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Computers Not Working In Education
salimfadhley writes "BBC Radio 4's current affairs program 'Analysis' is reporting [realaudio] [txt transcript] on emerging evidence that computers have harmed, rather than helped educational progress. There is still much debate among even the most enthusiastic supporters of schools technology about how computers should best be used.
Despite record investment in computers in the USA and UK, recent studies (not the ones funded by educational software companies) have shown a significant drop in core subjects (Math, English) in schools that place strong emphasis on Information Technology.
Evidence also suggests that whilst information technology has great potential in the classroom, teachers have not yet found better use for computers than as a big library. Very few schools have been able to use the new technology for cultural exchange, or to build practical educational networks with other schools.
Teachers do not know whether computers should be seen as an exciting but peripheral educational 'accessory', or if computers can actually be used to solve the most pressing problems of literacy and numeracy - the sorts of things that get kids through exams." The Economist had a similar article a month or two back, about Israeli schools that had similar results, along with an interesting comparison between how people see computers now, and how people in the early 20th century saw film strips in the classroom.
Just look at the post...
Don't let the teachers & principals see this, I might be out of a job! (Work for educational software company)
Wish I could comment more on this, but not sure where company intellectual property on stratedgies start.
I'm not surpised. Schools tend to take away hours from maths and physics for teaching computer "science", so that would explain enough. Pity that MS Word is considered more important than algebra.
I was encouraged in high school to use calculators since my H.S. was trying to go "high tech". In fact, we were REQUIRED to use them on tests .... if you didn't, you were going to fail due to a lack of time to complete the exam.
...
... English was another issue ... and why I didn't get into a good school), so this is a good example in my opinion.
... and I finished WAY before the other students in the course. HOWEVER, when I got my exam back, I got a 54%!!! Every answer was correct, but in big, red letters at the top of the paper, the prof wrote "This is what you get for looking at your calculator so much!" ... then he wrote "I need to see a few more steps and where you got some of these answers".
:)
... kids today need to learn to think for themselves BEFORE they begin to use technology as a crutch ....
.... but at the same time, we live in a technology laced society ... so which is more evil ... to force kids to learn, but not teach them technology, or to teach then technology, but make them helpless without it ....
....
... can't live with it, can't live without it ...
...
Then I got to college
Now keep in mind, I was a pretty good math student (scored perfect on the SATs in Math
I took my first college Calc II exam, and of course, used my calculator for it. In all fairness, it was a difficult exam, but a fair exam. I thought I would be "joe slick" and finish quickly by using the latest and greatest graphing calc. available
Needless to say, that was the last time I used that calculator for anything but to check answers (or to get answers and reverse engineer them)
My prof was right though
It is an evil world we live in
It looks like technology is like women
Just my 2 cents
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
That's the thing: Teachers do not know ... if computers can actually be used to solve the most pressing problems of literacy and numeracy - the sorts of things that get kids through exams." Computers cannot, on their own, solve any problems - they can perform complex calculations, sure, but you have to feed them the exact steps to follow. If kids do not understand the principles behind something as simple as multiplication or division, say, how do you expect a glorified calculator to help them? Sure they could use it to divide 22 by 7, but do they understand why they are doing that? Sure they can use spell check on grammar check, but is that any substitute for actually understanding sentence structure or knowing how words are properly spelled? That is how you solve literacy and mathematic deficiencies. You have to work at it - technology isn't the magical panacea everyone appears to think it is.
You don't see architectecture schools talking about how power actuated fasteners are changing how they teach, do you? Of course not, they are just tools that save on labor. Computers are the exact same thing, and the quicker people realize that a computer is just another form of tool, the quicker everyone will realize that there is nothing mystical about them and their operators. Realizing this will help to devalue the artificially high prices of computer "engineers", cut down on overhead drastically, and provide just the shot in the arm our stock market needs to rebound.
I don't mean to bash on our dedicated teachers - they are doing the best they can, given their abilities and environment, but hyping up computers as a replacement to study isn't a good idea. There's a reason we weren't allowed to use calculators until Calculus class when we were in school, and that is why we hand to hand write exams without a dictionary available. It is nice to have technology available, but it should always be as an assistant to aid the individual in his work- it should not direct his work
Computers should primarily be used as an information reservoir.
You have to tread carefully when students start using them as active information _processors_ . Then you start to wonder what the net effect on education is.
Unless the poster is outside of the US/UK...
Despite record investment in computers in the USA and UK, recent studies (not the ones funded by educational software companies) have shown a significant drop in core subjects (Math, English) in schools that plase strong emphasis on Information Technology
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
They are no substitute for real learning. They are television sets with Pron, nothing more. Strange how a whole industry has sprung up around a bunch of ones and zeros. Johnny has to read, write and do arithmatic with out a calculator. Johnny needs to know grammar and English composition, if in an English speaking country. If in a non-English country...well you can figure it out. Maybe.
See "Silicon Snake Oil" by Clifford Stoll in which he arrives at a similar conclusion. This came out about 4 or 5 years ago, don't know why anybody is surprised by this.
Computers *used* to work in education. I recall in primary school, the old BBC Microcomputers with software specifically designed to aid numeracy, literacy and logic skills. That actually worked, as it supplemented the classroom teachings rather than replacing them.
These days, computers waste time more than anything. It is too tempting for them to be used for 'messing around' with Windows and the Internet than for teaching kids basic skills. The latest crop of PCs have no software that supplements classroom teaching. What's the use of learning to use a word processor if you can't read or write?
Part of the problem is that many schools are staffed with teachers fresh out of school themselves and put into situations that equate to nothing more than glorified babysitting.
The real issue here, and this applies to whether or not we put computers in classrooms or force them to use old-school slide-rules, we've got to get back to teaching kids how to think, analyze and take some mental initiative.
Unfortunately, this usually starts at home
--- have you healed your church website?
From the article, David Reynolds says it better than I could:
I think we have dropped the material onto schools, we haven't provided adequate training for teachers in how to use it, we've assumed it's a good thing that doesn't need justification. And like many other innovations, the danger is that all innovation and change requires a coalition of people in schools to support them.
"Here you are, a nice shiny new computer. What do you do with it? Why, plug it in, of course". About the best learning software I've seen (and admittedly I haven't looked recently) was MathBlaster. Better tools and better training for the teachers is what is really necessary to make computers work in schools.
There are some people who are naturally inquisitive and who will seek out information and knowlege. Then there are others who will not. The presence or abscence of a tool that might help someone do this has nothing to do with whether they actually will or not.
When television first came out it was heralded as a tool for education. There were people who believed that it would be used by the masses to learn. They believed this because they were the type of people who seek to learn themselves, and so they interpreted the motivations of others through their own desire to learn. By and large television has not been a tool for education because most people simply don't want to learn. Their desire to not know is truly bizarre to me, but that is the only expanation I know that fits.
It is true that today we've got things like TLC, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, but how many years did it take after cable tv became popular that networks like these became a profitable enterprise?
If you need further proof of what I'm saying just look at books. Books are educational, yet how many people out there actually read anything? Most people can read, but few actually choose to read anything past street signs and the occassional newspaper.
If someone is intelligent and/or inquisitive, then they will use the tools available to them to learn. If they are not then the nature and usefullness of the tools available makes no difference because they aren't going to use them in the first place.
http://www.familyhaven.com/parenting/hightechheret ic.html
If you haven't read his book "High Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian" you really should. It's got some great reading and some things we should think about as we design software.
What can we do as software developers to actually make computers useful in the classroom instead of so distracting? Any thoughts from educators out there?
It hasn't been doing it's job for 2 decades now. People confuse education with vocational training. And president George my IQ is 50 Bush doesn't know enough to know how to fix the problem. Only thing he knows is "blow them up", "crawfished", gun racks, barrels of oil and selling his soul to the highest bidder.
According to an article on TechTv. A quote:
Because they are both high tech professionals, Paul's parents say they know firsthand the addictive nature of computers and the Internet.
"They are somewhat addicting, and for young children that don't have all of the faculties that we have as adults, I don't think they can determine how much of something is not good for them," Baldridge said.
Of course, many of the teachers (just like many of the engineers in the corporate world,) said "What? I don't think thats going to work." but the school boards wanted their schools to be considered hi-tech, and it was an easy way to get more money for education.
Now that this stuff has actually been tested in the field, we're seeing it all backfire.
And all jokes aside, while technology teachers tend to know what they're doing, many other teachers were given a manual and direct orders to "teach using these computers!". Obviously, thats going to have a negative effect.
From what I've seen, computers are mostly used in the classroom as electronic babysitters. Small wonder they aren't improving education.
Our society seems to be beset with a mentality that calls for computerizing things because we can, rather than because there's a need.
ps - Get more replies when there's a reply button, eh Taco?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Its been my experience (as a web development instructor with a private post-secondary school) that teens these days, despite the stereotypes, actually posess LESS computer literacy than geeks of my generation.
I learned DOS and UNIX on the command line. Windows and Mac will stunt your understanding of how a computer works, and make you think only of pushing around cute little icons. WIMP interfaces make people WIMPISH. They can't understand how the computer works, so they end up relying on 'geeks' to fix their problems.
Teach programming to everyone and teach kids a command line in school. Make them understand the technology that they'll use every day of their lives. Let our kids develop some computer savy and BRAINS.
While working on a grant at SDSU, I heard of an instructor in Maryland who found that her students who used a DOS-based PC to write english papers received better grades then did the Apple Mac counterparts. A 2 year study found that she was correct in that the DOS-based PC users used larger words, had a higher wordcount per sentance, and used more complete sentence structures. The students were enrolled in an English class because they didn't fail the entrance exam but also weren't good enough to bypass the English requirements altogether. The English department at the university didn't determine exactly what was going on but figured it was because at a DOS-prompt, you have to think about what you need to do next. In a GUI, you are prompted.
The DOS-based users has the DOS prompt staring at them and THEY had to figure out what the next step was. When they got to the wordprocessor they were already in a higer thinking mode then when ICONS lead you thru the task.
Once you're well versed and trained in the skills the computer is HELPING you with, you don't need to have such a bare-bones interface to get to what you want to do. Teach kids how to think and they will take off from there.
eye gas we just had to weight. can anyone help US to define the relationship between the billyuns investdead, to the resulting void of progress?
don't even bother robbIE. see you @around 40.
The problem, insofar as I can tell, is that High School teachers these days have no clue what's going on. They're not the ones preparing for life, so they try out all sorts of doohickies on the kids to fulfill their own educational fantasies. As I High School senior, I can tell you that I'm pysched for college. Finally I might have a teacher who has some experience in the real world!
Which wasnt all that long ago... well grade 3 (1987) up until grade 9 (you do the math, i dont have a calculator handy ;), calculators werent allowed in the classroom. You had to work out maths problems on paper.
If my family was being held hostage by some mad mathematician who demanded that I solve some equation or my family dies, i'd skip right to the funeral arrangments. Thankfully there arent many homicidal mathematicians.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Ballpoint pens have been found to have no advantage over pencils regarding spelling.
Calculators found to not aid basic understanding and proficiency in mathematics. (Yesterday I saw someone enter 150000 * 1 into a calulator, then write down the answer so they wouldn't forget it)
It's a tool, just because you have it it doesn't mean you know how to use it. Too much emphasis is placed on the hardware in schools, too much money is spent on a fast connection, teach kids (and teachers) how to actually use them for academic purposes and you may see an improvement in some topics.
For subjects such as history and geography, the internet really can help a lot. To teach spelling or mathematical skills, maybe some software can be of assistance, but only if people know how to use it. The computer is not a replacement for a teacher.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Since I'm thinking about it, I wonder if we'll see a higher number of intelligent posts on this article since we were unable to post for so long? Maybe a higher percentage of people actually clicked the link and read what they had to say? Maybe iit's not such a bad idea to let an article sit for 30 mins or so before they allow anyone to post replies.
I used to work in a School District IT department. Computers were thrown at everything as if they were a cure-all, when the real problem was that the teachers were awful. It seemed that the ones who were yelling the loudest about needing computers in the classroom were the same ones who put up signs saying "Welcome Student's" and the same ones--English teachers, mind you!--who were saying, without a trace of irony, "Yeah, me and her are going across the street for lunch."
We need to turn out smarter teachers and give them incentives to perform, like better pay, long before we think about having a computer for every student.
Notice you've finally got the spelling right Hemos 8o)
that I grew up in a world not dominated by computers, I learned to read, write, research, spell (well most of the time anyway), & do basic math in my head.
Now I find myself relying on spell checker to fix my spelling errors, a search engine to find information, and a calculator to do math. These are all great tools, but without the basic knowledge behind them, they become a crutch.
and looking at school test scores, they aren't being used as tools.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Computers are changing EVERYTHING. Just because we do not know how to use them does not mean that they are not effective. In fact, the main problem is that computers are close to at odds with mainstream academic thought.
What happens when within 5 minutes I can gain most any knowledge I desire? Well..it kinda breaks down the walls, that is what it does.
The problem with such limitless resources, is not a problem with the resource itself, it's a cultural problem. Our modern education system sucks. Absolutly, positivly sucks. All it does is turn a majority of students completly off of knowledge. It does not encourage the kind of curiosity and logical thought that make for an intelligent person.
Our education system should consist of the basic fundimentals..Math general scientific method, language and grammer, and logical thought are the most important things we can teach. Everything else stems from these base things, and should be taught as such.
Love of knowledge is the most important thing that can be gained at such a young age. We should not throw this away just so we can have good little Christian worker bees.
Mentioned Economist.com article "Pass the chalk", found here: http://ron.unique.cc/economist/economist1.htm, names three possible reasons for negative relationship between computer use and test scores.
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"The authors offer three possible explanations of why this might be. First, the introduction of computers into classrooms might have gobbled up cash that would otherwise have paid for other aspects of education. But that is unlikely in this case since the money for the programme came from the national lottery, and the study found no significant change in teaching resources, methods or training in schools that acquired computers through the scheme.
A second possibility is that the transition to using computers in instruction takes time to have an effect. Maybe, say the authors, but the schools surveyed had been using the scheme's computers for a full school year. That was enough for the new computers to have had a large (and apparently malign) influence on fourth-grade maths scores. The third explanation is the simplest: that the use of computers in teaching is no better (and perhaps worse) than other teaching methods."
One might add a possible fourth reason which may explain negative math score: EASE. I think if the pupils use computers to learn and solve mathematical problems they might start relyiong too much on computers and in effect "unlearn" maths.
Another skeptic voice when it comes to possible role of IT in development and education is found here:
http://www.himalmag.com/2002/august/essay.
Yet another voice Prashant Sharma from School of Oriental and African Studies University of London
http://www.dgroups.org/groups/OKN/docs/di
And skepticism about IT in production is best represented by "'Solow paradox'-- widespread evidence of computer use, little evidence of (widespread) productivity growth --continues, at least in modified form." found here:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMo
Yes, I remember being in school in the late 70's and 80's watching those woefully outdated propaganda films from the 1950's. They are the same movies that the Simpson's make fun of. My favorites were the movies that showed the use of the Civil Defense barrels stockpiled in the basement.
Computers are meaningless if you cannot read well, or are at least proficient in Algebra (I had to seriously brush up on my own because the public schools I went to did not emphasize math). For all those that say Math is useless (I used to be one), or I'll never use this stuff - they are dead wrong. Higher paying jobs do involve a solid understanding of numbers. If you lose 50% you need a 100% gain to break even.
I wonder how many schools that rely on computers even have programming classes. Plus, the computers may be sucking money away from budgets to get more updated text books.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
A computer is a tool. Period.
As with any other tool, for any other job, it cannot do anything by itself.
The most well-stocked mechanic's shop isn't going to be doing much by way of repairing automobiles unless there's a couple of SKILLED MECHANICS on hand to use the tools.
With the arrival of each new "Big Thing" (those of us with enough depth of memory and experience will easily come up with a substantial list), dimwits in positions of authority attempt to latch on to the tool as if it was going to solve problems and fix things all by itself.
Sigh.
My guess is that this is some sort of fundamental lapse in human nature and will never change.
Although, to look on the bright side, it certainly provides a competitive edge to those who figure out at an early age that they must inevitably figure things out for themselves if they wish to get excellent results, and then use those excellent results to take command of whatever situation it is that they are most interested in.
Is it fascism yet?
Pen and paper have not "educational" value per se, its how you use them. Computer at the same, but with a lot lot lot more of hassle (need power, they are big/need lots of space/they crash/break...etc)
This, being a very human process, can only be donne by humans.
Not machines.
The actual website of The Economist is here... the link given by Hemos only leads you to a scary picture of Alan Greenspan.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
I very much agree with the sentiment that IT is not working in education. An observation I've made in respect to the situation where I'm from is this.
There's the dream and there's reality. The dream is that in 'Smart Schools' teachers will use projectors and computers as aids and teach with interactive content and the Internet, assignments/homework will be given virtually and exams sat for the same way.
The reality is that most teachers are tecnophobic, there is little educational software available for the curriculum and students being kids will always find ways to beat security and muck up the system. That and the cost of such systems make them prohibitive to set up on a national scale, especially with present economic conditions.
But as most of us would agree, the technological aspect can be fine tuned to the point where it's perfect for the job. But the main issue here are the teachers themselves. Where most of them are trained in the conventional way of teaching, motivating them to quickly change and switch over to using computers and IT in every aspect of teaching is a feat of social engineering that is nearly impossible.
So I feel that all this about computers in education is over-rated. Sure, one day the dream will come true, but the move towards it must be slow and done with respect to the way things are being done now. Teachers, students and administrators alike most first be accustomed to technology, then the progressively increasing use of technology as aids, before the full blown use of IT in education.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
No shit, Sherlock?
Seriously, as far as I can tell the problem is that IT and most teachers are completely immiscible. IT is treated as a separate subject and this is confused with computation - which in turn encourages the technically illiterate to imagine that there is no more to computer science than their experience with Word and Excel. It is pointless to teach someone to program who can't solve simple algebraic problems; to word process when they don't grasp the essence of prose - or to use mathematical tools when they can't do sums by hand.
What this does revel is that human teaching methods are peaking. Gone is the dreams that you can teach calculus to grade 5's (a la STTNG) or having all the students be med-skool bound.
There's always going to be the geniuses, the idiots, and the "everbody in between" crowd. Learning is wildly varied from one person to the next, as is teaching method. I think there's a snide arrogance that we supposedly know "better" because we have these fancy tools and such instead of the blackboard used 50 years ago.
As Calvin (of C&H fame) said, "you can present the material, but you can't make me care". You'll always have that, unless you can find someway of legally spiking the water fountains.
I currently go to HS. We went through the "computers in every classroom" policy. Most teachers are not competent enough to use them (they're iMacs too, how dumb can you get?), and they try their hardest not to let students use the computers.
The computers which do get used are mostly for candystand.com golf. And we have an internet filter which uses blanket keyword blocking, which eliminates any websites with educational value.
As long as the focus is simply on getting "computers in the classroom" these kinds of results do not surprise me. For all the talk of quantity, I rarely, if ever, hear discussion on how computers will be used once they are in the classroom. Computers no doubt can, and should, play a roll in a child's education, but people need to remember that they are a means, not a solution.
If you really want a better education for our children we should return focus on the basics... Math - Science - Language/Writing/Reading. Computers can be used when applicable to help teach these lessons, but otherwise are not particularly necessary.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Computers are, and always have been... Tools. The ideas that a tool can/could teach children to think is great, but I think that the primary responsibility of teaching children to THINK, to reason, to make decisions is still primarily up to the parents, and in dual income familys alot of times it falls back on public education. The public education system is not up to the task for alot of reasons that I wont go into, so they try for computers, expecting the tools to do their jobs for them. No matter how great the tool is, if the child cant make the right decision to sit and learn from it, the tool is useless... Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction. "and on the 8th day, god said "let there be script kiddies" and the immature sprang forth from the earth".
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
I've tutored K-12 and college-level students for several years and have been in a lot of classrooms. One thing I've noticed, especially in education challenged South Florida, is that the school system is trying to use computers to make up for the lack of real teachers. The second problem is that most educational software isn't.
For example, many of the reading comprehension titles are no better than the workbooks from before -- read a few paragraphs, answer a few questions. In fact, they're often worse because the workbooks allowed the student to respond with a sentence describing the paragraph rather than clicking a multiple choice option.
I do think that computers are useful in post-lecture studies since it allows students to work at their own pace until they understand a topic. THis is especially useful for mathematics.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame the math curriculum. I used saxon through high school, and went on to get my BS in Mechanical Engineering. I would say I learned all the math in high school that I needed for college.
I would encourage you to continue with the practice at home, though. When I was in second grade, I had a real hard time doing subtraction and wasn't very fast at addition. My parents got me a book with about 25 addition/subtraction problems on a page, and had me do one page a night.
It took me a little longer to learn the multiplication tables as well, but by sixth grade, math was my favorite subject.
It may sound strange for someone who made it through differential equations to say they had problems subtracting, but it's true.
My kid's school (a 5th/6th grade intermediate school) has a beautiful, fully equipped computer classroom - and a teacher who teaches computing only. ...and that's the problem. The teacher knows *nothing* about computers. Practically all the kids know far more than she does.
Because she knows nothing, she dumps 'edutainment' programs onto the machines and has the kids play them continually while she merely maintains classroom discipline.
She spent three weeks (that's 40 minutes per lesson for 10 lessons) having the kids run some kind of 'typing tutor' program. Since all the kids learned to type in 3rd grade (at least as well as a typing tutor program *can* teach), they were all bored to tears with the repetitive exercises.
Fortunately, my son discovered that this stoopid program doesn't disable cut and paste - so he was able to complete all the exercises insanely quickly. Since the teacher allows them to surf the web once they have finished the assignments, he was able to go off and have fun by himself the entire time.
The crowning glory came at the end of the year when the teachers were handing out class prizes - my son was awarded the prize for best EVER score on the typing tutor by the dump computer science teacher - she proudly announced that he'd scored something like 3,000 words per minute with a 0% error rate. Some of the other teachers looked a bit strangely at her - clearly realising that something had gone amok, but perhaps assuming she'd just mis-spoken the results.
This is just one of many gaffes this teacher made. She had the kids "List 10 parts of the Computer". My kid duly wrote stuff like 'CPU', 'ROM', 'Ethernet Ataptor', 'Motherboard' - and the teacher gave him zero on the "test" saying that the correct answer was 'Mouse', 'Keyboard', 'Television' (!), 'Mouse pad', etc. When my kid complained that his computer at home didn't have a mouse pad she told him that this was nonsense and that ALL computers have mouse pads - this dissuaded him from telling her that the monitor is not, in fact, a TV set.
Similarly, she had the kids write down the 10 good things and 10 bad things about computers. My son complained that he couldn't think of 10 bad things. His teacher gave as an example: "They crash a lot" - well, since we only run Linux at home, my son knows that this isn't necessarily true and that it's not the COMPUTER that crashes - it's the SOFTWARE. Inevitably, when he complained he got in trouble.
I've written several letters to the teacher in question (she doesn't appear to read her email - even though it's provided by the school) - with poor results. I wrote and even visited with the Principal to try to get something done - but of course she just says that qualified staff are hard to get - and the State doesn't require that teachers are trained in the subject they are teaching.
So, can we conclude that teaching with computers is "A Bad Thing" ?
No!
