-o Who cares how corrupt our leaders are as long as they're tough on crime? o-

Is this not a forum? Sure, talk all you want, but if you don't want to bring attention to a person, why reply to their posts?

Of course, if we didn't have such posts, you wouldn't have much to b**ch about. I think it is funny and I find these forums entertaining. So please keep up the good work Sig11 and all those who oppose!

Sure, if you know all the algorithms and such, you will be smarter. Is it necessary though? Do we not make algorithms and functions so people can get their work done without learning all the basics? Why reuse code?

It serves no purpose and doesn't teach children anything?

Don't get me wrong, if your going to attempt to teach children something about computers, then, by all means, but a computer in each class room, and install Logo, or BASIC, or something.

But, don't do what was done to me. In the school district I grew up in, every grade (small schools too) had it's own computer room, which consisted of about 40 computers. So, once a week, we would join up with another class, and go to the computer room to learn.

This consisted mainly of three actives, in order of use:

1. Playing learning games. Absolutely useless. You learned how to play stupid games that were supposed to teach you grammar and math. Almost always the edutainment games seemed to be below our learning level. I can never once remembering a game that reinforced some just taught lesson. It seems to me that this was just done to give the teachers a break from teaching us.
2. Writing essays and such. Mildly useful, but still pointless. Perhaps if they had instructed us on how to use a word processor, it would have been good, but instead most students would hand write their essay, and edit it using pen and paper techniques. Then, in one shot, type it into the computer, and this was the preferred way, since it kept the children out of the teacher's hair (they often knew very little about how to actually use the word processing program)
3. Actual instruction on computers. I had one class (the only one ever offered to me) on programming. It was in Pascal, and this was only in high school. They should have done this more often.

All of my knowledge of programming (I took the final for the Pascal class the second week and didn't have to take the class) came from my self-teaching, by reading books and the like. So as a result, I tend to think I would have been better off (merely because my teachers would have been forced to teach me more) if our schools didn't have computers. And that coming from someone who makes his living as a "Software Engineer".
-- It is too late for the pebbles to vote, the avalanche has already started.

I would go so far as to say CBTs do not work as well as instructors for most people. As a software engineer, the only problems in the real world solved by computers are:

What's 5+5? 12? No, I'm sorry, that's incorrect. Please try again.

---
Protest the MPAA! Boycott Mission Impossible 2! More details here.

You are too preoccupied with the computer programing and computer science aspect of computers. There are other issues which are probably more important and what the the educators in the article are more responsive to. More like McLuhan's "the medium is the message" idea.

Consider drawing a circle, for example. If you draw it with a pencil on a piece of paper, you involve a large part of your nervous system. You use your visual system to guide your hand and judge the quality of your progress. You use your proprioceptive system to organize and co-ordinate muscle movements at spinal, brain stem, cerebellar, thalamic and cortical levels. Your auditory system hears the scratching of the pencil on the paper with the change in pitch as the direction changes continuously. Your sense of touch feels the pencil and the changes in forces on the pencil as it traverses its circular trajectory and the texture of the paper beneath the hand. In addition to drawing a (probably very inacurate) circle, there is a subliminal learning experience of "roundness" as experienced by many neurons at many levels.

Most computer drawing programs do a better job of drawing circles, but the experience is impoverished sensually. You pick a shape class from a menu and then click the mouse over where you want to draw it. THen you drag the mouse to adjust the size and you are done. Its so simple a blind person could do it and you learn almost nothing from the experience.

No, draw a square. With a pencil on paper, its almost an entirely different experience. Abrupt changes in direction, etc. With a computer its exactly the same. The only difference is that you choose a different shape category at the begining.

The person using a pencil and paper learns to distinguish circles and sqares at all neurological levels. The person using a computer only sees the difference at a higher, abstract level; a small subset of the understanding that the pencil-user experiences. To a mature person, this probably makes no difference, but to a formative mind, where neural circuits are still being laid down, such as k-5, this can make a big difference. Once a critical period of development has been passed, it can never be revisited.

I think that the educators are right, keep kids away from computers for the first few years of schooling. THEN you can use it as a tool, after they have a healthy, roundly experience brain in their head. At least for production work. I would think that a coumputer would still be acceptable for searching for things and some elementary programing/logic exercises.

Here is my testimonial.

I am going into grade 12 next year, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. When I was in grade nine, we took a course called "Computer Applications" which involved typing in ClarisWorks on a Mac Classic. Fun.

Grade 10, however was a little more advanced, well actually a lot more advanced. We learned QBasic on those same Mac Classics, we got a new Comp Sci teacher that year who was actually very good. We worked at our own pace, every now and then he'd give us a new concept (Which I already knew in C) for us to chew on. We would have tests farily often. The class was fun, mostly because of the students, but also a good teacher.

In grade 11 I didn't take Computer Science because I didn't feel I'd learn anything I didn't already know. And from what I hear from my friends, I was right. That year focused mostly on Pascal, on the brand new Celeron 400/NT machines our school bought. Towards the end of the class they touched on C, apparently. One of the final projects of the class was building a computer (PC) from scratch. Nice class :)

Grade 12 will be interesting. They are replacing another one of the Mac labs with an updated PC lab (More C400s), that will be fun, however this time, I'm going to step in and make at least one of the machines run some form of Unix.

All in all, our highschool computer program teaches the basics of how a computer works, and it has been good. All execpt introducing some people to PowerPoint. People at school do not know how to use PowerPoint very well, and it gets old fast, especially when they replace content with novelty./P

Because otherwise I'd have had nothing to teach my teachers

Finger for geek code & GPGP key. Online presence (no, really!) at http://i.am/thenut/

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Jeez.

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Sure the kids have really good C grammar, but when it comes time to write a research paper, printf("blah\n"); isn't going to cut it.

Maybe that was a bad example... who knows.

--- Jimi Hendrix's modem was a purple Hayes. ---

Computers also are a poor forum for teaching reading and writing, much as they may try. After spending time reading on a computer screen, your eyes tend to hurt, don't they? It's not the same as a piece of paper. Now, I couldn't write a paper without a word processor, but kids learn how to write better when they can use paper to sketch out their ideas.

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For all math classes, calculators are useless, and are actually prohibited in any undergraduate university math class I've been in.

--

The success of Win 9x does not surprise me. Many people wouldn't know a good OS if it bit them on the -- OW! HEY! Where'd that fscking PENGUIN come from?

``Just a fact: they teach kids to count, add, subtract, multiply, and divide with a calculator now.''

OK. McDonalds has to have cash registers with a button for each kind of hamburger rather than requiring the person behind the counter actually enter the actual price. Wonder which came first: students who didn't know math requiring McDonalds to install the idiot cash registers? Or did McDonalds install the new cash registers so the schools decided that students didn't really have to know much math after all. Those automated change dispensers attached to cash registers pretty eliminated the need to know any math. Subtraction is so hard.

Children will learn more through the interactivity of the classroom than by the solitary process of plopping down in front of a PC with a crappy piece of ``educational'' software. My girls will be learning their math on the computer (unless it's numerical integration and that probably won't be until high school).
--
CUR ALLOC      20195.....5805M

I agree with that... but you left out one big point. With tv, you just sit there and hope that some corporation decides that educational programming will make them rich... which is not often, hence the lack of real educational programming (besides the discovery channel).

But with the net you aren't just sitting on the reciving end. you go out and get what you want, instead of hoping someone just gives it to you. TV would only be like this if there was like 538594353768353945306473^43930323020302 channels.

• Education is not just about transferring information, and isn't improved by transferring it more efficiently
• Kids will always know more than the teachers. This will inevitably lead to huge conflicts. The teacher in charge of computing is often the one who wasn't any good at anything else.
• Computers aren't programmable. Not anymore. They used to come with BASIC interpreters. Now you just get Windows on the home PC, or a Mac. Kids can't learn as they play.
• A lot of the so-called educational software is a joke, rewarding little kids with visual stimuli too easily, leading them to fire at the programmes at random. Some studies have found that a lot of the educational software for very young kids discourages rational thought and promotes trial and error.
• Multiuser systems in schools tend to be run on an utterly fascist basis, due to admin cluelessness and underfundedness.

You can't tell me that these students aren't going to have to know how to use computers later in life. The trick is to make them so that they truly are educational.

It doesn't matter how pretty your PowerPoint presentation is if there's no content behind it. The school district I work for tends to subscribe to the philosophy of Dr. Willard Daggett. Take a look at his web site if you want to know where we should be headed in technology education.

-- No noose is good noose

You're absolutely right -- the (only) advantage of BASIC was that all the kids who had access to a PC had the same coding language available to them. It would be a Good Thing if all PC's now (and networks, too) had one (interpreted, relatively simple, high-level) language included in their utilities package.

Kids used to actually get a game (blocky graphics, no color, no kid today would put up with it...) and then be able to see how it worked -- deconstruct it. Then they could experiment with writing code to make a block look like it was moving across the screen, for example. I didn't start to learn programming until I was 18 (when I went to college), and I think that's late. (Of course, in my high-school days we didn't even have hand-held calculators! I think only accountants used calculators, and they were the big desk-top models.)

"Computers aren't programmable. Not anymore." An utterly pathetic statement if I ever heard one. Linux comes with many different compilers. And if it were up to me, teaching BASIC would be a criminal offense!!!! We could also save cash-starved school districts big bucks not going with the Micro$oft monopoly.

