Education and Tech: Furture Visions

In the Article by Larry Cuban at Stanford University titled Appendix E Public School Teachers Using Machines in the Next Decade, he talked about three plausible "futures" of teachers using computers, CD-ROMS, modems, and other telecommunications in their classrooms.

I choose to write about "The spread of computers in schools: confusion over access, use, and innovation. Use of computers as we know have spread through the years. In 1981, according to his article on average there were 125 students per computer; in 1991, there were 18 people per computers. This article was written in 1994, so some of the information is very outdated. Now in schools with computer labs, there are 1 computer per person in the lab. Now with the development of Lap tops and school purchasing them, it will be easier for students to use computers in their classrooms.

His article stated that for those individual students who use computers, they spend on average a little more than one hour a week (or 4 percent of all institutional time) on the computers. For the students who do use the computers it varies greatly on what they might do. I noticed in the school that I was in, the students did computer lab one day a week, probably an hour, where they played educational games or they did research for a report they were doing. Of course I only observed a third grade class.

The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) study concluded that students from high-income families have far more access to computers in schools than peers from low-income famies. Black students use computers in schools less than white, especiall in elementary schools. Pupils whose native language is not English have even less access to computers. Finally, low-achieving students are less likely to use machines to enhance reasoning and problem solving and more likely to use them for drill and practice.

I feel that if this article was written in 2007 that this assessment would be different. Computers can be adjusted to be in Spanish, French etc, so even if someone is not speaking English, they would be able to write a report or even get into a program that changed English into Spanish. I would like to think that schools have progressed to the place that they had more computers for the students to use. This of course will be the responsibilty of us future teachers to help make this possible.