While it seems kinda harsh, it's true. Having a few years of experience at a particular job will allow you to gain the trust of the other employees as well as the boss. No matter how much experience you have in programming (or chemical labs or paper analysis or whatever), it'll be the experience you gain with other people that will give you an "in" in the company.
Think about how many situations you've already been in like this; for example, school. The seniors in high school (no matter how much they did/did not deserve it) garnished more respect (or more reputation of some sort) that did the freshmen. If you went to college, you know that the upperclassmen get the research chances with the profs. Even if a freshman has 20 AP credits and can recite the entire periodic table by heart, the senior, who has had experiences with the organic chemistry prof, will get the summer research position.
As you get older, you will have had more experiences. And as sad as it is, age is often associated with experience. I look about 5-10 years younger than I am (I'm finishing college and have been mistaken for a middle-schooler). It's frustrating, but I figure I'll look better than them when I'm in my 50's, 60's, 70's.
I agree with needing a combination of the two methods. How to think is a very good skill to have in any discipline, but you need a base of facts off of which to start your thought processes.
For example, I tutored middle school kids in algebra for a few years. They were great kids and asked me all sorts of questions, some related to the stuff at hand and some for applications of equations in the "real world." The problem was that they couldn't multiply integers, and I'm not talking about five-digit numbers here. I thought should know what 4x8 is without using a battery-powered device.
I banned calculators from my lessons. At first, my students were really ticked at me, but they got faster (quicker than me, I'm proud to say).
Granted, you can't do a lot of algebraic manipulations on a calculator, but it's hard to build new concepts on something that is more fundamental and isn't totally grounded.
Hey, if worse comes to worse, at least I can make change at a register with relative ease.
There have been studies of identical twins who were separated at birth (I think there was a special on "20/20" or "Dateline" a few years ago). These twins never knew they had a sibling until they had kids of their own. The twins were astonishingly similar in habits, likes/dislikes, career choices, etc., even though they had grown up thousands of miles away from each other.
Now think of things in terms of this new, cloned kid. The saying "You are original, just like everybody else" won't be so funny anymore.
He or she will know exactly what they will look like later in life, what kinds of grades they're capable of in school, what kinds of jobs they'll be predisposed towards. They will be constantly compared to, well, themselves (about 20-30 years down the road). What if they don't live up to the standards already set by their parents, who set them by simply going through life?
Additionally, this kid will know what diseases or habits he/she will probably contract later in life, be it balding, tendancy for alcoholism (I'm not sure if I believe this study or not), diabetes, cancers, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, sickle-cell, (etc.), which all have genetic links.
Basically, this kid's whole future will already be known. Where's the excitement in that kind of life?
Of all the subjects which is the most important for the development of the student? The subject that makes the student think is the most important one. I don't belive there is a particular subject that is the "most important" for every person. Everyone is better at some things than other people, whether it be playing the violin, running a business, mountain biking, or brain surgery. Each of these tasks takes different training, and for each person, a particular subject will be more or less important. The skills taken from a subject often depend on the teacher, since artists can relate things to artworks or techniques while chemists can relate things to equations or particles. Math does still need to be taught to every student, just like reading will never go out of the schools. Yes, you can find a job in which you won't need a pencil and paper or a spreadsheet to figure things out, but most people don't want to work at a fast food chain or a retail store for the rest of their lives. Spreadsheets will calculate everything out for you, but you have to know how to use it, what formulas to put in it, and why you're using them.
People often say that math teaches abstract reasoning. Math problems are often solved using a set of steps or a pattern; this type of reasoning (breaking the problem up into pieces, relating steps to other concepts, etc.), which I believe to be quite logical rather than abstract, can be very effective in solving many problems, not just mathematical ones.
With the development of small computers and calculators do you see the role of math education declining? Math education is more important than ever. When most people worked in factories or in fields, calculus was probably not a priority. Today's society needs people who are more educated in technical fields -- people who can create and improve those small computers. I'm pretty sure that kind of work isn't done with elementary school division and multiplication. I have tutored a few junior high kids in algebra, and during my sessions, I do not allow calculators except for nasty decimal stuff. I'm the "hard tutor," but I'm making my students more comfortable with thinking, rather than just flying on autopilot with a calculator. Calculating 3*25 is hard until you ask how many cents are in three quarters.
