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From: gilbert@hci.hw.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.edu,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Becoming CAI literate
Message-ID: <173@glenlivet.hci.hw.ac.uk>
Date: 20 Feb 88 11:52:47 GMT
References: <776@zippy.eecs.umich.edu> <3316@killer.UUCP>
Reply-To: gilbert@hci.hw.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Scottish HCI Centre
Lines: 28

In article <3316@killer.UUCP> elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) writes:
>
>After fairly rigorous research last fall in the major education journals, I
>came to a number of conclusions. First, teachers generally don't know what
>computers are or can do... 
>a teacher who didn't know the difference between a terminal program and a
>modem. I got an even bigger laugh out of Education Digest actually printing
>the hair-brained article! (wherein the teacher discovers how to dump text from
>one Commodore 64 computer in his school, to another computer at another school)

How about some rigorous research in the history of technology difusion?
Tools and techniques in the agrarian revolution could take years to
travel a few miles and decades to pass between regions.  Things are
different now, but improved communications don't have an automatic
benefit, especially in the contemporary information explosion.

The teachers' ignorance, and the enthusiasm for sharing banal-to-some
discoveries is nothing to laugh at.  Ignorance and lack of
sophistication is rarely voluntary, especially amongst people whose
access to information and time for accessing it is limited.

Net users are quite priveleged with the speed with which their ignorance
is corrected, although the ignorant may resist the benefit at times :-)
We are in a minority with regard to this privelege.
-- 
Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Heriot-Watt University, Chambers St.,
Edinburgh, EH1 1HX.  JANET:  gilbert@uk.ac.hw.hci   
ARPA: gilbert%hci.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk UUCP: ..{backbone}!mcvax!ukc!hci!gilbert