Update: Teaching with Games project discovers school computers are not up to date, holding students back

by James Ransom-Wiley { May 25th 2006 at 2:25PM }

Last September, when Teaching with Games project* workers headed into UK schools with stacks of CD-ROMs, they didn't anticipate that the schools' computers would not be equipped with CD-ROM drives. Futurelab's Annika Small believes that technology is affecting the UK education system's ability to adapt to the times. "If you look at a classroom, it has hardly changed at all in the past 150 years," says Small.

The current education system is at odds with technology, scrambling to combat tech-savvy kids who are using devices, like their cell phones, to cheat. Small argues that if schools embrace technology and train teachers to tap into its educational potential, students will readily reform.

*The Teaching with Games project is run by Futurelab, an education charity, in collaboration with Electronic Arts.

See also: And today's homework is: play videogames

Tags: EA, Electronic Arts, ElectronicArts, Futurelab, Teaching with Games, TeachingWithGames

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Paul P. @ May 25th 2006 2:28PM

Personally I don't think you need computers in schools at all except for your computer courses.

White Rose Duelist @ May 25th 2006 2:29PM

I remember that when I was in high school, I took a typing class using brand-new 386s (and now I am dated), while the actual computer-related classes were taught on 5+ year old Macs.

Nintendo Kiddy @ May 25th 2006 2:31PM

Ha i feel so sorry for pc gamers. How sad that must have been to not have nintendo around and have to play games on those ugly plastic turds. Thank god for miyamoto saving everyone with his genius or we'd still be playing that crap. PC is so teh suck.

Nintendo = teh wiin.

cringer8 @ May 25th 2006 2:40PM

I think an ADAM computer would have been a funnier picture to place next to this post. "We don't have CD-ROM's, but if you have that software on a cassette tape, we're in business."

HHUK @ May 25th 2006 2:41PM

Hmm, Nintendo Kiddy, the name says it all. ;)

The state of computer facilities in the UK is not that bad in my area, my primary school now has decent PC's and as did my highschool. My college also had decent computers, not mega high-spec'd but aslong as they all had more than 1Ghz then they'd be adequate enough to use for what we needed them for.

Jordannnnn @ May 25th 2006 2:45PM

screw that!

My hihgh school gives every single student and teacher a shiny new(ish

Nintendo Kiddy @ May 25th 2006 2:51PM

Schools should be giving every student a DS Lite with braintease. That would help our education system.

Nintendo = teh wiin.

Kasumi-Astra @ May 25th 2006 2:59PM

I'd like think that every school in the UK has computer facilities that were at least CD-ROM capable. However, I don't think super-new computers are -that- neccessary either.

When I left school, the head of IT was busy replacing perfectly capable 17" CRTs with flatscreens across the entire school. The computers themselves are updated about once every four years on a rolling basis as well. So much was being given to the IT budget that other areas of the school were suffering. My sister-in-law, who has just left the same school is using the same maths textbooks that were given to me brand new. The head of IT now has a 30" monitor in his office as well, which is completely unneccessary.

The sad thing is that when they got around to throwing away an old BBC micro that had been collecting dust for a decade, they wouldn't let me have it. They said that it had to be binned and they can't give it to any of the students. I should've rescued the poor thing before it went in the skip.
You could easily teach students to teach using a basic, £300 computer equipped with Python and PyGame. One of my projects last year saw me doing exactly that, and I've never had so much fun.
Hell, you could teach students to build a game on that BBC micro. That's what I cut my teeth on fifteen years ago, it's a great machine to learn the tools of the trade on.
Now, I'm making a career out of it, and I owe it all to the BBC micro in the corner of the classroom, and lots of wasted time after hours at school.

Tush @ May 25th 2006 3:03PM

OK Nintendo Kiddy, we get it. Stop posting the same crap everywhere. You're hilarious.

Disposable Hero @ May 25th 2006 3:13PM

In my 11th grade US History and Government class, the teacher, who is a very seasoned History teacher and an ex-college US history professor is going to have one of the kids bring in their 360 and play the storming of Omaha beach on Call of Duty 2, it wont be in the middle of class or used to teach anything just yet, but he's going to look at it and see if it could be used in any way for teaching.