Not unless we've carefully checked that the teachers and curriculum are sensibly chosen. Clearly, if my son's school had spent the money that went
into that computer lab in some other way, they'd have gotten more value for money and the kid's grades would have been better...but that doesn't prove that teaching computers are bad - just that they are ineptly managed.
www.sjbaker.org
The reason computers arent working in education is because the money is being wasted on Microsoft Windows and other licenses instead of open source software, and due to the fact that buying computers designed for business work and not designed for education is a waste of time.
An ordinary computer should not be used for education, computers specifically designed for education should be used for education. Smartboards, which are far more advanced than ordinary chalk boards are proven to be more efficient tools for teaching. E-Learning which seems to work well in college only works due to the fact that specific software on the college level is created to teach specific subjects.
Honestly, when I learned from the software it was far more efficient than learning from a book. Usually teachers use books, but why not use software to teach kids? Software can be interactive and this allows students to learn Math and English better than from books. The reason its not working right now is because any new technology needs time to adapt to its enviornment. When computers were first invented we did not have the software to use the internet in the way we use it now, we didnt have the search engine, we didnt have peer to peer file sharing, half of the stuff we do now with the computer was not possible in the 80s, did they say in the 80s computers were useless? Hell no.
With Websites like Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The link is wrong... if you click on it, you are taken to a cybersquatter's page with a butt-ugly picture of Alan Greenspan.
The real link to The Economist is here.
I think a distinction needs to be made here between learning and teaching. A student can learn things from a computer just as they can learn things from a TV/VCR or a book (remember those?). However, for the most part, a computer can not teach students. Computers should only be used as a learning tool by teachers. When we try to replace the teaching mechanisms with the learning mechanisms, neither the teachers nor the students will benefit.
As a student of mechanical engineering I'm still amazed by the sheer mass of educational material available online.I'm not talking about silly Java or Flash-based applets. Need a good course on numerical analysis, linear algebra or aerodynamics? You name it, it's all there, mostly in pdf, which is easy on the eye when reading on your CRT.
Furthermore, free tools like gnuplot, mupad, or even the ODE-solver in the plotutils-package will oftentimes save your day when trying to grasp complex mathematical concepts.
For elementary or even high school though,I don't think these teaching concepts have had a big impact on education yet. Explaining trigonometry to a 16-year old probably works better on the blackboard.
Also, in the U.S., we are in the midst of a standardized testing frenzy that de-emphasizes the ability and talents of the individual student and cares only about the ability to complete a few standard problems. It is no longer necessary for a student to learn, but merely regurgitate facts and forms. For instance, an important part of the standardized testing education is the calculator. The fact is that when doing business, or industrial, or any other type of work a calculator is nearly worthless without the ability to do simple math in your head and approximating complex results. However, calculators facilitate the use of standardized tests, so we have money spent on these electronic calculators instead of books and food.
So it is no wonder that computers are not working. There is no time for students to have fun and just do free form learning. Everything is targeted to these damned test. As a recent episode of 'King of the Hill' stated, all parent care about is zero tolerance and tests. When I was in public high school ('god I feel old'), we have a PDP 11 and several Apple //s. Our IT education started with programming theory, then moved into programming structure and actual coding. The emphasis was on logic and design. These lesson helped up in all parts of our education. In the Junior year we had the opportunity to do system administration on the PDP, assembly on the Apple, or whatever,
That experience was luxurious compared to what I see today. Windows machines tightly locked down so the student has no hope of learning administration. Classes that emphasis the application of very high level library functions rather than proper programming techniques. The ability to use Microsoft Office is more important than the ability to think.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
How many times have you used a calculator, instead of a pen and paper.
How many people using a graphing calc (yes, a computer.. just small type) can acutally still do trig and calc functions without it's use....
We are becoming very dependent on our technology.
It's ironic that a technical community like Slashdot is probably more critical of computers in education than non technical people.
Actually, I think the idea of a computer as an information reservoir is greatly underrated. Granted, a lot of the information is rather unreliable, but that's just something that requires a little education in critical thinking. Other practical uses are simulations of physical experiments. We had a computer programme that simulated Milikan's oil drop experiment on the BBC micro. This is much cheaper and easier than setting up genuine equipment, and while not as satisfying, does give an idea of how this works. Also, in maths, a computer can perform thousands of complex operations in a fraction of a second, and display the results as a graph or othe human readable data.
What they can not do is replace teachers. A computer will not be able to push an intelligent child, or adapt for a slower child. It will not be able to explain the same concept several times until the child understands.
Far too much education is in "Computer Skills" i.e. Learning Word. These really annoy me because they tend to be rather Microsoft specific. No problem with learning how to use spreadsheets and desktop publishing software in general, but it's foolish to stick to specific products. While MS may have a stranglehold on the industry today, this will not always be the case. IBM no longer control the computer industry, so why should we expect Microsoft's reign to continue forever.
Who came to the conclusion that "Computers Not Working In Education"?
As far as I read, there is no conclusion:
CAIRNCROSS So, having put it in place have there been any real attempts to try to measure how well it's working? Any success in doing that?WATSON Oh yes. There's a substantial ongoing programme to try and measure the results. So far, the results are not tremendously clear or, at least not tremendously impressive.
and
CAIRNCROSS Now of course, it is notoriously difficult to prove conclusively that any teaching method has a good or bad impact. And lots of studies of computer-based learning have reached different conclusions from Professor Angrist'sJ'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
How many geeks/nerds learnt about sex using their computers ?
;)
Computers are great tools for sex education
http://www.pageliberale.org
Aren't you in for a surprise!
In Norway there has been a study that shows that children learn to read and write faster using personal computers. Pupils who learnt writing on computers exclusively until the 3rd grade developed both better writing skills and quality of content of their writings. Oddly enough the children who put off writing with pen and paper had better hand-writing as well. The hypothesis given to explain the results were that small children had not fully developed motor skills, and learning to write by hand for that reason could be both frustrating and more time-consuming.
Check out this article from Aftenposten (in Norwegian) for more:
l ?articleID=395751
http://www.aftenposten.no/utdannelse/article.jhtm
Some of the most important qualities that children need to learn from the social structure in school - respect for other people, respect for authority, the idea that consequences arise for one's actions, and obedience of the law - cannot be taught through the use of computers. These are also some of the qualities that are most seriously lacking in today's (at least, American) education.
Besides, many kids will always find learning boring, at least until they grow up. The ones who enjoy learning don't need computers to help them learn, and the ones who don't enjoy learning are obviously not learning anything if they're having fun. Teach the value of computers as a research tool, but never center education around the computer (certain business-centric or computer science high school courses excepted, of course).
The main problem with Computers and school is they they are delt with on a near Panic level. The School Board goes "OH WE NEED TO HAVE COMPUTERS TO BE ON TOP OF TECHNOLOGY" So they spend an exorbenate amount of money to get all of the top notch computers and have them setup. Now that they are their the teacher dont know what to do with them. Other then looking up information. The classes that tech kids how to use computers even the CS 101 Intro to computers class is a compleat joke, They dont show how to use computers to solve problems and lookup information and explain in high level how they work, they just show them how to use the word processor and brows the internet.
In my day in 5th grade I took computer classes, and we learned how to program in basic and use basic to solve problems. Useing the varables to help us understand concepts in algbra before we took algbra, using Apple II basic we were taught how to solve problems more logicaly and helped undersand in detail how things work.
When I got into Highschool they started updating the computer to get on the "Information Super Highway" (I already have been using the internet for about 2 years already) They got a bunch of computers with Windows 95 (This was in 1995) and then they began a stong computer training to modernize the school. So all the students used these computers for Word Processing and some simple browsing. They never trused the Computer Programming Class with the new computers although we could use them a lot more efficiently so we were stuck to doing our work on TRS80s.
After spending all this money on the PCs they are not really using them for what they are ment for and they are afraid to use them in more detail in fear of breaking them.
That is why they are not helping they are afraid to use them for what computers are for.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Now dont get me wrong, I love computers. Im a verified geek. I have been ever since my parents sat me in front of the old Apple IIe at the age of six. (And gave be a BASIC book at the age of 7)
Computers arent the savior of education that everybody was hoping they would be. Computers are a tool and nothing more. You will always have the children who choose not to use the tools available to them, as well as the children who have no tools available to them.
I remember one time in elementary school we were in the computer lab of Apple IIe s and I decided to have a little bit of fun with the people in there - so I wrote a little program to show just how l33t I was:You wouldnt believe how much trouble I almost got in for that little stunt. I distinctly remember sitting in the hallway for the remainder of the class - with a large smile on my face. (This only got worse when I started going into Radio Shack Stores - Some of the messsages I came up with there probably affected sales quite a bit
Anyway - I remember in highschool (around 1995) when they built the computer lab full of older IBM 486 Lan Manager machines. We spent a large amount of time there (to my great surprise) - but it was only to waste time on substandard "education" games and work on composing some research presentation using some Powerpoint wannabe called "Linkway" or something.
The point is: Most of those kids learned absolutely nothing. Most of them just goofed off in the computer lab. The teacher didnt even really know what the heck she was doing in there.
The morale of the story kiddies: Computers are like an encyclopedia - they are only useful if you are willing to open the cover and explore. Until then - they are useless.
Use computers as a tool or teaching device instead of treating computers as something seperate.
Why should you teach computer science? Computers are so common now this is like having a class on the science of using pen and paper, or having a class teaching how to use a calculator or word processor, sure you may need to take one class in your lifetime on this but currently most schools only do this.
Unless you go to a good school computers arent used properly. In college computers are used in a more proper fashion and it shows, look at how its done in college and do this in highschool.
A student can learn to read and write better with a computer than with any other tool, the dictionary book is not as efficient as spell check, and the best way to learn math is with computers because it allows you to focus on what really matters, the concepts of math instead of just stupid stuff like memorizing your multiplication tables, or other pointless calculations which your calculator or computer will do or which you can do by simply knowing that multiplication is just addition.
Math is currently taught wrong, its not that computers dont aid in teaching, they do, but only when teachers know how to use the computer as a tool to help them teach.
Teachers however are often dumber than their students when it comes to technology, we need to educate teachers so they know how to teach with software. I took a cisco academy class in which the whole class was computer based, I learned just fine from this although I wish we had more labs, this was the cisco academy, learning form computers is actually easier than learning from any book due to the addition of multimedia examples explaining things in greater detail, however some aspects of learning still require a teacher, and for something like networking its the physical aspect that was missing.
As for reading and math, theres no physical aspect to this, why dont some of you open source linux using programmer types make some math software? The reading software? Microsoft word, the internet, etc is just fine to teach people to read, hell buy them some old school RPGs like final fantasy, get them interested in reading for fun, parents have to do this, and a teacher simply has to give them assignments so they learn proper grammar, proper grammar is just knowing how to use Microsoft Word properly.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Teaching people how to think isn't going to come through a CRT with pretty pictures or entertaining or "engaging" content. I think part of the weakness of filmstrips, computers and other such educational technologies is that they are TOO visual and they spoonfeed information to students. By trying to make learning "easy", we're actually bypassing the exercise needed to develop a mind.
Learning takes a lot of struggle and hard work. There are no shortcuts, no matter how brilliant you are. Symbols and abstraction are the raw material of the human mind. The good news is that the technologies needed to deliver the goods are cheap and effective. If we got rid of all the computers tomorrow (and other non-essential technologies) and focused more attention on these 4 raw materials, we'd see a marked improvement in the educational system.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
If it were cool to be smart, and sufficiently good software were available, computers would be the best teaching tool found to date. Making it cool to be smart is probably harder than writing the software.
A computer is essentially a full-time one-on-one teacher with infinite patience (granted not perfect, but with strengths in addition to weaknesses). The way I would use it would be to find those children that show aptitude and results from their computer exposure, and increase their percentage of computer learning. That lets the human teachers concentrate on those who need the help, and lets those who are more self-motivated to proceed at their own pace. However, in todays politically correct world, I doubt that is happening much.
The final thing I'd like to say on this subject is that its hard to overestimate the impact of better displays and portable systems for education. Those have both improved considerably over the last couop
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Whether your tools are books or computers, the subject matter itself must still be drilled. Some schools see computers as a replacement for the tedious drilling ("play with the subject material"), others see them as a replacement for teachers (teaching programs), and others still see them as a glorified library or calculator. I would expect the latter category, the schools that use the computers most conservatively, to see the least of a decline in the students' performance. Those that try and use computers for new ways of learning fumble for it mostly, using inadequate software and poorly trained teachers. The very worst performers are those schools that see computers as the long-awaited tool that allows then to let the students "play with the subject material". Let the students play endlessly with (for instance) simulations of an economy, instead of drilling and teaching the fundamentals of economics, and you end up with students who are excellent problem-solvers and socializers, and even have a little grasp of the cause and effect of certain economic measures, but they'll have nu understanding of why measure a causes effect x.
I can't see computer software replacing drilling of the subject material, except perhaps aiding it. It's very cute to be able to plot a graph at the press of a button so the students can visualise it (and what an awful buzzword in education that word has become...), rather than do the tedious analysis of the function and draw it youself, but only by doing it the hard way will you come to a good understanding of functions. Software can help build understanding, but I foresee a very limited effect.
Software can be a replacement for a teacher to some extend. I can imagine a piece of software that does what the teacher will do when he or she sets the students to work a set of problems: look at how the student attacks the problem, and suggest different approaches or give little hints when the student gets stuck. This is like having a private tutor, available 24/7, for each of the students. Unfortunately there isn't software that is very good at this except for the simplest of problems.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Computers can be useful tools, but only as supplimentary to the primary teaching job. ie you must teach someone how to read, and write before a word processor is useful. You must teach someone how to research before 'going to the web' to research a paper.
there are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Stoll's book about computers in education is High Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian
Apart from the advantages of having every syllabus for every exam board (and often sample exam papers) available to me, there are extremely good online resources for my subjects which I can use as appropriate to the needs of my students. The BBC should know better - it provides a good selection of educational materials (biased towards revision more than learning) at BBC Schools.
Jon.
Many teachers know less about computers than their teachers . The teachers do not supurvise in the lab they just play solitare. Teachers just send you to funbrain.com which is not fun. I have nothing agnainst teachers I am just saying that some do notwork well with computers.
It's not the nature of technology that is causing these shortcomings, but, rather, the teachers and administration. When I was in high school, 8-4 years ago, we had at least one computer in every classroom, but were not allowed to use them. We had a "Media Center," which was basically a glorified library with a sectioned off area with outdated Compaq's running Win95 (even then, that was lame). Even the media center had restricted access. It is the nature of high school, unfortunately. Not to mention the fact that most -- if not all -- of the teachers refused to learn the computers to teach them. They simply sat in the room, unused.
The only time we used them was to make PowerPoint(less) presentations. Even then, because high school is so restrictive, you can't just go down to the Media Center at any time (because they force you to be in the classroom at all times. So you end up working on it at home, anyway.
There's quite a few ways I could think of to teach computing to students, but, then again, I'm an engineer. The average teacher just doesn't have the skills, time, or motivation.
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
As i wrote that i was sitting here filling out my ACT aplication. 5 pages of bubbles to fill in, just like every test every day at school. Scantrons suck. BUBBLES TO BE FILLED IN WITH YOUR #2 PENCIL ARE NOT EDUCATION!!! /endRant
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
A lot of the explicit teaching I got about computers at school was about what a computer was in theory (at a very high level: what a floppy-disk was, what RAM was, not what a Turing machine was) and about how to use business software packages on it.
There was also some teaching which used computers as an accessory to run so-called "educational" software. Two words: Granny's Garden.
There was very little teaching which focussed on how to use a computer to help you do something you had thought of and wanted to do. Nobody wanted to place the power of computers directly in our hands, or thought that it might be educationally beneficial to do so.
This is an opportunity that I think has been largely missed in schools: the opportunity to empower students to build their own castles in the air, be it through programming or through building databases or through setting up webservers or whatever. The opportunity to try such things should not be restricted to those with the resources and motivation to go ahead and do them anyway; that's one of the reasons why we have schools in the first place.
Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn no other.
Link to the The Economist article: http://ron.unique.cc/economist/economist2.htm.
Pen and Paper is also a cruch, should the professor tell you to do the math in your head? If you did do it in your head he'd say the same thing "I need to see how you got these answers"
You have to prove you know the steps is all, you can still use calculators and know math as long as you know all the formulas and steps to solving the problem it does not matter what tools you use to solve them, you can use pen and paper, you can use a calculator, a super computer, it doesnt matter.
Kids need to learn to use the tools of today, calculators are fine but only if the class is designed for it. If the class was a mathclass where all the math was done on computers, and all of the steps you did were logged, if you use a calculator it doesnt matter how you do the number crunching as long as the steps you used equals the right answer.
In computer programming its not about reinventing the wheel, its about embrace and extend, you can get more done if you share code and reuse code than if you write everything yourself. The only thing which matters is how much you can get done.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
My mother is a technology coordinator for the schools in my home town. She says that they throw millions of dollars at technology, but it does not do anyone any good. They do not teach children ABOUT the computers, they teach them WITH the computers. So really it is just a glorified chalkboard/workbook and often times is used as a babysitter. Personally, I think a good textbook beats a computer any day of the week. Additionally, the teachers are the same teachers I had 20 years ago, so they are not trained on how to use this technology. I think computers in schools are a waste of money and time.
Smeghead every day of the week.
Mod pparent up, it's funny cuz it's true.
Nowdays it is too easy to goof off on computers rather than use them for educational purposes. In fact, it seems that current 'educational software' is mostly a bunch of cartoon chrud with a little bit of math etc. here and there.
An elementary school math tutor for the kids who were behind asked me to make a math tutor computer program that wasn't cartoony etc. Getting exact details on what she wanted was like pulling teeth, but in the end we wound up with a piece of software that was kid-friendly (meaning easy for them to control, some kids have coordination issues when it comes to moving mice) and actually helped improve their math abilities.
One thing that I am quite proud to have worked with is the AR Program (Accelerated Reader). The concept is to have point values and difficulty values for most of the books in the library. Kids check out whatever books they want (they are strongly encouraged to use books of an appropriate difficulty level) and can take computerized quizzes on them. The kids can trade in points they earn for candy and small, cheap toys. It actually works! I would have imagined that the kids would have gotten tired of it quickly, but the teachers take it seriously and the majority of the books in the school library have AR quizes available.
I have volunteered in several elementary schools, but in the one where they emphasized this AR program I regularly saw kids leaving the library with books and actually eager to read them. That is a very big thing; getting kids modivated to learn/read is one of the biggest problems in educational. This computer software is not advanced; it could be made to work on an AppleIIGS, but the fact that it is actually getting kids to read (and to like it!) is profound.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I feel that schools are drifting too far away from the basics. Computers often lead to a cycle of chasing the latest technology instead of actually doing anything useful with it. Most school boards and schools are strapped for cash and resources; attempting keeping up with the lastest in IT will only leave them in an even worse financial position.
Computers have their place in many areas, including education. However, teachers must resist falling into the trap of just teaching the nebulous subject of computing. Is teaching a student the ins and outs of Windows or Word really a worthy use of valuable teaching time? Even if you do teach them to use say, Word, who's to say that by the time they leave the education system that Word is still going to be the word processor of the day? Even teaching them the basic desktop and window style GUI we are so familiar with may not end up being useful in the "real world" eight years down the road.
Now computers can be useful. A typing program can save on paper. A flash card program may just be able to give a student that extra bit of help, especially with classes often becoming over-crowded. Access to the Internet could, in some cases, supply additional resource materials in the presence of a picked-over library (but here one must be careful in teaching the student to "consider the source"). It's just that using too much classroom time and fiscal resources on finicky and ever-changing computers takes away from teaching the basics. A student leaving the education system with a solid grounding in language, mathematics, science, and critical thinking, will surely be able to react and learn whatever computer systems they come across in the future.
Read, write and research in your head?
So tell me, who's using a computer to read or write, without using their heads? I'd also like to meet the person with the encyclopedia brain implant that uses only their head to research? Research = 'search', i.e. from outside sources.
Some people need 'crutches' and some people who don't really need them, find them very useful.
Spelling aids are a wonderful thing for the unfortunates who didn't have excellent English teachers or whose brains simply aren't wired to spell 'properly'. Good and quick writers also find them helpful as they allow efficient and quick correction of mistakes.
Search engines give incredible access to oceans of knowledge and information. Nobody can be a polymath in all fields of knowledge.
Calculators remove the tedium of mind-numbing calculation. As long as you can do basic arithmetics and algebra in your head and know what the steps to solving a more complex mathematical problem are, your calculator is not doing your job for you, it's making it easier.
'And' (sic!) looking at your grammar and spelling, I'm surprised you're bitching about current school test scores. Maybe the education in the good ol' days wasn't so good after all.
Does it matter if I'm going to end up flying it into a building?
By the late 80s the business press was saying, "We've got all this investment in information technology, yet productivity is stagnant." Then we hit the 90s, where the business press (and the Fed) suddenly believed that IT efficiency was justifying the market valuations bubble ... but that may be another story. The point for now is that it took about 10 years of having word processors and spreadsheets before business people learned to use them more efficiently than the typewriters and calculators they were already proficient with.
Computers in grade school only became a big thing in about 93-94, with the Net hype. It may just take a decade or so for new tools to supplant old. By comparison, under Elizabeth I her ministers declared that the musket would replace the crossbow. Never mind that the crossbow had won many wars for the English, shot more accurately, and reloaded much faster. Embracing what in principle is new, better technology is often in the short term a step back. Then the technology improves and, more importantly, the culture of use adapts to it.
So expect a bubble in apparent educational results in about two years.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Knowledge of math can be learned just like you can learn C, but to actually be able to do it in your head, without pen and paper, or do math without a calculator, this is talent.
This is not something everyone can do, just like not everyone is good enough to write perfect C code in their head without looking into the refrence manual every now and then.
Instead of trying to make your daughter into something shes not, teach her to do math in whatever way she is capable of doing it, if she has to use paper, fine, as long as she learns the concepts and formulas who cares if her problem solving/ number crunching skills suck? The higher level maths like calculus are not about your ability to crunch numbers in your head its about your ability to understand the concepts and your knowledge of the actual formula.
You can memorize multiplication tables and waste your time practicing your number crunching for years, or you can accept that you arent good at this and learn the core concept of multiplication, by learning the underlying formula you learn its just addition and you can use the formula to do multiplication without memorizing all the tables.
This can save you YEARS worth of time which could be wasted practicing multiplication tables and memorizing answers instead of the processes to getting them.
Your teacher didnt teach you math right, you learned to crunch numbers, because you naturally had the ability to be good at crunching numbers you used pure calculation and number crunching to get you through math but dont you know all math is just concepts? Its not about the problem or the solution, its about the process.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It's one thing to use a calculator to get an answer. It is entirely different to play an educational game or do workshops on the computer. As for the workshops, I can't imagine that they are that productive. All they can do that paper can't do is adjust the difficulty level based on performance. But hey, we do that anyway, right? When we study, we skip the questions that are too easy for us and move on to the ones that challenge us, but that we can figure out.
As for the use of calcs on exams... I've taken many exams at top 10 universities in undergrad and grad engineering. For most of the good exams, a calculator would be useless (graphs or no graphs). Usually, a computer would be useless too, b/c the point was in figuring out the gracefull solution or approximation rather than grinding out some big ass calculation.
