« Refrigerator technology |Main| Customers to Businesses: Can you hear me now? »
Computers & Education
Why aren't human beings more adept at learning? Why do we often keep making the same mistakes? Humans have had the capacity to transcribe their thoughts for thousands of years now. However, it's only in the past few years that we've had the benefit of the inspirational For Dummies publications. And we've only recently had the benefit of computers in our school classrooms. Apparently, neither of these tools have helped. But forget about the difficulties in trying to educate dummies.
Why haven't computers helped our school kids learn better?
A recent study by German researchers blamed teacher ineptitude. The study's conclusions were questioned by Steve Talbott, the publisher of NetFuture -- an electronic newsletter that discusses technology in a balanced and sensible way:
Yes, teacher ineptitude is a logically possible explanation of the situation. But you'd think these pedagogical experts would occasionally ask themselves whether the widespread teacher resistance might have a more reasonable explanation -- namely, computer ineptitude. It is, after all, just possible that a great deal about the computer works against its educational use. It might be, for example, that the computer tends to make more difficult the single greatest educational task today, which is to bring the student into the fullest, richest engagement with reality --the reality of the natural world, the human being, and society. Link
How true. Technology is not always a necessary ingredient in learning, and often it can be an impediment. We all want to believe that there are easy shortcuts to learning; perhaps that's why the 'For Dummies' series is so popular. Perhaps we haven't learned much about education in the past thousand years after all. If that's true then it would probably be a mistake to blame technology.
By the way, if you want to subscribe to Steve's email newsletter go to the website: Netfuture.org. I highly recommend this publication if you want a clear discussion of technology and its effects on society.