Why are children often forced to memorize multiplication tables and do long division? These are simply the first steps (building blocks) toward understanding a subject. After all, you start reading by looking at individual letters, rather than words like "aneurism," "pseudonym," or "carboxylic acid." The fundamentals have to be understood before you can go on to more advanced topics.
Why is it that students who have some deficiency in math are stigmatized as "not so bright" more often than children who fail to do well in other subjects? I don't believe this is true, especially in later years (high school/college). Students who don't excel in math are told that it's hard stuff, and not everyone understands it, so it's okay. This is why people don't continue taking math courses: it's hard, not everyone understands it, and it's okay to give up. This is a society that produced a talking Barbie(TM) doll that said, "Math class is hard!" (I know the doll was pulled from the shelves, but the fact that it was produced at all is a clear indication of the mindset in this country.)
Conversely, why are children who excel at math considered gifted (more so than other subjects)?" Along the same lines, I think that because society deems math to be difficult, kids who do well in the subject are praised highly. There is nothing wrong with this notion, as long as the genius of these kids in other fields isn't overlooked and other kids in other fields aren't overlooked either.
I've grown up with computers in school, including elementary school (playing games that drilled addition and division skills), typing courses in jr. high, and other stuff in high school. In college, I use the Internet for lots of communication and research, and I have to type every paper I write.
The point is, I don't need a computer to learn. It's an incredible tool, and in today's world, I can't get along without one. However, I don't have to *own* one. It's definitely helpful to have one at your convience, but there's public computer labs all over campus. Actually, I don't want a computer in the classroom. I find them distracting, as well as people who insist on noisily typing their notes on clackity keyboards. After all, there's a teacher in the front of the room for a reason.
Besides, we've all had that one high school teacher who will not change anything he/she does for anyone, like having to enter grades via a school-wide network, for example. This type of teacher, who may be an incredible teacher in person, will not function well in a digital classroom. There will also be the teacher who simply posts their day's material on some webpage and expects the students to learn it. This may work for some college courses, but let's get realistic here... in high school (or younger), is that really going to happen? Is that the way kids should learn? Is that a way kids can learn?
Let's face it... education-related stuff is not always a good use of time, and often the younger folk know more about tech-related stuff than the teacher. Class time can be better spent on learning how equations work and why they appear in the forms they do rather than how to plug a string of numbers into a spreadsheet.
One last little thing... the kids would get to keep the laptops when they graduate?! Who wants a 6-year old laptop!?
I don't think that female web-users are really anything new; it's simply being encouraged more (for everyone, not just women), and people are finally taking notice, especially the media and advertisers, who now have a new demographic to cater to. Once a story about women gets to the media, people often think of it as a new sensation.
I am female, but I have never bought any teen magazines or "women's" magazines because the articles don't interest me; sometimes, I find them downright offensive or intrusive ("lose weight fast!" "how to make him feel good!"). Many of these websites that supposedly cater to women are exactly of this format and I have no interest in them whatsoever. These are not the types of sources of info I'm interested in, yet I'm "supposed" to be intregued by details on how to avoid bad hair days.
I've always thought of the Web as an incredible source of information, with little (read: zero) thought toward the gender the sites were catering to or created by. It just didn't apply. As a student, I have researched many papers and interests on the Web, sometimes being the only person in class, male or female, to have ventured on the Web. This is the part of the Internet I love -- the part where gender doesn't matter (nor does creed, color, nationality, or age); just an incredible wealth of information and sharing of ideas.
IRC is another great source of information and a great way to talk to and "meet" people. I do use IRC, and (except for the channels I frequent), I do not publicize my gender because of the offensive and intrusive messages I receive from men (no, I do not hate men, just the ones who automatically assume that I'm looking for a little *wink*nudge*, if you know what I mean).
To be honest, I feel sort of bad for the men. If these kinds of sites are available for women (even if they don't serve my types of interests), there should be a comparable set of sites for men. Of course, this probably won't happen because some raging feminist will cry "bloody murder."
In general, I agree with this post. The "Lego test" should not (and is not) given instead of SAT's or another standardized test. Race (or genger or creed) certainly does not determine performance in academic settings, nor does it indicate the way in which brain processes occur. However, I do have a few issues:
Look. College is many different things; I'm not going to argue that. But its primary purpose is a place of study. If a student can't perform well on a test (which requires that one exercise a reasonable amount of study skills), that student simply isn't going to do very well in most collegiate enviornments.
