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Ask Slashdot: Computer Charities for the Children?
Paranoid Diatribe wrote in with this worthwhile submission: "This past weekend, I wired my 4-year-old daughter's room with an old 486 running Win95 with a connection to my little LAN. Anyway, after seeing my daughter's face light up when she realized she could play in her own room, I got to thinking: What does it take to set computers, networks, internet, etc. for a "good cause"? Now I don't necessarlity mean getting the parts, and the physical side of things. That's relatively easy (though I wouldn't know how to solicit for hardware/software donations). I want to know the logistics of starting a non-profit organization where I can use my talents to benefit the children in my area. There's the legal aspect. The money issues. Tax issues.
And (as much as it sickens me), the liability issues. I live in Salt Lake City, UT and the climate around here is (to put it mildly) pretty conservative. The last thing I need would be to wire a local community center to the 'net to have some over-zealous local politician sue me because some poor kid stumbled onto an objectionable site while online. Maybe my fears are not justified... but I'd rather play it safe. Anyway, I'm so completely ignorant about this sort of thing, that I really don't know what questions to ask. Do any of you donate your talents and time for charity? Is it worth it? Is there a "right" way to go about this?" I think this is a worthwhile idea, but what is one to do about the already prevailent attitude in legislation that our children need to be protected from the Internet?
Actually, this came up in the NPR debate as well. Yes, personally, I would mind. But it does depend a great deal on the age of the child. But, would you let you child pick out any book completely on thier own, not show it to you, take it into thier room, and spend hours away from you isolated with some book that you don't know anything about yourself? That's sort of the point. The supervision is missing. And, the supervision is the issue.
My point is simply, it has nothing to do with the "thing" the kid does. It has everything to do with who they do it with, or if they do it alone. And, that's where the dangers of Television and Computers come in... The children get an enormous amount of access to information that the parents don't take responsability for monitoring.
Society as a whole chose long long ago that children should listen to thier parents and obey until the age of 18, when they could declare thier independance. Anything that makes it easier for a parent to "get out of thier responsability" is something I am against.
So, no, I don't think it's wise to let them read a book on thier own as a substitute for reading with them or to them. And, if thier old enough to read on thier own and take a book into thier room to read it, it's highly unlikely they will click a button in the book and it will turn into something totally diffrent that something you as the parent saw them take into thier room. But, I sure wouldn't let them wander to the library on thier own at the age of 4 or 5, and pick something out on thier own, and take it into thier room without letting me know what it was... there are way to many things that can go wrong along the way.
Get the older people on the net. They have years of wisdom to share, that will benifit society as a whole.
Plus, if they waste a few hours looking at porn, or reading something inapproprate, where's the harm?
The risks and liabliaty is much lower.
The rewards for society are much higher. Documenting thier knowledge and skills for future generations is something that we all may benifit from someday. Need advice on a new buisness? Check Grandpa Wilson's experiances running his own hardware shop for 25 years on his web site... Need to learn to cook your own meals and save a few bucks? Read Great Aunt Jennys online recipies she developed after 40 years of feeding 8 children on a very low income....
Now, THIS is an idea I could get behind and would love to support.
Great idea, if you allow them to have one in thier own room or something. I think I will probably have a very good computer, up to date hardware and software, to make use of some of the wealth of educational software that's out there, which is mostly GUI. But, I intend to be there to keep an eye on that even. And, it will be in a "common" area, not in thier bedrooms.
As much fun as I have had drilling holes in the walls and floors and stringing stuff around to get diffrent rooms of my house to have access to a home LAN, I think I would at least wait until highschool before I let them have a computer with net access in thier own room... If then. Not sure. Hopefully, my children will be happy with using one in a common area, and will have the character to use it responsably. But I sure don't count on that, I plan on working on that, and being there, and watching out for problems, and dealing with them as they come up in a helpful way.
You can't learn spelling with a spelling checker. You can't learn basic math with a calculator (addition and subtraction). You can't learn grammer with a grammer checker. And you can't learn how and what a graph means with a spreadsheet.
Over the last 5 years, I have taught freshman chemistry labs, and I can honestly say, students are getting dumber. Sure more of them can reach me through email now than 5 years ago, but less of them can do basic algebra on a sheet of paper sitting in front of them in the lab with no computer in it. That's not progress.
The computer is a tool. And a useful one. I totally agree. But my point is simply that it can be a crutch too. Most of the basics need to be done with pencil and paper first for understanding.
