Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!manis From: manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Against educational fads (was: math credit) Message-ID: <1990Dec9.183544.6800@cs.ubc.ca> Date: 9 Dec 90 18:35:44 GMT References: <15488@cs.utexas.edu> <16495@s.ms.uky.edu> Sender: news@cs.ubc.ca (Usenet News) Organization: Institute for Pure and Applied Eschatology Lines: 46 In article <16495@s.ms.uky.edu> morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes: >... Why not start encouraging students to program with >"alternative" projects? For instance, wouldn't an "interactive timeline" >program have just as much validity as any History term paper? Wouldn't >a computer simulation of a Chemistry experiment but perhaps one or two> be acceptable in place of the experiment itself? It's not so much a question of the educational validity of a particular experience, but rather whether that experience really does the job. For example, the interactive timeline project is particularly valuable to get students thinking about historical processes, but they may well get bogged down in factual matters. (I'll come back to this point in a moment.) The chemistry simulation is also valuable, but isn't the same as really mucking about with test-tubes and bunsen burners. (Why? Because if you do the experiment for real, you are duplicating what the actual discoverer(s) of that principle did. People often try to come up with clever applications for computers in schools. As a computer scientist and a (former) high-school teacher, I can confidently say that this is putting the cart before the horse. First, we must try to determine what we're teaching and why, and only then determine what means we will use to achieve this goal. `How can we use the computer in our school?' is most definitely the wrong question. `What tools should we use to solve problem X?' is the right question. All of this leads to my claim that educators and educational technologists have very different goals. The technologist should be developing tools, and pushing the frontier of what can be done with a computer (or other technologies) in an educational setting; but it is the educator who must decide whether that tool is appropriate in a given problem. Word processing is a case in point: in fact, it was the English teachers who decided that WP was a good thing for students, not because it meant that the students don't have to spend time studying boring old Thomas Hardy instead, but because those teachers were able to see that WP, if used appropriately, helps the student to produce better writing. The onus is still on the teacher to ensure that the student is in fact using WP appropriately. -- \ Vincent Manis "There is no law that vulgarity and \ Department of Computer Science literary excellence cannot coexist." /\ University of British Columbia -- A. Trevor Hodge / \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394