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SIIA complains schools don't buy enough software
John writes "CNN is reporting on study by a software trade group which seems to claim that schools aren't spending enough on software. This begs a few questions. One of them is, what sorts of software is useful for schools? (Other than Oregon Trail, of course!) " *sigh* How do you explain that money doesn't enumerate all value?
that's just the way things have been long enough for that to be popular opinion
I remember my school having one Apple IIe for the *whole school* when I was in the 5th grade in the early 80s. We go 30 minutes to play with the computer in one year and the only thing we played was the simple demo that Apple made for the computer on how to use it! Nevertheless I was quite thrilled when I played with it.
Last time I checked, many schools got "software grants" in the form of site licences from companies like Microsoft; that is, they got it all free. I would venture a guess that $5 per student doesn't include the money value of the stuff they get free, and therefore can't be used as a measure of the level of software use in schools. Perhaps a better measure would be "applications per student"(as in how many applications are avaliable to each student).
Being a network administrator for a school district, I happen to know a little too much about this situation.. The kinds of software the trade group is talking about are things like Windows (95, NT, 98, etc), Office 97, Publisher, Photoshop, Corel Draw. It's common practice for a teacher to buy one copy at CompUSA and to install it on all of their machines. Also alot of teachers bring crap from home.. It's something that can't be controlled, unless the district has the clarity of thought to establish a true technology department, that will dictate district standards in regards to hardware, software, and support.. Unfortunatly, it's hard to get it done right.. Until then there will always be excessive licensing problems.. but who cares?? Do you really think microsoft wants to get in the papers by sueing the hell out of a k-12 school district?? when funding is already so crappy? I think not.
That's why we have to finish taking over the world.
Okay, let's face it, that game can be quite addicting.
I still have the 5.25" Apple IIe floppy disk that I even still sometimes run on the Apple IIgs over here.
This is the 1990s. Computing _IS_ a basic skill that it is important to teach in school. Perhaps not as critical as writing and basic maths skills, but nevertheless important.
kinda makes you wonder where all the money is going to - no?
i bet the teacher unions will start screaming again about this cnn 'report' in order to get yet more money. (which will not trickle down to the kids either... but you can bet the local ever-expanding administration is collecting six figure salaries with incredible benefits.)
you can bet, however, that the schools easily afford hefty six figure salaries for the way bloated administration staff, as well as incredible benefits.
cutting just one of those positions will give you plenty of money for sw/hw each year.
all this boils down to the simple principle of fleecing the taxpayers of the most money with the least amount of work done.
Hmmm...
1. Learning to use computers
Linux. GCC, Perl, shell-scripting, other open source language
implementations. Apache. Etc. Cost: free.
2. Help with scientific/technical subjects (including math)
Don't know all what's available here, but I would imagine a
good spread sheet would be a good start. NeXS from Xess
Corp. is very nice. (I bet they'd be happy to extend a
serious discount to a school.) Real time, too. And there
are some very interesting free products.
3. Research (Encyclopedias/Internet)
Mozilla. Free.
4. Typing papers
WordPerfect, Star Office, Applix. I suspect any of these
would be pleased to offer exceptional discounts to schools.
And there's some free stuff, too.
The arts? I suppose The GIMP would fill the bill nicely,
for starters.
And the nice thing about much of what I note above is that
it was originally developed *at* *schools*! What could be
more appropriate?
Get these kids started right. Not with pre-packaged, hood-
welded-shut, "where will we let you go today?" solutions.
But with things concepted, developed, and released in an
open, cooperative environment. Feed *their* minds, not
some corporation's pocket-book! (At the expense of mine!)
Yes, but schools open themselves to the same thing that happen in South Korea. MS or other software company cracks down and then all the violaters *have to* purchase site licenses or legal copies.
Let me guess, schools don't buy enough software because they buy about 10 licenses for Windows and then install 300. Schools can't afford to pay ridiculous prices for licenses so the ratio of licensed software to actual machines is low. Maybe this is where they get the idea that schools don't buy enough.
Physical exercise *is* important. Take it from a long-time geek who
doesn't get enough of it! But mental exercise is equally important. And
one of the problem with schools today, from what I can tell, is that
students don't get enough of the latter. Europeans I know are appalled at
the emphasis placed on sports in U.S. schools at the apparent expense of
*education*. And this is a long-term critical problem. The entire U.S.
system of government is predicated on an educated populous. Look it up.
If the people become sufficiently dumbed-down, the system, as designed by
the Founding Fathers, will simply not work any more.
Thus the failure of the U.S. education system to *educate* could
ultimately result in the failure of our so-far grand experiment in
representative democracy. Strong words, I know. But people have to
understand that actions have consequences. A concept that our educational
system, the popular media, liberals, and the courts and their juries are
busily trying to stamp out.
It didn't seem to help Apple too much, did it...?
Buy RedHat or something even more expensive like Caldera. That'll teach those lamers to STFU.
...here from Brazil saying that at 14/May a group of people were going to check somewhere for pirated software, but most of the time they couldn't because of locked doors, people turning the AC off and... COMPUTERS PROTECTED BY PASSWORDS!!! Geez... this mean that if I'm using Linux I'm making impossible for them to check if I have warez? How c00l ;-)
Bad articles, full of mistakes, nothing aplies to free software, etc. Me thinks people have to get a clue.
Hmm... why don't any classrooms have one big fat box
with ~20 terminals for the students?
After all most school computers are usually under-utilized.
Our 10 year old Mac Lab is still running! All running Microsoft works, of course!
'Nuff said...
Well, jock bashing is only going to have the brain-dead dig in their heels. Not that you are mistaken, the value of Athletics is grossly overstated - and is not going to be corrected in this lifetime. A rational athletic/health program would not be anything like the current system.
When a kid is given school honors for writing some code, under the gpl (since it was developed on "company time", with public funds) that is actually useful, then we will know that progress is being made.
The question is how to get from here to there... any ideas?
[flame]
anyone who uses the word "MAC" or "MACS" in capital letters and is not in some way referring to ethernet cards probably doesn't need to be listened to. but that's my worthless opinion.
[/flame]
i think a bigger problem would be not that they're using "macs" but that they're using six-year-old LC IIIs. or that the macs are improperly set up.
the fact is that in general macintoshes are extremely good at compatibility. So long as you make sure that you use PC floppies in the macs (so that the students can bring work home) it really shouldn't matter that they're macs. MS Word is the same on whatever platform..
my deepest sympathies. (entered RPI 1995, left for UPenn 1996, would never, ever, ever go back)
I agree. Throwing more money at school bureaucrats is like throwing it out the window. The best teachers I had/know find ways for kids to do more with less. Get every drop of ability/hard work out of the kids to succeed, not whine, cry and give up because they're at a disadvantage or because something's not fair.
Ps..
Fairness sucks, I do not wanted to be treated like every one else.
ez8
I have worked at an educational software company for quite a while. If anyone of you work there. You can see why useful educational software sucks. Take my company as an example. The software's been written almost 10 years ago and it's keep porting to different platform (DOS->Win3.1->Win95->NT, what's next?) Source code was written by some 18 years old kid paying $15/hr. When programmers debug the software, it has to changed the code very carefully to avoid crash with other components. And the price is high, I mean, very high for that crappy piece software. Schools keep buying it because there isn't that many useful educational software out there (compare with, for example, database market.) The technology being utilized by schools are at least 3-4 years behind the mainstream business computing environment. So that's why crappy software can survive much longer in the educational community.
Who says Macs can't be upgraded? Besides, we have tons of Macs that are still in use. PCs eventually have to fully replaced. Same for Macs.
Computers are a vital tool for kids. They are just not for "Exploring the rain forest." Kids can use computers for typing papers, getting information from the Internet or programs, doing mathematical problems...mostly that kind of stuff. A computer is not a TV.
I am quite saddened by what I see here. It would seem that CS education at the High School level in public schools is almost non-existant. Having said that I must say I'm very thankful to be attending my public High School.
Our main CS curriculum spans two year, the first year prepares you for the AP CS AB exam, the second year teaches you system level programming for UNIX and 3D graphics. This all takes plce in our programming lab, which contains 35 Pentium II 300s running Debian.
Every computer in our school can access the Internet via our T1 connection. All of our servers run Debian as well.
This is entirely untrue.
Schools are bound to the copyright laws. They are no different than anyone else.
- AC
While I learned the basics of programming on my own on a Commodore-64, the programming class I had in high school helped make up my mind as to my career path. I figured if computer science in college was as easy as BASIC Programming, I had it made! (Ah, the ignorance of youth -- but I did end up with a degree in CS.) Teaching the fundamentals at the high school level isn't a big deal. Simple things (to us) like variables, looping, and control logic are not too advanced for high school students; simple programs aren't that different from algebra.
On my first day of college, the Computer Science department had a placement test for all CS students. Use any computer language, and do a couple simple tasks (looping, keyboard input, etc). Those who passed the test started with 200 level CS courses, while the rest were relegated to 100 level classes (and were suddenly a year behind the rest). Most of what I knew was self-taught, but the high school class helped round my knowledge.
When I was in elementary school, we had a computer room with about 25 tandys and a pair of Apple ]['s. The only software on the tandy machines was a really good math program, if you were lucky enough to get on an Apple then you got to play Karateka which is easily the best Apple game ever made. Since the computer room was shared by the entire school, we would only go once a week.
How much software does a student need to learn? I was taught typing on a typewriter, but I can see a typing program working out well for students, perhaps once a week in each class, elementary school students could play an educational computer game which tested their skill in each subject, but is this really necessary? Is a computer any better than a teacher? For things like math I believe a computer can be better than a teacher because a computer math program can time you and sharpen your math skills, but I don't think that would work out well for other classes. In my opinion, a good teacher will make kids learn more than a good computer program.
Once students enter high school, some familiarity with a word processor should be given so that they will be able to type up reports once they get to college. I'm really not sure how useful spreadsheet and database program familiarity is; I remember my teachers telling me that this stuff was what I'd need to know "in the real world" but I haven't used a word processor or a database program since I've gotten out of college. I use a rudimentary spreadsheet to keep track of my income, but I could have been taught all the knowledge that was required to create it in about an hour. Maybe the majority of people really do use word processors and databases and spreadsheets and would be at a great disadvantage if they didn't have that kind of training in high school and college, but I certainly never used it.
If I was BillG i'd value MSWord at $500 a copy and then give away 4 billion copies to schools as a charitable donation.
Talk about a tax break!
Total cost to MS: $0.
Anybody want to start a software company with me? I'm thinkin anybody could do this. I'm suprised nobody has. Its a no brainer
The problem is most definitely not the software, or even the hardware, it's the faculty. There are basically no schools in the country with competent computer staff. ALL the necessary software is available for free, and computers are soooooooooo F*&(in cheap right now. All it takes is a single competent person to put it together, but he ain't there :) Instead you have some poor schmoe doling out thousands of dollars for MS software, thousands more for better computers capable of running it, and still thousands more for simple applications that are already freely available.