People who learned programing with pencil and paper, and then after reviewing thier programs several times before submitting them to have punch cards made fully understand the value of writing efficent programs. People who use editors from the beginning and are just happy if things compile without errors are more likely to write bloat. I know a few people who worked with punchcards, and wrote programs by hand on paper first, and, as a "generalization" they write far less lines of code to do the exact same thing to this day, even when they are writing thousands and thousands of lines of code. In addition to being forced to do all the "extra" work was a step of "review" of thier code, because it helped to talk to others, look it over, and put a lot of thought into it BEFORE they tried to compile it. Even though they don't do that today, they benifited greatly from the experiance.
That is what I am saying. The "mentoring" needs to be there. Parents can be with thier children when they use a computer. A room full of 20 children with one supervisor is a situation with far less mentoring.
And, "Point and Click" isn't a hard skill to come by, learning how to create a logical procession of thought is something that is getting harder to come by. Logic can be taught much easier without the aid of something that thinks for you. :-)
Unlike the flamebait that I didn't respond to, I am not a Luddite. I believe that computers are useful, and have thier place, and will benifit children, adults, etc. I would like to see them in the schools. But, I would also like to see that they don't get top billing, that thier use is "earned" by proving they understand the logic behind what they intend on using the computers for BEFORE accessing them, etc, etc...
Oh, I didn't say you should only help private schools. Private schools don't need your help. They know where their dollar is coming from and where it is going, so they manage things just as well as any successful business.
Where do our skilled workers and professionals come from? Well, invariably they are people who are dilligent enough to claw their way to where they are, regardless of their schooling. I fell into one of those "special needs" categories, which made public schools a very hostile environment for me. I wouldn't be where i am now if it weren't for that learning environment.
I wholeheartedly advocate vouchers. And i believe the calculation of the value of each voucher should be carefully meted out and rounded up rather than down so we can ensure that the value of each voucher is the actual cost of educating one student per year, including administrative costs, building maintenence, the whole tamale, rather than a conservative estimate of how much load one student puts on the system. Yes, this would definately raise the education expenditure. Boo hoo, eh?
Second, I advocate education financing reform. Currently most schools recieve a large portion of their funding in the form of grants, which invariably have time limits and requirements. It's not uncommon for a district to recieve something along the lines of $100,000 that must be spent in the next 90 days on "handicapped access". If you don't spend it within 90 days, it's gone. If you spend it on something other than something obviously related to handicapped access, you're in big trouble. This is absurd. Schools should be allowed to pool their fluid assets and manage them like businesses.
Third, I advocate tax credits for businesses that donate time, money, or resources to schools. I don't just mean donating old or spare computers, I'm talking about teaching. Say, a local company that engineers electronics devices sending an engineer over to the school once a week to teach applied electrical engineering for a few hours.
Fourth, I advocate annual recertification of all educators. Failure to recertify resulting in manditory furlough. I challenge any educator to explain to me why they shouldn't have to prove they are qualified to teach. If you're certian you're qualified, a recertification test shouldn't scare you.
Fifth, I recommend that the processes employed by district offices to manage schools be audited every three years. Many districts are horrendously inefficent and would fail as businesses if they were required to compete.
Sixth, I recommend that it be made much easier to rid the market of poor educators. Currently, if a district attempts to revoke an educators teaching certificate for any reason, the teachers union will sue the district to prevent it, costing the district a huge ammount of money. Avoiding this often results in what districts refer to as "passing the trash" - the act of moving a poor educator to another district with a good recommendation, merely to get them away from the people who want them gone.
Finally, I recommend that teacher salaries be signifigantly raised as based on standardized tests and parental review. cronieism is rampant in our education system, so I would not recommend peer review under any circumstances. I recommend that teachers be allowed to carry their existing salary rate with them when moving between schools. I also recommend salary raises based on aquisition of additional training or further certification.
All of these recommendations are likely to cause quite a ruckus in the public education system if they were instituted. Centuries of complacency on the part of the public at large and stop gap measures on top of stop gap measures on the part of the districts and schools have lead to a state of affairs that is astoundingly unacceptable.
If we bankrupt the public education system in the process of building a private education system that is self sustaining and just as open to the poor and needy, so be it.
I have no respect for any person who says "Sure, the public education system is bad, but we'd be doomed without it."