None of this surprises me. I teach information systems in higher education, but have done some contract work for K-12 schools as well. In both environments, I have seen:
1. Computers used more to keep the students occupied rather than actually teaching them something about the technology.
2. Most teachers (but not all) are reluctant to learn new technology. In my state, teachers have to take a continuing education course in technology every so often (two every three years I believe). When it comes time to take those courses, most teachers opt to take basic computer courses (ie learn the Internet or the Windows operating system) because they already know how to do the basics and just want to get their required credits and be done with it.
3. The computers that the school systems purchase are so crippled (even then they are brand new) that you can't learn much on it anyhow. Part of this can be contributed to the fact that PC manufacturers sell the school systems 1-to-2 year old technology for a higher price than you can get the latest technology for hundreds less as a consumer. Thus, after overpaying for the computers, the school system is only left with just enough money in the budget to pay Microsoft for their unlimited site license. The to top it off, the administrators then install Internet filtering software, Deep Freeze, etc. to lock the machine down so tight that you really can't teach students but the very basics.
(As a note to #3, (not meant to be a sales pitch I might add) you would be surprised at how competitive Sun and Apple machines are when compared to the reputable PC manufacturers. I have seen the sales quotes from many computer manufacturers to my school and was shocked to see that in most cases you got more for less with Sun workstations and Apple workstations. Most school systems, including mine, doesn't purchase either however.)
I can go on and on all day long with other examples, but I think you get the basic idea with above. As a teacher, I see all of this as one vicious cycle that doesn't seem to have an ending. The way I see it, teachers need to be interested in keeping up with technology if they intend on using it in the classroom (school administrators and school network administrators the same way). The schools are getting ripped off by the vast majority of the PC companies by buying old technology for higher prices than consumers pay. I am trying to do my part to break this cycle by starting to teach Linux network administration using the existing hardware I have available to me in the classroom.
I am very unsurprised by this.
Computers are useful if you are teaching subjects which necessarily require them.
Computer Programming, wordprocessing, keyboarding, Drafting/CAD, video editing and photography are all subjects for which I have seen computers effectively used.
What do these have in common?
You don't teach them in elementary school!
I really think that computers in elementary school classrooms has more to do with principals obsessed with whiz-bang technology rather than anything to do with a "need" to "teach" students something they couldn't learn without them, or couldn't learn as quickly or effectively.
I hear arguments about basic computer literacy... but basic computer literacy is difficult to teach, I don't think it can be taught properly in the current classroom environment. That is, kids need lots of time alone with the computer. You can't develop that literacy a little bit at a time with multiple kids to a system interrupted constantly by a teacher who doesn't understand the technology.
To me, the first step in teaching somebody computer literacy, is getting them to overcome the fear of breaking something. Most teachers I've met are still at the stage of "Just click the icons... and hope it doesn't crash."
I can't wait until people realize that computers in elementary school classrooms are a stupid idea.
...just like alcohol and tobacco, and children should be allowed to touch them until at least age 18, and preferably age 21.
Computers used to be serious business and scientific tools, but that age is over. Since the dawn of the personal computer, they have progressively (regressively?) become an addictive entertainment device that steals the brain's ability to think and explore for real knowledge.
I say this as an IT professional who has a degree in computer science and almost 20 years experience in the field, and as a father to four children ranging in age from 3 to 13.
The problem with this kind of research is controlling for the other pressures on the school system. Say new teachers are leaving the profession forever at 70% after only three years on the job, if that has adverse effects on the general quality of education, would it be a good hypothesis to suggest it also has adverse effects on the way schools use computer resources?
We want to be careful not to blame the technology: it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools for the quality of his work. If you had learned in High School, for example, how to program your own integral solver, then you might have been able to breeze through the same exam *with* all of the intermediate calculator "leaps" documented in adequate detail to score the grade your answers demanded.
Computers *complicate* life, but trading for the additional burden of complexity gains insight which saves wasted effort in dead-end mistakes! If you feel the computer is simplifying your life, it is because you are not appreciating the insights properly: maybe someone else is? Are you dangerously and irresponsibly giving up control?
There's the real issue. Stop bashing computers in the classroom, and get to the real curriculum and pedagogy issue!
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Just because you are good at problem solving does not mean you are good at math.
Just because you memorize the answers does not mean you learn the process.
When you learn the formulas to math, you know that learning the multiplicaiton tables was an absolute complete waste of time, this is like using your brain as a number crunching calculator, when we have calculators which can do this, so why do the math in your head? Why waste years learning the multiplication tables when you can learn the formula for multiplication and then use addition to solve multiplication problems?
Addition is multiplication, Addition is also Subtraction, its all the same thing! You only need to teach ONE formula and it would teach all of these things instantly.
Or you can give people problems and tell them to solve them without giving them the formula, and waste years of their time while they memorize the answers
Why memorize 2+2=4, and 4+4=8 when you can just memorize A+B=C?
If A+B=C is addition, Multiplication is just A+A=B(2+2=2x2=4) repeated Addition.
Why should you bother memorizing the answers to repeated addition problems? Why not just teach them that its repeated addition and let them use what they already know to solve multiplication problems on paper?
If you want to memorize tables you can also memorize square roots, you can memorize the answers to fractions, you can memorize as many answers as you want but none of them will matter in the long run if you dont know the process, the formulas, the rules.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
OK, bear with me, lots to explain. You'll see where I'm going with this by the end.
Some people do well with words, others do well with visuals.
Visual Thinker Word Thinker
I expect that as a slashdotter you'll be slightly over to the left.
Visual thinking is most useful for computing to understand the abstract ideas.
Silicon Valley has a much higher rate of Autism and Dyslexia, both traits from visual thinkers who thus have trouble with words.
Computing is a doing thing. When I was at school computers were such a way out because unlike anything else it was about pictures and visuals. When I used the computer it was a doing thing; it wasn't about words and rote crap that school was --->
It was a part of school that actually favored visual thinkers. It wasn't like the rest of school that was about remembering and recalling stuff but not actually drawing lateral thinks and actually being creative with what was learnt.
People are becoming more and more visual thinkers, more dyslexic because the stuff we have to understand everyday requires it. We're bombarded with Advertising, the arts are on the up and this sort of thinking is useful if you try to program your video recorder;
The child fliddles with the recorder while thier parent reads the the manual.
See the difference?
Now, school is a rusty institution. The people coming into school don't think the same as thier parents did when they when to school. We're the do'er generation; we skate, we play on our computers. We don't read books so much any more, we may not in fact be quite so good with the word so socialising is different.
When we communicate we have a higher tendancy to draw associatative memories rather than stick to the literary rules that enslave us. We don't say "Well done Sir" we say "x 1337 mate, total ownage on last night". We are the creative generation.
School is designed to teach those who are good with words, this is why girls do so well. It's not designed with the visual thinker in mind.
'The teacher teaches the child' The child does not use the teacher to aid his learning.
Traditional subjects like science, maths, english should have the option of being taught like the way poetry and creative disaplines are done; the student creates, the student does, learning by doing.
Of course word thinkers shouldn't be left out but please remember that there are to ways to learn something:-
Indirect: Passed on knowledge (WORD)
Direct: Directly learnt knowledge (VISUAL/CREATIVE)
I don't expect you to understand this fully straight of because recogising the WORD/CREATIVE viewpoints is a real skill.
But maybe the next time you're confused while reading an O'Reilly you'll remember my post.
So long, good stead.
A blog I run for the wealth
My school offers a degree taught largely through computer-mediation (called the executive or emba). Students (rather their employers) pay over $100K in tuition to participate in the program.
The students meet on campus once per month and then disperse for the remainder of the month's instruction. Computer-mediation comes into play in several ways:
1. The students receive canned lectures from professors on CD.
2. The students use collaboration environments such as e-rooms to share documents and interact with each other and the profs.
3. The students use teleconferencing.
Of these, the canned lectures are the most time consuming to produce and the least well received by students. It's like watching educational tv. Yes, you can get something out of it, but it is not necessarily very engaging.
The collaboration environments and teleconferencing work well. People like them and use them. These two technologies enable people to interact with each other and more easily share electronic artifacts. It's like IM on steroids. Note that on-line games seem to moving in this direction, enabling enhanced interaction between people vs. pure person-computer interaction.
I think the issue with improving the canned lectures on CD is that you would have to create something like a PC game to get it really interesting, and that is beyond the power of most academic institutions. Then, you still have the issue of people ultimately figuring out all of the machine's tricks and becoming bored.
In sum, my school's experience seems to suggest that enhancing and enabling interaction is a good role for computers in education.
I do develop edu software in a small country in SE Europe, along with a few friends who also think this is important, and we are good at that. We are doing it for a five years now and we keep track of the childern, and we give the data to any scientist who ask us. We have no money to order resarch, and we certanly do not influence the results. I do prefer argumented critics over generic bravo's.
:-) in schools are mostly useless because this requires complete change of the system. On the other hand, computers and software as tools for education are essential as any other tool, if used right.
We have now about 20.000 users, and we keep track of about one in a five (it's voluntary choice of the user). Our software is for kids 3 to 8 years old, and it is designed to help learning math, literacy, safety in traffic, arts etc (no this is not a promo, I'm trying to keep the product anonymous as possible). With design we did not follow official school curriculum, we covered what we considered important and we tried to make it simple and easy to understand and - most important - fun for kids.
This approach was made because I do strongly belive that software is just a tool that should be used by educator (teacher, parent, whoever) to transfer the knowlwdge. Yes, we had kids using computers before they knew how to read - and used them to learn how to read. But again, it's just a tool - if one suposed to use it don't use it right, it won't work.
The real problem is, until September only one school was allowed (by our Ministry of education) to use our software (yes, most of our users are home users). Also they have spent about 5.5 million US$ on hardware for classrooms in elementary shools (including Windows and MS Office) and exactly 0.0 US$ on edu software. We do not fit in because we have results, and they face elections...
To keep long stroy short, computers (even with software
We used old trs model III computers to learn on when I went to school. We learned basic and it was a programming class. Today they teach everybody "keyboarding". The machines are usually wide open with no polices running to keep the students from tampering with them. Schools in my area will not pay to have the machines secured. As a result most of the students I see today cannot type correctly and some that want to are prevented by changed settings.
Schools will have to change the way they teach in order to benefit fully from computers in the classroom and that starts with proper security
I hate people who obsess about spelling!
Those people that are pointing out that computers are great reservoirs of information or that computers are great aides to the learning process are correct. Computers can be great aides provided that the software is there and given the state of the software industry these days, I'd have to say that educational software has taken a nosedive in quality.
Example:
10 - 15 years ago there were a few really good programs for the Apple ][ series computers for physics, chemistry, biology, and 'earth sciences'. I know. I used them and got a lot more out of those subjects than my classmates who didn't use them. The programs were great at _illustrating_ what was being taught in class. Do those programs still exist? I don't know. Would they have been made the same way now as they were back then? Definitely not. The graphics were horrible compared to today. But this (IMNSHO) actually helped because it meant that more time was taken in the actual descriptions of what was going on. Yes there were graphics, but the crappy graphics plus the detailed and in-depth descriptions were what helped me learn. Given today's technology, the descriptions would've been something like "As the animation shows above, blah blah blah" and then the animation would've been all spiffy and what not, leaving the student to scratch their head and wonder what the hell was going on.
The other important thing is for teachers to understand how to make the best use of technology in their classroom. This has more to do with the education of teachers though. This goes back to using calculators in classrooms as well. At what level of detail do we say 'Enough! If you need that level of detail in your work and you don't have a calculator, then you probably aren't going to be worried about performing that calculation anyway!' If you are stranded on a desert island/asteroid/planet are you really going to be worried about doing calculus or are you going to have other things on your mind? To be honest, I'm not sure I know where I stand on that issue myself. In high school, we couldn't use calculators for most things. In college, we could. Considering how well I did in math and science in high school and how poorly I did in math in college, it's a toss up. On the one hand I would certainly like kids to understand calculus, but on the other, if they can get the correct answer to the problem, then that's a good thing.
Teachers need to determine for themselves, how much of a role technology will play in their classroom and the results of whatever standardized testing there is should give a good indication of which method is working better. As examples:
Should papers be type-written or hand-written?
Should computers be used to teach math skills or science skills?
Should computers be used to teach foreign languages?
My answers would look something like:
1 - Hand-written unless the handwriting is atrocious, in which case the handwriting needs to be worked on. Using a wordprocessor to check spelling is fine, but then spelling mistakes in the paper result in a failing grade. Using a grammar checker to check for grammar mistakes should be treated the same.
2 - Hell no. Computers and calculators can certainly be used to aide the study of math and science but they should not be the primary learning tool. Turtle Logo is great for illustrating geometry (and indeed mistakes in that probably lead to a greater understanding of geometry) and likewise there are great programs that illustrate things in chemistry and physics (prOn doesn't count for biology, sorry). But all of those are really only good if you have some grasp of the basics behind the subject.
3 - Possibly. There are a lot of programs that can teach you about grammar and spelling. However, pronunciation is another story. Hooked on Phonics be damned. Having experience with French and Dutch language programs, I can tell you that hearing the computer say something is one thing. Trying to duplicate it is another. Again, another place where computers are probably better aides than primary tools.
Net result: Computers will only work in the following situations:
1 - Teachers that understand how to integrate computers into the curriculum correctly
2 - Students that understand how to use computers to aid their learning
3 - School administrations that understand how to get the above two
My problem with the current state of math education is that so much of the work I did in middle and high school classes was truly irrelevant, which meant that many of the repetitive proof exercises were essentially wasted because there were no "real world" anchors to hang them on. I was legitimately surpised much later in college, etc. to discover that what I had learned in HS actually had useful applications in the "if you do the math right, the bridge doesn't fall in the river, the engine gets more horsepower, the airplane flies better" world than I ever remember doing in HS.
I asked another K-12 math teacher (besides my own) why they didn't include more engineering type stuff in the curriculum, and his answer was so dead brain amd sexist that I couldn't believe it: "the male math students might like seeing how things relate to engines, electronics, civic engineering, etc., but the female students would be bored..." 'xcuse me sir, but in what way is teaching math without more of the practical applications is more interesting to your female students???
'Course, relevancy in education is my personal pet peeve, and /. is a community site, so I'll stop grinding the ax right here. Thanks for at least caring whether or not your students learned to use the grey matter at levels somewhere above the spinal cord at least part of the time.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
As far as I can tell, the schools that use computers to actually teach computing are few and far between. To my mind, programming should be regarded as a life skill like arithmetic, reading, writing. I really don't think programming in most languages is harder than arithmetic, let alone basic calculus (which is taught- and if taught early enough, many more people would grasp it.
Current "computer" classes are often "how to use MS Word and MS Excel, maybe even MS IE and MS Outlook Express".
If kids were introduced to proper computing (i.e. CompSci stuff and languages like Logo and Lisp) at an earlier age, they'd realise that computers can be extensions of your mind, and can do arbitrary virtual things (at least until Palladium/TCPA) - they're not just glorified TVs or typewriters, and the absurd effect we have now where companies like Microsoft take mathematical algorithms and sell them as products to the ignorant masses would perhaps be reduced.
Sure, "Computer Programmer" might become less of an elite job description, but at the same time, we'd see much better code.
While we're at it, we should bring back lessons in basic logical reasoning, skeptical thinking, though the marketing departments of corporations and religious organisations mightn't like that...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
I've never met a kid with "ADD" who cant pay attention to the television, or the video games, or books when they want to read them.
ADD in school is just a petty excuse teachers make for students who rebel, they dont just want to admit that they suck as teachers, their classes are boring as hell and their students arent learning.
In a class where a kid is not learning a damn thing or a class thats boring as h ell, suddenly the symptoms of ADD appear.
I think if a kid really does have ADD the best way to deal with it is to let them use the computer, and let them learn in their own way.
Also when a kid is on the computer, if they do have ADD even if they are distracted they still learn something, even if they go drift off into other websites as long as the school has things setup so the kid is always learning no matter where they go on the net, it can work.
Dont allow any games, perhaps you shouldnt allow someone with ADD to go into a chatroom, but if they have a problem paying attention and the goal is for them to gather as much knowledge as possible perhaps the best way is to let them direct their own learning. Not everyone learns in a structured way, and the solution is not to blame the ADD, but to teach them in a way which they accept, even people with ADD know alot about certain things.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Computers, calculators, even simple features like the speed dial on your phone, have contributed to this problem of 'dumbing down' society.
I teach math in a private facility for 'behaviorally challenged' children (aka, discipline problems). About 1/3 of these are classified special education. My biggest surprise over the past couple years has been the complete lack of understanding about basic math concepts. Most, if not all, of the kids I teach have been taught to use a calculator for basic math (+,-,*,/). Problem comes in, though, when most of these defend their answers on a test with 'but I put down what the calculator said!'.
These kids have become so dependant upon the technology, they don't see the problem with a calculator putting out an outlandishly wrong answer (usually due to 'fat finger syndrome'--you punch one or more extraneous keys). Add to this that I am trying to teach many of these kids to solve multi-stepped *arithmetic* problems (figuring their mortgage, car payments, the like), it is disheartening to watch an 11th grader (an 'A' student NOT special ed) go to the board and completely bone a basic arithmetic problem because he never learned basic division concepts when he was in grade/middle/jr. high school. His response? "My teachers told me to always use a calculator for division problems".
Computers are not any better. While administration on down want to look like they are 'technology friendly', computer education is often nothing more than basic 'this is how you turn it on and use windows and explorer' and 'this is a word processor, use it for your papers'. I have decided NOT to use computers because the time it takes to teach decent computer skills takes away from my time to teach basic concepts. I have one in my classroom to use for word processing and personal work with all games wiped off of it.
IT tech would be great if there was a way to integrate it with basic education--but this requires time and money, both things sorely lacking from our educational system.
First, there seems to be darn little emphasis on the part of the school board to make sure teachers continue to learn how to teach more effectively, and lots of teachers don't understand computers and how to use them. Instead, there's a drive to use them (something like the "teaching machines" of the 1950s) and a reaction against them, and neither lends itself to rational thought. It'll take a long time at this rate for computers to be used rationally, and even longer for the knowledge of how to use them spread.
Second, there's some really neat stuff out there on the web. There is a project whereby schools note first sightings of a certain type of butterfly across the country. This is an opportunity for very young students to do something with some scientific value, which simply didn't exist when I was young years ago. (The web has its own problems with young and impressionable users, of course.)
Most educational software is mostly useless. Usually, the software will teach a limited number of facts. The one exception I found was "Star Wars Pit Droids", produced by Lucas Learning before the big educational software market collapse. I felt that one tickling my math- related synapses. It seemed to me to be promoting mathematical thinking, rather than actual facts. The program rather flopped on the market, which may be partly because it didn't teach many facts, and the encouragement to think in mathematical terms was much too subtle for most people to recognize. Nevertheless, this is the only program I've seen that seems to me to encourage the right sort of thinking any better than, say, Pajama Sam-type graphic adventures.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
My dad is a teacher and there's a computer in his classroom which is supposed to be used by the students, but he does not let them use it because he's worried that they'll go out and find some porn and he'll get in trouble.
The sad thing is that he is right.
The other day, I found myself pulling out a calculator for something ridiculously easy; I think it was adding two 2-digit numbers -- I could have done it in my head, and it certainly would have been quicker than finding the calculator and plugging the numbers in.
That said, I think it's also worked miracles. The Internet, in my opinion, is a tremendous advancement in research: Given a couple minutes, I can find practically anything on Google. I can type up a research paper, and have multiple drafts, simply making minor revisions, instead of re-typing (or writing by hand again) the entire thing. I can even discuss whether or not computers are good with people all over the world on Slashdot. With my calculator, I can check my work, and be confident that my answer is right. Even more exciting is that, in theory, rather than go off to college next year, I could lie around the house and get my education online. I don't plan on it, but there's huge potential.
I think that, for the most part, computers are a good thing for education. They enable us to do much more than was even considered possible before the advent of computers, and they let us do it in a microsecond. The problem comes when people grow overreliant on computers, to the point where they forget how to divide numbers, don't know what an encylopedia is, and go to a library only to use the computer there. But used in 'proper doses,'I think computers are great for education.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
It used to be that schooling had two functions, teach basics in a wide range of subjects,the traditional 3 Rs, etc, and also to teach the ability to think as opposed to what is going on now which is in large part giving a politically correct answer and maintaining your herd and "caste" mentality status.
It is easier to command and control populations if they are ignorant and cowed and have a parroting answer that the various "commanding authorities" want to hear. People who can think for themselves are a threat to this mass two class society globalization effort.
For an overview of this I would recommend the writings of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. This is a paste from her bio:
"Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms."
It's a rather disturbing revelation.
Here is an interview with the author.
Sunday, May 13, 2001
SUNDAY Q&A
Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school?
Geoff Metcalf interviews former U.S. education adviser Charlotte Iserbyt
Editor's Note: Most parents want their children to receive a quality education. Yet, low test scores, drugs and violence on campus are increasingly prevalent in public schools and the disconnect between parents, educators and administrators is widening. Why is this situation occurring when so much time, money and attention are being directed toward improving education in the United States?
Today, WorldNetDaily staff writer and talk-show host Geoff Metcalf interviews someone who has some shocking answers, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. During the '80s, Iserbyt was a senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Education and has also written "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," a chronological history of the past 100 years of education reform. In this interview with Metcalf, she discusses the impact of the federal government, the United Nations and influential corporations on the American educational system and a little-known program called "School-To-Work."
Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.
By Geoff Metcalf
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
Question: The first thing I have to ask you -- I'm still not sure if this is a blessing or a curse -- but ever since I returned to talk radio ten years ago, I promised myself I wouldn't interview any author until I read their book. I was intimidated when yours arrived in the mail.
Answer: I don't blame you.
Q: It is a big puppy. 714 pages worth.
A: It is a big baby.
Q: What led you to this project? You were with the Department of Education in the '80s -- why the book?
A: I actually started collecting research in the early '70s. I was on a local school board after living outside the country for 18 years for the United States Department of State. When I came back, I was very upset with the changes I had seen in our school district -- which had happened to be a pilot-school district for change. The kids were rolling around on the floor -- they didn't have to learn grammar or anything -- and I was shocked. I started asking questions and, as the only parent who ever complained, I would go to school board meetings and ask very legitimate questions like, why don't they teach grammar?
Q: How dare you ask such a silly question?
A: And, finally, a retired teacher came to me and she said, "You are right on! I want you to go for some training to become a 'change agent.' We're going to find out what is going on." So, she paid for me to go to this training. The training came out of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was funded by what was to become my office in the U.S. Department of Education. It was funded earlier in the '70s -- and it was still funded under Ronald Reagan, by the way. This particular project was called "Innovations in Education/Change Agents Guide."
Q: So what did you learn in the training?
A: I was taught how to identify the resisters in my community. Those people who -- good people -- good Americans who have seen and know clearly these programs in the schools were not there to help our children academically.
Q: Hold on. This sounds as if instead of any modification in curriculum, the objective was to go after the people who were complaining about changes in curriculum?
A: Complaining about "values clarification" and complaining about "sex ed" and complaining about all of these subjects that have education hanging off the end of them. You know, we didn't used to have "math education" and "reading education" -- that's not really education. When you have "education" hanging off of it, you know that they have another agenda (except for "Drivers Ed"). Anyway, these were the people in our communities in the '70s who were saying, "I don't like that sex education. I don't think it is up to schools to teach my children there's no right or wrong." And saying, "I don't like that drug education and what's that critical-thinking education?"
I was trained because they didn't know who I was.
