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Are Computers in Classrooms Bad for Learning
Sideshow Vox writes "Evidently a number of experts in the education field see more harm than good in exposing young children to computers in the classroom. The article raises some good points about the darker side of the current fashion of computers in every classroom." I don't know when I would have found the time to write Slashdot during college if we didn't have computers in the classroom ;)
This article should be considered "a reasonable sound of an alarm" and not a wholesale debunking of pre-fourth grade use of computers.
If teachers were adequately compensated and trained, then the proper use of computers would enhance every facet of learning. It is time to place a higher tax distribution emphasis on paying and training teachers, this includes the proper use of computers.
Dumb, poor (read:underpaid) teachers are the enemy, not computers. Fix the system that allows teachers to have no incentive to be the best and to be compensated as the best. Pay good teachers well, pay excellent teachers better and pay phenomenal teachers gargantuan salaries. Put bad teachers out on the street.
Keep the computers in the classroom and have the teachers/students learn how to use them constructively.
Now is the only moment you have complete control over. Use now wisely.
"Both Oppenheimer and Roszak feel much of the problem rests with computer companies, who have tried to persuade schools to buy computers by citing flawed studies showing improved academic performance among students versed in computer technology."
"With this in mind, Roszak's advice to educators is straightforward: "Find out what Bill Gates wants schools to do and don't do it."
Let's re-write that to:
"Let's find out what Bill Gates wants to do, and don't do it!"
Sorry. Couldn't resist...
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
There are some very good tools on computers these days. But, these tools have potential to destroy the learning process if used incorrectly. So long as teachers work from the bottom up while teaching the kids, all is well. It's the minute that the teachers bring out the calculator BEFORE the little cubes to teach addition that things get messy. Use the tools, use the computers, but be clear that there is no dependency on them, that they're used because they're more efficient, not because our kids don't know how to do it any other way.
-huzzah!
Bull. Teachers need to learn how to use the computers correctly.
"Education is not just about transferring information, and isn't improved by transferring it more efficiently."
What is education about then and how does this statement apply to computers?
"Kids will always know more than the teachers. This will inevitably lead to huge conflicts."
This is not "inevitable". Kids (usually) don't know more than their teachers in any another field, even the rapidly changing ones (say, physics). In any case, this isn't a computer problem, it is a social one.
"Computers aren't programmable. Not anymore. They used to come with BASIC interpreters. Now you just get Windows on the home PC, or a Mac."
Again, not a computer problem, a "bundling" problem. For instance, RedHat Linux comes with many many many programming languages.
"A lot of the so-called educational software is a joke..."
Another non-computer problem. This one is just poor software. Easily fixed by using different software.
"Multiuser systems in schools tend to be run on an utterly fascist basis, due to admin cluelessness and underfundedness."
And finally another non-computer problem (surprise!). This one is social/administrative.
Now, I didn't mean to pick you to pieces specifically, but you were the highest rated at the time I read the story. Your subject line is that "computers don't work in the classroom". But as we can see above the REAL problem is that "computers aren't used correctly in the classroom". Big difference.
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Again, we hit the falicy of statistical generalization.
I went through school, and the only thing (other then an overly concerned mother) that saved me from being religated to remedial classes, for my inability to write coherently was the computer.
I have a moderate-extreme case of dysgraphia. My handwriting is like chicken scratches, and worse requires all my effort and concentration just to form the letters that well. As you might imagine, this tended to leave very little cognetive processing power free to be creative. It was so bad that the school in grade 1 thought I couldn't read because I was unable to write down the answers to the questions to test my reading comprehention.
Fortunatly for me, in grade 2 my parents bought me a C-64, a dot matrix printer, and a copy of paperclip. My marks on my written work went up as soon as I learned to touch type.
Also, coincidentally it got my start on my career, since the first time I logged into a BBS at age 9, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, despite not knowing the job title 'systems administrator' at that point.
Now if 1% of all students have my problems (and that's way under from the statistics I've been reading) by forbiding children this tool till they reach high school, you would be writing off millions upon millions of children.
WHEN will we learn the simple truth that what is good for one child is not good for every child. We all learn differently.
Just my 2 cents.
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On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Sure, this possibility should exist to for those that are so inclined, but face it, most students will not ever have the need/desire to actually code. Should they have to?
On the other hand, e-mail is quickly becoming a primary method of communication for many people. Word processing is essential to most any business. These are the applications our student need to learn.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
I share the same point of view as the poster. Of course I might not of called the opposition luddites... Being introduced to an Apple][c was one of the most educational experiances of my life. It taught me how solve a problem by creative means instead of just repeating whatever I was taught. This basic skill is overlooked (in my experiance) in most public education. School is in many ways public babysitting that progresses into a slave induction camp at higher grades. At least computers allow more feedback to a child when trying to solve a problem then a red tick on some throw-away assignment. Of course if we all went to the Waldorf system or something then I'd admit that kids might be fine without them.
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I think simply saying "computers in the classroom are bad before such-and-such a time" is oversimplifying things a bit. I tought myself BASIC on a C64 back when I was in Kindergarten, and I certainly did not suffer from using a computer at that early an age. Teaching kids how to do things like program, or to use a word processor, seems to be a perfectly good use of computers, even as early as elementary school. Drawing programs are as good a way as any to influence a child's creativity. Certainly one does not want to teach a child that the way to find the answer to any question is to simply do a search for it on the internet and write down what one finds, and naturally it's important to balance computer education with other forms of education, but I see no reason why computers should not be used for educational purposes. A more primary concern should be training teachers to use computers productively within the classrooms. A computer is a tool, and like any tool, if used wisely, it can be very helpful, but if used poorly, it becomes a hindrance.
The education (or as it is often called, edutainment, the name which reveals its inherent weakness) software was shoddy, this does not mean computers or their use is a bad thing, much like Microsoft products being shoddy does not conclude pc's are poor devices. One needs only to find the linux of education software (to use a comparison)to unlock the computers potential in teaching young children more effeciently and more effectivly.
NightHawk
Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.
Every night, tired dyslexics around the world look forward to 8 hours of peels.
You lost me, I am dyslexics, I don't think of peels?
Little advantage? I'd say big disadvantage!
Most programming tools today require little more than the cookbook mentality of dragging and dropping things into place. Furthermore, a hideously inefficient program could still run reasonably fast on today's processors; performance does not rely on intelligent programming in many cases.
I could see a kid today with Visual Studio go through AppStudio, create, build and execute an entire program and think he's accomplished something without doing any programming at all.
When I learned basic on the venerable and legendary Apple ][ and TRS-80, I was so fascinated by the concept that I would sit around and write code on paper when I wasn't around a computer (which was almost all the time!)
My experience is that real programming talent and ability is as rare now as it was twenty years ago despite the ubiquitousness of PC's. I'm sure there are millions who read "Java for Dummies" or "HTML for Dingbats", etc, and consider themselves programmers (and are perhaps employed as such), but the real hackers that move and shake technology are still very few and far between.
Give the kid an Apple ][. I've got an old XT lying around that is waiting for my six-year-old to start programming. I bet he'll be ready in a year or two. He appreciates things like Descent III and Total Annihilation, but is also fascinated by a little program I wrote that counts numbers. I bet he'll get a lot of satisfaction making that 8088 do his will.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> A lot of the so-called educational software is a joke
I can't help but think computers are replacing televisions as the "electronic babysitters" of the 21st Century.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A lot of people will argue that the internet is the best all-around reference (where else can you so easily find the average lifespan of a silkworm?). When doing research papers, this is definitely a must-have (the reference, not the knowledge of silkworms). On the other hand, elementary and middle school kids shouldn't be spending their time writing research papers -- rather, they should be obtaining the basic concepts that make future endeavors easier, graduate-level research for example. They should be learning how to think, how to process their thoughts, and how to share their thoughts with others. Only after our childrens' education lays this bulwark can they truly benefit from all that the internet has to offer.
Ostensibly, computers are in the classroom to help teach traditional school subjects. When teaching traditional subjects, the whiz-bang factor actually counts (as far as keeping the kid's attention), and the extra processor power of modern computers can pay off.
Not to split hairs or anything, but the study specifically states the potentially negative impact of using computers as instructional tools...this is far from banishing computers from the classroom altogether. Computers are GREAT in schools just as they are great in offices. Communication and employee (read: teachers) efficiency are two horrendously overlooked problems in modern schools. Teachers filling out sheets by hand versus making entries into Excel are wasting too much time on paperwork and losing time to give kids individual attention.
Let's not get carried away by saying we should banish the computer from the classroom entirely. Sure, they're pretty awful at teaching critical thinking, but if they help the classroom run better then we should pause short of a summary judgment of them as 'bad' in the classroom.
Without getting too deeply mired in discussing educational psychology and methods, it can really all be boiled down to this: Computer software will never be able to match the interaction that a human teacher has with his/her student. While human teachers are not perfect, they are unmatched when it comes to on the fly assessment and creative integration of a variety of teaching methods as demanded by the circumstances and/or student preferred learning methods.
I have a variety of educational software in my home, some of which is considered the best on the market, and while I am frequently surprised by good and creative methods, the assessment abilities of the software are laughable, leave MUCH to be desired, and are, at times, dead wrong. And as any good teacher knows, correct assessment is absolutely critical to the education process.
From my perspective it is a no-brainer. Give me a good human teacher and good materials on traditional media over a software baby sitter any day! They are worth their weight in gold.
Having said all that, I need to make it clear that I will make sure that my children receive a superior computer education. This is non-negotiable in much the same way as learning to read is non-negotiable. But while I enjoyed Asimovs robot novels as much as the next person, I believe the correct view is that computers are TOOLS not TEACHERS.
This article seemed a little off to me... comments like 'Computers download information, he says. They do not teach children to think' seem especially ignorant to me considering you could say something very similar about books ('Books contain information. They do not teach children to think').
In grade 2, my class got our own little Apple. It was a good machine for the time, and it was something neat for us to see, but it wasn't really used a great deal outside of playing hangman and thus practicing our spelling and reading. The teachers certainly didn't use it as a primary teaching tool. Later, in grade 4, our school set up a dedicated computer room where my class would go for an afternoon once a week and use LOGO and play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.
All in all, I think that I'm quite glad that I had the opportunity to experience computers at a young age... my reading, spelling, geometry and geography were all helped out a little bit, but I also got a chance to get used to keyboards, monitors, and printers (no mice until later), items which, now as an adult, I find that I seldom go a day without using.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think that computers for young children are as good or evil as some people say they are... I think that PCs on every desk is probably a bad idea, but no computers at all is just as bad.
moo
If that is truly the case, why are American colleges jam-packed with students from other countries trying to get an education here, rather than the other way around?
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
Ever heard of e-rate (amongst the other thousands of grants available)? Pencils don't qualify.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
right on man, finally someone with the same (crazy??) thought pattern as me. Every Linux article posted has %70 of slashdot whinning because "it will never make the desktop market if people have to put for any effort on there part" and it makes me sick.
I know what you are saying man, installing debian off 50 floppy disks onto a beat up old 486 with 1/2 your hardware is "off the mainstream".
You make a good point. Sure it was hard, sure it took 2 weeks just to get the dam thing to boot. Sure it pretty well sucked. But I guarnette you I learned more on my first linux install when linux was "raw" then I have in all my CS classes and Windows expeince combined.
Anything that is worth having is worth working your ass off for.
You do realize that we are both going to get -5 Trolls now....
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
These guys drive me nuts.
They would never dream of sitting a kid in front of a map and expecting him to learn geography, or handing him a book, and expecting him to learn to read.
But they sit kids in front of computers with (questionable) "educational" software, then pat themselves on the back for figuring out that kids don't learn anything this way.
I learned the first rudiments of programming on a VIC-20 when I was about nine. This helped me be a critical thinker, and to understand the rules of logic. I doubt that I would have learned much from that mind numbing, brain sucking reader rabbit.
F this, my kids are getting home schooled.
-Peter
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You are mostly correct.
- of-black-helicopters")
I would say that people with an aptitude might learn the technical skills of computers from exposure. I've seen countless classmates go into a computer class and learn:
A) Nothing.
B) How to type a report in Write or Word.
C) How to play solitaire.
D) How to pay me in order to get anything productive done on a computer.
Unfortunately, most instruction is either too simple, or too advanced for most people. And, unfortunately, most people seem to fall into a trap of making the machine too difficult to use. I'd like it if people were taught how mail works rather than how to use AOL/Pine/Mutt/Outlook only. But it just doesn't seem to work that well. Maybe because I'm dealing (and have dealt) with older people (by that meaning those who have graduated high school:) and the same thing doesn't carry over for kids who have had more exposure and don't automatically have an image of a computer in their mind that it is "impossible to learn how to use".
But on the other point, you are 100% correct. I've seen several schools spend tons of money on computers only to have the teachers say "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?" Especially at the elementary level, computers just add another degree of frustration and instruction. Teaching a child to read with a book is simple. Open. Flip back and forth. Same with writing: put pointy stick to paper. Move stick.
Now, of course, there are good teachers who can teach with computers at the lower levels, and there are students who learn better with them, but in my experience, teachers, administrators, school boards, and legislators have yet to figure out how to put the pieces together.
And on another rant: What is the deal with every school being wired? I'd have been happy if we had history books that talked about how the gas crisis turned out (the one in the 1970's, young'uns:). (And yeah, sure, you might find that information on the web, but either "Sponsored by Shell" or "the gas crisis was a conspiracy to track down the militias/tree-huggers/"those-of-us-living-in-fear
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I really liked your reply.
2) how many of you had computer classes in school that consisted of playing "oregon trail"?
Never even heard of it. Probably after my time.
well, i was 10 years old 14 years ago, when oregon trail was educational software for the apple ][. that was about 1986.
Donated equipment is great. If you can get the administration to let them use it, the kids love it.
that, in a nutshell, is what i was trying delicately to point out. they are continually lobbying for, as you say, "grants for hundreds of windows pcs" - which is the last thing in the world the kids need. the problem with "computers in the classroom" is the educational administration (not the teachers) aren't making good decisions - they're putting the wrong computers in the wrong classrooms, and kids aren't learning from them. the administration is making destructive decisions instead.
give them a room full of apple ]['s and some "BASIC" tutorial manuals. let the ones who want to learn, learn. i taught myself from a book. there are others like me.
thanks for your reply.
-mwalker
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
True, although the computer can only provide so much help. There is no provision for teaching kids to ask the teacher for further assistance. If the computer provides all the help needed, the student quickly learns that his/her teacher is not needed and is of minimal assistance.
Not to mention the fact that as we can see in this thread, most teachers are idiots with regard to technology. Students learn to respect the computer more than their teachers in classes where technology is overused.
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And just because you don't get a crappy implementation of BASIC in your ROM anymore?
There are lots of very good K-12 packages to teach programming principles and practice to the kids. Some of them, like Logo, have a tradition going back to the sixties. There dozens of good Logo systems, most of then very affordable.
For older kids you can use Python, for instance, and let they reach new albeit turtleless, places. And Python, IDE included, is free as in beer.
Unless, of course, the sys-admin from Hell that seens to work at your school forbids any software instalation for whatsoever reason. Then you should fire him/her and hire some of the kids to run the network for you.
But before that you should consider taking a look at the problem from his/her point of view. Lots of computer savvy teens and pre-teens, lots of clueless adults taking care of the said kids and as you pointed, very few resources. Under these circunstances anyone would consider running the network very, very carrefully.
I think this article is based on schools that use computers for several hours during an average school day. I'll be the first to say that most classrooms aren't like that at the elementary level. Even in elementary classrooms with 5-8 computers (or even 20 computers), for each student to spend 30 minutes on a computer (average) per day is very unusual. There are just too many other things to do. And yes, I realize there are some schools that have students on computers for the majority of the day. After visiting dozens of schools in the US I think I'm qualified to say that those schools are the exception and not the rule. Most schools certainly don't strive for such an arrangement, either. Obsticles aside (financial, spacial, etc), there's much more to teaching and learning than just sticking a kid in front of a computer all day.
The fact that most teachers aren't comfortable with the technology is an entirely different subject. Even when well-integrated into curriculum (which I have witnessed in several classrooms), computers just can't realistically make up that much of the day in an elementary school setting.
As an aside, I have to point out that students who are more easily distracted and have problems learning typically perform their best (by a wide margin) on computers. I'm not talking about playing games, I'm talking about actual learning. I have conducted some informal little experiments with this and they have consistantly yeilded the same results. Just had to throw that in. :)
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Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
Just because you slap a computer in a classroom doesn't make it useful. Just because you put what goes up in the blackboard into a webpage doesn't make it more informative. If the computers are actually used in some way, they are useful, but usually all I see on the computers in most HS classrooms is crap. I have also taken classes that are hard to teach without computers. Classes with 300+ people are definately more suited to overheads and presentations than to a chalkboard. At any rate, I've seen useful things done with them, and useless things done with them, but if they are just there because supposedly you are learning better by reading text off a screen than copying it off a blackboard, that's just silly. At least copying it off a blackboard you have to pretend to pay attention.
Eh...
Well, just as long as the students can't see the teacher's bookmarks (especially the ones under teaching materials - lesson plans - miscellany, which is really a link to C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS\MYPORN~1"), I don't see the harm in having computers in the classroom...
Healy would not introduce computers until the seventh grade. Theodore Roszak, a history professor and author of The Cult of Information, would wait until high school. Computers download information, he says. They do not teach children to think.
"The Internet," Roszak recently told The Dallas Morning News, "offers electronic graffiti. The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic. The essence of thinking is mastering ideas."
Books offer information. Encyclopedias offer "seas" of information. Are these things bad? No. Absolutely not. Computers can display information in a format almost comparable to the manner in which books are used. As technology increases, text books will be replaced by webpads and similar devices. To say that computers are bad simply because they offer a link to immense amounts of data is absurd. Computers go BEYOND books however, because they can offer interaction. The format in which information can be displayed, manipulated, and updated is far beyond that of paper books.
If computers are to be properly utilized in classroom settings at a young age, the software must change. The hardware will probably need to change as well - something more akin in concept to the PalmPilot than to a standard desktop. Proper applications would combine textbooks with homework so that while a student was reading a section, they could also answer questions and perhaps that software would offer feedback. (Computers in classrooms could become something like an interactive workbook.) Computers, however, cannot replace the interactive, highly flexible feedback of a teacher for a young student. The encouragement and support of a good teacher is immeasurable in the good it does a pupil.
So, let us suppose that applications are not where they ought to be in the classroom at this time, and we nix them for now. What about computers at home?
Headmaster Merrill Hall said computers are not introduced until the fifth grade, and parents of children in grades K-4 are even encouraged not to let their children use computers at home.
I whole heartedly disagree. I'm 22 and just finishing up in college (CIS). I remember when the Mac first came out and my father brought it home. All I played with was MacPaint (mmmm.... B&W monitors...) - and I had a blast. The amount of fun I had was entirely up to me - just like playing with GI Joe, or any playing with crayons. To say that computers shatter a child's creativity is silly. And in those first few naive moments with MacPaint, I lost any fear or apprehension I might have had about working with computers for my entire life.
How a computer affects children is related to how that computer is utilized. If you buy a program for your young child, check it out and make sure it is worthy of their time - that it IS something which will foster their creativity and their reasoning. If its mindless, ax it. Don't let them sit at the computer all day - make sure you introduce them to social situations to - either by playing with the neighbor's kids, your other children, group sports (little league, soccer, etc.), or maybe music lessons. Something. If we want well-rounded, educated children, we must expose them to a variety of learning experiences and environments. The computer is not the answer, but it can be a PART of the solution.
Testimonial time:
If it wasn't for that Apple ][ I saw in 3rd grade, I might never have gotten my C64 or my PC's, or learned to program, or majored in computer science...
I have no idea what I'd be doing if I hadn't become a programmer. Math? Bleh.
So tell me: what could possibly be bad about introducing computers to kids? If they don't like them, they don't have to use them, but I have a feeling they will all have to know what they are, and most of them will have to know how to use one...
The only possible cool slogan I could think up for such uneducated luddites would be "Fight the Future!"
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In each one of those classroom environments there was a time and a lesson that was better delivered using computers and technology than with any traditional methods. Of course the technology oriented classes are taught in labs and the need for computers in that environment should be obvious, but there are times that I don't even allow the kids to use them. I have found that, at times, it helps the design and reasoning out process if they don't just sit down and begin trying to work. It's all about how you use them.
Now for the bad news. A computer in every classroom is one of my school's main ideologies, but few teachers know how to correctly utilize them in an educational environment. They are wonderful for interactive science demonstrations that couldn't be done in a lab due to safety or cost issues. They are good for illustrating some difficult concepts in math. They are good for interactive geography lessons. They are a good tool for almost any subject you can think of.
The problem is many educators and administrators want to use them as a replacement for tried and true educational practices. They should be a supplement, not a replacement. I've seen too many otherwise fine educators turn into incompetent ones by placing kids in front of a computer and using it to baby-sit and placate.
Hopefully this will get better in the future as more and more technologically savvy teachers enter the profession. The answer is not to get rid of the computers, but to better train teachers in how to use them as effective tools.
Alas, I am becoming a god.
Classrooms will alwys be the place to learn.
--- I hate my sig
Computers are useless without computer teachers.
Give a child any of the myriad of pieces of babysittingware out there (read: most "educational" software), add a teacher to maintain decorum, and you will have achieved the functional equivalent of dropping a kid in front of Barney for an hour with a parent in the other room.
Give a child a calculator to do his math and a word processor to typeset his documents without a teacher who understands how to program the calculator or how to use a word processor as more than a typewriter and you have achieved nothing more than can be done with paper and pencil. In some cases, you have achieved less, as your student now knows a little less about how math really works than he would know otherwise.
Give a child a programming language (even a simple one), let them use the computer as a tool to achieve their means -- and have a teacher who understands this tool completely -- and you have achieved education.
Because otherwise I'd have had nothing to teach my teachers
Learning at some schools is like drinking from a Firehose
If the children are required to do these "mundane" calculations, then I think the curriculum is seriously fucked up. The only classes where these kinds of calculations would be required would be for things like physics and chemistry classes, which I highly doubt would be taught in any great detail in junior high (well maybe a little bit at the end of junior high). For all math classes, calculators are useless, and are actually prohibited in any undergraduate university math class I've been in.
I used to be the technical consultant for a laboratory at SUNY Albany that studied multimedia learning and its effects on learning as a whole. I worked with that group for 4 years and still keep up with the research that they are doing. Here is what we found: Multimedia (including computer based training) works best when it is part of a curriculum, especially a regimented one. However, the classic classroom (With the teacher up front and the students arranged in rows facing the teacher) is not the best environment for this type of learning. The classroom should be set up like a lab, where students can sit at a computing station and the teacher can move freely between stations. The other thing to note is that this form of learning works even better when the student is self motivated. These things being taken into consideration, it is my belief that while the theory of multimedia learning is a good one it is very difficult in practice. Most schools have problems maintaining a good student to teacher ratio, paying for books, and maintaining physical infrastructure. As always, if the government were spending more on education, this would not be an issue. Since multimedia learning works very well for self-motivated students, the type of learning could be particularly useful as an adjunct to home schooling, montessori schools, etc. There are an enormous number of social issues wrapped up in this as well, such as: how to allow access to the big bad (porn) internet, how to prevent students from downloading software, mp3's and other licensed products, how to prevent students from intentionally or accidentally breaking their machines ... the list goes on and on but pretty much breaks down to the same issues being grappled with in the business world.
