Computer Education in the Future

"Computer Education in the Future"

Can schools ever take advantage of true computerized education? When corporate America learned how it could use computers to improve productivity, the central role the computer in business had arrived. The need for improvement in education is present as even such staunch defenders of today’s schools as Sandia National Laboratories and Gerald Bracey point out. Moreover, everybody would be delighted if there could be additional gains even among today’s best schools.
Emulating the successful employment of computers by business, however, is not simple. There are unique difficulties in education. For example, school boards must alleviate the fears of teachers that they will lose their jobs. In addition, since education is much more involved in the political world, proportionately more people must take part in the process of making changes. The numbers of citizens who must become aware of the potential of computerization in education will be larger than in business, where the decision makers are fewer. In corporate America, when software companies developed programs to enhance productivity, individual businesses bought that software because they wanted to improve and did not fear changes. Education, with some exceptions, has a history of resisting serious change. This tendency lessens the incentive for software companies to develop the necessary programming.
The solution, therefore, must be twofold. First, educators, politicians, parents, and concerned citizens must understand how schools can use computers more effectively to improve education and to benefit students and teachers. Second, commercial companies must create suitable software.
These seem to be monstrous tasks, but both are possible. Many teachers, parents, and administrators want improvements and are engaged in an ongoing search for answers. They will need to examine and debate the value of true computerization as they carry out their quest. If these many searchers for improved education decide that computerization can supply an important portion of the answer, then it will be up to the private corporations to do their part. Some of these are already developing programming as noted above, and they and other companies could turn more of their resources and ingenuity to developing outstanding and effective educational software. The potential market is huge and software corporations will produce the programming as soon as they see that education will accept these changes.
Although there are differences in the paths of education and business in developing the use of computerization, there is one major similarity. American business was not able to take advantage of the power of technology until many of its basic practices changed. This is equally true in education. Until schools can permit a major alteration in the way teaching is carried on, they must necessarily continue to miss out on the improvement that computer technology can bring.