Anyway, children don't necessarily need to be programming computers at 6 years old, but when they are old enough (im not going to put a number there) they should learn a language that has structure and at least a vague real world use like C. Hell, I'd much rather see Pascal or FORTRAN used before one more child is stuck learning BASIC as their first computer language. At least those would teach concepts as basic as functions and put the child in a much better position to expand their programming skills. I unfortunately learned BASIC before anything else, and it was a pretty big leap to go to something like Pascal or C.

Every night, tired dyslexics around the world look forward to 8 hours of peels.

Every night, tired dyslexics around the world look forward to 8 hours of peels.

You lost me, I am dyslexics, I don't think of peels?

E-mail: News for Analog Gamers: mailto:bobs@strcat.com http://www.StrategicCastle.com

Ever heard of e-rate (amongst the other thousands of grants available)? Pencils don't qualify.
-- No noose is good noose

I don't believe that it is necessarily a Bad Thing to use computers in educational circumstances, and especially at the older levels.

Nemesys states that "Kids will always know more than the teachers" yet the article is most focused on removing computers from younger kids, pre-seventh grade. As the teachers teaching these students are constantly being replaced by younger teachers, those with a better understanding of this technology, they will be more informed. Though there are certainly students who know more than the teachers even at this early age, by selecting the correct system (perhaps a modified Un*x that targeted for this one purpose, with an easy to use GUI?) the teachers won't have to worry about these students as much (assuming that someone in the school knows how to set it up).

The biggest problem facing educators with their use of technology is that they are teaching students to become reliant on tech and not to use it as a tool. This is part of what the article is getting at when the author states that the students most learn the "e;ideas" first. This is a problem that reaches farther than just computers, however. To often are students taught to "just plug it in to your calculator" without having a clue as to the theory behind it. This is what the author is worried about.

Too often are students taught to "just plug it in to your calculator" without having a clue as to the theory behind it.

I got through my high school math and science classes (including chemistry) with a cheap calculator my father got at an insurance conference. I started using it in geometry because calculating sines, cosines, and tangents by hand took too long. When I got to college, I got through Physics, Statistics, and Pre-Calculus using a cheap scientific calculator.

When I got to Calculus 1, we were suddenly required to use a $90 graphing calculator. In the week I was in that class (I dropped it because I couldn't afford the calculator), we never did any actual calculus, we just learned how to use the graphing calculator.

Like computers, graphing calculators are nice tools. However, they shouldn't replace knowledge of the data behind the calculations.

In admiratione principium sapientiae, sic dicimus omnibus amicis, Nascantur in Admiratione.

Not necessarily. They can be pretty awful at teaching critical thinking. However, if you can point out web pages (for example) with conflicting opinions, and assign the students the task of evaluating these to form their own opinions, that would be very useful.
-- No noose is good noose

Sure, this possibility should exist to for those that are so inclined, but face it, most students will not ever have the need/desire to actually code. Should they have to?

On the other hand, e-mail is quickly becoming a primary method of communication for many people. Word processing is essential to most any business. These are the applications our student need to learn.
-- No noose is good noose

If that is truly the case, why are American colleges jam-packed with students from other countries trying to get an education here, rather than the other way around?
-- No noose is good noose

Who magically got educated on their 18th birthday?
-- No noose is good noose

You're all missing the point on how computers can be helpful in the classroom. They are tools not teachers. If your teacher is so horrible and can't teach the computer isn't going to make up for this. Its like expecting the blackboard to teach kids, except the computer is a little more interactive than a blackboard.

There are tons of free compilers out and about, not just for linux either. Search yahoo for free compiler, there are many. Of course that might require a download, but a teacher who is going to use a computer as a tool to help teach should know how to do that.

Screw educational software. Educational software is crap, I'll give you that. So don't use it. The good stuff is the programming stuff, and the presentation software. How many high school lectures could have been made more interesting by using an actual presentation, instead of a dull, monotone lecture with a teacher whose back is always turned and writing at the blackboard? And don't whine about attention span either. We don't have to be bored anymore, ok? Get that? Being interesting helps the learning process. Sure teachers aren't supposed to be entertainers, but any attempt at arousing interest is better than just feeding fact after fact.

So the admins suck, thats a general fact of school labs because yes, nobody wants to be a school network admin and everybody tries to have a job elsewhere. That pretty much means that there's always an exploit. Neither my grade nor high school admins were competent enough to keep me where they wanted me. Nobody knew security. It kept the masses inline, but gave us with some knowhow a little challenge. Some real thinking, how to get to king's quest when only the teacher has read permissions to the directory. My high school actually gave me an independent study and had me do a little admining of my own. You may think that proves your point that computers are bad in a classroom, but I don't see how a challenge like this could be bad. But you're breaking the rules you say. So were the kids too dumb to use a computer and pummeling each other on the playground. And now look who has a better job and future. And learning how to use a computer wasn't hurting anybody either, they still learned other things. Its not as though computers are doing all the teaching, thats why we have teachers .

Also, so what if the kids know more than the teachers. Are teachers too old to learn? Not all the kids are going to know more, anyway. There will always be the teachers who know nothing about technology, but how much use of computers are they going to make? Remember these are tools, a time and a place to use them. Most teachers can make a powerpoint presentation, and with the wizards make it look decent. Most of the time it wasn't a computer class anyway, so if I was helping to get the presentation in order so what? In my experience there was really only me and a few others who could beat any teacher skillwise with computers. And when the teachers had problems they came running to me, giving me a chance to teach and learn people skills.

Sure, if you think that the teachers are going to be replaced by computers you're in for a rude awakening. Like I said before, they're tools. When used properly, not as babysitters, they're going to be helpful. I started using computers at 3, most of my intelligent friends started using computers by 3rd grade. We carried through high school some of the highest GPAs, I was in the top 3% of my class of about 450. We're still doing so in college. The computer competent seem to be the most competent people I've met. Figure out how to use them in a classroom, and where its important to use them and they will do good. Don't blame the sloth and incompetence of some teachers on machines though. Teachers need to teach in order for kids to learn. Computers are just one more tool to help.

Wow, long rant.

True; but all computers come with web browsers, and I don't see why JavaScript today is worse than BASIC in 1980.

Today the computing environment has changed. GUIs are on the desktop, nearly every computer is connected to the Internet and a BASIC interpreter isn't on the machine. The motivations change too. Some kids want their own webpage. Some kids want to impress their more knowledgeable friends. Some just want to message everyone they know. But the tools are still there, they just take on different shapes.

So say a kid wants a web page. He's gotta at least figure out geocities' point and drool file manager to get a couple hundred animated gifs to the server. He's gotta configure some kind of counter. And he's gonna want roll-overs. So chances are, somewhere along the line, there is a chance to learn some JavaScript.

Granted, there is quite a bit of clutter in between the browser and the scripting engine, but it is there and it could be used to greater potential than it is being used. And once a kid has a handle on how information is presented on a web page, it becomes no different than the BASIC interpreters of yore.

What would we do if we were at that age again? Would our fascination with computers be any less? Or could it be nurtured to grow even larger? And are we doing anything to help nurture that?

Chris Cothrun

We hear about Japan's educational superiority, but what isn't told to us is that the superiority doesn't come from incredible funding or computerized classrooms. It comes from 3 things:
1. Dedicated parents
2. Dedicated students
3. Dedicated teachers

In that order of importance. A parent who sees education as important and as a thing in which they should play an active part will help their child succeed. A dedicated student will learn the material to the best of his ability, because he sees the value in learning. Finally, a dedicated teacher works to teach his students, trying to teach the good students AND the bad students. Computers do not enter the Japanese equation.

I had the good fortune to attend several courses in a German Gymnasium (college prep high school is the closest American equivalent) in Munich. I didn't see a single computer in any of the classrooms. And yet these are university-bound students, the "highest" track of Germany's 3-tracked system of education. And still, we hear of the superiority of German schools and educations. Without computers in every classroom. I grew up in a "nice, suburban" school system where there were computer labs, even in elementary school. Aside from typing papers and using Mathematica for my Calculus course, I can't remember learning anything from teachers using computers. Only from hackers who showed me how to get teacher-level access on the banyan network. THAT'S what hooked me on computers, not the Logo we worked with in elementary school, or all the papers I typed, or Oregon trail, or anything else we did.

And the tech guys? My sister is a teacher. Her art room has the only PC's in the school...the rest is all Apple. The tech guy there can't even figure out how to install a standard NIC in a PC. I had to come in and do it. So do I think these kids are getting a good computer education? Sure. Right.

Languages with different kinds of learning curves, but you can do something which is interesting (and has teaching value) with one line of Awk or Perl on a 486.
-- My worst fear is a sysadm that knows less Unix than I do.

When i was in high school we got a new computer lab full of Power Macs with DOS cards (these replaced the Apple IIs). The teacher that was hired to do the computer classes was nearly as clueless as most of the students. The only things we did were follow directions on what to click and what to make.

I was able to not do the assignments and instead assist other students with assignments and help the teacher with the lab.

Most of the people that came out of those classes knew nothing about computers. The took an entire semester to learn how to open Office and write a paper with some graphics. There was no mention of how they worked or anything about doing anything else with them.

This was probably a bad experience for most and detrimental at worst. A lot of students probably felt that they had wasted an entire semester doing nothing or something that a typewriter could have done.

Luckily I was in the Gifted program through elementary and got exposed to computers and computing concepts early. Sure we were using Apple IIs and BASIC but alot of that is still with me. Not to mention how to calibrate an Apple joystick for MS FlightSim ;)

So, as per my experience computers in the classroom were a waste of time for most of the student body.

That's if your school even has an AP Comp Sci class. Most are stuck with QBasic and Turbo Pascal classes.
I am sofa king we todd did.