Yes it's true that reflection is discouraged in modern society. By the time I saw this article posted here there was already 200 odd opinions to read. Now, I like to think that my mind is developed enough that I won't just choose the "best" opinion posted here and let it become my own, I will probably use the extra information to help myself form what (to me) is a more accurate opinion. However it is possible that all this information could be stunting to the thought process of a younger person
One point that I feel however is that the article seemed to be against using computers to teach or as a teaching aid and not so much as teaching computers. It is not unreasonable to say that in the near future some computer skills will be required for practically all jobs, and this is why parents are in favour of having computers taught to their kids. However when the computer can be used to avoid learning it presents a reasonable danger to education. My mother teaches history to 13-19 year olds (not sure what grades that is, we number classes differently in Ireland) and she is often faced with students handing up history essays that are just printed out of encarta, and which possibly haven't even been read by the student. Here what was intended to be an educational exercise is ruined by removing the need to assimilate the information by the student. This is where computers can be detrimental to education.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
It wasn't open source, it was for the Apple II and I can not remember the name.
:(
In Brazil we had a lot of good Apple software for teaching math, biology, vocabulary etc coming from universities and some independent groups during the eoghties. Some were amazing.
Now, naturally, it is all over...
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
First, coding was part of the original poster argument, and that was the point I was answering to.
I would agree that not everybody NEEDS to learn how to program a computer. OTH, we could consider that, as computers are a central piece of any modern society, all kids SHOULD have a basic understanding about them, including basic programming skills.
Also, I agree that email and word-processing are essential skills, but I really think computers have a place as tool for teaching almost everything. The real problem is to find good educational software for Social Studies, for instance. But I have already seen some.
correlation \= causation. In the US, you can find a correlation between LOWER per pupil education spending and test results. Why? Because homogenous states (Utah, etc) don't need to spend as much money on english as a second language programs, trouble youth programs, etc. Are you ready to make the commitment to lowered per pupil costs to increase academic results? matt
Isn't it a little more challenging to type than to turn a page?
I don't think so. Think about what's involved in typing... you're just making small movements with your fingers and pressing.
To turn a page is an extremely complex motion. You have to:
To put it another way, which would be more complicated... to build a robot that types, or a robot that turns a page?
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Good points.
About 8 years ago or so, MacWorld ran a special feature on computers in K-12. It was not a happy scene. The biggest problem they diagnosed was that in many districts administrators were basically dumping the computers into the classrooms. The teachers had no time to play with the technology, to see the degree to which they could use the technology and incorporate its use into their curriculum.
Children are messy. They learn at different rates, they require different kinds of attention. Hard to quantify. That doesn't stop administrations. Spend $X per child, look at pass/fail rates and mean/modal test scores.
Teachers are messy too. Some will warm to the idea of using computers as, say, communications tools, where you may have a social studies segment where kids interact with kids at a faraway school, and develop their skills corresponding with kids living in a very different society. Other teachers take more time to warm to this and some may never do so. Rather than deal with this, administrations often just Buy Stuff and Put it In.
Connectivity is being equated with giving the kids what they need, in some districts. If forced to choose, I'd rather my baby cousins (I've no kids of my own) had creative and bright teachers than fiber-to-the-desktop instant access to nowhere taught by someone who's been burnt out and is basically teaching until s/he can retire.
That being said, I know that way back in high school, I'd have given my right arm for the kind of access that 's prevalent now. I think there needs to be some studies which set age bands, within which technology is deployed for particular purposes, and evaluated for results along those lines.
Dave
I don't know when I would have found the time to write Slashdot during college if we didn't have computers in the classroom ;)
Come on, college is a completely different thing. If you haven't learned to think by then, you never will. Ooops, sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone. ;-P
"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
Well, it's easy to see why this correlation of Computer<=>WebBrowser happens. The internet is the big hype as of now, and will remian so. However, almost any skill can be taught on paper, or in the mind. Take your Logo example . . . I learned to graph incredibly pretty parametric equasions when I was 16, on PAPER. No computer needed, and I ended up learning a skill not usually taught until 2nd or 3rd year College all out of curiosity.
Also, another point, that may have already been made is that Computers best enhance learned skills. By this I mean, there is SO MUCH you can learn without a computer, and 99% of comptuer applications only assist you in completing theese tasks you could have done on paper or in your mind. You really learn to think when you do something for yourself, and you see underlying patterns, and you begin to understand knowledge itself. The computer is a black box. Input - process - output. You don't appriciate it.
At least, the KIDS won't appriciate it if they never see the complexity.
Thus, computers can really assist us when we need a task done quickly. They can make us more efficient, and in fact give us more time to learn, but only if they are used appropriately. (read: you KNOW that most kids in the classroom are actually on AIM, ICQ, or Slashdot most of the time)
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Cherish. Live. Dream.
Who magically got educated on their 18th birthday?
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
"And if it were up to me, teaching BASIC would be a criminal offense!!!!"
What the hell are you going to do, put a kid at the mercy of gcc? BASIC is a good first language; I learned BASIC about four or five years ago, and it whetted my appetite for programming in general (I've since added Pascal, C, Java, and some C++ and Perl to my list of known languages).
Just because you're biased against it doesn't mean that it's a bad language. Every language has its use.
1. Last time I checked some of the schools in our public school system needed better roofs and asbestos removal, and, whatever-deity-makes-you-happy help us, up to date text books. Spending money on computers isn't, or at least shouldn't be, a priority for some school districts.
2. What are schools going to do when the computers break? Hire a bunch of network admins and techs? Maybe in wealthy districts, but those kids probably already have computers at home, so the "digital divide" will morph into "rich kids have working computers and poor kids have broken computers" Great. That's a real improvement.
3. How many teachers will realistically use the machines for more than busy work? It will take a person with the energy to learn a new skill while working a full time job that often includes running the drama club, the chess team, or the yearbook on top of classroom work.
Our public education system is in many ways a nightmare. Teachers are underpaid, as a profession it doesn't rank up there even with VB Developer in the eyes of many people and thus doesn't always draw the cream of the crop, classrooms are overcrowded, in outdated buildings. Success is increasingly measured in test scores...
Wait -- I've got it -- schools can use the computers to more efficiently drill students for standardized exams! Because it's much more important for a person to do well on achievement tests than anything else...right...
I think this idea is a crock. Computers are not the equivalent of a tv for a lot of reasons. One, there are a good deal of educational type uses. Two, how many people here have started using linux or a unix operating system without learning anything. I think that it is amazing how much you can learn when you like the subject that you are studying. It is only going to help those kids who have a natural interest in the field. Or so it seems.
2) How computers are being used in the classroom
I see all the posts about how teachers are clueless, how computers are just teaching the kids to push buttons and not think, or how sticking kids infront of a computer is like putting them infront of a TV. But is having computers in the classroom really the bad thing here, or is it really a matter of the piss-poor implementation of computers as a learning tool.
To my mind, the real issue here is the phenomenal lack of support for computers within today's educational system. The School Board Admins down to the teachers in the classroom (on average) have a mastery of computers that lets them accomplish such demanding tasks as turning on the power and starting Microsoft Works. IMHO this is what leads to the problems that most other comments seem to be addressing.
Computers are just another tool, and if used properly, have the potential to be a great asset in a child's educational experience. The real problem here is that they are NOT being used properly (or even competently) in most schools that I have seen. Teachers are not CompSci majors nor are they network engineers (nor should they be expected to be). Sadly, the public school system lacks funding to pay the current staff what they deserve, not to mention hire personel that could do justice to the computer's potential as a tool for learning.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
I think it is very clear that people learn the technical skills of computers from exposure to them (I got my first taste on an Apple ][ back in second grade). But what else do they learn? Computers are being crammed into the schools as the solution to all of the system's problems, but there's no evidence that this works.
My impression has been that if you put computers in a classroom, but don't invest in teachers who know how to use them AS A TOOL OF LEARNING, then they are of little benefit outside of learning the technology itself. There's nothing wrong with learning the technology itself, but let's not kid ourselves that by simply dumping computers into a classroom we will magically help children learn better.
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The internet seems to be lessening the expected knowledge base that members of the population should posess... Rather than learning and actively KNOWING something, we're becoming a nation of "I'll look it up"
This trend may not have been so bad, back in the days of Encarta and Compton's digital encyclopedia were the norm for digital information, but now that everyone is using internet technology and resources, we must teach the valuable skills of verifying data. Imagine how many misinformed people are that way due to outdated or incorrect or biased information on web sites.
I guess I am going to sum things up: if this medium is to be used, we must teach the ways to use it, too.
http://cassettefetish.com
Microsoft Word is not computer science. Teaching logic, structure, and time management is much more important.
computers would work well in that arena.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
True, but most parents are more worried about that second income than educating their own kids. You should have heard the complaints at the school board meeting here a couple of months ago when the administration suggested a "planning day" for the elementary schools without one for the Jr./Sr. High. What shall we do with our elementary age kids when our high-schooler has to be at school and can't babysit?
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
That is why so many people are home schooling, and why the US/Canadian school system produces so many dunces. The School System Sucks...and these people are like the RIAA...they see the gallows, and will do almost anything, including the harpooning of their industry, to make sure that these new changes don't occur...but the bad news for them is that you can't stop change, and it is only a matter of time before everyone who goes to school will have at *least* one computerwith them.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
True; but all computers come with web browsers, and I don't see why JavaScript today is worse than BASIC in 1980.
Books are very carefully selected to be given to our children. Now, reading a book will not increase ones ability to think anymore than looking at a bunch of websites or other forms of downloaded information. On the contrary, the opposite is true. A child may find it necessary to have to start critically thinking about conflicting bits of information and deciding what it valid and what is not valid. This is a very crucial skill that is not taught in school.
Children are forcefed knowledge in school from preselected sources and thus, are often given a lot of false data that they must accept in order to pass a test. It seems that the authorities are really frightened about loosing their informational monopoly on education and wind up with a populace that can look at bodies of data and objectively accept or reject such data, based on their own knowledge and observations. Of course, this may seem like a conspiracy-theorist viewpoint but take a look at your own education and ask if this may have been attempted on you?
on computers in school. I remember only one class (well a series of classes) in my time in public school that I took a computer class and actually learned something, by an amazing stroke of luck some computer classes I took in highschool were taught by an actual real life geek (he was a Mac geek but hey that's good enough) I had already been using computers for a few years (a Commodore 128 and later a 286 DOS box) by the time I took his first class, but this was my first exposer to a GUI and related software. In addition to being a full fledged geek, Mr. Tryon was also a very good teacher which meant that he was able to teach the norms the basics while not boring the real geeks in the class. I took two of his Mac classes my freshman and sophmore years and feel better for it, even though what I learned directly from his classes is no longer very signifigant the ideas he imparted are still with me. One saying in particular that I have always liked is something he called Tryons Maxim: "I don't mind typing anything once" this is of course in reference to saving your work and not trusting the computer to do the thinking for you. Anyway I was hoping to paint this as an example of how a highschool type computer class should be taught. I've also had some utterly useless "computer classes" in grade school that consisted entirely of playing Oregon Trail (BTW i really miss that game, does anyone know if there is a Linux port out there?)
;-> ) Just my thoughts, if you have something to add, let me know.
I do think that computer classes can be very useful even in grade school if taught by someone who both understands computer and knows how to teach, sadly this seems to be a rare combination. Even worse good teachers in any subject seem to be a rarity, and perhaps that's the real root of the problems found in this study. Bad teachers misusing a potentially good tool. I'll agree completely that computers have no place in the classroom until 4th or 5th grade, however I think that if parents have a good understanding of computers exposing young childern to them (in small doses) is much better than sitting them in front of the TV or buying them Pokecrack cards. It all comes down to balance and proper use.
Basically if competent teachers can be found, and rational lesson plans devised I think computers in the classroom can be invaluable learning tools, but in absence of either of the above conditions computers will at the best have no benefit to learning and at worst actually cause harm to the learning process. I guess it's like that with any powerful tool though, if taught and used properly they are very good things, otherwise they are useless or even dangerous (can you imagine fleets of untrained bulldozer operators roaming the streets
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
My personal computer experience started at 5yrs old, playing Oregon Trail and Facemaker on an AppleII. I didnt use a computer again until I was 15... I think that most of us (at least those of us in our 20's) can't really comment on how computers affected us in school.
Computers of today are so much more than they have ever been before. So much more pervaisive and we design them to be soo transparent. They have insinuated themselves in everything we do.
For example, (those of you still in high school or collge), how can you write a research paper without using the Internet? I can barely remember how, after being done with college for 2 years. My method was to look for the info (journal articles & books) I wanted on the library website. Ordered the books online that I needed, went and picked them up at the library front desk. Most journal articles are now online in text form.... just printed them out. It's pretty easy.
But the scary thing for kids is who is teaching them to evaluate the information that they find online? Obviously, you can't believe everything you read on the web... not most things, in fact. Kids should be taught from a young age, what criteria you should evaluate information with. For example, We all know 9 out of 10 dentists recommend Crest toothpaste... well, what are their other choices? Crest or no brushing at all? Who knows...
So I am not necessarily worried about kids "swimming in a sea of information" but more I am concerned with them swimming in a sea of information and not being able to tell the difference between a good source of information and a bad one.
Let's remember that the article is dicussing children under grade 4. I think they have a point.
I know a mom who showed her 5-year old how to tyoe her her own name, (except for the accented 'e'). On her own, this girl started spelling it with "e`". Imagine her mom's surprise.
On one hand, she has explored and found a solution for a problem. On the other hand, she now thinks that writing her name with a pen and paper is stupid.
Kids that young aren't ready for Linux. They aren't even ready for Basic. Maybe in grade four I'd show them turle graphics.
God, I am so sick of the label "Luddite".
Does someone dare to criticize the Holy Grail of silicon? He's a Luddite. Does he intelligently assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet? He's a Luddite. Does he write an article about how not everyone is one of the converted? He's a Luddite.
Science has dismissed its critics as Luddites with a lazy wave of the hand for years, completely ignoring the fact that new technologies have always brought negatives with their positives. Antibiotics bred superbugs. Radio enabled facism. TV enabled consumerism. The Internet is firmly dividing the world along a technological fault line - technologically savvy and comfortable West on one hand and utterly impoverished and technologically inept Third World on the other.
Holy cow, so computers and the Internet aren't the be all and end all for education. They can do almost everything better than traditional media, but some researchers dared to point out where there is still room for improvement in the media, or where computers will never be able to help. So what? No media is perfect. To the knee-jerk reactionaries, though, detractors are not concerned parents and impartial researchers out for the best bang for their educational dollar, they are damned Luddites out to tear the whole thing down. How dare they point out weakness. We only accept blind faith in this technocracy.
Down with healthy skepticism! Down with pragmatism! Out with logic and rationality! Newer is better. Faster is better. More is better.
Don't ever doubt it, sonny. You might see the Emperor has no clothes.
© Copyright 2000 Matthew Yeo
Your eyes tend to hurt only if you have your refresh rate too low, or you have a cheap monitor. Ideally sometime lcd screens will be cheap enough to have on most pc's. I would rather use a laptop with a tft display than a 21" crt...
There are many great ways that technology can supplement the K-12 curriculum.
Ever hear of a WebQuest? It's a good way for teachers to use the vast amount of information available on the Internet, while still keeping things structured and not wasting time on having the students find information themselves.
I remember my class producing some sort of newsletter when I was in 6th grade, using Quark on Apple IIe's. How is this bad? I enjoyed learning about desktop publishing. I'm sure some of my less technical classmates gained useful computer skills. Since the whole thing was connected to the subject we were studying at the time, it was relevant to the curriculum.
"Theodore Roszak, a history professor (where? Podunk Community College?) and author of The Cult of Information," says "The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic." what? huh? Let me get this straight. This guy teaches history (which is basically memorizing facts) but he doesn't want kids exposed to information?
There are plenty of good educational websites that aren't just a "sea of information." Many companies base their reputation on providing high quality educational content. Never mind that this was a pretty poor article. Was it news, or opinion? It's not labeled. Note to journalists: You can't start off by stating facts like "A growing number of experts are recommending that young children not be allowed on computers for any reason at all" and descend into diatribe such as:
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I'd say that computers are neutral compared to the damage that forced education does to children. This may be a bit off-topic, but I think it's something that people should learn more about.
Check out stuff by authors such as A.S. Neill, John Taylor Gatto, and Alfie Kohn. In fact, Alfie Kohn has a website devoted to his work, and the school started by A.S. Neill (Summerhill School) also has it's own website.
We all need to realize where the idea of public schools and everything involved with them (forced education, splitting the day into one hour segments, age separation, bells, assigned seating, raising your hand) originated, and it did not originate in the idea of creating a free-thinking society. John Taylor Gatto has an essay that deals with just this subject.
Here's an excerpt:
The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous "Address to the German Nation" which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.
So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:
1.Obedient soldiers to the army;
2.Obedient workers to the mines;
3.Well subordinated civil servants to government;
4.Well subordinated clerks to industry
5.Citizens who thought alike about major issues.
Other things to look into are schools such as the "Sudbury Valley" schools, and even Montessori (although I don't find Montessori schools to be nearly radical enough in their teaching methods).
The whole idea of these schools (usually called "free", "democratic", or "modern" schools) is that children do not need to be forced to learn. Teachers should play a supportive role, and should involve themselves only when children initiate learning.
A lot of people say, "But then children won't learn anything," but that's not the case. Children are, by nature, very curious and willing to learn. If you've ever observed students going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd grade you see an incredible transformation from being absorbed by learning, to actively resisting it. This is because they're being forced to learn subjects and in ways that they're not comfortable with.
Before the Spanish Civil War, a lot of the anarchists (which totalled around 3 million out of Spain's 20 million) were strong advocates of modern schools as put forth by Francisco Ferrer (who later was killed by the Catholic Church), because they were opposed to the authoritarian methods that the Church used in their schools (which were the only ones available to poor children).
To summarize, authoritarian learning is not really learning, but instead obedience mixed with memorization. Libertarian learning, on the other hand, is much deeper, because it is based on what a child wants, and not what teachers and by extension, the state, imposes on them.
In other words, computers in the classroom are the least of these children's worries.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I disagree that the internet prevents learning as I attended a high school with a computer lab and witnessed how it can be used for education. For things like political science, and history the internet can be a great resource. I also administered my home linux box through the 'net, and played games of hunt with other people, but that's beside the point :)
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
So, what might work better is a system that logs how long each child takes, what questions they got right, etc. Then it can provide the information to the teacher. Part of this might include nice graphs to help them see where the children are doing relative to each other. Is one child falling behind? Is one child excelling? Is one child getting the right answers but taking a long time to do it? That information is useful and can be a tremendous aid to a teacher.
It seems that somebody needs to sit down and fundamentally rethink the position of the computer in a child's education. There is a reason we have teachers, and until AI gets to the point that it can replace us humans as teachers, it's best to keep them as tools.
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I did a brief search of the internet and found that John Rosewood is indeed a "Tough Love" author. It is natural that advocates of strict control over children would lean away from the internet. If I had not had access to the internet search engines it would have taken me a lot longer to get this guys spin. For kids in todays world it is getting much more important to learn who is talking to them and why. I do agree with teaching young children critical thinking skills first. I also believe the wealth and depth of information that can be found on the internet, but not in libraries has a place in grade school as well.
My high school physics teacher used Apple ][s with homemade photogates for our experiments in class. Three years later in college I saw Pentium 200s with expensive photogates doing the same thing with only one more digit of precision. I could only chuckle at how a Pentium had became an expensive stopwatch, especially when something as simple as an Apple ][ could have done just as good of a job.
... right?
IMHO K-8 should be without computers. They aren't necessary for learning that needs to be done, like grammmer and basic math.
I didn't need a calculator until Trig/Pre-Calc, and even then rarely, and it wasn't until a year and a half ago (1 1/2 years of college) that I needed a powerful computer so I could run Mathematica. In High School typing classes should become mandatory, and all you need to learn how to type is a typewriter, not a pentium. I agree that beginning programing classes should be with BASIC and with tools like QBasic.
We should be concentrating more on making sure that those who go through school come out literate, creative, independent people. Take the money to update "outdated" computeres and pay the teachers more. We would get better teachers if we payed them a decent wage, none of this $29,000-$3?,000 for starting wages.
The big question is: Teachers or Computers, which are more important to teach our children? Should be an easy question to answer, right...
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
When I was working as a high school computer teacher, I wanted to impart my students with the same, deeper, understanding of computers and how they work as I had. I thought a computer lab environment was the ideal environment in which to do this. I could instruct the students from the board and they could follow along on screen. In a college or tech school environment, where the students are there because they actually want to learn, this kind of setup might work. But in a younger group, which is more interested in goofing off, it was a disaster. For one thing, most of the students there had been exposed to computers all their lives. Most already had several web-based email accounts and were active on web-based bulletin boards and chat areas. They weren't about to sit and listen as I tried to explain such things as how operating systems and the Internet actually work. They already knew everything they thought they needed to know about computers, and they weren't about to let an older, uncool, person tell them any different.
Most geeks in my age group are probably a lot like me. We discovered computers at an early age and immediately started programming. I know when I was first learning on an Apple IIc my first lesson was how to write programs in BASIC. These days, programming skills are more important than ever, yet they seem to have been deemphasized in favor of general computer savvy-ness. Computers and the Internet have become basically just another version of television. Sure, there's lots of educational stuff out there, but who wants to pay attention to that when you can download N'Sync's latest hit or find out about Britney Spears new hairdo. Of course there were a few students who actually interested in learning, potential future geeks, but these were the exception.
My solution was to separate the students from the computers. Just like in driver's ed, no teacher is going to be stupid enough to place a student behind the wheel of a car on the first day. They spend at least a month just going over the rules of the road. I wanted a separate computer classroom, away from the lab area, where we could go over computer concepts and then go to the actual computer area to reinforce them. The same, I think, should be done for every subject. Computers are great educational tools, but only when they're used correctly and not relied upon too much.
Unfortunately, the board of the school where I was working didn't share my vision (this was a private school, and they were more interested in attracting potential students than giving a good education to the ones they already had). Their concept of computer education was to have a group of students sitting around working diligently on whatever so they could bring prospective parents in and say "and this is the computer room". It was the look of the thing they were most interested in, and I think that's where the interest lies.
They also wanted me to start teaching computers to a younger age group, junior high age. I told them if I was going to teach foundations of computer science to 7th graders it would look a lot like math. They weren't too keen on the idea, or my idea for a Computer Fair where students would be able to show off their creations for a chance at winning a medal. For those reasons and the general disagreement I was causing, I was dismissed before I could implement any of my changes.
So there you have it, the true motivation behind the drive to put computers into schools, not as an aid to education, but to gain popularity for the school. In dealing with parents and board members, most are concerned that children who aren't exposed to computers at the earliest age possible won't be able to get a job in the future. But mere exposure to computers isn't enough to impart the kind of understanding that true programmers have, and it's programmers which are becoming more and more important as computers become more prevalent.
An Apple's better than an XT, IMHO. Gotta love that built-in disassembler!
The cake is a pie
You can't tell me that these students aren't going to have to know how to use computers later in life. The trick is to make them so that they truly are educational.
It doesn't matter how pretty your PowerPoint presentation is if there's no content behind it. The school district I work for tends to subscribe to the philosophy of Dr. Willard Daggett. Take a look at his web site if you want to know where we should be headed in technology education.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
Although I agree with your skepticism about computers in the classroom, I disagree on a few points.
I agree that education isn't about efficiently transferring information. Learning the progression that leads up to that efficiency is what is most important, so that children can learn how and why such things are possible. Simply using it, doesn't educate people on the critical thinking.
I disagree about the kids knowing more about computers than teachers. My HS computer science teacher actually had his PhD in Comp Sci. Many of the teachers I've known at other schools also tend to know their stuff. At level lower than HS, this may be the case... but also, students probably won't know THAT much yet either.
The "easy-to-use" computers are probably not a great education tool. I have to agree with you on this. I had the fortune of not being exposed to such "simple" interfaces until after I learned to program.
