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Re: computers do more harm than good



Larry Smith wrote:

Does this have bearing on our recent discussion about the value of
computers in physics labs?

Larry

At 4:43 PM -0600 9/13/00, EDUCAUSE wrote:

REPORT: COMPUTERS IN SCHOOLS DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD

This summary deals with "children". I'm not sure we're talking about
the same age-group. I think one common bond though is that when
computers are used they should be used for something real. A computer
as a lab accessory is no different to me than an oscilloscope - however,
my experience from tutoring high school students who have done "computer
labs" which perform tasks such as simulating Millikan's oil drop
experiment is that such "labs" are the least educational thing they did
in class.

As for the strong thrust in our elementary schools, I agree that not
enough data backs it up yet. We had our school open house yesterday
with the teachers proudly showing off all the computers in the
classrooms. While most parents are impressed to see that their
kindergarden child can now do more with the computer than they can - I
am among those wo take it for granted that you *can* teach such things
to young children (in fact my own kids have access to 3 computers at
home and haven't learned much new about them at school), but am not
convinced that it should be given so much priority.

One certainly doesn't have to look far to find benefits listed by
boosters of computers in the classroom -
<http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Plan/NatTechPlan/benefits.html> for
example. However, the same could be said of music among others -
<http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/309m/project4/Ricker/arts/educate.html>
- and in fact I've seen studies suggesting that early music education is
better for math and science ability than early computer education (I
must confess that I don't recall where I saw these). Perhaps we should
benchmark our schools with a comparison of their computer:music budget
ratios.

As well it is customary to do cost/benefit (or pro/con) analyses, not to
simply list benefits (or pro's). I'm not convinced that the costs (or
cons) of doing so much with computers in the classroom have been studied
as much as the benefits, and this makes reasonable analysis difficult.

\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\

Doug Craigen
http://www.dctech.com/physics/about_dc.html