Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Study: PCs maek kidz dummer

Hoo wooda thunk it?

Those using computers several times a week performed "sizeably and statistically significantly worse" than those who used them less often.

The OECD pointed to a positive link between students' interest in computers and their literacy, and Fuchs and Woessmann found that the more computers there were in students' homes, the better their test performance.

However, they realised that more computers in a household generally means a more affluent family. Children from affluent homes tend to perform better academically, so Fuchs and Woessmann factored this in their analysis.

Having done this they found that the more computers there were in a student's home, the worse the student's maths performance.

Fuchs and Woessmann found that students performed more badly in schools with a significant lack of computers. However, they then took into account that schools with better computer availability also have better resources in general. They found that computer ability was not related to student performance.

They also studied the effects of computer use on test scores, and found that greater use of computers in the home impacted positively on test scores.

In schools the effect was different. Students who hardly ever used computers did a little worse than those who used them between a few times a year and several times a month. But those who used school computers several times a week performed "sizeably and statistically significantly worse" in both maths and reading.


Sew, haveing uh komputer iz both gud and bad deepending on weather yore rich or knot. Teh thingz u lern theeze daze.

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