Q: Who were you?
A: I was a resister. I was actually being trained to identify myself. And I didn't like it. The other part of it was, I was trained to go to the highly-respected people in our community
Q: Wait a minute. So, once you identified these so-called resisters, these people who were critical of people who defend the indefensible, then what do you do?
A: That's a very good question. No other talk-show host has ever asked me that. It's a good question. What do you do? You identify them and then the superintendent will try to get them onto a task force and make them have "ownership" and
Q: Ahhh -- a re-education program?
A: Yeah -- you got it! That's a very good question -- really, truly -- I've never had a talk-show guy ask me that question.
Q: It seems like an obvious question.
A: It is a very obvious one, and that's why it took me a while to come up with an answer. But that's exactly what the reason was. And, then, the other thing I was going to do was to identify the important people in the community -- good people, good Americans who have really been used with the Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, Garden Club -- go to them and convince them that these programs are vital to the survival of this country, of the world: The world is changing we have to have these programs.
I was really shocked. I was absolutely appalled. You have to remember: I had been out of the country 18 years and I had left a country that was red, white and blue, mom and apple pie, and all that.
Q: You were a dinosaur.
A: Well, yeah! I was a dinosaur. I had lived in socialist countries and I had traveled in communist countries and I had seen a lot. And, I thought to myself: "What the [blank] is going on in my own country?"
Q: Charlotte, what about teachers? There are some good teachers who are genuinely dedicated
A: Many. Many, many more than most people think -- and they have to keep quiet.
Q: Yeah but what is their reaction when they are presented with these controversial, non-academic methodologies that don't have anything to do with teaching anyone anything?
A: They are very unhappy, and they try to continue to do something that does have something to do with teaching and learning. I just recently heard the state of Oregon has passed legislation to get rid of tenure. I was always opposed to tenure. Now I'm in favor of tenure because what they are going to do now
Q:
A: Because of the way they are going to use it. Now, they can get rid of the good teachers without any problem. It used to be getting rid of the bad ones right? Now, they are going to get rid of the academic teachers. The teachers who do not agree with George Bush's education agenda -- you know the outcome-based, direct education, teach-to-the-test. These poor teachers -- these poor children -- and they do not agree in the changing of the definition of quality teaching.
Q: Charlotte, I'd like you to explain to our readers at what point did it become more important to manufacture this concept of self esteem -- and the fact that if you can "feel good" about the process, it doesn't matter what the results are. When did that happen?
A: Well, you know, it all started in 1934 when the Carnegie Foundation set the agenda for the next hundred years and that was to change our country from a free, individualistic economy to a planned economy -- and to do it through the schools. And the way they would do it, would be to change the social studies so nobody would know what our form of government is -- and how precious it is -- and to not teach the Constitution. This is the Carnegie Corporation plan -- to implement a planned economy through the schools. And it is going in right now.
Q: OK, that's the background and foundation. But at what point, recently, did they effect the significant change in direction, content and product?
A: At what point did all the touchy-feeling stuff happen? Carnegie happened in 1934, the United Nations in 1945
Q: The only touchy-feeling stuff I encountered in school was if you didn't do what you were supposed to do -- when you were supposed to do it, the way you were instructed to do it -- Brother Benilde would smack you up side the head with a book.
A: Well, that's right, but they don't want people to be educated, and this is a very important point. I know there are people out there who think: "Goodness, I thought the whole purpose of the corporations forming partnerships with the public sector (which actually is corporate fascism) was so that the schools would give our children better academic skills?" That's not true. According to David Hornbeck -- Mr. Carnegie and the big honcho for "School To Work," he said in his book, "Human Capital," which he wrote with Lester Solomon, that the corporations do not want educated people.
Q: Why?
A: Because educated people are very difficult -- they ask too many questions, they quit their jobs, etc.
Q: Actually, the way it has developed now, (and I think the primary reason they want to maintain the Department of Education) the corporations will identify what vacancies and needs they have and "train" workers. Charlotte, I want you to explain "School To Work" because I get so angry and seething when I think about it -- and try to talk about it -- that I sometimes butcher it.
A: So do I. I think the best way -- and I really recommend Congress do this, because it would be cheaper than going to Europe -- I would like all of them to go down and spend six months in Cuba. Is that a good answer?
Q: If they don't come back, it would be great.
A: Well, go down to Cuba and you will see the same system implemented there that they are implementing in Oregon, in California and in Maine and everywhere. Where the children are identified at a very early age, psychologically profiled -- fourth grade in some cases. In fact, the whole idea of work is started in kindergarten.
Q: Hold on a moment, Charlotte, because we have to stress something here.
A: What?
Q: This is not fiction. This is not something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie. This is something that is going on right now!
A: That's right. It is in. It is not vocational either -- which is something I have always supported. I'd like to share with your readers the story I sent you about the 12-year-old youngster in Minnesota. He understood what I was talking about and he said to his mom, "I want to choose my own future!" And he went to a big rally they held in Minneapolis at 12-years old. Isn't it interesting that this 12-year-old understands what "School To Work" is.
Q: And, beyond that, what about the people who don't "find" themselves until they are 40?
A: You're not kidding. I'm a bit older than that and sometimes I wonder if I've found myself
Q: I often joke when people ask, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" Duh? It presupposes I will grow up and that I will know. I'm still working at it.
A: We all have a lot of talents we don't know about until later on when something happens. You are absolutely correct. The thing is that is the German dual-track system of education and work-force training. It is the Soviet system -- people don't like to use that word. It is the Cuban system.
Q: What people need to recognize is they are trying to identify kids at an early age for what their aptitudes are. Not based on what the kids talents and abilities are, but what the corporation need is.
A: That's right. Actually everything is focused on the good of the state now. It is the state that is important -- not the individual's upward mobility, the individual's future life. That's the way education used to be. You asked me earlier when the change took place.
Q: Are you going to answer it now?
A: Yes. It really took place in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. And that followed the agreements that Eisenhower signed with the Soviet Union in 1958. I feel they very strongly influenced our agenda in education.
Q: I just dodged the bullet. I graduated in 1966.
A: You were lucky. In 1965, they couldn't get American educators to implement this agenda that the Carnegie Corporation wanted. Also, an incredible psychologist -- Brock Chisholm -- at the United Nations recommended getting rid of the conscience to the World Health Organization. And he recommended doing that through the schools by training the teachers to be little psychiatrists.
None of this was accepted by any American educator until 1965. I don't think even at that time they really accepted it but it did pass. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a major, major shift. It moved our marvelous system of education -- which, up until 1960, was the best in the world -- from academics, what you know in your head, to a performance-based system which we're screaming about: outcome-based education, mastery learning and Skinner (who said "I can make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule"). I think your readers can understand the difference between knowledge based in your head and performance based. Performance is how you perform on the job -- that is not the role of the public school system or any education system that I can see.
Q: And it changed in 1965?
A: That changed in '65. From that time on, all these incredibly horrible values-destroying programs were developed: values clarification, survival games, critical thinking. Geoff, I have a manual published in 1967 that is three inches thick of values-destroying programs. And people say, "Why Columbine?"
Q: Let me ask you this -- because I've spent a fair amount of time talking and writing about it -- the connection between the epidemic prescribing of psychotropic drugs to kids as a means of controlling them?
A: Absolutely. There's a very interesting appendix in my book about a Hawaii Master Plan in 1968. A pilot project for the whole country that was carried out in Hawaii and federally funded and it included just about everything that is taking place right now. But there was a recommendation in there to use these psychiatric drugs on our children. This has been planned for a long time. They don't want independent little active monsters running around in the classroom.
Q: There is an interesting sidebar to this. There is a woman in the San Francisco Bay area who has home schooled all her kids. Her daughter just went in the Army. The recruiters were surprised and elated that she scored remarkably high in just about every test. They gave her something like an $18,000 bonus for enlisting. They couldn't understand why she was so far superior to all the other recruits. Obviously the key reason is she was shielded and protected from public education.
A: There is no question if a parent is able to do that (and not all are -- I'm not sure I could have) they certainly should be home schooling. Or, if you can't home school, try to find a private school.
Q: But that shouldn't be necessary if the public schools had not been so corrupted.
A: It shouldn't be necessary, but we need to note that there are good public schools. Although there won't be for long because of the redefinition of academics -- and that good teaching is no longer what it used to be -- so we won't have really much of a public school system. There'll be nothing left in a few years because of the legislation that is going through Washington, D.C., right now and the way they have been crashing the public school system ever since I left my office in the Department of Education. However, right now, you have to look carefully at private schools. In many cases, they may well be worse than the public schools at the moment.
Q: So what do you suggest to concerned parents?
A: Well my recommendation is different from anybody else's because I guess I'm naive and have stars in my eyes and wear rose-colored glasses
Q:
A: Oh yeah
They are taking our form of government -- Congress did this in the '90s with this legislation where they effectively changed our free system of government to a planned economy. A planned economy is not a free system at all. And if Americans think it is, they ought to go down to Cuba and take a look. In my opinion nothing short of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education will take care of this problem. And that means not back to the state level but back to the local level.
Q: Weren't the Republicans going to do that?
A: Yes, Ronald Reagan promised to do that when I was there. And I think many of us were really disappointed that this didn't happen. There is no way for us to cure the problems in American education and for this country to stay free as long as that building is allowed to exist there in partnership with the Department of Labor. It gets all of its instructions
Q: Charlotte, I got a correspondence a couple of years back and the letterhead had both departments at the top of it.
A: That's right. They are in partnership. But, another thing is, they do not put the United Nations on top -- that is where the whole thing actually comes from. What we're putting in now -- I don't think people realize and this -- includes the school-choice proposals I'm talking about. What is going in now is international. You have the same school-choice proposals, charter schools, et cetera going into Russia. You have the Outcome-Based Education / Direct Instruction in Hong Kong. And for people to feel this is even a national program -- it is not. It is international.
I think that Benjamin Bloom is probably the behavioral psychologist who came up with the outcome-based ed and mastery learning -- he was a big U.N. guy. He died a couple of years ago. The purpose of education, as far as the United Nations is concerned, is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of students. Bloom went on to define "good teaching"
Q: What ever became of the concept of seeking out knowledge and information?
A: No, no -- people have to understand and it took me long time too -- when we see all these failures, we put all the money into the system and then the test scores go down, and we keep saying, "Why? Why? Get with it folks!" I finally realized about 10 years ago when I finally started putting all the stuff together, when we think it's a disaster, to them, it's a success.
Q: They are accomplishing their objective.
A: Absolutely. Because they don't care whether our children can read, write, count, et cetera -- they really don't. When they put these programs in like Outcome-Based Ed -- and we have proof of that one -- because we have the evaluation of the major outcome-based education program that went in under Reagan
Q: What did it say?
A: The evaluation said that, no, it really didn't work, that success -- academically -- was not there. But it was successful because it turned the system on its head from inputs that we used to have to outputs. Output is performance, and it's necessary for workforce training.
Q: If the government took all the money that is whizzed down that rat hole of the U.S. Department of Education -- and didn't give it to the states -- but somehow distributed it through block grants or something to the local schools, and put the local schools in competition
A: Yep
Q: Not any more
A: I think it's true, but you are always going to have the strings attached as long as you have the federal money coming in. That's why I would like to see us just abolish the U.S. Department of Education -- in which case, all the state departments of education are going to collapse because they get up to 80% of their operating budget from my old office.
Q: Cool! That would be a good thing.
A: Wouldn't it be wonderful? And, then, we go back and restore the finest system the world has ever known. Now that to me would be even more devastating to the United Nations people -- the internationalists -- than getting out of the U.N. Because if the biggest country, the most important economic power in the world, the United States, all of a sudden decided to jump off board of the "School To Work" agenda, which is an international one, they are going to be in such trouble they will not know what to do.
Q: Therein is the problem -- selling it. What about George Bush continuing with this?
A: He wanted it all along. Bill Clinton was certainly involved in "School To Work" but it was George Bush the elder who initially put his big message into the Congressional Record. The elder Bush was big on apprenticeships and "School To Work." And, I hate to say it, but Ronald Reagan was the one who actually contributed the most to "School To Work" by implementing the concept of Public-Private Partnership. That's in the Communist Manifesto -- Industry and Government.
Q: Don't be shy or reticent. I have been telling people as long as I have had a forum, it is not a question of who is right or wrong but what is right or wrong.
A: You're right, but that is very sad. When Reagan went along with the partnership concept -- which, like I said, is in the Communist Manifesto, merge industry with the government -- then he signed the agreements with Gorbachev on education, Then, the Carnegie Corporation got involved -- and what they are giving us is the Soviet system.
Look, in my book, in 1932, you saw William Foster, chairman of the Communist Party USA write a book "Toward a Soviet America" and what he called for was a United States Department of Education, the Pavlovian method that is going in under direct instruction. He called for the scientific method. He called for the teaching of evolution. Get rid of patriotism. All of this has gone in.
Now you can't tell me that George Bush doesn't know this. He was the one who recommended keeping the U.S. Department of Education last July. When the Republicans wanted to keep in the platform to get rid of it -- to abolish the Department of Ed -- he took that out. He purposefully took that out. He knows, although he talks local. He says we're going to have local controls. How can you have local control when you have the United States Department of Education dictating every single thing to our schools right now? There is no way we have any local control left.
Q: We have heard from some people about a Japanese concept of Kai Zin. It but basically it deals with tearing down in order to build up something new.
A: That is absolutely correct. In order for them to implement the new system they have to destroy the old one. David Hornbeck is the majordomo on that. He's been in I don't know how many states. He's destroyed Kentucky, he's destroyed Philadelphia. I don't know where he is now but you have to watch him. It is so sad that parents do not see what we see because it has been so gradual and now, when you have George Bush and Ted Kennedy agreeing on George Bush's education agenda, that doesn't really leave any room for anybody to be concerned.
Q: When the allegedly rabid left and right start agreeing without compromise that in and of itself is cause for concern.
A: That's right. But where do we go? George Bush is the controlled right and Ted Kennedy is the controlled left. Control -- that is the point. And they have met at the radical center. These are the people who are supporting the communitarianism idea which if you look in the dictionary it says, "communistic form of government." Who on earth would ever dream that the Republican Party could end up with someone in the White House who is supporting a concept -- communitarianism -- that is defined in any dictionary you want, as a communistic form of government?
Q: But the dumbed-down American populous either doesn't believe you or they marginalize you as just a conspiracy theorist. Despite these people being in your face with it.
A: You're right -- the most important documents with the proof, of course, are the very old ones. Yeah, they are in your face but they are not in the faces of the average good American who has really been manipulated. It has been a very diabolical plan. They use the three-pronged fork. They use semantic deception, which are words that sound so good like "basic skills." Then they use gradualism like the frog in the cold water -- you heat it up over 50 years and the frog is dead. And then you have the dialectic where you deliberately create a problem -- and you get people to scream and go out of business -- and then you impose the solution and people are so upset at the problem that they accept anything. That's the three-pronged fork, without which we never would have been taken. Plus, the dumbing down -- because if the American people do not understand the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and that we do have a special form of government here, we are not going to know when those things are taken away from us.
Q: And those in our Congress were either intentional or manipulated co-conspirators.
A: That is exactly what has happened with the Congress when they voted for this change in our economic system to make it like Cuba -- they obviously didn't know that we had a wonderful free-enterprise system that had brought people to the shores of America for the past 150 years.
Geoff Metcalf is a talk-show host for TalkNetDaily.
many teachers(remember i am a public school teacher), lets face it, have a very easy job. having them bang away on a computer for a few days, especially if there's a lab tech in there, makes it a piece of cake.
it's not that technolgoy should not be in schools. i am finishing a masters in instructional technology. it's just that beaurocratic problems and inertia make change damn near impossible. for instance, are district had spent lots of money on an netrworking infrastructure, moving towards, as our former, now retired, (and clueless) tech admin said "fewer, more powerful, servers". this at the time that that the indsutry was moving towards more, smaller, servers, disrtributed computing. so did we change. no, inertia. so, get to your school boards, they are elected you know, and demand accountability.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
My little girl (3.5 years old) spends more time in front of the computer than television playing Blues Clues, Bob the Builder, Little Mermaid, etc, and she amazes me with how much she learns from these things. The key? They are entertaining and challenging.
(On a side note, she uses an old p200 with 200 megs RAM running w2k, and the games are like 5 bucks each from the bargain bins. The whole set up is probably 1/3 the cost of a typical edumuhcational setup.)
Is it any wonder that an educational system designed to turn out mindless widget makers in factories seems ill suited to implement machines that excel in creative problem solving?
I remember my middle school (early 80's) had a huge room full of TRS-80's. They would routinely trott the parents by so they could ooh and ahhh over the slick silver exteriors. However, when we made our weekly trip to the cpu room, it was to run crappy worksheet programs that asked random math questions--nothing more than what we did with paper worksheets.
The most we learned from these machines was how to break out of the programs, then alter the BASIC to give us high scores. We had it so they would generate enough wrong answers to avoid suspicions. Voila...a creative and challenging application of computers in the classroom.
My hunch is that current education is still focused on rote widget maker type learning, and that the presence of powerfully creative machines is simply baffling the system. Until we realize rhythmic factory-esque pounding of the 3 R's is an outdated methodology, we'll have more kids utilizing the latest tech to learn Darren's Dance Grooves than anything else.
You cant teach someone something by reptition if they never learn the concepts it becomes gibberish in the end.
You can make someone do something a million times and i they never know why they are doing it they wont remember it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
There are two things regarding computers in schools that are holding people back instead of launching them forward.
1. Macintoshes in schools, PCs in the real world. This needs to stop, and it needs to stop soon. Macintoshes just train people to be stupid, whereas PCs are irritatingly kludgy and they force you to learn. Irritable smart people are much more useful than happy stupid people.
2. Educators who live in the stone age. You can't really teach a class full of students to use a computer when the instructor doesn't know the power switch from the eject button on the cdrom drive. (saw this scenario like seven years ago when I was still in school, actually. heh. he was an english teacher.) We should educate our educators FIRST and our children SECOND. heh.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
It's http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/radioseq/analysi s.ram
but was typoed on the link. The realmedia 404 equivalent STILL hasn't been fixed by the content guys - ie, just creating one and uploading. [Damion - One of the techies behind it]
I'm currently working on a project where we are connecting K-12 kids via videoconferencing to different events. For example, we just bridged a live stream of an open heart surgery to the web and had a few local high schools and junior high schools actively participating and asking the surgeon questions realtime, as the surgery was happening. (we used polycom units, by the way. www.polycom.com ). This January, I'm setting up the bridge so that the kids can participated in discussions of the JASON project ( www.jason.org ). Hopefully, we're going to have Dr. Robert Ballard, the guy who found the titanic, join us, since he teaches at the University of Rhode Island. These are the kind of things that can really enhance education, as opposed to just throwing together a few educational games and having the kids play them.
A lot of you have said the same thing, but kindof beat all around the subject without getting to the real point, so I'll put it in plain language:
Computers in the classroom do NOT teach the subject matter to the kids. They only teach the kids how to use a *particular set of desktop applications* (not necessarily even anything about the computer itself).
Second, as only one person pointed out, and as has been largely forgotten by the educational system as it stands today -- after presenting the subject matter, it must be drilled, and the drilling must be done such that the learner has to interact with the drill, if only by writing it down with their own hand (NOT by typing/clicking it -- different neural pathway, so doesn't work to embed the information). Why? Because rote learning is how you make the subject matter STICK in kids' brains. And if it's boring at the time, tough -- do you want them to really remember it or not??
Third, as only one other person touched on, the issue of discipline in the classroom has gone by the wayside, and given how easy it is for most kids to get more interested in bypassing what's allowed on their computers than in the subject matter, computers exacerbate this. Now the object is to keep kids "interested" -- and it's clearly not working. The old method of "you will sit still and learn this like it or not, end of discussion" may not have been "enjoyable" but it WORKED. Make up your minds -- do you want to keep kids entertained, or do you want them to grow up into competent adults? Because you can't have both.
Want to fix the problems generated and exacerbated by computers in the classroom? Easy. Restrict computers and in-school computer use to one place: the classes that are specifically *about* computers.
That won't do anything for the more-basic issues of bad teachers and bad school systems, but at least it will stop masking the problem.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I think that people forget this, and see computers as a solution to a problem, rather than a tool to help in the process of solving it. I suspect that most educators either don't understand computers at all, or tend to think of them in terms of replacing -- rather than adding to -- the educational process as a whole.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein
Learning is intrinsically an action where the brain is excercised in order to be able to carry out the action on it's own. Very much like sport if you want to think of it that way. Computers do not change this in any way: Learning remains learning. A computer cannot make you learn any better, I would think. The techno-addict mentality of modern schools probably makes learning worse in that too much time is spent playing with technical toys (I don't mean modern job requisites like word processing, using mail etc, just mucking with the devices) instead of getting the children to use their own brains.
That information technology isn't helping kids learn. Actually there are multiple reasons. The first is that the kids in school know more about the technology than the teachers. So its difficult to use technology to teach kids about technology, when the teachers have nothing to teach them.
The second problem is that they try to use computers to teach other subjects like math, science, etc. Some of these applications are good. For example using the TI CBL (computer based labaratory) to do high school physics labs. Or using the internet in addition to the library for research. Or learning how to type.
The third problem is that they could use technology to simply improve the learning environment. Replace the blackboard with a dry erase that has one of those cool electronic dry erase things. Or an LCD projector. Or give the teacher a tablet PC and a wireless connection from it to the screen. Give kids e-books instead of text books to save money, and prevent that heavy backback load, have one e-book reader per student with all their texts loaded into it.
The problem with technology in the classroom is they use it to teach kids how to do things with technology instead of by thinking yourself. Such as low level math with a calculator. Handwriting is also key. I've always used the computer for writing papers and as a result my handwriting sucks and I know it.
They should use computers to teach... about computers! Hey kids, this is binary logic. This is how to build a computer, these are the parts, here's how they work and what they do. This is C, write me a hello world. etc. etc.
When you use computers instead of learning the "non tech" way, as opposed to in addition to it, you run into trouble. If a kid is taught how to research things on the net, but not in the library, that's not such a good thing. The should learn both. They should learn to type in addition to practicing handwriting. They should do math by hand, and only after proving they can perform certain operations by hand then they can use a calculator.
ADD is politically correct 'Newspeak' for Stupid Kids.
#1) The attitude that standards are racist and/or otherwise discriminatory. This mostly hurts darker skinned minorities because the standards __will__ apply to white kids one way or another. What it creates is a mindset that says, that we don't expect minorities to achieve, but white, and usually asian, kids to succeed. It would improve the lot of the average black in this country if they were actually forced to meet the same standards as white and asian kids to get into college. #2) Public schools as indoctrination camps. Even my HS in rural VA was guilty of that. Rather than teach just the three Rs (and a few other subjects...) some of the classes were quite authoritarian. All over, kids it seems are being taught to respect authority and to never question its morality. Even the military doesn't go that far. In fact, the military demands that its people **disobey authority** if following orders means violating the UCMJ! As a quasi-Christian I am adamantly against this "don't think for yourself, obey everything they tell you" mindset. #3) Having the bottom of that barrel teachers. I don't see how this can be corrected. I go to one of VA's best universities and I see similar problems here. VA has the 7th best public education system in the US. The only solution I can forsee is allowing homeschooling, vouchers to pay for tutors or private schools and make the public schools fend for themselves. I know for a fact that I would be an immensely healthier person had I never gone to school after elementary school. I would much rather have spent my time teaching myself what I want for a while, wait until my brain was mature enough to get Algebrae, Geometry and Calculus (surprise, surprise, NOW I can, just not on THEIR schedule). I would rather have gone to HS at a community college.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Don't know how computers fit into the curricula in the UK, but here in the states an awful lot of third-rate vocational training is foisted off as "learning aout computers". Too many high schools and colleges cobble up "computer science" courses on Office, Photoshop, Linux, Windows and other packages. by hiring part-time instructors who simply paraphrase the paperback third-party book they tell their students to buy.
