The Hidden Cost of "Free" Information

Alan Warhaftig Coordinator, Learning in the Real World

Commercialization of Children Summit New York City September 10, 2001 Schools are spending billions on computers and networks with little evidence that technology improves learning. Vendors promise that the investment in boxes and wires will guarantee access to a wealth of free information.

The rise and fall of technology stocks should prompt concern about whether quality information will continue to be available free of charge. Content providers may discover that, like the dot.coms, there is no viable model for their business.

A more significant question for educators and parents is whether information from the web is in fact free. Content providers are sustained by advertising, and schools that regard information from the web as free are, in essence, selling their students to advertisers. Is it acceptable for students in schools to be exposed to a succession of banner ads targeted at them? Is this how education should be funded?

Learning in the Real World examines the pros and cons of computers in schools. A grant to Professor Larry Cuban of the Stanford University School of Education supported research for Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom, which will be published this month by the Harvard University Press.

Learning in the Real World recently joined with the American Academy of Pediatrics to award a $50,000 grant to Dr. Xiaoming Li, an educational psychologist and Professor of Pediatrics at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, to conduct a randomized, controlled study of the effect of computer use on gross and visual motor development in rural, low?income preschoolers.

Alan Warhaftig became coordinator of Learning in the Real World in July, 2001, succeeding founding coordinator William L. Rukeyser, who was appointed Assistant Secretary at the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA). Mr. Warhaftig is a National Board Certified Teacher who teaches English at the Fairfax Magnet Center for Visual Arts, a high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. His view of instructional technology is pragmatic: "The most important decision I make every day is how to use instructional time. My job in the classroom is to teach students to read, think, and write, and at this point computers offer few advantages. Unfortunately, vast numbers of computers are being placed in schools before appropriate uses have been identified and before teachers have been trained to use instructional technology to improve learning. We are, in effect, experimenting on this generation of children."