n539  2318  22 Jan 83
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    First of two
    By Muriel Cohen
    (c) 1983 Boston Globe (Field News Service)
    From kindergarten through graduate school, today's students are
flocking to computer keyboards and flickering screens like iron
filings pulled to a magnet.
    But the instant attraction of the machines for youngsters around the
country is causing profound uncertainty and confusion among teachers,
administrators and school boards.
    Already it is becoming apparent to many observers that computers are
threatening to alter the basic relationship between students and
teachers as the youngsters teach themselves to explore the
possibilities intrinsic to the new technology.
    So revolutionary is the potential impact of computers as learning
tools that their growing use in classrooms has been compared to the
spread of reading and writing 5,000 years ago.
    Are computers the black magic of the 20th century? What explains
their power to enchant and seduce students in ways that books,
pencils and blackboards have not been able to do?
    Teachers, academics, parents, computer experts and students
themselves can only speculate on the reasons; there simply has not
been enough time for extensive research on this infant phenomenon.
    But there is no doubt computers will be playing an increasing role
in the education of youngsters - both formally and informally - for a
number of reasons:
    - Not only do most youngsters develop immediate rapport with the
computer, but they do so with greater aptitude and ease than their
teachers, both adults and students agree.
    - Furthermore, they are free to explore the mysteries of the
keyboard, long before formal training, without fear of failure and
privately without the judgmental eyes of the teacher.
    - And both students and observers agree that the computer gives the
child a degree of active control over the learning process that does
not exist in the traditional teacher-student relationship.
    At the same time, the enthusiasm with which youngsters are welcoming
classroom computers is creating a great deal of uncertainty: Many
teachers, untrained in the use and potential of computers, feel
threatened and confused by the machines. The availability of
computers is also raising questions among educators about how they
should be integrated into curricula.
    The question is critical for more than 250 school systems in
Massachusetts that are using main frame, micro or minicomputers, but
Susan Foote of the state Department of Education said there is no
data on the precise number of machines in each school.
    A survey by the National Center for Educational Statistics of the
country's 82,000 schools shows that 31,000 microcomputers were in use
in 1980 and there are 146,000 in classrooms today. The use of
terminals went up in a more gradual rise, from 22,000 in 1980 to
27,000 this year.
    In the same three-year period the number of schools equipped with
small computers or with terminals rose from 29,000 to 36,000.
    Educators must decide how much time will be allotted for the
unsupervised use of computers, which allows for exploration,
self-direction and self-discipline by children - and how much should
be allotted to teacher-directed instruction tied to specific subject
matter.
    Academics are divided as to whether the use of computers should be
limited to reinforcement of traditionally taught material or whether
the unstructured use of computers can help children develop a number
of skills, including analytical thinking, which may not be nurtured
by using the machines to teach specific subject matter.
    Some of this confusion is illustrated in the Brookline, Mass.,
school system, long regarded as an academic pioneer, where school
librarians have been put in charge of computer education. Initially
put in charge of the machines and the software, the librarians this
year are teaching programming and, by their own admission, having a
hard time keeping one step ahead of even elementary-school students.
    A citizens' committee in that town is raising questions which are
typical of those being asked around the country: How can the
classroom teacher keep up with students? Should all children have
equal access to machines? How will parents learn to be as literate in
computer use as their children?
    Additionally, Brookline school officials are trying to determine how
best to integrate computers into not only math instruction, but
social studies, languages and other nontechnical areas, according to
Joyce Tobias, computer coordinator for the Brookline schools.
    But underlying the confusion of educators over how to use the
machines is a more fundamental disagreement among computer experts
themselves on the value of using computers in the schools.
    MIT Prof. Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist, questions the
value of introducing computers to young children as part of the
curriculum.
    ''It is a reckless introduction into schools. It is hard to see how
visual aids or new technological gadgets can be relevant. If you
teach computers, you have to throw something else out of the
curriculum,'' said Weizenbaum, who criticized schools today for
turning out ''so many illiterates.''
