Teachers Are Lagging Behind in Logging On
With more computers than ever ready to be booted up in
classrooms across the country, our schools should be turning out
thousands of Bill Gates clones. Not so fast. It seems half the
screens are dark because the geeks who backed this rush to get
computers in schools forgot one key element training the
teachers. Education Week magazine has just completed a
comprehensive report on technology in schools that shows
teachers don't know what to do with all that RAM. Almost 50 percent
don't use computers at all in teaching, and only 61 percent use
the Internet. And the educational software that's out there
doesn't provide much promise: 70 percent of high school teachers said
finding useful products is nearly impossible, and the
software-savvy give materials that are usable a grade C or
lower.