My first computer was the original Apple Macintosh. It's main purpose in the house was to write essays and play the occasional game or two (or ten). My dad bought a copy of Apple BASIC, but I never showed interest in learning to program.

When I finally went to college about five years later, the computer went with me and continued to be a workhorse for writing papers. It was in college, though, that I finally discovered how much I enjoyed programming and that I was really good at it. This was not due to my exposure at an early age to programming but my exposure to mathematics and logic (I have a BS in Physics and a MS in Physics, and now I write code for a company in Boulder).

How does a really powerful calculator (computer) teach children to think? I have not found any programs that teach logic, analytical skills, observation and deduction, or the synthesis of thought. Bring back books and heated debates about systems of thought and current issues. But we're all too damned afraid of offending people with our ideas, especially in the schools. Heck! Teachers are prohibited from offending and telling students that they are wrong.

Okay, I'm done ranting. Computers are a nifty tool, but do we want unthinking keypunchers using them?

----------------------------------------------------------------
Since when did the breadbox become the standard measure of size?

[the Internet] discourages study, reflection, and observation

As James Glieck points out in Faster, we used to wait weeks between lettered discussions and conversations -- even in professional fields. With the advent of typewriters and the enhancement of the postal service, this was reduced to days. Still, days of contemplation and reflection are good. You have time to think about things before you comment on them or reply to them, while waiting for a response.

In this instantaneous age, you have seconds, minutes or hours. I fire an email off to a customer, student or friend and can often receive an immediate response. Not much thought there. Or, if there is a lot of thought, certainly not much pause for reflection and contemplation before hitting the send button. We would consider minutes to be sufficient time for thinking these days.

Political polls are the same. What used to be a matter of days and weeks to form opinions now is, literally, seconds. Ten seconds after a politician says something, it is regurgitated on the news in sound-bites and immediately, opinions which have not been codified and split-second polls are returned and broadcast. Shazam -- you now have material to form your ill-understood opinion on.

Let's not just blame this on computers and the internet -- or short attention spans of children. Processing of information has grown greater than exponentially. If we're going to blame anything, blame TV Dinners, 22-minute news-casts, 10 second commercial jingles and minute-rice.
---
seumas.com
gothicauctions.com

I ask you, what can be done about this? To me, I think that the change has to happen at a more spiritual level. People in the U.S. are constantly concerned about how much time something will take, and so on. But really, in truth, what does it matter how long something takes? If I have to wait an extra minute because the traffic signal changed, SO WHAT?!?!?! I'm not sure where I'm going with this, so I'll stop now. But what can be done to change the current point-and-click attitude? I have no solutions...
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Please, don't read this sentence. I mean it, stop. If you read this, I'll disapp.....

Yes it's true that reflection is discouraged in modern society. By the time I saw this article posted here there was already 200 odd opinions to read. Now, I like to think that my mind is developed enough that I won't just choose the "best" opinion posted here and let it become my own, I will probably use the extra information to help myself form what (to me) is a more accurate opinion. However it is possible that all this information could be stunting to the thought process of a younger person

One point that I feel however is that the article seemed to be against using computers to teach or as a teaching aid and not so much as teaching computers. It is not unreasonable to say that in the near future some computer skills will be required for practically all jobs, and this is why parents are in favour of having computers taught to their kids. However when the computer can be used to avoid learning it presents a reasonable danger to education. My mother teaches history to 13-19 year olds (not sure what grades that is, we number classes differently in Ireland) and she is often faced with students handing up history essays that are just printed out of encarta, and which possibly haven't even been read by the student. Here what was intended to be an educational exercise is ruined by removing the need to assimilate the information by the student. This is where computers can be detrimental to education.

Teaching children at an early age to follow instructions without questioning them and to instinctively look to an expert/web browser for expertise are possibly the most valuable job skills we can give them.

I know you're playing the devil's advocate here, but this still needs refutation. This attitude, which far too many people hold, is how the Psychic Friends Network gets such great business and evolution gets banned in schools. Gullibility is never good.

I think that kids should be required to take a critical thinking course. I don't mean it like those pointless "critical thinking" questions you find on the SAT now--"Explain multiplication to an alien that knows no math"--but the sort of reasoning necessary for making rational decisions in everyday life. It should cover the following areas: logic--not necessarily symbolic logic, but how to follow a logical argument, and to spot holes and logical fallacies; statistics--the different kinds of averages and what they mean, what statistical significance is, etc.; and the scientific method--amazingly, in my experience science classes tend to either gloss over the method at the beginning of the course or ignore it entirely.

A suggested "reccommended reading" list for such a course:

• _The_Culture_of_Fear_ by Barry Glassner. Why so many people are so afraid of such rare, freakish, and sometimes downright mythological things (e.g. razorblades in Halloween candy) and the damage it does to society.
• _How_to_Lie_With_Statistics_ by Darrell Huff. Not really a how-to, but more of a how-they-do-it and how-to-avoid-getting-suckered manual.
• _Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things_ by Michael Shermer. This would probably be the most controversial, since it slaughters a lot of sacred cows. I'd prefer this to a book by The Amazing Randi (although Randi is fun reading), because Shermer is much less holier-than-thou.

Yes, and we should also remove all table saws from the shop class. Students are bound to say, "why should we learn to drop chalklines and use a hand saw when a good tablesaw will make a nice, even, level cut for us?"

Metronomes should be banned from music classrooms. If Bach had to find a tempo the hard way, so should our young musicians of today.

And isn't it sending the wrong message to have a custodial staff? I mean, sure, they will probably have access to janitorial services out in the workforce, but that doesn't mean they should need to rely on them.

We need to stamp out this kind of intellectual laziness, and if higher math and other fruity, pie-in-the-sky classes need to suffer for the sake of emphasizing the basics, so be it!

Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

Please say you were trying to use humor to make your point when you wrote "know" and "competance".

My point was that the presence of computers and calculators != no basic skills learning, and that "basic skills" have become much more of a sacred cow than they ought to be. When I need to divide 4578 by 13.762, I reach for the calculator, even though I could do it on paper if I had to.

The kids in your psych class prove my point. Calculators were surely banned from elementary classrooms when those kids were in 3rd grade, yet they still can't (or won't) do basic math... even with a calculator in their backpack. What have they gained?

Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic.

Quick, ban children from libraries!

*sigh* They have some good points about sorting and internalizing information, but once again, the article's plagued with some sensationalist stuff.

If kids can't handle loads of information at that age, fine, but shouldn't the emphasis here be on teaching so that they will be able to use the information in the future?

Just give kids etch-a-sketch pads and tell them they're computers, that'll save money at least:)

The real Bruce Perens has Slashdot ID 3872. Anyone else is an impostor.

The problem is that teachers and schools often forget that you actually have to structure some sort of educational plan around them. You can't throw a kid in front of a PC, DVD, library of educational laser discs, like their parents do with the television, and expect them to gain anything from it.

The benefit to the Internet, specifically, is that a student can expedite their gathering of information. If a student is given a chance to learn not only at their own pace, but in their own reas of interest, chances are they can make great use of the technology. Whoring the technology as a just another expensive piece of equipment to teach typing on -- or sitting kids in front of them and telling them "learn about birds" is rediculous and counter-productive.

Yet, this is how teachers taught when I was in school. This is how I see many teachers teach, today.
---
seumas.com
gothicauctions.com

This is not to say that computers have no place in classrooms. To the contrary - computers are very important in a classroom. Students must learn how to use computers, as well as something about how they work. Computers are an essential part of our future. I too learned my first computer skills in school (BASIC graphics - bleh), and I am glad I was introduced at a young age to programming. This, however, would have been much less meaningful had I not been inspired by a good teacher who wanted me to learn.

Jaeger
http://334.se2600.org
http://jump.to/jaeger

Computers download information, he says. They do not teach children to think.

"The Internet," Roszak recently told The Dallas Morning News, "offers electronic graffiti. The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic. The essence of thinking is mastering ideas."

says that the instant gratification involved in downloading information off the Internet -

The article was about how the Internet prevents learning. I agree with this as it's a haven for electronic graffiti. Obviously, computers are much more than the Internet. Computers can be used to make students think by teaching them programming.

I agree with this as it's a haven for electronic graffiti.

That said, I have to point out that the internet is computers, and computers are the internet. The internet is just a distrubuted computer, and you can program it just like you do a handheld -- well, the concepts are the same, anyway. Programming is programming, whether it's programming a machine, or a human brain. Programming can be taught with or without computers.

Also, the internet does not prevent learning. Lack of a sufficient knowledge base prevents learning. Most internet users are too clueless to learn anything from the net. That is not the fault of the net or the computers. It may have something to do with poor reading comprehension skills in the population being studied...

Your complaint reminds me of someone who complains that a hammer prevents work from being done by not being a saw...

0x0000

A picture is worth a thousand words. It just takes up more bandwidth.

Although the points raised here (essentially that old computers can teach computer skills as effectively as new ones) have merit. I have to disagree. It's our culture that says you've got to have the latest and greatest. If you give a student an Apple ][ (which, BTW, was my first introduction to computers as well), he's going to get the impression (possibly true!) that they're only getting this because it didn't cost anything. Translation: I'm not worth anything. I'm not into any of this tree-hugging social promotion or anything, but in today's society perception is reality, like it or not.

...not to mention I've not yet been able to access my e-mail on an Apple ][ (see my earlier post).
-- No noose is good noose

Ostensibly, computers are in the classroom to help teach traditional school subjects. When teaching traditional subjects, the whiz-bang factor actually counts (as far as keeping the kid's attention), and the extra processor power of modern computers can pay off.