    Weizenbaum also sees the machine as ''a psychological distancing
from reality. There is an enormous gulf between what you do and the
consequences,'' said Weizenbaum, citing as an example, a simulation
exercise of the Falkland Islands battle.
    ''It is similar to the bombardier sighting on an electronic target.
He is completely removed from the consequences,'' Weizenbaum
continued.
    But Dr. Sylvia Weir, his MIT colleague, regards computers as a new
''thinking tool,'' which will help youngsters develop analytical
skills.
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n540  2331  22 Jan 83
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    X X X analytical skills.
    Beyond that, Weir has seen children with severe physical handicaps
benefiting from the computer technology in her research with students
at the Cotting School for Handicapped Children in Boston.
    Youngsters who are unable to handle a pencil can tap a computer
keyboard and, for the first time, do complicated tasks that were
impossible because of physical limitations, Weir's work has
demonstrated.
    The surge in computer use among youngsters stems from a combination
of increasingly inexpensive technology and the introduction within of
''user friendly'' languages like Logo and Basic.
    Wallace Feuerzeig of the Cambridge research firm Bolt Beranek and
Newman is even more enthusiastic about the development of analytical
thinking in children who use computers.
    ''The machine is not inhibiting. The common computer languages, Logo
and Basic, are simpler than natural languages. They are more
well-structured than English and French. The regularities are
stronger and the exceptions are fewer,'' he said.
    ''It is a marvelous way of finding out that your ideas are not as
clear as you thought. If you make a mistake, you get an immediate
response. The process of using it is educational. One can proceed in
a much more predictable path from simpler to more complex.''
    Regardless of their educational value, it is apparent that the
romance between computers and children is catching on at a faster
rate than anyone envisioned. And the implications of a technological
generation gap are staggering.
    The speed and facility that many youngsters show at the computer
keyboard is incomprehensible to many parents and teachers. The
resulting gap in understanding has been likened to those in immigrant
families where the children become quickly acculturated in American
language and customs while their parents cling to their native
languages and traditional mores.
    Such a technological generation gap promises to widen, observers
say, as new developments bring rapid changes to computers themselves,
changes that threaten to be even more mystifying to people who have
not developed a basic familiarity with computers.
    According to a newly published study by a Boston research firm,
''The next three to five years will witness the first wave of
computer products using Artificial-Intelligence technologies ...
Artificial-Intelligence technologies have opened the door to whole
new markets for computer applications'' ... and to the development of
''fifth generation'' computers.
    MIT Prof. Alan Natapoff is among those who compare the computer to
the introduction of formalized reading and writing 5000 years ago.
    ''There is no precedent for the intervention of technology in the
private province of the mind. The first crucial writing of mankind
occurred five millenia ago, and life would not be as it is without
it,'' Natapoff said.
    Some observers - focusing on the interactions between children and
computers - are beginning to hint at the ways in which the machines
may influence their users.
    Almost every educator and computer specialist interviewed for this
article observed that children were drawn to computers because their
responses, unlike those of many teachers, are not judgmental.
    ''To be sure children learn easily. They have no inhibitions. But
even more important, there is no put-down with a computer,'' says
Weir.
    Again, unlike many classroom situations, the feedback from computers
is instant. MIT Prof. Judah Schwartz says, ''There is very little
occasion in anyone's life, in children's lives in which they can make
an act and immediately see the consequences of that action as they do
with the computers. In fact, we live in a society in which the
consequences of one's actions are increasingly remote. The computer
does not always give a good response but it is instant.''
    Said one mathematician who works with learning-disabled children:
''The computer lessens anxieties. Nobody is standing over you. The
computer is friendly, patient and consistent. You can constantly
erase. It is nonviolent, nonauthoritarian and always present.''
    Weir and a number of her MIT colleagues as well as classroom
teachers agree that control is one of the main attractions
responsible for the computer craze among young people.
    ''The child is in control,'' said Weir in an interview in her
Cambridge office. ''In one sense the child can predict what will
happen because he understands what he is doing. It is not a
mysterious process.''
