Re: Apple Computers-collector's items?

[dastar@crl.com (Sam Ismail)]

Gabriel Rossman (gabrielr@ucla.edu) wrote:

: I don't care if its flamebait, I stick to my opinions and here's why.
: The "getting the job done" idea might work except that computer education
: is an end, not a mean, as schools don't have sufficient computers to use
: them for every subject. The fact is that a kid who knows that it takes 10
: minutes to initialize a disk, writes fluent BASIC, doesn't know what a
: hard drive is, and has never heard of MS Word or Excel is going to find
: that the skills he learned in school have little to no use in the real
: world.
: Just as it would be idiotic for UC Davis to teach it's students to do
: everything with a hoe, when they'll be using combines, airplanes, and
: trucks in real life agriculture, its stupid to teach kids BASIC and
: appleworks when they'll be using Windows, Mac, or Unix and GUI suite
: software in the real world.

WRONG.  Learning to use tools on ANY computer will teach you the basic
paradigms you need which will allow you to operate any computer you
eventually end up using.  Just because they are learning on outdated
tools doesn't mean they will be at a disadvantage.  If you teach them to
be robots, they will be robots.  But if they are taught to understand
that you can highlight text, cut, copy and paste it, etc, they will be
able to carry those skills over to any system.  The concepts are the same.
Its just how you get there that's different.

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