Vi­jay Ma­haraj

Com­put­ers have changed the way we work. There­fore, it is on­ly nat­ur­al for com­put­ers to be giv­en promi­nence in the class­room. Com­put­ers are need­ed in schools to pro­vide stu­dents with ac­cess to the vast amount of in­for­ma­tion, de­vel­op dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy skills, in­ter­ac­tive and per­son­alised learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

Over the decades, it has be­come ob­vi­ous that there is a mis­match be­tween what we teach our chil­dren about com­put­ing at school and what they want to know. The phrase “com­pu­ta­tion­al think­ing,” refers to prob­lem- solv­ing meth­ods, break­ing down com­plex prob­lems in­to more man­age­able parts, de­vel­op­ing so­lu­tions us­ing com­put­ers.

This has be­come a suc­cess­ful ven­ture and is taught in schools across the world. Our think­ing was once based to­tal­ly on ab­strac­tion, de­com­po­si­tion and gen­er­al­i­sa­tion, and this has now changed.

Stu­dents sit­ting in a class­room, lis­ten­ing to teach­ers, hours up­on hours mak­ing notes, strug­gling to fo­cus on a white/black board, of­ten with­out mean­ing, is un­in­ter­est­ing, dull, lead­ing to weari­ness, leav­ing no space for en­gag­ing their imag­i­na­tion.

A wealth of in­for­ma­tion is avail­able via the In­ter­net, on­line li­braries and ed­u­ca­tion­al web­sites. Learn­ing be­comes more in­ter­est­ing, fun-like, and chil­dren’s at­ti­tudes change to­wards learn­ing.

Com­put­ers fa­cil­i­tate en­gag­ing lessons through video, sim­u­la­tions, and cater­ing for dif­fer­ent learn­ing styles. Not all stu­dents learn at the same rate; com­put­ers al­low for per­son­alised learn­ing where a stu­dent can work at their own pace, al­low­ing for those strug­gling to get sup­port and chal­lenge those who are ahead. Teach­ers can save time on var­i­ous es­sen­tial tasks like plan­ning, grad­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

The many rea­sons com­put­ers seem to be an ex­cel­lent tool for learn­ing are the at­trac­tion they hold for chil­dren and teenagers. This at­trac­tion is due to the abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems, crit­i­cal think­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills.

In the first in­stance, users are at­tract­ed by the mul­ti­me­dia ef­fects, such as fas­ci­nat­ing pic­tures, sound and an­i­ma­tion. In the sec­ond, by an ex­cite­ment sim­i­lar to when play­ing a video game. There­fore, when us­ing com­put­ers, what at­tracts the learn­er is not on­ly the beau­ty or in­ter­est of the con­tent, but al­so the cos­met­ic and video game ef­fects. When most teach­ers are find­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in mo­ti­vat­ing learn­ers, com­put­ers seem to pro­vide the stim­u­lus to cre­ate and main­tain in­ter­est in the learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

Many ar­gu­ments were for­ward­ed on the use of com­put­ers in schools.

J Robert Op­pen­heimer, AKA T Op­pen­heimer, was in­stru­men­tal in the de­vel­op­ment and use of ear­ly com­put­ing tech­nol­o­gy. His pri­ma­ry views fo­cused on the moral and eth­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

In an ar­ti­cle, he not­ed that the in­dis­crim­i­nate use of com­put­ers in schools must be avoid­ed. Com­put­ers must be used to im­prove both teach­ing and stu­dent achieve­ments. More im­por­tant­ly, com­put­er lit­er­a­cy should be taught as ear­ly as pos­si­ble.

Sey­mour Pa­pert, in his 1980 book “Mind­storms: Chil­dren, Com­put­ers and Pow­er­ful Ideas,” wrote: “The com­put­er can be seen as an en­gine that can be har­nessed to ex­ist­ing struc­ture in or­der to solve, in lo­cal in­cre­ment­ed mea­sures, the prob­lems that face schools as they ex­ist to­day.”

In his 1996 book “The Con­nect­ed Fam­i­ly,” Pa­pert writes: “One of the big con­tri­bu­tions of the com­put­er is the op­por­tu­ni­ty for chil­dren to ex­pe­ri­ence the thrill of chas­ing af­ter knowl­edge and what they re­al­ly want.”

Ed­u­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy places all learn­ers on equal foot­ing. Giv­en the right hard­ware, soft­ware and cur­ricu­lum ac­tiv­i­ties, even se­vere­ly dis­abled stu­dents can achieve the same de­gree of suc­cess as any­one.

Ed­u­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy has shown the ben­e­fits in terms of mo­ti­vat­ing stu­dents.

Where ed­u­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy is taught well, it has been shown to en­hance stu­dents’ lev­el of un­der­stand­ing and at­tain­ment.

Hav­ing tak­en the po­si­tion that com­put­ers are use­ful in the learn­ing process and stu­dents would ben­e­fit more from hav­ing ac­cess to com­put­ers in the class­room, we are ful­ly aware of the many coun­ter­ar­gu­ments against the use of com­put­ers. There will al­ways be ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. But a good school sys­tem would en­sure that pro­grammes are de­vel­oped to en­sure the strengths are em­pha­sised.

One of the rea­sons be­ing for­ward­ed against stu­dents hav­ing com­put­ers is that their safe­ty would be jeop­ar­dised. It is per­ceived by some that stu­dents would be­come vic­tims of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. We sup­port the view that some ex­tra mea­sures must be tak­en to pro­tect both the stu­dent and the in­vest­ment.

All school com­put­ers should be colour-cod­ed. The in­stru­ment should be paint­ed in a dis­tinc­tive colour that could be­come the trade­mark of this school in­stru­ment. When the na­tion and the ped­dlers of the stolen items know that the lap­top is a child’s prop­er­ty, the deal­ers in stolen prop­er­ty, with lit­tle re­sale op­por­tu­ni­ty, will find this colour code will act as a dis­in­cen­tive to thieves. In ad­di­tion, every com­put­er should have a track­ing de­vice in­stalled so it can be eas­i­ly traced.