As the use of technology increases and improves in our personal and professional lives, the rise in technology use in schools is meant to better prepare children for their future careers.
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It said there was “no noticeable improvement” in test results for science, maths and reading in schools which had invested heavily in classroom technology.
The report suggested that “we have not yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogues that make the most of technology; that adding 21st century technologies to 20th century teaching practices will just dilute the effectiveness of teaching”.
The OECD study, an analysis of digital skills, comes from the same stable as the Programme for global Student Assessment (PISA) surveys that rank 15-year-olds around the world in reading, maths and science.
Across the countries in the report, students who do not use computers in mathematics lessons (or use them only rarely) do better on paper-based tests than students who do use computers, after accounting for differences in socio-economic status. In some countries, like Turkey and Mexico, about half of the students don’t have access to a computer at home.
A graph shows test results for Canadian students compared to other OECD countries.
The OECD found a negative correlation between use of email, chat and digital exercises and student performance.
Australian students spend the longest period of time on the internet while they are at school, at an average of nearly an hour of use every day, which is twice the OECD average.
According to a global study by the worldwide organization, the use of technology failed to improve academic outcomes and was, in some instances, linked with diminished student performance. (Around 470,000 students participated in the study.) “A computer is no substitute for a teacher, and to the degree that it is used as such, will fail”. They also found that students who used computers excessively were more likely to feel isolated or alone.
One interpretation, said Schleicher, is that “building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interactions, and technology sometimes distracts from this valuable human engagement”.
“Overall, the use of computers does not seem to confer a specific advantage in online reading”, the report says. England’s schools minister, Nick Gibb, advised that schools should consider each student individually when deciding how technology should bes supplement an educational program-it’s not the teching cure-all people may have assumed.
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“It is important that educators remain in the driver’s seat, so to speak, when introducing technology in classrooms, that technology is not becoming too prominent – because it can distract”, Mr. Avvisati said.
