Technology, Education, & Discerning sounds

Subject: Technology,Education, &Discerning sounds
From: katlaughing
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 06:07 PM

Wasn't sure if this should be under BS or not, as one aspect could be music related and I think it is an important topic for discussion. If someone feels it should be moved, please do so.

I heard an interesting interview of an author in NPR, today and think it is well worth listening to; it will be available later today at www.npr.org.

The title was The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved by Todd Oppenheimer. Here's the info bit from NPR - An estimated $70 billion was spent to put computers in U.S. schools in the 1990s. But do computer-savvy students translate into better educated students? In his book The Flickering Mind, Todd Oppenheimer says technology in the classroom can actually get in the way of the learning process.


You can read portions of the book at www.amazon.com.

I can't find the exact quote, but one of the things which really stuck with me is that earlier in the 20th century, humans could recognize or distinguish between over 300,000 different sounds; then it dropped to 150,000; children, today, have lost even more and dropped to 100,000. THIS is important to music, obviously, and he noted that music programs etc. have lost out to the drive to include technology in every classroom.

From the bits I heard, he found that children are losing out on a bunch of very fundamental skills by using computers at the grade school level and he would advocate no computers in schools until the junior high stage,as I heard it. He said between schools which used the latest in computers and ones which researched topics the old-fashioned way, in the latter, children had a much greater depth understanding of their research subject, etc. than did their counterparts in the techno-advanced schools. The technos seemed to be more impressed and able to remember what they had learned of the techno-tools rather than the subjects they were to study using those tools.

He had much more to say, so I would urge anyone who is interested to listen to the audio at NPR.

Thanks,

kat

Subject: RE: Technology, Education, & Discerning sounds
From: Sorcha
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 07:32 PM

Interesting. I am a good researcher at heart, but I learned the 'hard' way...with hard copy. Now, I love the Internet, but I didn't get it until age 48. In my experience, kids exposed to computers/Internet too early get bored with it. All 4 (well, 2 ours, 2 added) are.

Subject: RE: Technology, Education, & Discerning sounds
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 08:11 PM

Wouldn't be the first time schoolrooms have been turned into laboratories and the "experiments" didn't produce the desired results.
There are fads amongst educators like there are fads about everything else.

I know any number of boomers who were taught to read using a method called "see and say" as opposed to a method based on phonics. At the time it was the latest and greatest. To this day not a single one of them can spell.

Subject: RE: Technology, Education, & Discerning sounds
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 05:58 AM

I'm a music teacher who has resisted the move to technology in my program, and I'm not being pushed by any administrators, thank goodness.
Computer technology has changed our world, it's true, but I agree that it has little or no place in the elementary school classroom.

And in the music classroom, the kids should be (and in my case, are) singing, dancing, playing a wide variety of acoustic classroom instruments, keeping the beat, and experiencing music to the fullest, not letting the electronic screen feed the info into just a limited portion of the brain.

Allison

Subject: RE: Technology, Education, & Discerning sounds
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 07:01 AM

In the early days of computers in the classroom, it made a magical difference to attention spans: kids who weren't interested in lessons suddenly took a lot of interest in the machines, and didn't mind (or didn't notice) they were being educated. I think that's still true to some extent, but now computers are commonplace the effect will be much smaller. I'd be interested in seeing some studies on this.

Steve

Subject: RE: Technology, Education, & Discerning sounds
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 08:32 AM

As a school Librarian of twenty years plus, I have seen computers erode the ability of students in many areas; research skills have become "press print", mental maths have gone out the window and numbers become disembodied from reality ; eg; using a calculator on a pc a student multiplied 10 by 20 qnd got 70,ooo as an answer. He accepted the answer as correct because the machine said it was correct. Writing and spelling seem to have suffered most and writing in long hand seems to have become impossible. The trouble with technology is that it has turned information into a consumer product and users of technology into "the ghost in the machine".
An interesting thread, glad you brought this to our attention. Thank You.

Subject: RE: Technology, Education, & Discerning sounds
From: mack/misophist
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 09:32 AM

The bit about discerning sounds is interesting. Loud music would seem to be the obvious culprit. How did they eliminate that?

Subject: RE: Technology, Education, & Discerning sounds
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 10:26 AM

Thanks for your comments and insights, everyone. GUest, that was one of Oppenheimer's contentions, that computers in the classroom are a consumer-oriented tool.

When employers were asked what they most wanted to see in a young person today it was excellent math, communication, writing and comprehension skills, along with being able to research well.

He also noted that someone from MIT whom he consulted said he could take a person who knows nothing about computers, teach him for a summer and they'd know them backwards and forwards,so to speak, with no problems; that is is not necessary for children to begin learning on computers when quite young. My daughter has known children of friends who were able to turn on a computer and negotiate to their fav. game, at two years old, before they've even learned to read!

Allison, I have to say one thing about tech in the music room. My sister, Mudcatter "bet," has keyboards which they use in a limited way. She still has all of the usual instruments, has them singing, clapping, dancing, etc., but in a controlled way it has been fun and educational for them to learn a little bit of how to compose their own tunes and notate them, listen to other folks come through on the computer with their music via the internet, and other useful music-related things. As far as I know, there's just one computer in her room, which is hers, so the kids' interaction with it is very limited. I think she's found a happy medium between her preferred way and the march of technology.:-)

Thanks,

kat