Dec
11
One of the oldest myths, and one which amazingly persists to this day, about computers is the idea that you buy one “to help the children with their homework”. What utter bunk! It’s like saying “ah, but my child will be a much better poet if she learns to write her poems with one of those trucks they use to paint the lines on the edge of the road and driving it around a REALLY BIG piece of paper”.
Yes, knowing how to drive will be a useful “life skill” but it’s hardly going to improve her marks for her “autumn poem” assignment. The reason computers are able to pull this one off is that the end result, usually at least, has better handwriting.
5 comments so far...
A myth started by opticians presumably.
After all that homework (aka computer games) they will probably need them
A computer *can* help with homework. Computers can present information in ways you can’t achieve with print which can help with learning, and of course having the internet opens up a world of information not easily available elsewhere. Writing my essays is a hell of a lot easier than it would be if I had to get everything out of books.
Of course, computers can be quite a distraction from homework too. Ahem.
I just don’t buy it Lisa. The internet is choc full of hearsay and inaccuracies. I can accept that an adult, with the critical eye of experience, can use the internet as a source of information, but I really don’t buy it from the point of view of educating children. They will learn useful skills in how to navigate the net, etc. but the ‘net does not encourage study, it encourages flighty skipping between subjects - this is the origin of the term “surfing” the net.
I don’t know about schools, but at uni, we were given tips on how to find information we could trust, such as .ac.uk and .gov.uk websites, and our uni’s website has huge lists of sites belonging to professional bodies etc. relevant to what we are studying.
Hang on, what am I saying? You can’t trust information on a .gov.uk website. I must be tired. :)
I tried commenting yesterday but I think I must have hit the wrong key before submitting!
What I was going to say was that with using the internet to find information,
not only can you find wrong information, but because you can pretty much get immediate answers
(in terms of the type of information a school child would be expected to learn about) a child is
less likely to read any additional information (unless they happen to be very studious!). If they
can do their homework quickly, they’re going to, so they can then go and enjoy themselves with friends, or go watch tv.
Books on the other hand can make finding the relevant information harder, so the child might actually learn more whilst trying to find the relevant information.
Of course it’s probably easier to get a child to do their homework using a computer than sitting trawlingthrough books!
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