CNN Looks at Handhelds In School
CNN has a special report on the use of handhelds in schools. While not dreadfully informative at times (did you know a lot of teenagers have cellphones?), it does profile some of the issues that schools are struggling with. How do you monitor to make sure kids aren’t using them to play games, or chat, or cheat?
One issue they don’t discuss is the definition of cheating. If a child can carry an abbreviated version of the Encyclopedia Britannica in their Palm ($39.95 at the Palm Store), and they will use that kind of resource every day in their personal and professional life, is it cheating to use it in school? When is memorization an important skill, and when is it just a traditional holdover of what expect for school?
I remember very clearly the day my chemistry professor told us that all tests would be open book, because “When you graduate and get a chemistry job, your boss isn’t going to come up to you, give you a work assignment, then grab up all your books and walk away.” If we can resonably expect that current schoolkids will live in a world where they will have the equivalent of an entire reference library in their pocket at all times, should we be re-thinking what skills we need to emphasize, and more importantly, what tools they can use when we test them?
The CNN article is at www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/09/21/sprj.sch.classroom.gadgets.ap/index.html.