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Summary: ENLIGHTENING!
Review: A wonderful book - enlightening and fun to read. Imagine peering into all sorts of schools across the country: wealthy, impovershed, white, diverse, black, high-tech, low tech. This is what Oppenheimer has done - in spades. His research speaks volumes about educating the mind and the tools we use (or misuse) to do so. If you're at all interested in what and how American's kids are learning, read this book.
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Summary: Most Important Book
Review: All educators, legislators and parents should read this book. If everyone would read it and pay attention we really could improve American education.
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Summary: good case for skepticism hurt somewhat by one-sidedness
Review: Anyone who has paid any attention to education in the past 20 years, whether personally or professionally, knows the tremendous sales job being done in the name of computer technology. Oppenheimer lays out in devastating fashion the opposing view and offers a much-needed healthy skepticism to the whole idea of computers in schools.
The strengths of the book are many. First, Oppenheimer gives us an historical context for the topic, starting not with the recent multi-million dollar deals giving laptops to all students in a district but going back much farther. In fact, he doesn't even begin with computers but shows, briefly yet effectively, how other technologies were also hailed as education's saviors but fell flat: radio, television, film, laserdiscs, etc. (he ignores, sadly for people my age, the filmstrip; perhaps he felt too fondly toward its sad little "ping" telling the teacher it was time to move forward another frame). Once he shows the reader how past technologies often failed to achieve their promise, he turns to early computers for several chapters before catching up to the big rush to put computers in the schools in the late 80's and the 90's.
He employs a lot of research studies in making his case or more often deflating the tech proponents' case, but the heart of the book is less the research studies than the personal visits Oppenheimer makes to schools that span a range of tech use, from those that are "tech-centered" to those that make almost no use of computers. As one might imagine from a book whose thrust is skeptical toward computers, the tech-centered schools don't come off so well.
This approach has both an upside and a downside. On the one hand, it makes clear and concrete the abstract questions: why isn't technology doing more to help increase test scores, why isn't it creating more motivated learners, etc. When one sees the computers actually in day to day real-school use where students use them to check email in the middle of class, where systems constantly crash, where teachers know less than their students, some of the questions seem easily answered. But there also lies the pitfall of the approach, since obviously no matter how many schools Oppenheimer visits, he is only seeing a tiny percentage and the visits are so overwhelmingly negative that one begins to wonder if this is truly as bad as it seems or is the game being rigged either consciously or unconsciously.
While the book's agenda is clearly to form a healthy skepticism in the reader's mind, a more balanced approach could have done the same and would have made for a better book. While Oppenheimer's points about the oversell of computers, about the forced costs involved in upgrading constantly, about untrained or undertrained teachers, about books budgets and teachers being cut while computers are bought are all strong arguments to take a much sharper look at technology's "bang for the buck", at least some attention to its many good uses would serve the reader well in terms of making this a more informed debate rather than a polemic. Beyond ignoring the positive uses technology is being put to, he also at times seems to stretch to blame it for things which occur in any classroom regardless of whether computers are there or not. For instance, he sees the fact that students are checking a non-relevant website or their email during a class session as evidence of the computer's negatives, but look into any classroom of 30 and you're almost bound to see some students doodling, some writing notes to friends, some sleeping at the desk. Or watch any kids doing group work in a library setting and you'll see some kids doing nothing or reading magazines rather than researching. Students have never needed computers to screw around and while Oppenheimer tosses off a recognition of this, he still seems to come down a bit hard on technology as the culprit in these cases.
He also doesn't offer enough viewpoints from the other side. For instance, when one teacher calls science simulation programs "garbage", the opinion doesn't really mean much if we aren't given an opposing view or example of it being used so we can decide for ourselves.
In the end, the books should really be made essential reading for any teacher/administrator and I'd recommend as well for anyone who pays school taxes and votes for school boards/budgets. It does present a strong case for being skeptical of the millions of dollars being spent on computers and will give informed parents and faculty the background to ask the hard questions that need to be asked of their administrators, their boards, and the salespeople coming around. For its clarity, its thoroughness, and it ability to raise those questions, I highly recommend it. I just wish he could have allowed us to trust the skepticism more by not rigging the game quite so much.
