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Home/ Team B Ms. Labrada's Class July 2014/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by sylvyapaladino

Contents contributed and discussions participated by sylvyapaladino

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Neuman Celano library study: Educational technology worsens achievement gaps. - 0 views

  • his story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.
  • Annie Murphy Paul is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of the forthcoming book Brilliant: The Science of How We Get Smarter.
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Neuman Celano library study: Educational technology worsens achievement gaps. - 0 views

  • The two were especially interested in how the introduction of computers might “level the playing field” for the neighborhoods’ young people, children of “concentrated affluence” and “concentrated poverty.” They undertook their observations in a hopeful frame of mind: “Given the wizardry of these machines and their ability to support children’s self-teaching,” they wondered, “might we begin to see a closing of the opportunity gap?
  • Many hours of observation and analysis later, Neuman and Celanano were forced to acknowledge a radically different outcome: “The very tool designed to level the playing field is, in fact, un-leveling it,” they wrote in a 2012 book based on their Philadelphia library study. With the spread of educational technology, they predicted, “the not-so-small disparities in skills for children of affluence and children of poverty are about to get even larger.”
  • Neuman and Celano are not the only researchers to reach this surprising and distressing conclusion. While technology has often been hailed as the great equalizer of educational opportunity, a growing body of evidence indicates that in many cases, tech is actually having the opposite effect: It is increasing the gap between rich and poor, between whites and minorities, and between the school-ready and the less-prepared.
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  • The unleveling impact of technology also has to do with a phenomenon known as the “Matthew Effect”: the tendency for early advantages to multiply over time.
  • negative effect on academic achievement—and in these cases, poor students’ performance suffers more than that of their richer peers. In an article to be published next month in the journal Economic Inquiry, for example, Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor and co-authors Helen Ladd and Erika Martinez report their analysis of what happened when high-speed Internet service was rolled out across North Carolina: Math and reading test scores of the state’s public school students went down in each region as broadband was introduced, and this negative impact was greatest among economically disadvantaged students. Dousing the hope that spreading technology will engender growing equality, the authors write: “Reliable evidence points to the conclusion that broadening student access to home computers or home Internet service would widen, not narrow, achievement gaps.”
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US Literacy, Math, and Technology Skills below OECD Average - ProCon.org - 0 views

  • According to a Nov. 2013 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study, most Americans are not at college-level proficiency in literacy, math, or technology skills--not even the average US college graduate.
  • In 2011 and 2012, the OECD administered a standardized test, the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), to 166,000 adults aged 16-65 in the 24 OECD countries to compare the literacy, math, and technology skills of adults.
  • he OECD found that 41.77% of Americans hold a bachelor's degree, lower than the OECD average of 42.01%. The United States ranked 14th out of 23 (the UK and Northern Ireland were tested together) in percentage of 25-34 year olds with "tertiary education." Korea was first with 61.63%, followed by Canada (57.26%), and Japan (55.84%). Austria ranked last with 20.34%.
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  • On the literacy proficiency portion of the test, the United States ranked 16th of 23 with 11.51% of adults having an "A" level proficiency, or a college graduate level of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. The average for all 24 countries was 11.79%. Japan ranked first with 22.56% of adults at an "A" level. Italy ranked the lowest with 3.32%.
  • On the "numeracy proficiency" (math) portion of the test, the United States ranked 21st of 23 with 8.48% of adults showing an "A" level proficiency. 12.42% was the average for OECD countries. Japan (18.85%) ranked first. Spain (4.06%) ranked last.
  • The third portion of the test was "proficiency in problem solving in technology-rich environments" and measured how adults used technology to get and use information, communicate with others, and perform tasks, or basic computer literacy skills. The United States ranked 14th of 19 with 5.1% displaying "A" level proficiency. Sweden ranked first with 8.8%. Poland ranked last with 3.8%.  Cyprus, Spain, Italy, and France did not participate in this portion of the test.
  • Japanese high school graduates... have higher literacy levels than university graduates... in England, Denmark, Poland, Italy, and Spain. Think about that. If you were a university rector in one of those countries, what do you think you'd be saying to your higher education minister right about now?" US college graduates scored an average of 8 points higher (297 out of 400 points) than Japanese high school graduates (289 out of 400 points) on the literacy portion.
  • The OECD noted that in all countries except Japan at least 10% of adults aged 16-65 fell below basic literacy skills, meaning they can only complete "simple tasks" such as finding information in a paragraph or completing one-step math problems but cannot perform more advanced literacy and math skills. 
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Pros and Cons of Technology in the Classroom and Where I Stand | Rachel Lynne's Blog - 0 views