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am a Chemistry and Studio Art double major, whose test scores were less than spectacular, but am doing fine in my senior year at a small liberal-arts school.
ACT's, SAT's, and the like, as well as this "leadership" test still exclude the fine arts. While I recognize the desire for science, math, and humanities majors, the arts are still very valid. A prospective concert violinist may not have any skills in geometry, but can play an incredible concerto. This type of person may have more luck in a personal interview type of setting. Yes, personal prejudices can surface (and disqualify the candidate), but hopefully, the interviewer would have a little more sensitivity than that. I don't think I would like to attend a school where I was judged first by my gender or color, then later judged by my brain.
Simply put, there are two issues here, and they play off each other. One is that some people perform or appear in a more favorable light from test scores while others will go further in an interview. The second issue, is that some people learn (and therefore, explain) things better either orally, audially, or in a written manner.
I would venture that in general, people going into the natural sciences would fare better on standardized tests than in an interview (of course there are exceptions to the rule). This assertion is based on the fact that people who are good in science usually have taken more math and more concrete writing than those in, say, theater. This mathy-reasoning stuff is also a large chunk of what the SAT's test on. This is not to say that art majors can't do math -- just generally, science majors have taken more math, have used it more, and continue to use it: it's familiar. Therefore, those in the sciences, will probably get relatively high standardized test scores.
On the other hand, those people in visual arts, especially in studio arts, will probably score very high on the Lego test (as long as they are leaders, apparently) because of their spatial abilities. Heck, the art part of my brain allowed me to manipulate molecules in my head for Organic Chemistry. In general, people in the arts need to see things in order to process them, so a physical objective (like building a replica of a Lego model) is ideal. This is not to say that science people can't draw or can't model anything -- just that people who are centered in the arts usually think this way.
In my opinion, ideally, every candidate would be judged on a combination of test scores, an interview, and some sort of portfolio of work (this could be anything they're interested in, not necessarily artwork). This would allow those who are strong on tests and those who are strong in interviews to have a bit of glory, and to put a bit of themselves forward in the portfolio. This is, however, an unrealistic prospect to put before college recruiters; they simply can't afford the time and effort to go through that much material for each of their 3500 (or however many) applicants. Instead, test scores are usually used now as the "first cut" to weed out those students who probably wouldn't make it in that school. While this could be an unfortunate mistake, the college recruiters have to start somewhere, and test scores are fairly objective (or at least quantitative enough for computers to send rejection letters to the students under a certain score and retain the rest).
Okay, so as long as your evesdropping on your roommate's phone conversation is kept a secret, it's not intrusive, disruptive, or wrong. Sure.
The bottom line is, he broke the law. No social status should allow anyone to get off the hook.
As far as the punishment goes, I think it fit the crime. He broke in to a computerized system and nosed around. The punishment should, in my opinion, have something to do with limiting his access to computerized systems like the ones that he used to break the law in the first place.
I also agree that in this day, zero computer access/use is almost impossible. However, there are people in the world (and even in the US) who funcion very well without Internet access (an inconceivable notion to some/. readers;)
On the other hand, if the assigned punishment was too harsh, what should it have been? I don't think there would be an easy way to regulate computer access on a daily basis or something.
Sometimes, it's better to give a little harder kick as a warning to discourage further actions.
Teachers will never be replaced. Think of all of the influences in your education (assuming you had any), and most likely, a teacher or two will come to mind... someone who inspired you to go a little further. I attended an independent, public elementary school. This school did not stress grades, instead dividing the entire K-6 student population into four "colonies." Each student was free to work at his/her own pace (under the watchful eye of a teacher or aides) in every subject. This was a benefit to many kids, especially quick kids and slower learners, but those who were not self-motivated had some problems in completing the assigned goals. Computers were not an integral part of the learning experience, but they were certainly used as a tool. Math drills (making the alligator eat the right number) were completed on the computer. These games were infinitely more fun with animation rather than just another sheet to fill out. Teachers could also spend more time helping the kids who needed it. Typing was taught to all 2nd graders (second colony) with a computer program; this is a necessary skill, but teachers' time could (and was) better spent elsewhere. Regardless of the benefits of computers in learning, personal attention to students cannot be replaced by a machine. I know that AI is progressing, but a program cannot take the place of another live person giving you a pat on the back.
