NPR: Morning Edition School Computers

"High-tech tools are quickly finding their way into the earliest experiences of children, but is that necessarily a good thing? NPR's Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg concludes her Tuesday series on children by talking with Lauren Sheehan, a woman who works at an Oregon school that does not use computers until eighth grade, and with Clark Folsom, a parent of two children there. (7:24) "

redux [03.08.02]
Sp!ked-IT From ABC to ICT

"In contrast to the involved and transformative process of making a child literate, the use of [Information and Communications Technologies] is intuitive. Even my three-year-old nephew Stefan can turn a computer on, move in and out of computer programmes, including his parents' email programme, and send messages. He cannot write a message that makes any sense - but he knows which field the text should go in, how to move the cursor between fields, and that you fill the field with symbols by tapping the keyboard. He has learned this by watching his older brothers, by a lot of trial-and-error, and, no doubt, through intuition.

But Stefan, or any other child his age, could never learn to read, write, divide and multiply through intuitive learning - because the manipulation of abstract symbols, whether the written word or numbers, does not make 'human sense'."

redux [02.13.02]
The Oregonian School in heart of tech country teaches without PCs

"Several of Swallowtail's high-tech parents say they didn't pick the school solely for its no-tech stance but support the philosophy behind it. The parents say they know computer skills are easy to learn because they work with technology all day.

"It's not rocket science to use a computer," says O'Mahony, a former Intel electrical engineer whose husband, Barry, is a senior engineer for the company.

The couple's children learn about computers at home from their parents, but, says O'Mahony, "We certainly can't teach them to paint.""

redux [11.06.01]
First Monday Computer-Mediated School Education and the Web

"The addition of the Web to the range of technologies which humans have used to mediate between themselves and the world has contributed to problems as well as advantages in the area of school education. Historical antecedents in areas such as writing, printing and industrialisation provide a context in which mediated experiences can be examined. In the 21st century, the availability of online education increases the possibility that virtual experience will be substituted for reality. There are also concerns that there will be a blurring of appearance and reality, and that cultural imperialism will continue to spread by use of the Web. Together with the observation that computer-mediation via the Web tends to reframe the central role of the teacher in the educational process, these factors are considered in terms of the need to establish future guidelines to reduce the adverse impact of the Web on school education."

redux [12.04.00]
Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks Higher Education in an Era of Digital Competition: Emerging Organizational Models

"Growing demand among learners for improved accessibility and convenience, lower costs, and direct application of content to work settings is radically changing the environment for higher education in the United States and globally. In this rapidly changing environment, which is increasingly based within the context of a global, knowledge-based economy, traditional universities are attempting to adapt purposes, structures, and programs, and new organizations are emerging in response. Organizational changes and new developments are being fueled by accelerating advances in digital communications and learning technologies that are sweeping the world. Growing demand for learning combined with these technical advances is in fact a critical pressure point for challenging the dominant assumptions and characteristics of existing traditionally organized universities in the 21st century. This combination of demand, costs, application of content and new technologies is opening the door to emerging competitors and new organizations that will compete directly with traditional universities and with each other for students and learners.

redux [05.09.00]
Netfuture Who's Killing Higher Education? (or is it suicide?)

"A growing consensus holds that new information technologies foretell the end of higher education as we have known it. I suspect this is true. Its truth, however, is not that the technologies are positively revolutionizing education. Rather, what we are watching is more like the end -- the final perfection and dead-end extreme -- of the old regime's shortcomings."

"All this worries a growing contingent of educators, who fear the corporation's "crushing solicitude". (The phrase is William F. Buckley's which he applied many years ago to the ministrations of centralized government.) I share this fear, but it seems to me that the more fundamental issue often goes unnoted: our changing notions about what education is make it inevitable that business and industry should step into the picture aggressively. If you want efficient delivery of effective facts and procedures, then business -- already attuned to such computationally rigorous training -- will far outperform the university.

In other words, having increasingly accepted their role as training grounds for business -- which is what the information-transfer model of education implies -- universities are now finding that business is better situated to train its own employees than schools are. At best the universities will simply hire themselves out to corporations.

redux [07.06.00]
First Monday Technology and Education: Between Chaos and Order

"Technology in all forms, young and old or simple and complex, can be potent tools that engage learners in meta-cognitive reflection. These tools engage learners to rethink their old beliefs, knowledge, and understandings. These tools might allow learners to compare new ideas with other individuals to assess whether new concepts and ideas are plausible and fruitful. Technologies can be educators' tools in finding creative ways that encourage students to self-test, self-question, and self-regulate learning in helping them to create solutions to complex problems. Educators need to help students realize that understanding about knowledge and beliefs are essential to human growth and development. Technologies should not estrange us from our humanity or the noble profession of educating competent citizens. We should not become "high-tech, self-driven slaves to technology.

"Protecting the embodiment of quality education encompasses learning to think, learning to teach, and learning to lead creatively, not only within the classroom (virtual and traditional) but also throughout all institutions of higher education."