Posted on 09/10/2009 12:34:49 PM PDT by OldSpice
Teenagers’ obsession with mobile phones and computers is taking a toll on their education, suggests a new research.
Andrew Kakabadse, professor of international management development, Cranfield School of Management, found that almost 60 per cent of teenagers were submitting coursework downloaded from the web without reading, rewriting, or understanding it.
The survey also found that the students’ addiction to text messaging was also affecting the standard of English, reports Times Online.
Three in ten respondents used text-message abbreviations, such as l8 (late) or RU (are you) in their coursework, with more than half of the 260 pupils saying they were either quite or very addicted to their mobile phone.
Kakabadse said the study “showed that technology obsession hinders spelling skills, implicitly encourages plagiarism and disrupts classroom learning”.
He added: “Despite school policies restricting mobile phone usage, students use the phone frequently with the majority making calls from the toilets.”
LOL
RU?
I wasn’t aware that teenagers needed any technological help to act like idiots.
It's not like the old days when we would copy an encyclopedia article and might accidentally pick up some knowledge from it instead of just highlighting, ctrl-C, ctrl-V, print.
Sounds like we could use a “teenage-mobilephone” czar.
ZOMG LULZ
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Zackly. I remember years ago in high school one of my classmates had one of the first LED-based hand-held electronic games. Can't remember the name of it, but you played a rudimentary game of football on it. His dad put a switch in the speaker to turn it off and he played it all day in class. I guess what's old is new again.
....my wife teaches freshman English at a local university...as soon as class is over the kids all reach for their cell phones....one day she asked them why that was...they looked at her like she was nuts for even asking such a thing.
....and BTW a Canadian college has introduced a new grade below “Fail”....it’s called “FD” failure with dishonesty...it is an attempt to curtail cheating by electronic means.
That’s it!
“...found that almost 60 per cent of teenagers were submitting coursework downloaded from the web without reading, rewriting, or understanding it.”
Article is a bit misleading. The problem is that teenagers are being dumbed down by the use of commputers, the internet, mobile handhelds, etc., but that there is a severe increase in plagerism, as indicated by what I cited above.
Sounds like a splendid idea to me.
While this is a problem, here is a counter thought. Think about how much information is now available at everyone's finger tips- information that just a decade ago, would have required weeks of research to find. There is a famous quote by Einstein: Never memorize something that you can look up.
What is being lost is critical thinking and analysis skills. How to rationally think about all the information in front of you, how to distill it and use it properly.
I'm guessing you meant "plagiarism".
Sadly, yes. I saw it after I hit the post button. I also meant to put ‘not’ after “teenagers are.”
:-/
“Never memorize something that you can look up.”
Sir, I resemble that remark!
Why can’t articles from the British press be identified in the headline so we’ll know not to take them seriously? This forum is about American issues concerning Our Republic. Half of what appears here seems to be British. What’s the point?
From article:
He added: “Despite school policies restricting mobile phone usage, students use the phone frequently with the majority making calls from the toilets.”
The advantage to wireless laptops is the ability to post to FR while on the toilet.
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