In any case, we should be talking about 'learning with computers", not "learning about computers".
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
So it's been out nearly 7 years now. Time flies when you're having fun I guess.
This book is perhaps Cliffie's greatest social contribution, but it really raised the neck hairs of many "technology advocates." It's absolutely bang on though and a "must read."
*Nobody* can accuse Cliffie of being anti technology. Being a professional technologist doesn't mean you can't recognize where its use appropriate and where it isn't.
Learing isn't simply a matter of filling out the right little box on the anwer sheet of a standardized tests. It's as much a social event as anything else, indeed this is the very argument of those that object to home learning ( a bogus complaint because there's plenty of society outside the classroom. In fact, that's where *most* of society is).
Some people who oppose home learning on this basis then advocate taking these children and placing them in cubes facing a glass titty.
I don't get it.
Hire good teachers, and then, for God's sake, *let them teach.* Although this thought scares some people. After all, little Buffy might just come home after finding that her parents, and government, have been lying to her.
We sure don't want *that,* do we? It's "unamerican."
KFG
ADD is not an excuse used only by teachers, but also (and porbably more often) by parents. There are distinct advantages a child can reap by being diagnosed with ADD. Foremost are better grades and test scores that result from more lenient grading, extra time on exams and more individual attention.
I agree that ADD is often a misdiagnosis, and that alleged "ADDs" are really just bored with History class. But, I disagree that giving them more access to a computer will somehow give the child the ability to find his own way to learn. We're not talking about grad students researching a thesis, but teenagers that would rather be at the mall. I don' t know about you, but when I was in 10th grade the last thing I wanted to do was get on a computer to experiement with the Graphing Calculator App.
But maybe I'm crazy.
fact: computers can do two things better than any human being. they are ( 1 ) calculate, and ( 2 ) remember.
fact: students k thru 12 have to learn more than two things in school.
fact: its not using the pencil in school that causes learning, but using the BRAIN that causes learning.
fact: there are 3 ways a student can learn. ( 1 ) by listening, ( 2 ) by seeing, and ( 3 ) by doing.
fact: it still takes the human brain one year to learn how to program a computer, and i am not referring to 'm$ front page trash'.
until computers can be developed to teach by the methods stated above, then their place in the class room will not be as important.
There are four main uses that we have identified:
- Collaboration - Our students use PC's for e-mail, sharing files to complete group projects, passing on links to web sites and articles from on-line databases. It's not uncommon to have two or three students working together with one serving as the "record keeper" keeping track of information which is later saved and shared electronically with the other group members. Isn't this the way you work as an adult? For our students, their
/home folder becomes a virtual notebook where they organize their important stuff and the /public share becomes a means of exchange.
- Communication - The most used applications in our classrooms are not the flashy, multimedia based, tutorial programs that you see in the educational sections of software stores. When our students are working they use the same programs the rest of the world uses, word processing, e-mail, spreadsheets and presentation software. There is little room for the computer as tutor concept in today's busy classroom.
- Analysis - Here's an area where computers have changed education (or should...). With spreadsheets and graphing tools now on every PC, students have the power to ask and answer "what if" questions and to make ready comparisons of data. Anyone who has used a spreadsheet to investigate something as simple as the costs of a trip to Disneyland will understand how useful these tools are in the classroom. Examples of good programming exist in things like the chart wizard in Excel and OO Calc. Preview buttons and updated wysiwyg windows make it easy for students to interact with the software and make choices. They may be using a wizard but they are still in control of what's going on.
- Creativity - Some of our most empowered users of technology are art and music students. Our art teachers were quick to see the potential in computers. PC's are seen as creative tools by our students after taking PC art classes where before they were only seen as productivity tools.
-- K12LTSP.orgOur students were quick to incorporate a networked environment into their day to day school life. They use it to get their work done and have found many ingenious social adaptations as well. As tools for collaboration, networked PC's are changing the classroom in the same ways they have changed the workplace.
Presentation software packages like PowerPoint and OO Impress are easily incorporated into networked classrooms. Teachers can use presentation software to add multimedia content to lessons. Students use these software tools as "virtual poster boards" for class reports. Some things just don't change and telling everyone what you know is still a big part of learning. Creating the presentation is still what brings it all together for many students.
Desktop publishing is an important use of PC's in today's schools. From one page flyers to student run newspapers, PC's make it happen. This is an area where computer use has acted as an equalizer in that everyone can now publish their ideas.
Expecting underqualified teachers to teach challenging subjects while requiring them to use unfamiliar hardware, someone else's idea of appropriate software, and an unstable environment (email, messaging) when no-one has really thought out the necessary changes to classroom behavior and trained teachers appropriately...well, I think it's a recipe for disaster and I'm extremely relieved that all my children are past school age. With luck the system will have changed by the time any grandchildren are old enough.
A true story. A few years back I briefly considered going back into teaching. To be exact, I considered doing a course that would have qualified me to teach teachers to use IT in the classroom. There were two problems. First, the college turned out not really to know what the course content should be. The person in charge was a pre-IT trained educator, not a computer scientist or an educational psychologist. Oh, and second, he admitted that there was no guarantee that the Government would actually fund these training posts.
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is looking for the way out.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Seriously, I remember being in High School, and they had the computer labs upstairs, and computers in the library. Everybody gets on them, and they usually know WAY more than some halfwit librarian or teacher, and so they just do some multitasking, making it look like they're doing work, and just surf the net, or play Drug Wars. And when they do computer classes, they aim them at people who have no computer experience, which isn't fair. I remember completing most of my Computer Science classes in 10-20 minutes, and then having to sit there for another hour and a half while the girls and stoners stumbled through Borland C++ or QBASIC or whatever God awful piece of out of date trash they fed to us. It costs the government too much money to keep all the computers in the state/province/country up to date, so kids will always have to deal with near obsolete programs, at least until they reach University or College...
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
i design educational materials for publishers. how could anybody expect technology to be useful in education without any planned assessment assessment implies known results, not testing. perhaps looking at the pew study posted earlier, and maybe looking at "the teaching gap", one can begin to find some clues. teachers and professional development is the area where technology will most change education. though my clients don't want to here it, textbook are dead. they have been dead. go read one!
The Alliance for Childhood studied this subject and published a report on Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood, which is worth a read.
am i the only person here who was actually helped by computers?
programming in high school helped me tremendously. if it werent for computers, id probably still be wondering what things like algebra and calculus were good for.
if used correctly, computers can be quite effective in teaching students to use logic to solve complex problems.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
ify...
In the hands of the intellegent, they amplify that persons ability to learn, teach and all the rest. In the hands of the stupid and ignorant, they make for immense stupidity and ignorance. All the "Spice Racks" not withstanding, a good film is made by a good editor who understands what they are doing and what the desired result will be. Same thing with teaching. The concept that all you have to do is to put machines in the hands of teachers who max out at AOL is an obvious fallacy. If you put them in the hands of teachers who understand their field and can teach their field with nothing more than a hunk of chalk and a blackboard they will increase the understanding and depth of knowledge.
Its the basics. Not the ribbons and bows that matter.
About two years ago, I sat down with three of the key players in our public school district's "technology infusion" project (read: get as many computers into classrooms as possible). I was there as a consultant to help them try and find a way to integrate technology into their music education program.
I asked the question - "what do you plan on using all these machines for in each classroom throughout the school, besides in the music department?". The answer - basically, a buzzword laden answer that meant little more than "every other school is getting computers, we have to compete".
And that, friends, is the heart of this, and I would wager a lot of similar "infusion" programs - this need to get the computers into classrooms, but no plan whatsoever on what the actual educational purpose is. How can we expect teachers to effectively do anything with technology when the only thing addressed with many of these programs is the "how" to get computers, but not the "why"? Not one single person I could talk to at the school actually knew what the educational benefit was supposed to be - just get 'em and use 'em and the kids will somehow get smarter.
I think the problem is that there really is not much of a justifiable reason to include computers in general classrooms - at least, not a reason anyone has really come up with and proven to be succesful. "Computerizing" classrooms is a knee-jerk reaction to trying to repair what are fundamental flaws in the education system.
And after two years? Well, it turns out that the "infusion" project did little more than bring Instant Messanging and Email to the masses at school. The school ran out of money to spend on the music department's needs, so the bank of computers they got sit unplugged in the back of the room. Lots of money wasted, lots of talk... no result.
Many similar distractive affects of computers can be seen in the workplace.
Take PC's in the home for example. How many home owners of PC's actually use their computers for anything other than wordprocessing? I would imagine way over 50% of PC owners would be better of with a word processor. Where am I going with this you may ask? Well, a word processor is much more restrictive. With a word processor you can't wander off onto the internet or start downloading music instead of doing your work.
I think computers in the school/college and work place environment all need greater restriction. Most of the computers in the schools and colleges I've attended are just standard windows builds. This provides a ridiculous amount of distraction. All these machines need have installed are the applications that are required. Not solitare, not MP3 players etc.etc.
I am now at University, and finally after going through 15 years of the education system, I am seeing computers used in the way they should be. No longer is there a teacher handing out sheets on how to use powerpoint which they don't understand, then wandering off to the front of the class while the rest of the students go online or play games. Finally motivated students who actually want to learn about computers, sit down and actually use the facilities to their potential.
At the end of the day computers are only a tool. Schools need to recognise this, and not force computers into areas of the curriculum in which they are not effective by praising teachers that do so. Computer equipment should be available to those who want to learn about them and see them as an effective tool, not those who are forced to.
I think we have all gone online or played a game when we are supposed to be working. What chance is there of getting school children to concentrate on work without them being distracted?
Like any other tool, computer use must be aligned with the objectives of the organization. As a systems analyst for small business, I see this all of the time. Many businesses have enough technology, it is just not applied correctly.
Does that mean I think teachers should be computer gurus? Absolutely not! If they increased the number of computers in the schools by a factor of X did they increase the number of techies, analysts and etc by the same factor? I doubt it. In some of the school systems here there is one PC tech for the school system and he hardly has the experience to adequately evaluate system implementation strategies. And none of the authority! These are key components. You can't just dump complex tools on a society, such as a school, and expect them to use the tools to maximum potential from some innate genetic skill.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
I think the mistake you've made here is thinking that you can/should only do one of these two things:
- Memorize facts
- Understand relationships
Clearly we are capable of doing both, and if you're going to function effectively in the real world, you'd better be able to do both. Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that your approach is "wrong". I'm just saying that it is not a good way to educate people who will have to function in society.I don't think anyone would argue that you can't teach multiplication as repeated additions, but --apart from a useful too to introduce the topic-- why would you want to do that? Here are a few reasons not to "just teach concepts/formulas":
Please keep in mind that I am not advocating just teaching children facts. Teach them facts and how to use them.
It's not that hard to design a test that makes any calulator worthless. Even my wonderful TI-89. Hell, that thing does symbolic integration, and will keep things like pi as pi in the answer instead of replacing it with 3.digitsofprecision. That doesn't help if you don't know how integration works and how to set up the problem.
Given that, I have never been allowed to use a calculator in any college math class I've taken (4 of them). Those classes are about concepts. They don't ask you anything you can't do fairy quickly in your head.
But on the other side of the coin, I have always been allowed to use a calculator in any of my engineering courses. Most of the time, I don't really need it. They intentionally use numbers that will work out simply. Maybe at the end you punch the final answer into your calculator with all the constants, but by that point you've got 90% of the credit for the problem. They let you use them because you've already learned the concepts by then so if you don't remember the integral of arctan(x) you can just use your calulator, just like d would to "in the real world". If you don't have any idea what that integral is supposed to work out to be, you're going to get it wrong anyways.
I can see the situation you had as being one of two things:
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If you went into the test not understanding the math. You probably deserved at 54%.
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If you knew the stuff and just used your calulator to save time that should have been fine (unless it said to show your work and you didn't).
Anyways blame the teacher, not the calculator. I used a calc. in all my math classes in H.S. and I didn't feel helpless without one. Calcutors are good, they save me a lot to time, and they make a lot of math problems easier. Kids need to be taught the concepts and the technology. If you're not teaching them the concepts, you aren't teaching the technology, you're teaching button pushing and you may as well let everyone play "Oregon Trail" and call it a computer science course.Life is too short to proofread.
Most often this technology is just tossed over the wall to teachers. They didn't ask for it, don't know what is possible with it, and don't know how to integrate it usefully in their classroom.
That's not to say they can't be useful -- they can. The shrill voices condemning computers are not materially different than those that condemned ball-point pens a few generations ago (ignorance of quill pens would be the end of education, don't you know).
Professional training is a minimum requirement for computers to be useful in the classroom. In most places it's not available. Where it is available, it's typically unpaid, or comes out of time the teachers are using for lesson planning -- so they have to choose whether to be prepared for class or to get computer training.
A typical teacher works tons of unpaid overtime, gets paid next to nothing, and pays for classroom materials out of their own paycheck. Without a substantial training program computers are just a burden.
Currently teachers cant really teach either, theres too many kids in a class.
Software can let a kid learn at his own pace.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Just wondering - why didn't the administration like the "homework line" you set up? Sounds like a great idea to me...
There is a saying in educational technology (yes, that is my field), that computers will never replace teachers, but teachers who know computers will replace teachers that don't.
Well, a European associate turned that around: If you can be replaced by a computer, you should be.
I started my undergrad in graphic design, and there is a rightly prevailing attitude in that field that the computer is no more than a tool, and knowing a few graphics program does not make you a designer. The same holds true in education.
We have seen too many educational packages put together by business, marketing, and computer peopl,e and not enough with real instructional theory behind them. Most educators are not capableof that.
Computers are just tools, and if they've failed, it is not the computer's fault, but the people who used them incorrectly.
I for one am using computers to teach lesser-taught foreign languages (Arabic, Swahili, Korean, Chinese, etc.) to people I will never meet, and who do not have the time or resources to attend school. Computers have not failed here because: a) we are getting as good results as in-class equivalents, and b) these students would otherwise be left without this education.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Bullys, Jocks, Cliques, etc, sure you learn about the social structure and it only harms you in the long run when you learn how cruel and how ignorant people actually are.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I am glad you are pysched for college. I taught for 18 years, 8 at the college level, before I quit to start my own computer consulting business. Let me give you a couple of suggestions:
1) Don't be afraid to take longer than 4 years to complete your degree. Why? Because you may have to drop some classes rather than submit to a non-learning situation. It's YOUR money, you are hiring them. If they can't do the job then fire them.
2) If you get a bad vib about a class during your first week of attendance (teacher can't speak English well enough, doesn't appear to know the subject well enough, or can't teach it) then DROP IT! Better you wait for a good teacher than simple 'take' a class to get credit. Student that have already taken the class are good source of information about the teacher. Ask several. Be careful about opinions that are personal, not factual. Lots of poor students badmouth good teachers. If you have to change institutions to find good teachers then do so.
3) If you can avoid having to work at a partime job while in school then do so. Time spent studying will be more valuable to you than the minimum wage you'd earn. As a well-trained college graduate, especially in a tech or professional field, you will probably earn much more than an HS grad or someone who obtains a degree in 'history' or 'psychology' or 'education'. The income difference would be equivalent to paying yourself more than $1,000/day for every day you are in college if you maximize your education while in college instead of wasting your time in a part time job. Most of the time that meager income is just wasted on social events that are mainly parting and blasting yourself with drugs. AVOID DRUGS. If you start down that path you'll end up at the bottom of the garbage heap, broke, on welfare, or stealing for drugs. There are lots of wholesome social events that will enrich your college experience. Alcohol and drugs are not part of that experience.
If you have to borrow more to avoid working then do so. You'll be able to pay it back unless your degree target is the 'humanities' or 'education'. As others have mentioned: a well trained person won't last long in most public schools unless they learn to be political and sell out their ethics. Half of all new teachers quit at the end of their first year. Half of those remaining quit at the end of their second year. Within 5 years fewer than 10% of new teachers remain in the profession. Most leave because they don't have the personality to teach, and teacher training never revealed this fact to them. A large majority leave because they realize they know nothing worth teaching others. They become overly paid babysitters, and if they can't 'maintain discipline' they'll get fired. If you are the right combination of training, personality and politics you may survive. However, it was easier to 'survive' 30 or more years ago than it is today.
4) Learn how to use a computer before you get to college. Specifically, learn how to install/use the Linux OS+KDE and OpenSource software, and how to connect your computer to WinXX networks and boxes (Samba) and/or Novell networks (New-well). Linux/OpenSource will keep your software expenses under control and remove the risk of being labeled and/or prosecuted as a 'pirate'. It will also allow you to spend more of your funds for a good laptop and/or Desktop. OpenOffice will be of great help. MuPAD will be of great help if you are a science/math major/minor. GIMP is great for graphics and animation. So is Blender. QCad is great for CAD. SciCAD is great for mathematical modeling of physical systems. Check the LinuxApps site, and other OpenSource software sites, for apps specific to other disciplines.
5) I repeat. Your education is YOUR responsibility. Don't lockstep yourself into some 'plan' pushed by an organization or institution if it is not what is in your best interest.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Bullys, Jocks, Cliques, etc, sure you learn about the social structure and it only harms you in the long run when you learn how cruel and how ignorant people actually are.
/.
I take it you weren't any more popular at school than you are on
Gee, I wonder why?
Actually, I would go as far as to say the problem is even far deeper than not having good teachers - it's not having good parents. If the kid won't give respect to the teacher and pay attention, even the best teacher is going to have a hard time.
Really, we need to get the parents involved in the children's education, and at a very young age.
But then there is a deeper problem of parents who have to work a ton to make ends meet, as their minimum wage job forces them to do so, and they then don't have time (or energy) to get involved. But I don't want to go any deeper than that...
In my opinion (different than yours) computers involved in education should be focused on making sure students have a basic computer-use skill when they graduate. For example, the following things;
- Using a keyboard quickly
- Using a mouse and other pointing devices
- Knowing the basic parts and what they do; display, peripherals, cabling,
what a modem does, what a network card does, memory, cpu and cooling
- Not being afraid of the things
- Having respect for the internet and that bad things and good things that
are out there
- Knowing how to look stuff up, CD ROM, internet, whatever.
There are some things that I do not think are important, programming languages or real 'computer science', working with hardware, installing operating systems or applications. Classes for those things should be available, but are not absolutely necessary for pre-college education. 'Computers'in high school means 'programming'to some people, 'internet'to others and 'typing papers'to others. So I think it is important to distinguish what skills kids need and then go after them, not say 'computers in education' and hope it comes out the same way one expects. (HanzoSan and I we expect computers to do very different things in K-12 education.)I do agree with you that adding a computer to learning basic geography will not help if the basic geography information is not good, or if the teacher does not know Libya from Iceland in the first place, a computer will not help. Though there are some students that could probably use the infinite patience and ability to repeat and go through variations that a computer can provide easily, slapping ordinary class information onto a computer does no good.
I have been telling all my relatives and anybody else that might listen, that if their kid gets to be looking for a job or enters college without knowing some basic stuff about computers they might as well get a lobotomy and go sell fries at McDonalds. People are NO USE to my business at all if they do not know how to use a computer, I do not care if they are CPAs, HR, receptionist, or are the best salesperson in the world. In my opinion having basic (see above) computer skills are essential as basic hygiene nowadays, and not in the future knowing a little bit about computers will be like the high-school diploma was in the '80s. 'Don't have one? Ok. Get out, no job for you.'
I'm a little angry, so forgive me if I get haughty. I didn't respond well to "rote learning" as a kid.
Second, as only one person pointed out, and as has been largely forgotten by the educational system as it stands today -- after presenting the subject matter, it must be drilled..
"Rote-drills" only work for the small percentage of kids who are wired for that kind of learning. And many of those kids won't focus their attention enough to learn even then.
As a result, bright, precocious, successful kids become more successful. Some truly brilliant kids who are developmentally delayed, who have ADD, who have different intelligences are relegated to "career tracks" where they will not blossom. So when the pathways develop that allow for higher math learning, for example, the kid's already in some vocational program learning to be an MCSE. What a waste!
The old method of "you will sit still and learn this like it or not, end of discussion" may not have been "enjoyable" but it WORKED.
It really didn't work that well. It worked for lots of kids who were in school, who were suited to it. Remember, lots of kids dropped out during the "glory days" of instructivist rote-drills. Lots of kids finished school at 8th grade, then went to work in factories or farms. These are the kids who were wasted on "rote drills." Sure, some of them were just unintelligent. But many of them weren't suited to the 19th century education you advocate. That worked well in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We had lots of laborer jobs. Now we have an information economy. We just don't have that many of those types of jobs anymore.
We shouldn't just throw away kids who don't respond well to rote learning. It's a very narrow view of learning and very elitist.
Want to fix the problems generated and exacerbated by computers in the classroom? Easy. Restrict computers and in-school computer use to one place: the classes that are specifically *about* computers.
I guess that would be the easiest way to do it. It's probably the easiest and quickest way to be eclipsed by Europe and Asia. How about doing more research and figuring out how to make computer assisted learning work?
Now, if you're truly interested in what real educators have learned about the educational process, you can do some googling on the following topics:
Constructivism
Multiple Intelligences
Ed Tech theory
And here begins my rant about Slashdot, and parent poster, please forgive me if I offend. Lord knows I've said and written some incredibly stupid stuff - orders of magnitude worse than what I took offense at in your post.
Why do we tend to write things like "Of COURSE, any IDIOT would know that XXXXX would solve YYYYY problem?" Do we think that the experts in the field are all sitting around with their thumbs up their fannies? We have a huge field of research in this area. It's fine to share your opinion. That's what Slashdot is about. But come on, don't be so arrogant about it - like the solutions are SO OBVIOUS, ANY IDIOT could figure them out. We are working on the solutions while so many others are just whining and griping.
Inform yourself, do some digging, some reading. Problems are almost always more complex than they first appear. Solutions are almost always more difficult to achieve than it seems they should be.
End rant.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
This phenomena was actually wildly expected among thinking people everywhere. Especially in the math community. My higher math teacher in high school was predicting this 10 years ago... (pre-calc/calc is what he taught), He never let us use calculators for anything, because technology abstracts the basic ideas away, and that is what you need, the basics, then you can build anything once you have those down. He also taught CS classes, basic and pascal, I see it even in the technology sector today, especially in most CS curricula in college that I've seen. They teach purely high level languages that abstract away all CPU/register issues, and so, the students get a dumbed down education not really understanding the way the registers work, how the memory works, how the cpu actually talks to these things, and therefore they write bloated code, because they don't see that there is a more efficient way at a lower level, because that lower level is abstracted away. Bottom line is kids are lazy, if you give them a nice graphing calculator, or a computer that has a nice graphing program, they will never learn pre-calc or calc, because they don't have to, they just type the equation into the program and it spits out the answer... unfortunately when they go to take standarized tests, they can't pass, cause they are now dependent on the technology, in essence they don't know anything, they've become mindless monkeys who know how to type equations into digital devices...