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Summary: Open minds in closed spaces
Review: How interestting to compare and contrast the editorial and customer reviews. Could these people have been reading two different books? How appropriate would this contrast be for an illustration of Plato's cave analogy. Incompatible realms of reality require the death of one incompatible party. Or do they?
In the education business the labels are so significant that non-conformity is a death warrant. Perhaps, the effort to read sub-texts rather than plain text is a hard thing to do. Oppenheimer is a non-nazi that is also a non-marxist who dares to ask a few WHY questions and make some serious points about education that need to be addressed with intellectual integrity rather than partizan alacrity. If our "public schools" were in perfect shape and produced the best education in the world for citizens of the best country in the world whose taxes support the best teachers in the world, a book like "The Flickering Mind" would be useless; however, if the converse is true, then the book is worth a reading and its theses merit careful consideration rather than condemnation since better teachers are the ones who produce better students rather than viceversa.
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Summary: Finally, a book that tells the truth
Review: I have always been skeptical of the inordinate amount of emphasis that's been placed on the whiz bang aspect of computers. The Flickering Mind, with clear and well researched prose, explains why computers don't teach my kids to think in ways that will ultimately help them in the big, bad world. Let's use Oppenheimer's book as a platform from which rethink the way we're emphasizing computers in the schools!
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Summary: Neither a fool nor a huckster
Review: I have spent the past five years obtaining a doctorate in educational technology and I have taught in public and private school and worked in the commercial software world so I read Todd Oppenheimer's book The Flickering Mind with great interest and concern. The back of the book has an endorsement from Gregg Easterbrook, a senior editor with the New Republic. I had read Easterbrook's A Moment on the Earth and realized that his appraisal of environmental conditions and endangered species was 80% accurate but the 20% that was inaccurate was very crucial. I'm afraid that Oppenheimer's book has done a similar job except that he might not have reached the 80% mark. I think that there are undeniable conclusions which must be dealt with from Oppenheimer's book. The main conclusion is the cost and obsolescence factor of the computer world. Upgrades, both hardware and software, are a way of life. The computer business-world is dependent on making improvements to the products. The computers are created by companies that depend on their ability to improve their hardware and software so people keep buying. Even if schools don't want to upgrade, eventually they have to. The machines break down and require a lot of maintenance. They can be expensive to run in the best of situations. That expense exists even before we consider the expense of virus and worms which will only get worst. Nobody has ever come up with an answer for that problem. Sometimes it does seem that computers are good for people who have lots of time, money, and self-discipline. Computers in the wrong environments are detrimental. Computers in the hands of poor teachers, uncreative teachers are worse than the teacher teaching without the computer. In order for computers to be used well they require a teacher who understands how curriculum may be improved with computers. But there was more left out than included in Oppenheimer's book. This does not dispute the tale that was told, it just argues that its insistence on black and white images ignores the spectrum of colors that could tell a much fuller tale. Oppenheimer presents anecdotal evidence to argue that computers are dysfunctional in schools. There is at least as much anecdotal evidence of computers working in schools and making a level of education possible that wouldn't otherwise be. Oppenheimer ends the second part of his book declaring that good teaching is not rocket science and "only a fool, or a huckster bent on selling rotten goods, could miss them." To understand the quality of American education may require more subtlety and understanding than found in Oppenheimer's declaration. Perhaps it is that the best examples of the use of the computer in the classroom are shown by teachers who used their own money to purchase the software to match the learning style of particular students; and managed not to be either a fool or a huckster's victim, but simple a teacher wanting to try one more approach to reach one more student.
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Summary: Where's the beef
Review: I'm a public school technology education teacher. Oppenheimer would call me an Industrial education teacher because I probably don't fit the requirements of a TECHNOLOGY teacher. To Oppenhiemer schools place too much emphasis and money on high tech. High tech gives teachers and administrators something to write on their resumes but isn't necessarily best for the students. Oppenheimer basically asks Where's The Beef? He wants better balance between fundamental skills and high technology ones. He wants educators to spend more time prioritizing what should be taught. For example CAD programs should not be taught till kids know how to use a ruler and learn to sketch and draft manually. And sometimes kids don't even know how to type with all their fingers.
