EducationQuotes

QUOTATION FROM AUTHORITY
COMPUTERS, TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION
Do You Give Good Quote?

PROBLEMS WITH THE EXISTING SYSTEM
TRADITIONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

"Yet when a teacher is admired, his example can certainly be contagious. We can often recognize the pupils of a particular teacher: they take over, for good, or ill, his stylistic mannerisms, his nervous habits, his habits of speech, as well as his intellectual and moral routines. THAT IMITATION REFLECTS THEIR ADMIRATION OF HIM. They do not, in the same way, take over than habits of teachers for whom their admiration is less, and the may forcibly react against the habits of teachers they dislike or despise. "
Roger Schank
Engines For Education

Education, to be effective, must be JUST IN TIME, not JUST IN CASE like it has been. In this age of information acceleration, we must teach people what they need to know now, not what they may or may not need sometime in the future. Anyone remember their high school calculus?

M. A. Scott
Futurist

"Students are turned off to learning in school. They worry about how well they are doing, about passing the next test, about pleasing the teacher, about getting along with the other kids. Rather than be excited by the classroom, they have learned to fear it."

Roger Schank (1995) Engines for Education, p. 1

"Those who succeed in today's school often do so by learning what the
rules are and slavishly following them . . . I attempt to get some
students to do some original thinking. The class focuses on discussing
questions about human thought processes. The students may say what they
want, they just have to do so in a rigorous manner. I say very little.
Many students are uncomfortable with this situation. They want to know
what I think and I refuse to tell them. They are reluctant to think for
themselves and are eager to tell me what they think I want to hear. My
failure to encourage this kind of behavior leave many of them confused
about what it means to succeed in this game. Academic success is what
drives them, and I take away the usual means."

Roger Schank( 1995) Engines for Education, 1995, p.8-9.

"Years ago, an American History teacher who lectured from one set of books and assigned readings in another sent a note to a colleague that said, 'The game is up. The students know where I am getting my information.' That is happening everywhere today, and the game is truly up. No teacher can compete with the power and the capability bility of the new
technology as a presenter of information. If teachers and schools try to sustain that role, they will be whipped."

School Reform in the Information Age Computers in Education) pp. 9

PROBLEMS WITH SCHOOLS APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTERS

"Their bold predictions were not wrong just premature. Computers are indeed
everywhere in American schools, but they are generally used as little more
than electronic workbooks for drill, or as places for kids to play games
during "free choice" periods. The promised revolution has failed to
materialize. But here and there, in cutting-edge schools around the nation,
there are glimmers of what could be."

Claudia Wallis Time Magazine

THE FORCES OF CHANGE AND EDUCATION

"Information Age education requires far fewer teachers to achieve the same or better results. A few thousand of the best teachers in the United States could replace many of the other 3 million. For example, today's 40,000 Algebra I teachers could be largely displaced by a handful of star teachers working nationally."

James Snider Education Wars, p p.27)

Goal-directed" and "just-in-time" learning are the new battle cries for many education reformists, a In the long run," what's most important about what we're doing is that it's the only real way to change the educational system. No matter how many people there are with how many good intentions, change in education is very difficult because there are so
many vested interests against it. But, happily, there is a kind of Trojan horse that exists in education, and that is a computer, and when you put something on a computer, people have some sense that it's magic. Which is fine, because in addition, it turns out that the computer offers one-on-one instruction that potentially could be magic, and they can see that the computer is interactive and will go in directions that kids want to go, and it helps eliminate the lockstep curriculum that requires that everybody has to be on the same page on the same day. Of course, the not-so-happy news is that a lot of people use those very same words to produce some really bad software, but what we're trying to
do is create fundamental change in the way people learn."

Roger Schank:End Run to the Goal Line
Educom 30:1, 1995http://www.educom.edu/web/pubs/review/reviewArticles/30114.html

"When one is overwhelmed, as everyone must be from time to time by a sense that school is too firmly implanted ever to change, it is helpful to contemplate the political changes across the globe that were until recently considered quite impossible."

