On November 30, 2004 Stephen Downes' Understanding PISA wrote an extremely good critique of this study:

"The headline was dramatic enough to cause a ripple in the reading public. "Students who use computers a lot at school have worse maths and reading performance," noted the BBC news article, citing a 2004 study by Ludger Woessmann and Thomas Fuchs (Fuchs and Woessman, 2004)."...

Not only that but today's Stephen's Web [see OLDaily] links to the article I read in the Scotsman this morning - Scotsman.com News - Sci-Tech - Computers 'can harm learning' and I agree with the closing paragraphs of that article:

Nick Clayton, a technology writer and former IT teacher, said it was not the number of computers that was important but how they were used.

He said: "A computer is a tool and can be used across all subjects particularly now you have the internet. But it has to be a natural part of teaching in the same way as books and other tools. And teachers need training in order to use them effectively."

The Register - How computers make kids dumb:

"A study of 100,000 pupils in 31 countries around the world has concluded that using computers makes kids dumb. Avoiding PCs in the classroom and at home improved the literacy and numeracy of the children studied. The UK's Royal Economic Society finds no ground for the correlation that politicans make between IT use and education."...

It's no surprise that computers at home are used by kids more for their entertainment value than their educational value. I suspect that if the researchers had used, say, the TV as their technology focus that they would have concluded that TV makes kids dumb!

It's my belief that - mainly - politicians consider computers in teaching to be a panacea and a cost saving when compared to the level investment they would need to bring class sizes down to a level that would allow teachers to really interact with, and inspire, the kids.

Of course those of us in the business of educating students using a computer as the actual subject of study are bound to suffer backlash from others that cannot distinguish between the use of computers and the discipline of Computer Science. Sigh!

Indirectly via David's Badly Burned C Level - Tom Evslin's Managing Programming for CEOs Part 1 – Decompiling Programmer-Speak:

"Naturally, programmers speak in code.  You may hear them but that doesn’t mean you know what they said.

...

As a CEO or hope-to-be CEO of a technical company, it is essential that you crack the code.  Otherwise you will have no hope of knowing when any particular piece of essential development will be done or even what it will do if it is ever finished.  Today’s blog is a phrase book of programmer-speak."...

And the follow-up article - Managing Programming for CEOs Part 2 – Done is a Four Letter Word:

"If you’re the CEO or are ever going to be, you’ve got to know when things are going to be DONE.  Nothing else matters; you can’t sell or use half done or 95% done.  As I blogged the other day, “95% done” is programmer-speak for the remaining 5% will take 95% of the total elapsed time.  You are asking for trouble if you try to manage by the percentages."...

Since tomorrow is the project report 'ship-date' many of the final year students at work I suspect that some of them will have already employed these codes ;-) As a long-time project supervisor I certainly recognise them. Classic stuff.

Since David eulogises about the "transparency of reporting, accuracy of estimating, near perfect quality and high level of productivity possible on a well run agile management or FDD project" I wonder if an software engineering degrees have really adopted AM or FDD as core components of their curriculum?

And the Winner is... Agile Management Blog! :-)

I was delighted to read that David's agilemanagement.net was awarded Best Project Management Blog of 2005. I feel a wee bit proud too.