Slashdot Mirror
The Flickering Mind
What's bad: The first 350 pages of The Flickering Mind are as depressing as anything I've read. In case after case, Oppenheimer describes politicians' and educators' mindless acceptance of claims by technology pundits and technology companies. The sheer number of tax dollars poured into worthless software and soon-to-be-obsolete hardware is appalling The fact that so few lessons have been learned in 20 years beggars the imagination.
Those are my words, not the author's. The book's examples are laid out in very plain, factual language. No raving rants, no wild tangents. Just record after record, study after study, interview after interview.
Oppenheimer has researched the book by interviewing teachers, students, former students, educational software employees, district policymakers and government officials across the U.S. People with hands-on experience using things like distance-learning systems, CD-ROM-based textbooks, math and reading games, multimedia software, student laptops, school intranets, web-based research papers, and dozens of pieces of educational technology.
A recurring theme in these interviews is how computers either make formerly easy things harder (like classroom discussion), and hard things avoidable (students who know how to copy-paste don't have to construct sentences).
"One English teacher could readily tell which of her students essays were conceived on a computer. "They don't link ideas," the teacher said. "They just write one thing, and then they write another one, and they don't seem to see or develop the relationships between them."
The many interviews give The Flickering Mind a personal feel, and make the reading easier. In many ways, it's like a record of the author's travels from school to school. But one of the book's great strengths is Oppenheimer's unwillingness to rely on anecdotal evidence. Much of the book is devoted to analyzing studies of technology's impact in schools. A good chunk of these studies are commissioned by firms that sell educational software. Not surprisingly, they tend to be shallow and nonscientific. Many pages are spent pointing out flaws in this research. This becomes important when Oppenheimer turns the same critical eye on studies which support his own conclusions. An interesting sub-topic of the book is how very few truly objective educational technology studies exist.
All the evidence against computers as useful learning tools wouldn't be so alarming if computers didn't cost so much. But educators seem especially blind to the continual costs of staying on the technology bandwagon. There are two faces to this problem, and The Flickering Mind addresses both. The first is schools cutting faculty and programs in order to purchase hardware and software. The second is local and national governments granting subsidies and to companies who promise to assist schools with technology. In both cases, taxpayers foot the bill.
The Flickering Mind relies mainly on educators' own criteria for determining how technology helps learning (can the kids read, write, and do math?) But it also takes time to puncture the oft-recycled dogma that society has a shortage of graduates with high-tech skills:
"When employers who were fretting about this gap were asked what skills mattered to them, this is what they said: Most important of all is a deep and broad base of knowledge. "Want to get a job using information technology to solve problems? Know something about the problems that need to be solved." This statement reflected the sentiments of nearly two thirds of the Information Technology Association of America's members. Following far behind this priority was "hands-on experience" with technical work, which less than half the nation's IT managers considered critical (Most apparently felt perfectly capable of teaching those skills on the job.)
What's good:
All is not Luddite doom-and-gloom. The Flickering Mind is careful to highlight the areas where computer technology helps kids learn. Many schools do benefit from computers--as long as the computers are in central labs (not in the classroom), and not networked. One school has a senior-level class in which students build the computers used in the labs. Programming classes are valued by upperclassmen with an interest in technology careers. Some educators have made adjustments, like the teacher who removed all but a single-size font from the machines "so the students can write instead of wasting time adjusting the text".
The final third of the book is an uplifting counterpart to the ignorance and frustration described in the first two thirds. Oppenheimer gives details of visits to several schools which buck the trend of embracing technology as an end in itself. They use computers, but not in the class:
"In an aging brick building on New York's Upper East Side, a dozen teenagers of varying ages, half of whom look like street kids, pull their desks into a circle as their teacher distributes several thick handouts. "You're killing trees," one student complains."
"Yes," says the teacher. "I'm killing lots of trees"
After the students have spent fifteen to twenty minutes with the handouts, discussion begins. The debate is constant and heated. Whenever the dialog bogs down or goes off course, the teacher quickly interrupts. "I want to hear some pieces of evidence here!" he insists.
A university professor contrasted former students of this school with others she'd met: "I've had the experience of asking students a question and there's a one-sentence answer. And it's not a question of shyness or dumbness, but the person hasn't learned how to develop an idea. How to make a statement and then qualify and describe and give examples and illustrations. Each and every one of these people could do that."
Conclusion
The Flickering Mind is one of the most well-researched books I've read. It is well worth checking out from your library. It's even more worth buying, because you'll likely be re-reading it and lending it to your friends.
