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Microsoft To Teachers: Using Pens and Paper Not Fair To Students
Freshly Exhumed writes: Pens and paper have no place in the modern classroom, according to Lia De Cicco Remu, director of Partners in Learning at Microsoft Canada. "When was the last time you used a piece of chalk to express yourself?" De Cicco Remu, a former teacher, asked the Georgia Straight by phone from Toronto. "Kids don't express themselves with chalk or in cursive. Kids text." Given the Microsoft Study Finds Technology Hurting Attention Spans story posted to Slashdot in the last few days it would seem that Redmond's Marketing and R&D people are at cross-purposes.
I've never considered the sales and marketing people to be the smartest part of any organisation. They have a limited scope of action and limited deliverables. Calling this out is right. I wonder if they also think children should stop learning maths as we all have calculators - or more likely that we all have calc.exe.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
No point in learning anything... you get *better* answers for most of your school problems from google, and this trend will only continue---so no point in learning anything, since you'll never actually need it in life anyway.
chalkboards and whiteboards are entirely reasonable in lectures and are still used in modern settings in business all the time.
Go into a lot of meeting rooms and you're gong to find a whiteboard which is basically the same thing as a chalkboard.
This notion that you have to use technology for everything is goofy.. and frankly I suspect they might be trying to sell us something rather than giving good advice.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Hammer salesman: See that problem? That's a nail. Over there? Another nail. Got a question? Nail.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I write on paper all the time. I'm a sysadmin. When a Windows machine goes belly up, writing a note and tagging the front of the machine is safer than hoping the other sysadmins will search the ticket system for the computer before using it elsewhere. Writing improves manual dexterity in young children and has been shown to improve memory. And no, "let Bing be your memory" is not a valid response.
My kids don't text, because my kids don't have phones, and they are not going to until they are 16, when they will be allowed to use their own money that they have worked for and earned at a job to pay for their own individual cell phones, if that's how they choose to spend it.
I'm teaching my kids to value things like reading books, interacting face-to-face with other human beings, outdoor activities, and other things that people apparently used to do before they became slaves to their smartphones.
Now, get off my lawn.
Indeed it is not fair to deny children the virtues of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. Every kid should have the right to express their ideas through these masterpieces of technology while communicating with others through Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Skype on their Microsoft Surface.
Think of the children! What will happen to them when we are constantly punishing them by moving a pen on a paper? Maybe they will start taking notes on real paper instead of Microsoft OneNote, the horror. Think of what will happen when they are forced to work with those life-threatening paper books! They could consume information without the safety of Microsoft Windows!
Please safe our future generation and give out children Microsoft Everything!
At least the lumber, plastic and ink industry don't collude with each other and the state or have a capitalist billionaire visionary with a crypto-communist penchant. As far as I know anyway.
It has been well established for many years now that both learning and using "cursive" writing (I know it as "joined" writing) is important for the development of young brains.
For example: http://davidsortino.blogs.pres...
This is irresponsible marketing, and with continuing cuts in education, stands a very good chance of not being challenged by educators before politicians base policy on it.
What a complete crock of excrement. I am amazed at the stupidity of these people. I wonder if they have ever used a whiteboard or had to take impromptu notes in a meeting. We as a society are dumbing down the curriculum to such a point that many kids today are no longer required to be able to do basic arithmetic with the excuse of "They will have access to a calculator, so it's not important." Spelling requirements are just as bad with multiple choice spelling tests along with the excuse of "They will have spell checkers available so they only need to recognize the proper word from a list." Current educational "standards" along with the recent trend of large corporations trying to indoctrinate new customers are brainwashing society's children. This blatant push by the Microsoft sales and marketing team is just one more example.
Can we have these people rounded up and executed before they do too much harm?
And no, I'm not some luddite who hates texting. I don't think there's any reason to force kids to become experts in cursive because no one writes stuff out in long hand now. My school attempted to get me to write legibly and while they improved matters a little, my handwriting still sucked.
Text is fine for, you, know, texty things. Kid's aren't morons. And they don't use things where text doesn't work. They're perfectly capable of using audio and pictures and even video where appropriate.
