"Wuz up?" Brigid, 12, writes. She has discovered the joys of computing, among them communicating with friends in a speedy form of e-mail English. She also likes doing searches on the Internet. She wrote a report on Egypt—she liked the part about embalming pharaohs best. And for a science project, she found out about the monarch butterfly's habit of generational migration. The female butterfly begins the trip and her fifth-generation descendant returns to the original site, she told me. I was not only impressed by her new knowledge, but I also admired her ease in interweaving learning and computer use.
Not all educators have such an easy time integrating technology with the curriculum.
A math teacher I know says that she doesn't use computers because she has no appropriate software. An art teacher who invested her own time and money learning computer graphics is frustrated because her school decided that the art department didn't need computers as badly as other departments did. And a social studies teacher told me that he is too busy preparing students for advanced placement exams to let the kids "play with the computers."
"Wuz up, teachers?" I want to ask, but they remind me that the obstacles to effective computer use in the classroom are many, including lack of resources, training, and time—and sometimes, the curriculum itself. In addition, although most teachers are convinced that teaching kids the technology of the day is crucial, the dilemma about which kind and what degree of computer usage are most effective remains unsolved.
In his controversial analysis of the benefits and limitations of technology in schools, Todd Oppenheimer in "The Computer Delusion" ponders the question, Does computer use significantly improve teaching and learning? (1997). Although he acknowledges the power of project-based learning and the exciting access to information that the Internet provides, he also points out that the Net confronts students with a chaotic jumble of facts; that instead of collaboration, control of the mouse often provokes disputes; and that project learning depends on a good teacher. He concludes that money devoted to technology should be made available for "impoverished fundamentals": teaching reading and thinking skills, organizing hands-on experiences, and building up the core of knowledgeable teachers.
Needless to say, techno-gurus like Seymour Papert find such a viewpoint intellectually backward. Papert argues that making the "most powerful technology ever invented" serve "modest intellectual goals" is ridiculous. He calls instead for "inventing new visions of education in the context of a digital world." Technology will alter the content of education and our entrenched social system, he believes. Regarding computers as "just a tool" is anathema. Papert concludes: Kids who have grown up with computers at home will be less inclined to let parents or teachers get away with loose talk and backward ideas. They will be less and less willing to buy into a school system that offers learning that is inferior to what they can experience outside....The kids will be the army for our cause. (1998, p. 12)
Those are fighting words, and maybe that's what revolution is about. But those who have lots of Brigids in our classrooms—kids who want to learn with computers—probably don't want the situation to come to that. Rather we are looking for the balance between the humanistic education we value and the technology that can make kids lifelong learners. We know that we need to follow the children, but we also know that we must guide them.
Michael Dertouzos, a columnist for Technology Review, writes: Learning may critically depend on what humans, not computers, do best: Lighting a fire in the student's heart, role modeling, and nurturing may contribute more to learning than the neatest hyper-linked courseware. (1998, p. 20)
Why must it be one or the other—the curriculum versus courseware, teaching versus technology—especially when the kids don't see it that way?