If he does, some of the younger Global History teachers might take a cue from him and use Age of Empires or something to teach. Maybe. But I really don't feel many games can be used for anything other than a novelty way of teaching something that could be told to the students or shown on video or something.

Momus @ May 25th 2006 3:17PM

I used to have an XT like that.

Michael May @ May 25th 2006 3:19PM

Yeah, less than 1/4 of my school's computers can cope with UT2004. Disgraceful.

Nintendo Kiddy @ May 25th 2006 3:21PM

Tush, you are cordially invited to eat my ass.

Nintendo = teh wiin.

Scott @ May 25th 2006 3:21PM

The high school teachers at the private school that I want to send my kids to use tablet PCs that have their screens projected on to the wall for the kids to see. It is a pretty sweet setup.

daniel @ May 25th 2006 3:27PM

around my school the computers vary in the main computer room theres about 50 systems running celeron d's with dvd rom i dunno the rest of the specs though but pretty good for what theyre used for, a lot of other places over the school have all in 1 systems some with dvd rom some with just floppy drives and there r sum pretty old pcs around which just have floppies and pentium 3's but most classrooms have a computer and a projector the reason for so many computers round the place is my school has something called technology college status but im not sure what that actually means

Nintendo Kiddy @ May 25th 2006 3:28PM

#13 thats not as cool as my GBA with afterburner mod and blue LED. Thats old school. It's worth like $250 now on ebay. Only nintendo systems increase in value over time.

Nintendo = teh wiin.

MetaHuman @ May 25th 2006 3:31PM

Bah! All the best edutainment is on Floppy disk for DOS! The Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, typing programs and the like. Those games were the rage of the class. At least at the several schools I went to traveling abroad in the 90s.

And even if Nintendo Kiddy is trolling and posing as a Nintendo fanboy and not meaning anything he says, he might have a point that Brain Training could work, becuase stuff like Number Munchers wasn't that far off, except it had cartoon characters. :p

Exbzurg @ May 25th 2006 3:31PM

Wow, totally different situation in my highschool.
Every classroom has a new dell computer(they update models once a year usually during winter.) We have 6 fully loaded computer labs. Every teacher has a laptop(this program was started last year). In my photography class we each had school issued laptops. Also we have a wifi network(though this is mostly for teacher use and is heavily encrypted). they also have a camera network system and are considering cell phone blockers. I guess our school just has more funding I guess. For the record though it is a public highschool in Gwinnett county which is in GA... And yes we are different from the rest of GA. Probally b/c if the funding though...

Amos @ May 25th 2006 3:41PM

Who says it's just the UK? A lot of schools here in the U.S. have crappy, old computers too. It's part of the lack of educational funding this country has...though increasing teachers's salaries would probably be the best thing to do with any more money in that area here at the moment.

Adam @ May 25th 2006 3:57PM

I play CS and Quake III on my pc comps :D

Derick @ May 25th 2006 4:03PM

This only dissapoints me because I will definately be graduated much before it ever happens. Meh...at least my kids could have a go at it. Sounds like a much more engaging way to learn and would keep students more interested. (at least the guys...I hope they understand that there is a gender barrier, even if more and more girls are starting to game.)

anonymous @ May 25th 2006 4:27PM

For the use of mobile phones in exams and stuff, couldn't they put something that blocked the single in the exam room so they couldnt do anything with their phone.

Jake @ May 25th 2006 4:30PM

I go to school in the UK and our computer system basically holds the school together. Everything is computer based, registration is done online, every student has their own school email and email is the main method of communication for staff (it even says they have to check their email at least twice a day in the school rules). Students have their own user accounts on the servers and there is wireless in nearly every room. Nearly all students have laptops and we're often allowed to use them in lessons (Often it's a good opurtunity to play games).

32_Footsteps @ May 25th 2006 4:31PM

Personally, I like the quote that you couldn't tell anything had changed in 150 years, despite the fact that they had computers in the classroom.

I can only come to the conclusion this means they have a working version of Babbage's Difference Engine. It might not have much processing power, but that's freaking sweet.