Seymour Papert
The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer

"It is a reality of life that on virtually every issue there are multiple points of view. Yet, historically schools have tended to teach children to seek 'the right answer'. One important way the Multicultural education approach affirms cultural pluralism is by helping students appreciate multiple perspectives or interpretations. Try to help students recognize that there is more than one way to view an issue, more than one side to a
story, more than one 'right' cultural practice: and help them to discern the standpoints from which the other people's perspectives make sense. By doing this, you can help students develop flexible thinking, an expectation that other viewpoints exist, and an appreciation of the similarities and differences among people."

Carl A. Grant, Turning on Learning

In his book "The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer" Seymour Papert contrasts the rate of change in education and the medical profession. He imagines two groups of time travelers from a previous century, one a group of surgeons and the other a group of teachers who have journeyed to the present to see how much things have changed in their professions. He suggests that the surgeons would be somewhat bewildered and confused observing an operating room in a modern hospital. However, the school teachers would not have great difficulty adapting to the "modern" classroom and might quite easily take over the class"

Seymour Paper
The Children's' Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer.

"The two driving forces of customer-orientation and machine aided presentation are moving us inexorable toward restructuring our curriculum and teaching practices." The only unknown is timing."

            Peter Demming
            How We Learn
            In Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing

"The teaching function of the university will be reshaped by new expectations from students concerned about the return on their investment in education-from business leaders seeking graduates with practical competence and from politicians who want more efficient and effective education for the state's subsidies--and by new technologies and competition from private firms."

            Peter Demming
            How We Learn
            In Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing

"When the personal computer first entered the classroom three decades ago,
prophets of the information age foretold a marvelous revolution. The world's
storehouses of knowledge would become instantly available to young minds.
Captivating digital landscapes would bring history, geography and science
alive on a screen. Not since Gutenberg, they exulted, had there been such a
powerful new tool for learning."

Claudia Wallis, Time magazine

"Computers are not a threat to the teacher (although the role of the teacher must change when using them), but computers may threaten the chalkboard. Computer technologies allow professionals to share with students tools that we use daily. Further, as educators, we can provide guidance to help students develop meaningful ways to construct their own
knowledge, much as we do ourselves." (B & C, V3, 1995)

Permanence and Change: Finding A Balance

"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate
or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized."

Most of us wouldn't be doing what we're doing if it wasn't for some teacher....no teacher's life is ever wasted.
Patrick Sheane Duncan

"The successful transformation of student learning and accomplishment in
the next decades requires effectively bringing together three agendas- an
emerging consensus about learning and teaching, well-integrated uses of
technology, and restructuring. Each agenda alone presents possibilities
for educational redesign of a very powerful sort. Yet none has realized
or is likely to realize its potential in the absence of the other two."

Karen Sheingold
Computers in Education "School Reform in the Information Age" p. 9

"To be `against technology' makes no more sense than to be `against food.' We can't live without either. But to observe that it is dangerous to eat too much food, or to eat food that has no nutritional value, is not to be `anti food.' It is to suggest what may be the best uses of food. Technology education aims at students' learning about what technology
helps us to do and what it hinders us from doing; it is about how technology uses us, for good or ill, and about how it has used people in the past, for good or ill. It is about how technology creates new worlds, for good or ill."

Neil Postman, (1997) The End of Education

THE CREATION OF NEW LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

"Digital media and Internet communications will transform learning practices from the sequential classroom curriculum to nonlinear hyperleanring environments. A new kind of teacher will emerge-the teacher who is course manager and a coach rather than an information transmitted. "

                Peter Demming
                How We Learn
                In Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing

"The traditional linear classroom will give way to hyperlearning environments. Curricula will be restructured to account for new understanding of the distinctions between knowledge and information. And a new kind of teacher will emerge who is good at inspiring, motivating, managing, and coaching, and who is evaluated on the performance of their students."

            Peter Demming
            How We Learn
            In Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing

"The ideal student for the virtual classroom would be mature in terms of motivation about learning (seeking to learn as much as possible rather than do as little work as possible), informed about the characteristics of this mode of delivery, and the owners of a PC and modem at home in order to maximize their access."

Starr Roxanne Hiltz
The Virtual Classroom, p. 126

CREATING ACTIVE LEARNERS WHO CONSTRUCT THEIR OWN KNOWLEDGE

"Our students have access to unlimited information, and have the freedom to be creative and innovative with this information. The only limitations students have are their own imaginations: Education is most valued when students have the opportunity to learn for themselves."

