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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poverty kids get computers, rich kids get teachers, December 8, 2003
More elegantly, FORBES editor Stephen Kindel wrote (almost 20 years ago) that "it is the poor who will be chained to the computer; the rich will get teachers."Oppenheimer visits numerous classrooms -- described alertly and sensitively -- and talks to innumerable teachers, students, company leaders, and others, observing the realities of technology in the classroom. He reports striking findings of good research into learning, since education has, in fact, a "long, abundantly documented history." His book is exceptionally readable and timely. It also prompts concern, e.g. about young lawyers dependent on online indexes who "'don't know how to use the books.'" He especially prompts concern for the experience of millions of students who will pass through priceless years of capacity for learning while being cheated because of administrators, teachers and parents who have fallen for "e-lusions," as Oppenheimer calls them. At least two audiences should read this book: (1) Ed school faculty -- As professionals training the new generation of teachers, you owe it to them and to yourself to be conversant with this book. If you are overworked, I sympathize; but you need to know this book, and probably need to assign the book as required reading, or at least require passages from it. If the following terms are familiar to you, you'll recognize matters the author deals with: attention span collaborative learning criticial thinking constructivism courseware distance learning & university systems "guide at the side, not sage on the stage" information economy instructional technology worker laptops in all classrooms mastery learning multiple intelligences No Child Left Behindpartnerships with business portfolios project-based learning readability formulas Renaissance Learning (a company) service learning task forces for curriculum development & technology (2) Parents who are anxious that their kids need the school or the home to invest in state-of-the-art computers. Here are a few sentences I marked: "Among the greater ironies of the computer age is that information is cheap and accessible, and so no longer very valuable. What is valuable is what is done with it. And human imagination cannot be mechanized." "Technology promises an experience by which we don't have to do anything to make it happen." There is a need for deepened human relations "which are very different interactions than the faux relationships conducted over the Internet."
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