Mindstorms

I just love the title of this article. And a mindstorm was going on in my mind throughout the reading as well.I just think it is so fascinating, that 28 years ago someone was predicting the future so acurately. Teading this article reminded me of reading an old science fiction novel. I constantly compared the things he wrote about to what we have today and to what we had when I went to high school. I remember in 10th grade we had to write programs for a little roboter, unfortunately everyone in the class had more knowledge than the teacher about computers in general and  this activity which was embeded in math class and could have been a lot of fun and very beneficial turned out to be one of the dullest tasks.Especially fascinating to me is that in 1980 when most people didn’t even know about computers yet and they were extreemly expensive someone was thinking about how these computers could be used in education. People put so much research into something that many people thought dangerous or insane. And they were right. Children are fascinated by technology and computers and they get absorbed and spend hours infront of them. So wouldn’t it make complete sense to use them for educational purposes?And what is most surprising is the cultural differences he talks about. Today I was at my practicum at Hugh Mercer elementary school. This elementary school has a computer lab and ESL students spend one period a day in the lab working on their language acquisition skills through computer programs. In Germany very few elementary schools are equiped with computers especially in the quantity they had them at Hugh Mercer. Also the smart boards that are used in many American classrooms haven’t found their way into German classrooms yet. So he really has a point comparing cultures and he doesn’t even have to go as far as comparing African culture to American culture even countries that don’t seem to be that different have completely different approaches to teaching.It certainly was very fascinating to read what kind of visions they had about 30 years ago and how many of those became true.

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