Let me make an analogy to see if I can be clear, let's take the television as a teaching device. Now, I think most people would say that television in general is detremental to learning, but think about good programs that you've seen, like Cosmos, or the PBS series The Civil War- in those instances the television has proven a very effective teaching tool, imparting not only knowledge, but understanding quite effectively, and efficiently.

I know that when I say whiz-bang, you probably think all fluff and no substance, but what I mean is using technology to add excitement and interest to an otherwise unintersting subject. We want kids to have a well rounded education, but not all kids like all topics, and I think that perhaps technology can be of help.

So, in summary I would agree with your basic premise that technology is often incorrecly being used as a panacea in education, but I would say that the problem is most likely not in the hardware, but in the particluar educational programs. I don't really have enough knowledge of educational software to speak about their current state.

I'll answer these from the perspective of watching what's going on in middle school (K12 in general) now, since there were no computers in schools when I was in school...

1) which would you teach programming to a middle school student with:
a) an apple II with logo and BASIC.
b) a pentium III running Microsoft Visual Studio.

2) how many of you had computer classes in school that consisted of playing "oregon trail"?

3) do you think that computers in classrooms are being used to teach computer skills, or as glorified slide projectors?

4) how much does it cost to get large coporations to donate their old XT's and apples to your school? (hint: they're dying to use this as a tax writeoff).

Donated equipment is great. If you can get the administration to let them use it, the kids love it.

5) do you need a pentium III to teach assembly to a child? will an XT do? might an old XT or an apple be better?

well i'm all for keeping 10-year-old third graders off of slashdot. we've got too many 30-year-old third graders already.

I think the single most important computer skill children should be taught is how to use a text editor. Everything else can build on that.

0x0000

I really liked your reply.

well, i was 10 years old 14 years ago, when oregon trail was educational software for the apple ][. that was about 1986.

the problem with "computers in the classroom" is the educational administration (not the teachers) aren't making good decisions [emphasis mine]

Many, if not most, problems in the educational system stem from uninformed decisions made by administrators, imo.
0x0000

Are these my only two choices? If so, you win for now.

Looking into the future, wouldn't you agree that it will be possible to customize an educational program to an individual? Find out how a student learns best (using the Multiple Intelligences or whatever revisions/replacements come about). Tailor the facts they need to know and methods they need to learn into their profile. Extensively use the internet and a fairly large team of effective teachers to determine what has been done what needs to be done.

Don't think it's possible? Wait about 10 years (on the outside, 5 on the inside), and I'll see if you've changed your mind.
-- No noose is good noose

how much does it cost to get large coporations to donate their old XT's and apples to your school? (hint: they're dying to use this as a tax writeoff).

In an institutional setting maintenance is really important. Working with discarded and eclectic equipment is painful and time-wasting. Educational organizations don't have lots of skilled people who can spend lots of time dealing with these things. They have a small numbers of people with usually very limited computer knowledged.

Some of the things schools have latched onto only make things more difficult. Using CDs in a lab is a bad idea. Using MacOS or Windows 95/98 with a lab can be quite difficult (RevRDist is great, but few schools seem to know about it). Having everyone with their personal floppy disk isn't great either. The technology is very flashy with absolutely no substance, and as a result computers aren't functional. And these are new computers, at that.

OpenClassroom (a Linux distribution aimed at education) could help a lot of this -- Un*x is much more appropriate for a situation with shared computers even at very young ages. But schools don't even really use more conventional tools that exist.
--
Ralph Nader for President. www.votenader.org

If you do not have the resources to teach interested children computer skills on a useful XT, then I'm afraid all the computing resources in the world are not going to help you.

In third world countries, the situation is different. But not in the US. I'm not talking about teaching computer science. I'm talking about functional computers that you can use for word processing, a bit of programming (I think Logo is good for teaching math, but assembly is not relevant to children, and is hardly relevant to programmers), and the Internet. Word processing is possible, but annoying on old computers -- particularly trying to deal with the printing situation. (these details matter!) Logo can work on anything. The Internet (and all the benefits to a lab that networking brings) is not functional on older computers -- anything less than Windows 95, MacOS 7 or 8 (I'm not too knowlegable there) or Un*x is not worth trying to connect to the Internet.

Computers are tools with which a teacher can do good things -- but they are only helpful, not an end in themselves. The teacher should continue to concentrate on the students, not the computers.
--
Ralph Nader for President. www.votenader.org

> Some of the things schools have latched onto only make things more difficult. Using CDs in a lab is a bad idea. Using MacOS or Windows 95/98 with a lab can be quite difficult (RevRDist is great, but few schools seem to know about it). Having everyone with their personal floppy disk isn't great either. The technology is very flashy with absolutely no substance, and as a result computers aren't functional. And these are new computers, at that.

What exactly is bad about CDs & Floppies??

[RAID on the Forest of Horrors] - Legend of the Web Dragon

2) Oregon Trail must have been after my time. My high school classes consisted of BASIC, Advanced BASIC, PASCAL and I've I'd stuck around for my senior year at that school, an AP class where we would have been writing recursive descent parsers in PASCAL.

3) What do you expect? No one with the computer skills to pick up a 50 to 70 K job in the IT industry is going to spend their time teaching. Our children are our future, and from what I can tell, we don't value our future at all.

4) They're throwing away 386 and 486 machines these days.

5) I wouldn't be teaching them assembly for a couple of years, if at all. I'd think assembly would be something you'd teach them if they decided to go for a career in CS. Does the average person really need to know about that?

Someone had to put all that chaos there!

Yup. I had a Tandy CoCo3 -- and you could make these son-of-a-guns sing! Hardware interfacing, programming, problem solving, you name it. Even with 'good-ol' Color BASIC, you could manage to get much done. In fact, I distinctly remember learning the abstracts of algebra long before it was taught in Junior High school--simply because it had learned to program my CoCo.

I would even go to the point of saying that todays students don't know ANYTHING about computers with respect to programming, how logic gates work, what an algorithim is, or even what the binary system is anymore. All they really know is the pop-culture type of stuff: Napster, ICQ, surfing, etc. In other words: with all of the emphasis on computers in todays schools, there is virtually no computer SCIENCE being taught. It's as if the tool is no more than a mere toy.
--
You're still using Windows?
Remove Butthead's sidekick to e-mail.

Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.
Freedom =People choosing how much power to give the Gov.

---
Protest the MPAA! Boycott Mission Impossible 2! More details here.

True, although the computer can only provide so much help. There is no provision for teaching kids to ask the teacher for further assistance. If the computer provides all the help needed, the student quickly learns that his/her teacher is not needed and is of minimal assistance.

Not to mention the fact that as we can see in this thread, most teachers are idiots with regard to technology. Students learn to respect the computer more than their teachers in classes where technology is overused.

Jason Weill Web Productions -- now with webpoll!

In general, the computer has become, in many instances, a mere replacement for the TV. Totally passive.

Yes, there are teachers who can use it as an active medium, but, especially in elementary school enviroments, they aren't used properly.

The money that's being spent on school computer projects could, to some extent, be better used in other areas at those schools, such as buying more books and supplies, or paying teachers a more competitive salary - one that would attract more young people with talent.

Big surprise.. NOT! Sitting a kid in front of the WWW isnt going to teach them anything any more than sitting them in front of daytime TV. As the article said, education is about teaching children to handle ideas and think creatively and coherently for themselves, not about feeding them data in the hope that they can someday connect it all into a body of knowledge. My kids access to the net is the same as access to the TV - restricted, monitored and controlled by mom & dad. If it has neither educational value nor acceptable standards of entertainment quality it doesnt get watched, whether its a TV program, a computer game or a www site.

Why is it such a shock to discover that pouring nothing but data into kids minds doesnt teach them to think about it?
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
"BLAHFOOM"

I say that the students must be mature becaus if they are not, the computer is just one more thing to distract them from learning. I've seen kids web surfing, playing solitaire, etc. when they were supposed to be listening to the teacher. Other kids will disrupt class by making noises with the computer while the teacher is talking. I do not believe however that immature kids should never use computers in the classroom. It just needs to be well-planned and well-supervised. The students should not have access to the computers when they are not supposed to be using them. Having separate computer labs that students go to in order to do computer work can help somewhat.

Overall, I think computers are a great aid to learning, but their use needs to be well-planned, and the audience of students needs to be considered.

Without getting too deeply mired in discussing educational psychology and methods, it can really all be boiled down to this: Computer software will never be able to match the interaction that a human teacher has with his/her student. While human teachers are not perfect, they are unmatched when it comes to on the fly assessment and creative integration of a variety of teaching methods as demanded by the circumstances and/or student preferred learning methods.

I have a variety of educational software in my home, some of which is considered the best on the market, and while I am frequently surprised by good and creative methods, the assessment abilities of the software are laughable, leave MUCH to be desired, and are, at times, dead wrong. And as any good teacher knows, correct assessment is absolutely critical to the education process.

From my perspective it is a no-brainer. Give me a good human teacher and good materials on traditional media over a software baby sitter any day! They are worth their weight in gold.

Having said all that, I need to make it clear that I will make sure that my children receive a superior computer education. This is non-negotiable in much the same way as learning to read is non-negotiable. But while I enjoyed Asimovs robot novels as much as the next person, I believe the correct view is that computers are TOOLS not TEACHERS.

I do a lot of volunteer work resurrecting old computers for use in small schools, especially in the elementary grades, but I don't see computers, by themselves, solving all the problems in our schools. You can't stuff a kid in a room full of books and think he will just start learning all by himself. You can't sit a kid down in front of a computer screen and think that she will somehow magically learn to communicate.