In my school (public, redneck Idaho, 3000 ppl town) we had a guy who was semi competent. He had the knowledge to set up a few programming classes (these "classes" were actually nothing more than asking us what we wanted to learn and giving us books). But just this little bit put me way ahead of anyone else in college! I talk with other students who come from upper class private colleges who had less computer education than me! Schools just aren't taking the time to hire someone who knows what they're doing, THAT is the problem.
Agreed this is one of the reasons I cringe every time the "I want to treat it like an appliance" mindset comes forth. Kind of like knowing the basic principles of math and calculators. Some people use calculators as black boxes [appliance] so when the machine spits out an incorrect answer they're either not aware of the fact, or how to correct it if they are. Computers are being treated the same way with the same attendent problems that go with it. Also the teaching of *particular* programs is of short term benefit. If the program changes or the person encounters a different program [same purpose] there can be difficulties.
Better to teach skills that have as broad a base as possible. Makes the individual more flexible and of better benefit to society.
I do not see any value of this "computer in every classroom" buzzword that appears popular across the USA. Lets look at it:
:P
What good does *one* computer in a classroom do? The teacher can't have everyone huddle around the 15" monitor for demonstrations, nor can it be used hands on by more than 1 student at a time! in a class of about 25 students, the class period would not be long enough to rotate through everyone.
I worked as technician for about 4 school systems in the 94-95 school year, and I saw first hand that single computers in classrooms where not being used as part of any curriculum. At most a computer savvy teacher could check her email or print some banners.
Instead of squandering resources like this they should take the single computers out of every classroom and turn them into another computer lab,
or they should put enough computers in the classroom so that all the students can use them without more than 1 rotation.
I recently took a university CS class where there was a fully loaded, inernet-attached PC on everyone's desk (the desks were more like tables). It was absolutely great, I could SSH to my server at home and take notes on my own machine, and occasionally use write or talk when things became dull
I know several programmers who still don't know much about their computers. I'm a non-programmer who knows a lot about his computer.
When I call for tech support on our custom program I usually have to educate the programmer I am talking to about the nuances of the hardware, the network, and what is actually happening with all his great code on my flashy GUI screen.
I also like to race my car. I don't know a lot of mechanics who can compete with me. However, I do know several drivers who have picked up mechanics skills.
I'm not forming my argument correctly here but the gist is that you can approach the ultimate goal of learning about your computer from several directions. You can be a programmer who learns about the hardware and then the applications. A word processor who starts to move beyond their program and onto the OS, networks, etc.
Personally, I had a bunch of really cool games that wouldn't operate on my old 8088 without a lot of playing with my config and autoexec files.
The entire computer industry has been choking on money these last 15 or 20 years. There is just SO much money made extremly easily simply by convincing ignorant people (not an insult, just reality) that they MUST have all the latest and greatest stuff.
This has become so bad that the industry has convinced itself that commercial software is destiny. They are addicted to the incredible profits being made in software. On top of that they are using part of these profits to convince people they need to buy software to be "educated". That is INSANE. Software does not in and of itself teach you ANYTHING. Software is a means to an end, and if the means is made more important, then the end will never be reached.
People need to re-learn how to solve problems with computers, not just spend money for playing with new toys. If we "teach" kids how to use a word processor instead of how to write a story, or how to write poetry, we are losing a significant set of skills that all the computer software in the world will never replace.
Stop the insanity!
I know, I know, I'm preachin' to the choir.
Let me explain first. I am a die hard techie. I have a degree in mech. engineering and in applied math. I program,use linux, have worked in very high tech environments, run my own internal lan, hell I might as well have a computer hard wired in as a part of my central nervous system I use them so much... though maybe not to the extend of some slashdotters... Also, I dont have an artistic bone in my body ( at least not of the painting, drawing type ).
Here's the thing, I've worked in medical research environments and have got very used to reading and criticing peer review research. The thing is all of the education research when it comes to making smarted, more creative, intelligent students points to the fact that ART not computers has a greater benefit. And guess what
Schools dont need to and should not spend millions of dollars on computers, since for the most part its a rout learning benefit at most and really computer companies are the ones to benefit. Spend more money on ART and music and develop better, more creative and intelligent students, not just more drone who can use excel. Anyone can learn to do a specific task, but helping someone be creative and learning to think....
And before this causes huge flamage, yes I think the use of comuters is benificial as well but so many schools and school boards, educators etc are ignoring hard research in favour of some dangling carrot because they've been sold a bill of goods by tech. companies about the benefits...
anyways...my 2 cents
A lot of the discussion here seems to be centered around the level of CS in High Schools. Is CS in HS all that important? I mean, think about it, maybe application training for the non-technical or non-college prep kids is the most applicable. Most of the really important programming theory is college level. Most of the good CS jobs require a college degree. Meaning, therefore, that even if students can get the skills needed to be a good coder in HS, if they go into the field, they'll just get the same info again. If not, a lot of the skills are wasted. I know that there are many out there that have/are/would've taken the AP CS classes and got college credit for them. My point here is, there are a lot of schools that seem to be pushing their students to do a lot more faster. It just seems to me that there is something to be said for doing High School stuff in High School, and College stuff in College. (Not forgetting that many nerds are do-it-yourselfers and manage to learn plenty on their own.)
Comments Welcome!
bp
Given the current setup of my school they would be better served with more recent text books and better payed teachers than they pathetic "computer applications" class I am taking. It it excell/word/access all the office crap, and it is pointless and boring. The students who already know about computers just sit and look at web pages (I spend allot of time at theonion and here ;)), and the students who don't just don't do any of the "work" given. In short, nobody learns anything. If they want to do computer things they should have a placement test given the large amount many students today know and different classes. I would have loved of been able to take the AP compuer science test. If they just want to prretend to be modern by having a few computers and a B.S. verification test then they would be better served spending more time on the other subjects. I think many high schools have similar problems.
I tutored calc to college and high school students. There are many applications available both commercial and free that can help your friend.
For example, Linux has GNUPlot, Octave, Yorick, MuPad and probably a thousand more covering everything from algebra to numerical methods to statistics to finite element analysis, etc. etc.
The amazing thing is that this software is either open source, freely distributable, or low priced.
True, actual tutoring programs are few, but I've always found that the easiest way to learn is work the problems.
For example, in algebra use GNUPlot to see how changing a constant in a quadratic affects the graph. Plot a few sin and cos functions to learn periodicity... Use Octave to solve a few sim. lin equations.
As for non-mathematical titles, there are many. There are at least 50 physics demonstrations, 5 astronomy programs, 10 music, 20 chemistry apps from searching Linux Software Map and Freshmeat.
For non-Linux apps there are hundreds freely available for Macintosh just searching info-mac and Yahoo.
Kwan
Where is the money the FCC gets from taxing telephone customers? Supposedly it was to provide internet access to schools. From the sounds of it the schools are spending the money elsewhere. Why the hell should I pay money to some faceless government agency that is nothing but an unlegislated tax on my telecommunications facilities when it isn't even benefitting children in my neighborhoods?
I work for a school district, and as such we've spent a lot of time talking about this.
/.ers have mentioned the Rainforest program... it's nothing more than fancy Drill and Kill.)
Everyone is dancing around an issue here... How are the computers used in the classroom?
There is the "old school" approach, if you will, is something we call "Drill and Kill". These are the programs like Millie's Math House, or zillions of other pieces of software out there that simply reinforce ideas and processes repeatedly. You have to enter 1 + 1 = 2 over and over again until you're sick of it. If you went to school when computers were new, this is the type of software you used. (A few
"Drill and Kill" software is what the SIIA is getting at I suppose. Yes, it takes a zillion Drill and Kill programs to keep a classroom happy. They're boring as can be, and not really that much better than a simple workbook or a few handouts from a teacher.
Then there is the "new school" approach.
Shift away from the computer as a drill and kill tool, and make it a tool for creativity. Use the computer to allow the kids to be creative in ways they never have before... being able to integrate sounds and graphics and movies into a book report, for example.
What does this mean? Well, in reality a copy of Microsoft Office is really all you need to equip a machine in a computer lab... and maybe a few other small programs, like a typing tutor. (However, most (all?) of our typing classes are acutally just done in Word.)
Don't like Microsoft? There's many other possibilities out there, too. AppleWorks (ClairsWorks), HyperStudio, KidPics... the list is huge. These programs are quite different than their expensive one-purpose Drill and Kill counterparts, and allow the kids to be much more creative, and learn in ways they've never learned before.
It's neat to see a kid who never does well in school on "conventional" assignments get all excited and really get into a project on a computer.
Wrapping this back into the topic: Why aren't some schools spending much on software? They don't need to. They have the tools they need already.
- AC
What kind of gullible individuals would trust a report from a Trade Association claiming that we don't buy enough of their product?
Geez...what's next.."NRA says : Americans not buying enough guns"
or...
"McDonald's research finds : people not getting enough Filet-O-Fishes"
This whole thing sounds like an Onion story.
So, you are saying that the kids won't learn anything by writing the Operating system and the applications themselves? :)
ehm... seriously though, it is a very valid point, but in a couple of years or so there will be free software available that is suitable for use by computer illiterate I guess..
BASIC?
I don't think teaching teachers how to program will work. Teachers for the mostpart are just ordinary people -- the same kind of people who have 12:00 flashing on their VCR's. My dad is a teacher, and I constantly have to listen to his stories about the pathetic attempts the administration has made at incorporating computer science into the curriculum at his school (and other schools). It's quite sad, really.
Dj wrote:
It's like complaining that no one does car mechanics but they all do driving lessons.
A perfect analogy. It's a device that most people will use, and it's a complicated device that we need to teach some people the inner workings. That's why most schools in my state (NYS) do offer both car mechanics and driving lessons. Granted most schools don't have the facilities for car mechanics, but they make collective arrangements so that someone with interest can learn.
With computers, most schools seem to have washed their hands of the whole programming aspect. They don't want to deal with teaching kids how to control the computers, just use them. Anyone who wants to learn to program has to teach themselves or wait until college in most parts of the state.
Another important thing about programming courses needs a little background. In case you haven't figured it out (don't worry, most people I've talked to haven't), the reason high schools make such a big deal about Math class has nothing to do with learning math. They know full well that few people require Euclid or Triginometry in the real world. It's there to teach you analytic problem solving, which is an important skill for everyone.
Programming teaches you algorithmic problem solving, which is another important skill for everyone. I think that at least Programming 101 should be a requirement, not a discarded option.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Are computer skills only relevant for computer programmers? Do people in the work place use
computers without needing or having to program
them? The answers no and yes.
It's like complaining that no one does car mechanics but they all do driving lessons.
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
Don't forget about the fact that most schools pump obscene amounts of money into their athletics departments... As an example, I remember a friend of mine who works for a school somewhere in Massachusetts saying he came across the principal's budget spreadsheets and the athletics department had some obscene amount of money like $400,000 for the next year, whereas the English department only had $8,000 for the next four years. (Those values may not be entirely correct due to bit rot, but I'm quite sure that the athletics department got some obscene amount of money for a shorter period of time compared to the English department.)
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
"To beg the question" is to assume that the conclusion of the argument is true (as one of the premisses of the argument).
Arguments aren't true or false; they're valid or invalid, sound or unsound.
