Students Outpacing Teachers With Online Skills

beaverfever writes: "The Christian Science Monitor ran this commentary by Tom Regan on how students in middle and high school are outpacing their teachers when it comes to understanding the potential of and using the internet for learning and doing research. The article addresses a study, The Digital Disconnect, recently released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Regarding the study, Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, is quoted: 'Educators have a choice: Either they need to adapt or they will be dragged into a new learning environment.' Both the study and article are about two weeks old, but an interesting read nonetheless."

Comments

Intro to Comps for Nursing

[rosewood]

My fiance is in a computer class for nursing students. She would skip it, but she wants the easy 3 hours of 4.0 to boost the GPA. She has had one class and already she is ready to shoot the lady. Some key phrases:

Once you switch to Cox [High Speed Internet] you will never go back to the Internet!

The reason all these computers [windows boxes] are slow is because they all run off one CPU!

She told me there were more, but she was busy trying to electrocute herself to get out of class...

Need competent admins and advisors.

[aengblom]

My mom is starting her first full-time job as a teacher on Tuesday. She's, umm, middle aged and was a stay-at-home'er. But she took a couple classes over the years and learning Windows 3.1/95 and office. In her previous private school part-time jobs, she typed every one of her lessons. So she STILL HAS THEM. She uses Power Point (I'm actually not a big fan in the classroom), but to spice up her Latin for these high school kids she used a Smart Board. This is essentially and interactive chalk board. At her new full-time job, the school (where money is tight) bought her one. She asks me questions a lot. I try to answer them. She is in no way an expert, but she achieved competent user level.

She is so far advanced tech wise for most teachers it is incredible (sad that is) and she's pretty sure it's the reason she got hired for a job that will be a stretch for her first year.

The saddest part? Her new school's admin seems so technologically inept, it's going to be quite difficult. They make her use an iBook (she knows Windows. She's trying to concentrate on learning Latin 4 this summer. Not Mac OS 9.1). It has a (broken) CD-R, but the admin doesn't believe her. (It says so in the Hardware and it screws up cd-r disks. Try to do that with a regular cd-rom) He says e-mail your files to yourself, but if she updates 10 files, she has to e-mail ten files. Not very efficient. It reads her files poorly and transferring them was a nightmare.

My point I guess? A major failure here is the need competent people to help teachers along. Most teachers were running the classrooms. Not taking computer classes. Computers make things much harder, unless you know a good way to set things up. I'll tech my mom to use FTP, get her a zip drive, find a copy of DAVE client or figure out something else to make her life possible.

The school gave her a partially broken computer that makes things nearly impossible to back up or move. Their advice as she picked up her new computer was "It's a Mac. You'll love it."

Oh and if you're interested in the Christian Science Monitor. (As in why should I read a "Christian" newspaper.... go here before you complain about this news source.

What the hell are these people doing?

[CaptainCarrot]

This just supports something I've been saying for a long time. We do not need to teach computers to children in the schools! The kids are outpacing their teachers for a reason: They're growing up surrounded by this technology; they're saturated with it; it's far more familiar to them than it is to their teachers. My grandmother grew up with crank telephones and party lines, where you had to listen to the ring pattern to tell whether a call was for you or one of your neighbors. She was utterly baffled in her later years by a cordless phone; she had never even used a touch-tone telephone before. A modern kid, surrounded with CD players, video games and ATMs just isn't going to find a general-purpose PC very intimidating. This overcomes the main barrier to computer use right from the start. How many of us have tried to get a parent online, and one of the main problems we had was getting them to but their hands on the keyboard and mouse in the first place?

Teaching students programming or other truly complex or specialized skills related to computers is a good thing, of course, as these subjects are ones that actually require some instruction to acquire in many cases, although not all cases by any means. But basic use of the Internet? Playing games for cryin' out loud? This is a waste of time and resources, especially when American students are falling behind in essential academic subjects like reading and mathematics. You see schools cutting back on subjects deemed "non-essential" simply because they do nothing more than enrich the students physically or culturally, like phys ed and the arts, but making all-out efforts to put computers in every classroom and to string cat5 all over the buildings.

Even in impoverished areas where it cannot be assumed that the students have access to a computer at home, I would argue that we would be better off exposing these kids to music, drama, or the plastic arts rather than putting computers in their classrooms. The Internet -- and especially the part of it most people see, the Web -- is very easy to learn with modern tools, and any moderately intelligent kid can pick it up in a week or so. This is not a "life skill" we need to spend very much time on. And when the students arrive knowing more than the teacher, there's no point in even trying.