Automating the Past or the Future

UNFORTUNATELY, many of today’s applications of technology simply automate the past. One of the best examples is Florida’s extensive database of test questions for various subjects in grades 6-12. Teachers are supposed to use a modem, communications software, and the Florida Information Resource Network to gain access to the database just to get a few multiple-choice questions for their next test. What a waste. Another example of an application of technology that automates the past is the extensive use of computers to maintain automated grade books. Of course, keeping a grade book is essential, but few programs that automate the grade book allow for the entry of anything other than numerical data — which should account for only some portion of a final grade. Observations by the teacher, samples of student work, written progress reports, students’ self-assessments, and teacher judgments just don’t fit into the neat little rows and columns of most such programs. Besides, at the end of a term, when the teacher can recall numeric grades but cannot recall observational or anecdotal data, sure enough the numbers are deified. To its credit, the state department of education in Florida is sponsoring a project to see if it is feasible for teachers to use “personal digital assistants” (Apple’s Newton, Sharp’s Wizard, etc.) as they teach to record and track anecdotal data. A third example of an application that merely automates past practice at the secondary level is student use of word processors to write term papers. How, pray tell, could I be against term papers? First, there are a lot more interesting things for students to write than term papers. Haiku poetry, letters, melodramas, editorials, biographies, autobiographies, advertisements, and dozens of other writing projects make good use of the language. Second, a text-only term paper does not fully exploit the technology. To make good use of today’s technology, students should create graphic art, produce television programs, desk-top publish periodicals — a class newspaper, for example — with drawings and photographs, and create video term papers using such resources as The Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century.(1) The Video Encyclopedia is a one-of-a-kind collection of about 2,500 video clips documenting history as it was made over the last 100 years or so. The collection is free of commentary, which makes it original source material for the social sciences. The collection comes with printed references, a “shot list” (identifying people and settings), and an extensive computer program that makes locating historically significant people, places, and events easy. Using this spectacular resource, students can create their own historically accurate video documentaries. The Video Encyclopedia is expensive — about the cost of a new set of band or football uniforms — but an entire secondary school can use the resource. At the elementary level, the extensive use of “skill and drill” or, if you prefer, “drill and kill” software is a prime example of automating the past. In the last few years the emphasis has shifted from “teaching” reading to language “learning.” The best elementary teachers I know now talk of “a literature-based curriculum,” “language-experience activities,” “oral language development,” “creative writing,” “storytelling,” and so on. Yet many of the computer programs I find in use in the elementary school do mundane — and perhaps even counterproductive — things, including drilling students on vowels, spelling, adjectives, and so on. My least favorite automate-the-past program is one that drills students on the state capitals. (Here is a test of the value of such activities: ask any upper-elementary school student who knows his or her state capitals what a state capital is and why someone might want or need to go there.) In my judgment any $30 drill-and-practice program automates the past. Unfortunately, a lot of big expensive programs do likewise, but that topic will have to wait for a future column.