Computers in schools: What a waste of time

I have been pondering a lot about computers being taught in schools and I think the system has got it all wrong. How can I say that; pick up your kid's computer text book and you will know. My daughter's third grade book teaches her "What is a keyboard" and tells her that her computer's "Keyboard looks exactly like the keyboard of a typewriter". How does this information help her in anyway.

It does not stop here. They will teach you what is hardware and what is software and what is an operating system. Does she really know or care about any of this? My eight year old (and any kid who has access to computers) can use the computer, paint stuff on it, save a file, search videos on youtube, can find games, remember the URL, differentiate between an IE and Chrome etc..etc..you get the point, and I don't know what she is ever going to use the knowledge that is being imparted to her in class.

You think it improves over the grades, you are dead wrong. My 7th grader is learning CLI and in case you don't know what that is, it is "Command Line Interface" where you use dir /w to list the files in that directory. Will this ever be used? And now they are teaching qbasic. I have nothing against teaching programing to kids but what my daughter is learning is how to write a program to add two numbers. It almost sounds like starting my engineering :-). There is so much stress on the syntax (which is what is there in the text book and comes in the exam) that the whole purpose is lost. And I don't know why everybody has to become a computer engineer (yes you heard it right, I started my computer engineering by writing a program to add 2 numbers in basic).

What I would have rather liked is for them to teach how to use computers to improve their learning, their communication, how they can better visualize their thoughts and ideas and express themselves better. The computers should be used to explore thing that would be otherwise hard to accomplish, how about model an aeroplane, build an engine or something else. Syntax is not what we should be hung up on.

Some of it could be limitations of the tools, but most times I think it is the limitations of the human side. There are some tools emerging. If you have not tried scratch, you should let your children try this one. Here are some of the projects that 7-12 year olds created without having the need to understand the syntax.

Aquarium
Bat and Ball
The Witch In the Forrest

This was just after I spent 3hrs teaching the basics. And they took another 3 hours to create this. I think this is a lot more multilateral than trying to teach them how to write a program to add two numbers.

If you would like me to conduct a session for your kids on scratch, do let me know and I will be happy to do that. Meanwhile if you know of other such tools, do share and I will try them out and compile a list.

Why I am doing this

Since this is the first post I thought I will start with my motivation behind starting the blog.

I am a father of a 13 year old and a 8 year old who turns 9 in a couple of days. I have tried sometimes to help them with their studies and realized not much has changed in the last 15-20 years. There is the usual teacher going through the textbooks,, giving notes, marking the answers, rushing through the portions and projects are all about writing 20 pages. I think teachers can do better than that with a little help. There is so much content available which can used to enhance the learning, yet nothing is used.

The classes are equipped with state of art equipment but none of it is being used. All the use of technology that I read about seem to talk about changing the face of education but none about adding incremental value. I find it surprising that tablets have not been able to reduce the weight of books in the classroom when the solution could be as simple as scanning the books and having the tablet configured that while at school, the kids can only use the reader app.

Maybe I am just ignorant and things have already been implemented and are being extensively used. This is my journey of discovery and I want to document what I understand and learn and want to document it so that it could reused for whatever it is worth.

I am hoping folks in the community will help me in this journey by providing me some directions and pointers.