But I look forward to see Microsoft (R) (tm) trying to sell a "solution" to goverments for a Very Large Fee (R) (tm) so "eliminate" pens only to find that oddly enough no one wants to draw a picture using texts.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I saw the post about the attention span study, but, you know....
We still use a lot of whiteboards at work to collaborate on ideas. It's not chalk on a blackboard, but still serves the same purpose of displaying a drawing or diagram for multiple people to view and make comments.
To be even handed, Apple takes exactly the same position. To view a real clusterf--k, check out the FBI criminal investigation into iPad purchasing at the LA Unified School District.
Why is Snark Required?
This is really anti-education. While handwriting isn't something as important as it was in the past, it is very important. While you can write on a tablet, I have yet to find one that is as decent as writing on paper. It's bad enough we let students graduate who can't read, but are we going to start letting students graduate without knowing how to write either?
Be seeing you...
If I'm communicating in a way that requires an official verifiable multi-person "paper-trail" I use email.
If I'm writing an academic publication (conference paper, journal article etc) I'll use a computer (LaTeX).
If I'm working out some theory quickly, I'll use paper.
If I'm making some quick notes, I'll use paper.
If I'm trying to express an idea to a colleague (or they to me), we'll use paper.
In the vast majority of the lectures I received, it was a whiteboard and whiteboard markers.
In only a couple of units were slideshows used, but that's because it was much simpler to show examples of bode plots etc without having to re-draw them every time, or show photos/movies of engineering machinery for example.
In high school, tablets didn't exist, the internet did, but almost none of the electronic resources I use today did.
We survived. We graduated. Many of us have done or are now doing doctorates.
In primary school computer usage was almost nil. If we wanted information, we went to the school library and used the dewey decimal system.
Parents need to stop using technology to babysit their kids and actually take an active role in their education and life from an early age.
I've never considered the sales and marketing people to be the smartest part of any organisation.
Then you haven't actually tried to do what they do and certainly don't understand it. My guess is that you'd fail rather badly if you tried. Companies like Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble and the like didn't get to the size they are because they had idiots in the sales and marketing departments. I've worked directly with some of the marketing folks at Proctor and Gamble and they are exceptionally bright and very good at their job. Sure there are plenty of idiots out there too but saying all sales and marketing people are dumb is just as idiotic as saying all engineers are brilliant. Both statements are demonstrably false.
Well, not technically, but I'm a software developer and I use a whiteboard almost every day. I suppose the real problem is that when I want a digital artifact, I use my non-Microsoft phone to take a picture of it. Maybe all they need to do is develop a set of markers whose ink is only visible to their own cameras.
I'm a millennial. Many of my generation express themselves with less eloquence on social media than you'd find among third world students where English is a third language. What they need is someone to tell them that they don't give a fried-in-the-sun rat shit how they express themselves-that if they want to be treated like they have an opinion more valuable than that of a coked out hamster-they'd better shape up.
I think the Georgia Straight got a sales call confused with news. As handy as computers are a pen and paper works much better very often. Android, Surface and iPad just don't really work that well to replace a pencil and paper. Until there is a commercially viable 40"x60" Surface with proper drafting table UI we will still be using paper for a long time.
It all starts at 0
In the real world, I use whiteboards and make handwritten notes every day. It's about convenience and flexability.
I like MS OneNote and use it to keep projected organized.. often they start with a whiteboard scan that I paste into my opening page.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
I am a teacher that has been highly into technology as a hobby from growing up with computers around me. I consider myself to be very literate in technology - much more so than my fellow teachers most of the time. I've watched districts roll out technology as the savior of classrooms multiple times, and have shaken my head as the technology has failed due to poor understanding of the infrastructure needed to pull off the new 'greatest thing ever!' The fallacy here is related to the other article referenced, kids attention spans are shrinking. So are adults! Technology has some wonderful uses, but at times it's getting shoved into the classroom as the savior of education - when it's not necessarily.
Add to that what happens in the real world and you lose power from a major storm like we did Friday. Our IT department must not have everything properly isolated on UPS supplies or something, because it took all weekend and until late yesterday afternoon before they got our phone and internet system back up. Last I checked our Microsoft Exchange server is still down. If we depend totally on technology in situations like that we'll be even more out of luck. Our attendance systems were fun yesterday...