Amen! Although children may be more accepting of visual images as reenforcement, it doesn't mean they are learning the right things. I don't have enough background on child psychology to suggest an alternative... but perhaps, if they aren't accepting of learning "the hard way", they are not ready to be learning about computers. This idea is similar to what I've encountered in the work-place. There are too many people who don't have the knowledge and experience in the area they are making decisions on.
A multi-user system could be a good or bad thing. I know that I learned more by exploiting security holes in multi-user systems than any "teaching" in my earlier computer-user stages. When my old HS was thinking about getting computers in the classroom, and in the library (REAL networked computers), I wanted to help contribute to it. But they decided to post-pone, and then had some district person set everything up. I wasn't impressed. It seemed to be a bad example of what a system should be. I hate to think about people who will learn from that example... and what kind of thinking it is going to bring into the industry... or hard-times for those people to learn what's "right".
Yes, and we should also remove all table saws from the shop class. Students are bound to say, "why should we learn to drop chalklines and use a hand saw when a good tablesaw will make a nice, even, level cut for us?"
Metronomes should be banned from music classrooms. If Bach had to find a tempo the hard way, so should our young musicians of today.
And isn't it sending the wrong message to have a custodial staff? I mean, sure, they will probably have access to janitorial services out in the workforce, but that doesn't mean they should need to rely on them.
We need to stamp out this kind of intellectual laziness, and if higher math and other fruity, pie-in-the-sky classes need to suffer for the sake of emphasizing the basics, so be it!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Being in highschool currently, I thought I'd offer some insight into how computers are used in 386/486 and maybe a Pentium or two) computers. They were all networked together, why I have no clue as the school decided that kids were not old enough to handle internet access in the schools currently. In elementary, we had old (ie. classroom. So, the computers were used as a glorified game console. We had DOS, and played stupid games that did not even attempt to be educational, I'm talking Pacman and Mario clones. I can't even remember using the computers on more than two occasions, but the teachers knew so little the person who ran the network was down there every week fixing something.
In highschool, a few classes have computers. Physics, Biology, and the higher math classes like Calculus I believe each have an old outdated PC. We have 2 computer classrooms, each one has about 20-25 400mhz/128MB RAM/17" monitor computers running Windows NT 4. They are networked together to share the two printers in each classroom (Note: this is a private school, I'm sure a large portion of tuition went to pay for the nice computers). For highschool students you can take Computer Literacy ("This is a mouse, you move it around..."), Data Processing ("This is a spreadsheet..."), and Computer Science ("This is C++..."). We also have about 6 decent Pentium computers in the library with net access. They are pretty much useless because the administration has deemed that we need blocking software, which blocks not only porno but every site that we need for research.
I just finished 8th grade and all 8th grade students are required to take Computer Literacy. It spent a semester teaching how to type, use Word, and some Excel. Fortunately, I was spared this course when the first day the teacher gave a timed typing thing to "see where we were". I wracked up about 120 words per minute while the rest of the students got about 5-20. After that incident I was allowed to teach myself C++ from the Computer Science text book even though it's a senior only class.
As for the Computer Science class, they taught C++. The teacher had majored in Computer Science and knew C pretty well. Unfortunately, since putting a lowly 8th grader in a senior class "might hurt their self esteem" I didn't actually get to hear the lessons or take any tests but the course covered the basics of C++ (functions, arrays, 2d arrays, structs, and basic classes).
-Antipop
What kind of systems should we set up in the various classes. How much is too much to spend on a particular room? What kind of OS's and other software should we put on them?
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Dyolf Knip
Computers are not a good substitute for traditional early learning methods. Some of us remember (fondly) exposure to computers in middle school and such, but that's not the real issue. While there are plenty of programs that can enhance learning and the creative proccess, this should all be done after the child learns how to learn. That's what children are really being taught in elementary school: how to solve problems by thinking on their own. I've been shown this by looking at my mother's and my sister's lesson plans.
I'm just afraid that some teachers will scrap their lessons plans and replace it with a computer program. And instead of focusing on how to multiply, they'll be given a calculator. I think most of us went through this... we became dependent on our TI's and HP's to multiply three numbers together. And we didn't even get those until high school at least.
My 2 cents...
When I was younger, in order to play all those edutainment games I had to learn my way around DOS/Windows because otherwise I couldn't get the game to load. Just poking around so you can get software to work can teach you a lot.
First, the whole discussion needs to be broken up into Teaching Computers (as in "This is the Internet" or "Here's How to Program in C") or Teaching WITH Computers (as in programs like Math Blaster or reading an Algebra FAQ instead of listening to an algebra lecture).
As for Teaching Computers, I'm all for it. I went to a private high school that was known for its excellence in Math and Science. This school however had only two semesters worth of Computer Science courses, which were data structure type programming in Pascal. Linked-Lists and Trees and such. I would have loved to see C and Perl courses, as well as computer courses outside the programming arena. General hardware knowledge, getting around the Internet (which they should make abundantly clear is more than just the Web), things of that nature. I think computers are becoming as important to know as History or Chemistry.
On the other hand, there's Teaching WITH Computers. In theory, this would be a good way to teach, like a chalk_board++. For this theory to pan out, it relies heavily on two major points.
One, the tool has to be made well. Whatever software is being used to teach must be exceptionally well designed, and from what I've seen, most of it isn't.
Two, the teacher must be familiar and proficient with both the material being taught and the tool being used to teach it. This is also seldom the case. Many teachers are put into positions where they're reading the textbook a chapter ahead of the students, and many teachers are not very proficient with computers. In cases like these, they're better off just reading a lecture, then letting the student review the textbook on their own time.
As with most things, this situation can't really be divided neatly in half. There is sort of a grey middle area. What about teaching computers as a tool for other things? Like using the web to find research for English or History papers, or using graphics software for art, or using math software to crunch big sets of numbers. This kind of teaching has the potential to be excellent, but as usual it relies on the teacher's familiarity with the subject being taught, which can't neccessarily be assumed.
So basically, the bottom line of my argument is:
1. Teachers need to be brought up to speed on the technology and made comfortable and capable with computers and the Internet. Easier said than done. The cynical might even point out that if they were that comfortable with computers maybe they wouldn't be teachers.
2. Most computer teaching should be left out of high schools and taught in colleges. High school is meant to teach you broad theory, basic societal knowledge to make you a well rounded person. Or at least that was the goal of mine. If you want to go to school to learn specific applicable knowledge for success in a career, you should do that at a college, at bare minimum a community college or junior college, even something like DeVry.
Hey!
Are those the only two choices? Between them, a), but then, what about word processing? Spreadsheets? These are the primary focus of most schools, these days. I don't know of one that teaches 'programming'. I reccomend unix workstations running X even at the elemetary school level. They're cheaper than DOS/Win boxes now, too. Let the kids learn gcc or perl -- or any of the any other myriad languages avaiable for *nix -- if they want to program....
Well, I'm british and I don't know much about the American education system, so this might seem a bit nonsensical, but...
I am doing a course at 'GCSE' level. This starts age 14 and ends age 16 (High). There is no programming involved. Everything is done on low-end (Well, compared to MY system) Windows systems. It's all mail-merge and spreadsheets and word-processing. My teacher was visibly impressed when I put some VBA into a database we were doing for a pretend hospital that encrypted the details of the patients' illnesses.
This is not advanced stuff... schoold don't teach programming, or certainly not to anybody below 16.
In my course, the marks aren't related to what you produce anyway. You get marks by producing multicoloured flow-charts listing what I did to produce the system, i.e. Double-clicked excel icon... this is really no skill involved stuff.
Just my $0.02
Michael Tandy
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Well, I'm sure my experience with computers in the classroom is a similar one to many others here.. If it weren't for my librarian (Brenda Sand, Prairie Elementary School, circa 1979-1984) wheeling a giant old black & white Magnavox TV into the room hooked up to an Apple II, and teaching us the bare essentials of BASIC programming when I was like 6 or 7, then I probably would never have had anything in life I could really latch onto and enjoy for as long as i've enjoyed computers.
I used to stay after school and play around with the Apple II's until the damn janitors kicked me out at 5:30. I was lucky, tho, I only lived two houses away from the school, and I knew how to cross the street without getting killed.
Having 3 measly underpowered personal computers hooked up to black & white TVs gave me a truse sense of awe among other things..along with it, a sense of responsibility, creativity, logic, respect, and imagination, and power. I was the youngest kid in the neighborhood growing up, and having that sort of thing to pour my time and energy into was unbelievably important to me, in retrospect.
Taking computers out of schools is like saying "Screw books! We have television!".. not the smartest strategy when it comes to education. Schools should be places where truckloads of information are available in a wide array of forms. Im pretty sure I was the only kid in school who understood what BLOAD meant, but it didn't matter. I learned 10x more with computers in schools as I was growing up as I would have learned without them.
A good thing -- Because with that knowledge, at the age of 26 I can pretty much choose where I live and choose what I do with my life. Many people with educations less comprehensive than mine don't have that luxury.
Information isn't evil. However, the teachers--the people who control access to that information are largely ignorant when it comes to computers. When you have that sort of situation, where the access to information is controlled by people ignorant about the technology involved (as many teacher's will readilly admit to being) THAT is the problem. The people in charge, not the computers. Computers are just tools, like chalkboards, overhead projectors or books. If you dont know how to use them, the information they hold never sees the light of day.
My $0.02,
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
I had the benifit of computers in the classroom from elementary through high-school. In the early days we had IBM PC Jr's, in high-school we had i386's. As an elective in my high-school we had a course titled Computer Math (I-IV), in which I took an hour of Pascal every day for four years. During this time I always had a knowledgable computer teacher, including one very well versed in programming during my high-school years. The computers were never used as a crutch, but they were used as a tool.
It is my personal belief that a computer in the classroom can be very benificial if it is used as a tool for interactive learning. Teachers should not ever view PC's as the sole means to teach a classroom, or feel that the introduction of PC's will require less interaction on the part of the teacher. Just as in an elementary school, one would not rely soley on the teachings of a text book, one cannot rely on the teachings of a piece of software.
I do believe that software makes a good replacement for a textbook, as long as the software is viewed in the same light. It is nothing more than an interactive textbook. This does not mean that labs can be forgone, or that students can learn better with a PC than a text book. It is a 1:1 ratio, PC's are nothing more than a textbook (just a gathering of information).
Students using a pc should be supervised, and allowed only to use it as a tool to aid the in completion of assignments, i.e. no games, no internet. I don't think that students should be introduced to the internet in a learning environment until university (learn to learn, before being given an easy way to find any information).
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!
How the hell else are they going to get kids to take "typing" without computers. I mean the entire point to that class was to play wolfenstein 3D and try to alt-tab quick enough into Windows 3.1 Word Prefect before the teacher busted you, what a RUSH!! do you actucally think kids would take that class if they had to firgure out how to play doom on a type writter? Come on
Seriously though folks I would agree that computers do teach kids (and adults) usefully stuff, IF computer are taught right. If you teach problem sloving skills, how they really work, things like that, it is good. But if you teach kids (and adults) "point here, click here, doube click here" it is worthless. Second if you use the computer to teach other subjects, like history, this is great because there is a wealth of information (and smut) freely avaiable on the internet.
But I would also have to agree with the people saying computer don't teach our kids. This is true, first computers are stupid they can't teach, people must teach. Second, a computer can't really help with "un"logistics subjects like speech for example, since it is a launage based subject.
It depends on how you look at them. If they are in the right person's (preferable the teacher's) hands they are be outstanding, but if someone is using them in the wrong matter (they don't know how, are a sucky teacher, or are afaid of computers) it will only bring bad.
"Computers in the class room" I think is just like birth control. 1) you must understand why to use it. 2) you must WANT to use it 3) you must learn to use it in the right way. Computers like birth control, it is all dependent on the "user" to make sure they make it work properly and in a productive manner.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
So the problem is the teachers, eh? That they tend to plunk kids down in front of useless "educational" software as a break from managing them?
;-)
So whose fault is that? Maybe the fault lies in the fact that anyone with the skill to teach computers prefers to make the $$$ in the world over giving anything back to teaching?
Back in the early 80s, my junior high school didn't have Apples or TRS-80s... a (very bright) bunch of administrators put out some money and bought a PDP-11/34 and a handful of terminals. We got a teacher who KNEW computers and for a few glorious years, programming was taught. And yes, 60-70% of the teaching time was spent AWAY from the computer, learning algorithms (well, mostly PRINT statements for the first year, but the thought was there). We learned. That is, until we discovered that account cracking was a good way to pick on our more muscular classmates
Anyway, the program died by 1985, when:
1: The PDP-11 was replaced with Apples with "educational" software.
2: The computer teachers were hired by industry and the school couldn't pay anyone good (at computers) to replace them.
Two lessons here:
1: Is the purpose of computers to teach programming or to be used as a library tool? If the former, take away "educational" games and use text. If the latter, put them in the library.
2: If you want to complain about the quality of the teaching, ask: why aren't you doing it? If the answer is "because I make more money doing what I do" then the question is: which part of the system is broken?
Although the points raised here (essentially that old computers can teach computer skills as effectively as new ones) have merit. I have to disagree. It's our culture that says you've got to have the latest and greatest. If you give a student an Apple ][ (which, BTW, was my first introduction to computers as well), he's going to get the impression (possibly true!) that they're only getting this because it didn't cost anything. Translation: I'm not worth anything. I'm not into any of this tree-hugging social promotion or anything, but in today's society perception is reality, like it or not.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
McDonalds has to have cash registers with a button for each kind of hamburger rather than requiring the person behind the counter actually enter the actual price. Wonder which came first: students who didn't know math requiring McDonalds to install the idiot cash registers?
The "idiot cash registers" were installed to help the managers keep track of inventory and determine sales figures. But try this for fun.
1) Buy something for, say, $3.46.
2) Waive a $10 to the clerk so he/she rings up the sale and gets the change for a $10.
3) Hand the clerk $5.25.
4) Watch as the clerk calls the manager to undo the transaction because he/she cannot subtract 346 from 525.
Ya gotta know the basics or else people like me will have fun at your expense.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
In an institutional setting maintenance is really important. Working with discarded and eclectic equipment is painful and time-wasting. Educational organizations don't have lots of skilled people who can spend lots of time dealing with these things. They have a small numbers of people with usually very limited computer knowledged.
Some of the things schools have latched onto only make things more difficult. Using CDs in a lab is a bad idea. Using MacOS or Windows 95/98 with a lab can be quite difficult (RevRDist is great, but few schools seem to know about it). Having everyone with their personal floppy disk isn't great either. The technology is very flashy with absolutely no substance, and as a result computers aren't functional. And these are new computers, at that.
OpenClassroom (a Linux distribution aimed at education) could help a lot of this -- Un*x is much more appropriate for a situation with shared computers even at very young ages. But schools don't even really use more conventional tools that exist.
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The first time i used a computer it was an old Apple computer in a logo class (it was some course on vacations, don't remember the age i had so it had to be a small number). After that i got computer classes in school, and the main topics were algorithms (the teacher had a clue, lucky me), Wordstar, and Turbo Pascal (and zaxxon :). After that i entered university to go on to study Systems Engineering. So, i benefited from computers at a very early age.
Now i'm working at a school as the sysadmin, and it pisses me off to see the situation shown on most of the posts and the article, on the facts that the students usually know more than the teachers, that computers are used as glorified typewriters or internet terminals, and that the old school teachings ala Seymour Papert (yes, the LOGO creator, any computer teacher must read his books) and their group, that the children need to use the computer as a tool to learn, is forgotten.
I am working hard here to make a difference, reinstate programming again, teach the teacher, put the necessary software tools on the computers, and change the focus from "keystroke teaching" to real teaching, but is hard to go against the status quo.
What are your feelings on this, people?
"We will run this with the same kind of openness we have run Windows,"
We in the US are doing a terrible job of educating our children, and rather than think long and hard about why that is, and how to fix it, educators and politicians have gone on a mad spending spree and thrown technology at the problem.
The problems with computers in the school are too numerous to mention here, and I think have been thoroughly covered in the media, but I think it is sufficient to say that computers in the schools have been an utter failure any way you look at them. Has anyone bothered to do an ROI analysis?
On a recent plane flight, I sat next to a middle school student from a very affluent suburb of Chicago. This school is very well funded and probably has more computers than students. He confided in me that all the kids used computers for was personal web surfing and playing games. One friend of his had even learned how steal passwords.
Wonderful - our tax dollars at work folks.
Think about it, if noone knew how to use a blackboard as an effective tool for teaching children, would we be demanding more and more of them in every classroom?
-josh
hhahahahahahahaha.
ahahaha.
what if there were no hypothetical questions?
anyway, thanks for actually taking my poll. from your answers, i think it's safe to say that i'm a lot like you.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
My experience with educators seems to corroborate your own. I know far too many teachers who know not a thing about computers, and have no real interest in learning. However, I'm less quick to blame this on individual teachers as administrators and politicians.
For example: my own aunt is an elementary school teacher in a public school in downtown Philadelphia. She knows not a thing about computers, despite having a nephew and a neice who are IT professionals. And why should she? Her principal dropped a single computer into her classroom and said, "Here, now you have a computer." No software, no recommendations on how the computer should be integrated in the curriculum, and barely an hour's instruction on how to make the computer run. If I were in her place, I'd be angry and resentful too.
Meanwhile, my own manager recently went to an educator's conference on technology in Harrisburg. A school administrator there informed him that she'd solved her school's Internet connectivity problems with an incredibly simple decision: she'd purchased a line of HP Pavillion computers, each of which have little "Internet" buttons on their keyboards. Unbelievable! Broadband connectivity to our schools, solved with the touch of a button!
In my own line of work, I hear a lot of tripe about "the wired classroom," and how "putting computers in the classroom" is the first priority for our "public servants," but precious little analysis as to how computers can be used positively in the classroom. Until someone can tell me - and the teachers - why the computers are there at all, I'm going to try not to get too upset at the teachers for being reluctant to waste time on them.
She began with a favourable attitude toward educational computing but came reluctantly to the conclusion that computers stifle learning and creativity and may cause damage to both vision and posture.
To read the article I had to lean forward in my chair and squint to compensate for the micro-font they used. When this became painful I no longer wanted to learn about how computers don't help learning, but couldn't think of anything else to do, so I posted this.
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+&x
Sure, they're pretty awful at teaching critical thinking,
Programming teaches you a lot about organization.
Get Microsoft Word and Corel Wordperfect out of the classrooms. Leave them for the computer labs.
Get GCC into the classes.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
This is just another example of the Luddite drivel we've all seen from so many people who fear the internets encroachment on their happy little lives. Anyone in a position to be affected by the internet(journalists, managers, teachers, etc.) while at the same time not being able to understand it is likely to be opposed to it.
I think the last sentence of his article says it all: "It's about acquiring knowledge and learning to think, in which case libraries, pens, and paper are the clear winner, hands down."
Exactly how are libraries, pens, and paper the clear winner in teaching someone how to think? They are not. They are merely tools, and as far as tools go, the internet and computing are far better ones.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
If you are talking about schools in the US, many high schools don't have enought money/tools to teach technology that you suggest.
We hear about Japan's educational superiority, but what isn't told to us is that the superiority doesn't come from incredible funding or computerized classrooms. It comes from 3 things:
1. Dedicated parents
2. Dedicated students
3. Dedicated teachers
In that order of importance. A parent who sees education as important and as a thing in which they should play an active part will help their child succeed. A dedicated student will learn the material to the best of his ability, because he sees the value in learning. Finally, a dedicated teacher works to teach his students, trying to teach the good students AND the bad students. Computers do not enter the Japanese equation.
I had the good fortune to attend several courses in a German Gymnasium (college prep high school is the closest American equivalent) in Munich. I didn't see a single computer in any of the classrooms. And yet these are university-bound students, the "highest" track of Germany's 3-tracked system of education. And still, we hear of the superiority of German schools and educations. Without computers in every classroom. I grew up in a "nice, suburban" school system where there were computer labs, even in elementary school. Aside from typing papers and using Mathematica for my Calculus course, I can't remember learning anything from teachers using computers. Only from hackers who showed me how to get teacher-level access on the banyan network. THAT'S what hooked me on computers, not the Logo we worked with in elementary school, or all the papers I typed, or Oregon trail, or anything else we did.
And the tech guys? My sister is a teacher. Her art room has the only PC's in the school...the rest is all Apple. The tech guy there can't even figure out how to install a standard NIC in a PC. I had to come in and do it. So do I think these kids are getting a good computer education? Sure. Right.
Computers are being pushed for one reason and one reason only, they reduce student contact time. In an age where teachers are making more than median income in most, if not all locales, the cheapest way to increase pay is reducing contact with the students. In Minnesota, where I live, student contact days have been reduced to 170 from 180 days a few years ago. That does not include many, many "work days", seminars and other crap. The NEA and Al Gore can burn money on computers and claim to have increased spending on education and continue to dumb down Americans at the same time. What a deal.
computers at uni and computers in classrooms in high school/grade school is whole different thing.
3-4 years ago some idiot decided that every classroom at our highschool should have 2-3 computers in it. imo this was stupidity because whats the point in having computers in classrooms where you learned philosophy, biology or psychology. computers should be placed in computer labs where you can go when you need computer. eventually they realised that noone was using those computers in classrooms so they decided to create extra computer labs.....
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
I agree with you on this. It's become common practice where I live to divert book money (both library book and text book) to buy either new computers or new software. Sometimes I think this is a really bad decision. Books are cool for lots of reasons. In the case of library books they don't ever need to be upgraded. The computer or software that is purchased instead may only have a life of a few years, and may not get fully used during that few years because of training issues.
I know of one particular junior high school that spend over $30,000 on routers, switches, etc. because they were going to do their own internet connectivity. It never got installed because no one knew how, and they wouldn't sub it out because they wouldn't admit their ignorance. Then the local phone company hooked them up with DSL at a discounted rate a couple of years later. As far as I know, all of that equipment is still rotting in a closet.
I believe that limited exposure to computers in the schools is a necessary thing. But I also believe that staying on the bleeding edge of technology at the cost of other budget items is a bad idea.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
Computer programming is a great educational tool in k-12 schools. The main purpose of early schooling is to mold children into good little citizens. That's why they have bells and exact schedules. That system was designed to create factory workers. We might not need factory workers as much now, but we still need drones who don't question orders to keep the world working. If everyone was creative and self-sufficient, we wouldn't be able to fight wars, and we wouldn't pay attention to the leaders who start them. Early computer programming can help the student's minds become more accustomed to strict regimens.
Authority wants digital minds. That's why we have fairy tales with good and evil. That's why we have 2 parties. That's why we always need an enemy.
I will rise from the ashes like a Tuscon!
I for one, have been using computers since _before_ around preschool. In Kindergarden I played with a Commadore 64 with some math and English programs. The same went for 1st and 2nd grade. Computers weren't part of the teaching curriculum, we actually didn't use them all that much (there were two available). However, we were given the choice of how to spend our free time, and I remember after having my spelling done in 1st grade going over to see if I could beat the latest high score in a fast-paced basic math quiz (I got really good at adding/multiplying numbers).
I wholeheartedly agree that computers are not the perfect teaching tool for young students. However, I do like the concept of having a few computers available when the students are allowed to choose their activities (reading, recess, a video, etc.). In 1st and 2nd grade we produced a newspaper a few times a week. The year I left they moved from a copied handwritten (completely by the students) to a typed out version. Such an activity helps cooperation (it was a class-wide effort), English skills, and how to use computers to produce something useful. I got a few copies of the newspaper after I left, and it's quite impressive.
In conclusion, computers have their place in younger education. They should not be used for mass teaching, but rather for independant exploration, or as a research tool in the library.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I seem to recall that in the Cree days (before the Europeans came out to start up some trouble, etc.), the grandparents would take care of the children if the parents were too busy. The mother conventionally took care of the children (since they didn't have really much cleaning or anything in the way that European housewives did), but she would be busy now and then (making/repairing clothes, preparing skins, etc.), so the grandparents would take over.