.02
To fix the problem?? No more calculators in math classes period, bring back the slide rules (my understanding of logarythms is severly lacking because I never had to use one... see I can't even spell it right)...
just my
The public education system in the United States in inept, what makes people think computers will change that?
Like practically all of you, this study comes as no suprise to me either. When I was in K-12 back in the mid 80's to late 90's the only thing I remember using a computer in class for was playing a game. I never wrote a single paper at school using a computer, nor did I ever use it to do research. Having a computer in the classroom meant one thing to students and one thing only... games. And the funny thing is none of the teachers I've ever had discouraged that attitude, or more accurately, encouraged the perception of the pc as a learning tool.
I've always beleieved the pc (like tv) has had minimal impact in my acquisition of knowledge because a pc cannot teach you to think. It is the attitudes and actions of the teachers and parents of students that set the stage for their apporach and attitude towards education.
That being said computers cannot be ignored as a tool for aiding students in becoming educated (internet, online encyclopedias, word processing, desktop publishing, blah, blah). For that reason I think school districts shouldn't spend money in purchasing and maintaining computer labs and should offer incentives to the parents of students by supplying them with vouchers to make purchasing a computer for their home more viable. That way the cost of maintaining/upgrading equipment is transferred from the school to the student who is the actual user of the equipment. After all, if a student has purchased a study guide to help him perform better in math or english and if it requires special software to be installed why shouldn't he be able to do so? Let the use and upkeep of computers be the responsibility of those who use them. A voucher system would also give students the opportunity to purchase a computer they are most comfortable with whether it's a Mac, pc (windows/linux), desktop, or laptop. Why should the student be forced to do his homework a certain way using a specific computer/application when he has a choice?
In my mind, there are a vast number of reasons for schools not to have computers in the classroom and having a voucher system in its place. From my own experience, a voucher system for purchasing a computer would have greatly eased the buying process of my family's first pc and I am absolutely positive that is true for millions of other people out there.
The problem is, computers are a tool but they're being used as a crutch.
Computers are not cost-cutting measures, as far as education is concerned. You will spend money on them. Lots of it. And if you spend it wisely, then there will be great benefit. But do not think you can replace teachers, or librarians, or libraries for that matter. You will not save money by putting computers in the classroom; if you are, then you're doing something wrong.
The main problem is that computers are absolutely wonderful tools. They do very well in terms of augmenting people's existing abilities. However, schools are not teaching students to use computers this way; they're teaching students to essentially replace their own abilities with those of computers. And then we wonder why little Billy can't add, never mind that he's never had to because his teacher always told him to use a calculator instead.
Technology is good. But we're using it inappropriately, and we're teaching it too young. Calculators should be strictly forbidden in math classes, at least up through basic algebra. Basic four-function calculators might be allowed in other classes where math is important but secondary to the overall concepts, but even there it shouldn't be permissible right away. At least through grade school papers should be required to be handwritten, and there's something to be said for requiring them all the way up through high school, with intermediate drafts turned in as well. No better way exists to encourage a clear, concise writing style than making wordiness an inconvenience; any writer can tell you that. Internet-based research, while it should not be forbidden (it's an important resource), should be severely restricted up through middle school. Kids can't be allowed to forget that while a great deal of information can be found on the Net, there is a great deal for which one must continue to look elsewhere.
Even worse than this, however, is that we're not teaching kids what they need to know about computers. We're teaching them essentially all the wrong stuff. A little basic programming should be mandatory. Nothing major, just a few lines of Logo or Python or Cocoa (the kid-based programming environment, not the object-oriented API in Mac OS X) or something else that's something suitably kid-friendly. A little of this, particularly in conjunction with a class in logic and problem-solving skills, could go a very long way. But even before that, where are the gradeschool-level courses in basic computer literacy? Not that we should be handing little Billy a bash prompt in kindergarten, but by fifth grade someone should at least know their way around the basics of a machine; enough to turn it on, turn it off, launch a program, and some basic troubleshooting.
Computers can enhance the mind, and in this they have the potential to do great good. But we're teaching kids in such a way that they replace the mind. The consequences of that will be disastrous.
Damn, I remember having to try to bribe the librarians to let me have grownup books. "Awww, what do you mean i cant read this im old enough!! MOM!! Can i read this!!!"
My parents usually went on the grounds if im old enough to be interested in it, i was old enough to read it.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
without reading the article, i have a couple of thoughts/questions...
why are we expecting young kids to learn some of the core subjects/concepts at an early age? if a kid does not learn a core concept at an early age, he surely will miss out and likely will find learning later in life to be more difficult. (magic bullet theory, etc)
if my kid doesn't learn basic algebra in gr 2, he surely will have more difficulty in gr 3 - 12; i'd rather not see him learn these concepts until his teens (iirc, that would be grade 6 or 7) so i can be sure my child is mentally mature enough
most people would be better off learning these subjects/concepts at a more adult age.
i think when kids are kids, we should be teaching them to play well with other kids and things like cooperation, etc. heck, maybe there should even be a class called 'consequences of your actions' and teach kids, using history, how your own actions can affect those around you
i believe this is a problem with society, that we cannot facilitate the learning needs that have been imposed (by our societal needs) on our children.
in regards to the computer, i believe it has value in being a vast/universal resource, but I wouldn't expect anyone to forceably learn from using it. also, time spent on the computer is usually leisure time, whereas learning in a classroom means a child has to deal with being: on-time, attentive, cooperative, and allowing them to make friends
Unfortunately some people don't know the difference between computer education and computer training. However I think they might just notice if their daughter was given sex training rather than sex education.
Cliff Stool ..er.. Stoll has a book out that's not that bad, called High Tech Heretic that I have checked out from my local free-beer-as-long-as-you-bring-it-back book repository. His book The Cuckoo's Egg was his best though, and I don't think he can top that one.
This article popped up and my first thought was, "Well DUH!"
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
I could rant for hours, but the overall point is this: Computers have almost no place in a classroom unless that is the topic of the course (such as computer repair). For other purposes, a lab setup (preferably an app-server/thin-client model) is superior. Most of the money spent on IT in schools should be redirected to better equipment in other courses, salaries, and maintenance.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
This bureaucratic attitude is bad in business, but it's plain horrible for education. I have seen countless school computer labs in disarray, because the "IT" people hired to put the lab together can barely snap together a computer, let alone approach infrastructure problems.
This can negatively impact education in a big way. My sisters' (private) school decided that they all needed Compaq laptops. But they didn't fully convert their curriculum over, so my 100lb. sister has to carry a 10Lb. laptop, plus tons of heavy books. The laptops are not durable enough for the school environment, the wireless network is laughably insecure, and the IT budget just keeps going up and up.
Most teachers aren't tech-savvy enough to counter these "expert" arguments, and their input (usually requesting Macs) is often ignored.
If computers are to be treated as "educational tools," then educators should be making the decision, not IT. IT should be for service and repair, not "computer dictators." They have seriously overstepped their boundaries and are harming education.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Regarding over use of calculators on mathematics and the lack of learning basic principles...well. You know in highschool? those bubble exams? When was the last time you saw space to show your work? I thought so. It always burned me that my teachers would try to emphasize "trying" and "showing your work" but in the end it was the answer that counted more. and on the exam, it was all that mattered.
As for computer classes. My keyboarding teacher in highschool worked in a mill before she became a teacher. she had a diploma and no degree. Result? she single handedly took down a computer lab via boot sector virus that got trasnmitted around. she also had no clue how to fix things that were broken. later, in 'computer apps', the teacher let me troubleshoot most of the class, becuse they were so clueless that if she helped every last one of them follow the directions that were inthe book, or fix somethin another studnet had screwed up, she woudl have had no time to teach.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Research on Teaching Math with Direct Instruction
e s/22497.html
Direct Instruction with Readying
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/research/conferenc
Doug Carnine is working with the President to get quality teaching techniques to teachers. None of these techniques need computers to teach.
I have seen a film where the creator of Direct Instruction took 5 year old kids from inner city Chicago, all black and labeled as needing special ed, and he had them doing algebra.
I didn't learn this kind of algebra till I was in 9th grade, and these little kids were answering questions on a black board in their heads. (like figuring out the hypotenus (sp) of a right triangle) and they were all excited and raising their hands saying "I know, I know!"
Of course the reason Direct Instruction hasn't made it into mainstream education, despite the incredible wealth of data and research showing it works better than every other system used today, is because it puts the resposibility for children learning in the teachers lap.
There is no excuses for teachers if the kids don't learn with DI, because kids _can_ learn and it's been shown to work with the slowest learners.
Our current systems allow teachers to say "well the kid didn't learn because the kid [enter excuse here]" (excuses range from "the kids has ADD" to "the kid didn't pay attention in class") which always ends up with the result "it's the kids fault the kid didn't learn".
Some interesting things to read about DI.
http://www.adihome.org/esp/v17n3/letters.pdf
http://www.adihome.org/esp/v17n3/index.html
-v
What gets me is that everytime I throw out an opinion regarding an educational issue, it's basically "mind your own business." But many teachers fashions themselves as computer experts and insists on giving me advice on how to run things, and if I don't bend, trying to force it via administrative means...
The sad part of this is, most of this is just for show. "We have computers in every classroom." I bet that is why there is two in each, so they can say computers instead of "a computer." Sounds so much more impressive.
Did anyone but politicians really believe that introducing computers would be sufficient to cure the deep illness afflicting government run youth indoctrination in the US? The schools are more concerend with youth detention, indoctrination and drugging if they student is unruly than with teaching. No amount of hardware will fix the result disaster.
I think the best use for computers in schools is as a replacement for the textbook... not necessarily as a subject unto themselves. In my school district (Tracy, CA), there have been a lot of complaints over students having to carry large amounts of heavy textbooks (at least one, sometimes more, for each class). A single elementary school in the district is set up to be a "technology magnet school" and all the students get to use a district-supplied laptop. If every student in the district got a laptop, tablet, PDA, or some form of access to electronic copies of the physical textbooks they have to use now, I think this would greatly reduce the number of parent and student complaints, as well as textbook storage problems. Also, when the information in a textbook becomes outdated, the book itself has to be replaced. With an eBook, only the copy of the file on a central server needs to be updated (patched, not necessarily replaced) and those changes will automatically be distributed to each client accessing the file. I think this would be a much more optimal and focused use of computing technology in schools, as well as a definite step forward in the educational system.
As for emphasizing IT as a subject, I don't think it's absolutely necessary for every student. At my old elementary school, we went into the computer lab for at least one hour every week. We played Mario Teaches Typing for 15 min, and then used the rest of the time to type up a writing assignment that went on our english grade. We also had educational software such as Bailey's Book House and DinoPark Tycoon (???), and Internet access through buggy, crashprone Netscape 2.x. I think this time could've been much better served had typing skills, Internet access, and other such things had been integrated into some other curriculum rather than standing on their own. The students could learn more about the subject at hand while still acquiring useful computer skills.
I also don't doubt the value of certain educational software. Some of the teachers I have right now and have had in the past lead me to believe that an interactive CD-ROM would be more educational than a human literally reciting verbatim from a textbook.
Computers are changing EVERYTHING. Just because we do not know how to use them does not mean that they are not effective.
Yes compuers most certainly do change everything. You can find out just about anything you want from the internet at little or no cost. Learning how to find information on the web is a useful thing to teach.
But the next comment is plain unsubstantiated uninformed hyperbole. You say...
Our modern education system sucks. Absolutly, positivly sucks. All it does is turn a majority of students completly off of knowledge. It does not encourage the kind of curiosity and logical thought that make for an intelligent person.
I mean besides the obvious spelling mistakes which I'm sure the author added for affect, this is nothing but a rant.
Ya had me then ya lost me rant-man. Next time - just take one dip - and end it.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
I've had more than a little bit of experience with school systems and computers, and it would be my guess that it is not the failure of the technology that is at fault, but rather the educators. I've seen many a Parent Teachers Association plug money into new computers, only to have them sit collecting dust because those responsible for gearing this technology towards the student were too afraid of it (and too ignorant of the uses in most cases) to take advantage of the tool. That is not to say that educators don't do their job, in most cases they do-But they have not been prepared to use technology to help in their task.
There are a lot of people growing up today who want to learn to use computers in a productive way. For some, this is limited to MS Word and Paint. For others, C, FORTRAN, or whatever else. Not everyone will use computers the same.
The problem is, the computer doesn't sprout arms and legs and a cartoon face on the monitor and teach you to use it. You need qualified people. How many of us out there who bemoan the fact that children today aren't learning what they're supposed to are willing to hang up their $40,000++++ year jobs (if you have one) and start pulling in $20,500 (starting parochial school teachers salary in my area, slightly more for public schools) just to share that knowledge.
I know I wouldn't. And I volunteer with children in other activities and I have found I work great with children, explaining things to their level without dumbing it down more. I've tutored individual students with great success. That being said, wild horses could drag me into a classroom with the education system the way it is today.
Start paying teachers a salary in the ballpark of the professionals of their field, and you'll attract the teachers who are enthused, know what they're doing, and become an asset. That isn't to say that there already aren't, but my experience has shown me that for the most part, before college, computer science teachers are teachers who just couldn't cut it elsewhere, and that's a shame.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
http://www.carnegielearning.com
I think this phased approach to teaching computer usage in schools is the way to go. Computers are still treated like novelty, though in my son's school, they now have an instructor for their computer class who is not an "educator" first, but someone who actually has computer and networking experience. But his school is a parochial school, so they can get away with that, where a public school couldn't.
One of the things that amazes me the most is that with all this emphasis on using computers, the schools don't teach typing anymore. So more kids are typing than ever before, and none of them know how to do it efficiently.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
My earliest memory of a teacher breaking down in front of a computer was in 4th grade. I ended up teaching her (suck that, evil bitch) how to open Word for Macintosh and how not to be scared of all those buttons. To look at teachers in my senior year of HS, there wasn't much improvement 8 years later.
Teaching with computers cannot be effective if the teachers spend class time fighting with simple problems they don't know how to fix. That was a problem in my English classes, the lesson plan just skidded to a halt until a student came to the rescue. I think computer LITERACY (not just familiarity) should be a hiring requirement for teachers who use computers as teaching tools. Yes, it's a bigger investment in summer training... but if they're that incompetent they shouldn't be teaching.
I think it totally depends on how you use it. Computers are a mere tool that can be used to increase efficiency: of what? that depends...
Instead of blaming technology, we should rather question the way it's being used
I am unique, just like you, and you, and you...
Well, like everything, it has a double edge. Let me share: .. which often introduces subtle bugs. Sad, really.
In CS, these days, I see students all around me in what I call the "code monkey" phenomenon. Instead of trying to understand pointer arethmatic, b+ search trees, memory allocation, etc. They just tweak (their often bad) code and hit compile 87 times until something compiles. In the olden days, when we had to use timesharing and punchcards, it was an ordeal to convert your programs to something the machine could understand. This generally caused you to be extra special careful about what you were doing, and to think critically about what it is the computer was doing as it ran through your program. I don't see that anymore in CS students.. they just add +1 to this, or change around boolean operators
But on the other hands, students that have a clue can use the computer to do fancier, more clever things. I'd say there is a higher "upper limit" for what students can get out of increased ease of use out of their machines... but that also means we can have code monkeys running around that have no idea what they're writing.
If I could program a child like I write software, I would be patting you on the back, you seem to have a hard time remembering what being a kid is like, let alone understand that people are inherantly not logical.
It's easy for you to optimally conceptualize a simplified mathematical model only because you've been repetitively exposed to all its nuances for most of your life.
For example, you state that addition is subtraction, but you fail to see that addition is subtraction with the concept of negative numbers (a concept dependant on the concept and mechanics of subtraction). Keep in mind that in order for kids to conceptualize this, they must be intimately familiar with the mechanics, which is nessecary for mentally simulating the concepts.
I wholeheartly agree that kids should be taught more conceptual math along with thier mechanical math (when appropriate), but I think your assertions that we can substitute mechanical math with conceptual math is very naive.
In other words, you started the off on a good thought, but failed to think it through. (You should play a devil's advocate a little more)
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
If you've ever shared a computer lab with an education student.. (you know, the ones that try to power the computer on/off with the monitor on/off, or use the cdrom as a muffin holder..etc)
It's not so hard to understand why computers have such a hard time in the classroom when the teachers have no idea how to use them. It's like having a top of the line sports car but having no idea how to drive.
I thought I would point out a few good uses of computers in schools that I have experienced first hand. I agree that computers can easily do more harm than good, and that more emphasis is needed on fundamentals, but in some cases computers make good educational tools...
1) Physics classes. In my juniour year of HS physics most of our labs used computers. We had macs with peripheral optical and force sensors. We did the traditional rolling cart and air track experiments for learning about kinematics, but velocity, acceleration, forces, etc. were graphed precisely. This allowed us to learn about the relationships between velocity and acceleration, for example, easily for ourselves (for the most part we discussed these properties in class AFTER we observed them for ourselves). We also had software for working with circuit diagrams where you are given partial info about voltage, current and so on at some junctions and had to fill in the remaining values.
2) Art classes. In my advanced drawing and design class we used a mac paint program to design an image which we later painted. The art program allowed for quick "rapid prototyping" and evaluation by our teacher, and let us look at a version of the final image before starting with the paint.
The ultimate plays for Madden 2006
" Clearly we are capable of doing both, and if you're going to function effectively in the real world, you'd better be able to do both. Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that your approach is "wrong". I'm just saying that it is not a good way to educate people who will have to function in society."
Most people are not good at doing both(look at how many people fail math) however, also we have enough human calculators, the number crunching followers do not innovate, its the creative ones who understand how things work who make all the innovation. What good are you if you can do well on jepordy? you dont help society at all.
" I don't think anyone would argue that you can't teach multiplication as repeated additions, but --apart from a useful too to introduce the topic-- why would you want to do that? Here are a few reasons not to "just teach concepts/formulas": "
The goal is not to teach number crunching but to teach math I thought? Math is just formulas, numbers have nothing to do with math, numbers are like saying that programming is all about interger variables, its not, sure it uses variables but theres alot more to it.
1. It doesn't scale well. Fine. So you're teach multiplication as repeated additions. What are you going to do when you have to teach them exponents? It's easy for children who can multiply as an independent operation to extend their understanding to repeated multiplying, but I would not like to try to convince a classroom that learning that (3+3+3)+(3+3+3)+(3+3+3) is a particularely eligant or useful skill."
3+3+3 = A+A+A
(A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) + (A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) + (A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) = A^3
The reason to teach them the formulas without teaching them the numbers is it teaches them what really matters.
The formula is simple.
This formula explains exactly what A squared is, this formula explains EXACTLY.
Your way of teaching would have kids using this formula without even knowing what the hell is going on. Dont tell me kids cant learn this, its alot easier than memorizing the times tables. Here I'll explain it all in one sentence if you cannot remember the formula.
A number which adds to itself by its own value then repeats the process 3 times is squared.
3+3+3 = 9, then add 3 nine times to get the answer.
"# It wastes too much time. Children who don't know basic math facts (memorized, not computed) are at a disadvantage when they are learning higher level math. I'm not talking about calculus here; they are at a disadvantage learning algebra. While other students are distributing, students who don't know math facts can't keep up with the arithmetic."
Thats why we invented the calculator. Einstien failed arithmetic.
# It's not helpful in life. When you're shopping after Christmas and need to figure out what something that is 30% off will cost, it's good to know that 30% is about 1/3 and how to divide by 3 in your head.
Not everyone is capable of doing this. Einstien couldnt do it. Sure its good to be a human calculator if you are gifted in that area but you cannot make everyone into a number cruncher, its not a natural ability for everyone just like not everyone has good handwriting, and no matter how much they practice they will never be able to do this stuff in their head.
The goal here is what? Give people a better understanding of math? Or filter out the number crunchers who are good at memorizing facts from the creative types who manipulate and innovate the facts to create new ones?
You can teach someone to draw by making them learn the facts but they will never truely be an artist. You can take an artist and try to teach them the proper way to draw but they will never be able to draw in any style but their own. When you take math and turn it into just pure number crunching what you are doing is telling people to be human calculators, sure this is useful to you, and sure it might even be useful for everyone, but some people can do this easily because their brain works this way and others just are never going to remember their multiplication tables, will NEVER be able to do math in their head and will ALWAYS need a calculator unless its simple addition/subtraction.
This is why I say why should we bother focusing on number crunching and calculations when we have calculators to do this? The chance of someone growing up in this age without a calculator is slim, the value of being able to do math in your head becomes less as technology advances eventually calculations will cease to matter, computers will be everywhere and all that will matter are the formulas you feed into them.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Disgusting. People who like public education will blame anything but the public education system itself for its failure to educate children. Blame a lack of funds, or the children, or computers, or anything, but never admit that the system is simply fundamentally flawed because it's run by bureaucrats whose pay isn't commensurate with their results.
I endured years of public education and got out having learned virtually nothing of history or geography. It was a complete waste of time and left me with nothing but bitterness.
teh intarnet hutz english performence?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!11111
*Splort*
"We need to turn out smarter teachers and give them incentives to perform, like better pay, long before we think about having a computer for every student."
Like any union, the NEA has always opposed, and continues to oppose, performance measurement of its members. Pay is determined by education level and years of experience. Since the NEA is the single biggest contributor to the Democratic Party, crackdowns aren't coming anytime soon.
In the capitalist sense, I agree that paying teachers better would cause smarter people to become teachers, but it would increase people of all intelligence levels in pursuing teaching. Without metrics for teacher performance, higher wages would just turn into an employment lottery, with more teachers than available jobs.
These reasons are part of why I support private school vouchers. If you're sick of the NEA, bad teachers, and wasteful budgets, you should be able to opt out. Microsoft can't touch public schools in the control they have as a monopoly. If you use a competing product (i.e. private school), you first pay for the public (monopoly) school with your tax dollars and THEN pay for the school your child is actually attending.
Education budgets continue to grow faster than the rate of inflation while schools simultaneously reduce the quality of their product, as demonstrated by test scores. There is no accountability. In fact, the worse schools perform, the faster taxpayers WILLINGLY pull out their wallets and hand over the cash.
With a voucher system, school improvements would not require constant attention from politicians who are already paid off by the NEA. Improvements would come from lower levels as school compete for students because they receive funding roughly proportional to the number of students they have can attract. Problem solved.
char *mySig;
Three years ago I was responsible for teaching a great many of the public school teachers in Calgary basic computer skills. The Calgary Board of Education decided to make said skills required for their staff, and contracted the training company I was working for at the time to teach classes on basic use of the computer, Internet, scanners, etc.
The experience led me to the conclusion that it is not the presence of computers that makes for a poor classroom experience - it is the ability of the teacher. Many of those I taught actually resisted learning something new, either being techno-phobic or holding the attitude that they were being "forced to learn" by the board. Many had a hard time learning anything at all. The overall attitude I got from many was that they had learned everything they needed to know in teacher's college 10, 20, 30 years ago and through their own experience - and how dare this young whippersnapper try to show them something new.
The reality is that the vast majority of students in any classroom, except for those in low-income areas, will already have access to a computer at home. They will have grown up with one, unlike their teacher, and likely know how to use it better. My advice would be to throw off the censoring software and let them at it. Let the students come up with new and interesting ways to fulfill their assignments with these tools. The same skill is likely beyond the abilities or comprehension of their teacher.
