Abstract
This chapter is concerned with the way schools and school systems in the over-developed world have come to terms with computers and related technologies and, particularly, recurring patterns in terms of how schools’ relationships with computers are considered and evaluated. The patterns I will describe are quite remarkable in that they have repeated over the past 30 years, and, as I will argue, will likely continue into the future. They are essentially patterns of response: response to whatever the producers of digital products for educational purposes place in front of schools; response to anxiety about keeping up with the schools-next-door and, ironically, response to concerns that, left unchecked, technologies could disrupt the patterns of schooling and, by extension, student learning. Even though the nature of the pro-offered products (and the associated technologies) has changed greatly since the early 1980s, the ways in which schools and school systems have responded to “the new” and “the latest” remains largely unchanged. I explore the way these patterns constrain debates about underlying technologies (which I prefer to call computing and communication technologies) and the value of taking a fresh look at the school/computer relationships.
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Notes
- 1.
I prefer the term “computing,” which is what these machines actually do, over “information.” Information connotes more than data. As Bateson (1999) suggests, information is the difference that makes a difference. But given the ubiquity of the acronym IT and ICT I will use these terms here.
- 2.
An exabyte is a billion gigabytes. A gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes. A small book is roughly 1.5 megabytes. This makes a gigabyte about 600–700 books and an exabyte 600–700 billion books.
- 3.
A study by IDC (Gantz et al. 2007) provides a detailed analysis of growth patterns and the methodology for doing the calculation.
- 4.
A useful history can be found at: http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history.shtml. The tight association between the interests of the US military and the educational use of ICTs continues to this day (Noble 1991).
- 5.
The term “microcomputer” reflected not only the physical size of the computer but also, relative to what were then called mainframe computers, their computing power. As computer power has increased significantly these terms have become obsolete and we are left with two broad classes: computers and super computers.
- 6.
The quote is attributed to Gibson but the specifics are uncertain, see, e.g. http://www.brianstorms.com/archives/000461.html for a history of the web publication of the quote.
- 7.
The calculator proved to be something of a harbinger of the debates about computer use in the classroom. The calculator was then at the centre of a debate in the teaching of mathematics in schools. The use of calculators in schools, and in the teaching of mathematics, has an interesting history (see for example, Ellington 2003; Fey 1989) that points to an important idea—the delegation of work to a machine—to which I will return in a later chapter.
- 8.
I recall with the early Apples that, on occasion, they would malfunction when they were in use for a time. The heat from the circuitry would sometimes cause the chips to rise from their seats on the motherboard. Switching off and gently pressing the computer chips down into the mother board would often solve the problem. In warmer parts of the country, teachers would explain how they kept modems in the refrigerator before use.
- 9.
Ursula Franklin (1990) has a detailed account of this process for a number of contemporary technologies.
- 10.
- 11.
Carolyn Marvin (1988) has an excellent account of early technologies in the US.
- 12.
This is no simple matter. More unpaid product development engineering is required for each new ICT.
- 13.
As Perelman (1992) noted, putting computers into classrooms is akin to putting an internal combustion engine in a horse.
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Bigum, C. (2012). Schools and Computers: Tales of a Digital Romance. In: Rowan, L., Bigum, C. (eds) Transformative Approaches to New Technologies and Student Diversity in Futures Oriented Classrooms. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2642-0_2
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