CAN COMPUTERS FREE TEACHERS TO TEACH MORE CREATIVELY?

Nicholas Meier:

At a party of a friend recently I got into a discussion with someone about education and the use of computer technology. The person I was conversing with suggested that educational software could and should be developed to relieve teachers of the technical aspects of teaching. Why should each teacher have to figure out how to teach reading or arithmetic when the best minds could solve that problem and create a computer program to teach the children these basic skills? Having software relieve teachers of this technical aspect of teaching, he argued, would free teachers to do the work that needed human interaction teaching critical and creative thinking. This suggestion makes me uncomfortable.
We agree that helping students to learn to use their minds well, in critical and creative ways, is given far too little attention in the large majority of classrooms. This is especially true in classrooms serving low-income and minority students. Because these students generally do less well on standardized tests, the schools that serve them are pressured to focus on raising those test scores.

One thought on “CAN COMPUTERS FREE TEACHERS TO TEACH MORE CREATIVELY?”

  1. Having worked for several leading education publishers, and more recently in the software end of education, I have worked with a growing number of schools that recognize that technology can help teachers reach many more children. For most schools, as budgets have gotten cut, staff cuts have created student/teacher ratios of one to twenty or larger, resulting in a reduction of one-to-one teaching time.
    With increasingly integrated schools, higher levels of poor families, and many more ESL/ELL students attending schools in WI, it will become more and more difficult to help our children become proficient in the basic skills they will need to succeed educationally and in the world of work.
    Using technology, students can spend quality one-to-one time learning those skills that are often lost in their classroom interaction due to lack of staffing.
    As our digital native children (even in low SES homes many have cellphones) enter our schools, we need to recognize ways to reach them more effectively than we have in the past.
    Software based programs can motivate children through learning tasks that are difficult to teach by offering alternative methods that children enjoy. Software can also keep track of individual progress–helping many students reach proficiency who would have fallen through the cracks. If school districts evaluate return on investment as a part of their rationale for methodologies being employed in classrooms, it should become evident that technology is not an expense–but rather an asset that can positively impact the bottom line in education–proficient and happy children (and parents).

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