Customer Reviews

Integrating Information Technology into Education (IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology)

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This collection of articles, while competently composed and edited, seems rather unimpressive when taken as a whole. Many of the contributors possess impressive credentials, and yet much of the writing is hortatory rather than descriptive. A few bemoan the proportional disparity of interest between the sexes regarding computers and IT (esp. Teague). Whether or not this is an immutable condition (and the evidence on brain physiology suggests this), it smacks of social engineering to alter curricula predominantly on this basis. The more impressive papers were--guess what?--written by the Japanese and Germans. Leave it to a Japanese teacher (Kobayashi) to describe pedagogy of teaching eigenvectors to high school students.

The implicit conceit centers around use of computers for teaching, rather than as an administrative tool. Having to stare at a computer terminal all day, I am skeptical of its efficacy in imparting new subject matter to young charges, rather than supplementing databases by more sedentary personnel. Even five years after the book is published, software and operating systems remain clumsy, slow and unreliable for ubiquitous computer programs. Extolling the virtues of an undeveloped methodology strikes me as faddish and counterproductive. To learn look-and-feel of current GUI formats is a waste of time for kids--these will likely be replaced long before they enter the workforce. Better that they learn to read, write and arithmetically compute than on obsolescent IT. Thus as a non-academician, I find the theme of this book to be mildly objectionable. Perhaps my assessment is unfair, but c'est la vie.