Technology and High in the Classroom

http://www.mercurynews.com/community/ci_9034769?nclick_check=1&forced=true

Matt Baxter, a writer for Mercury News - a newspaper in the Silicon Valley- complains in this article about the use and development of technology in the classroom. He reiterates that more money is being spent on keeping up the latest technology than actually just utilizing what we originally had. He made a great point about spending $30,000 dollars on new textbooks just because something was slightly changed.

I feel that he is pretty justified in what he is saying. It does make sense that we should be less obsessive about teaching elementary school kids how to type quickly or how we should be spending less time teaching them basic Microsoft office skills, but he is superseding the real issue. As a race, we fear being obsolete. The school system has went out of its way many times in the past century to keep up with the quickly growing field of technology.

What I really disagreed with in this article was a single sentance: "Meanwhile, sports, the arts and real school supplies suffer mightily." This is rediculous; sports and arts budgets can not be put in the same sentance. Sports has NOT suffered at all in the development of technology in the education world, but art has for other reasons. Instead of making an argument for increasing sports AND arts, just stick to the actual ones that are being hindered.

As a side note, Matt did touch on something that was nostalgic for me. I do remember that the best part of any science class was Bill Nye the Science Guy videos and the best part of math was playing on the computers. Technology may not be neccessary, but it sure did make learning fun.