The Computer Delusion - The Atlantic - 7 views
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IN 1922 Thomas Edison predicted that "the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and ... in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks."
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William Levenson, the director of the Cleveland public schools' radio station, claimed that "the time may come when a portable radio receiver will be as common in the classroom as is the blackboard.
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B. F. Skinner, referring to the first days of his "teaching machines," in the late 1950s and early 1960s, wrote, "I was soon saying that, with the help of teaching machines and programmed instruction, students could learn twice as much in the same time and with the same effort as in a standard classroom."
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a bridge to the twenty-first century ... where computers are as much a part of the classroom as blackboards
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We could do so much to make education available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, that people could literally have a whole different attitude toward learning
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Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford University and a former school superintendent, observed that as successive rounds of new technology failed their promoters' expectations, a pattern emerged
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Today's technology evangels argue that we've learned our lesson from past mistakes
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The promoters of computers in schools again offer prodigious research showing improved academic achievement after using their technology
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killed its music program last year to hire a technology coordinator
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The possibilities of using this thing poorly so outweigh the chance of using it well, it makes people like us, who are fundamentally optimistic about computers, very reticent
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Perhaps the best way to separate fact from fantasy is to take supporters' claims about computerized learning one by one and compare them with the evidence in the academic literature and in the everyday experiences I have observed or heard about in a variety of classrooms.
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Computers improve both teaching practices and student achievement.
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Computer literacy should be taught as early as possible; otherwise students will be left behind.
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To make tomorrow's work force competitive in an increasingly high-tech world, learning computer skills must be a priority.
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Technology programs leverage support from the business community—badly needed today because schools are increasingly starved for funds.
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Work with computers—particularly using the Internet—brings students valuable connections with teachers, other schools and students, and a wide network of professionals around the globe.
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Connecting K-12 Schools to the Information Superhighway
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begins by citing numerous studies that have apparently proved that computers enhance student achievement significantly
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n the early 1980s Apple shrewdly realized that donating computers to schools might help not only students but also company sales, as Apple's ubiquity in classrooms turned legions of families into Apple loyalists
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there is scant evidence of greater student achievement.
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They're especially weak in measuring intangibles such as enthusiasm and self-motivation
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Computers in classrooms are the filmstrips of the 1990s
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Apple quickly learned that teachers needed to change their classroom approach to what is commonly called "project-oriented learning
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students learn through doing and teachers act as facilitators or partners rather than as didacts.
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the guide on the side instead of the sage on the stage
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But what the students learned "had less to do with the computer and more to do with the teaching,
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Even in success stories important caveats continually pop up. The best educational software is usually complex — most suited to older students and sophisticated teachers.
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Part of the answer may lie in the makeup of the Administration's technology task force
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Each chapter describes various strategies for getting computers into classrooms, and the introduction acknowledges that "this report does not evaluate the relative merits of competing demands on educational funding
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Hypertext Minds
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Today's parents, knowing firsthand how families were burned by television's false promises, may want some objective advice about the age at which their children should become computer literate
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Opinions diverge in part because research on the brain is still so sketchy, and computers are so new, that the effect of computers on the brain remains a great mystery.
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that the mediated world is more significant than the real one.
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n the past decade, according to the presidential task force's report, the number of jobs requiring computer skills has increased from 25 percent of all jobs in 1983 to 47 percent in 1993
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told me the company rarely hires people who are predominantly computer experts, favoring instead those who have a talent for teamwork and are flexible and innovative
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Many jobs obviously will demand basic computer skills if not sophisticated knowledge. But that doesn't mean that the parents or the teachers of young students need to panic.
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NEWSPAPER financial sections carry almost daily pronouncements from the computer industry and other businesses about their high-tech hopes for America's schoolchildren
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High-tech proponents argue that the best education software does develop flexible business intellects
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IT is hard to visit a high-tech school without being led by a teacher into a room where students are communicating with people hundreds or thousands of miles away — over the Internet or sometimes through video-conferencing systems (two-way TV sets that broadcast live from each room).
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The free nature of Internet information also means that students are confronted with chaos, and real dangers
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We need less surfing in the schools, not more
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chooling is not about information. It's getting kids to think about information. It's about understanding and knowledge and wisdom
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