This seems to be a win-win-win situation. On the obvious hand, the children are well-suprvised while the the parents can carry on with whatever incredibly important (heh) work they're doing. Secondarily, the children get a teacher/babysitter who has many many years of wisdom beyond that of their parents. Finally, it ensures that the grandparents are important to the society (many seniors nowadays complain that they're not respected, they're neglected, etc.)
Obviously the kids aren't going to be learning the same sorts of things in that situation that they do currently. As I understand it, the majority of teaching that the grandparents gave was in the form of stories. And I don't think you can expect to learn much calculus or cell biology from your typical grandparent (I suppose there will be exceptions now and then, though).
So I think this would fit in well with the classical form of education, which was more meta-education than actual education. You taught the kids how to live their lives ("don't touch your tongue to the flagpole") from someone trusted (a family member) and knowledgable (old), and you also taught them how to teach themselves (reading, writing, research, etc.). Beyond that, all you would really want to do is help them out with whatever they were doing and maybe help them come up with/develop some ideas of what to do. Similar to home schooling, I guess.
Anyway, like with most things, it would all depend on the implementation. For an extraordinarily lathargic child, you would have to have an equally extraordinarily good teacher. With people having so many old relatives nowadays chomping at the bit to spend time with their grandchildren, grandnephews, grandneices, etc., though, chances are you could find someone decent. Plus hopefully this 80 hour work week (if you combine both parents) idea will die out soon. I dunno, could use some work.
On the topic of computers, though, I still don't see what a computer could provide in terms of general education that a person couldn't. The use of computers seems to be in reaction to the increasing size of classes, but I don't think putting kids in front of a computer is going to help things out much. As mentioned before, if the kid is interested in computer science, then obviously a computer will help things, but if the kid's interested in biology, taking him down to the museum or local university (you'd be surprised (or not) at how willing professors are to talk to people about their work if you ask) will do more good than a few hours wandering through websites.
give a 15 year old 2 hours of homework a day for a subject, and see how much he learns. then set a 15 year old down at the computer for 2 hours a day, help him build a variety of contacts online, give him links to interesting sites like this (the equivilant of giving them books) and see who learns more:-) justathought....
what hump?
Actually there is quite a bit of what you said that I agree with.
The study I referenced, however, was based on a test called NAEP, which is not a standardized test like the SAT is a standardized test. It is a low stakes test (i.e. nobody's future is at stake, scores for individual students are not reported....just for groups of students etc...) Not everyone has to take this test either. Its a small sample. Basically its a test designed for research purposes.
What the research said, for math, was that what the kids did with the computers was more important than having them.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
I was in a school for "gifted" children and we were exposed to computers as soon as they came out. We had a lab of Apple IIs even in Elementry School. I'd be willing to bet that we are all better off than the poor chumps who had to wait 10 years to have those same machines passed down to them.
Dassault buy Spatial
You are very right on some of your most obvious points. Such as your last point. But while many of these systems run Windows. Now I'm not hear to bash Windows, but why hasn't the recent development of Linux and the entire community provide alternitives to Windows and "utterly fascist basis." Computer will be programable until AI comes to town. But students have the AI already, instead of sitting them down to write a paper. Have them write a paper about the futures of computers. The time of the internet is now. The Internet, provides a medium to exchange information. Just look, how in history what has happened with the exchange of ideas. Marco Pollo, for instace. The Internet should be a tool to show students what is possible. How can a student leave school without experience in computers? How are they supposed to be the Future leaders of tomorrow? Look what has happened in the past few years. Look at we have, mapping the human Genome, medicine, etc. As a student, I can tell you that school do get enoguh computers simply because they can't afford it. That is were linux comes in. Its Free and Fast, and it provides more uses. I know that in Tucson, AZ we have a full elementary school running off of Linux, second grades writting HTML, running GIMP, My firends daughter wants a Laptop, shes 6. Check out osef.org for more info on this project. Simply put to conclude, computers are now a part of life. Computers provide a means to exchange ideas, and that promotes change, which then promotes learning. So for a change....study the past. Linux is here, here is change.
An excerpt from the article:
...but education is not about impressive technology. It's about acquiring knowledge and learning to think, in which case libraries, pens, and paper are the clear winner, hands down.
Allow me, if you will, to play devil's advocate and propose that "study, reflection, and observation" are no longer vital skills; pattern recognition and the ability to assimilate at a superficial level preexisting knowledge seem to have replaced cognition as the key element of success. Except for a lucky few who do genuine creative work, for most in society it matters not whether one can come up with a fresh perspective on a given problem, but rather whether the problem can be recognized as being similar to another that has already been solved. We live in a society of shortcuts and heuristics; whoever has learned the most (and the most useful) shortcuts and heuristics is bound to be the most successful.
I'm not arguing that being able to reason is no longer useful, as it most certainly is of value in some circumstances, however it is secondary to, say, the ability to learn the latest software package after being shown how to perform the necessary operations. We want people who can follow procedure, who respond most favorably to "bulletized" instructions, people who feel restless and seek quick solutions after thoughts occupy their minds for more than fifteen seconds. Spending any longer on a problem is "wasting time," time that would be better spent consulting an expert for the answer. Unlike the past, described so eloquently by Glieck, experts are cheap--they are just a few mouse clicks away--so why not use them?
Teaching children at an early age to follow instructions without questioning them and to instinctively look to an expert/web browser for expertise are possibly the most valuable job skills we can give them.
Teachers who don't know how to use computers
Educational sofware writers who can't get past drill-and-kill programs
Administrators and funding agencies who think dumping hardware and software into classrooms is sufficient.
Everyone should go sit down calmly, take a stress pill and read Seymour Papert. Computers are needed in classrooms, but not to teach kids how to surf the web. They are needed to transform education from its current one-way, passive mode to something more active.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Yeah, like standardized testing hasn't caused a heap of problems in and of itself??! You look at the atrocities being committed with standardized tests in public schools and you see quickly that computers ain't nothing.
Honestly, all this crap...computers in the classroom, standardized testing, 'discipline' and such is all just PR hype for administrators and politicians to use as a means to leverage more money out of the taxpayers.
You start with education choice and let the big money interests in schools find themselves losing revenue...then someone realizes that money isn't everything and the kids -are-.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Many, if not most, problems in the educational system stem from uninformed decisions made by administrators, imo.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Jeez.
2) Oregon Trail must have been after my time. My high school classes consisted of BASIC, Advanced BASIC, PASCAL and I've I'd stuck around for my senior year at that school, an AP class where we would have been writing recursive descent parsers in PASCAL.
3) What do you expect? No one with the computer skills to pick up a 50 to 70 K job in the IT industry is going to spend their time teaching. Our children are our future, and from what I can tell, we don't value our future at all.
4) They're throwing away 386 and 486 machines these days.
5) I wouldn't be teaching them assembly for a couple of years, if at all. I'd think assembly would be something you'd teach them if they decided to go for a career in CS. Does the average person really need to know about that?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
- Education is not just about transferring information, and isn't improved by transferring it more efficiently
- Kids will always know more than the teachers. This will inevitably lead to huge conflicts. The teacher in charge of computing is often the one who wasn't any good at anything else.
- Computers aren't programmable. Not anymore. They used to come with BASIC interpreters. Now you just get Windows on the home PC, or a Mac. Kids can't learn as they play.
- A lot of the so-called educational software is a joke, rewarding little kids with visual stimuli too easily, leading them to fire at the programmes at random. Some studies have found that a lot of the educational software for very young kids discourages rational thought and promotes trial and error.
- Multiuser systems in schools tend to be run on an utterly fascist basis, due to admin cluelessness and underfundedness.
That really was an unordered list.I think the /. topic here is a bit mis-leading. Not only are they recommending that kids not have computers in all the classrooms, but that kids under grade 4 should have them in their classrooms, and that young kids shouldn't have access to them at all.
Okay, to address the first bit... no computers in classrooms until grade 5. Yes, that's fine, I agree with that completely. Until grade 5, possibly later, I can see no reason what-so-ever to have computers in the classroom. With computers in the classroom, the kids will be hindered in developing some rather basic skills. Such skills are:
- social interaction
- printing/writing
There's probably more than that, just those two come to mind. Social interaction is crucial. It's rare that you can find a place in society that you don't have to interact with others. And as for printing & writing? well, at the very least, you need to know how to do that so it's easier to use a palm pilot (or other similar device) ^_^However, once they get to a certain level, I think that computer access is neccessary. Teaching kids how easy it is to type up their book report, or essay is good, as it also instills in them a sence of what looks good/professional.
Also remember, that even today, not everyone has a computer at home. So denying a kid access to one all throughout school is bad. Not only will they not learn some neccessary skills (typing, how to get around in windows), but they also have a greater likelyhood of being ostrasiced.
When i was in high school we got a new computer lab full of Power Macs with DOS cards (these replaced the Apple IIs). The teacher that was hired to do the computer classes was nearly as clueless as most of the students. The only things we did were follow directions on what to click and what to make.
I was able to not do the assignments and instead assist other students with assignments and help the teacher with the lab.
Most of the people that came out of those classes knew nothing about computers. The took an entire semester to learn how to open Office and write a paper with some graphics. There was no mention of how they worked or anything about doing anything else with them.
This was probably a bad experience for most and detrimental at worst. A lot of students probably felt that they had wasted an entire semester doing nothing or something that a typewriter could have done.
Luckily I was in the Gifted program through elementary and got exposed to computers and computing concepts early. Sure we were using Apple IIs and BASIC but alot of that is still with me. Not to mention how to calibrate an Apple joystick for MS FlightSim ;)
So, as per my experience computers in the classroom were a waste of time for most of the student body.
People need to realize that we cannot take a horribly outdated education system and simply drop computers in front of every student. Our energies should be directed at modernizing education, with the computer in mind as the most power information tool at out disposal.
The most important reason that I can think of for this would be to help break the patterns that bind the majority of computer use. It should not be a surprise that kids consider the computer a liesure device if we don't teach them otherwise. Those of us who have already stepped beyond the "computers as entertainment" lines need to turn back and ensure that the next generation benefits from our knowledge. One of the most powerful ways of doing this would be to integrate the computer into the single most powerful influence on young people today: their school.
I wish I could trail little fish behind me
My 17 year old brother is addicted to computer games in the worst form. He is about to drop out of high school and attempt to get his GED. Sad but true, the cause is because he can't quit playing games. He stays up until 9am every day playing star craft or diablo or Ultima Online. He started playing games about 7 years ago when I got my first 386DX40. I learned all about that silly PC because I wanted to play games and that dang 640 k of conventional memory had to stay free. Then I got my 486DX4100 and found out about OS2 and gave it a try. It was great. I could do some really awesome things that windows couldn't. I could even do some semi-serious scripting. Then I found out about Linux and realized I could really do some serious scripting. Then I got tired of having to dual boot to play games (before Doom was supported on Linux) and when Win95 came out it was such a world of 'improvement' or so it seemed that I reinstalled it and got rid of linux. All the while I had been learning about scripting, and hardware and memory management and OS management and networking and who knows what else, and he was just playing games. So he got his own computer after I beat the crap out of him time and time again for messing mine up. Now he just plays games and occassionaly he steps outside of pure gaming and makes gaming websites using flash or html. To summarize, he got started too young and had everything handed to him. If you are going to put young kids on computers, they need to be learning and not playing games. Games are a great way to get them interested, but they need to learn how the games work rather than how to look up the cheat codes on the internet.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
While this can be true, anyone who is ``destined'' to become a programmer will learn more than just the drag-n-drop interface of MS Studio. Plus, that is only if they're doing GUI programming which they most likely wouldn't be doing if they are just learning how to program. Even MS Studio can be used to make cli tools, and I don't think there are any ``wizards'' for that.
:)). I think that others would do the same.
People used to say that higher level programming languages would make programmer's weak as they would be shielded from the lower workings of the system, but we know what writing your own I/O library is like re-inventing the wheel.
My first graphical user interface programming experience was with MS visual C++ for Windows 3.11. It generated all sorts of MFC code for me, but soon I was curious about the inner workings of the wizard, so I looked into it (I've never touched MFC again
So, in conclusion, I believe that advanced programming tools will not make new programmers any ``weaker'', as any real programmer will become curious at the inner workings of the wizards and explore the code themselves. Then, once the inner workings are learned, the tool can be used to save time and effort when generating graphical interfaces.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
I think that the emphasis on having computers in the classroom is a bit too high. I think that people go out of their ways to find ways to put computers in every classroom. If there isn't really a reason for the computer, I don't see a reason to put it there. That's the case in most high schools. Some colleges dump ethernet jacks into every classroom. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes it isn't.
One interesting thought. I'm a computer science major. Most of my lectures are taught in rooms without computers (at least, not ones that we are really using). They get the concepts along fine without them as well. True, that means that I have to spend a few hours a week in a computer lab to get my assignments done, but what use would the computers be? If I'm in a math class learning Big-O notation, I could see a computer demo helping with the concepts (graphs and such), but if I'm a computer science major, and don't find it NECESSARY, I can hardly see how it is even applicable in most high school classrooms. I can see computers helping out a LOT, I can see how my classes are MUCH improved by their use, but when people are just saying, "Yeah, and we need a computer because computers are cool." It's kind of pointless.
Also, teachers should concentrate on actually teaching their students what they need to know. If computers are helping this, cool. Don't just have them sit and chat on ICQ during your lecture though, it's not productive. The only thing that that might help is the students who need a little distraction during your lecture. They might as well be reading a newspaper and ignoring you completely.
Anyways, just a few thoughts, use them if you can, but don't force it if it's useless.
Eh...
However, how many of us remember a teacher that taught us to think about things? Maybe things outside of his/her domain? The one that made us question things & want to learn more. I'll bet all of us remember those special teachers.
The point is that computers aren't really the problem, the problem is that some teachers use them as a crutch in a way that textbooks are often used.
managers...why god invented purgatory
Please say you were trying to use humor to make your point when you wrote "know" and "competance".
My point was that the presence of computers and calculators != no basic skills learning, and that "basic skills" have become much more of a sacred cow than they ought to be. When I need to divide 4578 by 13.762, I reach for the calculator, even though I could do it on paper if I had to.
The kids in your psych class prove my point. Calculators were surely banned from elementary classrooms when those kids were in 3rd grade, yet they still can't (or won't) do basic math... even with a calculator in their backpack. What have they gained?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Use the right tool for the job." If the job is composing an essay, than a computer word processor is better than paper an pen (IMO.) If the job is finding information, than all sources have advantages and disadvantages, the Internet included. But if the job is teaching, than no computer can replace a good teacher. Teaching children to use computers is a good thing. Using computers to teach children is not necessarily so good. In short, I disagree that computers are inherently bad for children, but agree that they are misused in today's educational system.
Looking at the article it IS talking about young kids. Namely, those in grades K-5, possibly up to grade 7, not those in high school.
Personally, I can admit I don't know enough to say whether or not its a good or bad thing to sit kids in front of computers in their classes. But I wouldn't say they're NECESSARY at that age. At least, not if you have to provide them by cutting other essentials. At that age, its more the interest in learning that you want to cultivate anyway. I would say that some exposure is good (get the interest) but not so much that you start to develop dependence on spell checkers and the like.
As for high school, by all means, boot up. Its then that real, usable computers could make a real difference. Wish I had had 'em then.
To be honest, this reminds me of the arguments for why young students should not be allowed to use calculators while doing math problems. IMHO, young students should not learn to only use calculators; they should learn the fundamentals before learning how to punch numbers. But with the Internet, what's the big deal? Let's say the homework is to find the first 4 presidents of the U.S. Whether a student looks the information up in a book or on the internet makes no difference whatsoever. They will still read the information, they will still have to study it to learn it for an exam, they will still have to put up with teachers who just want the blind facts mindlessly repeated to them, etc. The Internet is a source of not only information but ideas, and THAT is what should be taught in schools, not blind facts.
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Clifford Stoll, a self proclaimed "hi-tech heretic" has written a book by that same name, and he discusses the problems with having computers in the classroom.
I agree with Cliff, in the sense that learning takes place when a student absorbs knowledge from a book, paper or teacher. Anything that distracts from that communication (ie computers, tv, purty pictures, other students, etc.) is an obstruction to learning and should not be there.
I was Homeschooled, and had a computer in the "Classroom" from the age of 11 onwards. I can tell you that I learned much more useful information from reading than I ever did from the computer or TV or Internet.
Computers are a tool just like a calculator, they don't help you learn, they help you get work done. They are an intellectual crutch, or stepstool, which ever you like. When a child's mind is still growing, you shouldn't give him a crutch, but let him reach as far as he can without it, and when he can go no farther, give him the stepping stool.
-- Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam
This is not the same as saying computers are bad for kids, as was implied in the /. summary. An no research was cited to show that computers were bad. In fact there is a large body of evidence that shows that exposure to sensory and mental experience is beneficial for childhood intelectural development. For example there is significant research showing early exposure to music can be beneficial. The same would probably hold for most other activities which involve complex cause/effect relationships...such as interacting with a computer.
Maybe there is a negative effect if a kid spends 8 hours a day playing the same video game; well rounded development requires a wide range of experiences (social, intelectual, recreational, physical, emotional). But implying that computers are bad for kids certainly appears to be an overinterpretation of the article, and an overinterpretation of the available information.
I agree with the premise of the above reply. I don't think it is as black and white as the poster made it out to be.
//e. I loved to play games on it and got into many fights with my sister over who played better at Mario Brothers that my cousin pirated for us. I never really used the //e for much more than games and a paper or two over the years. That changed. I got sick of our Macintosh PPC 200 upstairs. Almost all the games sucked, it was too slow for the net, etc. So I went back to the Apple //e for a bit. All the games I liked were on two seperate disks. For all Macintosh's faults at least I didn't have to do disk switching. Having motivation I learned howto format the //e disks, copy DOS on them, copy files, etc. I learned on it. Later I went back to the Mac (color has a certain appeal) and found some good games for it (Lode Runner, anything by Ambrosia). Those games tought me more about the OS than anything else. I learned about file and creator types, what PC files were like, and tons of other stuff. Later I moved onto Winders at college. After a year of that eternel hell that resulted in massive drinking I moved to Linux. I think I am doing pretty well if I do say so myself. I even plan on making a program for fun in the next day or two.
I think computer use is a good thing. Just as you wouldn't decide not to teach math to children you shouldn't ignore computers either. They are going to be using them in the future, like it or not.
Not every youngin' is going to go over to a computer, see the link for a compiler, go "Oooh goody goody! Now I can make my own programs and be the coolest kid in the class!" Sometimes kids don't do wonderful things like crack open an Algebra book or start to program. Sometimes they need coaxing.
When I first started using computers I was in kindergarten. My family got an Apple
The moral of this long speech is that computers take time. When a kid starts to read they don't go for Beowulf or anything. They go for Sesame Street books full of color and pictures. Yet they learn to read. I don't think we should hold kids to a different standard on a different type of medium, like computers.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
Yup. I had a Tandy CoCo3 -- and you could make these son-of-a-guns sing! Hardware interfacing, programming, problem solving, you name it. Even with 'good-ol' Color BASIC, you could manage to get much done. In fact, I distinctly remember learning the abstracts of algebra long before it was taught in Junior High school--simply because it had learned to program my CoCo.
I would even go to the point of saying that todays students don't know ANYTHING about computers with respect to programming, how logic gates work, what an algorithim is, or even what the binary system is anymore. All they really know is the pop-culture type of stuff: Napster, ICQ, surfing, etc. In other words: with all of the emphasis on computers in todays schools, there is virtually no computer SCIENCE being taught. It's as if the tool is no more than a mere toy.
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You're still using Windows?
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
His take on the educational games is that they're a mixed bag---some actually made him learn various drills (multiplication tables and probs), while others were just babysitting. After I gave him a quick synopsis of the debate on /. so far, he said it really wouldn't have made much difference to him whether there had been computers in his classrooms or not. BTW, he's always been in gifted programs, where they've always had first shot at the new boxen.
My own experience with computers in the classroom this past year has been with three groups of teenage boys---few with any computer exposure. At first I had all kinds of expensive teaching and testing software to throw at them, and the latest and greatest games for rewards. Wet firecrackers.
After New Year's break I pulled the games, hid the teaching progs, and restricted the machines to actual task-oriented uses (writing treatment plans, letters to various people they needed to contact, managing our in-house library, etc.). They've learned a lot more this way, I think, and are using the machines to supplement and reinforce their regular classroom work, instead of trying to use them as replacements. And, of course, as the boys have gotten more comfortable with the boxen as simply boxen, I let them just noodle around and explore the things they can do with the other tools. BTW, these are dual-boot boxes, NT and Linux. All of the boys, including the (formerly) diehard Microserfs, have chosen Linux as their weapon of choice. I haven't pushed---it's their free choice, and I keep StarOffice on both OS's. I have made several copies of my Linux install CD's, and other free/open software, at the request of each of our graduates so far!
In summary, my opinion remains what it has been since '72---computers are great tools, but are neither the saviours nor satans of education. Things should get better when we have a new generation of teachers who grew up with computers and see them as tools, not miniature HAL's. And they will never substitute for teachers (well, not until the achieve sentience).
Nuff sed,
Malaclypse
I'd love to see these people apply their same test to children who learn with books and who don't. Books, not just computers, disengage us from the world around us, and from the people we live with. Yet few would argue about how books are ruining people minds (though Plato did argue against reading books).
"something witty here" -- mikewood
> Because homogenous states (Utah, etc) don't need to spend as much money on english as a second language programs, trouble youth programs, etc.
Spending money on "english as a second language" and the like, is most definetly not the problem with the public education system in the U.S. of A. I've seen this mentioned many times, but it's not true.
Our "english as a second language program" consisted of 2 full time teachers. If you fired them and distributed their salaries evenly among all other teachers, you'd probably had increased everybody's salary to $5.00 dollars per month. You think that type of money is really going to make the difference and attract good talent ??????
What's next, eliminate other "non-essintial" stuff, like phys ed ?
- sigs are for wimps.
The problem that arises is when children are taught at the elementary level that computers can do all the work for them. Case in point: why would we ever need to know mathematics when we can pull out a calculator and have it do all the work for us? If computers are introduced at too early an age, the students won't learn how any of the material works themselves, only that a machine can do the work for them. This is viewed as highly detrimental by most of the scholastics community.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic.
Quick, ban children from libraries!
*sigh* They have some good points about sorting and internalizing information, but once again, the article's plagued with some sensationalist stuff.
If kids can't handle loads of information at that age, fine, but shouldn't the emphasis here be on teaching so that they will be able to use the information in the future?
Just give kids etch-a-sketch pads and tell them they're computers, that'll save money at least:)
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Too often are students taught to "just plug it in to your calculator" without having a clue as to the theory behind it.
I got through my high school math and science classes (including chemistry) with a cheap calculator my father got at an insurance conference. I started using it in geometry because calculating sines, cosines, and tangents by hand took too long. When I got to college, I got through Physics, Statistics, and Pre-Calculus using a cheap scientific calculator.
When I got to Calculus 1, we were suddenly required to use a $90 graphing calculator. In the week I was in that class (I dropped it because I couldn't afford the calculator), we never did any actual calculus, we just learned how to use the graphing calculator.
Like computers, graphing calculators are nice tools. However, they shouldn't replace knowledge of the data behind the calculations.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
Geeks, go into the classroom and work with with students and teachers. Most teachers don't know what to do with computers, web or internet. You do. You can help. Schools won't get better without your help.
I wrote some software (free of course) that you can use to have kids do meaningful stuff. Kids do their homework by typing webpages into the browser. Its available at everyschool.org
Get out there. Even one morning a week can make a huge difference.
The problem is that teachers and schools often forget that you actually have to structure some sort of educational plan around them. You can't throw a kid in front of a PC, DVD, library of educational laser discs, like their parents do with the television, and expect them to gain anything from it.
