I can shed no light on Ms. Marten's request for research supporting the validity of the use of computers in our school system, but I can offer one personal example of a use that I questioned. When I was in teacher training, I spent 10 weeks in a kindergarten class in a MPS elementary school with a fairly high level of poverty. And every day we hauled those kids to a brand spanking new Mac lab for what was supposed to be 15 minutes of "customized" computer time (that is, the pre-reading/reading program that they worked on could be calibrated to their individual level of skill) What with the effort it took to get these squirrely little kids all lined up and ready to go, passing through the hallways to a location that was on the other side of the school, getting them in the lab and signed on (each had their own unique sign-on access code that involved typing their name and some numbers - with zero keyboard skills this took a while) and then needing to stop to get them organized to move back to the class room - I figure we spend about a half hour to get them 10 minutes of computer time. I always thought that this half hour could be better spent staying in the classroom and working on reading in a more low tech fashion. I would think that keyboarding skills and computer time is a much better investment for older kids, but kindergarteners and first graders I would question.
Sue Herridge Lynnhurst _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
