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High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian is literally about stopping computer education.

• mlyle 3y ago
  And as I've discussed with you elsewhere-- I feel like most of that criticism is spot on. Computers in education are great for: * Education on how to use computing or programming (... though when I teach these subjects, I do a whole lot of it offline) * Independent research (though you'd better stand at the back of the classroom and monitor what's going on very closely... and do this sparingly). * Occasional rapid feedback through a Kahoot about how much your class understands a given set of subject matter. * Letting students write and revise a paper quickly now and then * Occasional individualized practice through something like Khan. On the other hand, they're greatly overused even today. Instructors do things like: * Use a Kahoot every class to convey key learning material, which results in a disorganized, flash-card experience. * Perform enough of the work on computers that plagiarism and academic integrity become a huge concern. * Displace valuable classroom practice performing labs or doing arithmetic with inferior virtual eqiuvalents. * Allow students (without any type of learning or physical disability which would necessitate this) to take notes online, which under the best of circumstances is demonstrably inferior to paper note-taking for retention and also invites massive amounts of abuse. I feel like the case was similar in the 1990s: there was little evidence of benefit. There was less of the online abuse of computing, but there was still a lot of abuse and misuse.