Any idiot can learn how to use a blasted mouse or Word Processor. But I still wasted many hours doing homework on this in college. And I was in computer science.
What they should teach is programming so that children can really understand them.
Unfortunately in America the teachers union opposes educating or hiring computer teachers for budget reasons.
What do you mean kewl isnt a word?
Or l3370 h4x0rz?
PKD is also an abbrevation for Philip K. Dick, an author slightly more known to the technically literate crowd than is Polycystic Kidney Disease.
You are of course entitled to have any sig you want. Just as long as you know one or two people might be slightly irritated at ending up somewhere they Did Not Expect from following that link.
These conclusions are based on some time teaching (CS) and observing. I should note that in classrooms I essentially never use computers, - I don't even use Powerpoint (or the like). I do require my students to use computers extensively, but this is don in "lab" times and outside classes.
My first doubts about how useful computers might be came about when I was a grad student in a largish (and excellent) US university. The math people started teaching calculus with maple. Seems reasonable - nice to be able to plot things and check answers on problems. And then I started to notice that the students were spending all their time figuring out Maple, and very little of it figuring out calculus.
Later I was essentially told that I had to teach students in a classroom area where each student had a computer, and I had one with a projection screen. It didn't take long to discover that the students were playing games, surfing the web and so on. Not that this was a surprise - if I'd been a student in the class I'd have been doing the same myself (I used to read novels and do crosswords in class).
So, computers get in the way in a couple of ways - first they serve as walls between the students and what they are learning - the students learn about the programs, not the target (ie Maple instead of Calculus, MS Word instead of writing ....), and they use the computers as a way to avoid actually looking at the material.
This doesn't mean that I want to toss them out of education - I don't.
For example, I think chat systems and forums (slashdot and its ilk) could potentially be the best way for students to learn to write. Especially if they're writing for their peers - allow a certain amount of spelling and grammar comments and if they really want to communicate they'll learn the spelling and the grammar - and then go on to try to write persuasively and well.
Learning a simple programming language early on, then using that to maintain the computer and student "accounts" also has a lot of potential. Especially if it allows for drawing style graphics (GUI crap is less important). Once the language is known, students can learn to plot curves, plot locations of a "baseball thrown at a 27 degree angle at a speed of...." as well as computing the result by hand and so on.
Email and the like have other possibilities - if there were worldwide chat (IRC and its friends) its possible for students to chat to people across the world. Might be a good way to encourage students to read a map, learn about other places. With digital photography they could exchange pictures of where they are living. (So you might have to limit k-12 students to "safe" areas, thats ok.)
There are problems - many teachers are seriously phobic about computers and even more phobic about letting students free to explore on them (fear of parents reacting at the slightest hint that their kids might learn something "untoward" is a big factor). Evidently it is much better for high school kids to bully and beat up people than to see a naked woman/man.
And it is certainly easier to let students do nothing and waste time than to try to teach them much of anything. As long as the paperwork gets filled out correctly, at least.
I learned to read and type in the wonderful world of Zork!
>kill troll with sword
>take axe
>verbose
See the problem is: Its like everywhere else, people are just looking to pickup their paychecks so they can scurry off to Walmart to spend money on shet they don't need. I had it good I suppose. Back when I was younger teachers cared and the only computer we had was in the library. There was more emphasis on hand writing than typing. Believe me that characteristic shows today. Just how good do you write in cursive?
:)
Could you if asked, hand-write a 7 page paper?
I think the people going to school to be teachers really should reconsider. All to often the majority of them can't even apply calculas or high school physics. I bet you aren't even aware that the majority of Radiologists have trouble with college algebra. I know. One of my old girlfriends and all her friends were having a tough time dealing with it. Glad I haven't needed their services in quite a while.
Nurses don't fair any better. Thats why its ok I don't get blood drawn and or too many shots. I'm scared to death I'll die. j/k
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0210/21.king.p hp
talks about the Maine program to give every student a iBook (eventually).
...///...
You wanna drink ANOTHER WOMAN!
In reading the other replies to your post, I thought of one other thing that might help. This may be a little past your first grader's ability, but the time will come when you play games that involve keeping score. It can be really to encourage her to keep the score. The math will be interspersed with the game and it's time together as a family, so it won't matter that the game slows down to wait for the score to be updated.
Also, to the posters questioning my computational skills, i do quite well. In a store, i can estimate the bill in my head, with taxes and discounts. I balance my checkbook in my head. I am the designated score-keeper for games with my family (and i total the score with each turn, not at the end of game).
And to the memorization naysayers. I can't imagine having to add when I want to do exponents. what a waste of time. And try teaching the concept of negative numbers without first teaching subtraction. There is a reason why negative numbers are not taught in first and second grade, but subtraction is.
and about the finger counting. maybe someone else can comment on this, but you might want to try having her wear mittens or sit on her hands while you do flash cards.
counting fingers is like looking at the keyboard while you learn to touch type. it may help you be fast and accurate at the beginning, but it quickly limits your progress.
Computers aren't technology. They're artifacts of technology. Technology is more like what we consider science and learning, though it is more oriented towards solving problems. Problems may be philosophical as well as technical and require a range of skills -- from communication and critical thinking to programming and math -- for their resolution. It's funny how we end up "supporting" technology as if it's this great wire and steel god of some sort, when, in fact, it's our own activity -- our own minds, institutions, and ways of doing and knowing.
The initial report operates on an assumption that the educational system in question also makes -- that computers are some how a "subject" and that english is a "subject." This is flawed: WE are the subject, not computers or english or whatever. Luckily, ALOT of schools out there are understanding and deploying more learner-centered curricula that are themselves developed along with parents and community members. Anything less is folly.
Your post is so filled with inaccurate statements, unsubstantiated opinion and irrelevancy that it would be ridiculous for me to try to write a reply that does not also make me look like an idiot. But, since this is slashdot, and I have the day off, here goes nothing... [for those of you keeping score at home, I'm in bold and he's in italics]
Most people can do both reasonably well. The number of people who fail math classes is small (less than 10% in my experience). But you go on with several other mistakes. First of all you maintain that teaching someone math facts in antithetical to teaching them mathematical reasoning this is not the case. These two aspects of a well rounded math education complement each other. Secondly, you incorrectly associate knowing math facts with being human calculators and number crunchers. People who know math facts may or may not be good at arriving at more complex arithmetic problems quickly, though they are usually capable of arriving at them accurately. Thirdly, you have associated knowing math facts with a lack of creativity without demonstrating that this is so. Perhaps it is characteristic of your own educational background, but I can assure you that it need not be the case.
You have here (as you will do repeatedly throughout your post) ignored the fact that I am advocating teach both basic math facts and mathematical reasoning. I am assuming here that what you mean by the formulas is similar to my mathematical reasoning, but when I was in school the phrase just learn the formulas had more of a rote memorization feel to it.
You can make lots of silly statements like numbers have nothing to do with math. On some level (once you reach a high enough understanding of the subject) these are true, but they don't really serve as useful a purpose when you're dealing with younger minds who are experiencing these ideas for the first time. Here are some more that are equally true and equally dubious in value when teaching:
- Music has nothing to do with notes.
- Carpentry has nothing to do with wood.
- Art has nothing to do with what you see.
- Automobile mechanics has nothing to do with fixing cars.
- Poetry has nothing to do with words.
Interesting to think about how they might be true, but not all that useful when you are first introduced to a topic (except perhaps to get more involved students thinking in a new way).Um, that's not right. If 3+3+3 = A+A+A then your second line is not equal to A^3. This is, of course, clear to someone who know (presumably from memorizing, but possibly from using a calculator) that 3^3 = 27 and all those threes that you have on the other side of the equal sign do not.
Maybe you meant to say explains exactly what A cubed is (which it also does not do). I believe it is better to explain exponents as a shorthand way of doing multiple additions (just like they learned that multiplication was a shorthand was to do multiple additions).
You are spending way too much time on this one example, and getting the math wrong anyway. Why would you want to teach a student what cubed or squared was anyway (excepting as far as to say and perhaps have them memorize that we have special words for the two most common exponents)? Isn't it better to teach exponents as something like, the exponent tells you how many times to multiply by the other number (which we call the base)? You probably also advocate teaching basic addition via set theory.
Other people in other repies to other posts that you've made have adequately pointed out why it is useful to be able to do math when a calculator isn't present, but I'll add one more nail to the coffin. It is because I know math facts that I could tell that your example above was wrong. It allows me to quickly check to see if my answer (or your answer) is reasonable. That Einstein wasn't good at something does not mean that we should excise it from our set of worthwhile skills.
I don't see how your argument is in any way meaningful. Just because some people can not do something is not a reasonable reason that we shouldn't teach it to people who can (and I believe most people can be reasonably proficient with math facts and mathematical reasoning).
You are the only person in this argument who is suggesting that people be segregated in some way. I am suggesting that nearly everyone can and should be encouraged to learn basic math facts as part of a well rounded math education. In my experience it's usually a matter of convincing someone that they can memorize a few facts. These same kids who claim that they can not memorize things can routinely recite the lyrics to an entire album of music. It is truly rare to find someone who has honestly tried and can not learn the multiplication table.
You start off well enough: sure this is useful to you, and sure it might even be useful for everyone. Then why on earth would you not try to teach it to everyone? It is really starting to sound to me like you aren't good at memorizing (or have never really tried) and so you're trying to convince yourself that you are just as well off as everyone who can. It's not true. In my case, I don't spell very well at all. This doesn't mean that teaching people to spell is bad. I have a rougher time than if I could spell better. People who don't know math facts have a rougher time than those who do.
This argument is attractive, but there is no end to it. We have calculators that can do arithmetic, so why learn it. But we also have computers that can do any sort of symbolic algebra too. Why learn algebra? Calculus is the same way. The truth is that we need an concrete understanding of the basics to truly grasp more advanced topics, and it's just wishful thinking to believe otherwise. The easiest way to grasp arithmetic concepts is to memorize enough that the slightly more advanced stuff (still arithmetic) can be played with in a concrete fashion.
I feel that computers are not being used correctly in the classrooms. If it were possible to supply each student with a laptop that they were required to bring to each class. Have a network setup for the classroom that the students could plug into each day during class. The teacher would have the ability of using email or another method of distributing classwork such as those damn paper handouts I always used to get and lose walking between classes. Maybe even have email distro lists for individual classes so students and teachers can discuss or ask questions to the whole class while sitting at home trying to finish their homework. Maybe even setup IM rooms for the classes. There are limitless possibilities for using computers for school.
The big problem I see with the use of computers in schools is the lack of knowledge by the teachers and faculty. A majority don't know how to use a computer except to click when it says "you've got mail". Another problem is the lack of real technology being used. Of course they have computers and maybe even a little peer to peer for certain classes like typing or whatever but I have never heard of a school setting up it's own real network. Putting servers in classrooms, giving the teacher a computer on their desk instead of just an apple, some chalk and a monstrous stack of handouts. Hopefully we won't just abandon the idea of using computers but instead give a few more years to actually get them into the hands of all students and train teachers on ways to use them effectively in the classroom.
Did anyone read this quote from the article?
"From the beginning computers have been built by engineers for engineers and by men for men. And it came out in the earliest language of computers - the early IBM system had, you know, do you want to abort, terminate or fail this process was the standard language that came up on your screen. It was not woman friendly talk."
Some people really have to stretch to get their research dollars, don't they?
-monique
In Norway there has been a study that shows that children learn to read and write faster using personal computers.
Computers are a good tool in teaching writing *if* you also have a good teacher who can take the time to go over individual student work and show the student where he can improve. Computers make it easier to put down a series of ideas for a draft, but the student has to be taught how to revise.
Actually computers would help me teach writing, since they slow down my critical process. I'm such a miserable SOB as an editor that no-one would learn from me if I had a red pencil in my hand.
Also don't forget the use of computers as an exploratory tool in math. Understanding of math is aided by concrete things from the real world. Very few people are able to crunch through theorems to their inevitable conclusion. No, most people need models to help them in geometry as well as in abstract math.
No big surprise here. Substantial academic achievement only results from a student's motivation to learn. If the parents and the kids aren't interested, then the teachers (who are more interested in job security than anything) aren't and don't have any reason to be. Having computers is essential for teaching computers, but they're nothing but toys if the education system as a whole is a wreck.
Has anyone ever tried to create a real computer assisted curriculum? Or are schools just bolting computers on to the same old, badly broken system?
Imagine this scenario:
You come to school in the morning, and after show & tell you log in to your computer. It knows that you left off in your math lesson with, say, factoring polynomials, so that is where it picks up. Once you finish all of the lessons, it gives you a test. If you miss any questions, it reviews them. If the questions you missed fall into a particular category, it covers that section again, or better yet, covers that section using an alternate teaching approach. When you have it, you take a new test on that section. Repeat until you have it, or need to call in the teacher for 1 on 1 help.
Maybe you like math and you are getting pretty far ahead, so the learning system recommends that you work on some social studies. You slog through, say, state capitals, but let it know that you find that boring. So the system tries other social studies topics, maybe world religions or famous explorers, and when it finds something you like, it gives you the option of perusing a couple different lines of research. Once you achieve a certain proficiency in a subject, you can get some sort of fat reward for giving a presentation to the class on it.
Meanwhile, the school's server tabulates performance for each section, and notes that students are scoring worse than their usual on, say, the factoring polynomials section. That sends up a flag that that module needs to be improved.
What about teachers? Well they are still important as always. Group projects, art projects, hands on experiments, socially oriented activities, personal counseling, discipline and so on all need to be directed by a human.
But could we stop reinventing lesson plans? Couldn't we just get it right once, and then stick with that, making little changes as we find deficiencies? Could we stop teaching in herds, and leaving half the class behind, while boring the other half? Could we stop failing kids, and just work on the skills they need until they master them? Am I the only one that's thought of this, or is someone working on it?
- H
Fist time I noticed your handle. Too funny.
not an end to a means. Don't buy educational software, much of it are games and crap that don't keep the focus on the subject. Kids need to learn to concentrate even when it's not the most fun subject. Don't use edutainment. Use it like as a tool, nothing else. DONT HOOK IT UP TO THE INTERNET, that's inviting kids to slack off, (like what I'm doing now LOL.) The internet should stay home, it's just not that important, these days it'll probably be a relief to have an internet free zone, or if the school is in a poorer neighborhood, set it up so the computers can only connect to the net after school is finished. Example: Teaching math. The computers should have graphical calculator program (like KCalc) to be useful. In the library. Have a computerized card catalog search, along with periodicals, etc. Whatever. The teachers should find relevant software to their subjects and use them. Don't just put kids in front of computers and think that they'll be magically productive. Lastly, don't let the boxes become an excuse to waste time, I'm paying way too much in school taxes every year to let these brats play video games all day:)
Some diagnoses seem to be real, albeit often attributable to weird things like allergies/intolerances, some appear to be phantoms.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A very large number of today's students will eventually want a job where they will be expecteed to have a certain level of computer skills. So, while the computers in the class room may not be making math 100 times easier to learn, or exposing the student to life in India, the student will have an impossible time learning to use a computer with out hands on use.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
The easier it is for a different engineer to review your work the better. No matter where you work, someone has 1. approve the design work, 2. be legally responsible (as in getting massively sued). This is why Professional Engineers (PEs) are licensed and have a spiffy little stamp they sign tocertify the design.
So, yeah, write out everything. If you make a few blunders here and there they should be easy to spot.
Like most things, I think it's unwise to fault the tool. The problem as I see it is that the educators themselves don't understand the basic fundabmentals of computing. This creates a situation where computers are brought into the education environment, the teachers really don't know what to do with them, and so they get thrown at the kids wholesale "here, go learn on these computers" without any guidance or instruction.
I am often amazed at the number of people who have been using computers for years, but still don't understand the bare basics of what that big box is. To many people, I think, when they open a text document, they don't have a conceptual grasp that they have just opened a file for processing, that that file has a physical presence inside that box on the hard drive, etc. To most, that open text file is nothing more than a picture on the tv screen.
I don't know how it is with other technologies but I think one of the amazing things about comptuters is the ability for people to use them without ever having to learn anything about what they're using. If the educators themselves don't grasp the fundamental nature of the tools they've been handed, then how can it come as any surpise that they've become nothing more than an overgrown "Speak N Say" in the classroom.
Not to belabour the point, but this discussion has reminded me of a situation I was in not too long ago. Part of my job involves managing server backups. Well, I get a call one afternoon that a person (Mr. X) has messed up a file, and needs it restored. No problem, I think. I open up the software, find the file in question, and then restore it. Well, I get a call from Mr. X saying that the file I restored didn't have the changes they'd made to it. I explained that backups happen at night, so I could only produce the file that existed the previous night. Any changes that had been made that day were gone. After a bit of silence, Mr. X, exclaimed joyfully, "oooooh! so the changes I made today you won't be able to get to me until tomorrow....". Shocked not the best word, but the closest I can think of to describe my mental state at that particular moment. I had no idea how to approach the subject to Mr. X without being offensive. I ended up simply explaining that any changes made today to the file before it was deleted were gone forever. This seemed to confuse Mr. X mightily, but I didn't have any idea how else to approach it. It later turns out that the problem with the file in the first place, was Mr. X's boss had instructed Mr. X that two files had their names backwards, file1 needed to be file2, and vice versa. Well, to go about this, Mr. X had opened up file1, saved it into the same directory as file2. Opened up file2, and much to his surprise it looked exactly the same as file 2.
I know this is getting long, but the basic point is, Mr. X and millions like him have been using computers for many many years, yet still do not grasp the basic concepts which define a computer. Without these basic concepts, how can we ever hope for our children to become "computer literate".
RFC2119
"Computers not working in education"? Let's hope not ... the kids are the ones supposed to be doing the work.
That statement needs some qualifications, tho. First -- no apologies for "not knowing" here: over the last 20 years, I have taught science to students from 5th to 12th grades; I've taught computers to middle and high school students; I have taught undergraduate classes in astronomy, educational psychology, and science teaching methodology for elementary and secondary teacher candidates; I've taught graduate courses on the psychology of learning and on research methodology; I've conducted research on how students learn topics from science to multimedia authoring (before the Web existed) and on how they learn while working in groups; and I've published articles on the results of my research in peer-reviewed journals on all of these topics. So what does that get me? All of that qualifies me to say that I really don't know much about this topic (because I know that no one really knows that much about this topic!)
Back to qualifying the statement. Kids need to do the work -- but what sort of work do they need to do?
I know this about the research done on calculators in the classroom: when they're used as time-saving devices that let kids finish worksheets faster, then yes, they can interfere with those kids' scores on standardized measures of mathematics understanding. Not that the kids who do the worksheets by hand do all that much better. Calculators can perform algorithmic processes faster and, when the correct keys are punched, far more quickly and accurately than humans can. So let them do that. When calulators are used in combination with curricula that focus students on identifying problems, breaking them down into manageable pieces, and then solving those with whatever tools they need -- pencil and paper to diagram a problem, or calculator to do long division , for example -- then calculators can free up cognitive processes for those higher-level thinking tasks because the robotic-process stuff gets dumped into the calculators. Use technology in the manner in which it was intended, and you do see benefits.
Which reminds me -- any teacher or professor who marks a student down for using a piece of technology to arrive at a correct answer isn't simply a pompous ass: that person should be banned from using such technology in his or her own work. "I didn't learn this by using calculators/computers/whatever" is a lame, hypocritical basis of an argument against that technology and the WORST excuse for a theory of teaching I've ever heard. If a child has some device that will take the drudgery YOU had to live through out of a learning task, then you should be grateful for it and figure out how to better spend the additional time and mindshare that gadget gives you.
As for computers in education -- if you want to know what's gone so wrong with them, just look at how they are used in schools and how we use them on a daily basis.
No, wait, strike that. I forgot my audience. Education can't simply be about training children to play games and/or write game programs.</sarcasm>
Most programs (projects, not software) I've seen "introducing" computers to the classroom focus way too low or too high. On the one hand, you have computers as replacements for teachers/books/everything-else-in-the-school that often involve software no better than flashcard programs, and providing support to teachers limited to how to schedule computer time for their students and collect the automatically-recorded scores. On the other hand, I've seen some horrendous technology dumps done in the name of putting the Next Big Thing in one or two demonstration schools -- which essentially ends up being the glitzy cousin of the flashcard program.
In other words, the computers come with some Primary-Piece-of-Software that is supposed to illustrate the value of computers in education ... some monolithic one-shot bandaid to a school district's ailing Technology Program. Often paid for by donations from well-meaing researchers with government funding or maybe-well-meaning companies looking to be philanthropic (M$ is a wonderful example of how it shouldn't be done -- donate the hardware to schools then expect them to pay software licensing fees for the operating systems on them and for tech support ... the gift that keeps on giving...).
So, again, how do YOU use technology to make your work easier/better/deeper/faster/whatever? So what if students IM each other in the middle of a lecture -- if they miss some point they needed to know, they'll pay for it come test time or learn it by some other means ... on the other hand, what if those IMs are about what the topic of the lecture is? Instead of hurriedly jotting down notes that will be meaningless in a few hours, these students are trying to discuss the ideas behind what they are hearing. Given how some professors preach, it might be the only chance these students get to discuss what they're learning in class! One thing I do know -- learning how to convey a message succinctly as well as learning how to "listen" for responses while IMing someone is a critical job skill these days. 95% of the time I spend IMing people is work-related ... even if that colleague is two cubes away. Turns out text-based communication beats oral communication for a number of tasks, and IMing can be the best tool for the best approach.
The point here is this: computers do some things far, far better than humans can. Just like how a shovel is a better tool for digging a hole than using your fingers, and how a horse is better at pulling a plowblade than a human, or how a tractor can pull a rack of plowblades better than a horse. A computer is not a teacher or a miracle-device or a babysitter -- it's a tool. Any tool used improperly will, at best, waste your time and, at worst, harm you in some way. Glorify computers as some sort of magic learning elixir, and talk of "silicon snake oil" becomes legitimate. But it shouldn't be tacked on the computers -- put the blame on those selling the snake oil.
Computers will begin to make a dent in improving education when everyone -- not just teachers ... I have always found that the people outside of the education profession, particularly politicians and parents and researchers, have much grander and unrealistic views of what computers can accomplish in education than educators do -- when everyone will look to using computers in the classroom for what they truly are. Tools.
That's right, this vast new library is ruining our children's education! They are sucked in and spend all their time reading and learning! The shame of it, censor it now or we will never be able to control their little thoughts.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Most people can do both reasonably well. The number of people who fail math classes is small (less than 10% in my experience)."
Yeah thats why Americans do so well on their SATs, thats why Americans do sooooo well at Math. Just because 90% get passed doesnt mean 90% are on level in terms of knowledge, most people get passed but dont really know math. Thats why we get lower scores in Math than Japan.
You have here (as you will do repeatedly throughout your post) ignored the fact that I am advocating teach both basic math facts and mathematical reasoning. I am assuming here that what you mean by the formulas is similar to my mathematical reasoning, but when I was in school the phrase just learn the formulas had more of a rote memorization feel to it.
The formulas and rules are all you need to memorize. Formulas and Algorithms have nothing to do with "reasoning" because you can have good reasoning ability without knowing the routines, the formulas, the algorithms, reasoning is just logic.
