"The computer, moreover, does not teach, does not show a human being thinking and meeting intellectual difficulties; it does not impart knowledge but turns up information pre-arranged and pre-cooked. For example, an actual demonstration of "referencing" shows the student encountering the name Mozart in the course of reading a story on the screen. By creating a 'window' and without losing his story, he can summon up a portrait of the composer and a brief biography, while the opening bars of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik resound through his earphones. Wonderful, isn't it? Wonderful for creating the cliché-ridden mind."
That was written not last year, but 30 years ago, by the great cultural historian and educator Jacques Barzun.
Barzun probably could not have conceived of the scale and power of interactive, real-time technology today, but if he had, he would have seen how it magnifies his concerns. During the pandemic I am teaching my classes exclusively using Zoom - I have no alternative. To the extent that I can help students learn mathematics, it is their engaged struggle with off-line projects - which I insist be done on paper - that builds their understanding, and hardly anything I can do with them on-line. Without the intimate, sensory, interactive, argumentative, emotional context of a group of people in a room tussling together with math, it's extremely difficult to accomplish more than delivery of material.
Amen.
"The computer, moreover, does not teach, does not show a human being thinking and meeting intellectual difficulties; it does not impart knowledge but turns up information pre-arranged and pre-cooked. For example, an actual demonstration of "referencing" shows the student encountering the name Mozart in the course of reading a story on the screen. By creating a 'window' and without losing his story, he can summon up a portrait of the composer and a brief biography, while the opening bars of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik resound through his earphones. Wonderful, isn't it? Wonderful for creating the cliché-ridden mind."
That was written not last year, but 30 years ago, by the great cultural historian and educator Jacques Barzun.
Barzun probably could not have conceived of the scale and power of interactive, real-time technology today, but if he had, he would have seen how it magnifies his concerns. During the pandemic I am teaching my classes exclusively using Zoom - I have no alternative. To the extent that I can help students learn mathematics, it is their engaged struggle with off-line projects - which I insist be done on paper - that builds their understanding, and hardly anything I can do with them on-line. Without the intimate, sensory, interactive, argumentative, emotional context of a group of people in a room tussling together with math, it's extremely difficult to accomplish more than delivery of material.