The benefit to the Internet, specifically, is that a student can expedite their gathering of information. If a student is given a chance to learn not only at their own pace, but in their own reas of interest, chances are they can make great use of the technology. Whoring the technology as a just another expensive piece of equipment to teach typing on -- or sitting kids in front of them and telling them "learn about birds" is rediculous and counter-productive.
Yet, this is how teachers taught when I was in school. This is how I see many teachers teach, today.
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seumas.com
The main reason there is such a big push for computers in the classroom is that there is money to be made in it all. Not only that is that one county/principal/teacher can always brag that they have the newest and presumably the best machines for the tax dollar. The peepee stained urine hole I recently graduated from had purchased Pentium II's to teach students for a "web design" class where notepad was being used. Sounds like overkill to me. Even if the school had an excellent class AND computers fitted for the course, you will NEVER see a sentient computer teacher in public school. To plop a student in front of an overpriced Dell isn't the answer. What about the kids who prefer pure dictation?
nytimes.com this past week carried one sorry story, that the teachers for most part, were afraid of computers. they didn't know how to turn the damn things on.i was thinking, wouldn't it be great to teach progamming to little kids. sorry,most teachers are clueless about programming.the computer "labs" go unused in new york city. talk about "digital divide", not a problem, just pretend you don't see them---the computers,that is.i find all CD-ROM's thar are geared for little kids, to be anathema
Which is understandable, and very common. As a geek, I (and likely most of you) run into this sort of thing all the time. Most people don't understand what the internet is; they understand what a web browser is. And it's darned hard to explain to somebody, "no, I can't show you Linux." I can show you Windowmaker, and I can show you a Bash prompt, but you have to understand what Linux itself is.
A computer is, in a sense, the universal machine. It can become a calculator, or a watch, or an artist's canvas... hypothetically even a brain. Now to say that a windows machine doesn't belong in the classroom, that's plausible. You can make a case, too, that kids don't need to be researching their Julius Caesar report on the web. But to say that computers stifle learning and creativity, and that young children should not be allowed on them for any reason at all? Oh, please! Even if you can't find any better use for them, you can't tell me filling a scan-tron sheet is more educational than clicking radio boxes.
Of course, then there's the other extreme: computers are the greatest educational tool since the guidance counselor (most of whom are real tools...). Any kid with the unhappy fate of going to school without one is doomed to misery, probably as a useless minor bureaucrat in a public school.
People were getting damned good educations before computers. Often better ones, in fact. Hell, in the late 19th century, 1 Englishman in 5 was a Dickens reader... enjoying grammar that would snap the poor minds of most folks today. And a kid with a good grounding in symbolic logic, even if he's never seen a computer, is going to be better suited for IT work than one who spent 13 years pointing and clicking his way though most schools' pseudo-educational crap.
Computers aren't necessary to a good education, but they're probably useful in providing one. How they may be useful doesn't seem to be well-understood by our teachers just yet, and they (the computers, not the teachers) doubless do much more harm than good when misused.
My somewhat off-topic opinion? In the US we've not even been able to settle on a curriculum that works, much less an approach to computers. A centrally orchestrated, one-size-fits-all approach develops as poor an educational system as an operating system. Separate school and state, let schools create their own computing policies, and watch the effective ideas propagate through the system. There's no sense in trying to figure out the best educational use of computers a priori. I think I might do a better job of it than Dr. Healey, but surely nowhere near as well as would a healthy system of creative competition.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
Someone comes up with a new idea or a new tool -- outcome-based education, computers, open schooling... It becomes very popular, and there is pressure for schools to do something with it. So schools implement this new idea without really caring, without having any skill in it, and with only a small amount of practical information on how to make it work.
Surprise, surprise... it doesn't work well. The kids aren't learning. Maybe it's even harmful to them. But usually it's a waste of time, and the idea is becomes a reflection of the true values of the school system.
We can find, looking at computer education, that the values of the school system are to keep kids busy and occupied, and to help them pass tests. But it's hard to blame the school too much -- even if they really did want to do the right thing, it would still be hard. They still wouldn't have the personel. There still wouldn't be enough material for teachers to work with.
Perhaps computers are being pushed into schools somewhat prematurely. Or, at least the expectations are too high. Computers can't teach children, and they won't be able to anytime soon. But paper can't teach children either, but we aren't condemning the use of paper in schools.
That said, I think the idea of keeping computers from children until the 7th grade is a bad, highly reactionary idea. I also think keeping kids from reading until they are in third grade is a bad idea. More ideas and more stimulation can't be a bad thing. If computers are keeping children from ideas and stimulation that they really need to have, then that's a problem. But it's not computers' fault, it's the people who are defining the priorities for the children.
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Here.
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8===D
obTroll: I will take these hot grits from you with my hand, and pour them down my pants.
Computers, used properly in the context of education, can enhance learning. There are many parameters to consider:
There are basic stuff that need to be taught without technologies first. That way, the kids get a 'feel' of the process of doing things, albeit slowly. For example, arithmetic and general mathematics should be taught in such a way as to allow the student to be able to solve a number of problems 'by hand'. Learning to do basic math mentally is an advantage. Once these skills are mastered, then the student should be introduced to calculators and computers, showing them that more complex problems can be solved using these devices. With the basics they learned, they will at least know how the devices come up with an answer. That way, they can also identify bugs in the devices if they feel the result of the computation does not fit what they expect.
Teachers need to emphasize that computers (and calculators) are tools that can help learning and solving complex problems, but are just as prone to 'mistakes' as humans. Moreover, they should manage the time spent by their students on computers. For example, Internet use should be supervised so that students get to use the appropriate sites for their homework if needed. The Internet is distracting -- teachers must assist students to focus on the right stuff on-line. Parents should also get involved with their children's use of computers.
Once in college, computers are used to aid students in solving complex problems and doing routine stuff (like making graphs). Engineering and the Sciences definitely need computers as tools nowadays when doing complex experiments and designs. However, those basic skills (analytic thinking, solving problems mentally, intuitive thinking) are best learned the hard way first -- computers are used to verify analysis or to expand and visualize the problem better.
Let's just take advantage of computers, without giving up the 'hard way' of learning things.
Are these my only two choices? If so, you win for now.
Looking into the future, wouldn't you agree that it will be possible to customize an educational program to an individual? Find out how a student learns best (using the Multiple Intelligences or whatever revisions/replacements come about). Tailor the facts they need to know and methods they need to learn into their profile. Extensively use the internet and a fairly large team of effective teachers to determine what has been done what needs to be done.
Don't think it's possible? Wait about 10 years (on the outside, 5 on the inside), and I'll see if you've changed your mind.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
This is not to say that computers have no place in classrooms. To the contrary - computers are very important in a classroom. Students must learn how to use computers, as well as something about how they work. Computers are an essential part of our future. I too learned my first computer skills in school (BASIC graphics - bleh), and I am glad I was introduced at a young age to programming. This, however, would have been much less meaningful had I not been inspired by a good teacher who wanted me to learn.
Jaeger
http://334.se2600.org
http://jump.to/jaeger
I think computer in classroom is a current fad because it's so fast to see the results. John Doe for school board campain slogan - "I put a computer in every classroom in my district, re-elect me !". Just put money down and you got computers. Bussiness likes it because they can make money off it.
So what happens next? you gotta train teachers to teach computers, so now teachers learned basics about computers (e.g. Web design), and then they look at their pay stub, and they think, "oh well, why should I stick around and get paid like a garbage man? I have a master degree for god sake." So anyone with a brain is gonna leave to double their salary.
I can not believe how little they are paying teachers these days. But increase teacher salary is not going to see immediate result, you have to consistently fund the salary until new bright college graduates find it attractive to be a teacher. And of course that's after next school board election. Phew...
Democratic election often encourages short-sighted actions. Take it with a pinch of salt.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
in the classroom. They did have a good basic education that taught them how to think well enough to invent computing. The main problem I see with classroom computers is that they take away precious time from that basic sound education. Especially given that they are rarely used to their potential.
"Ideosyncratically euphistic eccentricities promulgate triturable obfuscation."
In third world countries, the situation is different. But not in the US. I'm not talking about teaching computer science. I'm talking about functional computers that you can use for word processing, a bit of programming (I think Logo is good for teaching math, but assembly is not relevant to children, and is hardly relevant to programmers), and the Internet. Word processing is possible, but annoying on old computers -- particularly trying to deal with the printing situation. (these details matter!) Logo can work on anything. The Internet (and all the benefits to a lab that networking brings) is not functional on older computers -- anything less than Windows 95, MacOS 7 or 8 (I'm not too knowlegable there) or Un*x is not worth trying to connect to the Internet.
Computers are tools with which a teacher can do good things -- but they are only helpful, not an end in themselves. The teacher should continue to concentrate on the students, not the computers.
--
The bad side I see- School system shoveling money into the upgrade hole, lame educational programs that the 'teacher' runs and sits back for 45 minutes, Mac/Pc/*nix holy wars..
..Um.. except maybe learning about computers? I can kind of see the point to this stuff, a computer is not a good substitute for a decent human teacher, but why would you want to keep kids away from computers?
"We have no evidence that stands up under scrutiny," Healy says, "that computer education is helpful for learning in children under the fourth grade."
air and light and time and space
I see one glaring problem with the article: Having a computer in the classroom is not equivalant to having access to the internet. You do not *have* to be able to get online if you have a computer.
:)
The main points against computers in the classroom seemed to be the belief that a computer will stifle thinking, and that there is too much information online.
So don't let your students get online until later grades if that is what the problem is. However, there is still value in allowing them to type their papers, and in allowing them to learn how to use the machines.
Additionally - there needs to be some basic security on the machines, so you don't have the more computer literate students putting games on them.
---------------- It is not a good idea to have a coffee drinking contest.
Yeah,yeah,blah,blah,blah.WAKE UP!!! This free
democratic learning has been penetrating the public school system since I was in grade school in the '70s.As it penetrated,teaching got "easier"
but I.Q.s dropped till what you got left is the
pimply faced illiterate gen-Xer standing before you asking"want fries?"
It started out as a way to teach"troubled"children.Then declaring success,they found it was a way to raise the kids self esteem,as well as their own.
"What works?"you may ask.Look to the history
of teaching,DISCIPLINE,STRUCTURE,RIGOR.
We used to school our young to prevent them being idiots.Now we school them not to feel bad
about being idiots.
Of course some students will not learn,SO WHAT?!We need ditchdiggers too,just not an entire
generation of them.
What the children need is skills for the future,NOT what they want,which is 99% likely to
be from their erronious distorted view of what they believe the world to be.
Please do not consider a career teaching,through no fault of your own I believe
you have been ruined by some Liberal Professors.
Consider instead opening a new age store.I'd much
rather smile at you as you sell me some incense,
than curse you at a parent-teacher conference.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The article was about how the Internet prevents learning. I agree with this as it's a haven for electronic graffiti. Obviously, computers are much more than the Internet. Computers can be used to make students think by teaching them programming.
I think it all depends on how the computers are used. At my high school the labs are closely monitored and run by knowledgable individuals. They are used for reference, EB On-Line, etc. The systems are also used for creating a new way of delivering information. Many of the students create videos using programs such as IMovie. I have seen other school where computers are not haddled as well and in those cases I agree they are a problem. However, when used correctly, I think they are a great resource.
for years, we've been told that the "computer gap" or "technology gap" between underpriveleged students and white, middle-class students is going to leave the poor out of the lucrative technology jobs.
the solution is to get modern computers into schools, and to allocate massive federal funds to implement the solution.
right?
some questions for the slashdot audience:
1) which would you teach programming to a middle school student with:
a) an apple II with logo and BASIC.
b) a pentium III running Microsoft Visual Studio.
2) how many of you had computer classes in school that consisted of playing "oregon trail"?
3) do you think that computers in classrooms are being used to teach computer skills, or as glorified slide projectors?
4) how much does it cost to get large coporations to donate their old XT's and apples to your school? (hint: they're dying to use this as a tax writeoff).
5) do you need a pentium III to teach assembly to a child? will an XT do? might an old XT or an apple be better?
when i was 14 i designed a robot that would sweep a photocell across my room, detect intruders, and alert me via a modem. when i was 16 i used the same system to control an optical fiber-measuring test gear for a science fair. it was an apple II. i haven't seem a more accessible computer since.
-food for thought, and my 2c.
"The Internet," Roszak recently told The Dallas Morning News, "offers electronic graffiti. The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic. The essence of thinking is mastering ideas."
well i'm all for keeping 10-year-old third graders off of slashdot. we've got too many 30-year-old third graders already.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
I think it's premature to start blaming computers for our educational problems.
If I had my way, every child who graduates high school would know how to turn on a computer, move some files around, and write an essay, including simple graphics and charts. They should know how to browse the Web, and how to send and receive e-mail. I don't care what platform they learn on, they just need to be comfortable with those ideas.
To get from here to there, we need to invest not only in getting the hardware and Internet connections in place, but on training teachers and selecting well-designed software packages.
Computers are a great tool, but like any tool, you have to know how to use them before they become valuable to you.
The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. - Jacques Bènigne Bossuet
When I was in kindergarten, I had already learned the basics of reading before my classmates. So my teacher, in her infinite wisdom, sent me up one day a week to practice reading with the 3rd graders in the school's computer lab. The procedure was simple: I was given a color-coded disk (different colors meant different levels) which contained a story to read and then some comprehension questions. That way, students could read on their own and get instant feedback on their progress.
The program worked well, even given the basic hardware specs (Apple II's or XT's). There was no problem with me understanding the material -- even illustrations and hyperlinked definitions of "hard words" were available. However, the comprehension questions were a different story. Students who gave a wrong answer to the multiple-choice questions were prompted with a reassuring "Try Again!" and a chance to choose from the remaining options. Although the total score went down as a result of second-guessing and the usage of "hints" (eliminating incorrect answer choices a la "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire"'s 50-50) the teachers rarely paid attention and merely were on hand to dispense disks.
What does this teach children? If you're asked a question, choose any answer. If you're not correct, don't worry -- the computer will guide you in the right direction. The computer does all the processing, while the students exist to push buttons. Anything requiring cognition and thought, or (gasp!) an answer in some form other than multiple choice, is neglected completely. Of course, the lack of human interaction and group thinking also come into play.
Bottom line: computers are certainly very useful in education, but they should not replace teaching methods that involve more than just pushing buttons and getting responses.
For more information, click here.
In general, the computer has become, in many instances, a mere replacement for the TV. Totally passive.
Yes, there are teachers who can use it as an active medium, but, especially in elementary school enviroments, they aren't used properly.
The money that's being spent on school computer projects could, to some extent, be better used in other areas at those schools, such as buying more books and supplies, or paying teachers a more competitive salary - one that would attract more young people with talent.
Computers download information, he says. They do not teach children to think.
Ok, last I knew, most teachers in public schools didn't teach children how to think either, should we get rid of them?
This seems like another case of, "Hey, this beige box didn't magically solve my problem!" When the truth is that if the tool is used properly, a computer can do everything mentioned in the article.
This reminds me of the calculator debate when I was in school. People thought that if students were allowed to use calculators that they would loose their math skills. Now calculators are required, but only as an aide to the learning, not in place of the logical thinking that takes place.
I think we could take this same issue and scale it up to the realm of computing/Internet. What we should be looking for is, "What is the best way (insert new technology here) can be used to further learning and education." Instead of assuming that it can adequately replace portions of it.
if computers weren't in our classrooms I wouldn't have become the incredible Marathon player that I am today. Nor would I have become the great strategist playing Myth. So there is definitely a plus to having computers in the classroom.
Today the computing environment has changed. GUIs are on the desktop, nearly every computer is connected to the Internet and a BASIC interpreter isn't on the machine. The motivations change too. Some kids want their own webpage. Some kids want to impress their more knowledgeable friends. Some just want to message everyone they know. But the tools are still there, they just take on different shapes.
So say a kid wants a web page. He's gotta at least figure out geocities' point and drool file manager to get a couple hundred animated gifs to the server. He's gotta configure some kind of counter. And he's gonna want roll-overs. So chances are, somewhere along the line, there is a chance to learn some JavaScript.
Granted, there is quite a bit of clutter in between the browser and the scripting engine, but it is there and it could be used to greater potential than it is being used. And once a kid has a handle on how information is presented on a web page, it becomes no different than the BASIC interpreters of yore.
What would we do if we were at that age again? Would our fascination with computers be any less? Or could it be nurtured to grow even larger? And are we doing anything to help nurture that?
Bleh!
I can't claim to be the originator of this idea, I heard it on the radio. I wish I could remember the name of the fellow who said it, so I could give proper credit, but I can't recall. The instant I heard it, it struck me as patently obvious. I want to know what others think.
The idea is simple. Put one main computer in the classroom. Each student may or may not have small terminals, perhaps built into their desks. The main screen for the computer, however, is wall-sized and wall-mounted at the front of the class. The teacher has access to the main console, meaning (s)he has ultimate control over what goes up on the screen.
The guy on the radio made the analogy with the old slates, which used to be in the hands of every student. The huge paradigm shift occurred when the students' slates were eliminated, and a single, large slate was fixed to the wall, making the device we now call a blackboard. This changed the whole learning environment.
There is absolutely no question in my mind that the single computer paradigm is the way to go. What do others think?
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Speaking strictly of K-12(US) education. College is a totally different story.
Teachers often try too hard to integrate computers in to a classroom. Often, there are too few computers to teach kids with. I think the best thing to teach kids is effective use of the Internet, comfortability with using a computer, and understanding the basics of how computers work.
Teachers are pressed toward improving standardized test scores, not on effectivly integrating computers as learning tools. Too often they aren't used correctly.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
instead of trying to use a tool to solve a problem, try actually getting overpaid and underworked "teachers" to actually try and do some work. break the unions and start making kids actually do some hard math problems instead of skirting them through. teach kids that you have to be able to think and that making money is the most important thing in the world. do not teach windows, linux, be, etc... Teach kids to think critically. do not push "fluff" courses, like afro-american studies and Tv history. every kid should take 3 periods of math, 3 periods of hard science (not biology) and some literature during the day. prepare kids for college. don't prepare kids for life, that's there own problem. Mike "no matter what you say, I'm smarter then you and right"
Fact: Some absolutely need them.
Misconception: Computers can't be used as a successful learning tool.
Lies: Newer computers are useless compared to the ole' Apple 2's.
I've read a lot of comments, and most of these opinions come from the fact that "edutainment" software is a joke. Sadly, most of it is. However, that doesn't mean there aren't good titles out there. Computer games today ARE mostly fluff, ARE mostly show. But some are not. And THESE are what the schools need, and the lazy admins and the "soon-to-retire" teachers don't want to use/learn them.
Why? Time. Money. These two are the only things that school administrators care about. If it takes a teacher a three-month course to learn one word processing program, how long do you think it would take to teach the students? Some would already know the program, some wouldn't. Learning curves when dealing with 30 kids is amazingly bad. Especially considering that a "wired" classroom is lucky to have more than 2-3 computers. These kids have to take turns, and some being super-experienced to others never touching a keyboard would provide more stress on the teacher.
This means more time will have to be taken to teach every student everything.
More time means more money.
See the chain?
Businesses with old computers should be the first to donate these used-up resources. So they can't run Office 2k. But if they could run wordperfect and DOS, that's all it would need. Most of these kids could care less about exactly what processor and ram comes installed. Some would. Most wouldn't. Kids just LIKE these things, just like we did. They like to explore, and I can assure that they would know the ins, outs,and arounds of DOS and that version of wordperfect before the school year was up. This doesn't mean that 8-year-olds need internet access. It just means they need INSTRUCTION. Instruction that is lacking. Because of the two vices:
Time
and Money.
Computers, while possessing the capability to enhance education, aren't used that way. Either the school takes a vocational approach (we'll teach you word processing because you need it in the workplace), it is used by students independently (in grade school I managed to get computer study, and played games for a few hours), or is totally misutilized by teachers not trained in their proper use.
A lot of time was lost when I was in school by teachers trying to figure out what was wrong with the machine, etc.
While computers can be used to assist education, merely throwing expensive distractions into classrooms doesn't provide anything.
Alex
While education is not supposed to be simply about the transfer of information, it remains a simple tranfer of information in most of my classes. Teachers rarely have the energy to delve into the deeper reaches of the subject, and to link it together, and give the children an "algorithm" as it were for learning more. Instead, its just a very slow download of information from teacher to student, followed by a few bursts of upload. Many classes focus more on factoids than themes, and so the easiest method of storage is short term. Why should you fully memorize something when instead, you can memorize it for two days, and voila, you pass the test. You won't usually be tested on it again. So you pass. Woopdiedoo. These problems are compounded by the endless antagonism between teacher and student. Many teachers that I've had have been worthy of my respect. However, I've had a much greater number who did not gain by respect, but instead simply demanded it of me. Total lack of teacher student solidarity leads to teacher-student antagonism. Soon, the students intentionally do work as poorly as possible to make teh grade. Within days of starting a new class, students learn exactly how much work is actually looked over by the teacher, and exploit that. If we know that a teacher only checks every otehr problem, we do every other problem. This doesn't exactly lend itself to learning, but why would we learn more by doing twice the number of problems? Many of the exercises that teachers have their students do seem to us, the students, to be either busy work, or of dubious pedagogical value. Soon, slacking is no longer a way to get out of work, but a protest against teh system. Also, while multiuser systems in school are fascist, so are classrooms themselves. I've been verbally abused by a teacher for correcting her.(She, among other errors, said, "hydroglyphics", and believed that the nile river flowed southwards, to lake victoria...) Questioning their authority, and above all, questioning their methods of "teaching" is to many of them an unforgivable faux pas. The student is given almost no input on their learning whatsoever, and this results in even more antagonism. Computers, on the other hand, can be highly educational. A student who learns on a computer can typically choose what they wish to learn. If you have access to the internet, its a simple matter of some cruising for students to find matter that interests them. My friends use the computers for a variety of purposes at my school- some to research plasma propulsion(of this persons own volition and interest), some to constantly reload the WTO website in a primitive DOS attack, some to make their own webpages. But the overwhelming theme here is that the students are pursuing their interests, and enjoy doing this. There is no antagonism between the computer and the student. It is simply a research tool. I willingly admit that many "educational" games today are terrible. The educational aspects are far too obvious, and students can smell education from miles off. No matter how many aliens you get to zap, you still have to do a dozen rather obvious math problems to get to it. This is the basic problem with educational software today- it operates on a reward based system rather than integrating the material fully into the game. However, there are many games that do not conform to this mold. I remember greatly enjoying the game Midnight Rescue(The Learning Company...does this company still exist?), wherein the player had to read lengthy clues, followed by a reading comprehension question that would give them a clue. You used these clues to help deduce which robot was the evil mad scientist(wow, this is a terrible description). This was all very well integrated into the game, and didn't seem like some educational block before every reward. There are also games that don't even advertise themselves as educational, but are. Look at Mindrover: The Europa Project- it teaches event based programming through a graphical interface thats really not that intimadating compared to line after line of code. Many school districts these days are bemoaning the lack of problem solving among the student body. They claim that while many students can easily assimilate concepts in math and science, they can't apply them to real world situations. Well, programming fits perfectly as a solution to this problem. You take an abstract concept(teh design) and make it into a concrete product(the program) through another abstract process(programming). You could have students write their own programs, and it could teach them quite a bit about problem solving. Have students in a class covering fractals make a program to form a sierpinsky(sp?) pyramid. This would teach problem solving much better than the "Farmer joe have two chickens, four cows, and three pigs. Each of these is worth xxxxxx. How much money does farmer joe have worth of livestock?" This is an extremely valuable use of computers. And most computers are very programmable. There are droves of freeware compilers and even IDE's out there that students can use to program on virtually any operating system. And a cheap school district could put linux and gnome on the machines, have a nice GUI thats not too intimidating and a host of free programming tools. There are reasons why computers can be bad, and there are reasons why teachers can be bad. I personally think that teachers have done more damage to my 'education' and my belief in the educational system than computers have or ever will. I also think that some teachers have taught me more than a computer and hours of research on hte internet ever will, but I am not about to chuck the computer out the window. Nor is my school. Computers have real world educational value, not to mention preparing many of the students in my school without computers at home to work in a high tech industry, which is one of the easier ways out of poverty these days(my school is made up of primarily of lower income youth, it being in the center of the poorer neighborhood of the city)
I'm a 15 year-old, and I'm going into my Sophomore year at Bloomington High School North, in Indiana. We, naturally, have (slow: a shared ISDN line or two for the entire school system) Internet access, and at least one computer in every room. There are labs in the library and almost every other department. There is, however, no real computer instruction; only basic, "this is a mouse" instruction is given. In the vocational school there are more serious classes, but those make it difficult to graduate for an academically oriented student.