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While it seems kinda harsh, it's true. Having a few years of experience at a particular job will allow you to gain the trust of the other employees as well as the boss. No matter how much experience you have in programming (or chemical labs or paper analysis or whatever), it'll be the experience you gain with other people that will give you an "in" in the company.
Think about how many situations you've already been in like this; for example, school. The seniors in high school (no matter how much they did/did not deserve it) garnished more respect (or more reputation of some sort) that did the freshmen. If you went to college, you know that the upperclassmen get the research chances with the profs. Even if a freshman has 20 AP credits and can recite the entire periodic table by heart, the senior, who has had experiences with the organic chemistry prof, will get the summer research position.
As you get older, you will have had more experiences. And as sad as it is, age is often associated with experience. I look about 5-10 years younger than I am (I'm finishing college and have been mistaken for a middle-schooler). It's frustrating, but I figure I'll look better than them when I'm in my 50's, 60's, 70's.
I agree with needing a combination of the two methods. How to think is a very good skill to have in any discipline, but you need a base of facts off of which to start your thought processes.
For example, I tutored middle school kids in algebra for a few years. They were great kids and asked me all sorts of questions, some related to the stuff at hand and some for applications of equations in the "real world." The problem was that they couldn't multiply integers, and I'm not talking about five-digit numbers here. I thought should know what 4x8 is without using a battery-powered device.
I banned calculators from my lessons. At first, my students were really ticked at me, but they got faster (quicker than me, I'm proud to say).
Granted, you can't do a lot of algebraic manipulations on a calculator, but it's hard to build new concepts on something that is more fundamental and isn't totally grounded.
Hey, if worse comes to worse, at least I can make change at a register with relative ease.
There have been studies of identical twins who were separated at birth (I think there was a special on "20/20" or "Dateline" a few years ago). These twins never knew they had a sibling until they had kids of their own. The twins were astonishingly similar in habits, likes/dislikes, career choices, etc., even though they had grown up thousands of miles away from each other.
Now think of things in terms of this new, cloned kid. The saying "You are original, just like everybody else" won't be so funny anymore.
He or she will know exactly what they will look like later in life, what kinds of grades they're capable of in school, what kinds of jobs they'll be predisposed towards. They will be constantly compared to, well, themselves (about 20-30 years down the road). What if they don't live up to the standards already set by their parents, who set them by simply going through life?
Additionally, this kid will know what diseases or habits he/she will probably contract later in life, be it balding, tendancy for alcoholism (I'm not sure if I believe this study or not), diabetes, cancers, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, sickle-cell, (etc.), which all have genetic links.
Basically, this kid's whole future will already be known. Where's the excitement in that kind of life?
Of all the subjects which is the most important for the development of the student?
The subject that makes the student think is the most important one. I don't belive there is a particular subject that is the "most important" for every person. Everyone is better at some things than other people, whether it be playing the violin, running a business, mountain biking, or brain surgery. Each of these tasks takes different training, and for each person, a particular subject will be more or less important. The skills taken from a subject often depend on the teacher, since artists can relate things to artworks or techniques while chemists can relate things to equations or particles.
Math does still need to be taught to every student, just like reading will never go out of the schools. Yes, you can find a job in which you won't need a pencil and paper or a spreadsheet to figure things out, but most people don't want to work at a fast food chain or a retail store for the rest of their lives. Spreadsheets will calculate everything out for you, but you have to know how to use it, what formulas to put in it, and why you're using them.
People often say that math teaches abstract reasoning.
Math problems are often solved using a set of steps or a pattern; this type of reasoning (breaking the problem up into pieces, relating steps to other concepts, etc.), which I believe to be quite logical rather than abstract, can be very effective in solving many problems, not just mathematical ones.
With the development of small computers and calculators do you see the role of math education declining?
Math education is more important than ever. When most people worked in factories or in fields, calculus was probably not a priority. Today's society needs people who are more educated in technical fields -- people who can create and improve those small computers. I'm pretty sure that kind of work isn't done with elementary school division and multiplication.
I have tutored a few junior high kids in algebra, and during my sessions, I do not allow calculators except for nasty decimal stuff. I'm the "hard tutor," but I'm making my students more comfortable with thinking, rather than just flying on autopilot with a calculator. Calculating 3*25 is hard until you ask how many cents are in three quarters.