You have to be careful what grade levels you're talking about too. Putting computers in Kindergarten rooms is a whole different story from using them in High School.

-- Your Servant,
B. Baggins

I heard an interesting theory one time that too much computer usage for very young children could be damaging to their motor skills. His theory was that playing physical games and using real markers, etc helped develop 3D spacial skills. Since computers are really only 2D viewing, then coordination could suffer. Even books, while a 2 dimensional surface, requires reaching out and turning pages, moving the book around, allows reading in different body positions, etc.

As I thought about it, it seemed to make a lot of sense.

--
Cynicism is not sophistication. In fact, it is exactly the opposite.

Quake is not 3D. It is 3D surfaces projected onto a 2D surface, creating an optical illusion of 3D. That does absolutely nothing for your 3D spacial skills.

Not to mention that twitching a mouse and pressing some keys are not going to develop skills for reaching and handling 3D objects.

--
Cynicism is not sophistication. In fact, it is exactly the opposite.

Isn't it a little more challenging to type than to turn a page?

I don't think so. Think about what's involved in typing... you're just making small movements with your fingers and pressing.

To turn a page is an extremely complex motion. You have to:

1. find the edge of the page
2. reach out
3. make a fine motor movement to take a single page (your tactile feedback is critical to this)
4. move your entire hand/arm over while moving your other hand (that's holding the book) so the page can close

To put it another way, which would be more complicated... to build a robot that types, or a robot that turns a page?

--
Cynicism is not sophistication. In fact, it is exactly the opposite.

CNN had an article about how it was the schools and teachers who weren't able to incorporate the computers into their lessons. The article also mentions many instances where the teachers were able to use the computers with their lessons, often giving their students invaluable tech skills they otherwise would never have gained.

And what's with this encouraging children to be forbidden to use computers at home?? Why??

This article doesn't say we shouldn't teach kids to use a computer. Fourth through Twelfth grades seems plenty of time to me. I do quite well with computers and I didn't even use one until my dad brought home an Apple IIGS when I was in sixth grade. The point the article makes is that kids should be given a few years to develop their real world communication and thinking skills before we enable them to rely on the computer. Considering the number of "pleas email mee info on painters lik michael angeloe" I get from my two cousins, I don't think this is a bad idea at all.

The computer is a wonderful tool, but it is not a substitute for critical thinking, english skills, or the ability to so actual research (in a *gasp* library). Computer skills are based on real world skills, not the other way around...

carlos

--

Coining new terms: SlashDDOS to replace 'Slashdot effect'. Used as a verb - "That site's been SlashDDOS'd"

anuther thing is spel chek. how r al theese stewdents gunnah lern how to spel?
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.

Informative

So, if I understand this correctly, she is upset because computers are supposedly edging their way into the monopoly on stifling creativity and damaging posture (remember those crappy chairs and desks when you were a kid?) that schools currently hold?
---
seumas.com
gothicauctions.com

I saw my first computer back in 1983 in my first grade classroom, an Apple II. The school had two or three of them, and each class got to see it for a day or so on a rotational basis. Consequently, they were not used very often except for the teachers to play Lemonade while students were taking tests. The Apple II we got at home a year later was much more beneficial in my personal computer education, but it didn't impact other fields of study very much.

I think that well-run computer labs would be much preferable to computers in every classroom or computers at every desk. And use the time for teaching computer skills, not other subjects. In a high school environment, I'd love to see a training lab set up with boxed computers and piles of equipment, and the students have to set up the computers, plug everything into the network and get the things started before they begin using them. And after they've succeeded, take it all apart and teach another group the next week.

My main concern with the hype surrounding computers in public education is the cost involved. Teachers aren't paid especially well, existing supplies (books, math and science equipment, etc.) are outdated or in poor shape, and here in Memphis, there are schools that aren't air conditioned and end up closing early during hot summer days. With those problems as well as the fact that students seem tobe having a hard time just getting basic subjects right, I think it's a bit premature to begin pushing for completely wired classrooms.

That being said, if private institutions or donors wish to provide schools with said equipment as well as the training and manpower to keep it running, then go for it. But please use the time and tools for computer-directed learning, not traditional subjects placed in a shiny wrapper.

Mar chir mheala tha briathra taitneach milis do n'anum, agus n'an slaointe do na cnamhan.

Joseph Kain

...and you KNOW that reading the debates here on Slashdot will keep them from truly thinking. :-)
-- No noose is good noose

It shouldn't matter HOW a child learns, as long as they learn. Discussions twenty years ago focussed on how TV was a developemental destructive force. Yet somehow we and our parent grew up and went to have normal lives.

As a 41-year old fart, I can relate a parallel. In the late 60s early 70s, educational TV was a big thing. Schools were "wired" with coax and educational TV programs were shown in the classrooms. We the students generally loved this time because the room was darkened, we got to kick back, and sleep or doodle. The only memorable thing I can remember from those programs was watching the movie "Flowers for Algernon." I don't know what it taught me, but it stuck in my mind.

As for us "leading normal lives," perhaps young people don't see it, but the baby boomers are a bunch of really fucked-up emotional cripples who are seeking happiness through how much they can aquire, yet are too wrapped up in themselves to spend time with their kids or spouses. Compared to people I know in their 60s and 70s, yeah, I think a lifetime of TV *has* had a negative effect on my generation. It's taught us to be greedy little selfish assholes.

(As you can see, I'm disturbed in slightly different ways! :)

Some people take their .sig way too seriously

Some people take their .sig way too seriously

I do tech support for their educational/instructional software. I think it's an excellent option in classrooms where teacher-led instruction is not the most practical. When you have a classroom of students with widely varying skills, or just a few students that would benefit from remedial/advanced instruction, it's great for the school and for the kids.

The people responsible for computers in the classroom need to know what the hell they're doing, just like any other tool. Unfortunately, most schools can't afford quality IT, and have "lab managers" that are simply glorified hall monitors/lunch aides. This opens a Pandora's box to trouble when they go up against a 13 year old with the skill and/or motivation to raise hell, or to simply steal the balls from a few mice. In a school with a skilled IS person/staff and the proper equipment, computers and education work quite well together.

--
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it -- Andrew Young

In most countries of Europe (and I am afraid of the rest of the world too) all classroom computers are *standardised* on MS Windows and dito Office. I do not want to spit on MS once again, but knowledge taught at school whether it is on primary or academic level should be universal. Therefore it would be better if a more theoretical system would be used which would illustrate the fundamentals on which *all* systems are based (=/ click "Start" in order to "Shut Down").

The same is true for apps: there should be an educational office suite which would show the *universal* logic behind every brand of office. I know this is very very wishfull thinking, but the situation now, every year a new Office requiring new, more powerful PCs is unsustainable for the tight education budgets in most of the countries. And students acquire knowledge which is already outdated at the moment of the lecture.

This was another right opinion of John C. Drashcan

"The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will u

Yeah, like standardized testing hasn't caused a heap of problems in and of itself??! You look at the atrocities being committed with standardized tests in public schools and you see quickly that computers ain't nothing.

Honestly, all this crap...computers in the classroom, standardized testing, 'discipline' and such is all just PR hype for administrators and politicians to use as a means to leverage more money out of the taxpayers.

You start with education choice and let the big money interests in schools find themselves losing revenue...then someone realizes that money isn't everything and the kids -are-.

In space, no one can hear you moo.

Where public education is concerned, there is no such thing as a 'low stakes' test. Tests represent a measurement and one that is of interest to parents. The NAEP battery is apparently used as a means to determine funding in my state and parents are having fits because it is a test which their children are given, but have no access to the results.

So, is a 'low stakes' test that doesn't tell you how you did really 'better'? Should children be used as PR tools?

I think, where these things are concerned, that it is all a very dangerous game and probably one we shouldn't be playing.
In space, no one can hear you moo.

"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman

IMO using a computer as an electronic set of flash cards isn't bad, so long as that is not all that is done to teach the subject. Differing people learn in differing ways, sometimes the rote drillwork helps, sometimes it turns students off.

The problem is devising and allowing teaching schemes that encourge thinking - using the `Net and/or books as a reference, knowing how to find useful information and sort it from the chaff, and how to assemble it. That makes computers as useful in philosophy or history as in math and CS.

Make all the tools and concepts available, train the teachers and provide enough of them with enough time to help students determine which tools are the most useful for that student.

Using computers to replace teachers or teacher aides, is a bad idea driven more by accounting than the desire to educate.

I think the biggest fallacy behind the "lets put a computer in every single classroom" is people believing that by the computer just *being there* kids will get smarter. No. Computers are tools,and if used properly, they will facilitate various learning tasks, but they will not raise the intelligence average in the classroom as soon as they're brought in.

I went to a high school that is in a relatively well funded School District and we had computers not in every single classroom, but in many. So they ended up just sitting there collecting dust. In fact, the only class that I know of that used computers actively was the physics class. People dont need computers in the Spanish, English or history classrooms. And if a need does arise to look up some informaion on the net for those classes, that need would most likely be a homework assignment or something, and there are libraries and home computers for that.

