Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The computer has become the learning appliance. Don’t believe me? Just ask my six-year-old niece. So what do schools do now?

“What are you searching?”

That was a simple question. Last weekend I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee visiting with relatives. I was sitting in front of my portable computer studying and modifying a document.

My six-year-old niece walked up to me, perched her chin on the table top next to my computer as only a precocious, six-year-old girl can do, rolled her eyes to me, and asked “what are you searching?”

She didn’t ask, “what are you doing?” or “what game are you playing?” or “can I use your computer to play Webkins” or whatever it is that six year old girls do on the computer. No, it was “what are you searching?”

Computer usage has come to this, searching. There is nothing else that we do on computers any longer. We search.

Maybe that isn’t a bad thing. Why search? Well, for me at least, I search to learn something that I don’t know. The computer has become a learning appliance. There are far worse things to do with a computer or anything else. Learning is pretty good.

What does this say for schools? If the computer has become the learning appliance, what do schools do? Teach kids how to use the learning appliance? That wouldn’t be a bad thing. Perhaps.