Taking Stock
Before making these decisions or actually distributing any funds to the schools for computer purchases, Glassman first needed to find out exactly what equipment already existed in the schools and how it was being used.
He soon learned that 14 of the 25 schools had some equipment on hand, but that only one school had nearly enough: 20 computers. Moreover, as he had feared, each school had a different approach to computer instruction.
Some schools were stressing programming. and were not exposing their students to packaged software, printers, modems, or disk drives.
At other schools, computers were used only as engines to run drill and-practice exerciscs. Glassman felt that these were effective in some remedial situations, but were often being used indiscriminately.
There were even schools where the computer equipment, initially installed with much fanfare, now stood idle. No teachers had been trained to use it.
A POSSIBLE MODEL?
P.S. 321 in Park Slope did offer one well-developed approach to computer education. There, all fourth and fifth graders spend one morning period a week in a room that's set up like an old-fashioned language lab. Instead of facing tape recorders, each "cluster" of two students shares one of 17 Commodore VIC-20 and three Commodore PET computers.
P.S. 32 l's computer lab is run by teacher Mark Golby. who has written computer books and teaches computing to adults at New York's New School for Social Research. Golby designed a lab curriculum that helps students understand arithmetic concepts while they learn BASIC.
"Young children sometimes have trouble seeing that multiplication is repetitive addition," Golbv said. "Take four times three, which is really three plus three plus three plus three. You tcach them how to do a program with a counting loop— a for . . . next loop where the limit on the loop is four. By doing that, they can see for the first time that by adding over and over again, they're doing multiplication."
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