[Educators] World Bank study on computer use, February 2009

[Yama Ploskonka]

Hi Caryl!

This WB study
http://tinyurl.com/d3gtto
is a source used in the BID presentation that came to Sur's attention 
yesterday
http://people.sugarlabs.org/rafael/TICSenEducacion.pdf

I got it by contacting the author of the BID presentation, Eugenio 
Severin.
Mirian Gregori of Sur is asking for the one about Uruguay and especially 
Brazil, or maybe there is another I do not know of?  I have no idea 
about one focusing on Uruguay specially.
Could you help us find that one?

I wonder how the BID study you mention would measure "confidence", and 
how come that is a valid criterium for anything.  It would not surprise 
me that they found a correlation between "self-confidence" and test 
results, and I would dare to guess that correlation would also hold 
positive for family income and two-parent home, which simply would prove 
that kids that have are better off will be better off...

But I am guessing too much :-)

Thanks!

Yama

Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi Yama,
> 
> This study seems to be a different one from the one circulating on the 
> olpc-sur list from the BID.  Similar results, but interesting stats on 
> computer use by the students in several Latin American countries.  It 
> was released in March and concentrated on Uruguay for much of its data.  
> The WB study seems to concentrate on Colombia.
> 
> The BID study says students who feel more confident of their computer 
> skills also do better in their subjects (tests?).  Is this a "chicken 
> and egg" situation? Probably!
> 
> Caryl
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:41:06 -0500
> From: yama at netoso.com
> To: educators at lists.laptop.org
> Subject: [Educators] World Bank study on computer use, February 2009
> 
> Earlier this year it was announced there was a momentous World Bank 
> study to be published. We  were warned it might be quite negative to the 
> OLPC project.
> 
> If this is that study, I find it very tame, nothing new really, and 
> nothing we cannot improve - if we want and dare to see reality.
> /
> /*http://tinyurl.com/d3gtto*
> http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&piPK=64165421&theSitePK=469372&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000158349_20090211111507 
> <http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&piPK=64165421&theSitePK=469372&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000158349_20090211111507>
> 
> yes, computers in education are mostly useless, doh, unless they are 
> integrated to the existing process.  Why don't people focus on that, I 
> don't know. (BTW, to integrate them to the teaching process, supporting 
> the teachers' work, is the approach we expect to use within OLE Bolivia) 
> (another BTW, talking with an international expert of UNICEF in Bolivia 
> I was told she had never seen something like that kind of integration, 
> ever, anywhere - go figure, seems /*so*/ obvious!)
> 
> Just to spell out what I am talking about right here, 
> constructivism/ionism is /*not*/ connected to the educational process.
> 
> My emphasis,
> from the abstract,                                                       
> /           "Overall, the program seems to have had little
> effect on students’ test scores and other outcomes. These
> results are consistent across grade levels, subjects, and
> gender. *The main reason for these results seems to be the
> failure to incorporate the computers into the educational
> process.*"/
> 
> from the text,
> "/ *The main reason for these results may be the implementation
> of the program*. Surveys of both teachers and students suggest that the 
> program increases
> computer use among students and teachers by a surprising small amount, 
> and most of the
> use of computers by students is for the purposes of learning to use a 
> computer rather than
> studying language.    Additionally, the extra computer use reported by 
> teachers is
> concentrated in the lower grades with older students’ teachers reporting 
> almost no
> computer use in both groups."
> 
> / 
> <http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&piPK=64165421&theSitePK=469372&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000158349_20090211111507>
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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