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Oversold and Underused
Larry Cuban
Computers in the Classroom
Harvard University Press
May 2003
On Sale: April 30, 2003
256 pages ISBN: 0674011090 EAN: 9780674011090 Paperback
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Non-Fiction
Impelled by a demand for increasing American strength in the
new global economy, many educators, public officials,
business leaders, and parents argue that school computers
and Internet access will improve academic learning and
prepare students for an information-based workplace. But just how valid is this argument? In Oversold and
Underused, one of the most respected voices in American
education argues that when teachers are not given a say in
how the technology might reshape schools, computers are
merely souped-up typewriters and classrooms continue to run
much as they did a generation ago. In his studies of early
childhood, high school, and university classrooms in Silicon
Valley, Larry Cuban found that students and teachers use the
new technologies far less in the classroom than they do at
home, and that teachers who use computers for instruction do
so infrequently and unimaginatively. Cuban points out that historical and organizational economic
contexts influence how teachers use technical innovations.
Computers can be useful when teachers sufficiently
understand the technology themselves, believe it will
enhance learning, and have the power to shape their own
curricula. But these conditions can't be met without a
broader and deeper commitment to public education beyond
preparing workers. More attention, Cuban says, needs to be
paid to the civic and social goals of schooling, goals that
make the question of how many computers are in classrooms
trivial.
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