[Edu-sig] gimme more computers (rant)

[Christian Mascher]

Hi Laura,

>
> Children all over Sweden are getting ipads, ruggardized from the school
> districts.  They are 240 x 170 mm, and apple has done a very good job of
> convincing education officials that this is where the 'computer literacy'
> money should be spent.

I think the public attitude to computers and education (all over the 
world) is crazy.

You don't _need_ computers for education. Computers are extremely 
overrated concerning school education in my personal view.

It is useful to have some "computer literacy", but compared with 
literacy itself: many orders of magnitude difference in usefulness, so 
actually the word 'computer literacy' is an exaggeration in itself.

In Germany they just published a study, showing that we are "far behind" 
Canada and many other OECD-states regarding computer-use in schools. No 
journalist even questioned the general assumption that this is 
necessarily a bad thing the public should get hysterical about. I also 
haven't heard about German engineers being lo-tech because they weren't 
allowed to look up everything in wikipedia when they went to school.

But the marketing of the Big Money Firms in IT-industry will pay off 
some time. Hey, lets burn lots of money for more computers in school - 
sounds GREAT.

Crazy...

Christian