You can purchase the The Flickering Mind from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Unfortunately, a lot of them do. I got into an argument with two friends over this one day. One's the principal of a school in Austin, the other is a teacher there. They both feel that computer skills are the number one thing they need to teach to make sure that students are successful, while I believe that Math and Science are. (I'm a computer professional.)
The fourth person in the argument is a math teacher, (and soon to be head of her school's math department) who feels that computers are a distant second to Math, Science and Writing skills.
Unfortunately, the computer has become the panacea to bad teaching. They think that if you put a student in front of a computer and he is taught to use it, he'll magically acquire a competence in the pure sciences. Really, they'll be qualified to work as data-entry clerks, but the educators don't seem to understand that.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Meanwhile, personal computers are now on their second generation of students, their capabilities change every year, as does what is needed to know to use them and The Future is all about them. It's not astonishing that teachers haven't quite figured out what to do with them.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The problem with Computer education is that they use computers for every area of studies but they don't teach them how to use the computer as a tool. For Science Class students will use computers to virtually dissect a frog. But when it comes to doing a calculation they will still reach for the paper. Or what happened in college there was a student working on there math homework in the computer lab, they were using the application called Maple (for those who dont know about it it is a fairly powerful math program) now he needed to do some simple arithmetic so he went around asking people for a calculator. Not even thinking about using the calculator that comes with almost every OS on the planet. Or in maple where you just need to to type the formula in and follow with a ;. He was trained to use the computer and Maple just as he was taught but it never occurred for him to use the computer for a problem that wasn't required for class to solve. But because the teacher are so inflexible about computer they don't teach the students to use the computers as a tool. They just use them as a way to sit down and grade papers.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Agreed. I think anybody would be a fool to question the value that access to computers has for education.
On the other hand, computers in the classroom doesn't necessarily sound like a good idea to me. A friend of mine is a teacher at an art college here, where they have invested a ton of money in technology and teaching the latest Web design, 3-D graphics, etc. He says he has a hard time keeping kids' attention in class when every one of them has a computer installed on his or her desk. He'll be trying to give a lecture and they'll be leaning over, giggling at each others screens as they pull up random pages on the Web. And these are *college students*, let alone high school age kids or younger.
Seems like you're better off having a large computer lab that students can use as a resource on their own time, the same way they do the school library. Or, wirelessly networked laptops on the desks would be fine, too -- just so long as they stay closed until it's time to get to work.
Breakfast served all day!
Unfortunately, a lot of them do. I got into an argument with two friends over this one day. One's the principal of a school in Austin, the other is a teacher there. They both feel that computer skills are the number one thing they need to teach to make sure that students are successful, while I believe that Math and Science are. (I'm a computer professional.)
Do you not see your own brand of blindness here? I readily admit I'm a math and science geek, and love both. But I will also say that math and science are completely useless to a LOT of people who could not care less about it, and in fact, it's OKAY that they don't care. Very few things in this world require science or high-level math past arithmetic.
Reading and writing are infinitely more important, because they underpin everything, including critical thinking. I've known a lot of people who liked math and science, but were utterly useless as thinkers. Hell, just look at Slashdot. :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I saw Stoll give a similar lecture at the Embedded Systems Conference a few years ago. A one-line summary of his thesis: Don't take computers out of the schools, but don't try to substitute them for real learning. Teach kids to use computers, but also teach them why computers work, how to program them, how to take them apart, how to build one, etc. I couldn't agree more.
Cliff Stoll is one hell of a good speaker. Bizarre too. He showed up at the ESC with two TV camera crews in tow, trying to interview him. He sat on stage before the talk, writing out his lecture notes on his hands. He had three or four milk-carton crates full of gadgets that he wanted to demonstrate, although I only recall one actually making it out of the box: a radar "speed gun" made out of an old coffee can and some electronics. He wandered all though the audience during his talk, at one point even coming out and taking over one of the TV cameras taping the talk. Although he had notes written all over his hand, he constantly seemed to diverge down new paths as they occurred to him. Oh yes, and then there was the four cartons of milk (or was it chocolate milk?) he drank during the talk. Very entertaining, and despite the apparent chaos of the lecture, he had the audience right in the palm of his hand when he wanted their attention... as at the end, when he talked about computers in schools.