Computers in Education "21st Century Classroom" p. 32.

According to the ancient Chinese proverb, people learn best when they
are involved in the learning experience. Interactive learning experiences
with computer motivate students by involving them in the active
construction of meaning, by empowering learners to make decisions, and by
providing knowledge of results for each decision or completion of a
learning task. This involvement makes learning meaningful and worth
remembering."
Jeri A. Levesque
"Using Computers to Motivate Learners," Social Studies and the Young Learner, p. 9-11.

"In the booths, all decisions are made by the students; it is their world.
In the virtual creative writing classroom students choose the environment
that will make them most comfortable. They can control what they will
hear, see, smell, feel, and taste, just as they can in all of the virtual
classrooms. Upon entering the booth the student is greeted verbally by
the Introspection Machine. The machine simply asks, 'How may I be of
service today?'"

Vance Viscusi
21st Century Classroom Computers in Education, p. 31

ONE-LINERS

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true, I'm half crazy over the love for you...."

HAL unplugged, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

THE NATURE OF NATURAL LEARNING

"The natural learning mechanisms children employ are not much more sophisticated than experimentation, and reflection with a small amount of instruction thrown in when they are in the mood to listen. They try new things and, when they fail to get what they want, they either try an alternative or are helped by an adult whom they then attempt to try and
copy."

Roger Schank (1996),Engines for Education, p. 2

"Natural learning involves the processes of pursuing goals which the learner finds personally meaningful, generating questions through experimentation and reflection, and developing answers. The essence of natural learning is the acquisition of knowledge and skills which are closely linked to the student's personal interest and goals. As the
authors suggest, 'without real inquiry that comes from student directed need to know, real learning can not take place'(p. 15).

Roger Schank
Engines For Education

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY

"We experience our own culture from the deepest levels toward the surface, so our own culture can be largely invisible to us. The deep structures are the origins of everything, and they exert tremendous power and give meaning to the other levels of cultural experience. When we look at another culture, we tend to see the surface first... we may fail to probe toward the deeper well-springs of meaning."

William Ayers,To Teach: the Journey of a Teacher

TECHNOLOGY AND THE POSSIBILITY OF "LEARNING IN CONTEXT."

"The World Wide Web's worth in education is not based on the wealth of information it holds. The same wealth of information can be found in traditional educational media. Rather, the Web transcends the traditional practices of connecting people with information to connect people with other people. The Web can facilitate and atmosphere in which voices, stories, reflections and interactions reach beyond those available in the
classroom, school, or community."

Paul Gorski
(http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/multicultural/net/comps/mcapproach.html)

ADAPTING TO TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

"I had no idea of what was actually going to occur. I had heard of electronic mail, but had never seen it in operation. Because of this , I felt rather bewildered and to a certain extent concerned. The very thought of such technology--computers, satellites, ect;..,was extremely daunting. I was also excited by the idea that I would have to be involved and get to know all about it."

"One important principle should reassure social studies teachers and make them eager to accept the new technology: 95% of knowing how to teach social studies with computers is knowing how to teach social studies. In other words, if you are already a good teacher you will find it extremely easy to incorporate the computer into your classroom provided you have access to computers and software and possess a basic knowledge of
computers.
            Edward L. Vockell "Computers and Social Studies Skills,"
            Social Education, November/December 1992.

THE PERILS OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

"How can we achieve both equity and excellence in education? Academic studies of school finance attempt to achieve "something that resembles equity but never reaches it: something close enough to equity to silence criticism by approximating justice, but far enough from equity to guarantee the benefits enjoined by privilege."

Jonathan Kozol
Savage Inequalities, p. 175

"On the surface, the future looks promising for those who say our youth can benefit from computers. The cost of powerful PC's and other information devices is dropping, and each week more schools are linked to the Internet. But the data shows that we're splintering into a country of information haves and have-nots, knowers and know-nots. Over the past
decade, kids in families in the top-third income bracket have become computer savvy and have plugged into the 'net. Kids in the middle third are starting to get on-line. The bottom third rarely sees a computer, let alone uses one . . . .Perhaps in 20 years, the marketplace will solve these inequities. Perhaps network computers as cheap as toasters will be
common in schools and homes. But until then, a lot of damage can be done."

