Does the Digital Classroom Enfeeble the Mind? - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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We see the embedded philosophy bloom when students assemble papers as mash-ups from online snippets instead of thinking and composing on a blank piece of screen. What is wrong with this is not that students are any lazier now or learning less. (It is probably even true, I admit reluctantly, that in the presence of the ambient Internet, maybe it is not so important anymore to hold an archive of certain kinds of academic trivia in your head.)
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Roughly speaking, there are two ways to use computers in the classroom. You can have them measure and represent the students and the teachers, or you can have the class build a virtual spaceship. Right now the first way is ubiquitous, but the virtual spaceships are being built only by tenacious oddballs in unusual circumstances. More spaceships, please.
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Jaron Lanier's article in the NY times. --- Adding to an already rich life, my father decided in middle age to become an elementary-school teacher in a working-class neighborhood in New Mexico. To this day, people who run grocery stores and work on construction sites, and who are now in late middle age themselves, come out when I'm visiting to tell me how Mr. Lanier changed their lives. Go up to any adult with a good life, no matter what his or her station, and ask if a teacher made a difference, and you'll always see a face light up. The human element, a magical connection, is at the heart of successful education, and you can't bottle it.
