to use headers and footers, how to use footnote and endnotes and so on
we are teaching Microsoft Word, or OpenOffice or what have you. We are
teaching people to be what I call "5 step computer users"
You have all encountered these users, they are the ones with the five
steps written out on sticky notes and stuck to the monitors of their
computers. If the computer of program ever does anything unexpected or
if they ever need to do something outside the 5 steps they are lost.
I knew of a school that prided itself on the excellent college
preparation it gave its students. Yet its technology courses were
little more than teaching the students to be secretaries. They were
fine so long as they never had to encounter a new program, or, heavens
forbid, an operating system other than Windows. They were training up
5 step computer users, Just like all the teachers and administrators.
Greg
On Feb 13, 2009, at 9:05 PM, Keith E Gatling wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 10:00 PM, Beth Ritter-Guth <
> britterguth@hotchkiss.org> wrote:
>
>> This is a fascinating conversation. Here are my thoughts, for what
>> they
>> are worth...
>>
>> I cam to Hotchkiss after a wonderful career teaching College English.
>> Technology was an excellent tool for helping students manipulate and
>> analyze texts. Programs like Zotero helped them compile better
>> research;
>> Google Docs helped them navigate collaborative writing; Second Life
>> helped
>> them explore literature on a deeper and more personal level. But,
>> those
>> wonderful tools were partnered with texts (Dante's Inferno, for
>> example);
>> the technology did not stand alone.
>>
>> We should never sacrifice content at the altar of technology, but
>> we should
>> be realistic about the kinds of navigation and processing skills our
>> students will need in college.
>
>
> So my question is then, does plain old, non-sexy, word processing
> matter
> anymore? Is it still important to teach students how to format
> documents to
> some standard, and in such a way that when the time comes that they
> have to
> revise them, it's not as much work as writing it all over again? Are
> tabs,
> margins, headers, footers, footnotes, text-wrapping around pictures,
> non-numbered title pages that are part of the same document (but
> don't count
> as page 1), and inserting table important anymore in this wikified,
> podcasting world?
>
> And let's not forget desktop publishing. For those who do eventually
> go into
> it, aren't those "boring" things I just mentioned exactly the kinds of
> things you have to look out for and deal with? Aren't even web pages
> designed with some nod to traditional typography and page layout?
>
> Are we so sure that what they do ten years from now will be so
> radically
> different from this week that we're willing to say "They'll pick
> that old
> stuff up if they need it, go with the new stuff"?
>
> I'm not so sure about that. While it's definitely true that the
> tools of
> 2019 will be very different from the tools of 2009, the change
> between any
> two years along the way will be incremental, and we can't afford to
> throw
> out today's tools because we're sure that no one will be using them
> in 10
> years. After all, they might still be using them in 7.
>
> And maybe the old tools will just take on a new form. From 1984,
> when I saw
> my first IBM PC, it took about 10 or 15 years for the typewriter to
> pretty
> much go the way of the dinosaur as a regularly used tool. On the
> other hand,
> the skills that had been taught in many a typing class go on in the
> form of
> word processing, and the people who write word processing programs
> have
> taken the time to put in as standard features all the little things
> that we
> struggled to get right on the typewriter, and to combine it with
> typography
> and publishing. Ah, the typewriter has gone away, but typing hasn't;
> with a
> better tool it's become something more and better.
>
> Podcasting? To me that's time-shifted radio with a minimum of
> equipment. In
> fact, I use podcasts to listen to radio shows like "Wait Wait, Don't
> Tell
> Me" and "A Prairie Home Companion" that I can't listen to in real
> time.
> Perhaps the future of radio lies in the podcast, but not everyone is
> going
> to want or need to do their own. 30 years ago, when I wanted people
> to hear
> my music so I could become a songwriter, things like YouTube
> would've been
> really great. But again, that's not for everyone. And those tools will
> change too.
>
> I guess I figure that *everyone* still needs the "nuts and bolts"
> stuff,
> which is evolving incrementally. *Some* people will gravitate toward
> *creating* stuff in some of the newer, sexy, forms like podcasts,
> videos,
> wikis, etc, but that won't be the majority.
>
> One last example. I love listening to audiobooks. It allows to
> "read" while
> I'm taking a walk or driving, which would otherwise be "dead time."
> But as
> much as I love audiobooks, it's notoriously hard to highlight or put a
> Post-It note on a particularly interesting page of that audiobook so
> you can
> check it out later on. Or photocopy that page to send to someone
> else. In
> those cases I find myself having to get an old-fashioned *book*, and
> hoping
> that it has an index I can check for a key word in the passage in
> question
> so I can find it.
>
> It's all incremental.
>
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