I think kids go to school to learn new things, like expressing themselves with chalk and writing in cursive. Why would you teach things they already know? Kids learn wonderful things like art and music in school. If Microsoft has its way, they would only learn Powerpoint.
I've been a mathematics teacher for nine years. And with the utmost sincerity, let me say this: Shut the fuck up.
Take your baseless opinions regarding educational matters and keep them to yourself. Microsoft has had as much success running schools as they had selling MP3 players. Note taking has been proven time-and-time again to be a very effective and powerful mnemonic device for learning. Studies have also shown that note taking with a pen/pencil and paper is more effective than note taking with a laptop. Furthermore, I can ask my students to have a notebook and pencil the first day of class, and for those who forgot or cannot afford it, I have plenty of spares to give them. I cannot expect the same out of a laptop or other digital device. Until you have research clearly demonstrating that any digital device is superior for learning development and comprehension, stay out of my classroom.
Given the Microsoft Study Finds Technology Hurting Attention Spans story posted to Slashdot in the last few days it would seem that Redmond's Marketing and R&D people are at cross-purposes.
You assume Microsoft thinks short attention span is a bad.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Lia lia pants on fia.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Kids don't express themselves in chalk?
She doesn't have children. I have chalk pictures all over my driveway.
Vermifax
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No conflict of interest here. Nope, no sireeee.
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"When was the last time you used a piece of chalk to express yourself?"
Yesterday afternoon, out on the sidewalk.
Meh, Microsoft.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Man, those are some brass ones, even for a company flack. "Think of the children!" has hit a new level of self-serving.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Writing is not just about expression - it teaches fine motor control, attention, patience. To say it's obsolete would be laughable, if it wasn't such an utterly sinister proposition.
I can see it now.....
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
When was the last time you used a piece of chalk to express yourself
When was the last time this guy saw a piece of chalk in a classroom... or saw a classroom, for that matter?
Kids text.
Know what else kids do? Hang around in shopping malls looking miserable. Many will also drink alcohol if they can get hold of it, or jiggle around in darkened rooms to music that consists of some guy making misogynistic comments over a drum machine.
So perhaps we should turn all the schools into shopping malls with rave venues, and serve lots of alcopops? Kids would be much happier. Whether they'd actually learn anything is questionable, but at least they'd stay in school. Except: they wouldn't because any cool thing to do becomes uncool as soon as an educational institution tries to do it.
Seriously - school curricula do need to make better use of technology, but that entails a major shift in the curriculum and assessment, to stop training kids to do things that technology can do better, and start teaching them to use technology properly. You don't do that by throwing a lot of tablets at schools and using them to deliver powerpoint-ized versions of the old curriculum. Shading bubbles on screen is no better than filling bubbles on paper. Nor do you learn how to interact constructively with people or construct and defend an argument by "liking" a picture of someone in Japan lighting a fart (...you didn't actually like it but all your mates 'liked' it so you went along in case anybody unfriended you).
Or, for any under-20s reading:
TLDNR: OP == TW@! TXT SUX! P3N+PPR FTW! KGOML!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I'm tired of the pro-tech (sales monkeys) people acting as though a kids development will be hampered by them being exposed to fundamental tools like chalk, paper, pencils, etc. On one hand they boast about how simple to use tech is these days that even a 3 year old can use it. Then they try to ram tech down your throats at the first opportunity.
Why the fuck are iPad's being used as part of a gym class now in my kids school? To justify the expense of the new shiny tech that everyone is using for fear of the boogeyman jumping out and teaching kids how to do stuff without the school sponsored electronic crack dispensers!
To kick Microsoft out of schools and scorn everything they say...
"I am sick and tired of this despicable company"
FTFY
Kids also pee their pants and pick their nose....so your point would be.....
Forget cursive handwriting (after 15 years of manual drafting in all caps, followed by 15 years of using CAD at work, I certainly have) pencil & paper still works much better than a tablet or laptop for writing out problems & solutions in algebra, geometry, trig, calculus, etc.
In all fairness, the sales and marketing folks just have to be smarter than the general public/potential customers (typically a low bar), and aren't always entirely honest.
So you are saying they have to be smarter than average by definition. Curious argument you have there.
