Skip Navigation
24 comments

  • Having access to a computer as a kid did not improve my academic performance either. It still positively affected the entire rest of my life.

  • I tend to find that any headline summarizing a study will never be capable of all the nuance necessary to understand what the study actually revealed. If a single student improved their academic performance with the provision of a laptop, the headline as phrased is inaccurate. It also looks like Peru has underperformance issues with education in general and with teachers not being digitally literate. I'd be curious to see the study replicated in other countries. The study noted that access to the laptops did improve computer literacy among the students, which is becoming more relevant for academic pursuits and even just general functioning in society, so I'd also be curious to see what might have happened to a control group with no access to the technology. Maybe the access allowed the students to maintain the average rather than have lower academic performance due to the lack of access...? As virtually every study I've ever read will typically say, "more research is needed..."

    • I agree that the headline here hugely over-summarizes the actual paper, but your counterpoints aren't accurate either.

      The "even one" argument isn't really correct - the post title says "kids" as a cohort. The academic performance of that cohort didn't significantly improve.

      The study states that pretty much the only skill that improved substantially was use of the XO laptop, not desktop or Internet skills. The learned skills weren't particularly portable.

      The study was performed against a control group, that either entered the program later or not at all.

      • the post title says "kids" as a cohort.

        Exxept the title just says "kids," not "kids as a cohort in this particular study," which can be read by anyone to mean all kids, including those not involved in the study. Without modifiers, it's a very vague and generalized statement that can be read as an absolute statement saying laptop access isn't academically beneficial for any kid anywhere. Hence the need for nuance.

        "Some of the kids in a group in Peru involved in this particular study didn't show significantly improved academic performance with access to a particular laptop."

        The study states that pretty much the only skill that improved substantially was use of the XO laptop, not desktop or Internet skills. The learned skills weren't particularly portable.

        That assumes the research sufficiently studied the portability of those skills or even could. I wouldn't make such an assumption. I've worked in digital literacy and some students do have skills that they just haven't learned to transfer yet, but they are still transferrable. And if it's specific to the OLPC laptop, that might only be indicative of a need for access to a more robust device or better digital literacy instruction.

        The study was performed against a control group, that either entered the program later or not at all.

        But was the control group students in another country with a different educational system or different teachers or different laptops or access to desktops instead, etc. et al?

        There are too many factors to draw definitive conclusions here.

  • Academic performance =/= computer skills.

    I do tech work for a living now but I did not perform well with homework or reading-heavy studying. The difference between computer and no computer wasn’t really relevant.

    These are separate skill sets, and should be treated as such. Access to a computer is still a net positive, though.

24 comments