Pupils Learn Poorly When Using Computer Programs

You hear almost everywhere about the revolution in education from computers but the reality is a little different and extensive research revealed little beyond incompetence in such software.

Abstract:

"Most digital learning tools used in schools are unsatisfactory and only test the knowledge the pupils already have," says Björn Sjödén, who has reviewed a large number of computer programs in his doctoral thesis "What Makes Good Educational Software?" - (ScienceDaily:  Pupils learn poorly when using most computer programs)

Update:  they key phrase in this is 'used in schools' and most likely it's best to segregate that from pre-school software and there's a note about that at the end.  You will see in one of the comments a testimonial on how well it works for kids before attending school.

The premise is seemingly counter-intuitive and I know it wasn't true with WEBSTER, the program I wrote for my ol' Dad after his stroke.  The Queen Bee worked with my ol' Dad using that program and he sure as hell did start speaking again.  It's not known and probably can't be known how much the program did toward that.  It's important to note the increased efficacy of the program because I was tuning the software to his specific needs and my sister was tuning the dictionaries in the same way.  Hardly any student software will ever receive that much attention after it has gone public.

Anywhere on the Internet you can find testimonials from the reborn on the value of computer-based instruction but, after over thirty years of professional experience, I never saw computer instruction to have even the faintest value and there was considerable need for it in learning about concepts in IBM mainframe software.

Note the distinction between computer software and computer-based learning as the latter may simply be gathering students to connect remotely to a live instructor.  There's no chance that will be better than sitting in front of Socrates to hear him discussing hemlock ... but at least it saves some gasoline and automotive expenses.

The software is the biggest racket and I'm not willing to write off all of it as I suspect there is value in the software for quite young children.  If there's a problem, it comes with an obsessive need to fix everything with computers when it's patently obvious they can't (i.e. people have to do it).

In short, education is far too important to entrust it to a machine.