 Tuesday, June 20, 2006
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Patrick Ross (via Nicholas Carr) writes:
A few months ago my 11-year-old daughter was researching a paper on Jesse Owens for social studies. She didn't go to the library, pull down reference books and fill up 3x5 index cards. She went onto Google. She found plenty of materials. But when I asked to read her completed paper, it was nothing but a cut-and-paste job from various web sites on Owens; she even included, quite randomly, part of a press release about some recent celebration in his honor.
Personally, I say shame on the teacher who doesn't realize, or can't test, that the student used modern tools to do the report, and only copy/pasted. In the age of Google and Wikipedia teachers will have to be as smart as the students; and so a far better assignment might have been to research Jesse Owens and the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the effects of that on the civil rights movement. Yes, that sounds hard for an 11-year-old, but the things that used to be hard (writing mountains of 3x5 index cards, and so on) -- just aren't anymore.
The research is the easy part (and in some ways, always should have been). Perhaps because it is easier now we can get our kids thinking earlier.
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Technology Review:
NTT DoCoMo in Japan, one the world's leading mobile providers, recently announced a prototype wireless network that could send data packets at 2.5 gigabits per second -- fast enough to download a DVD movie in between 7.5 and 10 seconds -- to a mobile device traveling at 20 kilometers per hour.
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May Jul
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