If you're willing to protect the system on the basis that it's better than nothing, you are as much a part of the problem as the system is. It's like saying "We can't stop using DDT, it's the only thing that keeps the aphids down".
My parents were, and are, far from wealthy. I, and two of my brothers, and one of my sisters, were sent to private school on the salary of a tenured humanities professor. Many people assume that private school is the exclusive domain of the wealthy. It is not. At the end of the school day, every type and class of vehicle was present to pick up students, from Jaguars to Yugos.
After two of my older sisters and two of my older brothers were dragged through the public education system kicking and screaming, my parents were determined that i should recieve a quality education. They bit the bullet and paid for it.
The fact is that the school that i attended spends 11% less per student than the state of utah reports that it spends per student. This is signifigant, considering that the state of utah spends both the least ammount per student of any state, and the highest percentage of their total budget of any state.
Regardless of the fact that this school did not, and has never had a selective application process, their standardized test scores have always been signifigantly higher than the state average.
The difference? An unencumbered learning environment and a small group of students whos parents were directly involved with their education.
It's not fair that they had to pay out of pocket for my education while still bankrolling the public education system through their property taxes. But they did what they had to in order to put me somewhere where i could learn effectively.
All this being said, the real problem starts at home. As a parent, it is your responsibility to be actively engaged in your child's education, wherever that may take place. If your student is doing poorly in school, no matter how bad the teachers are, no matter how big the school is, you are the first person at fault. Accept that responsibility, and deal with it.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Sorry, I guess I answer some of your questions the best I can.
My project group was run on the schoo department level, in particually the "Office of Technology," which oversaw all the vocational programs. Computers really did not have a department yet, and the vocational department was chosen more or less by default. Since we were working for the school department directly, there was no really liability issues for us, but our BBS ("pre-ISP") service was privately owned, and he had some hoops he had to jump to get a contractual agreement from the school board.
The money for the programs came from private parties mostly, and from the NSF, but the governor's office previously had pissed off the NSF, so mostly they just breathed down our necks, hoping that we would fail.
Problems usually fell into my lap, and my boss, the director of O.T. I went out of my way to interface directly with teachers so that they would not give us trouble by going through official channels, raising the ire of administrators along the way.
Logistically, you really need about two FT people per school in order to make sure things run smoothly. As I was a student, I spent more time out of class than in. I was not expected to go to college, so that was not considered any great big deal. Media Services (remember filmstrip projectors?) handled the load in conjunction with me.
Today I would assume that most school departments have a "Office of Computing Technology " or something like that. If not, usually ask for Library Information Systems. If a school department does not have an LIS office, then home. Strangly enough, LIS usually can pick up the slack because of the HELIN project and they fact that usually have free "time". Of all the departments I have worked with, statically speaking LIS is the most computer-literate, and the one with the highest computer productivity.
Higher Ed only gets involved if you are proposing currcula changes or the like. If you are doing something completely revolutionary like 3D-chemical modeling (tryed it) then usually then high ed defers to the governor's office to do an offical inquery. For the "Internet project" we were lucky because we enticed PBS into it as well, so the governor got PR points out of it. At that time "the internet" was of limited value, and it was possible that we would have been shut down. Fortunately HELIN was just starting to ramp up, and the state univerity had recently updated their gopher server, And I had just figured out how to get weather reports from madlab.(umich?)
One little antidote - I used to carry around a little pocket knife, about 4 cm long - and the day of the "big meeting," the demo lab only had 4 PC wired up. Our ISP guy came in at about 2pm with 30 ethernet NICs and 10-base-2 cable to wire the rest of the lab for the meeting at 3pm. He forgot to bring a knife to splice with, so he borrows mine. We just made it, but my knife was never the same.
He got the contract, and now owns POPs in multiple states. He must be worth millions. Without that knife, he would probably still be a broke man, and "learning link" would not exist. I think I still have it somewhere, and sometimes I wonder if I should frame it with the inscription, "The knife that saved k12.edu" (Well, at least it would have been delayed until NCSA mosaic came around)
I am not on a crusade against GUIs, nor do I think that they spawned from the smoking pits of Hell, nor do I think they are for losers only, nor do I think they are the only way to learn to use a computer.
I am not saying that I have my entire forray into parenting years from now planned to the last detail. I was saying that as a kind of joke with an element of truth in it.
It came from my memories of writing a breakout game in 4th grade when I first learned to use the Apple IIe's command line interface. I remember how much fun it was, and how smart and computer-literate I felt (hey, it was 4th grade).
