In the foreseeable future,computing will play an increasingly important role in human learning. However, no one yet knows exactly
how great that role will eventually be, or precisely what form it will finally take."Robert P.Taylor". Though computers play significant role in education, it created a different notions to educators, while some believe that computers are a perfect tutor, other argued that computers are just merely tool to help educators effectively deliver their lessons, and still teachers are the best deliverer of information. this topic helps us understand the application of computing
in education.
The Three Modes of Using Computing
in Education
The framework suggested for understanding the application of computing
in education depends upon seeing all computer use in such application as
in one of three modes. In the first, the computer functions as a
tutor. In the second, the computer functions as a
tool. In the third, the computer functions as paychecks a
tutee or student.
The Computer as Tutor
To function as a tutor in some subject, the computer must be
programmed by "experts" in programming and in that subject. The student is then
tutored by the computer executing the program(s). The computer presents
some subject material, the student responds, the computer evaluates the
response, and, from the results of the evaluation, determines what to present next.
At its best, the computer tutor keeps complete records on each student
being tutored; it has at its disposal a wide range of subject detail it can
present; and it has an extensive and flexible way to test and then lead the
student through the material. With appropriately well-designed software,
the computer tutor can easily and swiftly tailor its presentation to
accommodate a wide range of student differences.
Tutor mode typically requires many hours of expert work to produce
one hour of good tutoring, for any or all of several reasons. (a) As
intuitive beings, humans are much more flexible than any machine, even a
computer. (b) Creating a lesson to be delivered by a human tutor requires less
time
because it omits much of the detail, relying upon the spontaneous
improvisation and performance of the instructor to fill in both strategy and
substance at the time of delivery. (c) Computers are still relatively crude devices
and the only means we have of programming them are awkward and
time-consuming. (d) Human instruction rarely aims to accommodate
individual differences because the normal classroom situation prohibits such
accommodation; hence lesson preparation and design are simpler and
swifter. Because such accommodation is possible with the computer as tutor,
the substantive and strategic details needed to individualize the lesson tend
to get included, thus often greatly lengthening lesson design and
preparation time.
The Computer as Tool
To function as a tool, the classroom computer need only have some
useful capability programmed into it such as statistical analysis, super
calculation, or word processing. Students can then use it to help them in a variety
of subjects. For example, they might use it as a calculator in math and
various science assignments, as a map-making tool in geography, as a facile,
tireless performer in music, or as a text editor and copyist in English.
Because of their immediate and practical utility, many such tools have
been developed for business, science, industry, government, and other
application areas, such as higher education. Their use can pay off handsomely in
saving time and preserving intellectual energy by transferring necessary but
routine clerical tasks of a tedious, mechanical kind to the computer. For
example, the burdensome process of producing hundreds or even thousands
of employee paychecks can be largely transferred to the computer through
the use of accounting software; the tedious recopying of edited manuscripts
of texts or even music can be relegated to the computer through word
or musical notation processing software; the laborious drawing of
numerous intermediate frames for animated cartoons can be turned over to the
computer through graphics software; or the fitting of a curve to experimental
data can be done by the computer through statistical software.
To use the computer as tutor and tool can both improve and enrich
classroom learning, and neither requires student or teacher to learn much
about computers. By the same measure, however, neither tutor nor tool
mode
confers upon the user much of the general educational benefit
associated with using the computer in the third mode, as tutee.
The Computer as Tutee
To use the computer as tutee is to tutor the computer; for that, the student
or teacher doing the tutoring must learn to program, to talk to the computer in
a language it understands. The benefits are several. First, because you
can't teach what you don't understand, the human tutor will learn what he or
she is trying to teach the computer. Second, by trying to realize broad
teaching goals through software constructed from the narrow capabilities of
computer logic, the human tutor of the computer will learn something both about
how computers work and how his or her own thinking works. Third, because
no expensive predesigned tutor software is necessary, no time is lost
searching for such software and no money spent acquiring it.
The computer makes a good "tutee" because of its dumbness, its
patience, its rigidity, and its capacity for being initialized and started over
from scratch. Students "teach" it how to tutor and how to be a tool. For
example, they have taught it to tutor younger students in arithmetic operations, to
drill students on French verb endings, to play monopoly, to calculate
loan interest, to "speak" another computer language, to draw maps, to
generate animated pictures, and to invert melodies.
Learners gain new insights into their own thinking through learning
to program, and teachers have their understanding of education enriched
and broadened as they see how their students can benefit from treating
the computer as a tutee. As a result, extended use of the computer as tutee
can shift the focus of education in the classroom from end product to
process, from acquiring facts to manipulating and understanding them.
