Copyright © 1999 by Michael Segers, All rights reserved
Gotcha, didn’t I? Did you expect a self-avowed missionary for the computer and the Internet to say keep computers out of the classroom? Yet, having been a teacher for twenty years, I hear some teachers muttering amen, hallelujah, at this very moment. Every year, new waves of arcane technology (some students saw a video camera for the first time in my class), pop psychology, and other excesses of peddlers of various kinds of pedagogical snake oil washed through my classroom or at least settled in greasy puddles in faculty meetings. For many veteran teachers, the Internet is just the latest in a long list of someone else’s bright ideas: affective domains, kinesthetic learning, and touchy-feely self-esteem exercises.
Technology in the classroom is nothing new. We all passed through classrooms full of technology, the technology that had been around for many years: printed books, paper, pens, pencils, chalk, blackboards (although by the time I came along, the blackboards were green), and typewriters. Typewriters? Young’uns, ask your grandparents about those things!
We learned to use this technology without talking too much about it. Reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic were the basics. Once we learned these technological skills—applying eyes to books, pencils to paper—we accessed various sites for information and created our own little pages on a world wide web of literacy. Students grew up to become teachers, who used with their students the same techniques and technology their teachers had used. Television seemed to shine brightly, very briefly, but it ended up just an electronic substitute teacher.
Now, there is this strange new thing that looks like a cross between a typewriter and a television set on the desks of many fine folks who, in all honesty, feel more comfortable with the technology of inkpots and goose quills. I remember beginning my teaching career in a brand new building divided into wide, sweeping instructional spaces, not a classroom in sight. Guess what new teachers and old teachers alike did? We salvaged every screen, bookcase, and file cabinet we could find to create our own little models of the Berlin Wall, and kept on using the "classroom skills" that we had grown up with, trying to talk loud enough to be heard over our "peer teachers" in the "pod." I would say we were using nineteenth century teaching methods in a twenty-first century building, except that several years before the twenty-first century, the building has been reconfigured as a warren of tiny, walled-in classrooms without an instructional space in sight.
The problem was, no one explained what to do in our instructional spaces or why that would be any better than what had been happening in classrooms for generations. We teachers tend to be conservative, comfortable going "back" to basics, or we probably wouldn’t go back into the classroom as adults. I guess many of us think of education as passing along information, ideas, and values that aren’t all that different from what was passed along to us.
That is all dandy, but that strange machine is making demands upon our students and us that our teachers never prepared us for. No one ever asked, what do we want our students to be able to do with a book? Neither did anyone ever ask, what do we want teachers to be able to do with a wall? Since we aren’t used to asking such questions, no one is asking, what do we want our students to be able to do with a computer? Just as for generations, every student has had the need and the right to learn to read, so today every student has the need and the right to learn to use a computer.
But what does "using a computer" mean? Word processing? Accessing the Internet? Creating web pages? Programming in BASIC? Who is going to teach those skills? At the expense of what other parts of the students’ education, if it comes to that? What do we teach, and how much do we need to teach? Where and when in the curriculum do we teach these skills?
A much trickier question is, how do we integrate computer skills into the curriculum as a whole? In the good old days, teachers always assumed they had read more, written more, studied more, and at least spent more "hiney hours" in classes than their students had. Now, with some teachers still clinging to their quills, their students have their own web pages and sit up half the night hacking into Pentagon computers. How can we provide leadership when our students are so far ahead of us? Do we deck ourselves out in the trappings of relevancy, making ourselves a joke (painfully rapping last week’s hit while the piercings in our tongues heal) to the students we are trying to reach?
Computers were first used in classrooms to provide endless drills—answer fifty multiple choice, randomly generated math problems or match fifty vocabulary words with synonyms, and get a percentile score. We were still using pen and paper techniques with a brave new technology. We can all agree the skills of using a computer (whatever they are) have a place in the education we offer our young people, but what place do those machines have, once students and teachers learn how to use them? What can we do with this tool that we cannot do without it?
The only quick and easy answer in education is that there are no quick and easy answers. Television wasn’t the solution it was supposed to be. Taking down walls and putting up walls, opening a book or logging on to the Internet—none of these can take the place of the unique human interaction between students and teachers, whether or not they wear uniforms. By being honest about their own discomfort with computers, some very good teachers may teach their students lessons about values, while their students teach them the difference between an ISP and a URL. We need a humility many teachers may be as uncomfortable with as they are with computers.
So, again, keep computers out of the classroom until teachers want them there. A computer is just a tool; we still provide the brains. Show us how we can do things for our students with this tool that we cannot do otherwise. There is no difference between reading Romeo and Juliet from a book or from a monitor screen. But, there are ways that the computer and the Internet can let us do new things differently, even better, in English classes and science classes, in math classes and social science and foreign language classes. For once, teachers, students and administrators, let’s work together. Administrators, be realistic and supportive. Teachers, be honest about your own prejudice and anxiety, but be open to what this tool can do for you. Don’t be threatened by it any more than you are threatened by a piece of chalk. And, hey, students, we need you, your experience, even your expertise. Now, isn’t that a nice change?
Our freenet is very much a reflection of our community. So, it is not surprising that the Worth County schools have a distinctive presence here. Just look to the left and click on "Our Schools," or enter this URL:
http://www.peanut.org/wcbe/index.htm
Besides having pages for each school and information about the Worth County schools in general, this virtual school system has two excellent selections of "Educational Resources" and "Libraries." Now, at the beginning of a new school year, it is good to remind ourselves just how extensive these materials are and how useful they can be for teachers, students, and parents. You’ll be surprised all you can learn to do, even to keep your feet dry and your heart full of noble thoughts.
Rovin' on the Internet: Online Adventures