He's reminds us to KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID, like the Waldorf teachers do. He wants us to remember to keep the human touch. School counseling should be more than handing out personality tests and getting kids into colleges. He wants us to stop phasing out low technology shop classes and develop World Wide Web crap detection skills. He wants us to develop an educational pyramid similar to the one we refer to as the "food pyramid" and encourage creativity. Most kids don't even know the real reasons America has been attached by terrorists. "Because they hate our freedom" is a lame answer.
Oppenheimer hinted that HDDHD might be a factor of our high tech. Environment. Too much stimulation. I thank Oppenheimer for his lesson plan ideas. For example kids learning computer programming could make their own games. Kids could play chess or enroll in an inventing class (see Mission Impossible on page 122 and constructionist theory on page 133). Basically Oppenheimer believes technology is what you make it. It can help us or harm us. He stirs things up so that the rest of us can get a wider view of things we suspected but tried not put out of our minds.
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Summary: Great read about something that needs to be said
Review: I'm astounded at the vitrolic responses on this site to this meticulously researched and well-told narrative about the downside to yet another panacea offered to rescue public education in America. Read the book -- and these negative reviews -- you'll see that the story these critics see is in their heads, not on the the pages that Oppenheimer wrote. You'll also see why time and again that education has been hijacked by both those with good intentions and those with hardline agendas and rigid theories that claim to know what's best. This is a brave book, and a compelling read.
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Summary: Thinking Critically About Technology in Education...
Review: I've worked as a district level administrator in the K-12 world of educational technology since 1996. The questions and topics that Todd raises in this book are identical to the frustrations many of are dealing with on a daily basis. It's astonishing how many of today's educators have a blanket assumption that "technology" translates into "student achievement" or "improved student learning". The first 100 pages of Todd's book do a great job of deconstructing the biased research that's used as sales material by the technology companies. This is the first decent "critical" look at technology in education. A must read for anybody working in the educational technology field.
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Summary: Poverty kids get computers, rich kids get teachers
Review: More elegantly, FORBES editor Stephen Kindel wrote (almost 20 years ago) that "it is the poor who will be chained to the computer; the rich will get teachers." Oppenheimer visits numerous classrooms -- described alertly and sensitively -- and talks to innumerable teachers, students, company leaders, and others, observing the realities of technology in the classroom. He reports striking findings of good research into learning, since education has, in fact, a "long, abundantly documented history." His book is exceptionally readable and timely. It also prompts concern, e.g. about young lawyers dependent on online indexes who "'don't know how to use the books.'" He especially prompts concern for the experience of millions of students who will pass through priceless years of capacity for learning while being cheated because of administrators, teachers and parents who have fallen for "e-lusions," as Oppenheimer calls them. At least two audiences should read this book: (1) Ed school faculty -- As professionals training the new generation of teachers, you owe it to them and to yourself to be conversant with this book. If you are overworked, I sympathize; but you need to know this book, and probably need to assign the book as required reading, or at least require passages from it. If the following terms are familiar to you, you'll recognize matters the author deals with: attention span
collaborative learning
criticial thinking
constructivism courseware
distance learning & university systems
"guide at the side, not sage on the stage"
information economy
instructional technology worker
laptops in all classrooms
mastery learning
multiple intelligences
No Child Left Behindpartnerships with business
portfolios
project-based learning
readability formulas
Renaissance Learning (a company)
service learning
task forces for curriculum development & technology (2) Parents who are anxious that their kids need the school or the home to invest in state-of-the-art computers. Here are a few sentences I marked: "Among the greater ironies of the computer age is that information is cheap and accessible, and so no longer very valuable. What is valuable is what is done with it. And human imagination cannot be mechanized."
"Technology promises an experience by which we don't have to do anything to make it happen." There is a need for deepened human relations "which are very different interactions than the faux relationships conducted over the Internet."
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