Original thread from my old forum
First take the time to read this:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/11/30/ING8L39SIP1.DTL
Then understand that as far as I can tell everything this guy is saying is 100% correct.
Well I stepped away from this and didn’t ever post about it. Luckly P reminded me.
Do I think too much money is being dumped into schools for Computers?
Yes
Do I think too much money is being dumped into schools for Technology?
Probably not.
What is the difference?
Well it can be a subtle difference. I think we are spending too much money on Computers themselves. To much on MS licenses, too much on the software to run on it, too much on the administrative end as far as crazy programs designed to read data and aggregate it into meaningless numbers for administrators.
I don’t, on the other hand, think we spend enough money on things to help teachers teach the kids. I don’t mean software to let teachers sit kids in front of a monitor while they go off and talk. I mean things to help teachers make kids understand. We live in a new type of society as far as kids go. A large amount of the kids today don’t get the parenting that most of the adults now days did. See the rant’s here as an example and there are others on here. Instead they spend a lot more time with people they haven’t ever met, or in rapid fire conversations with lots of people. I think as a result they end up being less able to absorb information in a lecture style setting. Does that excuse them from having to learn like that? No, but we should be attempting to use new means to enhance teaching. There are lots of other methods than a teacher standing in front of a room with a blackboard and kids sitting out in the room. There are methods that involve the kids in the learning process. I am trying to use those more and more in the class that I teach and it seems to be going good.
Dumping more and more computers into schools doesn’t really help anything. There are teachers in the schools now that don’t know how to use the computers that they already have. There are systems in the schools that are supposed to be used for teaching and instead are co-opted for administrative uses. There are people that don’t meet the guidelines of being a teacher in this age and that aren’t planning on trying to get there. Schools are at a break point. They are led by people that didn’t have computers as children and who aren’t comfortable with them for more than email and word processing. These people are managing and teaching kids who use computers everyday for a million different tasks. This is a point that will slowly disappear as more and more teachers leave school knowing how to work computers and use them correctly, but I think any attempt that can be made to hasten this break points demise should be done.
More computers in schools is not the answer to that, more computer literate people in schools is. More technology to aid in the teaching process is. More reason to make teachers teach using technology as a tool and not a crutch is.