Found an interesting article over at The Pulse today. The question they ask there points back to a paper published in 1971 with twenty suggestions for what can be done with computers in the classroom (you can download a PDF of the paper here). The paper is fairly long (41 pages), but it can be cut down to a fairly simple list of suggested activities (for the sake of clarity, I have added a few notes in parentheses):
1. Make a turtle (a turtle is a small computer controlled drawing machine)
2. Program the turtle to draw a man
3. Turtle biology (practice with basic programming)
4. Make a display turtle
5. Place Spacewar (a game where players fight as spaceships)
6. Differential geometry (drawings)
7. Draw Spirals
8. Have a heart - and learn to debug
9. Grow flowers (more drawing)
10. Make a movie (of flower drawings)
11. Make a music box and program a tune
12. Play with semi-random musical effects and then try serious composing
13. Computerize an erector set crane and build a tower of blocks
14. Make a super lights show (essentially programming lights like on a billboard)
15. Write concrete poetry (programming random word generator)
16. Try C.A.I. and psychology (programming simple A.I.)
17. Physics in the fingertips (programming a computer-controlled physics experiment)
18. Explain yourself (ask students to make #17 more realistic)
19. Puppets (program computers to control a puppet show)
20. Recursion line (come up with more uses for computer)
How is this list of suggestions similar to what we do with computers in the classroom today? As far as I can tell, they are hardly related at all. This list focuses almost entirely on computer programming. I did some computer programming myself back in elementary school (I do fondly remember making that computerized turtle draw pictures), but it has mostly been eliminated from primary school curriculum. Why? What has changed in the last 30 years regarding computers in the classroom? The internet joined the classroom.
In my school, most every time a teacher gets out the computers for student use, it is to access the internet. Personally, I use the internet both for student research (my students have to write a few research papers during the year, and I give them some prep time in class) and to run some internet-based simulations (we recently ran a pollution simulation from SAS inSchool). Although computer programming is a huge industry these days, most students don't really get introduced to the idea until much later in their educational life. Today, computers are considered to be more a tool for learning (a source of information) and less of something as a subject to be learned about. The authors of the 1971 paper were concerned with teaching their students about computers, not about using computers to teach other subjects.
So, do we use computers to their full potential? The authors of the 1971 paper certainly thought that they were. Many of the administrators and teachers I work with today think that we are. I am not so sure. I think there is a lot of potential there left to reach. I am often frustrated with the idea that doing what teachers have always done using technology is automatically an improvement. When I have students use computers to research an ocean animal for a report they are going to write, it is convenient, but not really any different than walking them to the library and having them look up the information in books. Even worse, in my opinion, is when we "update" poor teaching techniques by throwing in some technology. For example, my district pays a site license for United Streaming, a site of streaming educational videos. Many of these videos are well done and worthwhile, and many are old and outdated. My administration tells us that putting in a videocassette in a VCR is not active and engaging teaching. Yet, they tell us over and over to use Untied Streaming. How is it more engaging teaching to use a laptop and LCD projector to show the exact same video I could show with a VCR and television?
There are a lot of teachers and administrators out there that need to understand that, from an educational point of view, not all technology is equal. Just because we use computers in our classes on a regular basis does not mean we are using it to our fullest potential.
Tomorrow I will continue with my toughts on the untapped uses for computers in the classroom.
3 other thoughts:
Wow! Those computer usages seem completely foreign to me! Technology is a HUGE thing at my school, but sometimes I think that pencil and paper are more effective tools for some tasks. Try defending that, though. You want to use your laptops to type 5 sentences for the warm-up? I don't think so. It will take 10x as long to get that tiny little assignment from you (print, e-mail, or whatever); whereas, if you write it and pass it to the front, we can be finished with this in 10 minutes, and then we can move on with life.
And now we use this magical program that tells my students what is wrong with their writing. They don't even need me. And to think I've spent years perfecting my teaching writing skills.
I'd say that my students use the Internet for most of their research, as do I, but I do miss the days when I could just go to a book and find all the information I could possibly want. Or, I'd think it was all I could want. With the Internet, I always think that there might be even better information, so I keep searching, but usually it's just a waste of my time. (I know my students aren't like this though, they stop looking after the first two websites.) It depends on the topic, though. The nice thing about Internet is that many people can use the same resources; when we use the library, we all have to share one or two resources.
But then don't even get me going on the troubling validity of information found on the Internet...
I, too, fondly remember the turtle - and yet when I mention it to most of my peers, they have no idea what I'm talking about. (I'm 29, if that gives you an idea of the time frame here!) I think it helped me get interested in technology, although my favorite thing to do was draw pictures with the different colors of "ink".
My other fond memory is of playing Oregon Trail on the library computers. Now THAT was a fun time!
As for validity of information, start off with the website about dihydrogen monoxide, at dhmo.org ... it gets the kids all hyped about the "threat" before they realize they've been had. I use it as a nice jumping-off point for discussion about reliability of websites.
I forgot about Oregon Trail. That was always a favorite. I feel old (and I am only 27) when I say that the video games that kids play these days confuse me!
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