There :)

----------------------- Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

People would have to treat kids with respect instead of bulls****ing them
We couldn't dominate them by keeping them locked up, lying to them, etc.
We would have to come up with a system of education based on the fundamentals of human communication
We would have to educate them based on the realities of the world instead of our agenda
We would have to brainwash them hard and fast, instead of having the luxury of taking our time.
We would have to teach them how to evaluate data (on the basis of the old Garbage In, Garbage Out theory)
It is too much effort to make the effort for individual education
We would rather spoon feed them our junque in large rooms with small windows.
We don't want to take the blame for getting caught with our pants down.
we do not want to be the outsiders in their world

I think this article is based on schools that use computers for several hours during an average school day. I'll be the first to say that most classrooms aren't like that at the elementary level. Even in elementary classrooms with 5-8 computers (or even 20 computers), for each student to spend 30 minutes on a computer (average) per day is very unusual. There are just too many other things to do. And yes, I realize there are some schools that have students on computers for the majority of the day. After visiting dozens of schools in the US I think I'm qualified to say that those schools are the exception and not the rule. Most schools certainly don't strive for such an arrangement, either. Obsticles aside (financial, spacial, etc), there's much more to teaching and learning than just sticking a kid in front of a computer all day.

The fact that most teachers aren't comfortable with the technology is an entirely different subject. Even when well-integrated into curriculum (which I have witnessed in several classrooms), computers just can't realistically make up that much of the day in an elementary school setting.

As an aside, I have to point out that students who are more easily distracted and have problems learning typically perform their best (by a wide margin) on computers. I'm not talking about playing games, I'm talking about actual learning. I have conducted some informal little experiments with this and they have consistantly yeilded the same results. Just had to throw that in. :)

Promotional Statement: Check out some of the mini-web pages 9-11 year old students created using HTML! Student-created Web Pages

Waiver: Nothing I say reflects the values of my employer.

--SONET "Open bombay doors!" Peterson Elementary School

In each one of those classroom environments there was a time and a lesson that was better delivered using computers and technology than with any traditional methods. Of course the technology oriented classes are taught in labs and the need for computers in that environment should be obvious, but there are times that I don't even allow the kids to use them. I have found that, at times, it helps the design and reasoning out process if they don't just sit down and begin trying to work. It’s all about how you use them.

Now for the bad news. A computer in every classroom is one of my school's main ideologies, but few teachers know how to correctly utilize them in an educational environment. They are wonderful for interactive science demonstrations that couldn't be done in a lab due to safety or cost issues. They are good for illustrating some difficult concepts in math. They are good for interactive geography lessons. They are a good tool for almost any subject you can think of.

The problem is many educators and administrators want to use them as a replacement for tried and true educational practices. They should be a supplement, not a replacement. I've seen too many otherwise fine educators turn into incompetent ones by placing kids in front of a computer and using it to baby-sit and placate.

Hopefully this will get better in the future as more and more technologically savvy teachers enter the profession. The answer is not to get rid of the computers, but to better train teachers in how to use them as effective tools.

yes.

Computers are useless without computer teachers.

Give a child any of the myriad of pieces of babysittingware out there (read: most "educational" software), add a teacher to maintain decorum, and you will have achieved the functional equivalent of dropping a kid in front of Barney for an hour with a parent in the other room.

Give a child a calculator to do his math and a word processor to typeset his documents without a teacher who understands how to program the calculator or how to use a word processor as more than a typewriter and you have achieved nothing more than can be done with paper and pencil. In some cases, you have achieved less, as your student now knows a little less about how math really works than he would know otherwise.

Give a child a programming language (even a simple one), let them use the computer as a tool to achieve their means -- and have a teacher who understands this tool completely -- and you have achieved education.

1. Last time I checked some of the schools in our public school system needed better roofs and asbestos removal, and, whatever-deity-makes-you-happy help us, up to date text books. Spending money on computers isn't, or at least shouldn't be, a priority for some school districts.

2. What are schools going to do when the computers break? Hire a bunch of network admins and techs? Maybe in wealthy districts, but those kids probably already have computers at home, so the "digital divide" will morph into "rich kids have working computers and poor kids have broken computers" Great. That's a real improvement.

3. How many teachers will realistically use the machines for more than busy work? It will take a person with the energy to learn a new skill while working a full time job that often includes running the drama club, the chess team, or the yearbook on top of classroom work.

Our public education system is in many ways a nightmare. Teachers are underpaid, as a profession it doesn't rank up there even with VB Developer in the eyes of many people and thus doesn't always draw the cream of the crop, classrooms are overcrowded, in outdated buildings. Success is increasingly measured in test scores...

Wait -- I've got it -- schools can use the computers to more efficiently drill students for standardized exams! Because it's much more important for a person to do well on achievement tests than anything else...right...

The internet seems to be lessening the expected knowledge base that members of the population should posess... Rather than learning and actively KNOWING something, we're becoming a nation of "I'll look it up"

This trend may not have been so bad, back in the days of Encarta and Compton's digital encyclopedia were the norm for digital information, but now that everyone is using internet technology and resources, we must teach the valuable skills of verifying data. Imagine how many misinformed people are that way due to outdated or incorrect or biased information on web sites.

I guess I am going to sum things up: if this medium is to be used, we must teach the ways to use it, too.

This is just another example of the Luddite drivel we've all seen from so many people who fear the internets encroachment on their happy little lives. Anyone in a position to be affected by the internet(journalists, managers, teachers, etc.) while at the same time not being able to understand it is likely to be opposed to it.

I think the last sentence of his article says it all: "It's about acquiring knowledge and learning to think, in which case libraries, pens, and paper are the clear winner, hands down."

Exactly how are libraries, pens, and paper the clear winner in teaching someone how to think? They are not. They are merely tools, and as far as tools go, the internet and computing are far better ones.

Is your computer randomly playing music?

God, I am so sick of the label "Luddite".

Does someone dare to criticize the Holy Grail of silicon? He's a Luddite. Does he intelligently assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet? He's a Luddite. Does he write an article about how not everyone is one of the converted? He's a Luddite.

Science has dismissed its critics as Luddites with a lazy wave of the hand for years, completely ignoring the fact that new technologies have always brought negatives with their positives. Antibiotics bred superbugs. Radio enabled facism. TV enabled consumerism. The Internet is firmly dividing the world along a technological fault line - technologically savvy and comfortable West on one hand and utterly impoverished and technologically inept Third World on the other.

Holy cow, so computers and the Internet aren't the be all and end all for education. They can do almost everything better than traditional media, but some researchers dared to point out where there is still room for improvement in the media, or where computers will never be able to help. So what? No media is perfect. To the knee-jerk reactionaries, though, detractors are not concerned parents and impartial researchers out for the best bang for their educational dollar, they are damned Luddites out to tear the whole thing down. How dare they point out weakness. We only accept blind faith in this technocracy.

Down with healthy skepticism! Down with pragmatism! Out with logic and rationality! Newer is better. Faster is better. More is better.

Don't ever doubt it, sonny. You might see the Emperor has no clothes.



© Copyright 2000 Matthew Yeo

However, re-read the last sentence of the article and tell me that its not crap. What gives him the right to claim that pen and paper are superior to computing in a learning environment? And even further, why should I allow that type of opinion to prevail when the educators are setting policies for public schools?

Is your computer randomly playing music?

Yep, I noticed that too. All media have strengths and weaknesses, paper and pen or computers. He makes the logical flaw in his last sentence that you do in your post - that any one media is "better" than another fundamentally for learning.

Still, he didn't call you a Luddite or mock your tiny little life surrounded by your technology drug...;-)


© Copyright 2000 Matthew Yeo

I think the /. topic here is a bit mis-leading. Not only are they recommending that kids not have computers in all the classrooms, but that kids under grade 4 should have them in their classrooms, and that young kids shouldn't have access to them at all.

Okay, to address the first bit... no computers in classrooms until grade 5. Yes, that's fine, I agree with that completely. Until grade 5, possibly later, I can see no reason what-so-ever to have computers in the classroom. With computers in the classroom, the kids will be hindered in developing some rather basic skills. Such skills are:

• social interaction
• printing/writing

However, once they get to a certain level, I think that computer access is neccessary. Teaching kids how easy it is to type up their book report, or essay is good, as it also instills in them a sence of what looks good/professional.

Also remember, that even today, not everyone has a computer at home. So denying a kid access to one all throughout school is bad. Not only will they not learn some neccessary skills (typing, how to get around in windows), but they also have a greater likelyhood of being ostrasiced.

However, how many of us remember a teacher that taught us to think about things? Maybe things outside of his/her domain? The one that made us question things & want to learn more. I'll bet all of us remember those special teachers.

The point is that computers aren't really the problem, the problem is that some teachers use them as a crutch in a way that textbooks are often used.

I read through this article, and I have to agree with these educators: Bringing the cutesy video-game world of Windows and the MTV-esqe Internet (not the meaty content that experienced surfers go for, but the eye candy kids will gravitate to naturally) would be little better than having kids watch cartoons all day in class.

I got a computer of my own for my eighth birthday. Prior to that, I had used other people's computers to program, both at school and at friends' houses. I learned quite a lot on that machine, because it was a machine that did little on its own. It was raw clay, and I got to learn how to sculpt. How could you deny that that's valuable to a child?

Sure, there were game cartridges, and yes, I played them. (Moon Patrol anyone?) But kids have N64 or Dreamcast or PS2 or whatever nowadays, and so don't need the computer for that. Most of the value I derived from my computer was learning how to make it do things. It was like a box of Legos, only the building blocks were program statements and the structures I built were on a TV screen.

Today's computers aren't like that. Rather, they're like TV. Force feed eye candy. They exist for "wow" and "fluff." I personally had started falling into that trap in the PC world. I got pulled out of that trap when I went to college and learned Unix. Now, whenever I go to use a PC running Windows, I feel like I'm watching MTV or something. It's all so uselessly flashy and relatively devoid of content compared to its volume.

It's really sad.

I intend to keep my Apple ][e's, Commodore 64's, TI-99/4A's, and so on, to give my kids machines to learn on. When they're old enough, I'll give them logins on my Linux network and start teaching them C or some other structured language, before BASIC's brain-rot sets in too heavily -- you're ok if you catch them by puberty.