Damaga @ May 25th 2006 5:06PM

@19. I play CSS and HL2 on my schools PCs :o

Raikage @ May 25th 2006 6:20PM

I worked with my school district tech dep. and all of our computers now have....wait for it....128mb of ram! and at least a 300ghz processor! and a minimum of 4gb harddrive! Well thats the students computers anyway...and CD drives are not required...but some how last year we got a 2.5ghz pentium, I think 512+ ram, and a 128 graphics card, so we had fun playing Halo, Unreal, and Rainbow 6 on it....good times, good times
P.S. Idaho is poor...

The Raikage

Jeremy @ May 25th 2006 6:48PM

"It's part of the lack of educational funding this country has...though increasing teachers's salaries would probably be the best thing to do with any more money in that area here at the moment."

Hahahahah lol, you really think that there is a lack of "educational funding" too much is spent on "education" because it is "for the children" and most of it is spent on "administrative costs" or other bureaucratic agencies. Education is over funded.

TaiZ @ May 26th 2006 12:55AM

At my old Highschool, half the computers were 75mhz win 95 machines that I ended up having to repair. The most advanced computers in the school until I graduated where in the A+/Cisco room, which had 933mhz Pentium 3s, Windows 200 with 128MB RAM, 30GB HDD and 64MB TNT2 PCI video cards. We played UT on them, and I had to fix them atleast once a week when they started letting Freshmen take the class. When I graduated most of them didn't even have their original parts anymore, because the Freshmen would steal random parts.

The teacher the Freshmen had was way too trusting, and let the bad kids do whatever they wanted. I sugested the board of education take action against the chidren that were destroying the computers, even giving them a list of names of all the culprits (little kids brag about destroying/stealing stuff) and they just told me "Were working on it" but never did anything. After I graduated, which was 2 years ago, they replaced all the computers in the school with new Dell computers. According to an old friend, who worked with me, and still works at the school, they still need repair every couple of weeks.

Schools need to have a Technology Appreciation class before the students are allowed to use the computers. The would learn the basics of repair, how to troubleshoot, how to locate a printer on a network, how to share folders, just basic stuff. If a student fails the class for any reason, they can't use the computers. Or if they pass but are caught playing games, going to inapropriate sites, checking their myspace account, or just missusing the resorces more than 3 times, they should loose all computer privledges until they write a letter of appollogy, and if they are caught after that, they should have those privledges removed permenantly.

boneyard @ May 26th 2006 3:51AM

that they don't have the latest computers on schools doesn't surprise me. but that some don't have cdroms drives because they are so old is kinda odd.

such a project should take into account that not all schools have the latest systems, but they couldn't have counted on this.

BadWolf2 @ May 26th 2006 10:39AM

#22 "For the use of mobile phones in exams and stuff, couldn't they put something that blocked the single in the exam room so they couldnt do anything with their phone."

As far as i know it is illegal to use devices that block signals in the UK.

Rootbeer @ May 26th 2006 12:33PM

The Math department's computer lab when I was in high school in the mid-1990's was a room full of about 20 Apple IIgs's, running some sort of rudimentary graphing software. Mathematica it wasn't.

I reckon those boxes were more powerful than the $90 HP graphic calculators we all were compelled to buy for class, but probably not by much.

Albert @ May 27th 2006 2:43PM

The following is an extract of an article from the UK Times Educational Supplement suggesting that money would be better spent on books rather than IT equipment:

"....Mr Hurd, Malcolm Dixon of Liverpool John Moores university, and Joanna Oldham of Liverpool Hope university, have been analysing data collected from more than 6,000 primary schools over three years by Ofsted. They have also surveyed 540 heads.

They have come to the conclusion that spending £100 per pupil on books has a greater impact on average test scores across English, maths and science than the same amount spent on ICT or staffing.

They found the average key stage 2 test score was 27.5 and estimated that schools which spent £100 per pupil on books raised test scores from an average 27.5 to 27.9 or 1.5 per cent per child. This compared to £100 on ICT which would raise scores by 0.72 per cent per child."

Full link and a related article in The Register:

http://www.tes.co.uk/section/story/?story_id=2233918&window_type=print

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/22/computers_dumbas/