More importantly, their domain of expertise is not in how things actually work, but in how to sell something to someone, so paying them heed in regards to public policy is probably not wise.
I work with sales people on a daily basis. They know quite well how things actually work and more than a few of them are engineers by training. The sales reps for my company all have engineering degrees and are probably more competent with CAD and product design than 99% of the people reading this. The sales reps that sell equipment to my company know in exquisite detail how their products work and are quite capable of repairing it when the need arises. If you want to be good at selling something you have to understand what it is you are selling and how it will matter to the person you are selling it to. There certainly are sales people who aren't very bright but they tend not to do very well.
> "When was the last time you used a piece of chalk to express yourself?" De Cicco Remu, a former teacher, asked
It was quite a long time ago, but I still remember it. I expressed myself by throwing the chalk at the teacher.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
In other words, this marketing nimrod wants students to be using "pen and paper" that she can sell.
"When was the last time you used a piece of chalk to express yourself?"
Last week. Whiteboard marker, to be precise, but if we had a blackboard in the meeting room, it would have been a piece of chalk.
Everyone who knows something about presentations also understands that Powerpoint is a horrible abuse and failure in at least as many situations as those where it is a useful tool. There are things that you can best show in animated slides, others are best described with prosa text, yet others with short and memorable phrases. In addition, everyone learns slightly differently. Some people can't remember anything in a lecture unless they take notes while for others watching all the slides or the scribbles on the blackboard is the most important and for yet others hearing the professor / teacher / workshop-giver is the main part.
The so typical and almost always wrong our-one-size-fits-all Microsoft approach will not solve any problems, it'll make it worse.
If kids these days don't know how to express themselves with pen & paper, then maybe that is something you should teach them? It's a useful skill, and even though I've been a computer guy since the C64 was state-of-the-art, for some tasks I still prefer a notebook over any iPad app, and the reasons are purely practical.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You mean brainwashing.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Try to do calculus problems without pen and paper. Would Microsoft suggest using MS Word Equation Editor?! Just give me a minute while I swallow my vomit. Ok, I'm fine now.
I'm a LaTeX aficionado. I do quite a reasonable amount of math type-setting. I use LaTeX because the output looks amazing, and because I can use my keyboard alone, instead of having to click on menus and buttons. However, it is still an order of magnitude slower than good old fashioned hand-written problem solving.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Actually, ironically, one of the best reasons to use pen and paper is for maths. It's rather hard to express matrices, vectors, integrals etc. in a text message. You need LaTeX and a graphical display and its a lot slower than pen and paper. An equation editor is even slower.
They draw dinosaurs, flowers, spiderman, farm animals, hopscotch, race tracks, cities. The driveway and sidewalk are fully engulfed my mid-spring and only 'reset's when it rains. Kids at play. With chalk. MSFT sales people are free to come by and observe.
My wife is a teacher and every couple of years some numbskulled administrator comes up with another brainstorm that boils down to thinking that throwing some more computers into the mix will fix everything. Of course computers are going to be part of these kids' world, so they need to learn about them, but figuring that kids learn better just because a computer is in front of them is a wrong-headed notion that's not borne out by the research.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
What do you mean "in the future"? I've got students whipping out graphing calculators to multiply 2*2.
True story: A math teacher I know once had a student come up to him who claimed his calculator was broken. The teacher took the calculator and entered 4, hit square root and got 2. Entered 25, hit square root and got 5. "Hmmmmm...it seems to work for me" he said. The student then proceeded to take the calculator, enter the number 1, and hit square root repeatedly. "See...the button doesn't work".
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Ever wonder where all that fund raising and grant money is going. Ever wonder why we seem to keep spending more and more in the schools with no results. My wife took up the PTA treasure position last year and the cost of technology is astronomical compared to other expenses. Sure, technology has its place and we need some of it but most of it seems useless. Why do teachers need a supper advanced projector or a smart board? Why do the kids need an iPad? Do those things really help teach the subject matter better? Many people learned math with a pencil and paper and trust me pencil and paper cost way less than an iPad. Plus, I suspect the paper is better because its not distracting kids with animations and digital rewards for every small accomplishment.