(I just knew my ABD in philosophy would come in handy one day!)
--
Posted by traveler359:
I know exactly what they are talking about. But one think that we must keep in mind is that they out fit a few computer labs and then everyone shares. I don't think its very reasonable to break it down in to dollars per student.
On the flip side maybe the free software movement needs to address the issue of educational software. I am currently learning C++ and VB once I complete this I plan to start on something like this. I belive that the free software movement has a lot to offer everyone, including students and educators.
Any ideas anyone?
I know these folks are just trying to pump another buck out of society, but I do agree with their point. Schools are woefully behind in their technology education, and few devote the kind of money necessary to keep up with the computer world.
I actually went to a high school where computer classes were ranked on par with home economics and phys ed. At least, that was what you had to choose from when you scheduled. There were no required computer courses--and my high school was considered progressive for the state!
I don't believe that all the fault lies with the for-profit software industry--if school systems would set some decent priorities, then spending on technology education would almost certainly have to increase (even considering free software).
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
In my experiences at high school, it seemed every piece of software they had was pirated. Note the word "seemed", I'm not making any accusations...
The first piece of software I saw was the FoolProof security dealio in the windows lab. It was shareware and expired in the middle of class. The next day, a new shareware copy was up.
(fwiw, you should never underestimate the ingeuity of a complete fool, as I estimate that it would take anyone worth their salt 30 seconds to disable. Note the word "estimate", I'm not making any accusations again.)
The other one was a quicktime panorama generator in the mac lab. The students were directed to disable the network connection before running it. When I tried executing the program with the network still on, it complained that someone else with the same license key was using it.
So, unregistered shareware and software without a proper site license. I'm certainly not implying anything, you can make the decisions on your own.
Sorry for the pissy nature of this message, but with all of the incidents of school totalitarian control lately, I wouldn't want to get myself expelled or sued for libel.
F0 07 C7 C8
Depends on which life you are wondering about. Rabbits breed like rabbits. If everyone going west had lived on bothing but rabbits (hunting every day), it is unlikely they could have caused problems with rabbit population. Shooting a 1000 lb bison (buffalo) and only being able to carry 100 lbs is realistic, though I would have gone back for the rest. In any case the Bison, antalope, and so on didn't fare so well, and their numbers have not yet recovered, but they are close.
"People are not wearing enough hats!"
...and they figured this out how?
Jón
"How do you explain that money doesn't enumerate all value?"
Some people just dont get it. I never liked hardcoded brains.
6 + ~1
not,
7 + ~1.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
...While I can't give any URL's, a community college I worked at was given a "grant" by Micros~1. Basically, they were given a "budget" which they were allowed to "purchase" Micros~1 software at retail price. Micros~1 then waited 9-12 months before delivering. It was explained to me as a way for Micros~1 to get an up-front tax writeoff for full retail price software, then clean out their warehouses of old stuff that wasn't moving anymore. Sick, but it worked.
InThane
Hmm, tough choice.
As you said yourself, it's a typing lab. I could type on a block of wood if I really wanted to. If there are typing labs with better than 8086s, it would be quite a waste.
We have a mailing list, seul-edu, and a website, http://www.seul.org/edu/ that are dedicated to fostering educational applications for Linux. We have a number of programs both pedagogical and administrative and documents (HOWTOs, on-line texts) under development which I think you might find interesting. We can always use help and feedback. Please take a look at what we're doing and then join us!
Doug Loss
Let's see, most schools are buying and maintaining Macs, so they are paying 50% to 100% more for their hardware, which is NOT upgradable..
Hmmm, I wonder why there is no money left for software??
Do the math.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
No, spend money to teach the teachers how to use computers and software. And no, I don't mean more multimedia pap, I mean office applications, accounting, C and Basic, real stuff that real people use on computers. Maybe teach them how to install and admin Linux or BSD.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Do these people live in some country that funds its public schools? Americans seem to think it happens by magic. Buy software? With a $200 class budget for the entire year?
Our schools can't afford basic necessities, much less software.
And chances are the only software that will run on the 286 and 386 in American classrooms is either free or out of print.
Brings back fond memories of the old apple IIe at my grade school. That game will always have a soft spot in my heart. I was the only one in my class that could make it to Oregon in one class period. (The dumbasses went at a grueling pace on bare bones rations.)
There's an idea for a great linux port.
My School's [Central Vermont] computer related courses:
Typing
Applications [wow.. they use Microsoft Works! $10 a pop?]
.... Thats it!
Next year theyre adding networking and programming [vb? i was like umm.. no] but theyre both 3 blocks a day for the entire year.. we have block scheduling, which is 4 blocks a day...
:P
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
This is a little off-topic, but I felt that I had to respond to all the people criticizing the use of computers in education.
I agree that a computer is not magical and won't instantly lead to better education. The fact that school administrators throw money into buying a bunch of over-powered computers and over-priced software doesn't mean that students will learn any better.
And yet, the fact that this often happens does not mean that computers have no value at all in the classroom. Computers, when properly used, can actually provide many educational opportunities that you simply can't get without them.
Here's an example. I work for the NASA Quest team (URL above). One of the many services we offer is regular web chats for school children to talk to real NASA scientists. Often, kids get excited about science as a result of these chats and become a lot more interested in their schoolwork.
This is the kind of thing that simply cannot be done with more traditional means (slide projectors, VCRs, blackboards).
I'm simply suggesting that computers are neither magical solutions to education problems, nor are they useless and unnecessary in schools. Computers have their place. They can be very helpful in furthering a kid's education, especially when used alongside more traditional means of teaching.
KARATEKA!!!!!
Right now and for many years past, our "schools" have not been schools, but "mental health" clinics under the domination of the Psychiatrists.
So, how about for the first several years, where students should be concentrating on the "three R's", teachers of those levels be paid entirely based on how well their students did in those areas in the previous year.
Last years students can't read, can't spell, don't know that 80 + 20 = 100? This year you teach for free (or maybe minimum wage) or you don't teach here at all.
Your third grade students last year all know their alphabet backwards, forwards and inside out (literally); know their phonetics; are able to use a dictionary by themselves (and like to use it, not like some students I had a decade ago who thought that being told to use a dictionary was punishment!); can read Kipling, Milne, etc as well as modern equivalents and enjoy doing so; are able to spell phonetically and have a good start on the special cases; are able to add and subtract numbers of any size "in their heads" and are able to (at least) multiply any pair of numbers both in the range 0 .. 20? Great! This year you get $100_000 for the year!
BTW, am not going to try to insert it into the above, but I neglected Grammar in the above exposition.
Of course, there are a few other things that should be taught at this level, like a little bit of Science, the ability to communicate ideas with pictures (no matter how poorly rendered, the point is the idea, not the rendering), some idea of music and musical structure (at least expose them to such things as "Peter and the Wolf", which in my experience most children love), and some idea of a discipline requiring formal body movement (doesn't really matter at this stage whether it is "Simon Says", ballet, Martial Arts, or Yoga. the idea is to build muscular coordination).
Concentrate on things like this in K-6, and you will have real students going into middle school. Then they can start learning how to really use computers as the tools they are.
What should not be done in the public schools is any attempt to indocrinate students with ethnic or cultural values. Nor, until the Psychiatrists are eliminated, should there be any attempt to teach morals or ethics. All recent attempts to do so have been harmful, as demonstrated at Littleton, and many other schools.
More to the point, a "computer on every desk" could be useful in the lower grades for such things as drilling (reading, spelling, arithmetic, etc). These machines need not be expensive (old i386sx boxen would do fine, with the right software). Maybe we should encourage High School students to write software for use by the lower grades and publish it to the Open Source community :=)
One other use would be for games that required the player to think .
Well, this got to be a little longer than I intended, and this is perhaps the wrong forum for it; but it needs to be said, and said often and loudly until these things happen; and on review I can't see anything that I could remove and still make my point.
== Buz :) Buz Cory -- New York NY USA
write for FREE help with:
Installing/Configuring Linux
Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
Changing DOS/WinDog to Linux is like changing a WW-I Fokker for an F-14
Know Yourself! Know Life!
Thank God; I was beginning to think I was the last person in America who knew what "begging the question" was. Admittedly, knowing that I might well be one of _two_ doesn't really fill me with glee.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Giving these kids subsidized net access is BAD. First, many can't read or write, let alone construct a thought or express an idea. Second, they're being dumped onto the net without the faintest idea of how things work. Third, not only is every last tax-serf forced to pay for their education that isn't educating, we're forced to pay for their net access (boy, I wish *I* could afford a T1!), AND we are forced to pay for bullshit "censorware" like NetNanny or Cybersitter, AND pay a bunch of librarians to sit around and read students' email. (If a student received or sent encrypted mail, they'd likely be banned from the computers, possibly viewed as a bomb threat in the post-Littleton climate.) But the worst part is that when they're done, they've learned nothing despite all the money that was thrown at them.
In one school, so I was told, no students were allowed to use the net for fear they might access evil information. They bought the connections and computers, but were too cheap to buy forty feet of cable to hook it up. And of course, the idiots bought multi-kilobuck PowerMacs, as if you needed that kind of power for web browsing. In the meantime, just about every place is running Windows, and any student who actually exhibits a clue is labeled a "hacker" and sent to the principal's office. Their "security" consists of having a network password that is the name of the school's mascot, and disabling the "Run" command on the Start menu. ACTUALLY KNOWING HOW THINGS WORK IS DISCOURAGED. We covered all this in the Littleton discussions, remember? Heaven forbid if a student telnets into a legitimate shell account not controlled by the school, or knows how to program in something other than BASIC.
The end effect of subsidizing free net access in the government slave camps known as "schools" will be to do an end run around any freedoms people still enjoy. The politicians who cry for a chicken in every pot and a T1 in every home would just love to have everyone in America given free net access, because then they could claim the net is a "public resource" and therefore needs to be regulated.
We are already paying too damn much, in money and tears, to lock children up and brainwash them. But of course, the Enlightened will lead the crowd with cries for MO' MONEY, MO' MONEY, MO' MONEY. Get rid of the compulsory attendance laws and give people a true CHOICE, and watch a thousand flowers bloom. Continue, and enjoy the spectacle of a boot smashing into a human face forever. Brother, you asked for it!
Fuck Slashdot
Webster's definition 2b for BEG is "to require as necessary or appropriate". This is the definition meant in the logical fallacy of "begging the question", as in to require the conclusion to be one of the premises, though usually worded differently of course. The confusion here is in the term "the question". The referent of "the question" in the logical fallacy is the premise that is merely asserted but not proven. When an argument begs A question, then it's meant that it requires that a question be asked of it (which could also be said of a fallacious argument).
It's common usage with technical accuracy to back it up. Some arguments can beg a response, an offense may beg a lawsuit (sometimes anthropomorphically phrased as begging FOR a lawsuit, which is derivative). It was common use before academia picked it up.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Cursive always seemed to me a very archaic rococo form of writing that's only suitable for signatures and calligraphy. I imagine the only use in teaching it is to read it and to develop a signature. I work with dozens of people, we all go to meetings, and NOT ONE person I know takes notes or writes instructions in cursive. When I was in grade school, I could block print very neatly, but had to take remedial writing for years, and my teachers constantly marked me down for penmanship, because my cursive was so bad. Is it any damn wonder I hated writing papers and procrastinated writing them for the rest of my school years? They taught me that writing was an ordeal to be endured, not a craft to be honed. Any wonder I found school boring and not worthwhile? I could have been learning, but there I was writing lowercase "f"s for half a class. I still can't get some capitals right.