The most frequent use of our computer system is to check Hotmail and other web-mails. The second most frequent use is to play the (classic) game, Drug Wars. A distant third would be looking up books in the library's on-line catalog and doing research for school on the Internet. Fourth would be messing with the network.
That's the basis of my opinions about computers in schools. My opinions differ from those of the article, though. The Calvert school, in Baltimore, seems to be an all-around better school (and is, most likely, private) than most public schools. (Public schools in America, should you not have children or live outside of the States, are abysmal; apathetic or misguided teachers and officials are abound, with corruption and stupidy in spades.) The article talks about possible developmental hazards; of course there are developmental dangers in forcing children to use computers. There's developmental hazards in forcing children to do anything. I must, however, digress.
Computers can be, and often are, useful tools. As a "computer person," I have rather poor handwriting and somewhat exceptional typing ability. I type all of my schoolwork. Were I to do otherwise, there would be a noticable drop in the quality of my work. However, my classmates prefer to write things by hand, as that's what they're more comfortable with. Unfortunately, because computers are the "wave of the future," we are often times forced to have Internet resources when writing reports and papers. Again, I'd best digress.
In conclusion (finally), computers and the Internet are fabulous tools. That, however, does not mean that they are the be-all, end-all of research and learning. America's public school system would be able to afford the classrooms and teachers (should they be available; the education industry has a gigantic demand for teachers and a rather small supply) that it needs if it would take the Internet out of classrooms and put teachers in.
Mike "Excuse the Rant, It's Just That I Care" Greenberg
http://www.yourmothernaked.com
They used to come with basic, but
now there are better alternatives. (I
guess Python is not the only one).
Also teachers will winge that programming
is highly technical. I guess they are
right, but the basics of programming give
one a mental model of what is actually
going on inside a computer. It seperates
people who know what a computer is from
those who don't, and eventually users from
lusers.
Think about how much time people spend
unproductively banging their metephorical
heads against the computer. This is why
I think 21st century kids should
be taught a little programing.
I am a science teacher and this is something I have been harping about for quite sometime. Educators do not know how to use computers in the classroom and are given only superficial training at best.
It seems computers have taken the education world by storm and school districts, departments of education and local school boards are requiring teachers to use them in the classroom without giving teachers proper training. In fact, I am required by the Texas Department of Education to integrate certain computer skills into a set number of lessons each year. Most of the teachers I teach with know very little about computers much less how to integrate them into a proper lesson. Many of them do not even own a computer at home.
In order to integrate computers into a lesson the teacher needs to carefully design the lesson to actually involve the student in the learning process and take the emphasis off of the computer. In other wordsit should not matter that the student is learning using the computer, it should be transparent. The teacher needs to look at the lesson and ask him/herself whether the student is learning what they are suposed to be learning just as effectively as if they were not using a computer.
A large problem is that teachers who have very little training design a superficial lesson using computers in order to get their technology education requirement in. At the end of the year they can say "See, I used computers in this lesson!" However, the students suffered because of it.
I believe that computers should be used only as a supplement to normal instruction in a regular classroom and not as the main form of instruction. The computer can be used as some form of enrichment or reinforcement exercise. Most lessons I have seen invlove very little critical or higher level thinking on the part of the student, unless you invlove higher level thinking skills then the lesson is wasted.
Another problem I see is school districts (including mine) are increasingly going to an 'integrated' approach to computer education. The students no longer have a seperate class they attend to learn computer skills, the regular classroom teacher is required to teach that as well. So, if a teacher wants to have the students do some form of project using Power Point then the teacher must also teach Power Point to the students while doing the project. I think this is a highly inefficient approach. Most of the teachers I know do not have the skills to teach Power Point etc.. One reason to blame is the aging teacher force. People today are not going into education and the majority that do will leave the field in 2-5 years never to return. So, we are left with an increasingly aging teacher force that does not want to learn how to use a computer.
I could ramble on forever about this subject. I am not against using computers in education. I simply wish that they were being used differently than they are today.
The quality of education has been in steady decline since the 60's-70's era. Computers are just another way in which the teacher can capture the attention of kids without really making them think. If anything, I think having computers in the classroom teaches kids how to take tests rather than solve problems. I think that having computers in classrooms is a good idea - provided that they are used to teach concepts and not to entertain, which is how they are used now.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
"The Internet," Roszak recently told The Dallas Morning News, "offers electronic graffiti. The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic.
sure... but the internet also offers the greatest amount of information on every topic anyone has ever thought of EVER.
Is it nessessarily a bad thing to be exposed to the dark underbelly of socioty? Should we all just pretend that nothing bad exists and live in the perfect false world that our teachers and parents wish we did?
Learning is not just memozing facts. That's the part of learning that you only use about 10% of in your real life. The part of my childhood learning i most use was the learning about people and socioty and how things work (or don't work). And most of that I have learned online because my parents and school are afraid to fill our minds with anything that challanges traditional conservative thought.
Telling parents and teachers that the internet is a bad thing for kids is a step backward in socioty. I suppose that as a teenager today, I grew up on the internet, but also I have recived most of my education for my future job(s) there, while at school we're all just doing busy work. I don't think that a single bad thing has come of my early exposure to the internet, other than awareness of the what the world is really like- not the state sponsored channel one crap.
I think this article is baloney.
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
As someone else said, without the Apple II's, I would probably not be where I am today (which is, the head of the IT/IS dept at a small company). And beyond that, my neice and nephew, both of whom are dyslexic, would most likely still be stuggling to read on a kindergarten level. When school started back up last fall, he was going into the third grade and reading on a high first grade level, while she was entering the first grade, and barely reading on an entry-kindergarten level. Attending a local Edison-project school, they were afforded not only computers in every single classroom, but also game consoles for home use with learning games (and believe me, some of those games are pretty cool... and yes, they still use Oregon Trail (Yea!!) :) They love working with the computers, because it takes something boring, like learning to read, makes it more fun, and gives them a real REASON to learn to read... without reading, they cant go lookup info on their fav. wrestlers or skaters, and they certainly cant read their favorite books (ie: Harry Potter, Magic Schoolbus, et al). Now, at the end of the term, my nephew is one of the best readers in his class, and his sister is doing MUCH better, but will still have to repeat the first grade. Overall, computers can go both ways in a classroom, good or bad... I think that, in most cases, schools and classrooms, and ultimately the students, are much better off with the computers. Peace out!
Cows go moo.
Big surprise.. NOT! Sitting a kid in front of the WWW isnt going to teach them anything any more than sitting them in front of daytime TV. As the article said, education is about teaching children to handle ideas and think creatively and coherently for themselves, not about feeding them data in the hope that they can someday connect it all into a body of knowledge. My kids access to the net is the same as access to the TV - restricted, monitored and controlled by mom & dad. If it has neither educational value nor acceptable standards of entertainment quality it doesnt get watched, whether its a TV program, a computer game or a www site.
Why is it such a shock to discover that pouring nothing but data into kids minds doesnt teach them to think about it?
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
As a student who recently graduated from high school, I totally agree that teacher incompatence is a major factor inhibiting the usefulness of computers in education. As the "computer whiz" in most of my classes, I was often responsible for operating the VCR and the television, because the teachers didn't know how to use them. The main stumbling block for the teachers was the TV/Video button, and even worse - a disconnected coaxial cable! So anyway, a few years ago my high school began a project to put a computer in every classroom. All 100+ classroom got $2500 Pentiums w/ MMX @ 200MHZ (this was a few years ago, so they were top of the line) Every classroom even got it's own hub, so it could at some point support even 8 computers, and all were connected to a network. How many of these computers have I ever seen in use? 0 How many have I ever even seen turned on? 0 The only computers that are used are the ones in the library, where there are occassionally classes for students with little computer experience - classes which seemed very instructive about using search engines to get useful information from the Internet. But nothing that challenged a computer enthusiast like me. I'd also like to mention, as an aside, that the school district paid $40k to get a district-wide license for McAfee VirusScan, but then didn't update the scanner for 3 years. So, I think computers skills (not neccessarily programming skills) will be neccessary for virtually every job for my generation. Thus, getting experience with computers in school is a great benefit. However, teacher incompetence and poor administration stand in the way of using technology most affectively.
You're right, my mistake. Thanks.
Some people take their .sig way too seriously
WHAT??? Computer's aren't a universal good?? And I just purchased my USB blender....
What do kids learn from watching underprepared teachers fumble around with broken machines. NOTHING!!
I'm sure a similar study could have proven that chalk boards don't teach kids either.
Young kids learn socially. Computers are usually meant to be used by a single individual. This is hardly social learning. While the internet was founded on interaction, it has become increasingly TV like. (How long can a 3rd grader sit in front of an email app?)
Anyone who believes a wired box can replace a good teach or caring parent deserves to be hit in the head with a SCSI cable - 50 pin!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Jane Healy... began with a favourable attitude toward educational computing but came reluctantly to the conclusion that computers stifle learning and creativity and may cause damage to both vision and posture.
Duh, computers cause vision problems? Not if you're not using monitors... Cause posture problems? Not the way I use my laptop (lying down, since I have a bad back). Here's how I used a laptop (ancient Model 100) to help young, troubled students in a tutoring program, over a decade ago:
Sitting a child in front of an oversized and badly placed monitor, and abandoning the child to a software product -- or even the Web -- is not "using computers in education." It is misusing computers instead of educating.
When I was a child, the dreaded phrase "look it up for yourself" in response to my queries for further information was a definite turnoff... very negative feedback which quickly taught most of us never to ask a teacher for advanced information. Now, I am sure, alert and computer-competent teachers help kids use computers to answer those questions, and easily explore as far as they want to in any given subject.
Don't worry -- the next generation of teachers will know very well how to incorporate computing and networking (and the network of knowledge and expertise now blessedly available!) in their lesson plans. As for the current crop of teachers, perhaps it is too late for many of them, but several kids are teaching one another -- sometimes online!
Where public education is concerned, there is no such thing as a 'low stakes' test. Tests represent a measurement and one that is of interest to parents. The NAEP battery is apparently used as a means to determine funding in my state and parents are having fits because it is a test which their children are given, but have no access to the results.
So, is a 'low stakes' test that doesn't tell you how you did really 'better'? Should children be used as PR tools?
I think, where these things are concerned, that it is all a very dangerous game and probably one we shouldn't be playing.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
What the article fails to address is the difference between computers and the internet. A computer does not need internet access to be a computer.
I would not fault the article's claims about the internet and its influence on young children. I am not agreeing with them either. They are simply not the issue.
The issue is the computer itself. I started programming Apple BASIC in second grade. I learned alot about logic, critical thinking, organization, and planning. Oh, yes, and math. I even came up with bubble sort on my own; I don't say this to brag, but as an example. When a fourth grader is "inventing" bubble sort because he's been programming for 2 years, there is something to say for the educational value of computer exposure.
Logo (4th grade) was also very helpful in learning math and algorithm development.
Should kids be on the internet? I don't know.
Should kids be on computers? Yes.
Should computers replace pen, paper, textbook, and classroom discussion? Probably not.
Are computers useful for teaching logic and mathematics to children? Most definately.
wishus
---
No, I don't think so, I think the problem is more likely the quality of the curriculum rather than the fact that there are computers there. My sister attends elementary school, and they do not have ANY computers there (I attended the same school, but had Apple IIs to learn typing) and they waste so much time there with cultural education, and other crap, that they don't bother to teach math or grammar correctly. She also gets hours of homework every night which from what I've seen is a complete waste of time (especially at that age). This leads me to ask myself, ``What are they doing in school over there since they have so much home work?'' (it is my opinion that there should be NO homework at elementary level), this added on to all of the rules they have "read 15 minutes a day, have your parents sign this folder indicating that you read for the duration, sign this, sign that". They treat the kids like they budget their time. At that age they want to play, not be filling out paper work.
So, no, it is not computers that are causing the problems (that is like saying that since in other countries with better education systems they use #3 pencils as a standard that we generally use #2 pencils is the cause for our poor educational system).
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
I say that the students must be mature becaus if they are not, the computer is just one more thing to distract them from learning. I've seen kids web surfing, playing solitaire, etc. when they were supposed to be listening to the teacher. Other kids will disrupt class by making noises with the computer while the teacher is talking. I do not believe however that immature kids should never use computers in the classroom. It just needs to be well-planned and well-supervised. The students should not have access to the computers when they are not supposed to be using them. Having separate computer labs that students go to in order to do computer work can help somewhat.
Overall, I think computers are a great aid to learning, but their use needs to be well-planned, and the audience of students needs to be considered.
I've been involved off and on in education for some years as a volunteer and as part of non governmental organizations concerned with education. The contrarian blowhards have been beating the anti computer drum for years (for example the Waldorf school people, or Fritjoff Capra of Tao of Physics fame).
Now, I'm a contrarian myself, but I have two problems with the way these people think. The first is the straw man argument. They like to hold up a particularly feckless attempt to use computers in education as a model for the whole, rather than searching for the best (e.g. Seymour Papert's Logo work). The second problem is one of false dichotomy -- you really should be doing X (for example lab work) rather than computers -- as if "doing computers" should be a subject matter that displaces something else.
For example, take Cliff Stoll's observation in the article [the instant gratification involved in downloading information off the Internet - to which 94 per cent of America's public schools are now connected] "discourages study, reflection, and observation". Note the heavy paraphrasing from the article, to be fair to Mr. Stoll.
Sure, downloading somebody's unsubstantiated opinion is not going to do anything for a student's intellectual ability. But look at how bad biology texts are -- we are perilously close to that situation with textbooks today. Perhaps they would be better off downloading an essay on evolution by an eminent biologist. Like the open-sourcers say -- use the source. Go back to the Federalist papers and see what the founders actually thought. Read Milton on free speech, Jefferson on the problem of slavery, Einstein's letters to Roosevelt on the atomic bomb, or find out how a dictator thinks by reading Mein Kampf. You can get it all on the Internet.
I'm not an expert in educational systems, but I see two great possibilities for using computers, both of which are hobbled by fatal flaws in our educational values.
(1) The Internet. Criticizing the Internet for having educationally valueless content is silly -- the same can be said for your local library. However, sending children off to do assignments on the Internet without training in critical reading and thinking is folly. Unfortunately, kids are trained in the mechanics of reading more than the philosophy and art of reading -- questioning the provenance of an idea, going to original sources, detecting rhetoric and logical fallacy.
(2) The computer as a creative tool. The fact is, all kinds of creative activities such as art, music or computer programming are given short shrift. How can the computer be used as a creative tool if the student doesn't have outlets for creativity?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ahh... the good ol' days of Oregon Trail, horrible excuses for word processing software, and discovering that you could tell the Apple to do stuff without putting in a disc. Okay, enough memory lane. Here's my effort at putting down the article point by point.
Thesis: "A growing number of experts[the article names three] are recommending that young children not be allowed on computers for any reason at all."
Support 1: "computers stifle learning and creativity and may cause damage to both vision and posture"
Okay... vision and posture, granted. But then my parents told me when I was in elementary school not to read under the sheets with a flashlight because it'd be bad for my eyes, and I imagine that posture wasn't too good for my back either. To say, just because it may be bad doesn't mean it must be bad. The article presents no factual documented evidence as to how computers may stifle creativity.
Support 2: "Computers download information...They do not teach children to think."
The fallacy of this statement has been pointed out by many: computer does not equal internet. My own meaningless thoughts later.
Support 3: "The Internet offers electronic graffiti. The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic. The essence of thinking is mastering ideas."
Infants come to mind. It doesn't seem that parents first let their children master breathing, then eating, then maybe the color red. Since birth humans are immersed in information, and what is knowledge but linking these things together? Also, again, computer does not equal internet. And it seems a bit odd to me, but is thinking anything else but recognition of objects or ideas and the linking of these? Surely I don't have to master the concept of humanitarianism before I can think about "hey, maybe rich people could help the guys who are a bit down." I dunno.
Support 4: "the instant gratification involved in downloading information off the Internet - to which 94 per cent of America's public schools are now connected - 'discourages study, reflection, and observation'."
Study, reflection, observation? What the h-e-double hockeysticks? Are they really worried that third graders won't be reflecting on the story of Lincoln and the cherry tree? Education has ALWAYS been memorization of data. Making this process quicker and perhaps more entertaining is not a threat but should be embraced.
Quaker Boost: "But there are schools bucking the trend. The Calvert School in Baltimore is one such low-tech bastion. Calvert's students are required to write daily compositions. During a visit in the autumn of 1999, I was impressed by the level of literacy reflected in compositions by children as young as first grade. Headmaster Merrill Hall said computers are not introduced until the fifth grade, and parents of children in grades K-4 are even encouraged not to let their children use computers at home."
Somewhere along the line, use of computers was somehow determined to mean the dropping of writing. Again, this paper lacks any evidence that schools that do use computers in learning have low literacy, it simply insinuates this. Mere propoganda.
Zip-bang ending: "It's about acquiring knowledge and learning to think, in which case libraries, pens, and paper are the clear winner, hands down."
It has always been a tactic of someone without any good argument to make claims for the other side that the other side would not make. NO ONE has said, "Gee, no we've got these computers, let's start burning the books, and who needs to learn cursive after all?" This entire paper is an excercise in stupity, trying to pass the ideas of a few people as Great Truths as determined by The Enlightened.
Valete!
By Nature they are good.
Soon we will not need our human bodies (shells) at all.
Our consciousness will be uploaded to a giant computer were will we live (in the Wired).
So you better learn to use a computer at a young age. And learn to use it well.
How cool would it have been to have had a
low cost number crunching cluster back in high
school?How about Gimp or Blender or P.O.V. in art class?How about midi sequencers in music-theory/composition class?database,spreadsheet and word processors for
accounting/business classes.CAD for drafting and shop classes.Internet MIGHT help for looking up
historical and scientific material if closely monitored.Crap!Just use a little imagination and
a set of debian discs.I can maybe see a need for computers starting at the jr.hi-school level.till then kids just need to forge some synapses of their own.
Schools have janitors,they could hire an admin and a couple techies.Make the damn hippie,union baby teachers take summer courses to catch up with the real world.Lynch any school
board member who turns down old p.c.donations and
complains that they cant afford new software for
the districts crapintoshs and crapples.
Yeah,there are a lot of good,legitimate needs
for boxes in middle and high schools.When kids can't read,write or cipher they certainly can't compute.But these sensitive feminist(males and females)liberal teachers are convinced that if only the kids self-esteem is high,there will be no need for
any skills later in life,thats what computers are for,silly.(oh,spank me,I'm ranting)
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
A computer is a tool nothing more. I think he is confusing a computer and the Internet in the article. Computers != Internet. We don't just use the computers in the school for surfing the net. We've got a lab of SGI Indys and a Linux networking Lab :) we've got a typing lab, a CAD lab, a robotics lab, the list goes on and on. Computers are not just a case monitor and keyboard/mouse. There's a whole other level of computers out there that are part of our every day life.
I don't think exposing kids to different operating systems and computer architectures is hurting anyone's education. We've also got a lot of real world examples.... take our AutoCad lab for example.
However, even though we were blessed with all of this technology, I don't think any of the teachers have forgotten the need for a pencil and paper. Most of the staff realizes that a computer is only as smart as its user. I don't think we're developing a generation of slackers who don't know the most basic of things as long as we remember what got us to where are.
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
-- Ernest Hemingway
Basically the lab computers were NT boxes that were used in the lab either to run Excel to make graphs or, for one lab, to actually gather the data. I didn't have much input into the design of the lab experiments, but they were well put together and didn't require much thought on how the computer was to be utilized.
The big difference I saw between pre- and post-computers was that the students got more done. The computers saved a lot of the busy work of creating the graphs and then computing the slope of whatever data was graphed. Excel could also do a log plot easily. However, the important part of almost all labs was what to DO with that slope. What did it mean? Computers didn't help there. Although with computer help there was usually more time to think about it, most of the students seemed more interested in writing something and leaving than really understanding what the lesson was about. Though that could be a commentary on my teaching technique rather than the computers. ;)
But I think this was the way to go and some of the other folks on this thread have it right: the computer should not be the centerpiece - it should be a work-saving tool (as it was meant to be). The lesson should not revolve around the computer (unless it is a computer science class). The real learning happens in the interaction between the students and each other and between the students and the teacher. As much as computers have advanced they cannot replace a human teacher (yet) or another human student.
"There is no shot you can take that I cannot simply deny." - Ertai, wizard goalie
A couple of positive experiences I've had in school with computers:
Fourth grade - the class builds HyperCard stacks to learn about the 13 Colonies. The teacher was clued, but not so egotistical that she couldn't take a clue from one of us when we get something right that she doesn't. We got to build things which were unique and our own, which was gratifying. This beat the heck out of Logo, which ended up being a teacher-centered, slow, boring exercise in Turtlegraphics.
Fifth grade - We got to do an intro-to-statistics sort of project involving the collection, sorting and classification of different kinds of junk mail we students received at our homes, putting the info we gathered in spreadsheets (learning to use spreadsheets), and making heavily-hypertexted reports up based on the results, again in HyperCard. Real-world data are fun to work with.
Unfortunately, after middle school began, no one bothered innovating anymore, nor did students have the chance to create anything more structured than a textual document. "Computer classes" focused on application skills and simple scripting, and didn't really teach more than you could learn from reading the manual.
In high school it only got worse; AP computer science classes were Pascal-based (though content-rich by comparison with some of the stuff other people had to go through, apparently) and the administrators started on some insane laptop purchasing binges, resulting in lots and lots of computers running Outlook (then Exchange) and Word and Quake and little else. The faculty avoided innovation like the plague.
A C++ class temporarily instituted my senior year provided a group of students the opportunity to mess around, with fairly little instructional guidance (let alone introduction to OOP.) I used the opportunity to teach myself MFC and BeOS programming, but lots of people didn't do quite as much (one suspects they didn't know how.)
I still miss HyperCard, though; it was a great tool that anyone could use, even fourth graders. I think it would be great if someone could come up with an app that worked cross-platform on web pages as straightforwardly as HyperCard worked on its "stacks" on the Mac. Perhaps a compiler from HyperTalk to Java could be written, to support the really intuitive scripting facilities it supported? -- I am not among the Java "converted", but I recognize the power of the language qua Web platform.
I graduated high school spring 1997, should you wish to frame these comments in terms of a period in time.
"...conclusion that computers stifle learning and creativity and may cause damage to both vision and posture..."
that can also be said about books, they to cause damage to both vision and posture. Anyway I always loved reading and when I was in school I used to bring a book with me and read it during class. Do I regret it? Not.
"...She has even speculated that early introduction to computer "learning" may also interfere with proper brain development..."
Early introduction for a child to any kind of learning interfere with proper brain development. I heard about that two years ago, so why just target computers now?
And yes I agree that young children don't have to be exposed to computers at such a young age. But computers in every classroom starting in mid high-school and college will definitely be an asset for students.
