Summary Classrooms, With and Without Computers essays

Summary Classrooms, With and Without Computers essays Over the past couple of decades computers have grown to play a very important part in our everyday lives. One important area where computers are beginning to take control is in education. The article, On Classrooms, With and Without Computers, by Stoll C. (1995), comments on how the increasing use of computers and similar technologies, like the internet, in schools around the world is actually changing education for worse, not for better. The article discusses disadvantages associated with introducing computers into education systems and also examines how traditional teaching methods have a far greater and more positive effect on a students learning. The article notes the extremely high costs associated with installing, maintaining and upgrading computers which, as a result, drain funds from solving other problems such as overcrowded classrooms and unqualified teachers. The author also examines how increasing the usage of computers in schools results in many students losing motivation and becoming uncommitted since there isnt an authoritative figure, such as a teacher, to punish them when they veer off from the task at hand. The article also comments on the way computers teach students. It examines how computers provide students with solutions rather than teaching them how to devise their own solutions and how computers act as a barrier to the one on one teaching experience which can only be offered by teachers. Using computers, students cant discuss problems they have with certain topics. Furthermore computers cant identify a students weaknesses and cant explain in further detail concepts which the student cant grasp. Other disadvantages using computer based teaching methods according to the article include the lack of control in accessing undesirable material such as pornographic websites, the fact that computers usually only supply basic simplistic answers and the idea that ...