[clover] eco debate by 七七夕夕

七七夕夕UID: 2753801

组里的作业到现在才交。。。
     虽然，因为过年等种种原因，大家没有一起完成太多的事情，但是相信进了这个组的都会有收获，至少我是的。
     到现在才把debate弄出来，有点汗颜。。。。不过，感觉还是很有收获的。。。
－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－
组里的人很多都已经考完aw了，还有一些跟我一样还在对aw的惶恐中奋斗。。。anyway。。。bless～bless～everybody～～

七七夕夕UID: 2753801

Technology in education

This house believes thecontinuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education.

About this debate

Over the last several decades, large investments have been made to equip primary and secondaryschools with computers and teachertraining. Now it is time to examine whetherthere has been a sufficient return on this investment. Does technologyreally offer substantive advantagesto students? Does technology accelerateor impede real progress ineducation? Similarly, does technology serve as a teaching crutch(=help) or does it offer theability to promote sustainable change in the world’s classrooms? Andif so, is the technology deployed today being used to best possible advantage? What conditions need to exist inschools for technology to have an impact?

Background reading

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One clunky laptop per child
Great idea. Shame about the mediocre computer
Jan4th 2008 | From The Economist online

IT WOULD be a stunt, but one perhaps worthperforming, to write this column onthe tiny, green and white, $200 XO computer from One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)that sits idle before your columnist. Alas, he cannot.

This is not because the keys are too small for his adult hands(though they are), or because the processor’sslow speed makes the machine frustrating to use(though it does). Nor is itbecause the track pad sometimes goes screwy and the keys lack the normalpressed-key response that allows smooth typing. It isn’t even becausemoving the column from theword-processing application to the web-mail system is prohibitively difficult.

Instead, it isbecause the XO, which yourcolumnist has explored since it arrived a few days before Christmas, has bugsthat cause occasional crashes. Adiscreet message sometimes flashes when the system boots up, warning of some sort of data-checkerror. ;


It wasn’t supposedto be this way. When NicholasNegroponte, a tech guru(=leader,expert, authority) at the celebrated(=famous)Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, launched the initiative in 2005, the vision was grandiose, but the implementation seemed beguilinglysimple. Computer-processing technology had become so widespread andinexpensive that DVD players and mobile phones had as much power as thePCs of just a few years ago. Just add a screen and keyboard, the thought went(=succeed), and you’llhave a cheap, functional laptop.

Indeed, Mr Negroponte’s vision was brilliant. He planned to blanket the developing world with tens of millions of $100 laptopsfor kids. The low cost would come from atripartite “perfect storm”. First, economies of scale:sales would be directly to governments, who could only buy quantities above 1m.Second, the machines would bypass(=circumvent)Intel’s processors and Microsoft’s software in favour of open-sourcestuff. Third, commodity parts would keep the price low.

Mr Negroponte sought funding from educationministries: “It’s an education project, not a technology project,” he was fondof saying. Faced with critics who arguedhe should concentrate on the classic development issues that keep peoplepoor and sick rather than doling out(=hand out) high-tech gear(=equipment), Mr Negroponte wouldrightly reply that education through computers can help resolve all suchproblems.

Today that optimism seems Pollyannaish (=over optimistic). Many governments (includingNigeria’s and Libya’s) cancelled their informalcommitments to purchase the machines when they realised the devices were untried(=untested), the price higher than envisaged(=expected) and other cheap laptops available.
A few trials in places like Haiti and Rwanda, together with orders from Peru andUruguay collectively fell far short of (=lessthan)even 1m machines. A clever holiday promotion in North America that offered two laptops—one for thebuyer and one to donate to a child in a developing country—for $399 similarly fizzled(=failed). Production lines at Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese manufacturer, wereleft idle.

