To be a success at school an ordinary student has to do a lot of things: find information about something or somebody; find the word definitions; read different maps; read classics for literature lessons, etc. A few years ago people should go to the library and work with encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, books. They did a tremendous work
Now we can surf the Internet and without leaving our homes we can find information in
Wikipedia, Google Earth, and even read books on-line. From year to year it becomes easier to get the information we need.
We have asked students from Moscow and the USA where they get information. Most of them find it with the help of the computer. In our school we have asked 106 students in the 9th, 10th
,
and 11th grades. 64% of them find information in books. But at the same time we found out that our students read less. There are 680 students in our school, 457 of them take books in our local library, and 337 students visit our school library.
What is a computer? Are computers friends or foes? At the start of new millennium, technological and educational advances are reaching extremes. As everything becomes more complex, the way we work out problems and find the solutions is becoming easier. With the help of computers we have an access to the best libraries in the world, an access to a huge database.
Computers reduce the time we spend on looking for information.
However, students who rely on computers to do all their work are being cheated out of mind-expanding experience. Students still need to be forced to use their own brains for some things.
Here what our students think:“I’m for computerized education. Some people think that students should learn to use their own brains. I find it humorous that parents and teachers call for a limit on access to computers for school children.” (Vanya)
”We are against computerized education.