Do Tablets Help Children Learn?
” I realize there is software written for tablets (someone linked to many below) which emulate activities such as drawing and painting. The point of this article is that creativity and learning areimproved over traditional methods. I doubt that doing things on a tablet is even equivalent to the physical interaction of other methods, let alone superior.
Is a math program better than watching and interacting with a teacher? Are 8 blobs of colored pixels really better than the 5 oranges and 3 apples on the table?
Is drawing (with a 100+ ms latency) better than on a piece of paper? Will a flat glass screen provide the subtle, subconscious insight into texture, shading, pressure, etc that crayons do?
Is a finger painting program provide as meaningful feedback as actually getting paint on your fingers? Just how well can you simulate the color and paper for water-colors?
Humans are social animals that have evolved to use our hands to examine and manipulate our environment. There’s a reason smaller children do things like finger paint — it’s a very tactile activity with clear feedback.
Technology has a place in the classroom, of course — the newfangled school computers I used in my middle school years are what pushed me at CS and programming — but tablets like the iPad are solutions looking for a problem. That they’re failing to find one is why we get these articles claiming they’re “better” because, gosh, 77% of adults guts’ say so.
You say they’re a tool — okay, nice truism. Please, tell me what tablets do to improve more traditional methods.
“
Extracted from here.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/03/2113206/do-tablets-help-children-learn
