Temecula Tech

I remember Cliff Stoll when he was just the hyper guy at BMUG meetings in Berkeley. Since he became an authority on the proper role of technology in schools, I’ve found his commentaries to be a little repetitive. In yesterday’s LA Times, his op-ed piece — “Computers in class are lousy teachers” — some good points are mixed in with others which don’t match my own observations. “The computer changes the ecology of the classroom. Attention is diverted away from the teacher and toward the magic screen. Electronic media are emphasized at the expense of the written word.” I don’t know which classrooms Cliff has been visiting, but in my experience most of them have so few computers that there is no way that computer screens are the center of attention. And I don’t think he’s writing his opinions using a quill pen, so is it reasonable to complain that new media are gaining in use, even in schools? Later, he says that “computers aren’t the center of most jobs; why should they be central to our schools?” Here again, this is a reasonable point, coming after he emphasizes the need for interpersonal skills rather than programming skills, but most schools I’ve been in don’t make the computer anywhere near a focal point.

Cliff concludes by saying that “what was once an exciting novelty in education has become a distraction from learning,” which doesn’t match my observations in schools. In fact, I think the opposite is true — in the early days of computers in schools, the technology was a distraction most of the time. At this point, when it’s used successfully, it fits in to the curriculum and isn’t the object of study.