I feel like I didn’t give enough of my opinion about Stoll. I appreciate the book…I also appreciate Papert’s book. I just got aggravated about how different the two authors were. I know we need to look at both angles it just caught me off guard.
So I decided to include some quotes from the book that I found profound…good or bad.
pg 38 Stoll talks about the use of laptops in the classroom and how advocates feel they move at a quicker pace and can be updated quicker. Problem is, websites like Wikipedia have been found to have innacurate content. And if you are talking about a subject such as history we teach the same things to our kids year after year just throwing in any new historical events.
pg 45 Stoll talks about how when kids just ‘click’ on the right icon they don’t use critical thinking skills. He argues that their choices happen on a screen not to them directly.
pg 58 One of the more compelling arguments, Stoll suggests that readers of multimedia don’t dig for meaning they just focus on the pretty pictures on a web page. I have to agree I sometimes fall into this category. I usually read what has the most interesting headline or the most eye catching picture.
Stoll also mentions the need for balance when using computers for learning. He suggests that we don’t allow children to watch TV at school for fear that they don’t have a TV at home so why the urgency to allow computer use at school. I think that kids these days will be comfortable with computers whether they have one at home or not. They are just growing up in a different culture than we did. Stoll suggests that there may not be any real balance between use and non-use. I think we have to make an attempt at any cost.
pg 76 Calculating against calculators. My most favorite section of the book. I have always felt that the use of calculators offered only a crutch to the student. I remember, in 3rd grade, having to stand in front of the class everyday and recite the multiplication table. I never forgot them. Kids these days do not know their times tables. I think that calculator use should be reserved for more complicated math such as calculus and trigonometry. There is no real educational value in knowing which buttons to push on a calculator and having no idea what is happening inside to get the right answer. I am constantly telling students to show their work so I can see where they went wrong. I am a firm believer that getting the right answer is always what is important. Learning the steps is where the real work is.
pg 143 Stoll mentions that ‘wisdom and knowledge….are not the same as information’. I would have to agree. We take in endless amounts of information in a day, this doesn’t mean we have become knowledgeable about anything. He also states that power depends on social skills and suggests that too much time spent using a computer leads to and inability to get along with others. He says ‘ Internet = Loners’. I agree with that statement too. Although a person may be interacting with other people online they are still doing that in a quiet place probably alone. I think we need to social interaction that requires more spontaneous, face-tot-face comments. Sometimes when people are communicating through a computer they pretend to be something else. This becomes more difficult in person.
