This should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer:
Are smartphones making kids less intelligent, or at least making it tougher for them to actually master the material they are studying?
That might well be the case, according to a study conducted at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
The reason: When completing homework and other assignments, students are apt to look things up on their phones, rather than learn and internalize the answer. That works for getting a quick correct answer, but it makes it a lot harder to recall the information when test time rolls around, the researchers found.
Students who received higher homework grades, but lower exam scores—by as much as half to a full letter grade—were more likely to have Googled (or otherwise searched) their way to the homework answers rather than coming up with them themselves.
Students who look up answers tend to rapidly forget both the answer and the question itself, said Arnold Glass, the lead author and a professor of psychology at Rutgers. That means homework becomes a "meaningless ritual" rather than a learning opportunity—and the exam results show it.
I marvel at the stupidity of teachers who say kids shouldn't have to learn much can they can look up anything they need on their phones. Makes you wonder about the teachers' critical thinking skills, no?
Saying that students learn by looking up things on their phone is the same mentality that said kids didn't need to memorize multiplication facts (or any other facts) because they would always have a phone with them. I promise you this is not how math is taught in China, Japan, Russia or India. The failure to force kids to use the power of memory along with innovation leaves them ill equipped to compete with kids in other nations. I have hated for a very long time the intrusion of cell phones into the classroom.
ReplyDeleteSo it's true, students don't memorize the multiplication table? I'm out of touch. I remember when I llmemiruzed that, the Preamble, and the Gettysburg Address. I could feel my brain grow.
ReplyDeleteMany in education consider that "rote memorization", which is obviously a bad thing. Why memorize when you can just get out a calculator, right? Sheesh.
ReplyDelete@WildChicken It used to be a standard in Texas that students had to learn to memorize 24 lines of poetry and present it to the class. I still remember every word of "Jabberwocky" which was the poem I learned in sixth grade. In third grade we wrote multiplication table facts while the teacher took up lunch money and took attendance. I can still multiply faster or figure out the tip at dinner faster in my head than my kids can on their phones.
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