More on twitter, txting & tablets in school

I missed the money quote in the post below. And that is:

"...the Kineo can only access websites that are pre-programmed by an administrator or teacher, and its messaging capabilities have been disabled to make sure students use it for learning, not texting."
Made by the writer of the article, Dennis Pierce, editor of sSchool News.

"learning, not texting"! So check out this bit, also sent by C L:

Use of Twitter is linked to higher grades, study finds
According to a new study published in The Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Twitter can bolster student engagement and grade-point average.
The study followed 125 pre-health majors at a midsize public university. Those using Twitter, says Rey Junco of Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania, the lead author, had an average G.P.A. half a point higher than their counterparts in a non-tweeting control group. They also more frequently participated in class, sought out professors and discussed course material outside of class.
Twitter was used for discussions, questioning professors in and out of class, receiving feedback and reminders, and reviewing course concepts reduced to terse fundamentals, all via laptop or cellphone.
Students seemed to find the medium a less intimidating way to express themselves in large lecture halls. “Twitter was a useful, low-stress way to ask questions,” Mr. Junco said.
As one student wrote on Twitter: “One of my favorite parts of the day is when I’m sitting in Bio lecture and a tweet has been sent out through the class account and everybody looks at their phone.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/world/asia/10iht-educBriefs10.html?src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/world/asia/index.jsonp

iPad/Android lock down (vs unlocked tools for schools)

Do we want our kids learning with "information appliances," or with the robust, flexible and powerful tools that are available? That is the question, or at least that's the question posed by Brainchild with their new Android-based table PC, the kineo.

According to Dennis Pierce of eSchool News, "Perhaps best of all for educators, the Kineo enables school leaders to specify the applications that students can use on the device by “locking down” apps they don’t want students to use." And from the same article: "“A teacher can have full confidence that when her students are working on Kineos, they are on task and won’t get into trouble,” said Brainchild President Jeff Cameron...." 

Well, yes, perhaps. But this is really a question that's begging for research. Do appliance-style learning devices (such as the Kineo) deliver better results in classrooms than more flexible, consumer-oriented products (e.g., iPAD)? Under what conditions--in terms of teachers' capacities, classroom management models, curriculum constraints? And what competencies? 

Here's a student quoted in the same article: 

“The Kineo … is like a portable textbook with study guides, calculators, [and] movies that is handy and portable, that you can pretty much bring anywhere instead of using textbooks and big bulky computers,” said a student at Manatee Middle School. “I have a lot of trouble in math, and this device is just so helpful with that, because it has study guides and it lets me just practice all the things that I need.”

However, as Claudia L'amoreaux sez in an email about this bit of sophistry, "it's the learning-not-texting mentality....uh guys, anything that motivates kids to write thousands of messages a day can pro'ly be used for 'learning.'"

Well, BC has posted a bunch of research, but AFAIK it's comparing nuts to bacon--"conventional math instruction" with instruction augmented by BC software and tools. I dunno if this solves anything in relation to purchasing decisions, except, again, to purchase (something) or not to purchase (something).