As much as I grumble about computers in schools, this negates a lot of my arguments.
My main argument has been — and is — that what is called “computer literacy” or computers in the classroom is really a kind of VoTech education, where we teach kids how to use office equipment, specifically software applications that may not exist in their present incarnations by the time they enter the workforce.
But a hardware platform that, by design, can’t support corporate bloatware but still supports the basics of information retrieval/research and basic word and numeric operations is hard to complain about. if we’re using this stuff to teach them how to think, how to organize data, how to learn, I’m on board. If we’re using it to teach the office workers of tomorrow, I’m agin’ it.
More griping, anyone?
http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php/archives/2003/01/02/whose-classroom-is-it-anyway/
http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php/archives/2002/11/23/i-may-be-wrong-on-this-one
http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php/archives/2002/12/30/technology-in-the-classroom-help-or-hindrance/?cat=14
It’s not that I’m feeling self-referential (any more than usual): this is an issue that gets my attention quite quickly.