Computers in the Classroom: Agents of Change - 0 views
-
Within four years a pencil and a pad of paper will be placed in every single classroom of the country so that every child, rich or poor, will have access to the new knowledge technology. Meantime the educational psychologists stand by to measure the impact of pencils on learning.
-
In fact what I now understand that the Foobarian educators would actually do is not reject the pencil but appropriate it by finding trivial uses of the pencil that could be carried out within their meager resources and that would require minimal change in their old ways of doing things.
-
And the success of students like Bill in these environments shows that just as all children -- and not only those who "have a head for French" -- learn French if they live to France, so, too, all children learn mathematics if they meet it in a context that is more alive than the ordinary curriculum.
- ...4 more annotations...
-
The differences between Bill's learning experience and what schools offer in the form of a few hours a week in a "computer lab" could fill many pages. Here I focus on just one: The computer lab fits into the structure of school by making "computer literacy" one more subject with its curriculum and its time slots while Bill's learning cut across all these structures. He had access to computers and other technologies all the time, whenever he needed them
-
Computers seem expensive because schools put them in the same budget category as pencils. The actual cost of production of a net-based computer powerful enough to support deep change in learning would certainly be less than $500 (and I believe that with a national effort we could bring it down to $200), and its expected lifetime would exceed five years. An annual cost of $100 per year is about 1.5 percent of direct expenditure on public schooling. Taking indirect costs and the social cost of educational failures into account, it is less than 1 percent.
-
We are already beginning to hear stories about the influence in classrooms of children whose access to home computers and to a home learning culture has given them a high level not only of computer expertise but also of sophistication in seeking knowledge and standards in what constitutes a serious intellectual project
-
It is 100 years since John Dewey began arguing for the kind of change that would move schools away from authoritarian classrooms with abstract notions to environments in which learning is achieved through experimentation, practice and exposure to the real world. I, for one, believe the computer makes Dewey's vision far more accessible epistemologically. It also makes it politically more likely to happen, for where Dewey had nothing but philosophical arguments, the present day movement for change has an army of agents. The ultimate pressure for the change will be child power.
-
Computers in the Classroom: Agents of Change By Seymour Papert This article appeared in The Washington Post Education Review Sunday, October 27, 1996 Seymour concluded that computers do not contribute to better learning. The computer lab fits into the structure of school by making "computer literacy" one more subject with its curriculum and its time slots. It's about access to computers and other technologies all the time, whenever needed. He has a new book, The Connected Family, He develops the idea that the computers that will be the pivotal force for change will be those outside the control of schools and outside the schools' tendency to force new ideas into old ways. He talks about the influence in classrooms of children whose access to home computers and to a home learning culture has given them a high level not only of computer expertise but also of sophistication in seeking knowledge and standards in what constitutes a serious intellectual project. The number of these children will grow exponentially in the next few years. Their pressure on schools will become irresistible.