In my second year of High School, my maths teacher told the class that there wasn't really any need to learn most of the formulas at that time because normally you could just use a calculator. At tertiary level this is completely true. Nobody bothers working out simple stuff when it'll easily plug into a calculator/computer. But that didn't stop us from learning how to do it in High School, and it's something I'm glad of.
I think that making computers available to children through school is important, but to me it would seem silly to base education around them to the point where children rely on them.
Computers are great, but they're also really antisocial. Any children who want to get deeply involved in them can do it in their own time, or maybe through some separate program in schools.
Really I don't think having them available can cause much problem as long as it's in a way not to distract children from what they're there to be learning.
===
(My wife's a teacher, so I speak with some experience.)
Too often, computers in the classroom are used more to keep kids attention and keep them out of the teacher's hair than actual learning. If you've ever looked at primary educational software, it is mostly utter crap. You get basically videogames with a thin helping of vaguely educational soundbytes or glorified flash-cards. Not all that great for learning, and certainly not worth the price considering what could be bought with the same money. (I.e. books, pencils, etc.)
Perhaps computers can, in theory, be helpful for younger kids, but in order to be so, education software needs drastic improvement and teachers need much better training.
If I had a kid, I wouldn't even consider most "educational" software. I'd rather set them up with SimCity first. I'd much prefer to see them reading a book.
I'm no luddite. I've been using computers daily since the age of forteen, over twenty yers ago.
I'm talking about the primary grades here. When you get to older kids, computers start becoming useful as a research tool.
When advocates of computers in the classroom talking about it, they invariably talk about theory and ignore the realities of the current state of technology and what software exists. Yes, in theory, it could be a huge boon. But until someone actually does something decent, it is just pac-man with the ghosts replaced with ants and the name changed to "rain-forest adventure".
The cake is a pie
Here in my home province of Nova Scotia, the government is obsessed with computers, like they consider them the be all end all (or whatever the hell the saying is) to everything that's wrong with our education system. This is maybe not such a good idea: my old school, an old rural elementary/junior high with about 800 kids, has a PowerPC in every classroom, 10+ iMacs, 6 G3s w/FireWire, Studio Displays, etc, 1 huge, brand-new G4 server thing, 4 Sony Digital8 camcorders, stacks of Zip, Jaz, and CD-R disks and drives, literally innumerable hundreds of dollars worth of overpriced software.. and more on the way. Your Tax Dollars at Work.
This would all be fine, if people actually used the equipment. Instead, most students seem content with reloading their hotmail accounts all day, and the only movies made were pointless. Half this stuff is still in the original packaging! And the textbooks are still falling apart!
So I guess the point of this (rambling) post is that computers are not the solution to illiterate kids and crappy grades. They are a fine educational tool, if used correctly, but we can't forget the importance of good old teaching, and work. and stuff.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
I do a lot of volunteer work resurrecting old computers for use in small schools, especially in the elementary grades, but I don't see computers, by themselves, solving all the problems in our schools. You can't stuff a kid in a room full of books and think he will just start learning all by himself. You can't sit a kid down in front of a computer screen and think that she will somehow magically learn to communicate.
You have to be careful what grade levels you're talking about too. Putting computers in Kindergarten rooms is a whole different story from using them in High School.
-- Your Servant,
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Ok, this kinda compliments my first post. I meant to say this as well...
In elementary school, my class learned BASIC on Apple II's. It was a great experience (and an easy A for me since I already knew BASIC).
This is what I mean by using the computer to teach. If you are teaching something on the computer, then it is good. If you are telling the kids to play Oregon trail for an hour, it's more like recess than any kind of lesson.
Critical thinking can be taught with computers, but you have to make sure that you are teaching the thinking, not just how to query search engines.
There are also lots of reasons to get kids away from the terminal, but that doesn't mean keep them away from it, it just means, maybe they should have some social development time, and science time and such. Watching a chemistry experiment on laserdisc was never as fun as doing it for real. I am sure that it is the same with DVD...
As far as posture and eyesight are concerned. Staring into books all day isn't great for the eyes, and kids already have bad posture. I would think that looking up at a monitor instead of down at a desk would actually help. I had private education as a kid, and we were actually taught good posture. Perhaps more public schools should go this route. If you want kids to behave like proper little adults, teach them to be that way. I think that the posture argument was completely invalid.
Besides, if computers were bad for kids, I wouldn't be the social/intellectual butterfly that I am now *VBG*
Eh...
In the Red Escolar project, the computers are not directly in the every-day classroom, but in a separate lab. This takes away the possibility that computers may distract students from their every-day learning.
The computers, set with Internet access, are used to share ideas with very distant schools, which have different social, economic, cultural and geographic situations. This brings a richer
understanding of the world to the child.
-o-
I agree with the idea that programming has helped a lot of us during our early days, helping our creativity and abstract thinking, and probably marking our way of thinking, and career preferences forever: it did in my case. I was one of those lucky 8-bit processor computer owner, as an infant.
But you have to admit it: learning programming requires a lot of exposure to the computer for the kid, and that just doesn't happen at school; at least not in Mexico, where the kids recieve from 1 hour to 30 minutes of computer exposure a week. But this is enough to participate in collaborative groups, and get to know people from far away parts of the country.
-o-
Programming distracted me from a lot of other school activities, but I was more distracted with games. Actually, it was the games that motivated me to start programming ("I'd like to make the machine do that by myself!").
-o-
You won't get any bad postures if you stare at a screen for as little time as 30 minutes or one hour, but you can try harder by getting a computer of your own. Too bad mexican reality doesn't let you ask this to 95% of the population.
-o-
I can imagine a salesman trying to think about the "advantages" of a computer inside the regular classroom, to get a better comission check for the month.
Computers in the classroom are neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It's all in how it is used. Obviously, children need to learn how to use computers, and school certainly is a good place for that. I'm sure many of us have our stories about how we fell in love with computers we first saw at school (8th grade computer club for me), so it's obviously important to us.
The problem is, you can't let computers be used for everything, or they can detract from some of the basic learning children need. How do you ever learn to spell when your computer checks all of your homework for you? Where's the incentive? How do you learn to add and subtract, let alone multiply and divide, when you always have a calculator handy? Hell, I can hardly do those now, I'm so used to punching stuff in on machines. When I was in school (not very long ago), there were many classes (and not just math, either) where we weren't allowed to have a calculator. Sure, we bitched about it, but how could we have learned to do basic math when we had a tool to do it all for us? It's what they call "tough love," I guess.
I think that computers definitely belong in the classroom, but we have to be careful not to let the classroom be replaced by the chat room.
Come on, legal document you save, who here has never faked a lab notebook.
-Compenguin
Computers download information, he says. They do not teach children to think.
That sounds like a lot of my teachers when I was younger. Well, except for the "download information" part.
Michael
Do you have ESP?
It seems that the studies should be on how the
computer is used in classrooms, not if it
should be used in classrooms. Then a study
should be done to see if it is useful in
anyway, then it should be done away with if found useless.
I could argue that sitting at a desk and
reading a book all day contributed to my
nearsightedness and bad posture. Perhaps we
should do away with desks and books?
It is ironic that the article, which seems to
have a slant against using computers in
classrooms, is written with few good
examples and no supporting evidence. Thus it
contributes to the "sea of knowledge" without
much thought.
I would like to see the studies, and hear what
ideas came out of them besides "computers are
bad for children".
Meye2sense
--Fac Iustum Nec Time-- --Veritas Prevalibit--
At age five my father gave me my first exposure to a computer when he started teaching me to program. It changed my life, defined my mode of thought and my way of approaching problems, taught me to probe and experiment, and taught me that solutions can be obtained by ordering a problem properly. These are the fundamentals that we need to be teaching our children, not how to surf the web for pages about monster trucks and pokemon, and not how to make web pages by drag and drop. Children need to learn how to organize their thoughts and approach a problem, and at the same time need to be stimulated to develop procedural thinking. Exposure to knowledge is an end, not a means.
These "experts" are correct in that if we use computers to simply give children exposure to the huge knowledgebase of the web, they gain nothing, and probably lose out on time they could spend doing other things. But they are completely wrong in saying that is all computers can provide for children. Children need to learn how to think in an orderly logical manner, and how to process information. What can do this better than a machine that does nothing but process information in an orderly logical manner? Don't give children a web browser, give them a programming window. You'd be surprised how much programming is like playing with legos when you learn as a child.
I heard an interesting theory one time that too much computer usage for very young children could be damaging to their motor skills. His theory was that playing physical games and using real markers, etc helped develop 3D spacial skills. Since computers are really only 2D viewing, then coordination could suffer. Even books, while a 2 dimensional surface, requires reaching out and turning pages, moving the book around, allows reading in different body positions, etc.
As I thought about it, it seemed to make a lot of sense.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Look at a graph of computers/head in the classroom vs. educational standards across countries around the world. Given the incredibly low educational standards we see in the US and the high standards in countries with only a basic information technology infrastructure I think it's pretty clear that there is a negative correlation (I don't have references to hand - check out many newspaper articles and Scientific American over the last year or two).
--
-- SIGFPE
Ummm... I didn't go to "High School". But thats just pedantic. Are computers needed for design, art, architecture or business processing? Of course not. They're not even needed for spreadsheets. And unless you have a lot of data they're not needed for plotting data. Using paper gives more of a feel for the sort of accuracy and the typical values.
Gosh, that was highly negative of me wasn't it. Actually, it seems that your school was one of the rare cases where computers are used sensibly. Not all schools have a teacher who isn't scared of the things (Yes, I really mean scared. Any more terrified and they'd be leaping back after pressing a key). Sensible use of computers in schools is not a bad idea. Its just hard to find
Depends on what you're learning, doesn't it?
A working PC with Internet access and/or available video games are bad for learning because they are a distraction to young minds. Young minds often lack the self-discipline to pay attention when there are MORE FUN things to do. This applies as much to grade-school as it does to college.
That said, computers are a tool, a delivery mechanism. One could just as easily ask if colored pens in the classroom are bad for learning, and conclude that they are since they encourage kids to make pretty colorful doodles instead of memorizing their multiplication tables.
Computers make memorizing such things as math tables, rulles of spelling, and readily referenced information unnecessary (right or wrong is another topic)... They CHANGE the learning process.
Arguing if some thing or another is good or bad in the immediate sense is shortsighted - it's like fleas arguing about what breed of dog they happen to be on, and whether this is good or bad.
Are books in the classroom bad, just because they make it possible for kids to no longer have to learn everything from oral tradition?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
The reason kids don't get the results back is that no one kid takes the entire test. Any one kid is typically given 3 blocks worth of questions. For math that means between 20 and 50 questions, depending on grade level and the type of questions in the block. The entire math assessment however, is approximately 200-300 questions.
Why not give each kid all the questions? Because it is intrusive and expensive to do so.
Instead, each student actually gets 5 estimated scores based on his/her performance on the blocks they completed. The five scores are estimated based on their performance on the blocks they complete plus the demographic questions they answer. How those stats are computed is beyond me, I am a humble programmer.
Also a very small sample of kids is actuallly used in each state (approximately 2,000). This is again to minimize intrusion and keep costs low. Its enough to get a decent sample though. In effect nobody really cares who takes the test, as long as we can get 2,000 kids to do so.
Thats why results are posted for entire groups of people. For example: males who watch 5 hours of tv a day, or kids who have students that has a teacher that knows about a computer. yadda yadda yadda.
On a more personal note, you sound like a conservative to me. Thats cool. I consider myself one as well. I don't send my kids to public school and I wish there was some system in place that afforded me a choice of where I send my kids. I find it offensive the gov't thinks their schools are the only ones that can teach. Incidentally...NAEP has shown that Private school/Catholic school kids do better in most subjects.
NAEP is useful because it does look at things at a high level and say what things are working and what things aren't. The computer study I mentioned was one of the good things to come out of NAEP.
Yes I am sure there are states who decide what programs get funded and what don't based on NAEP. Is that so bad? I mean if a program isn't helping the kids then why not discontinue it? Its your money...why waste it! I just hope they are using the data correctly.
All the best.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
CNN had an article about how it was the schools and teachers who weren't able to incorporate the computers into their lessons. The article also mentions many instances where the teachers were able to use the computers with their lessons, often giving their students invaluable tech skills they otherwise would never have gained.
I agree. And it's not just elementary school or high school teachers who seem to resent learning anything new. Many higher ed folks are just as stubborn and just as backward about technology. Students can see this as well as you or I, and it's hard to expect them to show much enthusiasm for a teaching mechanism that the teacher doesn't really understand or refuses to care about.
-Bryan
I agree with some previous posts that there is a comparison of computers to tv. I'd have to agree to a certain point. But my point is that it will never matter what the object is in the classroom, someone is going to complain. They have complained about everything from calculators and now computers. No matter the teaching aid used, there will always be someone against it simply cause they feel that they didn't have that when they were in school and they don't see it's place in the classroom.
Times change, and so should people. No you can't block your children from everything on the internet. But how many of you site your children infront of the TV while you make dinner or do laundry? Do you think your children arn't exposed to some of the very same things? Or is the TV just more socialy accepted? Why not, they felt the same way when TV's started replacing radio's.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
I know you're playing the devil's advocate here, but this still needs refutation. This attitude, which far too many people hold, is how the Psychic Friends Network gets such great business and evolution gets banned in schools. Gullibility is never good.
I think that kids should be required to take a critical thinking course. I don't mean it like those pointless "critical thinking" questions you find on the SAT now--"Explain multiplication to an alien that knows no math"--but the sort of reasoning necessary for making rational decisions in everyday life. It should cover the following areas: logic--not necessarily symbolic logic, but how to follow a logical argument, and to spot holes and logical fallacies; statistics--the different kinds of averages and what they mean, what statistical significance is, etc.; and the scientific method--amazingly, in my experience science classes tend to either gloss over the method at the beginning of the course or ignore it entirely.
A suggested "reccommended reading" list for such a course:
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
And what's with this encouraging children to be forbidden to use computers at home?? Why??
Integrating techology (and by this they mean computers) into the curriculum is currently in vogue in the educational establishment. Teachers are pushed to use computers in their classroom even if they don't have much utility. You could use a computer to record data and plot it for a physics experiment, or you could use a lab notebook. In the real world, you'd use a lab notebook, because notebooks are legal documents that you save. Why? Well, it's because the people pushing the technology don't understand the technology.
It's interesting to read http://www.nextgenerationforum.org/ as these people are actaually doing the research on how to make computers (amongst other things) encourage creative activity.
The computers themselves are not the problem. The problem is that educators have no idea how to effectively use them as a learning tool.
In general educators and other experts seem to have no idea what learning is or how to encourage it.
The basic problem of all education is that you need a student who wants to learn and a teacher who has some desire and ability to teach. If you can get those two things in, all other problems are trivial. Most of the things that you hear educators complaining about, such as lack of funding etc. are just excuses for the fact that the kids don't want to learn and there isn't anything educators can do to change that.
Computers have been seen as a way to encourage kids to learn. I'm sorry but putting something on a computer screen isn't going to make someone want to understand it any better than reading it on paper. Now educators are realizing this and soon the search for the next new thing in education will begin.
Computers can be a tremendous tool for learning. But in order to be that, the student using it must want to learn. If they don't then its as useless as any other educational tool that has ever been used to try and teach those unwilling to learn.
I think a big part of the problem is that students are discouraged from wanting to learn by the very methods used to try and teach them. Education is made into something that is done to students instead of something that they do themselves. How many kids go to school because they have to and work for grades instead of knowledge? How many students temporarily memorize things for a test instead of truly trying to understand concepts?
Knowledge is a tool. Any information or understanding is only as valuable as its ability to be applied. Students who memorize have no understanding and cannot apply what they have supposedly learned.
The best way to fix this problem is to change the criteria which students are judged by. Test them on comprehension and the ability to use their knowledge and you'll encourage them to truly learn.
I do think the idea that small children should be kept away from computers is pretty damned silly. I've been around them since I was 5 years old and I certainly have no deficiency in the learning department. Its just proof that the "experts" are a bunch of flunkies.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I've wrestled with this a lot w.r.t. my kids. They both have had access to computers and the web growing up. I buy them "educational" software that they enjoy and use. But I do not think these programs are a substitute for hands-on tactile learning with adult teachers and mentors. Not at all. They are ever so slightly better than watching T.V. but not much better. Not as good as a really big mud puddle, or an any hill in the back yard, or a game of 'go fish' played with a friend...
The adults in their lives, especially the parents and teachers, are what matters. Just like it always has been. I'd much rather have my kids' school spend money to lower the teacher/student ratio than to invest in more computer hardware. No contest.
This article doesn't say we shouldn't teach kids to use a computer. Fourth through Twelfth grades seems plenty of time to me. I do quite well with computers and I didn't even use one until my dad brought home an Apple IIGS when I was in sixth grade. The point the article makes is that kids should be given a few years to develop their real world communication and thinking skills before we enable them to rely on the computer. Considering the number of "pleas email mee info on painters lik michael angeloe" I get from my two cousins, I don't think this is a bad idea at all.
The computer is a wonderful tool, but it is not a substitute for critical thinking, english skills, or the ability to so actual research (in a *gasp* library). Computer skills are based on real world skills, not the other way around...
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
Frankly I worked in an office & most of the requests I got where almsot idetnical. For instance 1 woman would 'accidentally' kick the power cord out of it's socket under her desk every day & had us come 'find out what was wrong' with her computer. Frankly I think everyone needs a lesson at some time that computers have certain things that need plugged in to work.
As for the other points you made (the numbered ones that is). Well you know what I say that in HS when I worked (for free) with the schools computers & therfore did most of the job of dealing with those people you mentioned. I now see the same things in business as I did then. The 'pretty girls' (which aren't always just 'girls', plenty of guys do it to) don't see or don't think they have to know how to use computers to suceed (which they see as a 'geek' thing). Then the 'Old Timers' who feel they are ready to retire & so don't need to learn anything new. & the Admins of course which fell they make enough money they don't need to care about how to use something like a computer.
I think it's all part of the same problem & it needs a solution, but I don't have one.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
As James Glieck points out in Faster, we used to wait weeks between lettered discussions and conversations -- even in professional fields. With the advent of typewriters and the enhancement of the postal service, this was reduced to days. Still, days of contemplation and reflection are good. You have time to think about things before you comment on them or reply to them, while waiting for a response.
In this instantaneous age, you have seconds, minutes or hours. I fire an email off to a customer, student or friend and can often receive an immediate response. Not much thought there. Or, if there is a lot of thought, certainly not much pause for reflection and contemplation before hitting the send button. We would consider minutes to be sufficient time for thinking these days.
Political polls are the same. What used to be a matter of days and weeks to form opinions now is, literally, seconds. Ten seconds after a politician says something, it is regurgitated on the news in sound-bites and immediately, opinions which have not been codified and split-second polls are returned and broadcast. Shazam -- you now have material to form your ill-understood opinion on.
Let's not just blame this on computers and the internet -- or short attention spans of children. Processing of information has grown greater than exponentially. If we're going to blame anything, blame TV Dinners, 22-minute news-casts, 10 second commercial jingles and minute-rice.
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seumas.com
As a 41-year old fart, I can relate a parallel. In the late 60s early 70s, educational TV was a big thing. Schools were "wired" with coax and educational TV programs were shown in the classrooms. We the students generally loved this time because the room was darkened, we got to kick back, and sleep or doodle. The only memorable thing I can remember from those programs was watching the movie "Flowers for Algernon." I don't know what it taught me, but it stuck in my mind.
As for us "leading normal lives," perhaps young people don't see it, but the baby boomers are a bunch of really fucked-up emotional cripples who are seeking happiness through how much they can aquire, yet are too wrapped up in themselves to spend time with their kids or spouses. Compared to people I know in their 60s and 70s, yeah, I think a lifetime of TV *has* had a negative effect on my generation. It's taught us to be greedy little selfish assholes.
(As you can see, I'm disturbed in slightly different ways! :)
The thing that I don't like about the article is it makes sweeping blanket statements about computing in schools with no distinction for:
Thus, I have to come to the conclusion that this article is meant less to be informative on the issue than to scare up some good sound-bytes ("computers are bad, mmOK?").
Here's some ways in which I think computers in the classroom are inappropriate:
carlos
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As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Is that teachers aren't properly educated as to what's going on in the world of computers.
These teachers go to school for 4-5 years learning what? How to teach! The teachers themselves can barely understand what's going on with the computers.
I do tech work at a school district in a Pittsburgh suburb, and if what I've seen is typical, then it's completely understandable that kids aren't learning anything more than button pushing in school.
I've had teachers fill out work request forms for their computers and when I go to take a look, the problem is that THE KEYBOARD IS UNPLUGGED! Or the power cord is not plugged in! Or the monitor isn't plugged into the computer.
The teachers who have no clue come in many different varieties, the ones which I detest most are
1. The 'pretty girls'. They have this "I'm just a girl, tee hee" attitude and don't care how ignorant they are.
2. The almost retired. They have the "I'm outta here in 5 more years so screw this learning new stuff crap." attitude.
3. The administrators. "I make $100,000 per year so I don't need to understand a fucking thing."
The people in charge of the school can barely turn the computers on and use them, how in the world do you expect them to be able to teach kids how?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Computers are an incredibly valuable resource in education- however since most schools do a miserable job at educating it follows that the computers are of little benefit in a school doing a lousy job at educating the kids in the first place. I'll bet the computers are a great benefit at the schools already doing a good job...
Computers are just a tool. They will not fix what is wrong with the education system.
FWIW - we homeschool our kids and the computers in my house (one running Win98, one running RH6.2)are an invaluable part of the kids education process.
In most countries of Europe (and I am afraid of the rest of the world too) all classroom computers are *standardised* on MS Windows and dito Office. I do not want to spit on MS once again, but knowledge taught at school whether it is on primary or academic level should be universal. Therefore it would be better if a more theoretical system would be used which would illustrate the fundamentals on which *all* systems are based (=/ click "Start" in order to "Shut Down").
The same is true for apps: there should be an educational office suite which would show the *universal* logic behind every brand of office. I know this is very very wishfull thinking, but the situation now, every year a new Office requiring new, more powerful PCs is unsustainable for the tight education budgets in most of the countries. And students acquire knowledge which is already outdated at the moment of the lecture.
This was another right opinion of John C. Drashcan
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
anuther thing is spel chek. how r al theese stewdents gunnah lern how to spel?
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.
I'm seeing a lot of posts that read along the lines of, "If it weren't for Apple IIs in the classroom I would've never started programming, tinkering with machines, etc." Of course, this being slashdot, a good number of people here have their lives revolve around computers, so whenever any discussion comes about that threatens to eliminate their primary tool from any aspect of society, they feel threatened/outraged.
As a first year college student, I can say that I've been educated at both ends of the computer curve, with Apple IIs and with Pentiums. What I've noticed is that the higher and more prevalent the technology, the more it is misused. In my high school, we spent over $100K on buying the latest and greatest Dells and having them all networked, only to have them gather dust while a small group of students--those who already knew what they were doing--put them to use. When the machines were finally available to the entirety of the student body they were primarily used for game playing/web surfing, activities that obviously aren't educationally beneficial (most high school students would choose mtv.com over slashdot.org any day). At the same time, our AP classes were in need of new textbooks and our pleas went unanswered.
I'm sure that in some cases, schools have incredibly motivated and skilled teachers willing to use computers the way they were intended to be used, but in the vast majority of cases they are little more than Nintendos/TVs/phones, depriving schools of money that could be better spent on books/teachers.
There's always a stink about "my goodness, we need more computers in the classrooms!" but IMHO, there are a lot of other things that should be addressed first, regardless of whether the computer can be a good learning tool (which is a whole other topic...)
My wife taught in a public high school in Austin for 7 years. What was she missing?
She had kids sitting on the radiators for the first several weeks of class while they waited for desks to be brought in.
