The 1990s - The three gurus of educational computing and their impact on the schools
Outline
- The Three Gurus of Educational Computing
The Three "Gurus" of Educational computing
This week we will take a closer look at three influential educators in the field of educational computing and how their work contributed towards the way emerging technologies (Module 5) are being explored in math and science classrooms. I call them gurus because their work had a major impact on what teachers did in the classroom with technology. Each of them had a different perspective on the role of computers in education. In an article I wrote in "Scenes from a Dynamic Classroom" (Charischak, 1989)* I summarized these perspectives as empowerment of the computer, the student, and the teacher.
Patrick Suppes - Empower the Computer
When we first met Patrick Suppes (Module 2 - the 1960s), he was doing
pioneer CAI work at Stanford University. By the end of the decade he along
with his colleague Richard Atkinson founded the Computer Curriculum Corporation
(CCC). They believed that the best way for students to learn the fundamentals
of mathematics is to do the same thing as the students who want to get
to Carnegie Hall; namely, practice, practice, practice. The computer was
perfect tool for this. Recall the picture of the student at the terminal
in one of Suppes' research lab.
Notice that all the student's senses are controlled (and amplified)
by the computer. Distractions and thinking are minimized. Focus is on recall.
Suppes software set standards for subsequent instructional software. After systematically analyzing courses in arithmetic and other subjects, Suppes designed highly structured computer systems featuring strong student control, learner feedback, lesson branching, and student record keeping.
As a computer education specialist in the mid 1980s at BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Servies) in Westchester County in New York, I helped teachers to implement computers in the classroom. There was not a lot of money coming in to provide for this service. Fortunately, BOCES made a lot of money selling the Suppes program (which is what everyone called CCC at the time) to school districts, New York. Suppes was our "cash cow". Much of the early Drill and practice software that schools used in the 1980s was a simplified version of the Suppes idea of drill and practice. There were many varieties of D&P software in the schools, but most had these characteristics:
- Most instruction occurs in groups of 25 to 35 students in small segments from 20 to 25 minutes long.
- Instruction is usually either whole-class or completely individual.
- Instruction is teacher dominated, with teachers doing most of the talking and student talk confined largely to brief answers to teacher questions.
- When students work on their own, they complete handouts devised or selected by the teacher.
- Students have little responsibility for selecting goals or deadlines and little chance to explore issues in depth.
- Most responses are brief.
- Knowledge is represented as mastery of isolated bits of information and discrete skills.
Impact on Schools
Since "basic skills" knowledge has always been a priorty and the Suppes
system had a reputation for improving test scores school districts would
try to find the funding to have this program. A typical 8 terminal cluster
and server could cost $30,000 or more. It became a priority for poor performing
schools who were able to get outside funding. Much of the stand alone software
that appeared in the 1980s and continued to be marketed in 1990s had many
of these same characteristics but on a much smaller scale.
Seymour Papert: Empower
the Student
| People laughed at Seymour Papert in the sixties when
he talked about children using computers as instruments for learning and
for enhancing creativity. The idea of an inexpensive personal computer
was then science fiction. But Papert was conducting serious research in
his capacity as a professor at MIT. This research led to many firsts. It
was in his laboratory that children first had the chance to use the computer
to write and to make graphics. The Logo programming language was created
there, as were the first children's toys with built-in computation.
Today Papert is considered the world's foremost expert on how technology can provide new ways to learn. He has carried out educational projects on every continent, some of them in remote villages in developing countries. He is a participant in developing the most influential cutting-edge opportunities for children to participate in the digital world. He serves on the advisory boards for MaMaMedia Inc. (whose founder, Idit Harel, was once a doctoral student of his at MIT) and of the LEGO Mindstorms product line (which was named after Papert's seminal book Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas). Papert lives in Maine, where he has founded a small laboratory called the Learning Barn to develop methods of learning that are too far ahead of the times for large-scale implementation. He has been named distinguished professor by the University of Maine and is credited with inspiring the first initiative aimed at giving a personal computer to every student of a state. He spends a large part of his time working in the Maine Youth Center in Portland, the state's facility for teenagers convicted of serious offenses. Papert's contributions go beyond the field of education. He is a mathematician
and is a cofounder with Marvin Minsky of the Artificial Intelligence Lab
at MIT and a founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab, where he continues
to work. Papert collaborated for many years with Jean Piaget at the University
of Geneva in Switzerland.
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Tom Snyder - Empower the Teacher
Profile
- Founder and chairman, Tom Snyder Productions, a Watertown, Mass.-based company creating interactive group software
- CD-ROM products for K-12 social studies, science, math and language arts
- Keynote speaker at educational conferences on technology in the classroom
- Visiting faculty member, Harvard Graduate School of Education
- Has taught grades 4-8 science and social studies
In "Blinded by Science", Tom Snyder writes: "It's just possible our
decisions about technology in schools are not being guided by the instincts
of our best teachers. In fact, it's hip sometimes to try to get rid of
that pesky teacher--that egomaniacal, full-frontal teacher who stands up
there and exploits everyone by imposing the tyranny of his personal point
of view on a whole class full of children."
| Assignment: 4.3
Read Tom Snyder's article "Blinded by Science" http://www.cssjournal.com/archives/snyder.html Read Snyder's statement of philosophy at
Hear Tom Snyder give a keynote speech
Read an article by Tom's colleague David Doctorman "The Computer as a Presentation Tool classroom" - A chapter in the Book "Great Teaching in the One Computer Classroom" T. Snyder. Available from Tom Snyder Productions. Read an article by Tom's colleague David Doctorman "The Computer as
a Presentation Tool classroom"*
(a) Summarize Tom Snyder's perspective on the use of computer in the classroom. (b) Compare the three guru perspectives on each of these for instructional purposes:
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In Module 5
The World Wide Web and emerging technologies
By the early 1990s computers were a common site in schools. But it
was not until the Internet become a major player did the visionaries see
as realistic some far reaching uses for computer technology in education.
Kay's human amplifying knowledge machine appears now to be within grasp.
In Module 5 we will look at how emerging technololgies and growing knowledge
about how we learn is beginning to impact education as we transition into
the 21st century.
Patrick Suppes' Website
http://www.stanford.edu/~psuppes/
Influences of Papert - A place for kids on the web
http://www.mamamedia.com/
For grownups
http://www.mamamedia.com/areas/grownups/new/home.html
Papert gives a talk on teaching and learning
http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html
Looking at Technology Through School-Colored Spectacles
http://www.papert.org/articles/LookingatTechnologyThroughSchool.html
Some nice math ideas here. Should fractions be removed from the elementary
school curriculum?
Building Software Beats Using It by Idit Harel
http://www.mamamedia.com/areas/grownups/new/home.html
Idit is a colleague of Papert's at the MIT Media Lab.
Final Thought
| We Must Have "Imajunashun"
A first-grade girl in a Mississippi school used a computer to compose this philosophical statement: "The biggest thing about someone is imajunashun. Before you can be something, you must imajun it." Salk imagined a way to eliminate polio - not a treatment to relieve it. Kennedy imagined a man on the moon - not a faster jet. We imagine a school that revolutionizes learning for the next century - not one that reconditions learning as we have known it in the past. We imagine a school in which students and teachers excitedly and joyfully stretch themselves to their limits in pursuit of projects built on their own visions not one that that merely succeeds in making apathetic students satisfy minimal standards. We imagine a school from which every student will come with vision:
Source: Seymour Papert's website - Planet
Papert
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*I will express mail you the reading material for this week.
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Center for Improved Engineering and Science Education,
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