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How Technology Changes Classrooms
Corrupt writes "Just ask 11-year-old Jemella Chambers. She is one of 650 students who receive an Apple Inc laptop each day at a state-funded school in Boston. From the second row of her classroom, she taps out math assignments on animated education software that she likens to a video game."
There is very little value in learning how to do things the old way when the new way is all that will ever be used.
Following your logic, we should all be hunting and gathering instead of shopping for food because now we can't feed ourselves, either.
Let us retard all progress in the name of tradition because... well, there is no good reason. But it would make you happy, I suppose.
I have a small issue with your argument. As tools become more complex, learning to use them becomes more complex. Reasoning and logical thinking are not harmed/hampered by having complex tools available. They are harmed by teachers who use complex tools to avoid doing the harder part, teaching kids to reason and think. Sure, a laptop or calculator makes fast work of math problems yet structuring a mathematical proof is something the calculator won't do. If kids want to copy someone else's work off the Internet, teachers need to ensure that testing requires the child to prove they know the material.
Did nailing guns make carpenters less skillful?
Did spreadsheets make accountants less skillful?
and so on....
You are blaming the problem on the tool instead of the teacher.
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Thanks to technology, people are graduating without even knowing how to construct complete sentences. And also thanks to technology, those same people can now go on to be "editors" for major websites. : p
This guy's the limit!
And following your logic we should not be teaching math at all just how to use a calculator.. See how silly following logic can be!
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Indeed it is... IF you've got the multiplication tables memorized...
Learning is about making connections. Memorizing is about having the bits in place to connect. Education requires both.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
As a high school English teacher I only have one (sad thing) to contribute here. We're strongly discouraged from teaching grammar... since the administration "knows" it is boring and cannot hold student interest. If a subject or lesson cannot (or does not) keep every child in the classroom entertained, no matter how diverse the population, then the teacher is faulted.
On the other hand, be glad they've got laptops to keep them entertained. Yay!
Meh.
Or it could be that most schools do not teach grammar or language structure at all, I know when I was in school we never got any of that crap. We got a few mentions of 'noun' vs 'verb', etc. But nothing like a lecture or classes on proper sentence structure.
I am 26 years old, with a degree in English, and I have taught English at the high school level in the past (I now teach computer courses for various reasons).
What does that mean besides the fact that I will invariably overlook a grammatical mistake in my own post? We don't teach grammar or language structure at all. Since about 1990, the trend in American English instruction has been the so-called "whole language" method. It is essentially based in a belief that immersion in proper English methods will result in more effective grammar instruction.
In practice, it means that children should be taught grammar through, say, correcting their own papers (where the changes and differences have more meaning than a drill) and through reading.
The fifth grade (1989-1990 for me) was the last time I had instruction in sentence diagramming. I did have one hold-out 9th grade English teacher who insisted on rote memorization of irregular verbs and their tenses, but who didn't provide much guidance for what distinguished "future perfect" from "past participle." Having sat through those courses, it's easy to understand both sides of the grammar education approach/
Like several other posters, it took foreign language instruction in middle school and high school before I started understanding the concept of infinitives, conjugations, tenses, etc. Coincidentally, it was also immensely frustrating when certain parts of foreign language instruction had to "dumbed down" because most students wouldn't have understood the terms being thrown around. In French, for example, you create the past tense of a verb by conjugating either avoir (to have) or etre (to be), then using a special ending for your action verb. Whether you use avoir or etre is determined entirely by whether or not your main verb is transitive or intransitive (one that has vs one that doesn't necessarily need a direct object). It's a simple distinction, but even at university level we were reduced to memorizing an mnemonic device (DR AND MRS VAN DER TRAMPS) to list the few intransitive verbs. Had the students received even minor direct grammar instruction, the distinction between the two would have been easy; as it is, there was much hand-wringing from students over the fact that a few uncommon verbs were not in the mnemonic but were intransitive.
So, to summarize, there are valid arguments for both teaching approaches. I am personally of the opinion that we learn grammar much more through absorption than rote memorization; this also makes it one of the most difficult subjects to teach to minority groups or recent immigrants who aren't immersed in the "proper" grammar 24/7. I can see why "whole language" grammar learning has its advocates - immersion methods are generally considered the best way to learn a foreign language, so why not apply them to our native language? On the flip side, though, ignoring the more technical instruction can substantially weaken a student's performance in other subjects. In the end, it's really a philosophical debate, like many in education, that boil down to personal or institutional preference.