Why are children often forced to memorize multiplication tables and do long division?
These are simply the first steps (building blocks) toward understanding a subject. After all, you start reading by looking at individual letters, rather than words like "aneurism," "pseudonym," or "carboxylic acid." The fundamentals have to be understood before you can go on to more advanced topics.
Why is it that students who have some deficiency in math are stigmatized as "not so bright" more often than children who fail to do well in other subjects?
I don't believe this is true, especially in later years (high school/college). Students who don't excel in math are told that it's hard stuff, and not everyone understands it, so it's okay. This is why people don't continue taking math courses: it's hard, not everyone understands it, and it's okay to give up. This is a society that produced a talking Barbie(TM) doll that said, "Math class is hard!" (I know the doll was pulled from the shelves, but the fact that it was produced at all is a clear indication of the mindset in this country.)
Conversely, why are children who excel at math considered gifted (more so than other subjects)?"
Along the same lines, I think that because society deems math to be difficult, kids who do well in the subject are praised highly. There is nothing wrong with this notion, as long as the genius of these kids in other fields isn't overlooked and other kids in other fields aren't overlooked either.
I've grown up with computers in school, including elementary school (playing games that drilled addition and division skills), typing courses in jr. high, and other stuff in high school. In college, I use the Internet for lots of communication and research, and I have to type every paper I write.
The point is, I don't need a computer to learn. It's an incredible tool, and in today's world, I can't get along without one. However, I don't have to *own* one. It's definitely helpful to have one at your convience, but there's public computer labs all over campus. Actually, I don't want a computer in the classroom. I find them distracting, as well as people who insist on noisily typing their notes on clackity keyboards. After all, there's a teacher in the front of the room for a reason.
Besides, we've all had that one high school teacher who will not change anything he/she does for anyone, like having to enter grades via a school-wide network, for example. This type of teacher, who may be an incredible teacher in person, will not function well in a digital classroom. There will also be the teacher who simply posts their day's material on some webpage and expects the students to learn it. This may work for some college courses, but let's get realistic here... in high school (or younger), is that really going to happen? Is that the way kids should learn? Is that a way kids can learn?
Let's face it... education-related stuff is not always a good use of time, and often the younger folk know more about tech-related stuff than the teacher. Class time can be better spent on learning how equations work and why they appear in the forms they do rather than how to plug a string of numbers into a spreadsheet.
One last little thing... the kids would get to keep the laptops when they graduate?! Who wants a 6-year old laptop!?
I don't think that female web-users are really anything new; it's simply being encouraged more (for everyone, not just women), and people are finally taking notice, especially the media and advertisers, who now have a new demographic to cater to. Once a story about women gets to the media, people often think of it as a new sensation.
I am female, but I have never bought any teen magazines or "women's" magazines because the articles don't interest me; sometimes, I find them downright offensive or intrusive ("lose weight fast!" "how to make him feel good!"). Many of these websites that supposedly cater to women are exactly of this format and I have no interest in them whatsoever. These are not the types of sources of info I'm interested in, yet I'm "supposed" to be intregued by details on how to avoid bad hair days.
I've always thought of the Web as an incredible source of information, with little (read: zero) thought toward the gender the sites were catering to or created by. It just didn't apply. As a student, I have researched many papers and interests on the Web, sometimes being the only person in class, male or female, to have ventured on the Web. This is the part of the Internet I love -- the part where gender doesn't matter (nor does creed, color, nationality, or age); just an incredible wealth of information and sharing of ideas.
IRC is another great source of information and a great way to talk to and "meet" people. I do use IRC, and (except for the channels I frequent), I do not publicize my gender because of the offensive and intrusive messages I receive from men (no, I do not hate men, just the ones who automatically assume that I'm looking for a little *wink*nudge*, if you know what I mean).
To be honest, I feel sort of bad for the men. If these kinds of sites are available for women (even if they don't serve my types of interests), there should be a comparable set of sites for men. Of course, this probably won't happen because some raging feminist will cry "bloody murder."
Look. College is many different things; I'm not going to argue that. But its primary purpose is a place of study. If a student can't perform well on a test (which requires that one exercise a reasonable amount of study skills), that student simply isn't going to do very well in most collegiate enviornments.
