On Tuesday 19 January 2010, Sean Swehla wrote: > > What the hell do K-12 students need a laptop for? Sometimes there > > seems to be a frantic belief in throwing money at our schools' > > problems, and that computers will be a magic pill that will make > > everything all better. > > At this point I don't think it's about the purpose for which the > kids need the computer so much as about why the teachers need the > kids to have them. I grew up using computers. I got my first when > I was 6 yrs old and I haven't been far from one since. I know that > this isn't true for /most/ people my age, but it is more and more > the case. Kids these days really are 'digital natives' (with > apologies to whichever author I stole that from). > > They are using computers in all kinds of aspects of everyday life > starting at a very young age. Anything that brings school more in > line with their everyday lives will improve the impact of the > education.
Where these two meet is sometimes an interesting point of conflict. A spell checker is a nice tool for finding minor errors, but it wasn't really meant to be used to type up a list of a kid's spelling words. Likewise a spelling and grammer checker wasn't meant as a method of fixing sentences written by a lazy grammer student. At home kids typically spend a lot more time IMing than formal writing. [And who wants to write "instant messaging"? ;-)] This has some unexpected consequences, as first semester English students in college these days typically add l77t speak and LOL texting shorthands in formal papers. Oddly enough to some extent this is accepted, because these shorthands are so prolific that it's difficult to say that they're not part of the English language, which is something that has always been in flux, even though we don't often consider it to be. In William Shakespeare's day there were about 150,000 words in the English language, but today there are now over 1,000,000. http://sfopera.com/images/education/Shakespeare_Words.pdf http://www.languagemonitor.com/no-of-words So the computer /is/ changing how we work and how we learn, just not necessarly the way we expect it or want it to. And programming somehow isn't being introduced early-on the way it used to be when I was a kid. I think somehow there seems to be less focus on it today. Perhaps it's because it's distinctly it's "own thing" that doesn't help reinforce other learning? I don't know. > How many kids have you known that did poorly at math > because they just didn't care enough to learn? I've know quite a > few, and almost all at some point said "I'm not going to need this > in real life, so why bother?" I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but part of it is likely how the subject is introduced. "Learn this because you have to" makes it an advisarial subject, whereas learning applications along with the math gives reasons for the subject's importance. Memorizing the "times tables" was very difficult for me because it had been introduced to me by the former method, whereas trigonometry was far easier for me because it was introduced with the latter method. I'm far more motivated to learn when I have a motivated teacher. However we could probably easily turn this around and also play devil's advocate -- how many of us techies want to learn Shakespeare? (We typically don't -- and I don't.) But why do you think that is? It's not like his writings haven't had an influence on science fiction -- Star Trek from the start was heavily influenced by it. So it's not that the subject isn't interesting -- it's something else. [The English teacher I had that wanted me to read Shakespeare was of the "because you have to" ilk.] > So if kids are going to have access > to computers everywhere, what's going to make them believe in a > computerless educational system enough to put forth any effort? I guess it all depends on the application. > I don't disagree that teachers need to learn to use the computers > effectively in the classroom, but I definitely believe that as a > society we are well beyond the point where we should be > questioning whether or not computers should play a role in the > next generation's education. > > /thor They're definitely "here to stay", that's true. :-P -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Feb 3 - Arduino Mar 3 - Sahana and 7 Years of MHVLUG Celebration Apr 7 - Nagios