Sitting a kid in front of a web browser does not teach computing. Showing a kid how to make the computer do things it's not already trained to do (ie. program) opens the door for true creative exploration.

No comments about posture though... (as I slouch heavily into my chair).

"Both Oppenheimer and Roszak feel much of the problem rests with computer companies, who have tried to persuade schools to buy computers by citing flawed studies showing improved academic performance among students versed in computer technology."

"With this in mind, Roszak’s advice to educators is straightforward: “Find out what Bill Gates wants schools to do and don’t do it."

Let's re-write that to:

"Let's find out what Bill Gates wants to do, and don't do it!"

Sorry. Couldn't resist...

t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't
/.'ing at Light and Threshold: 2 and lovin' it!

This article seemed a little off to me... comments like 'Computers download information, he says. They do not teach children to think' seem especially ignorant to me considering you could say something very similar about books ('Books contain information. They do not teach children to think').

In grade 2, my class got our own little Apple. It was a good machine for the time, and it was something neat for us to see, but it wasn't really used a great deal outside of playing hangman and thus practicing our spelling and reading. The teachers certainly didn't use it as a primary teaching tool. Later, in grade 4, our school set up a dedicated computer room where my class would go for an afternoon once a week and use LOGO and play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

All in all, I think that I'm quite glad that I had the opportunity to experience computers at a young age... my reading, spelling, geometry and geography were all helped out a little bit, but I also got a chance to get used to keyboards, monitors, and printers (no mice until later), items which, now as an adult, I find that I seldom go a day without using.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think that computers for young children are as good or evil as some people say they are... I think that PCs on every desk is probably a bad idea, but no computers at all is just as bad.

moo

Healy would not introduce computers until the seventh grade. Theodore Roszak, a history professor and author of The Cult of Information, would wait until high school. Computers download information, he says. They do not teach children to think.

"The Internet," Roszak recently told The Dallas Morning News, "offers electronic graffiti. The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic. The essence of thinking is mastering ideas."

Books offer information. Encyclopedias offer "seas" of information. Are these things bad? No. Absolutely not. Computers can display information in a format almost comparable to the manner in which books are used. As technology increases, text books will be replaced by webpads and similar devices. To say that computers are bad simply because they offer a link to immense amounts of data is absurd. Computers go BEYOND books however, because they can offer interaction. The format in which information can be displayed, manipulated, and updated is far beyond that of paper books.

If computers are to be properly utilized in classroom settings at a young age, the software must change. The hardware will probably need to change as well - something more akin in concept to the PalmPilot than to a standard desktop. Proper applications would combine textbooks with homework so that while a student was reading a section, they could also answer questions and perhaps that software would offer feedback. (Computers in classrooms could become something like an interactive workbook.) Computers, however, cannot replace the interactive, highly flexible feedback of a teacher for a young student. The encouragement and support of a good teacher is immeasurable in the good it does a pupil.

So, let us suppose that applications are not where they ought to be in the classroom at this time, and we nix them for now. What about computers at home?

Headmaster Merrill Hall said computers are not introduced until the fifth grade, and parents of children in grades K-4 are even encouraged not to let their children use computers at home.

I whole heartedly disagree. I'm 22 and just finishing up in college (CIS). I remember when the Mac first came out and my father brought it home. All I played with was MacPaint (mmmm.... B&W monitors...) - and I had a blast. The amount of fun I had was entirely up to me - just like playing with GI Joe, or any playing with crayons. To say that computers shatter a child's creativity is silly. And in those first few naive moments with MacPaint, I lost any fear or apprehension I might have had about working with computers for my entire life.

How a computer affects children is related to how that computer is utilized. If you buy a program for your young child, check it out and make sure it is worthy of their time - that it IS something which will foster their creativity and their reasoning. If its mindless, ax it. Don't let them sit at the computer all day - make sure you introduce them to social situations to - either by playing with the neighbor's kids, your other children, group sports (little league, soccer, etc.), or maybe music lessons. Something. If we want well-rounded, educated children, we must expose them to a variety of learning experiences and environments. The computer is not the answer, but it can be a PART of the solution.

Even the continents drift. - George. F. Will

I don't know when I would have found the time to write Slashdot during college if we didn't have computers in the classroom ;)

Come on, college is a completely different thing. If you haven't learned to think by then, you never will. Ooops, sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone. ;-P


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
(hyperlink by me)

I see all the posts about how teachers are clueless, how computers are just teaching the kids to push buttons and not think, or how sticking kids infront of a computer is like putting them infront of a TV. But is having computers in the classroom really the bad thing here, or is it really a matter of the piss-poor implementation of computers as a learning tool.

To my mind, the real issue here is the phenomenal lack of support for computers within today's educational system. The School Board Admins down to the teachers in the classroom (on average) have a mastery of computers that lets them accomplish such demanding tasks as turning on the power and starting Microsoft Works. IMHO this is what leads to the problems that most other comments seem to be addressing.

Computers are just another tool, and if used properly, have the potential to be a great asset in a child's educational experience. The real problem here is that they are NOT being used properly (or even competently) in most schools that I have seen. Teachers are not CompSci majors nor are they network engineers (nor should they be expected to be). Sadly, the public school system lacks funding to pay the current staff what they deserve, not to mention hire personel that could do justice to the computer's potential as a tool for learning.

When I was working as a high school computer teacher, I wanted to impart my students with the same, deeper, understanding of computers and how they work as I had. I thought a computer lab environment was the ideal environment in which to do this. I could instruct the students from the board and they could follow along on screen. In a college or tech school environment, where the students are there because they actually want to learn, this kind of setup might work. But in a younger group, which is more interested in goofing off, it was a disaster. For one thing, most of the students there had been exposed to computers all their lives. Most already had several web-based email accounts and were active on web-based bulletin boards and chat areas. They weren't about to sit and listen as I tried to explain such things as how operating systems and the Internet actually work. They already knew everything they thought they needed to know about computers, and they weren't about to let an older, uncool, person tell them any different.

Most geeks in my age group are probably a lot like me. We discovered computers at an early age and immediately started programming. I know when I was first learning on an Apple IIc my first lesson was how to write programs in BASIC. These days, programming skills are more important than ever, yet they seem to have been deemphasized in favor of general computer savvy-ness. Computers and the Internet have become basically just another version of television. Sure, there's lots of educational stuff out there, but who wants to pay attention to that when you can download N'Sync's latest hit or find out about Britney Spears new hairdo. Of course there were a few students who actually interested in learning, potential future geeks, but these were the exception.

My solution was to separate the students from the computers. Just like in driver's ed, no teacher is going to be stupid enough to place a student behind the wheel of a car on the first day. They spend at least a month just going over the rules of the road. I wanted a separate computer classroom, away from the lab area, where we could go over computer concepts and then go to the actual computer area to reinforce them. The same, I think, should be done for every subject. Computers are great educational tools, but only when they're used correctly and not relied upon too much.

Unfortunately, the board of the school where I was working didn't share my vision (this was a private school, and they were more interested in attracting potential students than giving a good education to the ones they already had). Their concept of computer education was to have a group of students sitting around working diligently on whatever so they could bring prospective parents in and say "and this is the computer room". It was the look of the thing they were most interested in, and I think that's where the interest lies.

They also wanted me to start teaching computers to a younger age group, junior high age. I told them if I was going to teach foundations of computer science to 7th graders it would look a lot like math. They weren't too keen on the idea, or my idea for a Computer Fair where students would be able to show off their creations for a chance at winning a medal. For those reasons and the general disagreement I was causing, I was dismissed before I could implement any of my changes.

So there you have it, the true motivation behind the drive to put computers into schools, not as an aid to education, but to gain popularity for the school. In dealing with parents and board members, most are concerned that children who aren't exposed to computers at the earliest age possible won't be able to get a job in the future. But mere exposure to computers isn't enough to impart the kind of understanding that true programmers have, and it's programmers which are becoming more and more important as computers become more prevalent.

I had the benifit of computers in the classroom from elementary through high-school. In the early days we had IBM PC Jr's, in high-school we had i386's. As an elective in my high-school we had a course titled Computer Math (I-IV), in which I took an hour of Pascal every day for four years. During this time I always had a knowledgable computer teacher, including one very well versed in programming during my high-school years. The computers were never used as a crutch, but they were used as a tool.

It is my personal belief that a computer in the classroom can be very benificial if it is used as a tool for interactive learning. Teachers should not ever view PC's as the sole means to teach a classroom, or feel that the introduction of PC's will require less interaction on the part of the teacher. Just as in an elementary school, one would not rely soley on the teachings of a text book, one cannot rely on the teachings of a piece of software.

I do believe that software makes a good replacement for a textbook, as long as the software is viewed in the same light. It is nothing more than an interactive textbook. This does not mean that labs can be forgone, or that students can learn better with a PC than a text book. It is a 1:1 ratio, PC's are nothing more than a textbook (just a gathering of information).

Students using a pc should be supervised, and allowed only to use it as a tool to aid the in completion of assignments, i.e. no games, no internet. I don't think that students should be introduced to the internet in a learning environment until university (learn to learn, before being given an easy way to find any information).

This is not the same as saying computers are bad for kids, as was implied in the /. summary. An no research was cited to show that computers were bad. In fact there is a large body of evidence that shows that exposure to sensory and mental experience is beneficial for childhood intelectural development. For example there is significant research showing early exposure to music can be beneficial. The same would probably hold for most other activities which involve complex cause/effect relationships...such as interacting with a computer.