There really was something to say for doing everything without ever moving my hands from the keyboard. It was like I was working in overdrive, molding a program as an artist works with clay. Then it was VB and Visual C++, and they worked pretty well for the small projects I was always into, but an element of pioneering and discovery was lost. Not until I started programming for linux did I feel like that again.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
You are probably right: being with a parent is better than being with a computer or tv.
But most of the kids who would end up going to this thing would probably (if they're like everywhere else) be part of an after-school program of some sort. These would be kids whose parents would be at work until 5 or 6 every night. For them, it's probably not a choice between "be with mom" and "play Reader Rabbit" (do they still make that? I loved that thing). It's a choice between "go to afterschool program and use computers" or "go home and watch tv, possibly get into trouble". Unfortunately, it's not about choosing whether or not to use an "eletronic babysitter"--many parents have already made this choice either from laziness or being too busy or thinking that it's good in moderation. The real choice is often about which electronic babysitter does the least damage. I think most of us here (except possibly those with CTS) would agree that a computer would do the least damage, being interactive.
So in most cases, a parent is better, but when a parent isn't an option, then what?
The real question is: Is it better to have children play with each other under supervision (not a parent) like normal or use a computer under supervision, and which requires less supervision. The answer might be the same; kids might be better off playing red rover (they still do that one, too?) instead of using the computer.
I believe that the young are not the only ones that need to be exposed to the 'information superhighway'. In the US there is a large population of (older) retired persons whom could be a great resource to the net. At present, these persons have been completely ignored with relation to technology. Without even mentioning the idea, many older retired persons have expressed a great interest to me in learning computers and especially the internet. Apparently there is currently no reliable for-profit or non-profit group in my area (Houston, TX) that assists older persons with computers. Does anyone have any suggestions in relation to setting up a non-profit organization to assist them? Feel free to email (digitalh2o@bigfoot.com) me regarding this issue, too.
We are deploying several hundred Pentium 2-class PCs throughout the district over the summer with the goal of every single classroom having an Internet-capable computer at their disposal. In addition, the District has just approved $3 million dollars for new hardware purchases so that each teacher may have a reasonable machine upon which to work and browse the Internet. Internet access is filtered (at least HTTP access) through the Utah Education Network to remove objectionable material. Internet access is provided at the head-end through a single T1. So, to answer your questions:
If you really, really want to help fix systems, not just mentor children in their use, in Salt Lake City area schools, contact the Granite School DistrictHuman Resources Department and let them know you wish to volunteer -- they'll definitely be able to help you out.
Good luck to you in your volunteering efforts.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
I was just listening to a long debate about the internet, computers, and television in childrens lives a few days ago. They made some very good points about why computers and television should be taken out of the lifes of children more and more. The reasons were not porn, or violence, or anything that you would like to call censorship.
The cases were clearly showing that parents are relying more and more on "electronic" babysitters, hoping the kids would just watch TV or play with thier computers, and staying "out of the way." Children need guidance, even if they are not subject to "bad" influances. Children have to be taught some lessons that they can't get from "electronic babysitters."
Social skills for one. I wouldn't want a whole generation of people who developed thier social skills on Usenet and Slashdot like sites, would you? Another point was that computers don't require any extensive amount of "logic" development, and the "better" a computer is in the public eyes, the less it requires from the users. This is why you get the BOFH stories, because people are given access to "powerful" computers without being taught any "logic" skills first. If we start giveing children more computer access at earlier ages, before we teach the basics (reading, lots and lots of math, etc..) they may call the helpdesk less, but it's unlikely they will be a generation of "better hackers" because they will lack some fundemental reasoning skills.
What it boiled down to is this: Parents _must_ spend more time with thier children, and _anything_ that comes in the way of that is going to cause more harm. The list of excuses to avoid this is endless... I got a program that can teach them more about math than I can personally, they need to learn independance, I don't have time because I need to be away earning a living to support them, etc, etc, etc.... But the simple fact is, they should be learning independance, self respect, math, social skills, pride, and logic under parental guidance. The fact that the parent doesn't have the ability to teach these things is not an excuse to "let someone else do it." What really needs to be said is, who we need to be teaching is the parents, not the children. We need to give the parents the skills to confront thier children, one on one, and make them into the people we would want to be our neighbors, friends, and reletives.
