PowerPoint Hits Elementary School
from the it's-everywhere,-I-tell-you,-everywhere... dept
Someone once told me that any time a story appears in the NY Times, expect a similar story to appear in the Wall Street Journal soon afterwards - and vice versa. It seems the Wall Street Journal took their time on this one. A year and a half ago the NY Times wrote about how PowerPoint is being used in the classroom, and even USA Today had a similar story a year ago. However, now The Wall Street Journal, republished at MSNBC, has decided it's a big enough story for them to tell. So, in case you hadn't noticed elementary schools are now using PowerPoint. As with any such article, people are afraid that using PowerPoint, while it may be fun for the kids, encourages bad writing habits - and focuses on style over substance. Others, though, think it's a good way for kids to get used to using such tools, and practicing skills that will help them later in life.
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Then it's time...
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Back in the day
And if you had a "conservative" professor in college, s/he would not accept essays written by word processors, because a "genuine" essay had to be typewritten.
Yes, in high school, computers were still treated like some sort of vocational trade, therefore good students were steered away into "hard science" subjects like chemistry or physics, because there would be a "critical shortage" of scientists and engineers in the coming years. And I got out of college just in time for the Cold War to end, so there was a total overabundance of chemists and physicists, most of whom eventually became IT professionals.
Hell, I spent some of my early years in rural Japanese elementary schools, where pens were considered "dishonest" so you had to use pencils for everything. Getting car rides to school was forbidden, because it was too "decadent"; good kids walked for miles through snow, and getting your hands and ears numb "toughened you up".
We should go back to the days when kids solve all their problems on chalkboards they take home from school, because paper notebooks are "wasteful" of the nation's resources.
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Skills for the future
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Re: Skills for the future
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Also check out...
the PowerPoint commedian.
My personal favorites:
Life Specs: a chart showing that the more slides, the less usable data.
and
Pie Chart of Chart Types
(from The Screensavers)
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