Maths-Whizz Blog

A US Department of Education study, released earlier this spring, found that using reading or mathematics software in class had no significant effect on students’ test scores. The report, titled ‘Effectiveness of Reading and Mathematics Software Products: Findings from the First Student Cohort’, is available here.

The News Tribune, a Washington state newspaper, reported the findings last month thus:

The long-awaited report amounts to a rebuke of educational technology, a business whose growth has been spurred by schools desperate for ways to meet the testing mandates of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.

Over nine thousand students in 132 schools took part in the study that looked at 15 different software products, all used for either reading or maths teaching. Becta, the government’s educational communications and technology agency, has been looking into the effectiveness teaching software for some time, but has not (at least to my knowledge) come out with such an official overall verdict on the worth of teaching with software, as America’s Department of Education has done. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer racing games make you a bad driver - at least, according to the findings of some recent research, both in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and for the driving school company, BSM.

In a sense, this finding is encouraging - apparently simple games are influencing complex real-life behaviour. If computer games are having this kind of effect then educationally-stimulating and socially-constructive games could be genuinely useful for children and adults alike. April’s ‘TechNews’ report from Becta (the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) notes the development of “Ethics Game” in Thailand, the brainchild of a civil servant in the Thai Government’s Moral and Ethical Development Office who was concerned at the emphasis on violence in arcade games. “Ethics Game” has been designed to encourage learning of the five precepts of Buddhism: do not kill, steal, lie, commit adultery, or drink alcohol. Read the rest of this entry »