Re: Computers

[jwerchan@lima.ohio-state.edu (James E. Werchan)]

hi folks,

this is making me think, and thinking can be such a nuisance sometimes..........

First, I've been trying to find Cindy Selfe's keynote speech on technology,
and i can't find it at the ncte web page.  am i not looking in the right place?

I wanted to read it before shooting my mouth off, because i remember it
being very pertinent to this thread.   but i can't find it, so here i go anyway:

I had a meeting yesterday with our assoc. dean, and matters of computers and
television came up, mostly in a Distance learning context, but also in a
general pedagogical context.  It seemed, in that discussion, that we were
assuming/expecting more and more students to be computer-literate, and were
building computerized teaching spaces willynilly.  but it seems like the
dividing line between "computer-literate" and "plain, garden-variety
paper/pencil literate" is getting thinner and dimmer.   But computer science
courses in basic PC use are not required.   And, thinking about our
predominantly blue-collar service area, I wonder if we're just creating more
and more mechanism to exclude undesirables.  Hell, literacy itself is a
mysterious enough beast for many of these folks; mechanizing literacy , when
the non-mechanical form is mysterious already, just seems like we're
creating a new gatekeeping mechanism, a new way to separate sheep from
goats, a new way to enlarge the have-not class.

So today, i read in USA Today that the director of the FCC cited a  big
federal study that said only 14% of predominantly-minority schools have the
infrastructure to enable using internetted computers for instruction, and
only 4% of rural schools are so wired.

Do you catch my drift here?  Computers might not be a god-send!  (And please
understand, I am no Luddite: I'm building my second home PC.)  

Or something.  i'm babbling again.

I sure wish I had that Selfe article.   She said it so well, and I promised
myself to reread it and now i can't find it.

later,
james
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                    Dr. James Werchan
(or maybe it's just someone who kinda looks a lot like him)
              Ohio State University at Lima
                    4240 Campus Drive
                     Reed Hall #135
                     Lima, OH 45804
                      419-995-8882
				
                    werchan.1@osu.edu	
								
  Come and visit: "http://www.lima.ohio-state.edu/~wacc"    
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