  • , I will share some of the findings of my group and explain how they impacted me and can impact all educators.
  • Negative Effects: Spell-check: Through our research we discovered that many students rely too heavily on spellcheck to correct their spelling, and as a result, have poor spelling skills.  In the following video, a high school girl describes her spelling problems from dependency on spellcheck.  It also addressed the problems that arise from text speak.
  • Other negative effects of technology on learning: -Technology makes it easier to cheat and plagarize -Decrease in critical thinking -Decrease in analysis skills -Decrease in imagination -Don’t process as much during class, easily distracted
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  • Are Digital Media Changing Language? http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/mar09/vol66/num06/Are_Digital_Media_Changing_Language¢.aspx Is Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thinking and Analysis? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128092341.htm
  • Sparknotes and other such sources: When I was in high school, most of my peers never read the novels assigned in our classes because they could easily and quickly read a plot summary, character analysis, and theme, symbol, and motif summary on Sparknotes.  With this site and others like it so easily available, we can’t be surprised when kids don’t read books!  
  • This technology definitely has the potential to have a negative impact on student’s reading, writing, and critical thinking.
  • One of the issues we discovered is the negative effect texting and instant-message language has on student’s writing capabilities.  Our research shows that acronyms and abbreviations are slipping into student’s writing.  Rather than using formal English when writing papers, many students use digital language, which includes things like: -lower case ‘i’ rather than uppercase ‘I’ -b/c for because -idk for i don’t know -recurrent grammar issues
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http://www.nber.org/papers/w16078.pdf - 0 views

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    This is the US National Bureau of Economic Research's Working paper containing negative effects. It is the cited work in the web articles highlighted above.
  •  
    This is the US National Bureau of Economic Research's Working paper containing negative effects. It is the cited work in the web articles highlighted above.
sylvyapaladino

Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis? - 1 views

  • As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.
  • Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology, says Greenfield, who analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including research on multi-tasking and the use of computers, the Internet and video games. Her research was published this month in the journal Science.
  • Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not, Greenfield said.
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  • "No one medium is good for everything," Greenfield said. "If we want to develop a variety of skills, we need a balanced media diet. Each medium has costs and benefits in terms of what skills each develops."
  • However, most visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for reflection, analysis or imagination — those do not get developed by real-time media such as television or video games. Technology is not a panacea in education, because of the skills that are being lost.
  • Studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary," Greenfield said. "Reading for pleasure is the key to developing these skills. Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy. Many students do not read for pleasure and have not for decades."
  • Among the studies Greenfield analyzed was a classroom study showing that students who were given access to the Internet during class and were encouraged to use it during lectures did not process what the speaker said as well as students who did not have Internet access. When students were tested after class lectures, those who did not have Internet access performed better than those who did.
  • college students who watched "CNN Headline News" with just the news anchor on screen and without the "news crawl" across the bottom of the screen remembered significantly more facts from the televised broadcast than those who watched it with the distraction of the crawling text and with additional stock market and weather information on the screen.
  • More than 85 percent of video games contain violence, one study found, and multiple studies of violent media games have shown that they can produce many negative effects, including aggressive behavior and desensitization to real-life violence, Greenfield said in summarizing the findings.
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Computer use has 'persistent negative impact' on child's maths, reading test scores | N... - 0 views

  • GRANTING teenagers access to computers can actually diminish their reading and maths results, according to a new study. e Sunday Telegraph reports a survey of more than half a million children reveals technology is counter-productive in improving student achievement.
  • It found that introducing children to computers from 10 years of age could have a detrimental effect and was associated with "modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student maths and reading test scores".
  • The study, published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, flies in the face of popular belief and shows that expanding computer access does not reduce the digital divide.
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  • "Students who gain access to a home computer between 5th and 8th grade tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math test scores," he said.
  • "For school administrators interested in maximising achievement test scores, or reducing racial and socioeconomic disparities in test scores, all evidence suggests that a program of broadening home computer access would be counterproductive."
  • Researchers analysed administrative data for more than 500,000 Years 5-8 students from North Carolina.Studying their computer use and test scores, researchers aimed to asses the impact of student home computer use
  • Professor Vigdor claims home computer access is damaging because students are easily distracted and end up using their time to socialise and play games.
  • High-speed internet was also a contributing factor and tempted children to use their computers for recreation.
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Books Without Batteries:The Negative Impacts of Technology - 0 views

