[Edu-sig] re: A Fact on the Ground

[Kirby Urner]

Here's a supportive letter I got after I posted some of my 
stuff in newsgroups (name of sender withheld)...

===========================
on 12/11/00 12:13 PM, Kirby Urner at urner@alumni.Princeton.EDU wrote:

> I'm a big fan of the computer-at-your-elbow approach to
> studying math concepts, and am frustrated that classroom
> teachers seem stuck on an evolutionary plateau with graphing
> calculators.  Calculators are cool, but a lot of school
> districts have pumped big bucks into computers, and now
> feel ripped off because Johnny only uses them to run CDROM
> page-turner software or play games, and Sally just wants
> to download MP3s.
> 
> But that's a failure of the curriculum, not the technology.

Boy, did you strike a nerve with this! My daughter attends a 
public school with beautiful Macintosh teaching labs, several 
computers in every classroom, and either 100MB Ethernet or 
wireless networks covering the school. However, most of what 
gets done on the computers is called "multimedia" and I was 
required to buy my daughter a graphing calculator this year 
for precalculus, even though we have much more capable "graphing
calculators and other graphics programs on the computers. None 
of the math curriculum uses the computers in any meaningful 
way even though the computer programming curriculum (Basic 
followed by C++) is controlled by the math department.

OK, I'm calm now. Back to work. Keep up the good fight.

[XXXXXX]
Univ. of Pittsburgh