This started as a comment to teacherken's excellent diary the last furlough day - of THIS school year. Please read and recommend his diary.
In the diary teacherken says
I teach in a school district which is very restrictive on students use of phones, MP3 players and the like. While I abide by the policy, I think it is wrong and counter productive, as are policies such as those that ban the use of or access to in school of social networking sites of all kinds. In fact, I think we do our students a disservice in this approach, because it is so much a part of who they are and how they interrelate with each other and with the larger world that we would be well advised to find ways of using the technology, of empowering them to use skills they already have as a means of learning more effectively.
teacherken is absolutely 110% right. We must use technology to enhance education. I wrote one of the early papers on using computer technology to enhance education. See Using electronic mail as a teaching tool. It was published over 38 years ago. Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet few K-12 teachers use electronic mail and there is so much more computer technology to take advantage of.
My daughter has been using computers, well not since birth, but certainly since kindergarten. Yeah, she does use computers more in college, but not nearly as much as she could if the professors truly took advantage of them. Below are some of my thoughts on how we can better use computers in education.
I will start with books. Do we really need hard cover books? All texts should be distributed electronically at huge cost savings. Imagine no longer having to keep an inventory of all the text books in K-12. Imagine being able to have the latest and best text books available for use by the students. Imagine not having to pay hundreds of dollars for math text books just because of all the symbols. I could go on and on. There is no question in my mind that every student should have a tablet/notebook computer for text books and providing the computers would be cheaper over time time than the constant purchasing and repurchasing of all the text books. Okay, the publisher will not make as much money and professors can easily self publish their books, but the students/parents save big time.
But this is just the tip of the ice berg. All papers and tests can be given via computers. Why should teachers have to worry about paper. Paper get's lost and misplaced, computers can automatically save and backup tests. Of course students will have to learn how to type, but isn't that a necessary skill anyway. We can even enable students to write and draw on screens. Now consider grading. Computers can help teachers grade tests, even papers. If Armies of Expensive Lawyers, (can be) Replaced by Cheaper Software, then surely computers can check for copying and assist with grading of written material.
While this is little more of the tip of the ice berg, there is still much more. Consider text books for example. Reading is great, but electronic text books can be listened to also. Why not? It would certainly help the blind. And sound is just the beginning. I loved Walter Cronkite on the Twentieth Century. Now imagine video integrated with text books and education. I first encountered Richard Feynman on film, his physics lectures had been recorded. Imagine seeing teachers answering questions raised in class on video. Imagine students writing papers with video integrated into the paper. Say the paper is on a play and they integrate video of the relevant parts of the play to their paper. Finally, students should be creating videos for teachers to grade. Language courses are available on computers, why not use them for teaching foreign languages.
Let's move on from computers to cell phones. Cell phones for the younger generation are a necessary part of life. I held off on cell phones until digital cell phones came of age. My daughter in middle school begged for a cell phone and we finally got her one in high school. The cell phone is attached to her like a third arm. Now imagine giving a quiz to students via text messages and receiving the results via text messages. And this is just a start.
One thing few people appreciate is that work is not about working alone, but working in teams. Yet we do not teach people to work in teams, the emphasis is on alone work. Imagine using social networking sites to enable to students work as a team. No longer will a project be done by a single person, rather the project will be a team effort and the team graded. Consider the concept that people will really learn how to work as a team at something other than football. Imagine learning the difference between constructive criticism to help move the team forward as opposed to destructive criticism to achieve individual success. This could really be a game changer.
Technology changes us. We can either change for the better or the worse. The choice is ours. We need to use technology to change education for the better.