Is
the Internet overhyped?
Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published in
Northland Reader
now
Reader
Weekly
May 25, 2000
“We know we must connect all our classrooms to the Internet...”
(Pres. William J. Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 27,
2000) (
1)
Really? The band room? The wood shop? The English
class?
Does the band room need Internet access to provide music? Or
would the money be better spent on buying sheet music and acquiring and
maintaining instruments?
Does the wood shop need Internet access to provide project plans?
Or would the money be better spent on acquiring and maintaining tools?
Does the English class need Internet access to provide copies of
Shakespeare? Or would the money be better spent on buying
hardcover copies of Shakespeare, Richard Wright, and Ursula K. Le Guin?
Clinton’s statement and similar statements by many others are
indicative more of a mania to adopt the “latest and greatest” without
thinking through all the consequences. This mania is seen both in
government and private organizations. Sometimes it comes from the
top down, sometimes from the bottom up.
“OK, Mr. Author, if the Internet is such a mania, how come you make so
much use of it for your articles? And if you use it, shouldn’t
school kids learn to use it?” Yes and no.
Yes, the Internet can be a wonderful tool, but it can also be a great
waste of time. “A library is where you go to find facts. The web
is more like a garage sale: it's possible you'll find what you want,
but only with a lot of digging, searching, and wading through things
that smell funny.” (
2)
I found out just how true this was in researching this article.
I’ll come back to this later.
No, school children can learn to use the Internet at anytime in their
lives. I am active in the
University for Seniors at UMD.
Many of the members are using computers for a wide variety of
tasks. Many of them first used a personal computer within the
last ten years. The successful users among them have two common
traits: a love of learning and an ability to type.
“Even some usually pro-technology types, like Apple Computer Co.
founder Steven Jobs, have expressed doubts [about computers in
schools], suggesting that what students need is more classroom focus on
basics like writing and mathematics and higher-level skills such as
critical thinking.” (
3)
Because Frank James paraphrased Steve Jobs, I wanted to find Jobs’ own
words. I did a search with Alta Vista for “critical thinking”,
“steve jobs” “apple”, and “education”. Alta Vista found 39 web
pages. The first page was an Apple page of “Hot News”. I
searched it for “critical thinking”, but it had changed! It was
the only Apple page of the thirty-nine.
I checked a few other pages, but most of them “smelled funny”.
So, I decided to start with
Apple’s home page and search within Apple’s own site. I did a search
of “critical thinking, steve jobs”, but my browser (Internet Explorer
4.5 for the Macintosh) wouldn’t load the page! The URL (or
address) that Apple’s search feature created was so long that it
wouldn’t even fit in the error message window! I couldn’t even
search for “Jobs”!!!
One of the Internet success stories is
Amazon.com,
a bookseller! In fact, if you do a search for something on the
internet, you are quite likely to find reviews of books on the subject
rather than the text as written by the original authors. Of
course, you can search the Internet for free because the search site
depends heavily on revenues from booksellers who want to sell you books
on the subject of your choice.
One of the most optimistic works on the future of technology is Bill
Gates’
The Road Ahead.
It is available in good old-fashioned paper form. The only way to
get the electronic form (a CD-ROM) is to buy the book. I searched
for “the road ahead” on the internet, and no Microsoft page was in the
first 10 pages of the 3,997 found. I went to
Microsoft’s home
page
and did a
search for “the road ahead”. The first 10 pages of the 67 found
were not the text of the book. I did find that the CD-ROM might
have an error! (However, on August 2, 2007, the page describing
the error is no longer available.) (
Should computers be in schools at all? Of course computers should
be in schools, in appropriate places. The first is in typing,
sorry, keyboarding. Who wants to learn to type on a big heavy
mechanical typewriter like I did over 40 years ago? But we don’t
need to have the latest, biggest, fastest computers to teach
typing. Even a Commodore 64 can do that. The second is in
the library as an addition to a great, humongous collection of books.
For it is from books and great mentors that we learn writing,
mathematics, and critical thinking. Let us make sure we have
well-stocked libraries and highly-respected teachers. When we
have achieved those two goals, then maybe we can think about adding
computers.
(1)I accessed this quote May 4, 2000 at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/SOTU00/sotu-text.html. That page is
no longer available. I imagine each President deletes his
predecessor's records after the National Archives has copied
them. However, the Clinton library's
copy of the
speech does not have that phrase or any other mention of connecting
classrooms to the Internet! After an exchange of emails with an
archivist I learned that there is a briefing copy and a
transcript. My search had only turned up the briefing copy.
The
archivist gave me the link to
The
American Presidency Project's copy. and
the correct
link in the Clinton library. I couldn't find the latter
because I searched on the date of the speech, but the speech was
indexed under the date of inclusion into the web site! Searching
the web is not always a solo endeavour.
(2) “
Kev's
Collection of
Cool Quotes”, Kevin Killion, accessed August 2, 2007. Kevin
moved from the URL that I originally had.
(3) “Plan to wire all schools to Internet falls
behind”, Chicago Tribune
Online, Frank James, Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau, June 22,
1999,
file
available in Chicago Tribune paid archive.
©2000, 2007 Melvyn
D.
Magree