I just glad I got the in-school Brawndo concession signed before they took away all the pens.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Me sitting in front of HR person
HR person: "We're pretty concerned about this particular essay you wrote in third grade......."
Your "permanent record" can now contain every spelling mistake you ever made.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
While using "technology" ( streaming video ) to deliver training for the certifications I'm pursuing, I have found that taking notes via pen and paper is what helps me to retain it. I have tried using a laptop and the info just doesn't stick.
ONLY by writing it down manually do I remember it.
No matter how I try to emulate it with tech like a pen / tablet combo, it just isn't the same.
I'm working on an MS degree in Computer/Electrical Engineering. I find that I write a lot faster than I could type, particularly the large amounts of crazy math in several classes I've taken, such as refreshers on advanced math, circuit analysis, analog electronics, Fourier transforms, etc. The equations, symbols, and complex diagrams would be very hard for me with my laptop.
One might argue that writing is OK to do if it's on a tablet. Well, I find myself very frequently flipping back and forth amongst several pages, which may or may not be in linear order. Some may be from a few weeks ago. My several fingers allow me to quickly hold a page and flip to it. I would not want to be doing tremendous amounts of spastic swiping to go back and forth like Johnny 5 could flip paper pages.
My stack of tree slices isn't as compact as a tablet, but it doesn't lose power or require charging or a power cord to use it. It's not as hard to see in sunlight or other glare situations. I need a stylus in either case (pen/pencil being the paper-compatible stylus types) My observation has been that pen or pencil on paper give me a higher-resolution writing experience, the wider lines from a tablet stylus make my writing/printing less readable unless I exaggerate and write very large to space things out more. Paper is more apocalypse-resistant, in that, should I survive, I'll still be able to read my notes and textbooks a few days (and more) after doomsday, while tablets will quickly become useless.
Yea, I otherwise went through school before tablets (Well, I guess there were Newtons), and a few years before PDAs or laptops that would survive a couple classes without being plugged in. I grew up with paper. But so far I really have found it more practical to use for writing and taking class notes than a tablet.
This is always a conundrum to me. If you spend no money at all on marketing, you get no customers and your business grinds to a halt. Yet, for every dollar you spend on marketing, the return is only pennies on the dollar.
That's not even remotely true. While it's certainly possible to squander marketing dollars doing something dumb, properly done marketing has a substantial ROI. Let me give you an example which is close to a lot of the people here. Take any software company. Microsoft, Oracle, etc, it doesn't matter which one. Look on their income statements. You'll see that engineering accounts for about 10%-20% of their total costs. The majority of the rest of the cost of these very profitable enterprises is sales, marketing and administration. Their net profit margins will be somewhere between 15%-30%. How is this possible if they were taking a loss on marketing and sales which accounts for close to half of all their expenses? This business model would make no sense at all if the return on marketing and sales was pennies on the dollar. In actual fact it is about a 2X or 3X multiple return on money invested in marketing. Sometimes more.
Companies don't dump lots of money into marketing because they are stupid. They do it because it brings a substantial return on the money invested in it. If it didn't work then there would be no reason to ever market anything.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
I think this bias comes largely from IT workers who have to deal with rank and file marketing employees who are often clueless when it comes to a lot of technology.
And I assure you this bias works the other way around. Finance and accounting people think that IT workers are utterly clueless morons when it comes to money. Sales and marketing people thing IT people have no concept of what their customers actually care about and no idea how to talk to another human being. Everyone tends to think their job is the hardest and that no one else really gets what they do.
I'm sure I too am biased because of this, but it also seems like your low-level IT employee has more practical intelligence than a lot of low-level marketing employees who seem to trade on good looks and social skills versus any specific practical skill or insight with marketing, at least at the undergrad-only level of education.
Their error is generally that they think their abilities in IT actually mean they are smarter when in actual fact they are at best only smarter in certain ways. They also frequently mistake lack of interest with lack of aptitude. All the sales people for my company are degreed engineers and very competent ones at that. People go into sales and marketing because they find it interesting and challenging (and yes financially rewarding) and you know what? They are right. It is challenging and it can be interesting. Sales is an exceedingly hard job - much harder than most IT jobs in my opinion. I think this because at different points in my career I've done both and I'm roughly equally competent (read mediocre) at both. I'm both an engineer and an accountant by training and to be honest, the most difficult things in business are rarely the technical stuff. Not that the technical stuff is trivial - it isn't by any means. But the most difficult jobs involve managing and selling to people and those who can do those things well are hugely valuable.