You can make lots of silly statements like numbers have nothing to do with math. On some level (once you reach a high enough understanding of the subject) these are true, but they don't really serve as useful a purpose when you're dealing with younger minds who are experiencing these ideas for the first time. Here are some more that are equally true and equally dubious in value when teaching:
Even on the most basic level numbers have nothing to do with math. Notes have nothing to do with music, you dont need to know how to read and write notes to make music, knowing how to geometry and trig have nothing to do with knowing how to draw.
Sure these things can help you do something but these things are just tools, numbers are tools, the values are a tool, it doesnt matter the level because teaching in levels is just how you learned, you dont have to learn something at level 1-2-3-4, you can teach something on multiple levels at once if the kids are smart.
Um, that's not right. If 3+3+3 = A+A+A then your second line is not equal to A^3. This is, of course, clear to someone who know (presumably from memorizing, but possibly from using a calculator) that 3^3 = 27 and all those threes that you have on the other side of the equal sign do not. see there you go focusing on numbers and not looking at the formula.
The formula gives you 3 squared, which is 27. Its not cubed or at least I dont think its cubed but I mix the terms up. IT could be cubed, the term doesnt matter, only the formula used to find the solution matters.
You are spending way too much time on this one example, and getting the math wrong anyway. Why would you want to teach a student what cubed or squared was anyway (excepting as far as to say and perhaps have them memorize that we have special words for the two most common exponents)? Is the goal to teach them math or to teach them how to work with numbers? By the way my math is right, I checked it with the calculator.
Other people in other repies to other posts that you've made have adequately pointed out why it is useful to be able to do math when a calculator isn't present,
Yeah and its also useful to know how to ride a horse so that when your car breaks down you can get around, its also useful to be able to do algebra in yourr head without pen or paper, just because something is useful doesnt mean the general population should spend years learning it.
Then why on earth would you not try to teach it to everyone? It is really starting to sound to me like you aren't good at memorizing
I'm not good at memorizing stuff which ill never use. Alot of others are also bad at Math, why should we waste our time? Sure its useful for some people to know this but not for everyone.
Should everyone learn C, C++ and Java so that if their computer somehow runs out of software or has a bug they can fix it themselves? Hell no, thats what programmers are for, we dont need to write our own software so why do we need to do our own number crunching? Let mathematicians who enjoy this do it for us.
Should everyone master anatomy because we all need doctors? should we all learn several languages so someday when we are in afganastan we can communicate better? Please, we are talking about average people here, most of them will never use this garbage and will forget it, in fact my parents dont remember the math garbage they were taught, even my friends dont remember most of the garbage they were taught, simply because they never had to use it, the calculator was always there and faster.
l. Just because some people can not do something is not a reasonable reason that we shouldn't teach it to people who can (and I believe most people can be reasonably proficient with math facts and mathematical reasoning).
Most people can write their own operating systems, most people can be their own doctors, most people CAN learn to speak 7 languages but why do we all need these skills? Especially if its not fun learning this stuff, why should it be a REQUIREMENT for everyone? I Dont mind it being an elective for people who want to be mathmeticians or who enjoy doing this but most Americans hate Math, most do BAD in Math, check out the test scores, we score among the lowest, face it, half of this country is good at math and the other half is not, the ones who arent good at Math are capablee of learning all the garbage but they forget everything they learned within a year and only learn it to pass a test or get a certain score on the SATs. Teach stuff to people who care, dont waste time teaching stuff to people who dont want to learn it and who will never remember it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It's refreshing to see an abstract troll.
This is my take on the new problems associated with IT in the classrooms: There are no new problems in the classrooms. The problems that are being faced today in the classroom are the same they were twenty years ago. As technology and understanding advance the school system trudges slowly behind.
Why are we still teaching in the classroom that which we have our computers do for us now. You need to do lower level math? You just ask whatever computer program is relavent to do it. We should be teaching children how to effectively use the technology to do the required task.
Now with that said we should now be focusing on the more creative and abstract subjects at a younger age. Instead of teaching the same English lessons to students for 8 years, we should be emphasizing creative writing and let the computers do their jobs.
Why do we try to teach the same crap to school children that was spit at us in school. We say no point in it then and I sure they see even less point in it now.
Let's take a cue from our European and Asian brothers (and sisters) and start teaching more advanced classes at a younger age. Those who can't make it can go on it to vocational programs (I might add that these get a really bad rap in the states). This way those who should go on to college will be better prepared for what's to come. This is not to say that those who go into the vocational program are kept from college. If at some later date they decided to go to college, they'd be required to start at a junior college and work back into the university program.
In conclusion, we have known that our school systems are horribly messed up. So the powers that be decided to try IT as a band-aid. "Oh so sorry, that didn't work well then it the fault of the technology" is the new banner behind which we hide the real issues. The real issues in the educational system have never been addressed, nor will they until we realize that the problem does not start in the school but at home. This is why nothing will ever be done to fix it. Take it from a former Secondary Education major and brother to two teachers. The system can only be as good as the parents' involvement in the system. Where there is high parent involvement we see great schools? Where there isn't.... not so great schools.
A couple of things are happening:
* administrators are beliving the hype put out by companies flogging their software.
* They are seeing technology as a way of being able to create "reusable" content.
* They are being sucked in by a bunch of marketing brochures. They pick software by finding the package with the most features
Little research is being done in this area. It is taboo to go against trends. It is too bad really. Personally, I think the computers in education will be the "New Math" of this decade. Lots of money and effort will be put into it with very few positive results.
Is there a place for computers in education? Definately yes. Unfortunately, right now we are taking the spaghetti approach
Those who create computers and the software have no interest in providing tools that allow people to do things for themselves. This is very deeply ingrained in the concept of making people need you. Never teach them to fish and feed themselves, but instead sell them an easy copy of fish you create and lead them to believe they need to return the next day for another meal.
.... constraints....
It's inherit to understand the results of the study.... inherent in the intent by which computer products are produced and sold.
This process has extended now with the adoption of software patents.....
So all this really does make the simple pencil a more useful tool to use in learning than high tech over invented
beyond a few minutes on a @#$@#$ing webbrowser. And I'm in High School; the middle school students are only allowed to go to disney.com and the county school website!
It would be TRIVIAL to take down the entire network (winshit 98 systems with SHARED LOGIN SCRIPTS that are WORLD WRITABLE!!!). In addition, any computer can print to any printer in the school; the principal's included with NO PASSWORD!!!
If the computers aren't being used and the tech coordinators don't know how to secure them then why do we have them?
(This post ignores the obvious fact that winshit boxes suck. The shitty systems (with winshit Nothing There 4.0 sp0 for the server) were configured in such a way that any moron could damage it. This is beyond any whole M$ has placed since Dos 3.3)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
This may come as a shock to many parents and school administrators but hundreds of generations of students have gotten by using only books and personal instruction to learn. Folks such as Einstein, Mozart, Goethe, etc seemed to do pretty well without computer based learning. Maybe it is the modern culture and the lack of a learning environment at home that is the real problem but that would require parents cutting back on their precious careers and the big house to spend time with the kids.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Secondly, we want to INTEGRATE the computers into the rest of the class study. We want them to learn the basic prinicples of ART with computers, and not learn PhotoShop, We want them to learn the prinicples of WRITING with computers to help them write, not teach them WORD, we want them to learn Book Keeping, NOT EXCEL, and so on.
So what we started to do is to create a criculum for TEACHERS. We found we need to teach teachers why and what they can get from the integration of computers into the learning environment.... and not to just stick a Computer Lab into the school and expect that functions to teach something.
To join this effort, see www.nylxs.com
Ruben
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
I'm a little bitter they didn't have that in my school when I was a tyke.
Oooooh, those idiot teachers and administrators. It seems that they're unable to find a use for computers and the Internet as other than a big library! Why, all those kids can really do is ... read.
How "Old School".
... which we spent the next 3 generations progressively wasting.
Even the vast addition of cable-delivery (many more channels) has mostly wasted the medium.
TV's pervasiveness and popularity have brought out the worst in broadcast media.
TV's blue light flickers over the faces of millions of morons, and their ranks grow with each televised generation.
Rubbish. Look: All television did for us was to perform the unprecedented bringing of audio-visual theatre into each home within broadcast range. That had a remarkable potential
So, here we are with another unprecedented event: the bringing of a world library into a connected school (and honestly, into each connected home). The result?: ho hum. I can hear the virtual refrain from middle-class American homes: "Moooom! Now that we've got DSL, why doesn't the computer suck my dick when it shows me webcamgirl porn? Waaaah!"
What the hell does it take to satisfy you people? Does a technological advance have to be hip and sexy in order to be perceived as having value? Students can access knowledge of world-wide span at home, at school and in their public libraries. Literacy rates should be climbing when such an exposure occurs. But I just don't see that. I do see a lot of youth (computer-literate to the last) who have attentions that span comparably to short-lived nuclear particles. Did they expect the computers to do their reading for them?
Do any of you look at modern American grade-school and junior-high texts? They are becoming a blizzard of attention-diverting texts, colors, pictures and overall choppy layout. What ever became of the reasoned argument, which is the strength of textual information?
We must keep our eye on the prize. Books, field trips (to see artwork, manufacturing, etc.), lectures, and YES even the Internet are all tools for learning, and for developing that Holy Grail of education: critical and analytical thinking. If Internet usage seems to produce a drop in, say, understanding mathematics, then it's time to look at the student: his time spent online, what he sees online, and how he interacts with what he finds. Flighty use of an educational resource is more than enough grounds for downgrading its involvement. Yes, this might even mean restricting computers in schools to their libraries, where they probably should have stayed in the first place.
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]
webquest.sdsu.edu/
webquest.sdsu.edu/matrix.html
Or, see what you find by searching Google for "webquest."
I think rather than training all students how to use computers proficiently (basic computer literacy should be promoted), the emphasis should be on training teachers to use computers as effective teaching tools. Instead of having each student use the computer individually or in small groups, the teacher (or a technology teaching assistant specially trained to do so), should be using a computer, preferablly with a large display (schools should be able to get projector displays donated by corporations as new large flat-screens become popular and cheaper), and guide the class through a computerized lesson. The effect would be to use the computer as an electronic chalkboard.
A chemistry lecture could include a projected animation of the 3-D structure of molecules, history lessons could be highlighted with montages of images of important people and places and animations showing how the territory of various nations has grown or shrunk over ages; music class could be enlivened with MP3 recordings of compositions, along with a display of the notes on the staff coordinated with the music. Some districts could provide students with individual tablets for viewing closeup detail and interacting with the teacher, for instance playing quiz games (like the electronic triva games played in taverns).
The possibilities are only limited by the imagination, it is only for apprehensive school boards to take an initiative, and the people to provide the funding.
"There is nothing more useless than a lock with a voice print." - Cardinal Borusa
The ability to use Microsoft Office is more important than the ability to think.
Ah well, in that case, the schools are doing a good job, at least in the sense that they are preparing people for the real world. The ability to use MS Office really is more useful, in some jobs, than the ability to think! (Ugh, maybe the next level will be to teach our kids how to schmooze and make your boss think you do your job well while you sit on your ass all day long and play computer games. That would be another skill that's useful in the real world...)
To put all this another way, knowing how to think -- really think -- is not something that is terribly useful in our society. Or at least our society is not set up so that it's really required to know how to do it, and there are (in my experience) relatively few jobs where having the ability to think is really one of the most important skills you can have!
Of course, I'm speaking of how I see the world currently, not how I'd like it to be or how I think it must be.
You sound like an exceptional teacher to me.
In my entire school career (70s and early 80s, urban schools in the south and west US), no teacher ever told me the reason they required me to show my work (and many didn't require it anyway). Some implied that it was to screen out homework cheaters.
The way I was taught the multiplication table was very spotty and low level. I only started making real progress when School House Rock came onto saturday morning TV. The catchy songs helped my memorization a lot.
But the thing that really cemented by multiplicaton skills was the songs pointing out some of the special properties of table multiplcators (like how the nines digits reversed 18, 81 27, 72 or how the elevens were just doubles 11, 22, 33, 44 up to 99)
Have you seen songs used inside classes to help with memorization much?
That's not really fair to parents. At the urban middle class level, house price can have a direct correlation with physical safety and school quality (via tax base).
I'm just going from personal experiece, but my Mom going to work and my Dad getting a serious career upgrade meant our family moving from South Central LA to Gardena (a suburb) and the several schools I went to over the years were a lot safer and better in general.
On the downside, I was pretty much on my own educationally. If you can come up with some way out of this kind of dilemma, I'd like to hear it.
If you're really interested in computers and education, take the time to read this article by Seymour Papert, creator of Logo and Gaston Caperton, former governor of West Virginia. For those of you with a special interest in math (I know there are some!), take a look at this . Also highly recommended is Papert's book "The Children's Machine" from 1993.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Most people are not good at doing both(look at how many people fail math) however, also we have enough human calculators, the number crunching followers do not innovate, its the creative ones who understand how things work who make all the innovation. What good are you if you can do well on jepordy? you dont help society at all.
Conceptual understanding and number-crunching skills are not mutually exclusive. If anything, they're mutually-reinforcing. Encouraging children to rely on using calculators as a crutch will severely limit their mathematical abilities. Calculators can be useful to check an answer, but if you can't do a problem with pencil and paper, you're in trouble.
I think the main reason so many people have trouble with math is that they never really had a solid understanding of the basics. Often this is the fault of the teacher, who may rely too heavily on rote memorization (never revealing concepts like "multiplication is repeated addition") or simply fail to teach some (or all) of their students effectively, often ignoring them (say, because "girls can't do math").
Unfortunately, if your grasp of basic math isn't solid, you'll really struggle with higher math, because it builds so heavily on basic math. Many people seem to struggle with math for many years because of one bad math teacher in their past, who failed to teach them properly. From that point on, it's usually nearly impossible to recover, because the pace of the new material assumes a solid understanding of the previous material, and without that understanding, math becomes a constant struggle.
Consider how many people loathe "word problems". Because there is no rote procedure to translate a word problem into a math formula, any student who depends on rote mechanisms for formula solving may end up guessing as to that initial formula for the word problem. Students with a solid understanding of the concepts involved usually find it quite straightforward to translate the word problem into a formula. Those who are already struggling, and probably have only learned rote skills with no comprehension of what they're doing or why, tend to be downright terrified of word problems, because they know that getting the initial formula wrong will ruin the solution, yet it can look fine to them when they turn it in!
The irony is that "word problems" are exactly how we teach young children basic math in the first place! Such problems help to connect abstract math to the real world, and makes it easier to understand. If anything, math students should do more word problems, and not move on to more advanced concepts until such problems become second nature to the students. Of course, this would take more time (and the problems are harder to construct), but students would actually learn math better, and it would give them a more solid foundation for higher math work.
3+3+3 = A+A+A
(A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) + (A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) + (A+A+A + A+A+A + A+A+A) = A^3
The reason to teach them the formulas without teaching them the numbers is it teaches them what really matters.
The formula is simple.
Simple? Maybe for 3^3. Now try the formula for 9^9 and tell me if that still seems "simple" to solve as repeated addition. Conceptually, it may be straightforward, but in practice, it's useless. Moreover, if you only understand multiplication as repeated addition and cannot multiply directly, it's much harder to understand why 9^9 = (9^4) * (9^4) * 9, and in turn, 9^4 = (9^2) * (9^2).
On paper, I just calculated 9^2 (= 9*9 = 81), then 9^4 (= 9^2 * 9^2 = 81 * 81 = 6561), then 9^8 (= 9^4 * 9^4 = 6561 * 6561 = 43046721), and finally 9^9 (= 9^8 * 9 = 43046721 * 9 = 387420489). Have fun trying to calculate that number by adding 9 to itself 43,046,721 times to get the answer your way. I hope you have a lot of time to waste.
Unfortunately, my number-crunching skills are not what they once were. I could only get to 9^4 in my head, and even on paper I only got to 9^8 without error. In the last step, multiplying 7 * 9, I accidently came up with 56 (7 * 8) instead of 63. So I got the wrong answer, 387419789 -- which was obvious when I checked my answer with a calculator. This is why memorizing multiplication tables by rote is important -- without knowing the right answer for a simple multiplication, I could have resorted to repeated adding, but that would have been much more prone to error.
It's been 15 years since I graduated high school, and I haven't kept in practice since then. Back in high school, my brother and I were both on the Math Team (geeks!) and our team often clobbered the competition. Everyone competing was good at math, and calculators were forbidden. How did we get to be so good? Practice. Yes, we had a solid understanding of the concepts, as we needed to. But it also took lots of practice.
Believe it or not, if you do the same type of problem often enough, it really does become second nature, and you can solve it almost effortlessly. Yes, the Math Team took this to levels far beyond what ordinary math students would, but the principle is the same. Go ahead and try to multiply a couple 8-digit numbers by using repeated addition in place of every multiplication and you'll be pulling your hair out. And you'll almost certainly get the wrong answer. It's important to learn the multiplication tables well, so that the trivial multiplications become second nature and the harder ones become manageable.
If you can't even calculate 30% of 70 in your head, that's pathetic. 10% of 70 is 7 (shift the decimal), 7 times 3 is 21. I don't care if numbers aren't your thing, this is a basic skill. There's a reason why "'rithmetic" is one of the "three R's" of traditional education, after all. If you allow yourself to rely on calculators too much, you'll find yourself crippled without them. And while there may not be a lot of need for calculus in everyday life, there's a lot of use for basic math, and even a little algebra.
Despite the availability of calculators, everyone should learn basic math skills. To neglect such basic skills is foolish.
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
By the way, although it took some effort for me to calculate 9^9, calculating 8^8 is a snap for me. That's 16777216. Since I work with computers, I've had lots of practice with powers of two. I've memorized all the powers of two cold through 2^23 (8388608), and 8^8 is 2^24 (i.e. (2^3)^8), so doubling that number took little effort. Since I'm more certain of the values of each power of two than which power of two each is, I started from a point I know for sure (2^20 = 1048576) and doubled it 4 more times (2097152, 4194304, 8388606, 16777216). Only that last one required double-checking; I know the others by rote.
:-)
3 75 ...
Why do I know the powers of two so well? Practice. Lots and lots of practice. You run into them all the time with computers, but beyond that, I've been doubling numbers in my head since I was a child, just as mental exercise. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576, 2097152, 4194304, 8388608 -- I've memorized all of these, and 16777216 is starting to become familiar. 33554432 isn't familiar yet, but it's a nice simple pattern. 67108864 will be a little harder, but all it takes is practice!
I used to only know through 2^16 (65536) well, but I've taken to doubling numbers in my head if I'm having trouble falling asleep -- I'll mentally recite as many as I know by rote, then start calculating additional ones in my head, until I fall asleep. Other times, I'll do it in the middle of the day as a mental exercise. One of these days, I'll have the powers through 2^32 down cold, then I guess I'll have to start working towards 2^64!
Granted, there comes a point where memorizing numbers is of questionable value. For example, in 10th grade (18 years ago), I memorized over 100 digits of Pi from a poster on the wall, over the course of a year. I can still recite about 50 digits effortlessly after more than 17 years. This is useless for any calculations I might do, although I've used it as a password. Slightly modified, of course.
3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399
My rote memorization of powers of 2 is quite useful, but my knowledge of Pi mostly isn't. Perhaps I should work on memorizing some powers of 3 through 9, on general principle... (Or at least the first few prime numbers!)
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
First of all, I'm a microwave/RF circuits engineer, and my wife teaches high school biology; we solve differential equations and/or dissect animals regularly :)
:) As Solomon wrote, there's nothing new under the sun; teaching history gives us the backdrop of current events showing us where we came from and hinting to the studious of where we're going.
Education isn't about getting a good job. It's not about learning what will make you employable and bring home the bigger bucks. It's not about money at all.
Education is about making the student a better person. It's about figuring about yourself and the world around you. For example, teaching literature to teenagers puts them in touch with their newly discovered feelings. The angst that Romeo and Juliette feel is something that the average teenager can relate to over their first crush.
Writing papers, essays and other school projects teaches the student how to communicate with others. Without the ability to transfer ideas and share experiences with others, the student will certianly have a difficult and frustrating life!
Math and science lessons develop the student's ability to think critically and reason effectively. People aren't born with the natural ability to THINK; it must be taught. Is the "value size" at Wal-Mart actually a better deal than the smaller box? It may be cheaper by the ounce, but if it's perishable, can it be used up before it expires? Should I refinance my house at a slightly lower rate even if I have to pay points? How far can I drive on that last three gallons before the car sputters to a halt? Will I make it to the house? I like flowers; which ones can I plant that will not die this winter/summer? Now my flowers have bugs. How can I get rid of the bugs without hurting the flowers?
Cooking is chemistry; knowing how to put things together in the right porportions to effect the desired results. Many home maintenance operations are chemistry-- glues, paints, fuels all undergo chemical changes during their use. Furthermore, it's probably important to know why it's bad to mix household cleaners, for instance.
Nobody wants to die young; health classes teach habits that overcome naturally-occuring slothful lifestyles and poor eating habits leading to myriad problems later in life. Students also look better, feel better and have higher self-images when in shape than when not. Finally physically fit individuals tend to be sharper mentally than unfit people.
Knowing history keeps the student for falling for the current political fad. Remembering the past allows us to know they're pulling our leg about "the worst economy of the last fifty years." Learning history instills appreciation for how special our (United States) form of government is in the world, how our current government is far removed from what the Framers intended, and how more people should have paid attention in their history classes
Teaching biology goes hand-in-hand with health. Why is strength training not enough for cardiovascular fitness? Why are aerobics not enough to get "cut?" Food goes in one end, comes out the other; what happens in the middle and why is it necessary? What impact does porcine anatomy play in the raising of hogs? Finally, biology may be the first time that the students deal with their on mortality; human anatomy is not far removed from the specimen on the table.
None of these things are intended make you a better worker bee; they make you a better person.
Most "education" software available now has very little to do with pedagogy (the science and practice of helping people learn) AND - ha-ha - with computers. Computers delivering prettier flash cards? Now with animation, eh? So what - the idea of a flash card is still as primitive and inefficient as it was 100 years ago.
:-). There are things like Zoombinis where children can experimentally solve logical puzzles. The computer helps to visualize ideas, for example, keeping track of all the pizza ingredients tried before (a logic and combinatorics puzzle). Thus concepts of higher math become more accessible to investigation and meaningful learning by kids.
Still, I am quite optimistic about the field
The simple thing like image search on google is a powerful learning tool for younger kids (2-5). The kid can type a word, ANY word - and instantly see pictures corresponding to it. Also, for older children, it is an interesting tool for interdisciplinary studies.
Power issue is important here. Some computer tools, like most programming languages, designing environments, internet, modeling programs like Maple, art programs like Photoshop, etc. - give people who use them power to create. Many "educational" programs do not help children gain this power. If software is all about children memorizing by heart some pre-determined facts, and then regurgitating them fast enough - it does not do anything to give children real learning power.
People think there might be a problem? The schools that I went to as a child employ the use of Apple 2's to this day, under the guise that they teach kids basic computing skills - which is a lot like saying that Tinker Toys or Erector Sets are just one step away from building structures like the World Trade Center.
This sig no verb.
A bit slow on this one, which is a shame because the article I'm linking to is fantastic. Back in 1997, the Atlantic did a VERY goood opinion piece on why computers should be kept out of the class room - http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jul/computer.h tm
(German philosopher) Georg Wilhelm Hegel, on his deathbed, complained,
"Only one man ever understood me." He fell silent for a while and then added,
"And he didn't understand me."
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