Maybe there is a negative effect if a kid spends 8 hours a day playing the same video game; well rounded development requires a wide range of experiences (social, intelectual, recreational, physical, emotional). But implying that computers are bad for kids certainly appears to be an overinterpretation of the article, and an overinterpretation of the available information.

Someone comes up with a new idea or a new tool -- outcome-based education, computers, open schooling... It becomes very popular, and there is pressure for schools to do something with it. So schools implement this new idea without really caring, without having any skill in it, and with only a small amount of practical information on how to make it work.

Surprise, surprise... it doesn't work well. The kids aren't learning. Maybe it's even harmful to them. But usually it's a waste of time, and the idea is becomes a reflection of the true values of the school system.

We can find, looking at computer education, that the values of the school system are to keep kids busy and occupied, and to help them pass tests. But it's hard to blame the school too much -- even if they really did want to do the right thing, it would still be hard. They still wouldn't have the personel. There still wouldn't be enough material for teachers to work with.

Perhaps computers are being pushed into schools somewhat prematurely. Or, at least the expectations are too high. Computers can't teach children, and they won't be able to anytime soon. But paper can't teach children either, but we aren't condemning the use of paper in schools.

That said, I think the idea of keeping computers from children until the 7th grade is a bad, highly reactionary idea. I also think keeping kids from reading until they are in third grade is a bad idea. More ideas and more stimulation can't be a bad thing. If computers are keeping children from ideas and stimulation that they really need to have, then that's a problem. But it's not computers' fault, it's the people who are defining the priorities for the children.
--
Ralph Nader for President. www.votenader.org

Computers, used properly in the context of education, can enhance learning. There are many parameters to consider:

• Excellent teachers
• Good software
• Managed time on computer use

There are basic stuff that need to be taught without technologies first. That way, the kids get a 'feel' of the process of doing things, albeit slowly. For example, arithmetic and general mathematics should be taught in such a way as to allow the student to be able to solve a number of problems 'by hand'. Learning to do basic math mentally is an advantage. Once these skills are mastered, then the student should be introduced to calculators and computers, showing them that more complex problems can be solved using these devices. With the basics they learned, they will at least know how the devices come up with an answer. That way, they can also identify bugs in the devices if they feel the result of the computation does not fit what they expect.

Teachers need to emphasize that computers (and calculators) are tools that can help learning and solving complex problems, but are just as prone to 'mistakes' as humans. Moreover, they should manage the time spent by their students on computers. For example, Internet use should be supervised so that students get to use the appropriate sites for their homework if needed. The Internet is distracting -- teachers must assist students to focus on the right stuff on-line. Parents should also get involved with their children's use of computers.

Once in college, computers are used to aid students in solving complex problems and doing routine stuff (like making graphs). Engineering and the Sciences definitely need computers as tools nowadays when doing complex experiments and designs. However, those basic skills (analytic thinking, solving problems mentally, intuitive thinking) are best learned the hard way first -- computers are used to verify analysis or to expand and visualize the problem better.

Let's just take advantage of computers, without giving up the 'hard way' of learning things.

Jane Healy... began with a favourable attitude toward educational computing but came reluctantly to the conclusion that computers stifle learning and creativity and may cause damage to both vision and posture.

Duh, computers cause vision problems? Not if you're not using monitors... Cause posture problems? Not the way I use my laptop (lying down, since I have a bad back). Here's how I used a laptop (ancient Model 100) to help young, troubled students in a tutoring program, over a decade ago:

• I observed certain troubled students (especially boys) were very stressed by the mechanics of writing, when they were asked to write a story. One boy in particular often became very distraught over his inability to keep a decent straight margin, or to separate words with the correct spacing, etc.
• I invited the children (I was working with a small group, only 2-3) to tell me their story, and let me write it down for them.
• Each child in turn would tell me one sentence that belonged next in the story (fortunately I am a fast touch-typist). The children's grammar problems virtually disappeared when they told me the sentence, as opposed to writing it down.
• Their narrative skills developed at an amazing rate -- when a child failed to develop the story with his contribution, he immediately noticed this, and said, "No, wait!" and then gave me a better development.
• After the children agreed the story was finished (I "helped" in the process overall, by asking after each few sentences whether or not we were finished now), I printed the story, having introduced many page breaks.
• I gave printed copies of the complete story to each child so they could read their own work (which enormously helps children's reading skills, as many educators discovered long before me), and illustrate it.

Sitting a child in front of an oversized and badly placed monitor, and abandoning the child to a software product -- or even the Web -- is not "using computers in education." It is misusing computers instead of educating.

When I was a child, the dreaded phrase "look it up for yourself" in response to my queries for further information was a definite turnoff... very negative feedback which quickly taught most of us never to ask a teacher for advanced information. Now, I am sure, alert and computer-competent teachers help kids use computers to answer those questions, and easily explore as far as they want to in any given subject.

Don't worry -- the next generation of teachers will know very well how to incorporate computing and networking (and the network of knowledge and expertise now blessedly available!) in their lesson plans. As for the current crop of teachers, perhaps it is too late for many of them, but several kids are teaching one another -- sometimes online!

Books are very carefully selected to be given to our children. Now, reading a book will not increase ones ability to think anymore than looking at a bunch of websites or other forms of downloaded information. On the contrary, the opposite is true. A child may find it necessary to have to start critically thinking about conflicting bits of information and deciding what it valid and what is not valid. This is a very crucial skill that is not taught in school.

Children are forcefed knowledge in school from preselected sources and thus, are often given a lot of false data that they must accept in order to pass a test. It seems that the authorities are really frightened about loosing their informational monopoly on education and wind up with a populace that can look at bodies of data and objectively accept or reject such data, based on their own knowledge and observations. Of course, this may seem like a conspiracy-theorist viewpoint but take a look at your own education and ask if this may have been attempted on you?

There are many great ways that technology can supplement the K-12 curriculum.

Ever hear of a WebQuest? It's a good way for teachers to use the vast amount of information available on the Internet, while still keeping things structured and not wasting time on having the students find information themselves.

I remember my class producing some sort of newsletter when I was in 6th grade, using Quark on Apple IIe's. How is this bad? I enjoyed learning about desktop publishing. I'm sure some of my less technical classmates gained useful computer skills. Since the whole thing was connected to the subject we were studying at the time, it was relevant to the curriculum.

"Theodore Roszak, a history professor (where? Podunk Community College?) and author of The Cult of Information," says "The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic." what? huh? Let me get this straight. This guy teaches history (which is basically memorizing facts) but he doesn't want kids exposed to information?

There are plenty of good educational websites that aren't just a "sea of information." Many companies base their reputation on providing high quality educational content. Never mind that this was a pretty poor article. Was it news, or opinion? It's not labeled. Note to journalists: You can't start off by stating facts like "A growing number of experts are recommending that young children not be allowed on computers for any reason at all" and descend into diatribe such as:

But teachers and administrators, education's front-line, are seemingly smitten by the new technology. This is unfortunate, because as has been the case with every other fad embraced by public education over the last 40 years, research into computer education and its effect on child development or the learning process is, at best, lacking. Worse, much of the existing research raises lots of red flags.

What kind of systems should we set up in the various classes. How much is too much to spend on a particular room? What kind of OS's and other software should we put on them?

--
If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.

Dyolf Knip

People need to realize that we cannot take a horribly outdated education system and simply drop computers in front of every student. Our energies should be directed at modernizing education, with the computer in mind as the most power information tool at out disposal.

The most important reason that I can think of for this would be to help break the patterns that bind the majority of computer use. It should not be a surprise that kids consider the computer a liesure device if we don't teach them otherwise. Those of us who have already stepped beyond the "computers as entertainment" lines need to turn back and ensure that the next generation benefits from our knowledge. One of the most powerful ways of doing this would be to integrate the computer into the single most powerful influence on young people today: their school.
I wish I could trail little fish behind me

Which is understandable, and very common. As a geek, I (and likely most of you) run into this sort of thing all the time. Most people don't understand what the internet is; they understand what a web browser is. And it's darned hard to explain to somebody, "no, I can't show you Linux." I can show you Windowmaker, and I can show you a Bash prompt, but you have to understand what Linux itself is.

A computer is, in a sense, the universal machine. It can become a calculator, or a watch, or an artist's canvas... hypothetically even a brain. Now to say that a windows machine doesn't belong in the classroom, that's plausible. You can make a case, too, that kids don't need to be researching their Julius Caesar report on the web. But to say that computers stifle learning and creativity, and that young children should not be allowed on them for any reason at all? Oh, please! Even if you can't find any better use for them, you can't tell me filling a scan-tron sheet is more educational than clicking radio boxes.

Of course, then there's the other extreme: computers are the greatest educational tool since the guidance counselor (most of whom are real tools...). Any kid with the unhappy fate of going to school without one is doomed to misery, probably as a useless minor bureaucrat in a public school.

People were getting damned good educations before computers. Often better ones, in fact. Hell, in the late 19th century, 1 Englishman in 5 was a Dickens reader... enjoying grammar that would snap the poor minds of most folks today. And a kid with a good grounding in symbolic logic, even if he's never seen a computer, is going to be better suited for IT work than one who spent 13 years pointing and clicking his way though most schools' pseudo-educational crap.

Computers aren't necessary to a good education, but they're probably useful in providing one. How they may be useful doesn't seem to be well-understood by our teachers just yet, and they (the computers, not the teachers) doubless do much more harm than good when misused.

My somewhat off-topic opinion? In the US we've not even been able to settle on a curriculum that works, much less an approach to computers. A centrally orchestrated, one-size-fits-all approach develops as poor