I should probably state my qualifications before I begin this post… I work as the computer technician for a K-12 private school. I don’t work directly with the students, but I DO work with the teachers in implementing their educational needs on our computers. Also, it wasn’t that long ago that I was a student myself.
I personally feel that modern computers are the wrong approach for educating our students.
Yes, the Internet is a very powerful tool to teach students, and is necessary in schools. That obviously means modern computers… however, modern computers come with many issues, and I’m not so sure that in today’s world, they’re the most appropriate solution.
See, from what I’ve seen, teachers nowadays have major trouble keeping up with the technology. In fact, much of my job is helping the teachers figure out their own computers! (Most teachers where I work are issued laptop computers, for logging of relevant data in the day-to-day operations at this school.) If the teachers can’t understand the technology, how are they supposed to teach it to the students? Furthermore, how are they supposed to understand how the student is using the computer?
However, computers are an EXTREMELY useful tool. I don’t think anybody can debate that. So much valuable educational media is available for computers, and they also assist in problem solving, and document creation.
I personally feel that older computers, such as the Apple II, are a better tool as the primary computers for education. (Note that I said primary. I feel that there should still be modern computers accessible, due to the whole Internet issue. Also, when students go off to college, and/or go to the workplace, they’ll find modern computers.) This might seem rather… archaic. And, did I seriously just suggest a system that is predominantly command-line based as an EASIER alternative to modern GUI-equipped systems? I think I just did. (Of course, I am looking from the geek’s point of view… I could be totally wrong here.)
First off, there’s so much less complexity to such a machine. For someone who wants to understand the machine, it’s extremely easy – one could learn the machine’s deepest secrets in a matter of months. Compare that to modern computers – VERY few people know the deepest secrets of modern software and hardware. If I had grown up on even the most popular computers that were available new when I first started using a computer at the age of three, in 1991 (either Windows 3.0-based PCs, or Macs,) I almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten into computers. The computer would have been a black box to me. Instead, I was able to understand the computer.
Second, security becomes almost a complete non-issue on the older machines. No networking to speak of, so no need to secure machines against each other. No logins required – it’s all about physical access. No hard drive to corrupt the data on, it’s all on (surprisingly reliable) 5.25″ floppies, in most cases. And, as a sysadmin, I can say that NOT having to fight permissions to get a poorly coded piece of educational software that only expected to be run as Administrator to run under an extremely limited account (remember, in a school, you pretty much have to treat your students as malicious users that you’re actually giving a username and password) is a GOOD thing. The only permissions on an Apple II are whether a notch has been cut in the side of the floppy disk. 😉
Finally, the quality of the educational software for such machines is downright excellent. Much of the Windows and Mac educational software I recall using… I found boring. However, the Apple II software… a lot of it, I found to actually be extremely entertaining, while I still learned something. The art of “edutainment” seems to have been lost. Then again, all of these experiences are from many years ago, so…
Of course, there’s two (three?) major drawbacks to this.
The first, I’ve already mentioned – Internet. However, that could be handled by providing a computer lab that was closely monitored (I won’t get into my opinions on closely monitoring students that are on the computer versus, for example, filtering content, in this entry… I’ll save that for another day…) by qualified staff, and equipped with modern computers. I’ll admit that this would be the most controversial point of my thoughts by FAR.
The second, is that most students have been exposed to modern computers, and know what they’re like, and would reject an “obsolete” computer. Heck, by the time I was six, I knew that there were better (as in faster, more powerful) computers than the ten year old Apple //c that I used.
A very weak third drawback… sharing printers is a royal pain without a network. Of course, that’s what AppleTalk (which was supported on the Apple IIs, specifically for sharing printers and network booting of the machines, especially in a school environment) was for. 😉 An extension on this drawback, though, is modern printer support.
Which means, I guess what I’m going at is… I think something LIKE the old systems would work better than modern systems, not necessarily the old systems themselves?