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

Sat Mar 14 18:17:46 EDT 2009

On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Yama,
>
> I went back and looked at the BID report again this morning.  It seems to be
> a pastiche of stuff gathered from many sources:
>
> They have some stats on internet use by students in several countries
> identified only by a title with no source listed:
> Generación Interactiva: 25.476 estudiantes de Argentina,
> Brasil, Chile Colombia, México, Perú y Venezuela
>
> Some comments on the impact of technology in the classroom from a 2006
> publication (poorly sourced)
>
> Some statements related to standardized test results, evidently in Colombia,
> but no hard data (this is where the "confidence=competency" comment comes
> in).
>
> Excerpts from someone's Powerpoint presentation in English with no comments
> relating it to results, it just seems to be about the structure of a
> hypothetical project.
>
> "Evaluations" of pre-pilots in Haiti and Paraguay based on "perceptions"
>
> Graphs of attention span data from Haiti...no before and after, no
> information on how it was measured.
>
> In short...this report is pretty useless.  I apologize for not seeing that
> yesterday.
>
> Now the big question: Why isn't someone doing a real study of how our
> deployments are working?  Certainly there are many grad students out there
> looking for a topic for their dissertation who would love to make this their
> project.

+1

> What is preventing this from happening?

Columbia University Teachers College is studying the New York
deployments. There was a report last year of a Swiss study on the
costs of deployments.

I have been arguing for a program of research for two years. It is in
the Earth Treasury mission. I consider the lack of such studies to be
another instance of Nicholas's mismanagement of the entire program.

> Caryl
>
>> Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 11:10:11 -0500
>> From: yama at netoso.com
>> To: educators at lists.laptop.org
>> Subject: Re: [Educators] World Bank study on computer use, February 2009
>>
>> 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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