Review of Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom (Paperback)

If you're looking for a thoughtful, insightful analysis of the use of technology in the classroom, this book is NOT it.Two of the book's conclusions seem unassailable, i.e., the benefits from using computer technology in the classroom have been oversold by its proponents and the technology is little used in the classroom despite pervasive access to computers.This, however, is not news, as virtually any thoughtful parent with school-age children could tell you.Unfortunately, the book is rambling, and the analysis is sophomoric and naive.It might have made a useful magazine article, but the book-length format has resulted in the inclusion of so much chaff with the few grains of wheat as to make reading this rambling, poorly argued book a frustrating and annoying experience.

The unspoken assumption that underlies the whole book is that computers represent a genuinely transformative technology that should and inevitably will result in a revolution in instructional methods from pre-school through the university level.The author investigates a number of reasons why this revolution has not yet occurred notwithstanding the pervasive availability of computers in the school systems he studies but fails to investigate or discuss one of the obvious reasons, i.e., that the technology (at least at the current state of hardware and software development) is a vehicle ill-suited to producing the author's hoped-for instructional revolution.

The author uses the advent of film, radio and television as models for the acceptance of new instructional technologies in the school systems.He fails to discuss in any of these cases the ultimate reasons for their failure to revolutionize the classroom experience, i.e., their fundamental unsuitedness to the task.No one today would seriously advocate the widesrpead use of any of these still "underused" technologies to transform the educational experience for the better.

The author would have been able to explore his subject more effectively if he had compared these supposed revolutionary technologies, which advocates argued would fundamentally transform education but were never widely adopted, with technologies that have been widely adopted in the classroom.Teachers, like other workers, will rapidlyadopt procedures and technologies that they believe will improve their ability to function effectively.(See, for example, the pervasive use of computers by teachers for preparatory and administrative activities, which the author discusses but whose significance escapes him.)The computer revolution in business was driven from the bottom up.Workers clamored for computers that they knew would simplify complex tasks and improve their ability to get their work done, much the way teachers have embraced computers for preparatory and administrative tasks.By contrast, computers have been introduced to the classrooms not by grassroots demands from teachers but from top down pressures from parents and administrators.As the author rightly points out, teachers today are not technophobes and commonly make extensive use of PCs outside the classroom for person use or to prepare for classes.If there were readily apparent, readily implementable and educationally beneficial uses of computer technology for instructional purposes in the classroom, teachers would be clamoring for more computers not letting them sit "underused."

The author investigates any reason he can think of to explain why teachers don't integrate computer technology into the classroom except the most obvious one -- that computer technology (like film, radio and television) is not a suitable vehicle to produce a revolution in instructional methods.

The author fails to cite even one example where computers have had a revolutionary effect on classroom instruction, even among teachers who are highly motivated to use and promote the technology.Even the few teachers he praises for integrating computers into the classroom seem to be doing nothing more than using computers to do the same old things that could otherwise have been easily done with slides, pictures and other low tech technologies.There was nothing "transformative" or "revolutionary" about any of the "innovative" uses that he lavishly praises.

The term "underused" in the title of the book assumes that computers should be used in the classroom much more than they currently are, but this assumption goes wholly unexamined by Mr. Cuban.

JHB



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