Thank you for the citations on computers, Catherine (Shreves). I'm also glad to hear the district is trying to figure out its finances. I urge the board to keep on that one. The studies, meanwhile, are what I was looking for. It' s taken me a while to read some of them, and I'm not done.
The first thing I was struck by is that this list of citations from MPS computer department contains a very high number of publications that aren't studies. These include reports on prizes presented to school districts for using computers and case studies of uses of computers. A surprisingly large number of the actual studies are about how teachers' and students' attitudes towards computers have improved after computer introduction. I've seen about three studies so far, none peer reviewed, that seem to indicate improvements in standardized test scores, but none of these is specifically for elementary school. One paper by B.C. Decker, (not peer reviewed) showed that computer programs improved elementary school children's spelling scores but had no effect on their reading ability. Two sponsors of reports I recognized were Apple Computer and the Software Publishers' Association. I think the board needs to take into account when considering the use of computers in elementary school that there is a lot of hype around this issue. Apple Computer owes its survival to the school market. Computer software companies stand to gain much by selling more to us. These industries have helped shape federal and state policies about the use of computers in schools. The policy that is being imposed everywhere is "integration across the curriculum." This is supposed to avoid making computers an end in themselves, but it seems to fail at that. If the Decker paper indicates anything, computers can help little kids with specific narrow skill areas, using software geared specifically toward that skill. Even if computers do that better than anything else, which hasn't been demonstrated, it does not make good policy to schedule computer time for little kids and "integrate across the curriculum." What our elementary school kids seem to do during computer time is a lot of typing, drawing with a mouse, selecting clip art, and using spreadsheets. Nobody seems to have investigated whether these popular activities do anything for young children's achievement. The school board needs to consider the possible down sides of using computers with the very young. One popular argument for computers is that kids like them. This is also true of television, which was the last technological advance that was supposed to transform education. Teachers do use a lot of enjoyable activities with children, but setting the expectation that every activity for young children be as fun as a computer game is counterproductive in the long run. Learning is not all fun. It involves a certain amount of hard work. Capitalizing on the potent motivating effects of achievement, in my opinion, is better preparation for future learning that all the bells and whistles that computers can provide to little kids. Some other concerns: I've already talked about the siphoning of resources, time, volunteer effort and attention away from books and reading, art/music. Computers compete with physical activity, a concern for our increasingly obese population. The district's endorsement of computers for little kids carries a lot of influence with young children's parents, who feel pressured to buy computers for little kids. (This is why computers are aggressively marketed to elementary schools.) If you first introduce computers in middle school (except for special needs), my experience says there will be absolutely no reduction in the skill level that kids will achieve with computers. I urge you not to buy into the industry line that putting a kid on the Internet or on the computer will somehow help them skip childhood. Kids still have learn how to read, how to do math, and how to work with other people. We can't change little kids' need to learn the basics in the concrete, three-dimensional way that their minds and bodies work. That said, and after looking at some of the research out there, I think the district needs better information. I think computers in elementary school need to stand up to real scrutiny, free of hype. I am wondering why academics are not clamoring to study the Minneapolis school district. It's big; it's urban; it's got extraordinary public support. What we're doing with computers in the elementary schools seems to be an experiment, but nobody is taking data. Let me propose a study: Half the district continues to use computers with the little kids, with all of the hype computers currently get. The other half, the control group, takes part in something like "Gel Pens, Clay and Three-Dimensional Objects: The Revolutionary Education Program of Tomorrow." Kids are assigned randomly. We make a big deal of it. The groups compete. We take data. Maybe we could raise everybody's achievement. At the very least, we could generate some excitement around the schools. Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Heather Martens Kingfield _______________________________________ 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
