Location
Holiday Inn, Manatee Room D
Start Date
29-4-1997 2:00 PM
Description
This project was initiated as a result of an address by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin at KSC in 1995, in which he advised KSC employees to become involved in education as a critical goal for the future. In my work as an emergency physician I come in constant contact with children and teenagers in Florida, and have observed that a growing percentage have difficulty with simple verbal communication and lack the basic skills required to achieve success in technologically demanding careers. This is most commonly a problem with children from poor backgrounds; a growing percentage are permanently disenfranchised from our vision of the future and are likely to become a costly and destabalizing factor in future society.
What can be done? Resources are obviously limited; as Florida consistently ranks among the lowest of the 50 states in suport for public education, and alternatives such as private and charter schools will never be available to the majority of children at risk. Moreover, there is little evidence computers provide a meaningful benefit even in districts with adequate resources: “Schools in the United States have 5.8 million computers for use in instruction—about one for every nine students. ... Despite technologies available in schools, a substantial number of teachers report little or no use of computers for instruction. Their use of other technologies also varies considerably.” (From Now On, http://otabbs.ota.gov/T128/)
Paper Session I-D - Development of a Low-Cost Elementary School Computer Lab Using Excess NASA Equipment
Holiday Inn, Manatee Room D
This project was initiated as a result of an address by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin at KSC in 1995, in which he advised KSC employees to become involved in education as a critical goal for the future. In my work as an emergency physician I come in constant contact with children and teenagers in Florida, and have observed that a growing percentage have difficulty with simple verbal communication and lack the basic skills required to achieve success in technologically demanding careers. This is most commonly a problem with children from poor backgrounds; a growing percentage are permanently disenfranchised from our vision of the future and are likely to become a costly and destabalizing factor in future society.
What can be done? Resources are obviously limited; as Florida consistently ranks among the lowest of the 50 states in suport for public education, and alternatives such as private and charter schools will never be available to the majority of children at risk. Moreover, there is little evidence computers provide a meaningful benefit even in districts with adequate resources: “Schools in the United States have 5.8 million computers for use in instruction—about one for every nine students. ... Despite technologies available in schools, a substantial number of teachers report little or no use of computers for instruction. Their use of other technologies also varies considerably.” (From Now On, http://otabbs.ota.gov/T128/)