That being said, sure, a donation to a school of computers is a somewhat nobel thing. My children will probably have computers of thier own as well. But be warned, if the child grows to be more involved with any device more than they want to be involved with thier parents, it is an indication of something bad. And it is NOT unreasonable to remove the childs access to television or computers if the child is unwilling to spend time with the parents first.
Aside: Look at me, I can attempt to look at my life and be self critical. I am suposadly a highly educated, responsable adult. BUT, I can't spell very well at all. And, I will say frankly, that somewhere along the line someone just pointed out a "spelling checker" to me insted of taking the time to show me how important it is to be able to do it on my own. So now, although I "educated" I am relyant on an electronic device, and trying to go back and teach myself something I should have learned 20 years ago from a parent or teacher.
I've worked extensively with the public education system in the united states, as the former technical lead in the customer service department of a company that sells an educational software package exclusively to schools.
It's doomed. Burn it.
My work included pre-sales coordination, so i wasn't only talking to the "bad" customers. Out of the literally dozens i worked with every week, I found that maybe 1 in 100 wasn't suffering from cranio-rectal insertion.
My advice is simple. If the school gets the idea that you are offering them a free service, they will overstay their welcome. Yes, I even have extensive experience dealing with the Salt Lake City and West Jordan school districts.
The first day will be fine. You'll arrive, install the system, show a math teacher and an administrative secretary how to work some of the programs, tell them where the power switch is, they'll chat with you for a while, say good bye, and everything will seem hunky dory.
The second day you will recieve a call from someone who says they can't find the mouse. Someone will have stolen it, err, re-assigned it to a more important use. Alternatively, they may state that they turned it on and "nothing works". After an hour of troubleshooting over the phone they will admit that someone decided the system absolutly positively needed to be moved to another location, and that nobody knows where to plug anything in. They will also wonder why the network doesn't work, regardless of the visible lack of a network connection of any kind at the new location. You will be asked to run cable for the network connection.
The third day, someone will accuse your system of having wreaked havok with something, anything else in the building. You will spend the rest of the day picking bits of paper out of the fax machine to prove it wasn't your fault.
On the fourth day, the administrative secretary will call you and say that "nothing works". Upon further investigation you will realize that she carefully wrote down every single operation required to turn on the system, start IE, and bring up her Hotmail. She will be waiting at the prompt stating that windows was not properly shut down and the drive needs to be checked, utterly helpless.
The following days will be various repetitions of the previous four. Some time within the first two weeks, someone important will call you and ask that you come to train a few of the teachers on how to use the system. You will arrive and find half of the district crammed into the gym staring at your system, which has been moved again, and again has the mouse plugged into the keyboard port and vice-versa.
On a date some time between one week and two months from installation, you will recieve an angry call regarding pornography.
Not until you disconnect your telephone, get new email addresses, and move to a new home will they stop asking you for help. You're a free lunch. Get used to it.
Personally, I'm a product of a private education.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I could not possibly agree with you more!
I am always annoyed by parents that leave their kids in front of the tv to keep them "out of trouble". Perhaps thats what this whole debate over the internet it! Parents would like to leave their kid on the internet to keep them out of trouble, but they can't because it's not censored like tv. One of the short articles at the onion makes a great point about this - go to their page and look for the one called "Ritalin Cures Next Picasso".
We have to stop and think "What are we trying to do when we surround kids with technology?" Some parents will do this because they are kidding themselves into thinking their kids will have an "edge" in the new high tech world. We at slashdot ought to know better than that - they will just learn to point and click earlier. Hardly a hard-to-come-by skill.
There is something Neal Stephenson said that relates to this perfectly. I don't recall his exact words, but basically he said that the people that will control tomorrow's technology (and today's for that matter) are the ones that can comfortably deal with text. As in being able to read and write well. Multimedia is for the lusers - an interface for the 'eloi' out there.
Net access is great when people reach a certain age - it will help you to really see issues from all angles and get the whole story, as opposed to television newscasts which present a very one-sided version most of the time. It gives you another way to figure out who you are, express yourself, and find a community other than the ones you live among.
But little kids will not get that out of it. A 4 year old is much better off learning from a role model standing right there working with him/her, and playing with friends of the same age.
When I have kids, I'll give them a computer with a command line interface, and if they are interested in learning to use it, I will teach them. Then, when they get to be teenagers, they can have their GUI. That ought to be interesting.
Vidi, Vici, Veni