Technology in Schools
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OK, so maybe this isn't the best place to make notes. Lord knows the discussion on Slashdot gets you all sort of opinions. However most of us are biased because we're technology professionals. We make a living from computers, so we have a different outlook than the people that will grow up to become auto mechanics, doctors, postman, lawyers, or some other non-technological profession.
The Milwaukee Sentinal Journal has a 3 part series (
Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) that look at some of the impacts of technology on schools, both from the effectiveness and the cost.
As the parent of 3 kids, two of which are in school and one starting next year, I'm a little torn about their use. I think my kids should learn about how to use computers. Not necessarily programming, but the web, how to search, email, reference sites, the things they need to know to make it a tool. A very powerful and useful tool, but still a tool.
Beyond that, I'm not sure how much good we do by having kids with computers in school. Learning to take notes, imprinting the concepts in your mind by writing them, translating your notes, and staying focused all are easier with paper and pencil. I know that you can still play games, write notes, day dream, etc, without a computer.
But with one, the call of Solitaire and other distractions are much easier fallen prey to.
Steve Jones
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My 14 year old daughter is celebrating at the start of this new school year because she will never have another IT lesson now she's started her GCSEs and IT is not compulsory at her school, unlike where her brother studied.
With two IT professionals as parents and a brother about to start studying computer games programming at university, she's jaded by the subject and bored with it all.
This doesn't mean she can't or won't use a computer but will use it as a tool rather than a subject, writing up coursework etc. She lives on MSN, chatting to friends across the country and has been taught in her IT lessons how to type properly and search for information (unlike myself who had to take Latin instead of typing at school!).
I would have liked her to learn more about spreadsheets and databases as tools but she wants to be a vet and can learn IT from her parents and will pick things up quickly.
I don't feel the need for more IT in schools - writing things down has always been better for learning. More time spent revising and reviewing the written work and reading around the subject is what children really need rather than computer time which is usually wasted playing games or sidetracking on the internet.
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Back in the dark days of card punchers and two finger typing, I was taught that before you can use a computer for anything, you must first know how to do it manually.
Same applies today.
Students should write their reports on paper first and then type them into a word processor.
Students should layout their spreadsheets before starting to create one.
Students should learn how to read a book before tackling a manual. Which, when translated from multiple languages into English is an all new problem.
Students will never master the use of a film camera by downloading photos off the Internet.
Don't look under the hood of your car unless you have a strong stomach, are not color blind, understand basic electronics and already know how the mechanical parts are supposed to work.
Start small, take your lawn mower apart first, then build up from there.
Technology is to serve man, not be his master. That's the problem I see with computers in schools. To much reliance on what they do instead of how they do it.
And also as a father of three, don't expect your kids to understand computers the way you do. They learned in a sanitized school setting instead of real world access and issues.
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I find it really interesting that of the 3 posts in this thread, each of them seems to state computers are becoming overused in schools.
While I do agree that students should learn to do things manually before they do them on computers, I think they become better prepared for the world they're going into if they do things on computers too. I think that professions like doctors, lawyers, and auto mechanics are becoming increasingly computer-based, and kids that use computers at school on a daily basis will be more effective in these fields as well as technical ones.
I'm not saying that anyone with a high school diploma should be ready to be a DBA or a programmer, but a basic understanding of how computers work (and how to use and fix them) will help a graduate in their career, regardless of their field.
Casey
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A lot of kids have computers at home and parents at work. They (kids) have to learn how to take care of computer what not to do for the first place. For example my son designed a web site and put some of his friends pictures on it. He did a good job learning complex HTML tags using MSDN Library, but I told him to remove friends' pictures unless he has a written approval from each of his friends' parents. My other son really likes to use Task Manager to end processes when he thinks the computer is too slow. He has to learn that some processes like virus protection should not be ended as well as explorer.exe
Regards,Yelena Varsha
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I'm a "back in the day" guy too. We had to learn math by hand in case we did not have a calculator.
Kinda' idiotic really. Other than simple math, I do not need to do derivations on paper with a pencil... On the other hand, for a while, they were teaching my son all othe components of a computer. Gee, those never change.... I do not need to be a mechanic to drive a car. It is good to know some things so I am not ripped off, but this was worthless.
Now, they are not teaching typing. That was a full blown class when I went to school.
The basics are still the reason our kids are there. This pollucka that children have so many more things to learn these days than when we went to school. Go to an old books bookstore sometime and try and find a 4th grade reader from the 1800's. It will floor you! Those kids had to learn enormous amounts. Latin, Greek, Trig, etc...
Computers are great. Calculators are great. But you still need to know how to read, write, and add in your head.
My vote is with the first three threads.
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
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"I'm a "back in the day" guy too. We had to learn math by hand in case we did not have a calculator.
Kinda' idiotic really."Farrell that is not "back in the day" Back in the day was when you had to learn math by hand because there were no calculators.
