Posts Tagged ‘computers’
Computers and Self-Directed Learning
In the July 9 online edition of The New York Times, Silicon Valley-based business professor Randall Stross published an article entitled Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality. He described some studies in which economists have been measuring a home computer’s impact on the school performance of children in low-income [...]
Self-directed Learning Happens Everywhere
Reconciling our beliefs about the flawed nature of schooling with the need for education in the developing world is an ongoing dilemma for many unschoolers. It's often the basis for the criticism "it's okay for you to do, but..." There was, in fact, a spirited discussion on the topic about a year ago in the letters section of Natural Life [...]
Learning to Write By Doing It
I had a chat this morning with someone who was bemoaning kids’ use of technology. Her fifteen-year-old daughter wants either a cell phone or a laptop computer for Christmas, she said, but she and her husband are worried that the teen won’t “learn to write properly because of all that Facebook, Twitter and texting nonsense that young people [...]
The World is Discovering Autonomous Learning
"Kids learn on the Internet in an autonomous way, by looking around for information they're interested in or connecting with peers who can help them. This is a big departure from how they're asked to learn in most schools, where the teacher is the expert and there's a fixed set of content to master." I, and many other unschooling advocates, [...]
Librarians Are Tech Savvy
Librarians have traditionally (and probably unfairly) had a conservative reputation. But they and their libraries are the best example I can think of for a replacement for schools and their teachers. After all, libraries are publicly-funded learning institutions, open to everyone and mostly free to use…but usage is not compulsory nor monitored [...]