Does Broadband Make Kids Smarter?

It was a story that would stop any Intelligent Community in its tracks.  

Economists at the University of Chicago studied the educational outcomes of children in low-income families who were given vouchers to help buy computers.  "We found a negative effect on academic achievement," said assistant professor Ofer Malamud, "I was surprised, but as we presented our findings at various seminars, people in the audience said they weren't surprised, given their own experiences with their school-age children."

In "Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality," Randall Stross reports on several studies in Romania and the United States that all point to the same thing.  Simply giving a computer and broadband access to low-income students does nothing, on average, to improve educational achievement - except for helping them acquire the skills needed to play online games and use social media.

A Duke University study of middle school students, which ran from 2000 to 2005, actually found that broadband and education can conflict.  Students posted significantly lower math test scores after the first broadband service providers showed up in their neighborhood, and significantly lower reading scores when the number of broadband providers passed four.  Not exactly what we were hoping for from greater competition in the broadband market.  As with the U Chicago study, the effects were confined to lower-income households.  

What's going on?  Social scientists are understandably wary about speculating in this delicate area.  The Duke study authors did suggest that in low-income households, parental supervision might be spottier.  After all, the students may be the first computer users in the family, which puts them in a position of authority.  (Haven't we all turned to a 12-year-old for technology advice at some point?)  

A volunteer installer for the Eastserve project in Manchester, England told me a story of being called into a home by a woman who said her subsidized PC wasn't working.  When he visited, she had the PC set up in the living room and her five children sitting in a row before it.  He checked it and everything seemed to be working.  Rubbish, said Mom.  It's not doing anything.  "Make it go," she demanded.  She apparently thought it was some variant on a television, which would switch on and entertain the kids without need for effort on anyone's part.  Not an unreasonable assumption, really.  Just wrong.  

We all know how easy it is to waste time on the Web and with computer games.  They are like the television only so much more engaging because they are interactive.  So it really shouldn't be surprising that putting technology into the hands of the untrained and under-supervised may produce the opposite of what we hope for.  

The article brings home to me the value of context.  Intelligent Communities tend to be good at managing this subtle but essential thing.  They know it is not enough to provide access to technology.  Reasonable expectations are required.  The user must be trained.  The trainer of the user must be trained.  The environment must be structured to produce success.  Whether it is deploying a broadband network, creating an innovation program or, yes, promoting digital inclusion, the process is at least as important as the product.

In Cleveland, Ohio, USA, Case Western Reserve University is using its existing campus network to deploy ultrafast broadband and computers into adjoining low-income neighborhoods.  With the network is going a small army of students and professors.  They are providing the context, which is research. While expecting to do good, the university wants to explore how low-income families can actually use broadband to improve their lives, increase their incomes and build community ties.  What the Case Western team discovers will be applied more widely to help reduce the immense gap between the digitally literate and illiterate in modern societies.  

Context is powerful.  That Eastserve volunteer in Manchester told me something else that has stuck with me.  In addition to doing installation and service on the project's low-cost PCs, he also leads training classes.  He told me that the last place he wanted to train people was in a school classroom.  He would go to people's homes, to community centers, to libraries - anywhere other than a school.  I asked why.  Because, he said, most of the people in this poor district had a miserable experience in school.  School was a place where they failed, over and over, and learned to pretend that it didn't matter.  So to make them return there for training was to start them off on the wrong foot.  Just like introducing poor kids to PCs and expecting them learn more than the skills needed for World of Warcraft.