Kids do need to learn how to do both simple and complex math by hand so that they will understand what they are doing. The schools at least in the US do a very poor job of teaching any math simple or complex. The schools in Europe seem to do better or at least the people I know who learned their math there know their stuff. I was in the store the other and watched both customers and employees who could not compute the amount of change they should receive from a transaxtion. When training people in this basic task after getting the deer in the headlights look they say "Why do I need to know how to count change the register allways gives me the right answer." I have often thought it would be fun to program the register to give the wrong answer and see how long it would take for someone to notice. Perhaps I will do so one day and everyone can email me while I am in Jail after all it would be crule and inhuman punishment to lock someone up and deny them the use of a computer.
Mike
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They had calculators when I was young, but no one owned them as they cost a bizillion dollars. I guess I was on the cusp of "back in the day".
But your point seems to be the same as mine - with the advent of the computer, (and teaching "social attitudes in schools" and the myriad of other pollucka they have introduced into the school system), things like simple addition/subtraction have fallen by the way-side.
We spent a lot time this summer testing and keeping our son ready for his next grade level, (only two hours a day for him - so he had a good summer) and he has already had to correct his math teacher. Yikes!
If we are educating our kids this way, who will be the next to educate their kids?! Its kinda' frightening...
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
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There were calculators back then.
First it was fingers, then toes, then came the slide rule which was used more as another fun way to whack your neighbor with then modern day devices. And did not require batteries or light to run on. Some how we managed to get to the moon using those devices before the computers were programmed.
When I learned to count change back, the register did not tell you the amount and you had to count it out into the customers hand from the sales price up to the bill denomination. And yes, every now then a brain freeze would sweep through and you would mess up but you always caught it. But from that experience, I now calculate the change in my head and have caught an error more than once in the pile that was handed back to me. Not the registers fault, the humans. Makes me use a credit card more.
That's because the basic stuff is not being taught anymore. Ever use a U-Scan to check out at store? Now one "clerk" can cover 8 separate registers and the only real job is to free the machine from some user error. Little math used. Some social skills used, mainly to blame the "stupid machine".
So who is going to fix these machines? Europeans or Asians from what I read here.
All this is the result of the "dummy down" program that this country has been subscribing to in our school systems. Thank you liberal America.
Sorry, had to say that because it is so frustrating. Home schooling is on the rise and they wonder why.
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Ditto!!
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
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Glad to see the majority agree with "manual maths".
Both I and my children referred to in the earlier post were first taught in traditional English private schools some thirty odd years apart and I believe it is the best possible start. We all knew our tables up to 12 times by heart before age 8 and wrote a good clear rounded joined up handwriting with correct spelling and a good vocabulary. These basics are what state schools missed out on and are trying to get back to.
Duaghter by the way was doing homework equations by hand in the car yesterday and didn't consider a need for a calculator. Maths exam papers here now specify "calculator not allowed" or "calculator allowed" and children have to take both types.
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Just to clarify, I don't think people should be taught how to do math on calculators before they're able to do it with a pencil.
But, just to play the devil's advocate, It's the same principle as teaching those Riemann Sums before you start integrating in calculus. After you learn to integrate, do you ever need to use Riemann Sums again? Nope. They're taught simply to help you understand what you're doing when you integrate. If you understand what you're doing when you do arithmetic on a calculator, does it really matter if you have to count on your fingers the one time your calculator breaks? Is it so horrible to have to look up some words in a dictionary when you’re writing something on paper because your spell checker usually spells them for you?
Maybe the reliance on technology isn't as bad as people think.
*prepares to get slammed*
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What's with this technology in schools stuff? What ever happened to learning to count with the pinball or the ladybugs' picnic or learning to add in a song from Sesame Street?
When I have kids, I hope they will understand what technology can do for them but at the same time understand that their brains can use the exercise too. We'll definitely use the computer as a learning tool (for games like Number Crunchers and Word Munchers), but they'll also learn about the calculator and by "using crutches" (as my 5th grade teacher put it), doing math the manual way and learning to carry over numbers. They'll learn about Microsoft Word or some time of word processing program, but I hope they'll have to learn about writing on paper first... and using dictionaries in book form to learn a word's definition and spelling.
Like Steve says for his kids, I hope my kids will see the computer as a useful tool.
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I think that is the whole point here. Students need to master the manual methods first before using computers for daily work. Who uses a typewriter anymore for correspondence? I certainly would not want to do my math work without my trusty HP calculator -even if I don't use all the functions,(I just like using RPN verses AOS) but I still need how to do the steps. And that is the whole point of technology in schools, it's just not for Internet access and homework, it should be training for real world use. Learn how to use a word processor, spreadsheet and database programs. How to use multimedia and presentation programs. How to do graphic design, cad and photography. And don't teach all this just on an Apple based product when 95% of what they will probably use in the real world is Windows based. Apple should also be taught, but not as a primary learning tool.
And why isn't typing or keyboarding made mandatory in school? If that is the primary interface to a computer and they want to teach technology, then it should be a required course.
Just like english, spelling and math (not the 3r's) are required.
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