Jared Schmidt

I & L 2749

Homework #1

Due:  January 23, 2006

            My high school experience was typical among the stereotypes that are expressed today.  The classrooms were setup to be used for students to be taught through lectures.  The desks were all in neat rows to ensure uniformity while the teacher lectured, mainly from overhead transparencies.  To the side of most of the science classrooms, there were about six lab desks with older equipment, most which was rusting.  There were some computers in the classroom; however, they were rarely used in class and they were the old style green-colored screen computers, which at times would make it difficult to understand certain ideas or concepts.

            John Brown talks about how today’s society is gradually moving towards a digital realm.  From his experiences in the workplace, he realized that his coworkers learned a lot better when they could be networked to one another so that when the need arose, each person could call on the others to get solutions.

            In my high school science classes, this was not the case.  Students were not connected to other students throughout the school, not to mention those in their own classroom.  This type of learning is not as effective as that mentioned by John Seely Brown in his article.  The technology available was not very useful either.  Each computer was capable of running small programs off of either 3.5 or 5” floppy disks.

            My junior and senior years of high school in physics were the only classroom experiences where I had the opportunity to use IBM computers that were connected to photo gates and other technological devices.  In these classes it was easier to learn about concepts in physics by using the computers.  It was also possible to network to the other students so that we could share information, data or results.  This classroom setting seemed to parallel that of the digital classroom that Brown spoke about.

            Another feature that was not present in my classrooms was the use of video photography to record lectures or experiments during class.  John Seely Brown talked about Stanford University and how they used videotapes of lectures.  Several people who worked for Hewlett-Packard that were attending Stanford were required to leave and move away.  In order to continue their education, the videotapes were sent to them and as a group, they were able to watch the videos, pause them when necessary and then continue on with the lecture.  He mentioned that the small group of engineering students outperformed those that were taking the actual class.

            My high school experience would have been made a lot easier if video photography was used.  For those classes that were difficult for me, such as chemistry or biology, a taping of the lecture or lab demonstrations would have been very beneficial.

            Another point that John Seely Brown brought up was that students today are multiprocessors and can do a number of tasks at the same time, such as listening to music, talking on the phone and working on the computer.  In my free time, that was evident during my high school career, however, during class it was not possible because most of the class was devoted to taking notes and working on practice problems.  The environment was totally opposite of that which is described in John Seely Brown’s article.

            The digital classroom and society that John Seely Brown spoke of was not present when I was in high school.  Some aspects were there, but just like video photography starting off fairly slow, so was the digital age while I was attending high school.