... school offered me nothing stimulating, so I learned to teach myself far more effectively than any school.
That last part actually turned out to be beneficial to me
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Many museums are online, and until Bill Gates buys exclusive digital rights to them ALL (which he really is doing), many fine works of art have extremely high-res photos of them. With an LCD projector (yes, this takes real money folks) and a slideshow program, a teacher can create an art appreciation curriculum without ever needing to maintain a bunch of slides, which fade, crack, and get lost.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Programming in multiple languages and writing device drivers at 17? Geez! I wish you had been my dad!
...on second thought, that's not true. Computers weren't my parents' thing, but they did enough by encouraging me to read and study what I was interested in.
Jay (=
(who may someday catch up with the teenagers of today...)
conclusion: it is good that schools do not spend much on software. the opportunity exists for them to cultivate the programming side of their students. to think like a programmer is to always be learning. isn't that the goal?
this all blends nicely into the free software movement, as other more loquacious people will surely point out.
The "latest and greatest" software for all those new computers that was on the budget for last year is not in the budget for this year.
So how do alot of school compensate? Joe brings in that new Win98 CD that came with his computer to "upgrade" the computers. Pete brings in that copy of Office 97 that he got from his mom, that she "borrowed" from work. No one really sees it as illegal, expect the jokingly, "you didn't see me type in this key *wink* *wink*"
What about linux? HAHA The computer lab in my old HS was run by a 70 year old librarian, who kept shutting off the computers when they would dial-in to the ISP because "it was making funny noises and it was going to break it" Then someone told here that was the modem connecting. Someone has the patience enough to teach her linux?
I don't agree at all with the headline, there is too much imputing of motives going on than is supported by the article.
Clearly, this being an industry trade group, we know what their agenda is, but when I read the CNN article, all I saw was someone describe the amount of money spent on software as "peanuts". I don't think that it is logical or fair to jump from that statement to the headline of this article.
Yes, software is a great thing, and it will be necessary for our kids to learn computers. However, what's the use of teaching them how to use computers if you're not going to teach them to read?!? Or do arithmetic? The primary function of our primary/secondary schools is *supposed* to be to teach basic skills to our children, such as reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. They fail miserably at this, as evidenced by the explosion of remedial courses being required of many students entering college, not to mention the level of grammar seen in IRC and newsgroups. If a person can't read and write, then all the software in the world won't help.
Personally, I'm strongly in favor of hard copy, *especially* in primary school. These kids shouldn't be able to get out of writing their cursive 'A' 100 times just because they can punch a button on a keyboard.
When a person has mastered (or is fairly competent at) the basics, *then* expend the money on software to enhance more advanced learning. And as always, reinforce the learning skills.
Matthew Vanecek For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except me. I'm always getting i
I agree with you. I go to another "rich" school in Santa Monica, CA. Even though we are relatively rich, we still have too few textbooks & not enough paper for the copiers. We have a bunch of Macintosh SEs and LCs all over the place that nobody uses, and a computer lab with a bunch of Pentiums running 95. We have AP compuer Science, but I'm not in it. As far as I can tell, we have about 7 good computers on campus. There are 2 Mac G3s in the Yearbook room, another 2 in the Journalism room (I'm on the paper), and 2 new G3s in the Journalism room. We're buying another 2, and Yearbook is getting one. We use them for Pagemaker in laying out the paper, and Quake 3. A large percentage of the student body is poor, though, and not the type to be on the paper or in Yearbook, so I doubt they ever see a computer better than my calculator in their whole four years. It's a shame.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
This just goes to show the inefficacy of computers in the classroom. Schools are given the computers because of course we have to have computers in the classroom, the president says so. Then the schools have to figure out what to do with them.
They could install all the latest whizzbang software at $500 a seat, or spend nothing and get the same end result. Guess what happens?
Computers don't teach kids. Teachers do. I am not convinced that a computer as a teaching tool is any more effective than a good teacher showing a videotape. The computer is a media tool, just like TV/VCR or an antiquated 'film-strip'.
I had a teacher once who did not know how to teach so he would sit us all down with a film strip, ignore us, and grade papers. We learned nothing. The same thing can happen with a bad teacher and classroom full of pentiums with an 'Explore the rain forests' CD-ROM - its just a hell of a lot more expensive.
Stop wasting money on computers/Internet in the school. Spend the money on paying teachers a respectable salary instead.
-josh
How do you explain that money doesn't enumerate all value?
:)
oh, but there is correlation! if people buy something, that means it has value to them!
but that's not the main point. the problem is not just schools not spending much, but also the industry not providing much of interest.
case in point, i recently talked with an old high school teacher of mine, and at one point he started telling me about the college-level calculus courses they're planning, and the difficulties they have finding the right software. his experience was that the market is pretty much split into silly puzzle-style programs on one end, and mathematica on the other - nothing in between. college freshmen trying to find good tutoring software to help them with calc can relate, i'm sure. no wonder people don't buy programs, if there's little available.
and secondly, regarding the poor quality of school software - i've worked for a while in one of the big public school systems, and educational software costs a lot. depending on software, it can get into upper double- and triple-digits per machine for a specialized program (times several dozen machines per lab). on one hand it's understandable, because a limited-market title is naturally going to be more expensive to offset production costs - but if you're an educator faced with a choice of spending your entire yearly software budget on one or two specialized titles, or several types of general productivity and math/statistics software, which one will you choose? considering present pricing and selection, no wonder we have curricula based around m$ office and mathcad.
which is not to say educators are not to blame. all too often they mistake typing and ms office classes for 'computer science education' - a distinction which i'm afraid is also often lost on college freshmen trying pick a major. labs are often run by people without much it training, who learn as they go. but that is more excusable. teachers are primarily educators, and shouldn't be expected to be necessarily computer savvy. somewhere higher up in the administration there should be people who keep up with technology, evaluate educational software, and advise the teachers, but we've still a way to go until then.
which brings us right back to not having good software to begin with.
My other car is a cons.
In the past, there were big hopes for computer aided instruction (CAI), but those don't really seem to have come through.
What computers seem to be most useful for is to learn computer related things (programming, data analysis, etc.), as office tools (text processing, graphics, etc.), and for accessing the Internet. For programming and data analysis, free software is probably the best there is (why warp little minds with VC?). For office tools, most computers ship with some form of office suite anyway; if they don't, that's probably the cheapest purchase per student (unless it's MS Office, of course). And Internet access software is also included.
It's a simple fact: there isn't much need to spend much money on desktop software anymore. I'm religious about not pirating software, and still pretty much the only money I spend on software is on the occasional $30 game.
We had computers in elementary school. Apple ][e's. Did they teach me ANYTHING? Nothing other than I dispised monochrome screens. Later we got newer systems with some computer program that was like a historical game or something. I dont remember, I didnt learn anything from that either. In high school we had a computer lab, a bunch of Mac 960 or some arcane number series. Did I learn anything from those? Nothing more than I hated MacOS 7.x. If schools really want to get any productivity out of computers they need to put them in the hands of the teachers along with some basic training.
The high school where I learned to hate MacOS 7 asked me to come back and consult for them because they were getting beacoup cash for making their school "digital". So I spent many hours and researching and writing up a very good report (IMHO) that would cost them well under budget and get two computers in every classroom, most of the teachers a laptop, a projector in all of the rooms with laptops, DVD players for the language department (watching popular movies in Spanish and French is a good way to get exposed to said language), a TV and VCR in every room, and a very nice set of thin clients in the library for browsing or printing files. My proposal was rejected. Why? Because the teachers in charge of the computer lab (read: in charge of the "digital" money) are Mac users and really want to push PowerPCs with PC adapter cards. My proposal called for PCs which they dont like. My proposal would have gotten them alot more bang for their buck, they want 3000$ Macs in every room, no one gets projectors or anything else now.
The point of that rather long rant is that teachers and administration should NOT be in charge of the purchase of computer hardware and softwware. School boards should hire professional consultants for all computers and computer related purchases. The REASON they dont buy enough software that the SIIA complains about is many teachers don't have the background or technical training to make sound IT decsions. Why do companies hire IT consultants and managers instead of making any Jonny Comelately for IT issues? Because they know what they are doing, their livlihood depends on doing their job wel land under budget. They can also be called upon for technical support and trouble shooting.
Ok, I'm done
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
i went to cedar lane (just graduated in jan. actually). this school had about 100 people in it and was for people w/ learning disabilities, emotional problems, etc. it's in fairfax county, one of the riches school districts(sp) in the country. we didn't even have stalls in the boys bathroom, just a toilet in the corner. we did have a 56k compressed leased line (which was plenty) and shiny new overly equiped dells(iirc) and a bunch of 486's that were donated. also we got a dual 300 p2 compaq server (one of the ones w/ the little lcd status display) w/ 9gig cuda's(iirc). what did this server do? it ran nt and did nothing but log logins so they could tell when people changed the screen saver password and try to figure out who was logging in as admin (which requiered no passwd). i WAS lucky enough to get a p/75 with a 2gig hawk scsi drive and a very nice sony 17sf monitor (my favorite) to do some development on. they didn't offer any programming classes, but i got to code
anyway, thanx to the teacher. if only i could have installed linux or freebsd (or any other *bsd, for that matter) i could have set it up to be a school wide file server, web server, and mail server. actually one of those 486's could have done it.
i HATE magnet schools. they're just not fare. why should one group of kids get all that stuff and others be screwed? the magnet school in fairfax county is herndon high. they have multiple t1s, switched 100baseT lans, cd towers, top of the line servers w/ huge raid arrays, etc, etc. then there's the "smart" school for the "GT" ("gifted and talented" kids) who get all sorts of sparcstations and cisco routers to play w/ till their hearts content. when i was in the library at cedar, i was told to stop downloading a quicktime plugin for netscape (i installed tons of software on many different computers throughout the school). i stopped, did as i was told, and then found out that the teacher had gone and written me up behind my back; i found out the next day i wasn't allowed on the computers for a week. the next year, someone changed the passwords on some of the library's win95 boxes. so who do they blame? you guessed it, ME. after i had helped admin their network, assign ip's, install software, fix problems,
help students and teachers with things on the computers, etc. they asked me if i did it and i said no; they didn't believe me. they believed i was a "hacker". it made me wish i had never done anything for them. in the end, they decided to be nice and "let me off" cuz they couldn't prove anything. another incident w/ the assitant princible, was in the computer lab one day, when the teacher's kid was sick. she was subbing for my period until he returned. the first (warning bell) rang and she thought it was the final late bell. i told her there was still 10min left and she said "don't tell me what time it is, boy." that wasn't all, the school was full of pregnant 16 year olds (some i even tried to talk out of getting pregnant w/ their boyfriends) and girls who dated guys in their 30's and 40's (unfortunetly the age of consent in virginia is 16, last i heard). i could go on, but i think you get the idea, it sucked.
i went to cedar lane (just graduated in jan. actually). this school had about 100 people in it and was for people w/ learning disabilities, emotional problems, etc. it's in fairfax county, one of the riches school districts(sp) in the country. we didn't even have stalls in the boys bathroom, just a toilet in the corner. we did have a 56k compressed leased line (which was plenty) and shiny new overly equiped dells(iirc) and a bunch of 486's that were donated. also we got a dual 300 p2 compaq server (one of the ones w/ the little lcd status display) w/ 9gig cuda's(iirc). what did this server do? it ran nt and did nothing but log logins so they could tell when people changed the screen saver password and try to figure out who was logging in as admin (which requiered no passwd). i WAS lucky enough to get a p/75 with a 2gig hawk scsi drive and a very nice sony 17sf monitor (my favorite) to do some development on. they didn't offer any programming classes, but i got to code anyway, thanx to the teacher. if only i could have installed linux or freebsd (or any other *bsd, for that matter) i could have set it up to be a school wide file server, web server, and mail server. actually one of those 486's could have done it.
i HATE magnet schools. they're just not fare. why should one group of kids get all that stuff and others be screwed? the magnet school in fairfax county is herndon high. they have multiple t1s, switched 100baseT lans, cd towers, top of the line servers w/ huge raid arrays, etc, etc. then there's the "smart" school for the "GT" ("gifted and talented" kids) who get all sorts of sparcstations and cisco routers to play w/ till their hearts content. when i was in the library at cedar, i was told to stop downloading a quicktime plugin for netscape (i installed tons of software on many different computers throughout the school). i stopped, did as i was told, and then found out that the teacher had gone and written me up behind my back; i found out the next day i wasn't allowed on the computers for a week. the next year, someone changed the passwords on some of the library's win95 boxes. so who do they blame? you guessed it, ME. after i had helped admin their network, assign ip's, install software, fix problems, help students and teachers with things on the computers, etc. they asked me if i did it and i said no; they didn't believe me. they believed i was a "hacker". it made me wish i had never done anything for them. in the end, they decided to be nice and "let me off" cuz they couldn't prove anything. another incident w/ the assitant princible, was in the computer lab one day, when the teacher's kid was sick. she was subbing for my period until he returned. the first (warning bell) rang and she thought it was the final late bell. i told her there was still 10min left and she said "don't tell me what time it is, boy." that wasn't all, the school was full of pregnant 16 year olds (some i even tried to talk out of getting pregnant w/ their boyfriends) and girls who dated guys in their 30's and 40's (unfortunetly the age of consent in virginia is 16, last i heard). i could go on, but i think you get the idea, it sucked.
I've recently been involved in a project in Pennsylvania called "Link to Learn". Minus all the politician-speak, it was a bunch of studies engineered to figure out how schools could get the most bang for their technology buck, with an emphasis on Internet connectivity.
While attending a meeting of several L2L testbed projects, my manager had the occasion to speak with a school administrator who had received beaucoups bucks from the state in order to get her school wired. When my boss inquired about how she'd approached the problem, she said that it was easy. Apparently, she'd purchased a score of HP Vectra computers - the ones with the little button on the keyboard that say "Internet".
My manager tried to break the news to her, but she was quite convinced that she was all set, and he didn't have the heart to ruin her day. The point of all this being - of course school muckity-mucks aren't buying software. They wouldn't know what to do with it.
OK, my "gymnasium" (Is that equal to high school in the US?) was a newly built one, with some high-tech-wannabe ideas. Anyway, computers where used together with some digital cameras (Wow, those cameras had high resolution!), as a complement to ordinary cameras when teaching photography. That must be categorized as "art". But yes, writing papers is the most usefull area. And don't forget SIAA represents those who sell the programs, what they are doing is trying to convince the politicians who decides over school-budgets to spend some of it on their programs...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I'm a HS senior, 3 days from graduating, and I live in a rural area in northwestern Minnesota. I go to a small HS, only 250 people. We have at least one computer in every classroom (mostly K63-400s). Most teachers use it for grades, but they all have to use it for things like attendance reporting and daily announcements. The teachers send attendance for each period to the office. They also read the daily announcements off of the intranet web page.
Students get a chance to use a computer at least one period a day (plus homeroom). Some classrooms have mini-labs (~10 PCs). They are actually one-piece (monitor+CPU) 386 machines connected to an NT terminal server (Dual PII450 w/328mb RAM, 18gb disk). The library has about 12 PCs for student use (6 Terminal Server machines, 6 P-75s). There is also a 20-machine computer lab with 20 more P75s. In the main computer lab there are 25 P200MMXes and 2 PII400s (for video editing). Students in certain groups (such as National Honor Society, etc.) get mail messages to their personal mail accounts. We use MS Word 97 and WordPerfect 8 for writing reports. They teach Word, Excel, Accounting, Cisco Networking, and next year Computer Literacy (from A-Plus), and Computer Hardware (also A-Plus.) (After the Cisco class, I plan on taking the test to get my CCNA.) The shop teacher also teaches AutoCAD, and computer based robotics, CNC milling, and electronics. Students do research for most classes on the internet. We have subscriptions to a few online research services too. The science classes have computer based physics and chemistry experiments (data acquisition stuff). The biology classes also track migrating birds with data from a local wildlife refuge and then they plot the data using ArcView. We have a service called NovaNet with online curriculum on almost any subject. It has tests and grades student progress online too. (I am taking Russian on it right now.) We can also go on the internet whenever we want, from any PC.
This summer, we will be installing (thanks to e-rate) a full-duplex switched 100Mbps (200Mpbs Full Duplex) ethernet, replacing our current token ring system. We will be adding a new Compaq server (Dual PII450) with NetWare 5. (Though I may convince them to use Linux instead.) We are putting in Cisco 100Mbps switches (two at the highschool and one at the elementary, with fiber connecting the buildings) so each machine will have a dedicated switch port. The e-rate paid for 70% of the switches and rewiring. The rest (the other 30% and all the other equipment) is paid for by the school district.
All in all we have about 75 PCs for 250 students. Since most are in labs or the library, basically anyone can use a PC whenever they need to. (During class, homeroom or after school.) We also have a T1 to the internet, 48GB of server storage space, 14 served CD-ROM drives, a PII-233 web server, and a MetaFrame terminal server (8 servers in all).
The only software we've bought is MS and WordPerfect office for the whole school, a few copies of AutoCAD, some grading software, MetaFrame, and video editing software. Our ArcView software was donated. Most of our computer budget goes into hardware...
Andy
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
If these schools are running such old machines, it makes it all the more of a target for Linux. Teach real programming with real command lines. Then, and only then, after they have cut their teeth on the command line, intrduce them to GUI methods. (The business students are an exception, as they have to be taught how to USE a computer, not program one.)
Hopefully, with all this Universal Service Fund money coming in, schools can update their computing infrastructure to something other than the products from Uncle Billy's Evil Software Empire.
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
Schools have no money to spend. I was given 50,000(canadian) to spend on my dads school. After 25 iMacs and a couple of G3's, there is no money. Even with the discounts, we are short about 10,000. If companies got into their little heads that free software(or close to free) is the way to go. How are we supposed to teach kids on the magical new computers if they have no soaftware?
Ah, but that will only work unitl those corporations or schools have a disgruntled former employee or the SPA creates an incentive program (5% of the fine or something; do they already have something like this?) and then you're toast.
Hmmm, I wonder which one is ahead . . . Now, if I'm not mistaken, computers should be used in schools for four things:
Now, HOW would you use computers for a subject defined (by the SIIA) as "reading"? And the "arts"? Fine, I can see using a computer to create digital art, but how about painting, music, sculpture, and photography?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I guess I was significantly luckier than I thought. My high school was a magnet Sci-Tech-Math program and therefore had an excellent computer system. We had three labs for the computer classes -- One with 30 LC IIs and LaserWriters, one with 30 RS/6000s (AIX 3.2.5, I think) and two Lexmark printers, and one with 30 IBM PCs (Pentiums with NT). These labs were across the hall from the 4000 square-foot research lab. In addition to the labs themselves, each classroom had at least 10 computers, mostly Performas, and the Media Lab had about 20 Quadras and a couple of Amigas (the Video Toasters, mainly). They taught us computer basics in the LC II lab; FORTRAN, Pascal, C, and C++ in the AIX lab (I have fond memories of xlc and xlC); and Pascal (AP CompSci) in the PC lab.
All of these computers were Netwared together by the world's least competent CNE and connected to the Internet by him as well. Fortunately, most of us were competent enough to fix things when he broke them.
The best benefit of the computer science classes is thinking and problem-solving skills, which are sadly lacking these days. Cutting them is a fatal mistake -- it reminds me of the state of our music programs. Music helps with spatial reasoning and math, but it's always cut first. However, they never touch the sports programs. grrrrr....
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
At my highschool we have one "computer teacher" who has taken most of the equiptment we get from the schoolboard home. I know this because I have seen all the invoices yet all the equiptment isn't there, or it will be there for like a week and then suddenly it will be "broken" and he'll have to take it home to fix it...uh huh sure....
Of course I also go to the same highschool that uses 8086es in the typing lab. Oh well, one more week till I graduate...
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s: a-- C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E- W++ N o-- K- w--- O- M+ V PS+ P
Isn't there a dos port of it?? If so send it, if it's legal!
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/otrail.shtmlW indows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Actually, it already is.
Volume 35 - Number 11, page 2:
National Pork Council: Many mericans suffer from pork deficiency
It's not online anymore, but basically, it says : "NPC finds fewer than 5% of americans are recieving suffiencent 18 daily servings of pork"
It is pretty difficult to hire what you would classify as a 'competent' computer staff with the dirt for money the administrators have to deal with. I'm certainly not siding with the suits here, but you must admit it's hard to hire a person with a great deal of computer knowledge for $26,000/yr when that same person could get a job making at least $100,000/yr plus great benefits and a nice sign-on bonus (assuming they are knowledgable) somewhere else.
:) The majority of my time at the school is actually spent volunteering (good thing I don't care much about money!). I do have a few helpers that know a great deal for their age, which I think is good too. But this level of education often needs community volunteers literate in technology to get things rolling.
:) I hope I am doing this by volunteering my time. Just thought I would randomly throw that in.
:D
The best computer programs I have seen implemented at the high school level are actually run by the students. They let the students create their own curriculum, supply them with the necessary books, and let them do what they need to do. You would think this would be a disaster and that the students would take advantage of the system, but it actually works quite well since the students tend to compete with one-another for knowledge, and they tend to be checks against one another.
A couple programs I have seen have the top students running the technology program for the entire school, including maintaining the school network, the school web site and web server, all of the classroom machines... all that good stuff. Not only do they learn a lot, but it also helps them to get some recognition and respect rather than just the athletes getting it all the time. When their work helps the rest of their classmates or when their work makes their school look good, they tend to get a great deal of respect.
I work at the elementary level, so this sort of thing gets difficult.
I think it is much more productive to actually do something about the problems you see than to just go around and bitch about them.
Maybe some LUGs should go out and volunteer at schools that need help... find companies to donate hardware (486 machines are easily had when it comes to donations) and then set up nice little Linux labs for the students to use.
Wow, it's neat to see how jumbled my thoughts can get when it gets late.
Anyway, to bottom line it, I agree that the vast majority of 'computer staff' is incompetent, but I also think there is more of a reason than the hiring procedure behind it. I think the constructive approach concerned students should take would be to organize and plea/argue for a more active role in their technology program. Complaining about the administrators or teaching staff seldom gets anyone anywhere.
Well that's my two cents...
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
"The Word Processing labs (the macs) were used frequently. Too bad students couldn't take their work home to keep working on it, unless you were the one student in a hundred who had a Mac at home."
:)
Perhaps they should have educated the students on using the Macs. You can save to a PC formatted disk with PC Exchange enabled (which runs transparently) and save in Rich Text Format. I go between MacOS/Win32/Linux all of the time using this method and I've never had a problem with it... aside from when I use tables extensively. Most all word processors can read rtf anymore.
Just had to throw that in.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
Money is usually really scarce, yes. But just to clarify - most of the software runs on Macs. We run all PC's at our [elementary] site, but every title we own is hybrid MacOS/Windows.
It seems to me that most of the kids games these days are created with Macromedia Director or Macromedia Authorware, both of which port software fairly easily between the two plaforms.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
I've never heard of such software grants, I think you are mistaken. There are often reduced prices when you buy a 'site license' (which most often includes a license for 25 machines), but I guaruntee you that these companies don't give their software away. You are talking about a huge market here. Usually even the reduced prices aren't that great - they are usually way out of our reach at our school site.
As for Microsoft, the closest thing that Microsoft offers to what you are saying to schoools is an 'open license', and I know for sure that it is definately not free.
You might be confusing grants that different companies sometimes offer with site licenses. These grants require that you apply for them, and usually you are competing with a large number of other schools or organizations. One grant that I'm helping out with now has 400 other schools competing for it, and there is only one $3000 grant that will be awarded. Grants can be larger (even in the millions sometimes, though this is very very rare), but this usually means there are more organizations competing for it (often times thousands or tens of thousands). Chances of getting them are slim, and usually they choose the same schools or school districts repeatedly - which gets rather frustrating for the majority of the schools that repeatedly get nothing.
One school in a nearby district received a $1 million grant last year, and was awarded a $3 million grant for next year. It's especially frustrating to find after talking with some of the students that most of the technology isn't even being used.
As for the free software offers, I would be *really* intrested to see some URLs or phone numbers posted here. Otherwise, I would have to say that you are definately wrong about this.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
As the technology coordinator of an elementary school, I don't buy much software because most of it is pretty bad. I have found that usually software that has good content is usually coded *really* bad (crashes regularly), and when I find software that runs decent (relative term) the content is pointless. It's pretty frustrating.
So, the kids learn how to actually use the computers most of the time rather than having them play useless games all the time. In the computer lab we take machines apart, they learn how to navigate through the file system I created, learn word processing skills, and they make extensive use of the Internet down to 2nd grade. I guess this is most useful for them to learn anyway.
I wish the software we have would run on Linux. Even more I wish the software companies would sell Linux versions of their software... but I realize this is a long way off if it ever happens. I am actually getting some Linux boxes together this weekend to deploy in a classroom or two in the next week or so (primarily for word processing and Internet access).
--SONET
Our School Technology Site
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
I really have to wonder if schools are legally using the software they own? How many of you have heard of your teachers taking home the school software? If the teachers are stealing, who's to say that the school isn't abusing the limited site license?
But really, now. Schools have trouble buying new books every 4-5+ years. Software changes almost bi-yearly. How can they expect schools to buy the latest and greatest software?
Six
I come from a fairly wealthy town, so the High School is much better off than most schools. It's still pretty pathetic. We have a computer in every classroom. They are used for absolutely nothing. I mean nothing. The teachers don't even use them. We also have a couple computer labs. The one for foreign languages is filled with Apple IIe's that are used to run the most pointless software I've ever seen in my life. Wouldn't it make sense to put the computers that are being used for nothing in the classrooms in this lab? But then we wouldn't have a computer in every classroom... Now, like I said the school isn't that bad off. Quite frankly I don't see a big need for computers in foreing languages. The school actually offers a couple decent programming courses, including AP Computer Science, and the lab we use for these actually has pentium 133s in it. Of course, the school got these computers about 3 years ago, and all of them came with network cards. Because of administrative incompetence, in 3 years the school still hasn't managed to buy a couple hubs and some twisted pair cable to connect these computers, but that's another story. What's my point. I'm not sure. Personally I don't think that computers are that important to the school. The only reason they have any at all is because they want to look good. Don't get me wrong, I love computers. I go to the library every day during lunch to get on the internet. But really the only reason I do so is to keep up with slashdot. At least I'm getting a good education somewhere...
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
My point:
My school had a very good computer program from a monetary standpoint. I did learn a lot about applications. However, in order to learn more about things I was interested in I had to learn on my own about programming, operating systems, and more. I did learn on my own, I learned C/C++, Linux, HTML ... However spending more on software is useless if you don't have teachers competent enough to teach it.
have no idea what to do with computers.
my school has a few hundred dell 266mhz PIIs deployed and another 2-3 hundred sitting in storage.
How long is it gonna take them to deploy those?
2-3 years?
and to make it worse the guy they got running the whole thing is a complete idiot. He's got a Computer Learning Center degree. (oh yeah thats some qualifications right there).
He had all the pcs running with 256 color mode including the ones in photography. Try editing some true color pics in photoshop in 256 colors -- it ain't pretty. he of course had all the pcs locked out (which he should cause kids will mess with the settings) so it took me an extra 30 secs to change the color depth and res.
and his ingenious way of transfering large images -- putting zip drives in all the pcs.
i guess it would be too much trouble to put a share on their shitty NT server which is insecure and crashes all the time.
speaking of the server, one of my friends got suspended for 3 days cause he showed the guy that he could copy some files off the server that were supposed to be restricted. the school said he was "hacking". pretty pathetic
and of course their wonderful internet connection thru a bess n2h2 proxy. Originally they had a T3 connection, but then they switched to this Bess proxy which is thru a T1. It is SO slow -- my 56k modem is at least twice as fast because this thing is so inconsistant. of course the reason for this thing is to block the kiddies from the evils of the internet, but up until last month you could bypass it by going to any delegate proxy (ie http://magusnet.com:8084/-_-http://www.site.com/)
. So the proxy blocked access to any directory named "-_-". theres still other ways around it. . .
well i'm outta there next month so i couldnt care less about their problems but
my point here is obvious. Schools should spend just as much money in paying someone who knows what he is doing as they do on software and hardware.
The teachers try to fill the day with teaching -- a student can't easily use the computer when the teacher is talking and asking questions. When there is time to work on assignments, there is not enough time for all students to use the computer.
And even if all students could use the computer, with 6 hours and 20 students, each student gets 20 minutes a day. (Yes, I'm using numbers which tend to be worse in real life...)
It is hard to measure how much benefit a school gains from software.
It is hard to measure the quality of software.
This is not correct. "Begging the question" is a rough translation of the Latin "petitio principii," a venerable term which refers to the logical fallacy referenced above. The common use of "begs the question" to mean "suggests the question" is erroneous. There is nothing "technically accurate" about that usage, and academia did not "pick [the term] up" from common usage -- quite the reverse.
Well I for one would have loved to have received car mechanics courses at school. They spent years teaching me all sorts of useless things that will never mean anything to me, and now I'm a member of the working class I regularly throw away large chunks of my salary on car maintenance (and half the time get ripped off) for my crappy old wreck of a vehicle, simply because I'm not clued up about cars.
Perhaps if more people were clued up about how computers work internally they wouldn't get ripped off so easily - this embodies MS's sales philosophy - teach people how to use *Microsoft software*, not how to use *computers*. And its precisely why large corporations like Intel and Microsoft, as well as thousands of smaller computer sales and repair stores are ripping ignorant consumers off left right and center - precisely the way mechanics rip people off.
At the *very least* some basic algorithmic principles should be compulsory for everyone at school. I remember as far back as primary school doing "Logo".
At my (public)high School in canada, we have 5 3D Studio MAX R2 liscences, 1 liscence (soon to be 2) for Animo, ~32 photoshop, illustrator and premier liscences(one of each for every computer) as well. Not to mention all the OS's and the sound programs, etc. BTW, this is only in the Multi-Medis Lab. I think that our school on a limited budget has done extremely well. Even most of our systems fall into the Celeron w/64mb range. I still have to get atleast 1 linux install there to me me happy.
Loren
"Religion, opiate of the masses."
Its because a lot (I mean ALOT) of schools are running clunky old 386 machines or MACS, niether of which are been supported by mainline software companies. You can hardly blame the schools, because it seems there is never enough money to buy paper for the copy machine let alone buy a fleet of new computers and software site licences every year.
It's a software TRADE GROUP. They're representatives of the companies that make and sell computer software. Companies like Microso~1, Borland, Adobe, etc. These companies make money by selling software.
This "report" was constructed solely for the purpose of generating revenue for the companies that sponsor the trade group. It's ridiculous. Most intelligent people will completely ignore it. However, some idiotic school board administrators will likely see the report and say, "We should spend a chunk of our budget on new computer software."
And you know what sucks about this? It's OUR money. We pay property taxes that go to the school districts. Even if you're renting, part of your rent goes to the property taxes for the building you live in. Arghh.
They say schools aren't buying enough.
I would actually say that these businesses aren't giving enough software away to schools. Things like OS's, Virus Protection, Development Tools, and Office applications should be offered free to by anyone to any public educational organization.
(Hmmm. Perhaps that statement should earn a "Well, DUH!")
Oh well, it's thinking like that which explains why I'm not a billionaire (or millionaire, or thousandaire).
The first course used computers without really being a computing course. It was "Keyboarding" (a touch-typing class) taught on PCjrs. The teacher knew zero about PCjrs (good thing there was myself and another geek there, or we wouldn't have booted them), and she probably used to teach typing on manual typewriters. She was a strict disciplinarian, which is exactly what is needed for this course. Touch typing doesn't expand your mind, but is the ultimate drill 'n kill course. While she taught us touch-typing, we taught her a bit about computers and lightweight word processing. Note: this was the type of room that taught IBM to leave the cords on the keyboards. Thirty PC jrs in one room, each of them connected to their keyboard by nothing but infrared and no auth codes--we had lots of fun standing up and aiming our keyboards at each others' computers!
The other course, called "Computer Programming" or somesuch, was on the venerable Apple ][. The teacher, in this case, knew at least a bit about programming. The school didn't have a "CS" department, so it made the course a math elective. If you assume that higher math exists in school to stretch your mind in abstract directions, programming does make for a fine math course.
We spent the first half of the year programming in BASIC, and the second half programming in Pascal.
Three notes to slashdotters still in school.
First, when using computers in a course about computers, some teachers don't mind being taught computers while teaching you the real subject matter. This helps the next class.
Second, anyone who intends to spend their career at a console or terminal should take a typing course. It's boring. It's harsh. It's the worst nightmare of drill 'n kill. But it's useful drill 'n kill. With touch typing, you can just think the words and your fingers will get them into the computer for you. People don't naturally progress from hunt 'n peck to touch typing; the only way I know to gain the skill is the drill 'n kill. It beats burning brainpower over the next forty years watching your keyboard, looking for the 'v' key. Barring direct neural interface, touch typing is the shortest line between you and the box.
Third, enjoy those computer courses where you know more than the teacher. You will still learn something from the teacher, and you may be able to teach the teacher some neat tricks (again, be careful and don't try to show off your wizardly superiority). Most importantly, however, is that you can turn the course into an opportunity to gain school credit for hacking. If you can stump the teacher, you're likely finishing assignments early. Use that opportunity to hack at what you want to hack at--if you have a good teacher, they'll help you in your endeavors. One of the best ways to learn coding is to write code. Consider it a lab course to do exactly that. Besides, it sure beats study hall ;^>
--The basis of all love is respect
My High School is one of those that is just coming out of the dark ages. If you visited, you'd swear you were in the 50's; the conservatism is sickening... (If you were to see the 110 year old gothic building you'd know what I mean.) But anywhey, the school was forced by the local people to teach some kind of computers course.
We got a small class (15 486x66 computers) and we're learning the wonders of MS Works. In the library, we have 5 Pentium II machines for internet use, but no one is allowed on them (they don't trust us).
We don't have CAD, programming, Unix, internet (that we can use), or even a network that students can help on. Actually, we aren't allowed to do or use anything anything except works - not even notepad or calculator. Instead of getting or doing something to supply us with an education close to being called decent, we just got a $4 million gym (valued at 2x the worth of our school!!).
In my junior year of high school (1985-86), my school offered two computer courses: a one-hour-per-day course in Pascal (taught on original IBM PCs), and a two-hour-per-day course in BASIC (taught on a mix of Apple ][+'s and ][e's). I chose BASIC, because I'd been using it for years already and, frankly, I wanted to have an easy double A to balance out the low grade I always got in PE (due to having many 'non-suit' days since I hated sports). Boy, was I mistaken in thinking that it would be simple!
/do/ with what they have. Teach people the general skills and they'll be OK. But, of course, that gets into the whole problem of educational institutions teaching their students how to memorize useless facts instead of teaching them how to /learn/.
That course turned out to be one of the best I've ever taken. Yeah, it was on already-ancient Apple ]['s. Yeah, it was in BASIC. But the instructor actually knew what the heck he was doing, and he taught us Structured BASIC. GOTO's were not allowed. We had to learn to use WHILE loops. We had to put colons in as whitespace to make the stuff prettyprint. And he was a pretty darned good software tester, and wouldn't let you move on until your program was bulletproof.
All of that came in very handy when I later moved on to C. I would have been lost, otherwise. So I'm still benefitting from the things I learned in that course, even though I took it 13 years ago, even though we were using Apple ]['s, and even though we were using a form of BASIC.
Contrast that with the university I attended, which had modern (for the time) 386's. I took the required introduction to computers course, and learned such 'useful' things as what a CPU is, what the difference between RAM, ROM, and disk space is, and how to flowchart a program (although we never actually typed in a program in that class). The bulk of the time was spent on learning how to use Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS, WordPerfect for DOS, and DBase for DOS.
Of course, I already knew all that stuff, so I was bored out of my mind. Yet the course was required, even though the information was fairly useless.
The point of my stories is that the equipment and software doesn't matter as much as what the instructors
So, yes, it would be nice if every school, college, and university had a computer with a full range of programs and a fast connection to the internet on every desk. But the likelihood of that is miniscule, so it'd be nice if more attention was paid to what is taught than what sort of equipment is used.
-Joe
I worked as a computer lab assistant and the "New Perspectives" Line of pamphlets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htextbooks didn't even take into consideration the GUI design. They totally ignored right-cklicks and how every application is supposed to have the same things under the File, Edit, Windows menus.
By the way I hope slashdotters like to do more than rant. Administrators need to know about this.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Arrgh! No one is begging any questions here. "To beg the question" is a fallacy where one assumes that an argument is true while attempting to prove its truth. It does not mean "to request that a question be addressed". If you look "beg" up in any dictionary, you'll see an entry referring to the idea of evasion or side-stepping (probably the third entry or so). That's the sense, here.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
...to expand its software purchase programs and implement them everywhere.
And really, do we think that there's tons of software out there that's really worth major purchase dollars like that? If we saw some really well focused and useful products, I think there might be a worthwhile reason to purchase. But right now, there just isn't that much to really compel schools-- most of which are underfunded, while many even fail to keep sufficient faculty because there is already so much spending in certain schools to keep pace with the technology market (something the school system just can't afford to do right now).
Oh, and for the US or any large education system, standard consumer/business pricing plans just won't be feasible.
Obviously we need research and development initiatives on a large scale. But at least some of the funding has to come from the industry. I think that given the number of large players soaking up the economy, there's enough cash collectively to do that, given the sheer difficulty of meeting costs and expanding facilities as is.
Check out Heartsoft.com for shcool software. In addition, they are planning a really cool, secure browser for
school kids. This will definatley sold on a per school basis especially when they get gobbled up....
I've worked at a few departments on my campus the years I've been in college, and I can tell you one thing - if they have even two licenses for a piece of software that they use on 100 machines, I'd be damn well surprised. I rememeber my boss copying NT Server off of a CD a friend in another department mounted in his server...
The fact is, no one cares, and no one checks. We burned off copies of software for professors for use at home, for ourselves...any reason at all. It keeps the departmental budgets down, and makes things look good to the accounting department. Sure, they're supposed to buy licenses, and we get pretty good deals on them too....but....there's paperwork to be done for buying things - and it's easier.
And we all know it's not just my school, it's everywhere - exceptt those that may have draconian accounting policies. I'll wager a large number of corporations do as well.
But hey. I'd launch into a huge comment on piracy, but I'll stay on topic.
TY
Well, I think it is obvious to the free sofware crowd that the money spent by schools on software is a lousy measure of of their dedication to computer education. I think a better measure is to check the class sizes of real computer courses and the number of machines available per student in such classes. Also, to note the fall of computer science type classes (read: programming) and the rise of application classes. I think, seriously, that your average computer class these days is an overglorified version of typing 101.
When I was a kid we learned BASIC in junior high and assembler and PASCAL in high school. I was in a high school recently that had no programming classes at all. However, they did have 90+ PC's in their Business Ed department, all running Word and Excel.
Obviously something is wrong here.
That's a false analogy. Math problems, especially at the HS level, have well defined solutions and encourage the "correct" mathematical reasoning.
Programming problems are a different matter, especially at the introductory level. The problems are either trivial or the teacher can't identify bad solutions. I know that even in college most of the CS majors (but not all) were notorious for tweaking loop boundaries until the code "worked." That is hardly a "problem solving" attitude.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
My high school boasted constantly about its dedication to technology. There were several Macintosh word processing labs on fairly new machines. There were two upgraded labs my senior year which had p2-233s running NT, Word, and Excel. All the classrooms had their own computer (something that was boasted of often). Several levels of Computer Programming classes existed.
The Application labs were nice. Good machines running the software most people will actually get a chance to use.
The Word Processing labs (the macs) were used frequently. Too bad students couldn't take their work home to keep working on it, unless you were the one student in a hundred who had a Mac at home.
The Programming labs sat back and watched while all the other labs in the school were upgraded. As of several months ago, they were still 8 year old Macs running Think Pascal.
I took four years of programming in high school. I might as well have taken a study hall, except that I would have gotten something useful and productive done in study hall. It's another case of training instead of teaching...the school would rather train students to play the trained ape on software than to free their minds by introducing them to programming.
-bonesbro
Hmm, last I checked if you saturated the schools with free software like outlook,works,or other things that M$ does then the students are stuck into the "upgrade" trap that MS loves... "you use word97?? what are you in the stone ages??? you have to get 98/99/2000/2001/2001.5/etc... for 199.99 a crack" why? well no obvoius reasons, i can use emacs and latex to do the same thing the wordidiots can do and my word processor pre-dates microsoft!!!!
it's all just a bunch of rich people whining.. kinda like bankers, they need to be killed and eaten in order to have any value in the community
my having a geek genetic makeup and also having a technology business helps greatly I agree. but my daughters currently do not have any interest in computing past fashion designer and talk to me barbie (Which by the way is hackable! my 14 year old was grounded for 2 weeks for making the barbie say "shithead" instead of the girl's names.. I laughed so hard I peed my pants, and my wife was not entertained as I was by it.) but whatever they are interested in they get my same amount of effort. my 11 year old son loves rocketry, so we spend 1 weekend a month trying to hack the rockets for more power and altitude. the key is to teach the kids to think outside the box, and to shun structure when you are trying to achieve a solution... only the genius will do it in a wierd way.... the drones follow what they were force fed.
Easy to do and simple as pie....
1. education at home by parents that will do what it takes for their kids. "Dad can quit smoking and buy the family a PIII!" or mom can ask the teen to help her learn windows,linux,how to use the toaster... (JOKING) I have found that teens/kids get attitudes when we look at them and say "you're wasting your time" about something they enjoy doing... and we dont come down on them like a bar of lead when they do really stupid things (Drugs) but overreact about silly things (Forgot to mow the lawn).
2. start our own private schools! in a nutshell - tell the current system to go suck monkey nuts! after only 1 year a string of technical/private grade-middle-highschools would garner praises never before seen by an education system. Yes it will be pricey as hell, yes it will be difficult, but what will the reward be? no mass murder in the schools for one, smart kids will bet he peers while the dumb jocks will be extracted to the public schools where they belong..
and this system needs to set up scholarships so that poor bright students can get in....
but this would be utopia... rich alumni dont give money for tech centers... they buy new scroeboards for the football field, or a new baseball field. remember this current alumni.. send a message that education is #1 and school subsidised sports should be dead last behind janitorial staff.
Basically do not trust the public schools to educate you or your children. all of my kids (5 of them!) have a 386,486or pentium in their room to play with (Only linux on them except for the 7 and 8 year old girls.. they need to run barbie software, but it dual boots) and I require Linux/programming work to be done by them. My 17 year old admins my business (ISP) and programs in perl/C/python/bourne-shell and has written a device driver for linux (for a hardware card I designed) my 14 year old is learning C now after PERL and sysadmin stuff. and my 11 year old is learning the sysadmin end and Perl. why?? so they will kick the butts of every other person they come up agains in the world, they will knw what computers are all about (my 17 year old died laughing when he was told by a MS tech that NT is harder to learn than Unix and will take alot of learning to master... he mastered NT server in 2 weeks and then asked me to delete that crap from his hard drive)
:-) everything we need is FREE online :-)
There is a lesson here.... School sucks, live with that fact, but you dont have to live with it, you can self educate/ educate your children. I spend $3K per year on my childrens computer education for hardware and some years I double that. software?? we buy nothing except games
BTW: my kids still cant kick my butt in quake, but they do whine because I play on the Qake server....
This is a valid point. As a grad student in a geological science progam, I did a lot of work with GPS and GIS. In both cases, our department was provided with GPS recievers, processing software, and GIS software licenses each costing $20,000 to $40,000. The idea being that if people were familiar with the software or hardware in question, they would be more likely to insist on its use when they were out in the paying world.
The analogy holds with standard software. How many people (ordinary computer semi-literates) have any idea what to do with a database? Well, that is something that is a rather difficult concept for a lot of people to grasp. Anyone can type a paper in Word or use Powerpoint to make a gaudy presentation, but few people right off the bat have any clue of what to do with a relational database. So the granting of one license, which is costs the software company nothing, (especially if we assume that the schools couldn't pay for it if they wanted to) leads to people who understand the advantages of a given peice of software, and why they need to have it when they are in the working world. That means more sales, and more happy customers evangelizing the product
It isn't even a matter of whether its morally right to "force" a school to pay for software (I am a firm believer in Free Luna style TANSTAAFL) but it is instead a matter of sound business strategy for software companies. Good PR, good advertising, and good karma. Everyone is happy.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Adobe has a licensing program that requires a school to purchase 1 "full" copy of a program at retail, but then get addl licenses for a fraction of the cost -- around $200 a pop. That's helped my department acquire legal licenses of Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, and Premeire. Can you tell are teachers are wannabe artists? =)
We don't have too big of a computer program at my school. We have Business Computer Information Systems, which basically teaches you how to use Word and Excel. I'm skipping that. And then next year I'm taking Computer Science one, which is basically Visual Basic. Then I get to take Computer Science II AP, which deals with C++ programming. But the school is considering dropping it since there is only 10 people in there this year. It doesn't help any that teachers get paid really badily, so schools aren't able to get good computer teachers. Why teach for peanuts when you can go into the commercial industry and get paid a lot more. One of my friends was saying that last year they had a great CS teacher, but she wanted to make more money, so she went into the computer industry. So now he complains about how much this new CS teacher sucks and that he knows more than she does most of the time. It's pretty pathetic really.
I'm a 15 year old Sophmore at a school that is considered "rich" in Amarillo, TX. Your tax dollars and the computers that it buys are being wasted. We have about one Macintosh computer per classroom, and the teachers are the ONLY one's who ever use them. The only times I have ever used a computer at school is in the library, and for Keyboarding IA. I'll be taking Computer Science next year, on 486 Wintel machines. The one's for keyboarding class are I think 386's, possibly 286's running Windows 3.1. All the burcratic crap about a computer in every classroom is a lot of bull. Almost all of the teachers just use them to compile our grades, that's it. And most of them have no clue how to use them. A few do need/know how to use computers, but it's a small minority. We have, I think, 4 computer labs, two of them are for just any classroom that wants them, the other two are for computer specific courses. Everyone of those computers suck, and run outdated software. For example, we have semester tests coming up, so my Spanish teacher decided to go to the computer lab to run some Spanish programs so it would help us study. Needless to say, the programs are incredibly uninteresting, and do not help in the least bit. I would learn much more if the teacher just reviewed us. As for internet connections, I've only been on once during school. Our whole class went to the library (the only place where you can get on the net) to look up housing prices in Houston for a project. I guess it was useful, but geez, I'm a sophmore and only used the internet once at school? I thought that I would get on a lot more than that listening to Congress. The computer situations in schools suck right now. They rather give their extra money to the athelets than the computer nerds.
I manage a computer tech department at a fairly large college (which anyone with half a brain can figure out with one click! :). I have a few comments on the story and on the followup comments:
Regardless, if the SPA ever did audit us or any other school, they should be shot. That story is a big crock and it almost seems like they are trying to set up a justification to starting campaigns to audit schools for software piracy just because low expendiatures on software just must indicate software piracy internally.
My experience growing up was with public schools, not private ones. I hope the private schools do a much better job than my public ones did.
When I was in junior highschool, we had quite a few Apple IIe's. However, the teacher could barely stay ahead of the students in learning how to use them, etc. I had been programming since I was a small child, and was actually asked to teach the advanced topics of the course. (Though I didn't have any experience on Apples.)
It seems to me that if schools are spending money, its on hardware. They can then bring parents into the school, point at the new computers, and imply that they're keeping up with technology. Unfortunately, the computers count for almost nothing if adequately trained teachers are brought in (and software is normally inadequate as well).
When I moved on to highschool, I didn't even bother with computer courses. I actually spent a few days in a programming class, just to see what level they were at. My experience mirrors that of others here; all of the newest computers were being used for word processing, because they had more natural keyboards than their old Apple IIe's!
Sadly, the "programming class" consisted of less than 10 students and about 6 Apple IIe's, and they were stumbling around in Pascal for the entire semester, I believe.
I had hoped that with time these situations were washed away with the technology boom, but it sounds as though they're still typical.
The only avenue for a public-school student is to take night or weekend courses at a center like Learning Tree University. It isn't cheap, but it will teach you advanced concepts and will not limit you in the way a public school course would.
The problem is that teaching is a profession that tends to attract people who are less likely to be technologically proficient. A lot of people from my high school are now teachers, and not one of them majored in any type of scientific or engineering field.
This is because, for a lot of people, teaching is a "backup" profession: after finding that a BS in Italian doesn't apply to many jobs, it's easy to go back to school and get a teaching credential. People who have an engineering degree can find jobs pretty easily, as can, for the most part, people with science degrees. So the teaching ranks end up being rather heavily weighted towards people with liberal arts degrees.
There are, of course, people who go into teaching as their first choice, but it's rare for these people to be into science and technology. This is unfortunate, as technology becomes even more important in the future.
I'm not sure what can be done about this, though. The US doesn't have a culture that values teachers very highly, and so it's hard to find people who are interested in going into teaching as a first choice. Teaching is a rather low paying job (although teachers usually get 3 months off a year), so it doesn't have much draw for those people who can find other jobs, especially tech ones.
The teachers who are into tech, though, can really make a difference. My jr. high computer teacher definitely changed my life by taking the time to encourange my interests in programming...
How much is enough money? One billion? Two, three or four? And what software should we buy? I am sure that the association also has a study (by Mindcraft?) which shows which educational software are best for the mental growth of children. That would be of great help to administrators, teachers and children who dont know that they are not spending enough. This will also give us a simple checklist of software that needs to be bought to keep the association happy. They can revise the list every six months so that all schools will also know exactly what to buy and when to buy it.
I remember a questionnaire from MAD magazine which asked questions about your address, where you work and what time you would at home and finally asked you to sketch your house key.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
Is it right for software companies to force schools to pay for their software?
I mean, the ones who benefit most from the schools choice of software is the software company because students who learn Word in school are more likely to buy it themselves and to propagate to thier future employers to buy it.
My point is that the software industry should GIVE thier applications away to schools, as they will gain on it in the long run.
Unlike some of the people that have posted here, I never had the chance to learn any type of programming in high school. My school just got new Pentium machines at the beginning of 1998-1999 school year. As with any home PC, most of these came pre-setup with Windows, Office, and Navigator. The only specialized software that any high school might even have the remotest need for would be some type of CAD program (my school has AutoCAD R14), maybe computer graphics (mine has Mac and Windows versions of Photoshop 4.0), accounting software (my school doesn't have this as there is a township career center which has it), and lower level math/english/science/ course programs. These few pieces of software are very expensive for single end-user licenses. Imagine the need for 20-40 licenses to fill a classroom at $1000 a pop for AutoCAD or $500 a pop for Photoshop and it adds up. Schools can't afford to buy new software every year. My school just upgraded to AutoCAD R14 this year after being on R12 for the previous 3 years. The thing that is really killing the software companies is pre-installed software that they sell to PC vendors for wholesale pricing, who in turn sell these pre-setup machines to schools, who don't need to buy any software now. If they want more money, they shouldn't sell software to PC vendors!
Follow the money at national and local levels! The ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) had a standout paper on why good educational software is hard to do. Essentially, you need people who are excellent in the subject, people who are good programmers, and then, most importantly, people who have experience in user-interface and curriculum design. This costs really big bucks. Right now the money is on putting boxes in classrooms, not in making sure that there is meaningful content in the box. I am a trainer of adults and a teacher at a local community college. I do lots of curriculum design. I've had only one request to design meaningful programming/math interfaces, but lots of requests to design application tutorials. I'm playing hooky right now from yet another class I'm writing. I hope to see more on this later.
I didn't see a computer in school until I got into high school (Back in the mid '80's) and the high school had a computer lab with about 20 Apple II's of various makes. I took a BASIC programming class and did OK. Between my sophomore and my Junior year I availed myself of the "High School Summer Program" that the college my father worked at was putting on. There I learned Watfiv (A fortran derivative) and DEC assembley language. When I returned to high school for the advanced BASIC and beginner Pascal courses. If I'd been able to stay in that school for my senior year I would have been taking advanced and AP Pascal, where the students were writing recursive descent parsers. We moved however, and my last year of high school was in the deep south. They'd just got fortran for the Apple that year and didn't know their way around the software. I did, because it was the same environment that PASCAL was in, so I ended up teaching the class for the first couple of weeks. That year I wrote a graphing program in PASCAL for my last project, and with only about 15K of memory to work with I had to swap even my keyboard routines to disk. Those certainly were educational machines.
Anyway, it's my view that if you want to REALLY educate the students about computers they're going to have to see how they WORK. To do that, closed source software is simply not going to cut it. You can get Linux for free and make as many copies as you want. You get a wonderful programming environment and basic software tools that could be used to write reports and whatnot. You can look under the hood and see how anything that interests you works. And what's more, you can run it quite well with a GUI on a 486/66 and quite well with a command prompt with a system as low-end as a 386 SX. So you can put that round of hardware buying off for another year and perhaps hire someone who might be able to teach your kids something about the computers.
All in all, Linux is a much more "educational" environment than Windows or MacOS, and you benefit from not having to worry about silly licensing problems. An in the know school board should not only advocate Linux usage, they should mandate it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I played lacrosse in High School and loved it. I was also a national merit scholar and graduated with a BS from Cornell last spring. Nor was I unique. Out of my graduating class from high school, the starting quarterback for our football team, the captain of the swim team and the captain of the crosscountry team all went on to Harvard. The starting pitcher for our baseball team went to Stanford. In fact, about half of my AP Calc class were varsity athletes.
Did you ever consider that athletics are frequently funded by alternate revenue streams? Those people in the Booster Club actually donate and raise a lot of the those funds, not your tax dollars. The school budget gets voted down, athletics are often the first to go. You want play football this year? Fine, you'll need to come up with a check for $150. The coaches at my school were paid $1 salaries for their time.
Cutting athletics to free up cash to throw away on shiny new computers are not the answer. In fact throwing money at the problem, no matter what the source, will not improve things. Finding dedicated, caring people to lead the way for those less technologically adept will.
In short, please don't lash out against other cliques, be they jocks, bandies, goths, straight-edgers or whatever just because the shop teacher turned technology coordinator lacks a clue. Be proactive rather than reactive.