  • In The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Norton, 2010), Nicholas Carr notes that after years of digital addiction, his friends can't read in depth anymore. Their very brains are changing, physically. They are becoming "chronic scatterbrains... even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb."
  • Carr continues: "For the last five centuries, ever since Gutenberg made reading a popular pursuit, the linear, literary mind has been at the center of art, science, and society. As supple as it is subtle, it's been the imaginative mind of the Renaissance, the rational mind of the Enlightenment, the inventive mind of the Industrial Revolution, even the subversive mind on Modernism. It may soon be yesterday's mind."
  • Because our brains can no longer think beyond a tweet, we can't write well. And we can't read well either. The idea of reading—let alone writing—War and Peace, Bleak House, or Absalom, Absalom! is fading into an impossible dream.
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  • Here's what an e-reader is: a battery-operated slab, about a pound, one-half inch thick, perhaps with an aluminum border, rubberized back, plastic, metal, silicon, a bit of gold, plus rare metals such as columbite-tantalite (Google it) ripped from the earth, often in war-torn Africa. To make one e-reader requires 33 pounds of minerals, plus 79 gallons of water to refine the minerals and produce the battery and printed writing. The production of other e-reading devices such as cellphones, iPads, and whatever new gizmo will pop up in the years ahead is similar. "The adverse health impacts [on the general public] from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those for making a single book," says the Times.
  • Then you figure that the 100 million e-readers will be outmoded in short order, to be replaced by 100 million new and improved devices in the years ahead that will likewise be replaced by new models ad infinitum, and you realize an environmental disaster is at hand. We will have lost a chunk of our planet as we lose our minds to the digital juggernaut.
  • Here's what it takes to make a book, which, if it is any good, will be shared by many readers and preserved and appreciated in personal, public, and university libraries that survive the gigantic digital book burning: recycled paper, a dash of minerals, and two gallons of water. Batteries not necessary. If trees are harvested, they can be replanted.
  • Book Love, edited by James Charlton and Bill Henderson, is out from Pushcart Press on April 23, the International Day of the Book.
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The 4 Negative Side Effects Of Technology - Edudemic - 3 views

  • Let’s take a look at the top 4 ways that overuse of technology has influenced our children in an adverse manner:
  • 1. Elevated Exasperation These days, children indulge themselves in internet, games or texting. These activities have affected their psyche negatively, consequently leading to increased frustration. Now they get frustrated whenever they are asked to do anything while playing games or using internet. For instance, when their parents ask them to take the trash out, they get furious instantly. This behavior has shattered many parent-children relationships.
  • 2. Deteriorated Patience Patience is a very precious virtue and its scarcity could deteriorate a person’s Will. Determination is a necessity that comes with patience and without it no individual can survive the hardships of life. According to studies, tolerance in children is vanishing quite increasingly due to the improper use of technology. For example, children get frustrated quickly when they surf internet and the page they want to view takes time to load.
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  • 3. Declining Writing Skills Due to the excessive usage of online chatting and shortcuts, the writing skills of today’s young generation have declined quite tremendously. These days, children are relying more and more on digital communication that they have totally forgot about improving their writing skills. They don’t know the spelling of different words, how to use grammar properly or how to do cursive writing.
  • 4. Lack of Physical Interactivity No one can deny the fact that the advancement of technology has produced a completely unique method of interaction and communication. Now, more and more people are interacting with others through different platforms like apps, role-playing online games, social networks, etc. This advancement has hampered the physical interaction skills of many children. Due to that they don’t know how to interact with others when they meet them in-person or what gesture they should carry.
  • Alice Martin is a professional essay writer from UK, works on AssignmentValley’s education blog. She became a writer after completing her college and then established her career in the field of education and research.
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Why Web Literacy Should Be Part of Every Education | Co.Exist | ideas + impact - 0 views

  • Like reading, writing, and arithmetic, web literacy is both content and activity. You don’t just learn “about” reading: you learn to read. You don’t just learn “about” arithmetic: you learn to count and calculate. You don’t just learn “about” the web: you learn to make your own website.
  • No one would have believed that peers could contribute knowledge and advice, helping one another to learn through YouTube videos, Wikipedia, or other sites. In fact, if you go back to 2000, before any of those things existed, you cannot find accepted theories of human nature, economics, or earning that could predict that those things could and would exist in less than a decade. No one guessed Wikipedia’s success, not even its founders. We simply didn’t know that, without a work plan, a lesson plan, or a taxonomy of what “counts” as knowledge, without leadership or payments or designated roles, people--non-experts--would build the largest encyclopedia the world has ever known, because we love to share what we know with others, and we’re even willing to spend endless hours creating our own community standards, editing, and making it right.
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The Six Early Literacy Skills | CLEL - 0 views