If you ever get the chance to see this guy talk, don't miss it.
the public schools in my district have higher paid teachers and vastly superior facilities (i mean its not even close) compared to the private school. in spite of the fact that the private school spends 2/3rds of the public school (per student) the private school produces students that consistantly score 2 grade levels above the national average in reading and math on the standford 9 tests. OTOH, 80% of california public schools fail to achieve the national average for the grade level they are teaching and the public schools in my district score in the botton 25% of all california schools.
the bottom line? it's the parents and not the schools or the money put into schools that insure academic achievment. the dictionary is used in my home almost daily. reading, math and thinking are part of our daily home life and probably part of the daily home life of the other parents sending their children to the private school. NO amount of funding will produce a level of academic achievment which will come close to that of students whose parents really really really give a shit about education. talking about educational funding is a lot like arguing about the size of the firehose while the orphanage burns. it completely ignores the real problem. the educational crisis is a cultural problem, not an economic problem.
the real evil is not what people think - its how people think
Because of this, I am likely to make better decisions about cryptography. I will not confuse a stream cypher with a one time pad.
Now:
More and more, my education is coming from the Internet.
I believe we need to rethink the whole concept of school, and what it is for.
I've read Jane Healy's book. While I generally agree with the sentiments, I found her book far too pessimistic and her statements far too sweeping. I'm an IT Curriculum Specialist for a K-12 school. My job is to critically assess technology and assist teachers in integrating the more useful technologies into our curriculum.
We've established a laptop program that has been quite successful. The girls (it's a girls' school) learn the traditional curriculum, enhanced with laptops, a knowledge management system, and other technological tools.
The main tricks are not to let technology dictate the curriculum and not to simply layer technology on top of existing curriculum. When you see an example of poor technology use in a classroom, it's often because some administrator decided that a given technology is cool looking and dumped it into a school for photo ops. When you see technology actually impeding learning, it's because a new technology was deemed "important" and it was dumped into the lap of an untrained teacher using a lesson plan he or she wrote years ago. If that teacher tries teaching the same lesson with extra doodads, the instructional time increases, effective learning time decreases, and technical problems totally draw attention away from the point of the lesson.
Here's a little one page Statement of Philosophy I give to teachers who are new to our school:
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT A SCHOOL LAPTOP PROGRAM
Basic Assumption:
1. Laptops facilitate in two areas, processing information & sharing information
Paradigm Assumptions:
1. Laptops need to be approached as a "participatory" (Marshall McLuhan) or "cool" (Don Tapscott) medium, not a technological one
2. Collaboration & group work is highly valued - otherwise, why use networked computers?
3. The laptop project should encourage presentation & sharing. Otherwise, why use laptops instead of desktop computers or even paper & pen?
4. "Math thoughts do not occur just in math class". Integrated learning is important and needs to be reflected in how technology is used
5. Laptops should be used only when appropriate
6. A laptop program should allow laptops to be used not only for academic activities, but also for social activities. The Internet was built on the former premise, but innovation came from the latter
7. It's difficult to predict the future. Fortunately, shaping the future is much easier
Implementation Considerations:
1. Portable laptops, in theory, will allow anytime, anywhere style of investigation - not only within the school but outside as well
2. Information (raw input & finished output) must be easily accessible & feedback must be immediate
3. The needs of students & teachers drive software implementation design - the technology must be invisible (at least, for the initial laptop grade)
4. Within the same software program, teacher needs and student needs are different
5. Complexity increases with each additional piece of hardware or software beyond what is "standard" in a laptop. Every modification or addition can crash a computer.
6. There are novice users and expert users and each approaches technology differently
If every individual in a school follows the spirit of this guide, and they have a handy-dandy jack-of-all-trades like me to assist, any technology use can't help but be at least a neutral, if not entirely positive, experience in that school.
>Do it anyway. He'll get a better education that way.
I was going to say you were right, but then I realized that you're wrong. The kid won't get a better education, he'll get an education! Schools are about schooling, and education is not included.
There are very few good teachers, but those few are responsible for all the education which happens in the schools. For a good view of what schooling is all about, and how it differs from education, see John Taylor Gatto's essay, The Six-Lesson School Teacher.
See what I've been reading.
The facts don't bear that out: the end result of computer-editing tends to be rather scattershot. I would argue that this is because coherent arguments start as fully-formed thoughts (in the short term; in the longer term obviously they develop, as one learns). The sad fact of the matter is that most folks don't seem to think well, and computers just give them an easy out.
Writing drafts by hand forces one to think--it's slow, and painful and spends money (paper's not free). Typing, by contrast, is easy and cheap. There's no incentive to think before jotting down whatever comes to mind. Much of my /. output is proof of this:-)
Back in college, I finally figured out how to write good papers: I went down to the local pub with a briefcase full of books and paper, spread it all out and started. First I read the books; then I wrote an outline; then I fleshed it out, then I wrote the paper a few times, then I went home an typed the whole thing up in LaTeX, printed it out, proofed it one last time & turned it in. Much beer was drunk and much tobacco sacrificed in my pipe throughout the process... Anyway, I ended up with straight As that year, compared to low Bs, a few Cs and some As.