Talk:David Moursund Editorials





Comment by David Moursund 3/14/09
The editorials I wrote for the Oregon Computing Teacher, The Computing Teacher, and Learning and Leading with Technology represent a certain historical perspective colored by my (mainly optimistic) view of how computer technology would help to improve our educational system.

For some reason, I am reminded of the following quotation:


 * "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." (Chinese proverb)

This fits relatively well with the history of computers in precollege education. Many computer in education pioneers set goals of teaching students to make effective use of computers. They focused on creativity, teaching programming, and problem solving. Many other people set the goal of making computers available to students.

It turns out it is much easier to provide computer services to people than it is to teach them how to make relatively "deep" and effective use in the tools. The current worldwide yearly production of cell phones that contain a quite powerful computer, can connect to the Internet, can take pictures, can do text messaging, and so on is now about one per six people. Add to this yearly production of well over 200 million microcomputers, a large number of quite powerful calculators, a huge number of very powerful computer game devices, GPS systems, and so on and it is easy to see that we have been quite successful in the "giving" part of the computer picture.

What we have not been able to do is to significantly improve the quality of education that most students are receiving.