Re:technology lag in school

 
Regarding ThinkQuest, here's a couple of references:
Learning from Learners, Internet Style
Educom Review (March/April 1998)
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewArticles/33214.html

The website has accessibility issues:  I sent a message to Thinkquest with a
link to the WAI guidelines, CAST, and the Bobby analysis of their homepage:
http://io.advanced.org/thinkquest/

Karl Hebenstreit, Jr.


____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    technology lag in school
Author: "al gilman" <asgilman@access.digex.net>
Date:       12/1/98 4:06 PM

to follow up on what Claude Sweet said:

> My background is in education and I can tell you that only in
> universities are faculty and students provided with the latest
> and greatest in computer and Internet technology.

... and Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County, Inc...
Did you see the results of the ThinkQuest awards?

[snip]

> ...I still have problems with convincing teachers that it is NOT
> necessary to learn how to manually write html files for most
> people who are concerned with producing product rather than the
> process itself. I guess it is a carryover from the days of DOS
> and the demeaning remarks of DOS computer users about people
> who preferred the graphic user interface of the Macintosh or
> Windows.

It is an analytical religion that dates back to the revolution of
Gutenberg, Newton and Leibnitz.  The computer may have upset the
apple-cart on this one -- I maybe don't want to know.  The
teachers are firmly into the paradigm that problem-solving is
based on atomization, on analysis.  The three R's are all calculi
of little code tokens.  Can you blame the teachers if there is a
lot of inertia there?

Just ask the teachers: How many people drive cars?  How many
people build cars?  Put the history they are living in the
context of the living that they recognize as history.

Al