Saturday, March 31, 2007

Technology is THE tool ...

Something to think about when kids come in w/school assignments and tell us they "can't use the internet" from David Warlick's 2 cents worth blog entry on March 19th:

(back in the day [my words]) ... We were using the computer as a tool to help students learn to do things that we were, by and large, still doing on paper. We were using computers to continue the paper training of our children — and these tools were pretty good at it.
Today, however, computers are THE tool. Computers and the Internet are today’s information landscape. It is where we manage commerce, communicate, play, and access information, even the information we use to look up in an almanac. Twenty-eight years ago, those sixteen kilobyte computers were useful tools for helping children develop what were still paper-based skills.

The disturbing question today is, “Does paper represent an adequate tool for learning skills related to a digital networked information world?”
If not, why are we acting like it does?

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Kailua, Oahu