    Adds Patricia Davidson, a UMass mathematician working with
learning-disabled youngsters: In using computers the ''learner is the
active person rather than the teacher.''
    Davidson, who is conducting research on learning-disabled youngsters
at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston, has found that the
graphic quality made possible by such computer language as Logo has
stimulated children. ''Kids can see what they are doing in the
language,'' she said.
    Logo, the computer language most frequently used in greater Boston
school systems, provides children with the ability to design and
manipulate graphic images on the screen. ''Other computer languages
tend to be analytical and verbal language. With Logo's graphics,
there is a strong visual sense,'' Davidson said.
    Nevertheless, most experts and educators agree, the relationship
between children and computers is so new - and the implications of a
technological generation gap so far flung - that no one is yet able
to truly comprehend the benefits, pitfalls, optimal uses of computers
in schools.
    Concludes Harvard Dean Henry Rosovsky: ''My feeling is that this is
a new technology of supreme importance and that it is very difficult
for us at the moment to assess its long-run implication.''
    END
    
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n541  2342  22 Jan 83
BC-2COMP-2takes-01-23
    Second of two articles
    By Muriel Cohen
    (c) 1983 Boston Globe (Field News Service)
    In classrooms and homes throughout the country, children are happily
hunting and pecking their way across computer keyboards as rapidly as
many formally trained typists.
    The impetus for this enthusiasm has nothing to do with typing
skills; rather it is due to the phenomenal attraction with which
computers are grabbing the attention of children from age 5 on.
    While teachers, school administrators and librarians around the
country find themselves unprepared for the dramatic proliferation of
computers in classrooms - in many cases less prepared than their
pupils - the integration of computers into mainstream education is
proceeding on a number of fronts. To cite a few examples:
    - Computers have cracked the College Board. For the first time in
board history, high school students will be able to take a college
entrance examination in computer science in 1984.
    - Scores of New England colleges are offering a range of courses to
help teachers learn computer programming, either to work in their
classrooms, or to train for a new career.
    - Lesley College flies faculty members from Boston to Denver to give
a course in computer programming to classroom teachers.
    - A regional school district embracing the Massachusetts towns of
Ashby, Townsend and Pepperell is offering computer literacy - or
familiarity with computers - for students in kindergarten through
high school.
    - Harvard College has joined the increasing number of colleges and
universities that require credits in computer literacy for graduation.
    These isolated developments in scattered parts of the educational
network are symptomatic of the wildfire spread of the new technology
and of the mounting importance of computers for teachers, for
students, for the future of American schooling and their potential
for revolutionizing the country's economy.
    The increasing availability of low cost computers and the
unquenchable student thirst for computer time and training is
outracing the ability of schools to cope with the rapid changes in
technology and the growing demands for state-of-the-art instruction.
    School administrators, teachers and education schools are scrambling
to catch up, in many cases without enough experienced staff or
equipment or even a lucid blueprint for the long term.
    For instance, high schools will have to begin instruction next
September to prepare students for the first College Board computer
science exam in May 1984, said Joyce Tobias, computer coordinator for
the Brookline, Mass., public schools.
    But at the present time, many schools are teaching the Logo or Basic
computer languages, rather than Pascal, the computer language that
will be used in the College Board exam.
    The test will include questions on programming methodology, on
algorithms and data structures as well as on the use of Pascal, one
of several widely used computer languages, said a College Board
spokesman.
    To prepare students for such exams, schools will need teachers with
an interest and aptitude for programming. Scores of New England
colleges and universities are offering crash courses in computer
languages and programming and are attracting teachers anxious to keep
up to date with the growing investment in computers by their school
districts.
    They will have to decide how much time will be allotted from already
crowded classroom schedules for children to use the computers for fun
and games, which allow for exploration, self-direction and
self-discipline, and how much for teacher-led instruction.
    Some educators note the possibility that schools with a traditional
approach to instruction might limit the use of computers to
reinforcement of material rather than allowing students to develop
their own programs.