She had kids sharing textbooks because they were short.
She didn't have a phone in her room, or even a working intercom or panic button. If an emergency came up, she had to send a kid tearing down the hall to the principal's office.
Needless to say, having a computer sitting on a desk in the back of the room was not a high priority...
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I ask you, what can be done about this? To me, I think that the change has to happen at a more spiritual level. People in the U.S. are constantly concerned about how much time something will take, and so on. But really, in truth, what does it matter how long something takes? If I have to wait an extra minute because the traffic signal changed, SO WHAT?!?!?! I'm not sure where I'm going with this, so I'll stop now. But what can be done to change the current point-and-click attitude? I have no solutions...
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A decent book on the subject is (AI researcher) Roger Schenk's Cognitive Computer. He makes a case that the only useful thing a computer has in education is learning problem-solving techniques via programming. You don't need a pc for every child to do that. An hour or two a week in the computer lab is plenty for gradeschoolers. Maybe offer a daily class in high school. But as far as the bulk of education goes, the old-fashioned ways involving books, essays, and pencil-and-paper math are just as good today as they were 100 years ago. Don't bow to corporate america's warnings that our kids "aren't ready for the workplace of tommorrow." They're 10-year olds, for heaven's sake.
I am a man of const int sorrows
The real problem isn't the computers existance. It's that there are so few good teachers anymore. A decent teacher should be able to integrate the computer as a source of information, just like the dictionary, encyclopedia and other print mediums.
That Calvert school the article mentions could do just as well if there were computers in each classroom! The existance of the computer shouldn't exclude kids from writing hand written assignments and papers. The existance of the computer shouldn't mean that kids don't have to think on their own. The existance of the computer is exactly the same as any other source of information and if people don't treat it as such, THEN it is bad for education!
** Martin
Considering that there will be computers in just about everything in the near future, it seems odd that we would exclude them from the classroom. I think the problem right now is merely that they're not being used properly. Once the new generations of teachers who have been trained how to use computers effectively in the classroom begin to filter into the school system (it's already happening) I think these problems will become much less significant. The thing about computers is that they offer an excellent visualization tool for visual learners... especially for math and sciences. The problems arise when the teacher expects the computer to do his/her job for him/her. This really only applies to primary education, of course. Since it's getting harder and harder to find jobs that don't expect you to have at least a little computer experience, I think that computers in education become an absolute necessity once students reach the high school level. At the very least a high school graduate should be able to get around an OS and use a word processor/email/browse the web.
magic chef
Informative
After reading the article I think that the authors are a bit too anxious to discard computers.
True, if used incorrectly computers can be less than worthless in a classroom. But, just because they CAN be misused does not mean we should ban them. Better to research better ways to use them.
Sitting a kid in front of a web browser and shouting 'LEARN!' isn't going to work, most of the edutainment programs are jokes, but at the rate civilization is going basic computer use is going to be as necessary as literacy to survive.
We do need better programs to teach, we can't rely on computers as the sole teacher, but they can, be a useful suppliment.
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Damn Right. In my middle/high school we had a computer network. Guess what? It was only used to play pirated network games, experiment with virii, BIOS passwords, and other nasty stuff, and just generally give the poor underpaid admin way to many headaches. The computer is only needed in the classroom as far as it can be a supplement. Just like a pull-down map. It can be a learning aid. But people shouldn't pretend that it is the teacher and subject itself.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I am attending several online courses for my master. I automatically send the questions to Ask Jeeves and reroute the awnsers to the "school." Within the next week my user will have PHd's in Microbiology, Genetics, Quantum Mechanics, Veteranary Biology, Hungarian Basket Weaving and French.
Does anyone know where I can order ten live dogs and some Exacto Blades online?
Dirt doesn't need luck.
This link is a summary of some work done here at Educational Testing Service .
/.'ed!!!
Basically what researchers here have decided is that the use of computers to teach mind numbing things like multiplication tables or addition tables is negatively correlated to performance on national tests. That is if you use a computer like flash cards, kids are not helped....they are done a diservice.
However, the use of computers to play educational games (e.g. Math Rabbit or Treasure Math Storm or any other math game that requires a child to think about what they are doing) is positively correlated with performance on national tests.
So its not just that they have computers in the classroom, its what they use them for.
ps: I hope ets.org can handle being
I'm still working on a clever footer.
So, if I understand this correctly, she is upset because computers are supposedly edging their way into the monopoly on stifling creativity and damaging posture (remember those crappy chairs and desks when you were a kid?) that schools currently hold?
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seumas.com
As usual, polotics in the school system have managed to screw it all up. About 5 years back, there was a push for "Four computers in every classroom." Of course, very few teachers really could use four computers in class, but that was irrevelent. It was still great PR... and a huge expense.
Plus, for some reason they decided that normal disk drives shouldn't be used (probably some brilliant plan to prevent students from loading software). Instead they loaded strange little boxes that contained disks that looked like CD's (picture a big minidisk). Downside - try updating them or adding a new piece of software. The computers were only useful for running the software that came with them. Besides that, they were piece of junk computers anyway. None of this really mattered though, because no one really needed them.
It's all getting straightened up now. They gave up on trying to keep four in every room. They just starting distributing the ones they already have to the new rooms. Of course, they were outdated five years ago... I haven't seen those funny drives in a while. I think they just trashed them. My high school just put new motherboards and processors in those same computers (cost a pretty penny, and the computers were running DOS anyway...). This is after they bought new computers for the labs that actually need good ones.
What it comes down to is that they put thousands of bad computers all over the place. It was fine that they were lousy, because they weren't in use. Now they're buying good computers for the rooms that need it, but are still updating the old ones that are running simple software and don't really need to do anymore at this point. Why? I don't know. I think every move made in the "Computers in the Classroom" movement has been motivated by public relations.
What schools need is a few nice computer labs for classes that actually need them. Outside of that, what's the point?
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
Webster Groves Computer School, a public elementary magnet school where I got my 1st thru 5th grade education, has just put 30 new Dells (complete with full, high-speed Internet access) running Windows 98 (hey, you can't have everything) in each of their 3rd, 4th and 5th grade classrooms. As it turns out, my own 4th grade teacher, Sue Gibson is still teaching there and I had the opportunity to hear about her experiences with the new equipment (as well as letting me play with the new toys).
The students are eating it up! Which causes the teacher to just plain love it. Remember when we used to do reports on posterboard with magazine cutouts pasted to it? These kids are putting together Powerpoint slide shows that look better than what I see at work. Heck, their class website is more interesting than any college classes I've taken.
And these aren't the select district Poindexters, either - they're just regular kids. The method for getting in the school is based on a lottery rather than test scores.
Now, it's not all peaches and cream. There are problems with kids going to "unauthorized" (read: PORN) sites, but from what I understand, it's only from students who are otherwise known for getting in trouble. In other words, the kid most likely to check out penthouse.com is the one who got in trouble last week for bring his dad's pocketknife to show off.
The way I understand this, it's all about guidance and supervision. Remember Star Trek? The prime directive was not to interfere with "primitive" races because a radical change in technology could seriously screw up their values. The same goes for computers in the classroom. You can't just plop a 10-year-old in front of a PIII and expect him to become Linus.
Computers are a teaching tool. There was math class before there were calculators, or slide rules for that matter. There was school before there were books. There was school before there was even paper! Ancient Roman schools had children writing on wax tablets. Then came paper and children used it to take notes on and store. Then books allowed us to store, read and recycle information. Computers are simply the next big teaching tool, and hence, belong in EVERY classroom, along with the propper guidance.
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After expounding on all of the problems that can come with extended computer use at a young age, the article states, "Unfortunately, America's parents are also sold on the benefits of computers." The important distinction here is the difference between the ideas that (A) computers are inherently good for children (in and of themselves) and that (B) computer literacy is good for children.
Computers can aid in the learning process [I'm talking an educational environment here; let's leave off for a minute the value of computer training ten more years down the road, when these kids are entering the workforce] just as blackboards, books, libraries, and glue can-- more so, as they can be more powerful and flexible tools. Giving a blackboard to someone who doesn't know how to write isn't useful. Sitting a child down to browse the web isn't educational, not in the way that public schools are supposed to be. Teach a child how to use a graphing program, though, and perhaps (s)he will understand math a bit better. Show a child how to find britannica.com and perhaps he will benefit even when he is miles from a library.
Computers aren't inherently good or inherently evil, though a lot of people want to make them out to be. They're (most of them) not built for small hands and short bodies, and adult keyboards can do bad things to kids fingers and postures. Playing computer games instead of socializing is just as bad (worse) for children socially and emotionally as it is for adolescents and adults. But teaching kids how to use these tools to their educational advantage would be immensely helpful in schools. It's a shame that few schools have properly implemented the technology.
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I saw my first computer back in 1983 in my first grade classroom, an Apple II. The school had two or three of them, and each class got to see it for a day or so on a rotational basis. Consequently, they were not used very often except for the teachers to play Lemonade while students were taking tests. The Apple II we got at home a year later was much more beneficial in my personal computer education, but it didn't impact other fields of study very much.
I think that well-run computer labs would be much preferable to computers in every classroom or computers at every desk. And use the time for teaching computer skills, not other subjects. In a high school environment, I'd love to see a training lab set up with boxed computers and piles of equipment, and the students have to set up the computers, plug everything into the network and get the things started before they begin using them. And after they've succeeded, take it all apart and teach another group the next week.
My main concern with the hype surrounding computers in public education is the cost involved. Teachers aren't paid especially well, existing supplies (books, math and science equipment, etc.) are outdated or in poor shape, and here in Memphis, there are schools that aren't air conditioned and end up closing early during hot summer days. With those problems as well as the fact that students seem tobe having a hard time just getting basic subjects right, I think it's a bit premature to begin pushing for completely wired classrooms.
That being said, if private institutions or donors wish to provide schools with said equipment as well as the training and manpower to keep it running, then go for it. But please use the time and tools for computer-directed learning, not traditional subjects placed in a shiny wrapper.
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
The problem with most computers in the classroom programs is that most of them are half baked attempts. The education system in use today is far to outdated to get the most out of new technologies. Not to mention the severely hampered budgets at most schools.
When I was in 6th grade, our school got a whole bunch of Apple IIe's donated. Fortunately, for us students, our math teacher already had one, and was fairly knowledgable of BASIC programming before they even came in. In a matter of days after their arrival he had a mini BASIC programming course all put together. He taught it as part of his regular math course where he taught us how to use simple math to make little interactive games. He also got "Oregon Trail" and "Lemonade Stand", showed our Social Studies teacher who to run the computer and we set out to learn our first lessons about economics, critical thinking, and budgeting. That was back in the eighties. The computers in the classroom programs today haven't come very far.
Most of the programs that I've seen have been silly little exercises on looking up information on the web or watching a string of multimedia clips (sponsored by XYZ Corp. complete with ads).
There is so much that can be done with a computer today besides the basics of programming, networking, or even using a computer, which many schools still do not teach. A thin client on every desk could make for an excellent learning environment, provided the content is there. Imagine a virtual textbook with print, video, and audio content. It could certainly make History class a lot more interesting. There is a lot of potential for computers in the classroom, we simply need to update the way we educate.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Joseph Kain
It shouldn't matter HOW a child learns, as long as they learn. Discussions twenty years ago focussed on how TV was a developemental destructive force. Yet somehow we and our parent grew up and went to have normal lives.
I think it's important to remember there isn't too much for kids on the internet though, but plenty of software.
I don't think the issue on this subject is whether or not computers are good for kids. Anything kids spend way too much time doing is not going to benefit them in the long run. However many schools, teachers and parents think that computers are a substitute for learning instead of a companion. My father is a teacher (5th grade) and only lets the kids use the computer after their daily classroom work is complete and verified as correct by him. In this case, the computer time becomes a motivational tool for the kids to get their work done instead of daydream. But the caveat is that it has to be done correctly! However there are a great many teachers who'll take their kids to the lab and plop them in front of the machine, run Muesum Madness (or some other worthless "educational" program purchased by your tax dollars), and congratulate themselves on bringing technology into the classroom. I think the writers of this study need to go back and analize their results a little further. Is it the computer that's causing the problem or is it how the computer is utilized? To quote Taiichi Ohno (father of modern manufacturing) -- "You must ask Why? at least 5 times to get to the root cause." Any teacher could get kids to write better, more literate compositions if they actually force them to! So use the Internet to research their compositions, let them type it and print it out. What's the difference between that and going to the encyclopedia (which in elementary schools are usually older than the kids) and then handwriting the composition? Use the latest primary sources while letting kids get research skills that'll help them in the future.
Some people take their .sig way too seriously
Don't put computers in the classrooms, but do put computer classrooms in the schools. I agree that making the machine too ubiquitious where it is not the focus can harm our larvae. I got further than my friends with computers because I had the time ample time off in which to code and yet had sufficient access in which to try out what I'd studied and discovered. Math don't need no buttons!
IMO using a computer as an electronic set of flash cards isn't bad, so long as that is not all that is done to teach the subject. Differing people learn in differing ways, sometimes the rote drillwork helps, sometimes it turns students off.
The problem is devising and allowing teaching schemes that encourge thinking - using the `Net and/or books as a reference, knowing how to find useful information and sort it from the chaff, and how to assemble it. That makes computers as useful in philosophy or history as in math and CS.
Make all the tools and concepts available, train the teachers and provide enough of them with enough time to help students determine which tools are the most useful for that student.
Using computers to replace teachers or teacher aides, is a bad idea driven more by accounting than the desire to educate.
Are these the people that think we're learning something useful in school now? As far as I can tell, about the only thing worthwhile that they teach at my school is computer literacy. In a time when computers are becoming integrated into every part of society it's very gratifying to see the school trying to teach its students how to use a computer and not to be afraid of one. We have clusters in most of our classrooms at school, and we find them very useful in alot of classes, we have software and hardware for the physics class to collect data, we use the computers in our economics class to research world problems with current data pertaining to what we're covering. Now, economics itself is pretty useless in the real world, but using a computer is something everyone in the western world will eventually be doing on a daily basis.
I find it sad when I come accross a student frantically searching through ancient library books looking for current information to use in his/her project, while ignoring the computer lab next door. The simple fact is they're ignoring the lab because they're afraid of the computers. The earlier we're exposed to them, the better off we'll be. I'm not advocating them as a sole means of teaching, I'm advocating using them as a tool in the entire process of teaching, and teaching their use too.
In short: teach us something we'll use, don't cut the only thing you're doing right.
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I do tech support for their educational/instructional software. I think it's an excellent option in classrooms where teacher-led instruction is not the most practical. When you have a classroom of students with widely varying skills, or just a few students that would benefit from remedial/advanced instruction, it's great for the school and for the kids.
The people responsible for computers in the classroom need to know what the hell they're doing, just like any other tool. Unfortunately, most schools can't afford quality IT, and have "lab managers" that are simply glorified hall monitors/lunch aides. This opens a Pandora's box to trouble when they go up against a 13 year old with the skill and/or motivation to raise hell, or to simply steal the balls from a few mice. In a school with a skilled IS person/staff and the proper equipment, computers and education work quite well together.
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E2 IN2 IE?
Well, first of all let me say I've used computers in my classes for a long time, I was one of the privledged few that got to play with the apple 2 in first grade (I owned one before that) and I have to say that I'm a pretty good student, and I've always been a bit ahead of my class (back when grades weren't necessarily socially inflated).
:P)
I've been a TA to 3 teachers (English, Math, and C programming) that used computers. And my assessment is that the more the teacher knows about computers, and the application of computers in the the class's subject matter, the better compuers are.
The English teacher knew nothing about computers, and basically had kids watch powerpoint presentations about grammer. It sucked, and kids used the darkened room as a way to sleep through class.
The Math teacher was not very good with computers in general, and origially had a huge number of powerpoint presentatins to show. I managed to talk her out of it and instead we got her hooked up to a nice graphing caclulator program which was really classy. She only used the computer when introducing the students to 3-dimensional equasions and pre-calculus (like basic derivatives) and it seemed to help a lot. She would let the kids experiment with different functions, but she made them try and explain what the curves the computer would graph should look like, and why. All the kids said it was usefull.
The C class was a different story. That teacher knew a lot, but he insisted on using the computer for everything. I am a college student and I have attended some pretty stellar classes on various pogramming subjects, and none of them involved powerpoint. The class was difficult for the students to understand, and they didn't do too well. It was sad, because the teacher wouldn't listen to me when I advised him to try some new things (like letting the kids USE a computer
So careful use of the computer, applied to the subject matter is good. Just dropping kids on the internet is dumb, unless they have the drive to learn about it like some of us did. Maybe it's Powerpoint's fault. Everyone uses that program way too much.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
The article points out that children younger than grade 4 should not be exposed to computers, which to extent I can accept (I got my first computer when I was 8). Kids that young have no need to learn about the Internet, they are still developing social skill, among other basics. They should be introduced to them gradually and at the "right" time, whatever that may be. To give a kid a computer for the sake of it makes no sense.
I work for a company that does school network and setup almost exclusively. We've seen instances where companies sink large amounts of money into a school to give it the best technology possible in order to see if they'd get any return on test scores. There have been instances of schools almost doubling test scores in a couple instances. What tests they are I have no idea, but it seems to refute these people :)
isn't this the same discussion as calculators in the classroom? of course, a computer can do so much more of the kid's homework than a calculator can, but that's not the point. so long as computers are used as tools for learning, i say let them play.
I work for a School district as the summer Technology Director. The problem I have found is not the the Computers are a detriment but that the Teachers either are not trained to use them or refuse to put in the time to be trained. This causes a situation were the teachers just say "there is a computer... learn on it"
What they should be doing is building a leason that is taught in the classroom then has information on the internet or on a reference cd or such that the students go to to reinforce the leason.
Computers are tools to help do work and to help learning... they are not learning in and of them selves. If a student does not have any direction when they are put on a computer then they will have a lower chance of learning something that is relivant. If on the other hand the teachers would integrate the computers into the curriculum such that that computer is just another tool for gathering information or for compiling it then the students would learn more.
From what I have seen... many of the teachers are older and have it in their mind that "they don't know how to use this newfangled technology" these teachers are unwilling to try to learn about the computers and how to use them in their lessons. The people are a problem because they fall back on the principal that if I put them in a computer lab and have them *play* a "learning" game then it means I don't have to "teach" and thus it is easier for me to cost out till retirement.
The next group of teachers that is a problem would be the new teachers that had computers in middle and high school... these people have had computers and thus beleive that they know how to integrate them into their curriculum... the problem is that when they had computers in school all they did was go to a lab and play a game so the teacher would not teach... thus they are not any better then their teachers... To add to this problem these teachers think that they already know how to use computers in the classroom and thus are unwilling to spend time in training classes to learn how to do it correctly.
The last group of teachers are the ones that would like to learn how to us the computers more effectivly. Usualy they did not have computers in school when they were younger... but they did have technolgy such as tvs, vcrs and other such things when they were younger thus they are not scared of the technology. The problem is these people are few and far between and school districts have a hard time justifying the money to spend on a training course that 1 or 2 people are going to attend.
A good example of this is... we offered the MOUS training courses at the district. We had seats for 30 people for each class and we had classes at all leavels. The largest class we had was 10 people... these classes were offered free of charge to all district personel. The teachers would get an extra vacation day if they attended X number of classes and the support staff would still be paid their daily wage while they were in training. There is no reason these classes should not have been full. The more common reasons that were given as to why people could not come to the classes were:
"I really don't think I need any training on how to use MS Office 2000, I have used "
"I really can't see spending 4 hours a monting for a week at the school... I mean it is my Summer Vacation" - Said by a teacher...
"I have no use for this computer and Office... I have my typewriter that work just fine..."
These responces puzzled me as the classes were free and they were being compensated in some way for taking them... I wish I could be Paid to take training classes.
So before people blame computers many of the problems are with the teachers and the administration. The common frame of mind is "we need to spend money to buy computers... Computers are good for the students... the more computers we have the better the students learn..." The problem with this is that you have to have a curriculum that integrated the computers rather than makeing a curiculum out of the computers. You need training for both students and teacher on how to use them and how to integrate them into your current task at hand.
Rob Lines
CS major University of Pittsburgh
Towanda Area School District, Summer Technology Department Director
How to finish Doom I... :)
:)
Before that (about 15 years ago), I was introduced to computers in 6th grade with TRS80 and Coco. It was okay. We did some Logos, a little bit of BASIC. And our teachers knew a few things about computers. That's how I get hooked to computers. My parents then bought me a C64. Today, I'm programming (please, don't laugh!)RPG on AS/400. At least, I didn't scrap my career doing some web sites design.
If you can get great supports from the teachers, and not learning something totally pointless, it can be a wonderful way to learn.
But it can be disastrous if the teachers simply sit their class in front of their computers just to get a break. They have to stay with them to watch their progress, help them, motivate them.
"Theodore Roszak, a history professor and author of The Cult of Information, would wait until high school. Computers download information, he says. They do not teach children to think."
Does this make them useless as a tool of learning? This would only be a problem in classrooms with lazy teachers who use computers as a crutch.
Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in very large numbers.
I read through this article, and I have to agree with these educators: Bringing the cutesy video-game world of Windows and the MTV-esqe Internet (not the meaty content that experienced surfers go for, but the eye candy kids will gravitate to naturally) would be little better than having kids watch cartoons all day in class.
I got a computer of my own for my eighth birthday. Prior to that, I had used other people's computers to program, both at school and at friends' houses. I learned quite a lot on that machine, because it was a machine that did little on its own. It was raw clay, and I got to learn how to sculpt. How could you deny that that's valuable to a child?
Sure, there were game cartridges, and yes, I played them. (Moon Patrol anyone?) But kids have N64 or Dreamcast or PS2 or whatever nowadays, and so don't need the computer for that. Most of the value I derived from my computer was learning how to make it do things. It was like a box of Legos, only the building blocks were program statements and the structures I built were on a TV screen.
Today's computers aren't like that. Rather, they're like TV. Force feed eye candy. They exist for "wow" and "fluff." I personally had started falling into that trap in the PC world. I got pulled out of that trap when I went to college and learned Unix. Now, whenever I go to use a PC running Windows, I feel like I'm watching MTV or something. It's all so uselessly flashy and relatively devoid of content compared to its volume.
It's really sad.
I intend to keep my Apple ][e's, Commodore 64's, TI-99/4A's, and so on, to give my kids machines to learn on. When they're old enough, I'll give them logins on my Linux network and start teaching them C or some other structured language, before BASIC's brain-rot sets in too heavily -- you're ok if you catch them by puberty.
Sitting a kid in front of a web browser does not teach computing. Showing a kid how to make the computer do things it's not already trained to do (ie. program) opens the door for true creative exploration.
No comments about posture though... (as I slouch heavily into my chair).
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Using computers to teach children math is usually bad unless used as a quizing device. Teaching children how to use computers in class is good.
Listen, if you are using the computers as the sole method of teaching a kid about Social Studies (Carmen Sandiego was cute but come on) then it sucks. If you teach a kid about programming to illustrate practical uses for abstract math then it rocks. You are teaching a child about a core subject and illustrating a real world use of the tool at the same time. Computers in class are not bad. The way computers are being used in class is what is bad.
ACK
I think the biggest fallacy behind the "lets put a computer in every single classroom" is people believing that by the computer just *being there* kids will get smarter. No. Computers are tools,and if used properly, they will facilitate various learning tasks, but they will not raise the intelligence average in the classroom as soon as they're brought in.
I went to a high school that is in a relatively well funded School District and we had computers not in every single classroom, but in many. So they ended up just sitting there collecting dust. In fact, the only class that I know of that used computers actively was the physics class. People dont need computers in the Spanish, English or history classrooms. And if a need does arise to look up some informaion on the net for those classes, that need would most likely be a homework assignment or something, and there are libraries and home computers for that.
There :)
Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government