Education

At the risk of sounding "anti-education" (free-thinking):

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to launch “the most sweeping effort ... this country has ever seen” to modernize school buildings and equip classrooms with computers as part of his economic-stimulus plan, prompting optimism among ed-tech advocates despite pervasive budget constraints.

Is there any evidence that more technology in the classroom helps kids in any way (I've done some looking and have read conflicting studies. Most say that technology helps if "done the right way." Well, anything "done the right way" is good. Paper and pencil instruction "done the right way" improves student achievement as well, I imagine. Using just my brain, however, I ask: Have students become much smarter in the past 15 years? In the past 50, since television?)? In my experience, most technology in schools ranges from mildly beneficial and interesting to neutral to counter-productive. We have a lab in my high school stocked with brand new iMacs. I stopped using it.** I'd rather have my students write their essays in class and then rewrite them on their computers at home- or, by hand. Who cares?

Obama is doing for the Internet what President John F. Kennedy did for television, says Hirsch, by encouraging the use of it as a common and essential staple of American life.

I thought that people liked TV because it wasn't intellectually taxing, sometimes compelling, and free. I didn't know that it was actually a government plan. Thanks JFK! It's worked out well. Kids now spend more time watching TV, probably, than engaging in any other activity, and who would argue that they're much better off for it? I'm calling my kids right now and force them to watch more TV. After that, more computers and video games!

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption,” Obama, who will take office Jan. 20, said in a December radio address. “Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online,” he said, going on to link broadband access to the competitiveness of the U.S. economy.

More Youtube, MTV, Myspace, and porn (redundant, I know)! Because you know that when kids get online, they're checking out Encarta, right? Because kids can only get information from the internet, yes? How did our parents learn stuff? You need T-1 lines for encyclopedias?

“When the federal government begins to model very positive models of collaborative technology, it’s only a matter of time before schools do the same,” he says.

The government is my role model. It's not yours?

“He really is the first president-elect to have harnessed the power of technology,” she says. “His campaign systematically used technology not as an ATM machine but as an effective vehicle to communicate and develop a sense of engagement of individuals across the country and across all age groups.”

He protests too much. Obama used it mostly as an ATM machine.

Gray says President-elect Obama’s move to appoint a chief technology officer for the government demonstrates a shift in the way that technology is viewed nationally: “This is in fact recognizing the critical role that technology will play in America’s” quest to be more competitive in a global marketplace.

Lowering the corporate tax rates and cutting back on regulation would probably make us more competitive than the government wasting money on Carmen SanDiego and modeling efficient, competitive behavior.

Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?

In addition to providing schools with the technological infrastructure to teach students 21st-century skills, President-elect Obama has also promised to bolster professional development for teachers. Ann L. Flynn, for one, hopes that he follows through.

What, pray tell, is a "21st-century skill?" Why don't we get those 17th-century skills down first? Teaching isn't that complicated. It would be more productive to take the cash spent on teacher "development" and fling it towards one of those new wind mills. At least I wouldn't have to attend those boring teacher classes.

“We are celebrating the election of our first president who truly understands and embraces information and communication technology, connectivity and the power of the World Wide Web, and the democratization of information, knowledge, and 21st-century communications,” Knezek says. “The most important priorities for the U.S.—to regain a leadership role globally in education, to overcome the recent slippage among nations we’ve seen in almost every important statistic of international educational comparisons—are already on President-Elect Obama’s radar...”

...Keith R. Krueger, the executive director for the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking, or COSN, thinks that reforming the federal E-rate program, which has an annual budget of $2.25 billion, is a key step to achieving universal broadband access.

We're slipping internationally after Bill Clinton's E-rate technology initiative. Well, then what we need is more technology, obviously.

How much would you like to bet that the students with the most technology upgrades will get dumber?

But, which administrator will say "no" to more stuff?" Which politician will point out that school spending has no clothes? Onward towards waste!

Article here.

**I would like a projector at school. It may not help the kids, but what the heck?