Today's Seattle Times has a rare praiseworthy unsigned editorial -- "Three ideas for cleaner government"
Three bills introduced by Rep. Toby Nixon, R-Kirkland, deserve special attention. The topics are different, but they have two things in common: Each protects a fundamental right of the people; in each case, the Washington Supreme Court should have protected that right, but didn't.The three bills entail, respectively, public records, eminent domain and the right of referendum. Read the whole thing. And three cheers for Rep. Toby Nixon.
And Danny Westneat is correct to ask rhetorically "Teaching tech much too soon?". As someone who earned an M.S. in Computer Science, I have to agree that our schools put too much emphasis on, and spend too much money on, computers for the elementary grades. The best way to prepare for computer literacy as an adult is to first acquire a solid foundation in math and English. It wouldn't surprise me if the embarrassingly low WASL pass rates are partly attributable to an overemphasis on computers at the expense of basic skills.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 20, 2006 01:24 PM | Email ThisIn order to know if your comuter is screwing up, you HAVE to understand basic math and English.
Garbage in = garbage out. An old truism.
Posted by: Elmo on January 20, 2006 02:00 PMLord help me! The slimes is talking sense! Someone must have piped some oxygen into the newsroom ;'} (Westneat's column is pretty good too)
Posted by: alphabet soup on January 20, 2006 02:08 PMR
Posted by: Randy Mueller on January 20, 2006 02:08 PMMy day is all around computers too. Computer literacy for K-5 (at least) is best taught at the home. Math & the sciences (including social) are more important.
Posted by: A Watchdog on January 20, 2006 02:31 PMAnd yes, it's nice to have computers at school, but it would be better if elementary schools emphasized core knowledge and the three Rs primarily!
Posted by: Michele on January 20, 2006 02:33 PMGregg
Posted by: Gregg on January 20, 2006 03:29 PMI read this editorial this morning and had to make sure I was on the right website. Couldn't believe this was actually in the Times. Good ideas all. Which likely means they don't stand a chance.
Posted by: Palouse on January 20, 2006 03:30 PMAt the elementary level, computers are used by the teachers to communicate with parents, maintain the voluminous records now required by Olympia, and make lesson plans. They are now able to collaborate with other teachers in the district online, certainly a savings in time and resources. There is also a use of "smart boards" which is just a modern chalk board that connects to a computer and can record the daily lesson. None of this means students sitting in front of a screen.
What is sad is sad about both Westneat and Cannon is that they haven't made the effort to educate themselves on the facts. Cannon has been invited, but has yet to actually see what is happening in the classroom.
So I am to assume that you all would prefer students use pencil and paper to write papers, rather than Word? Should they not learn how to use the internet to do research? Should we forbid the use of calculators, even though computation skills are taught and tested?
Great - that's what we need - a bunch of students unprepared for the current world.
Exactly. It is wonderfully instructive to see how some people fare without a spellchecker or grammar checker in front of them. Do you ever scribble notes to people on paper? What if you were afraid to, without your crutch? Do you carry a calculator around with you all of the time to do those everyday, off-the-top-of-your-head calculations? If not, it's best to have a sense of numbers to help you get through life.
Remember, the people who invented computers... didn't have any.
Posted by: TB on January 20, 2006 04:28 PMMy writing improved tremendously once I got online editing capability. Before, it was too easy to just leave a poorly written sentence or a typo because it meant retyping an entire page. Admit it - you all are guilty of the same thing. Now I will work on a sentence until it is right. Why deny our students the same tools?
My daughters are graphing complex math problems on their calculators, something I did not have the opportunity to do. So, they can spend time understanding the concept rather than spending the tedious time drawing a graph. I don't know about you, but I was born without the "art" gene, so this was always a painful process.
It is time to enter the current century.