Don Tapscott, "The Private Sector and the Digital Divide"
Computerworld

In Endangered Minds, Jane Healy wrote of an English Teacher who could readily tell which of her students' essays were conceived on a computer. "They don't link ideas," the teacher says. "They just write one thing, and then thy write another one, and they don't seem to see or develop the relationships between them." The problem, Healy argued is that the pizzazz of computerized schoolwork may hide these analytical gaps, which "won't
become apparent until [the student] can't organize herself around a homework assignment or a job that requires initiative. More commonplace activities, such as figuring out how to nail two boards together, organizing a game... may actually form a better basis for real-world intelligence."
Todd Oppenhiemer(1997, July) The Atlantic Monthly 280:1 pp 45-56

"To a certain extent curiosity comes naturally to the young, but its development depends upon a growing awareness of the power of well-ordered questions to expose secrets. The world of the known and the not yet known is bridged by wonderment. But wonderment happens largely in a situation where the child's world is separate from the adult world, where children must seek entry, through their questions, into the adult world. As media
merge the two worlds, as the tension created by secrets to be unraveled is diminished, the calculus of wonderment changes. Curiosity is replaced by cynicism or, even worse, arrogance. We are left with children who rely not on authoritative adults but on news from nowhere. We are left with children who are given answers to questions they never asked.
We are left, in short, without children."

Neil Postman
The Disappearance of Childhood

"Ultimately, the qualities of education that we care most about are not technological; they are matters of educational philosophy and practice and in turn depend on broader moral and political judgments. In thinking about education, we ought not to be preoccupied with computers at all, and if the technological transition is successful, we will not be. Because
of all they make possible, we must make computers part of education.
Then they should 'disappear'."

Paul Starr Computers in Education "Computing Our Way to Educational Reform" p.18

THE PROMISE OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

" Online courses emphasize those very skills in which many of our students are most lacking, reading and writing. Reading and comprehending a textbook is very difficult for many, and the online course intensifies this difficulty by requiring even more reading. Further, it eliminates the very means by which many students actually do their learning, through the spoken word. For this reason alone I believe that online courses are most
adaptable to advanced courses where students are experienced and more likely to come with better developed study skills."

Roxanne Hiltz, The Virtual Classroom, pp.108

"Electronic mail, for instance, offers an obvious stimulus for children's writing. They can correspond with contemporaries in faraway places with strange sounding names or subscribe to one of the internet's thousands of special-interest groups which embrace everything from the War of the Roses to the Stone Roses. It is definitely a great source of vanity publishing, offering wannabe authors a potential audience of some 30 million readers. Budding playwrights, novelists, or science fiction fiends can visit one of the
many writers' workshops where they can go to seek more help than even the best
motivated teacher would ever find time to give."

            Arnold Evans
             Dead Poets Society Meets Cyberspace.
             Times Educational Supplement.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE TEACHER

"Any plan would, of necessity, have its origin in a new way of educating
teachers, because it would require a refocusing of the purpose of
teaching. As things stand now, teachers are apt to think of themselves as
truth tellers who hope to extend the intelligence of students by revealing
to them, or having them discover, in convertible truths and enduring
ideas. I would suggest a different metaphor: teachers as error detectors
who hope to extend the intelligence of students by hoping them reduce the
mistakes in their knowledge and skills. In this way, if I may put it
crudely, teachers become less interested in making students smart, more
interested in making student less dumb.

John Passmore
The Philosophy of Teaching

Learning In Context/Learning By Doing

"This architecture [of education] aims to have students learn every
possible skill through learning by doing. Because the doing of the task is
what prepares the student for real life, it is important that the student
be able to actively engage in such tasks. Simulations of all kinds can be
built. But the designer must understand the situation well enough that the
simulations will be accurate portrayals."

Roger Schank
Engines in Education website

"Children learn by trying to do something, by failing, and by being told about or by copying some new behavior that has better results. This perspective is founded on the simple but central insight that children are trying to do something rather than to know something. In other words, they are learning by doing. Doing, and attempting to do, is at the heart
of children's' natural acquisition of knowledge."

Roger Schank
Engines For Education