New evidence that computers change the way we learn
People who use computers regularly are constantly mapping the movements of their hand and computer mouse to the cursor on the screen. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 19 have shown that all that pointing and clicking (the average computer user performs an impressive 7,400 mouse clicks per week) changes the way the brain generalizes movements.
“Computers produce this problem that screens are of different sizes and mice have different gains,” says Konrad Kording of Northwestern University and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. “We want to quickly learn about these so that we do not need to relearn all possible movements once we switch to a new computer. If you have broad generalization, then you need to move the mouse just once, and there you are calibrated.”
And indeed, their studies found that Chinese migrant workers accustomed to using computers made broader generalizations when it comes to movement learning than a group of age- and education-matched migrant workers who had never used a computer before. While both computer users and non-users learned equally quickly how to move a cursor while their hand was hidden from view, computer-experienced individuals more readily generalized what they learned about movement of the cursor in one direction to movements made in other directions.
To get to the bottom of that difference, the researchers studied another group of 10 people unfamiliar with computers both before and after they spent 2 weeks playing computer games that required intensive mouse use for 2 hours each day. That two weeks of experience was enough to convert the generalization patterns of those computer-naïve individuals to that of regular computer users, the researchers report.
The findings show that computer use not only changes our lifestyle but also fundamentally affects the neural representation of our movements, the researchers say. This new understanding of movement learning might have important real-world implications for people undergoing physical rehabilitation in the clinic.
The invention of the computer is one of the most remarkable innovations that have occurred over the last ten decades. The modern world is deemed digital, what most people fail to appreciate however is that the source of life being digital is the computer. Gone are the days when executing stuff was done manually. Today at the click of a button, rocket machines has been launched, ICU life-support is run, instant communication is enabled, to mention but a few.
Computers are defined as programmable machines that have two key features :they respond to a specific set of instruction(given by the human) that have been well defined and they can execute a pre-recorded list of instructions usually referred to as a program. Therefore computers execute what they have been instructed to.
Computers have evolved over the years from the static mainframe computers to the portable modern computers that we use today. Modern computers are both electronic and digital, and consist of the actual machinery such as wires circuits and transistors –these are referred to as hardware, and the data and instructions that are fed into the computer which are collectively referred to as software.
Components of the Computer.
The main components that make up the computers are:
Memory: enables computers to store data and programs.
Mass storage device: this is commonly referred to as the hard disk.
Input devices: such as the computer keyboard and mouse.
Output devices: such as the screen.
CPU: which is the heart of the computer and is responsible for all executions.
“Our data revealed that generalization has to be learned, and we should not expect it to happen automatically,” says study first author Kunlin Wei from China’s Peking University. “The big question in the clinic setting is whether supervised rehabilitation can lead to functional improvement at home. Thus, the next natural step for us is to experiment on how to make this generalization from clinics to home happen more effectively.”
“If we could make patients generalize perfectly from robotic training in the hospital to drinking tea at home, then training in the hospital would maximally improve everyday life,” Kording adds.
Influence of Computer in Education
In education, learning and sharing information has amazing developments after we started using computers in our life. We can find the answer to virtually any question within moments and can communicate this information in a variety of ways in real time. Needless to say we can see every educational institution has interaction of student with computer. The invention of tablet computer made smooth transition to student with computer from heavy bags carrying books and other learning accessories. Libraries have gone digital as well, so the public have access larger amount of information virtually anywhere. Connecting to the internet gives us access to worlds of information right at our fingertips and anywhere. Distant education through online and online exams are getting more popular and becomes the paradigm of the higher education. Most of the famous universities offer online education and examination to their students.
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Current Biology, Wei et al.: “Computer use changes movement learning.”
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Mary Beth O’Leary
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