Posted by: Janet S on January 20, 2006 04:49 PMI had a teacher in high school who would make us not only write our weekly papers (yes, we had to write one paper per week for an entire year, something I think is probably unheard of in Seattle Public Schools these days), and if we had a grammatical mistake that he caught we would have to rewrite them from scratch. You wouldn't believe how much better papers got when you had to rewrite them three or four times from the start. When you only re-read quickly, or don't even re-read at all but let Microsoft Word find your poor grammar or spelling errors, you don't get the same sort of involvement and you absolutely learn less.
Technology is not a substitute for mental sharpness, but rather a tool to hone the already sharp.
Posted by: Marc on January 20, 2006 05:48 PMYes, we should ban any sort of technical aid device in the classroom until at least middle school. You seem to think that learning to depend on technological devices is good - wrong. Thinking like that is why Chinese, Korean, and Indian students all outperform American students. Performing operations without understanding the theory behind them prepares you for a lifetime of flipping burgers.
Posted by: Aaron on January 20, 2006 06:52 PMTeachers spend their day preparing lesson plans, grading papers, and working with students. They also need to communicate with parents, administration, and other teachers. Would you have them do this with pencil and paper? Are you against teachers using email, and online collaboration?
As for making students forgo computers - you are too focused on the mechanics, and not the meat of what they are supposed to learn. If someone can easily change the structure of a sentence, or quickly look up the right word, won't their product be improved?
Spend some time in a first rate classroom sometime. You will be amazed at what is being accomplished.
Posted by: Janet S on January 20, 2006 07:40 PMNo--their production will improve, but there is hardly a guarantee that the product would improve. If that were the case, the presence of word processors should have created several thousand Shakespeares by now.
This has nothing to do with teachers having access to technology. When I was in middle school in the early 80s teachers had access to computers for preparing their lesson plans and grading. Getting computers for every teacher is not an expensive proposition, and if all they were doing is guaranteeing teacher access to computers there would be no issue. Instead, schools are spending the money to give laptops to every child, and that's where the rest of us other than you, Janet, find a complaint. Do a quick search of the 'Net and you'll find hundreds of thousands of hits on school laptop initiatives, including the one Nicholas Negroponte is leading to try to ensure every kid in the world has a laptop in the hope that it will drive open source development: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69615,00.html
Needless to say, for the vast majority of kids with average amounts of interest in computer programming, this will be nothing but a waste of time and effort.
It's a nice strawman and all to keep harping on the idea that those of us complaining about technology replacing learning as a focus for children are really talking about stripping teachers of computers, but you're missing the point entirely.
Posted by: Marc on January 20, 2006 08:14 PMOrganization Man, SLO Class of '80
Posted by: Organization Man on January 21, 2006 08:16 AMOnce one has learned to plot an equation, using a computer or graphing calculator is a marvelous time-saver, but knowing how to make the calculator display the plot of an equation should never be confused with understanding of the underlying concepts.
The same point applies for writing. Knowing how to use a spellchecker (even when someone bothers to use it) does nothing to improve one's spelling. The spellchecker simply becomes a crutch.
This is amply demonstrated by the typical conversation in an online chat room. The acme of good communication is the use of phrases like "how r u".
Expressive, not so much, but they can all type it very fast.
Posted by: ewaggin on January 21, 2006 12:47 PMHe found that he was more productive when he wrote first drafts with pen (or perhaps pencil) and paper. Word and similar programs are fine for some things, but they are actually not very good for composition.
I have found that when I write longer documents, it is better to do most of a first draft on paper. The word processing programs are much better for revisions, of course.
(BTW, if you just need a program to write letters and simple memos and such you will probably be better off using a simple program like Abiword, instead of one of the heavyweights like Word or Word Perfect. And Abiword has a great price -- free.)
Posted by: Jim Miller on January 22, 2006 02:07 PMAssuming home-schooling is out of the question, buy these and read from them to your children on a regular basis:
The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967967503/002-5411222-3176068?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
Elementary Mathematics From An Advanced Standpoint: Arithmetic, Algebra, Analysis
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/048643480X/qid=1138025804/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/002-5411222-3176068?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Elementary Mathematics From An Advanced Standpoint: Geometry
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486434818/qid=1138025865/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-5411222-3176068?s=books&v=glance&n=283155