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am a Chemistry and Studio Art double major, whose test scores were less than spectacular, but am doing fine in my senior year at a small liberal-arts school.
ACT's, SAT's, and the like, as well as this "leadership" test still exclude the fine arts. While I recognize the desire for science, math, and humanities majors, the arts are still very valid. A prospective concert violinist may not have any skills in geometry, but can play an incredible concerto. This type of person may have more luck in a personal interview type of setting. Yes, personal prejudices can surface (and disqualify the candidate), but hopefully, the interviewer would have a little more sensitivity than that. I don't think I would like to attend a school where I was judged first by my gender or color, then later judged by my brain.
Simply put, there are two issues here, and they play off each other. One is that some people perform or appear in a more favorable light from test scores while others will go further in an interview. The second issue, is that some people learn (and therefore, explain) things better either orally, audially, or in a written manner.
I would venture that in general, people going into the natural sciences would fare better on standardized tests than in an interview (of course there are exceptions to the rule). This assertion is based on the fact that people who are good in science usually have taken more math and more concrete writing than those in, say, theater. This mathy-reasoning stuff is also a large chunk of what the SAT's test on. This is not to say that art majors can't do math -- just generally, science majors have taken more math, have used it more, and continue to use it: it's familiar. Therefore, those in the sciences, will probably get relatively high standardized test scores.
On the other hand, those people in visual arts, especially in studio arts, will probably score very high on the Lego test (as long as they are leaders, apparently) because of their spatial abilities. Heck, the art part of my brain allowed me to manipulate molecules in my head for Organic Chemistry. In general, people in the arts need to see things in order to process them, so a physical objective (like building a replica of a Lego model) is ideal. This is not to say that science people can't draw or can't model anything -- just that people who are centered in the arts usually think this way.
In my opinion, ideally, every candidate would be judged on a combination of test scores, an interview, and some sort of portfolio of work (this could be anything they're interested in, not necessarily artwork). This would allow those who are strong on tests and those who are strong in interviews to have a bit of glory, and to put a bit of themselves forward in the portfolio. This is, however, an unrealistic prospect to put before college recruiters; they simply can't afford the time and effort to go through that much material for each of their 3500 (or however many) applicants. Instead, test scores are usually used now as the "first cut" to weed out those students who probably wouldn't make it in that school. While this could be an unfortunate mistake, the college recruiters have to start somewhere, and test scores are fairly objective (or at least quantitative enough for computers to send rejection letters to the students under a certain score and retain the rest).
Okay, so as long as your evesdropping on your roommate's phone conversation is kept a secret, it's not intrusive, disruptive, or wrong. Sure.
The bottom line is, he broke the law. No social status should allow anyone to get off the hook.
As far as the punishment goes, I think it fit the crime. He broke in to a computerized system and nosed around. The punishment should, in my opinion, have something to do with limiting his access to computerized systems like the ones that he used to break the law in the first place.
I also agree that in this day, zero computer access/use is almost impossible. However, there are people in the world (and even in the US) who funcion very well without Internet access (an inconceivable notion to some /. readers ;)
On the other hand, if the assigned punishment was too harsh, what should it have been? I don't think there would be an easy way to regulate computer access on a daily basis or something.
Sometimes, it's better to give a little harder kick as a warning to discourage further actions.
Teachers will never be replaced. Think of all of the influences in your education (assuming you had any), and most likely, a teacher or two will come to mind... someone who inspired you to go a little further. I attended an independent, public elementary school. This school did not stress grades, instead dividing the entire K-6 student population into four "colonies." Each student was free to work at his/her own pace (under the watchful eye of a teacher or aides) in every subject. This was a benefit to many kids, especially quick kids and slower learners, but those who were not self-motivated had some problems in completing the assigned goals. Computers were not an integral part of the learning experience, but they were certainly used as a tool. Math drills (making the alligator eat the right number) were completed on the computer. These games were infinitely more fun with animation rather than just another sheet to fill out. Teachers could also spend more time helping the kids who needed it. Typing was taught to all 2nd graders (second colony) with a computer program; this is a necessary skill, but teachers' time could (and was) better spent elsewhere. Regardless of the benefits of computers in learning, personal attention to students cannot be replaced by a machine. I know that AI is progressing, but a program cannot take the place of another live person giving you a pat on the back.