Re: TI-89 virtue email needed
[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Re: TI-89 virtue email needed
I have to take objection to your statement that "skills lost to machines are
acceptable losses". I teach electronics in a vocational setting. The
students
in my classroom/lab are required to calculate the electrical characteristics
(current and power) of any circuit they are working with. If a calculator is
unavailable (even though there exists a class set) they must be able to do so
with pencil and paper. I require this to minimize the possibility of an
accident.
Rick Homard
Ray Kremer wrote:
> Yet another excellent response. I think we've established now that skills
> lost to machines are acceptable losses. After all, as long as one person
> still knows how to find a square root, he can program the calcualtor to do
> it, and the rest of us can use the calculator. As long as one person knows
> how to make soap, the rest of us can buy it from him.
> The only problem left, then, is adjusting the cirriculum in the schools to
> allow for the new technology. As has been pointed out, when you use
> technology to do things, you can move one to harder things you couldn't
> do before. This results in greater knowledge overall. Even if you can't
> see the trees for the forest, it's a bigger forest. However, teachers and
> textbooks are slow to adapt. Integration by hand (etc.) has been taught
> since calculus classes began. We have the disadvantage now of being on the
> borderline between doing it by hand and letting the calculator do it. We
> know the 89 will do it, but the teachers are still required to teach it by
> hand. Not to place any blame, this happens in any large organization.
> New textbooks editions are only done every few years, so new developements
> in between may have to wait before getting put into print. The problem is
> compounded before the college level, when schools buy a set of books and
> rent them to students, only buying the new edition when the old books are on
> the verge of falling apart from age. A real world example, air traffic
> control towers were slow to switch from vacuum tubes to transistors due to
> government standards. The purpose for standards is to make sure you don't
> switch to new technology before it is proven, the only bad thing is the
> process for updating the standards is slow. Okay, that a very loose analogy
> when applied to schools, but you get my point. All I can say here is that
> students five or ten years from now will have the joys of using the full
> power of the TI-89. We in the here and now, though, have to grin and bear
> it until the change occurs.
>
> >Wow! A good, intelligent discussion going on here! One thing to ask
> >ourselves is, "Is the skill we lose important to our life?" I remember 1972
> >when I was in 11th grade. HP had just come out with the HP-35, the first
> >handheld scientific calculator and our math teachers were really worried
> >that we'd forget how to do square roots by hand. Does anyone do square
> >roots with pencil and paper anymore? Does anyone even remember how? I
> >don't. Some skills, such as whaling, calculating square roots or making
> >soap are being lost but does it really matter? These things were once vital
> >to survival for many people but today they're irrelevant skills. If you
> >told our great grandparents that virtually no one today knows how to make
> >soap, they'd have a fit! "How do you keep clean?" Perhaps some of the
> >skills we consider vital today will fall into the same category in the
> >future. The line will move itself when society as a whole is ready for it
> >to move. There will always be people like the Luddites who couldn't accept
> >technological change but they will only slow down change by a small
> >fraction. The change will happen. It's up to us to be ready.
> >
> >Tom Lake
References: