KQED’s interview with John Sipe, senior vice president, national sales manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:
Since last fall, 400 California middle school students have been using the iPad to learn Algebra with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Fuse program. This first app, Holt McDougal Algebra 1, is an interactive version of the textbook, and with it, students get feedback on practice questions, they can write and save notes, receive guided instruction, and access video lessons.
“We like to say that the course is ‘re-imagined,’” said John Sipe, senior vice president, national sales manager at HMH. “It’s a lot more than just adaptation. We know that it’s a more iterative process than a revolutionary process in moving things to mobile delivery to a place like iPad.”
Preliminary results show that 78% of the students using the iPad app scored Proficient or Advanced on the California Standards Test, while the traditional textbook using students scored 59% Proficient or Advanced.
As much as some folks want to poo poo these sorts of experiments they are likely to more or less have these same results. Why? Because these kids are of the digital generation. They are all about TV, the Wii etc. Plain books are boring, but put it on some nifty digital thing and they will want to play around with it. And getting them to do that is half the battle
“…put it on some nifty digital thing and they will want to play around with it”.
And soon this nifty thing will become boring … then what? Technology is not a replacement for good teachers igniting the imagination of students.
Also, I think a part of learning is developing the discipline to work your way through tasks which are admittedly for many quite boring.
I find these tools quite valuable but they are not central to getting children to learn.
There really does see to be almost a cult of people who think learning should be as hard and painful as possible instead of something we like to do.
It’s the same cult that often believes that what works for one kid works the same for all. But forgets that some kids have reading disorders etc