Who Needs Computers in the Classroom? Not Students

Last month Adi Robertson wrote an award-worthy mini history of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) fiasco, which many of us have long forgotten about. Near the end, this quote stuck out: “What the project did not demonstrate is that kids could use computers for learning.”

It’s a point that needs to be reiterated as the never-ending push to load up the classroom with computers goes unabated.

OLPC is the brainchild of Seymour Papert, an early promoter of computers in the classroom and was soon co-opted by the MIT Media Lab and its extraordinary promoter/director Nick Negroponte, who wowed the World Economic Forum with a $100 prototype.

The whole raison d’etre, though, for the idea stems from the mistaken belief that computers in the hands of children or, for that matter, computers in the classroom are a good thing by definition.

Ironically, as OLPC emerged, a true revolution was taking place that was indeed putting computers in the hands of children around the world: the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. But none of this is education in the traditional sense. Even as a teaching machine utilizing specific learning software, the computer is second to a teacher guiding a student through a chapter in a book.

The computer can be—and is—used as a testing station. It does that well. Papers can be written on the computer. The student can learn keyboarding and some programming skills. It can expedite the submission of papers and speed up the writing process. But as a raw teaching tool, the computer has never been that good.

If there is nothing else available and you have one teacher per 200 students, then maybe it’s better than nothing. But the machines are expensive and need constant replacement. In short, the whole computers in the classroom idea was a Silicon Valley scam to dump computers and complex networking gear on some suckers with a government purse.

The money is better spent on sincere and hard-working teachers whose job it is to teach and can do a better job than a Windows 10 rig.

So what needs to be done? At this point in history, kids do need computer literacy skills and one classroom filled with machines where computer literacy and coding is taught. This lab would also be available to students to do homework and write papers if they have no equipment at home.

The architecture would be internet-centric, but not dependent. Students would have their homework as storage on personal USB thumb drives. Everyone would be taught how to use the technology to the point where, for example, they understood the difference between RAM, disk memory, flash memory, and ROM in its various forms. I am shocked how many people cannot understand these differences.

If you begin to research computers in the classroom, the search tends to bring up “the benefits of…” and article after article extols these benefits, all written on behalf of people selling computers. When you look at real research such as the OECD report on Students, Computers and Learning, the usefulness is quite sketchy and may even have a negative influence.

And to my way of thinking computers invite time-wasting especially when they are of the handheld phone variety. Just look at the zombies!

So let’s take this pull-quote used on the OLPC article seriously: “What the project did not demonstrate is that kids could use computers for learning.” Always keep that in mind.