Do children learn better using computers?
This is the very question Jenny Lewis, Principal of Noumea Public School in Sydney’s out west, has attempted to answer with the development of a practical, state-of-the-art database application called ‘Schoolmate.” Jenny and her staff felt that computers didn’t work well in classrooms because “the relationship between the curriculum and computers wasn’t linked for teachers”. From 1997 Jenny and her staff have been developing and using the ‘Schoolmate’ program and now there is real proof that children learn better using computers. “It’s one of those chicken and egg types of things, really. Was it because we were collecting our data better or was it because we were using computers? But what I can say is that once we were tracking the children better using computers, once we were individualising our teaching using the information the computers were providing, once we were evaluating to a child, the results followed. If we could keep a child here 8 – 10 months the improvements were betwe