I would say my kids' pen paper and crayon to texting ratio is about 10,000:1. Perhaps higher.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The end game here is to phase out cursive entirely, then a couple generations down the road, nobody can read it, and thus the US Constitution (written in cursive) will be meaningless gibberish to the common man, and then "they" can tell them what it actually "says" with their own injected bias.
Next up, a cashless society...
I'm a programmer, but I still tend to do my thinking, planning, sketching ideas, note taking, etc. with paper and pencils/pens. I just find that I can think better with those tools than some program on a tablet or laptop. It's easier to draw sketches and it doesn't feel so permanent like putting it into a computer does so I'm more apt to play around with ideas and throwaway what doesn't work.
Try to design the next lambourghini model using only twitter.
What knuckledraggers do they let out of school these days,
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
"When was the last time you used a piece of chalk to express yourself?"
That would be this morning. Any other questions?
“Why do you expect a kid to go to school and sit in the same seat everyday with pens and paper?”
Um, because they use pens and paper at home too. Any more?
“So classroom—what classroom? Learning is anytime, anywhere. Kids are learning everywhere. As long as they have that device and they have that connectivity to the cloud, they can do their work anywhere. So that’s why the tools become so important.”
That's funny. When "the tools" are a pen and paper, the tools aren't so important and learning can actually be any time, any where. It's when you try to artificially tie the act of thinking to having a Microsoft(tm) Device(tm) connected to the Cloud(tm) that you lose the ability to "do work anywhere".
This is my lawn. You may get off of it now. You are dismissed.
So what are the creative drawings that cover my driveway several times a week? What are the drawings and stories they are starting to write. I will acknowledge that similar to myself, my oldest does not like writing by hand (minor learning disability diagnosed in me in middle school) so he does better with a keyboard, but the others like writing and as they are getting older they are expressing themselves. My middle child will play on computers but I doubt they will be his primary outlet for energy and expression. It's just not in his personality, he gets bored staring at a screen.
Anyone who tries to push a monolithic educational style is trying to harm our educational system and our kids. There are many different learning styles, a competent teacher knows how to find and engage the learning styles of all her students, not just the ones that do well with keyboards.
Kids express themselves in many media and forms.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
We use a chalkboard all the time for sketching out open source solutions. Of course it helps that we painted a whole wall with chalkboard paint. Somehow a whiteboard is not as satisfying.
I can totally believe that Microsoft doesn't have enough creativity to make use of a chalkboard any more. It's sad if true.
- Paul
Everyone except Myron Aub.
> "Kids don't express themselves with chalk or in cursive. Kids text."
Kids also scribble and carve into desks and spray paint on the walls on occasion. In the past they passed notes to each other, as well. No one has suggested adopting those as main methods of performing and submitting work. Schools should be getting kids ready for college, where college should finish getting them ready for the workplace. And not many workplaces will do much of their work via texting.
"When was the last time you used a piece of chalk to express yourself? Kids don't express themselves with chalk or in cursive. Kids text."
Yeah, well, kids aren't trying to teach 30 other kids long division, are they? Fucking idiot. Took me 2 whole seconds to tear down your premise.
Kids also push each other to be first in line (no matter WHAT they're lining up for, they want to be first) and call each other "poopyhead." Does that indicate radical new teaching methods? LET'S DO WHAT CHILDREN DO, HERP DERP! Fucking A.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The issue is whether the kid should adapt or whether the school should adapt. The ability to print with a pen or pencil or even a finger in the mud can be crucial. The issue goes back at least 100 years when some people noticed that educated kids had far less memory ability than kids who did not learn to read and write. We have made certain mistakes and classes to simply increase memory as well as classes designed to require fixing on a topic with deep concentration have been severely lessened in the educational system. Even radical practices that have no place at all in modern life had some value. The great Samuel Johnson was asked about new laws (about 1630) that stopped teachers from torturing or even killing students. Dr. Johnson remarked that if one student is lost the entire school is lost. What he meant was that any student who displayed behavior problems or learning problems was like a rotten apple in a barrel of apples and would ruin the quality of the school for everyone. To that extent beatings and even killing should not be banned.
