First, the news…
Computers may not boost student achievement
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO  Give a kid a laptop and it might not make any difference.
That’s the message from research presented here Monday, which suggests that spending millions of dollars to bring technology into kids’ homes and schools has decidedly mixed results.
Taxpayer-supported school computer and Internet giveaways are political gold, but studies have questioned whether they actually help student achievement. This research, presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting, confirms skeptics’ doubts.
In one study, researchers from Syracuse and Michigan State universities examined a program that gave laptop computers to middle-school students in Ohio in 2003. Preliminary findings are mixed.
“Overall, we don’t know if it is a worthwhile investment,” says Syracuse researcher Jing Lei.
About 37% of the children say they stare at the screens for more than three hours a day; a few report more than five hours a day. Parents help kids with homework more often and students’ grades benefit slightly, but teachers report more classroom distractions as students check e-mail. And students actually feel distracted: In the first year, their grade-point averages rose modestly, but when Lei and a colleague asked them to estimate their GPAs, students actually believed they dropped.
Evidence has shown that computers are finding their way even into the homes and schools of the nation’s poorest students. A Tennessee study found that schools serving low-income children had more computers than your typical school  125 for poor kids’ schools vs. 114 elsewhere, and computers in low-income schools often were more connected to the Internet.
But using computers, for instance, to teach reading in primary grades actually showed negative results. (more from the USA Today article…)
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For those who want to put out there that most black folks are “kept out” or denied access to technology, here is some data from the 2003 report entitled “The Buying Power of Black America”:
Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.0 billion
Computers and Related Equipment . . . .. 1.9 billion
Consumer Electronics. . . . . . . . . . 3.5 billion
and this…
African-American Web Users Growing Faster Than Overall Population
ClickZ News
By Christopher Saunders | September 17, 2001
Growth in Web usage by African Americans outpaced the average rate of growth during the past year, which could make the group more attractive to online advertisers, according to new figures from Nielsen//NetRatings.
Based on a recent study by the firm — a joint venture of NetRatings (Quote, Chart) and VNU’s ACNielsen and Nielsen Media Research — the number of U.S.-based black men and women using the Web had grown 19 percent by August 2001, to 8.2 million users. Meanwhile, the overall online population grew just 14 percent.
Growth in the amount of time that African Americans spend online also topped the overall average, increasing 22 percent from last year to nine hours and 41 minutes. By comparison, overall average surfing time only increased 12 percent from last year, to about ten hours and 22 minutes. (more…)
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