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Q&A: Does Every Classroom Need a Computer? The University of Texas' Gary Chapman talks about the limits of technology as a teaching tool One of the least controversial ideas in education reform is that there should be a computer in every classroom, right? Some educators are questioning that philosophy. Chief among them is Gary Chapman, director of the 21st Century Project at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Staff Writer Sam Jaffe spoke with Chapman on July 6 about his views on where silicon fits into the curriculum. Q: The Clinton administration has been pushing the concept of one computer in every classroom. Is it a good idea? A: No. I think that the goal of getting a computer into every classroom has no rational basis. It's more a numbers game so that federal education authorities can report progress toward the goal, rather than progress toward the improvement of education. As far as getting a computer for every child, I think that's excessive and inadvisable. Q: Why is it inadvisable? Are computers not good teaching tools? A: It's an over-emphasis on the technology and the costs outweigh the benefits. Q: Have researchers come to any conclusions about the efficacy of computers in classrooms? A: There have been lots and lots of studies. The problem with the studies is that they all suffer from a phenomenon in social sciences called the Hawthorne effect. It's named after a town called Hawthorne, Ind., where a group of power-plant workers were being studied and they showed marked improvement just because they were being studied. The Hawthorne effect says that when a group of people is being studied, the most influential factor for any improvement in their activity is the attention they are given by the people who are doing the study. Just the fact that in all studies involving kids and computers you have the Hawthorne effect makes it difficult to separate the positive effects of giving kids computers from the positive effects of giving kids more attention. Various studies show that kids improve their learning using other techniques, without computers. Some schools have demonstrated high performance in learning with a de-emphasis on computers. We really don't know whether computers improve learning or not. I wouldn't say we'll never know, but the factors going into learning are so complex and interrelated that it's hard to determine.
A: Teacher training is essential, but currently undervalued and under-budgeted. Another important feature that is undervalued is technical support for teachers and kids. Most schools can't afford technical support. That problem is getting worse because technical-support people are in such high demand in the private sector they can get very high salaries and school districts have trouble keeping up. Q: Does technology work better in schools where parents have higher income and have more education? A: What really makes the difference are high-quality teachers, small class size, and parental engagement. If you want to have kids learn computers, then you need good teachers and a room full of computers. But if you're simply trying to get kids to learn traditional subjects, there's no indication that computers really make a big difference. We know that educational outcomes have declined over the last 30 years. One computer in every classroom doesn't add a whole lot of value to the curriculum. There are too many kids to share it and it's difficult for the teacher to build lesson plans around one computer. It's a matter of educational philosophy. Are we trying to teach kids how to use computers or are we trying to get them to learn more basic subjects? Q: PCs have only been with us for the last 25 years. Don't you think educational software will improve dramatically and make technology more useful in the classroom? A: There are some software packages that seem to help in some specific subjects, such as math or science. We hope that they will improve over time. There's also the problem that computers engender a style of learning that is tied to technology. The way computers work, you have to program into the computer some assumptions that create boundaries for learning and it's rare that a teacher is able to discern what those boundaries are. The kids learn as much as possible within the assumptions of the software, which may be adequate or may be subtly inadequate. Is that the kind of learning that we want to accept? Q: Is hooking up every school to the Internet a good idea? A: It depends on how the Internet is used. There's a lot of junk on the Internet, including misinformation and inaccurate information. If it's used in a way that gets students to valuable information, then I can't see any objection to it. But the training we need for the teachers and the students to evaluate that information is, so far, inadequate. Q: Is the Internet a good teaching tool today? Will it ever be? A: It has to be combined with conventional approaches to teaching critical thinking. Among my students, who are graduate students, I have frequent difficulties in getting them to look at information from the Internet with a critical eye. They tend not to be skeptical and to take everything at face value. The Internet doesn't have any inherent advantage over other kinds of published material -- other than the fact that it's more voluminous. Even the volume of the information on the Internet is over-rated. The material that's available on the Internet is nowhere near as thorough and as well-organized as a good reference library. If I had the choice of my graduate students being experts on the Internet or being experts at using a good university library, I'd choose the latter. Hopefully they'll be experts at using both.
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