Article Assessment-1

Megan Fitzpatrick    mfitzpatrick@sisd.org   February 4, 2009

The Overdominance of Computers  by Lowell Monke

Overview of the Article

Monke argues the common assumption that students will not be prepared for the 21st century unless they have access to computers in school.  He states  "preparation does not necessarily warrant early participation".  Educational focus should be on Inner Resources.  Computer use should be limited in elementary and increased just before graduation.  Class time should primarily be spent compensating students for the screen time they have outside of school with critical thinking skills.  The logic he implements is the analogy of driving a car.  We let 3rd graders drive cars because they are necessary for survival in the 21st century, there for we shouldn't let students drive a computer, an equally powerful technology, until they are capable of making informed emotional and technical decisions.

Reference Points

• Inner Resources include:  Self discipline, Moral Judgement, Empathy
• Unless students have knowledge of the physical world and community relationships, they are unable to infuse depth and meaning to their work
• The more students have access to computers the lower their tests scores (based on one international test)
• screen time needs to be compensated with real time
• Students don't lack technical skills, they need more qualities like parental care, community support, teacher competency, hope, compassion, enthusiasm
• students need to learn how to deal with the mess of technology's waste: nuclear, automobiles, antibiotics, and decisions related with technology like genetic engineering
• Do Jut-In-Time instruction before graduation
• Elementary school tools should be simple

Reflection and Significance

It would be interesting to title the units in my science and technology classes as empathy, discipline, moral judgement and use the content of cellular respiration, energy flow in ecosystems, and spreadsheets as ways to support these important "Inner Resources". Monke seems to consider all computers to be part of a network, which is often the case and is a real source of danger for students and computer use.  In our elementary classes, I see computers being used for maybe 30 minutes a few times a week.  These computers are only used for specific software. I agree that undirected computer use can be abused by students . I spend hours a week monitoring students explicitly and anonymously and sometimes disciplining them. The car analogy has its obvious weakness, we don't let young students drive but they do ride with us. Likewise we need to be guides of appropriate computer behavior and technique to students.