"Pens and paper have no place in the modern classroom, according to Lia De Cicco Remu,"
Poppycock. One expresses themselves differently via pen, pencil, paint brush, computer keyboard, thumb-type, mechanical typewriter, or electronic dictation... each are notably distinct. Remove any one and you limit the modes of expression available. At our collective, expressive peril.
he would have really flipped out with -1!!
Cashiers are utterly unable to make change without having a machine do it for them. I was at a computer store in the late 90s when their network went out, and they were nearly unable to operate. They brought out 3 people to each cash register to do the check outs: one to process the order, one to use a calculator, and one to lookup the procedures in a thick binder. I am not making this up.
Pull away the crutches and society can no longer walk.
I would have liked to invite Lia De Cicco Remu to take a few high school math tests, no pen and paper allowed. The test should be answered as a Word document, using the equation editor for all math including lengthy interim calculations. I'll toss in a couple linear equation sets with three unknowns, some polynomial divisions and differentiating some reasonably complex functions, so there will be plenty of math to type in even though the problems themselves would not be too hard. The test would of course be time limited.
I have looked for all sorts of possible replacements for pen and paper for math and physics for high school students. There is no electronic tool which gives you the freedom and creative flexibility of pen and paper. I love using chalk, prefer it over whiteboards, and only rarely use powerpoints when teaching - which also helps me slow down to the same speed as the students are operating. The technologies that are supposed to be a replacement for the complete solving of a problem (not just a tiny piece such as drawing a graph or solving an equation) including any initial scribbling and eventually documenting the solution, such as tablet apps with free-hand drawing, smart boards, or software such as GeoGebra, have cumbersome interfaces that get in the way and interrupt the creative flow, or have other major limitations. With a pen and paper you have complete control.
You want students to focus on the subject matter and the stuff they are supposed to be learning, not mastery of some SW interface. The math and physics you learn will stay with you forever. The SW you use in school will not.
Yeah, and they also don't know shit. Should we just keep it that way? Maybe we keep them in diapers forever too?
X
NT
if you can't write joined up and without the aid of a phablet, then I have NO INTEREST in employing you. Fuck off, out of my office.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Microsoft says pen and paper isn't fair for students, and at the same time they're trying to push electronic devices that have pen input. So instead of actually innovating and creating a better solution, they've made the paper run on batteries. Problem solved?
More to the point, it's unfair to Microsoft's sales
I can well believe it, power outages are a thing here. As is me losing it with the rampant stupidity of people in general, cashiers in particular. How they manage to get dressed in the morning is a boggle.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
... and so isn't tying your shoelaces and wiping your butt - surface pro will do it for you; you may end up with brown shoelaces if you change the order...
Imitate, assimilate, innovate - Clark Terry
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing - Salvador Dali
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Microsoft people that made it a successful company were raised with pens, paper and chalk.
That set of tools is old fashioned but we know it works.
The other day I was keeping an eye on my kids playing in the yard while also pondering some of NASA's current engineering design challenges when I had one of those "Ah Ha!" visions so I grabbed a piece of chalk and sketched out the concept right there on the concrete driveway while it was still clear in my mind's eye. Later that evening when the kids were asleep and I had the required peace and quiet I was able to use a computer to render the idea more neatly. The lesson there? It is the ideas that count, no the recording technology. A stick and some dirt would have been just as effective as a Microsoft Surface, if not more so! Fortunately there were no Romans around at the time. http://www.hellenicaworld.com/...
But we are NOT interested;
Casteism
"Writeboard" is an interesting eggcorn. I'll have to use it in a story I'm writing where one part of the country speaks a derhotic "Elmer Fudd"-type dialect with labial /r/.
I've always hated cursive. It's always sloppy, impossible to read, and for the last 30 years has done nothing but piss me off. I'm glad to see it dead.
Unless you speak Arabic, in which case you even have to type in cursive.
Next up, comic sans.
If not Comic Sans, then which font to simulate neat manuscript writing would you recommend? Is Comic Neue fine?