Computers are not the answer

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Just as I suspected. The computer is not the tool to create a generation of well-rounded youngsters. It takes real life and hands-on experiences to make a real person.
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Not OK computer.
Feb. 5, 2006.

Thomas Edison was a great inventor but a lousy prognosticator. When he proclaimed in 1922 that the motion picture would replace textbooks in schools, he began a long string of spectacularly wrong predictions regarding the capacity of various technologies to revolutionize teaching. To date, none of them ?- from film to television ?- has lived up to the hype. Even the computer has not been able to show a consistent record of improving education.

"There have been no advances over the past decade that can be confidently attributed to broader access to computers," said Stanford University professor of education Larry Cuban in 2001, summarizing the existing research on educational computing. "The link between test-score improvements and computer availability and use is even more contested."

Recent research, including a University of Munich study of 174,000 students in 31 countries, indicates that students who frequently use computers perform worse academically than those who use them rarely or not at all.

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detano, I totally agree. Media are just tools and nothing more. Good teachers need to inspire students to learn.

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What a child needs most are real life experiences. Sitting in front of a computer does no teach you to canoe or swim or fly a kite.
A computer is like a wonderful world-wide library full of information.
Using it to excess makes a child anti-social. You cannot play with other kids if you are alone staring at a screen.

My grandson (8 1/2) will not own a computer for a while.
He is busy reading or building things or swimming or playing the piano. Needless to say, he is best in class and in sports as well.

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Personal computers actually aided my son through school. He began to be treated for attention deficit disorder at age 7. Like many children with ADD, his handwriting was unreadable. Wordprocessing software was a great aid in getting schoolwork done.

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it's a tool (a card in a the deck)
it depends on when and how it's played
played right it can be a trump
played wrong and you know the results

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The point that I am trying to make is that things are simply tools, and inspiration is the only key to real learning, whether it be by parents or by teachers.

Of course there are exceptions. What school is going to teach a kid to ride a bike?

I don't believe in standardized tests, frankly.

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Letty wrote:

I don't believe in standardized tests, frankly.

I knew there was more than one reason I like you so much! Embarrassed

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ah, husker, how sweet. Thank you. The PSAT and the SAT are supposed to be good predictors of how well a student will do in college. What a crock. Of course a high score on those tests will presage the success in college. Those students learned to conform to being standard.

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My 10 year old daughter has been given computer classes
in School since Kindergarten. She has one at home too,
but it is used as a tool (great for misspelled words) and
nothing else.

She's too energetic to sit long behind a computer, but regardless, I think it is the parents who need to controll the
daily internet/computer usage. How am I going to teach
my child a healthy balance, if I don't give her the option?

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I hear computers are the wave of the future....

But you're so right, nothing bets hands on for learning some skills.

Plus, I can imagine not being able to sit and feel the pages of a book in my hand. They're so portable too. It just wouldn't be the same sitting under a tree on a beautiful day, with maybe an apple and ice tea, and lean back and relax with your laptop.

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Oooooooooooooowwwweeeeeooooowhaaaaaa!!!!!

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Re: Computers are not the answer

detano inipo wrote:

Thomas Edison was a great inventor but a lousy prognosticator. When he proclaimed in 1922 that the motion picture would replace textbooks in schools, he began a long string of spectacularly wrong predictions regarding the capacity of various technologies to revolutionize teaching. To date, none of them ?- from film to television ?- has lived up to the hype. Even the computer has not been able to show a consistent record of improving education.

Using Edison as a predictive barometer of how technology has or has not affected education is specious reasoning at best and clearly irrelevant. To say the misuse of TV and film and computers as a medium for education must mean it's efficacy as an educational tool is marginal is dubious logic at best.

detano inipo wrote:

"There have been no advances over the past decade that can be confidently attributed to broader access to computers," said Stanford University professor of education Larry Cuban in 2001, summarizing the existing research on educational computing. "The link between test-score improvements and computer availability and use is even more contested."

Having a professor of education with an obvious interest in maintaining the satus quo come out against technology vis-a-vis education smells self-serving and biased.

detano inipo wrote:

Recent research, including a University of Munich study of 174,000 students in 31 countries, indicates that students who frequently use computers perform worse academically than those who use them rarely or not at all.

To impute such a cause and effect is clearly rife with logical fallacies. You could well find all sorts of superficially apparent cause and effects with things like skin color, language choice, ethnic background, body height, sexual preference, sexual experience, etc.

If this is the state of the art for the rationales against newer technologies aiding education, it is embarrassingly weak.

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Computers are not the answer

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