  • Six basic skills comprise early literacy and help determine whether a child will be ready to learn to read and write.
  • PRINT MOTIVATION: includes being interested in and enjoying books.
  • Kids who enjoy books and reading will be curious about reading and motivated to learn to read themselves. Motivation is important because learning to read is HARD WORK!
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  • PRINT AWARENESS: includes noticing print everywhere, knowing how to handle a book, and knowing how to follow the written word on the page.
  • Children have to be aware of words before they can read them. They need to know how books work--which is the front cover, what's upside down and right side up, which page to start on, how to look from left to right on each line of text.
  • LETTER KNOWLEDGE: includes knowing that letters are different from each other, knowing letter names and sounds, and recognizing letters everywhere.
  • To read words, children have to understand that a word isn’t one single thing—it’s made up of smaller things, and those smaller things are letters
  • VOCABULARY: includes knowing the names of things.
  • It's much easier to decode a word on the page when it's a word you already know. So children with bigger vocabularies have an easier time when they start to read, since it's much easier for them to make sense of what they're sounding out. Children who understand what they're reading are more motivated to keep reading.
  • PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS: includes hearing and playing with the smaller sounds of words and recognizing that words are made up of a number of different sounds.
  • hildren who can hear how words "come apart" into separate sounds will be more successful at "sounding out" words when they start to read.
  • NARRATIVE SKILLS: include describing things and events, telling stories, knowing the order of events (sequencing), and making predictions (what might happen next).
  • f children can describe something, they have an understanding of it. If children can tell what’s happening in a story they’re reading, they are comprehending the story and not just the sounds of each individual word. Understanding what they're reading is crucial to helping them stay motivated to keep reading. If they don’t understand what they’re reading, they won’t care, and they won't want to put in the practice they need to become fluent readers.
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Literacy Skills Definition and Suggested Reading - 0 views

  • Definition: Literacy skills are all the skills needed for reading and writing. They include such things as awareness of the sounds of language, awareness of print and the relationship between letters and sounds. Other literacy skills include vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension
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What are literacy skills? | Thoughtful Learning: Curriculum for 21st Century Skills, In... - 0 views

  • Literacy skills help students gain knowledge through reading as well as using media and technology. These skills also help students create knowledge through writing as well as developing media and technology.
  • Information literacy involves traditional skills such as reading, researching, and writing; but new ways to read and write have also introduced new skills: Consuming information: The current excess of information requires students to gain new skills in handling it. When most information came through official publications like books, newspapers, magazines, and television shows, students encountered data that had been prepared by professionals. Now, much information is prepared by amateurs. Some of that work is reliable, but much is not. Students must take on the role of the editor, checking and cross-checking information, watching for signs of bias, datedness, and errors. Students need to look at all information as the product of a communication situation, with a sender, subject, purpose, medium, receiver, and context. Producing information: In the past, students were mostly consumers of information. When they produced information, it was largely for a single reader—the teacher—and was produced for a grade. It was therefore not an authentic communication situation, and students felt that writing was a purely academic activity. Now writing is one of the main ways students communicate. It has real-world applications and consequences. Students need to understand that what they write can do great good or great harm in the real world, and that how they write determines how powerful their words are. Students need to take on the role of professional writers, learning to be effective and ethical producers of information.
  • Media literacy involves understanding the many ways that information is produced and distributed. The forms of media have exploded in the last decade and new media arrive every day:
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  • Students' use of media has far outstripped educational use, and students will continue to adopt new media long before teachers can create curricula about it. It is no longer enough to teach students how books, periodicals, and TV shows work. Students need to learn how to critically analyze and evaluate messages coming to them through any medium
  • As with information literacy, the key is to recognize the elements of the communication situation—sender, message (subject and purpose), medium, receiver, and context. These elements are constant regardless of the medium used. By broadening the student's perspective to see all media as part of a larger communication situation, we can equip students to effectively receive and send information in any medium. Students must learn to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each medium and to analyze each message they receive and send.
  • We are living through a technological revolution, with huge changes taking place over brief spans of time. A decade ago, Facebook didn't exist, but now many people could not live without it. The average cellphone is now more powerful than computers from several years ago. We are surrounded by technology, and most of it performs multiple functions. In Growing Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, Don Tapscott outlines the following eight expectations that students have of technology. Freedom to express their views, personalities, and identities Ability to customize and personalize technology to their own tastes Ability to dig deeper, finding whatever information they want Honesty in interactions with others and with organizations Fun to be part of learning, work, and socialization as well as entertainment Connecting to others and collaborating in everything Speed and responsiveness in communication and searching for answers Innovation and change, not settling for familiar technologies but seeking and using what is new and better
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