    ''That is no different than computer-aided instruction,'' remarked
Tobias.
    But critics say that restricting computer use to preprogrammed
instruction - without allowing for unsupervised student
experimentation with the machines - may discourage students in much
the same way that overly authoritarian teaching may stifle the
initiative and ingenuity of students.
    While a majority of Massachusetts schools had some computer
equipment last year, more technology is being purchased in the
present school year with the new federal block grant dollars, which
allow greater local latitude on how the money is spent.
    Right now school systems are studying their options for all the
changes prompted by the introduction of computers: the need for
teacher preparation, physical alterations to buildings, a search for
appropriate software and evaluations of curricula in the light of the
new machines.
    But regardless of the ways in which schools decide to use computers,
virtually every school system is facing a shortage of teachers who
are competent to use and teach the use of computers.
    Betty Drew, a veteran elementary school librarian, said recently she
and her colleagues in the Brookline schools object to the requirement
that they teach computer use to their students.
    She readily concedes that many of the youngsters are ahead of her in
programming.
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n542  2350  22 Jan 83
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    X X X IN PROGRAMMING.
    ''We do not quarrel with the notion that we should help students
select the appropriate software, store it, catalogue and care for
it,'' Drew said. But she objects to holding classes in which she is
expected to teach the youngsters Logo programming - a subject in
which she herself has had only minimal instruction.
    Drew, who supervises the Lincoln School library in Brookline, admits
she is often just one jump ahead of the seventh graders who on their
own are able to program elaborate games or geometric designs on their
computers.
    To begin to meet the need for qualified teachers, the Harvard
Graduate School of Education is planning two new programs.
    Associate Dean Jerome Murphy said he expects the faculty to ratify a
pioneering effort to help industry, the elementary and high schools
and their students. Under the proposed program, the school would
recruit middle-aged mathematics and science specialists from industry
to be retrained for teaching.
    ''A lot of these people need updating in technology. The companies
might provide early retirement for these older staff members who then
could become teachers. Harvard would set up a program to upgrade
their scientific skills and help them understand what it means to
teach. We would serve schools, industry and individuals,'' said
Murphy.
    A second program, interactive technology in education, will begin
next September. ''In the next several years schools will need
technical coordinators who are familiar with technology and know a
lot about kids and learning theory so they can be advisers to
teachers and administrators,'' Murphy said.
    Harvard itself has already acknowledged the advent of the computer
age by imposing a new graduation requirement. All Harvard students
must be able to use the Harvard-Radcliffe system, knowing how to log
on and write a simple program in which the computer accomplishes a
repetitive task, said Prof. Andrew Gleason, who headed the university
task force on computer literacy.
    At both the university and secondary levels, schools will also have
to expand their job placement arms, as well as their liaison
functions with computer-oriented industries, in order to help guide
computer-educated students into appropriate career paths.
    Shawsheen Valley Vocational Technical High School in Billerica
boasts of a graduate placement record that is close to 100 percent.
In order to meet the demands of local industry, Shawsheen has moved
into computer instruction, preparing students for a variety of
computer jobs, from technical repairs to programming.
    ''We teach Basic to begin with and Cobol and Fortran in the 10th
grade,'' said teacher Sarah Lee Pappalardo, who took a $10,000 pay
cut to leave an insurance company to teach computer programming at
Shawsheen. The school has limited facilities and can turn out only 20
programmers per year. Students also learn data processing and word
processing, operations which are becoming universally used in
business and industry.
    In the past two years, the curriculum has been constantly modified
as the technology and the job market have changed.
    Shawsheen was able to lure Pappalardo, an experienced programmer,
into teaching even at a substantial cut in pay simply because she
enjoys teaching. But she is an exception.
    Most qualified teachers are forsaking schools for private industry
as hungry computer companies recruit mathematics and science teachers
for the state's growing technology industries.
    And unless school officials are able to find ways to lure them back
into the classroom, today's young students may become by default
their own teachers in areas which they themselves define.
    END
    
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