All this is a shame, not least because Mr Negroponte’s idea was sound and the machines’hardware, at least on paper, impressive. The initiative inspired several advances in laptop technology, in terms of (=such as) features (flash memory instead of aspinning hard-drive), design (a laptop-to-tablet form and a waterproof keyboard)and price reductions. A pull-cordhand-generator for power is in the works.OLPC and their boosters(=supporters)deserve hearty congratulations for all of this. Unfortunately, OLPC’sproblems, which can be distilled(=concentrate) into four main areas, risk turning awonderful idea into a plasticpaperweight.

First, the implementation of the technologies isterrible. In their zeal to rewrite therules of computing for first-time users, OLPC shipped machines with a cumbersome(=burdensome) operating system. For example, addingFlash to do something like watch a YouTube video requires users to go into aterminal line-code and type a longinternet address to download the software: it seems impossible to cut-and-paste the address. Major PC vendors(=sellers) spend millions inresearch and development to enhance a computer’s usability; OLPC tried to reinventthe wheel and came up with(=turn out to be) an oval.

Second, the go-to-market execution (as it’s calledin the industry) was imperfect. Therewas a lack of documentation, support and methods to integrate the PCs into school curricula, teachertraining, and the like. OLPC seemed to think that just by handing out laptops, everythingwould sort itself out. This columnist happensrather to like that gung-hoapproach, yet also recognises that the consumer is not the nine-year-old user with infinite time on her hands, but a government bureaucrat who has toevaluate the machines relative to the other options.

That leads to the third problem. Since the project launched in 2005, commercial rivals have emerged: Intel’s“Classmate” at around $250; Acer’s laptop at $350; Everex PCs with Zonbusoftware at around $280; Asustek Computer’s Asus Eee at under $400; and anIndian competitor, Novatium Solutions, which created a basic "NetPC"for around $80. There are many more.
OLPC initially treated all these activities asthreats rather than competitors. Lately, Intel has supported OLPC, though this week said it would leave its board, and Microsoft istrying to tweak(=slightly adjust)Windows XP, an earlier operating system, to work on the XO. But all computerbuyers will have to compare the XO to a lot of other products in the market—something that never seemed to have struckOLPC’s staffers as a possibility, but should have.

This leads to the final problem that has done themost to disappoint OLPC’s fans:the hubris, arrogance and occasionalself-righteousness of OLPC workers. Theytreated all criticism as enemy fire to be deflected and quashed rather thanconsidered and possibly taken on board. Overcoming this will be essential if the project is to succeed past its first release. Technology products improve based on userfeedback. The OLPC staff will need to learn to listen to the candid criticism of outsiders for thesecond-generation of the laptop—or they do not deserve to build one.

Ultimatelythe OLPC initiative will be rememberedless for what it produced than the products it spawned(=generate). Theinitiative is like running the four-minute mile: no one could do it, until someone actually did it. Then many people did.

Likewise, an inexpensive laptop seemed impossibleuntil Mr Negroponte and the OLPC group placeda stake in the ground to build a $100 laptop—which in turn spurred(=stimulate) the industry’s biggest players to createlow-cost PCs. Mr Negroponte’s vision for a $100 laptop was not the rightcomputer, only the right price. Likemany pioneers, he laid a path for others to follow.

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deploy v. to spread out, utilize, or arrange for a deliberate purpose <deploy a sales force>
best v.to get the better of : OUTDO
clunky adj. clumsy in style, form, or execution <a clunky thriller> <clunky earrings>
mediocre adj .of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance : ORDINARY, SO-SO
Alas ― used to express unhappiness, pity, or concern
screwy adj. crazily absurd, eccentric, or unusual
prohibitive adj.tending to preclude use or purchase <prohibitive costs>
hiccup n. a slight irregularity, error, or malfunction <a few hiccups in the computer system>
vision n.a thought, concept, or object formed by the imagination
blanket v.to cover with or as if with a blanket <new grass blankets the slope
tripartite adj. having three corresponding parts or copies
pollyanna n. a person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything
untried adj. not tested or proved by experience or trial <a recruit untried in combat>
envisage v.to have a mental picture of especially in advance of realization <envisages an entirely new system of education>
short of:  OTHER THAN especially : of a lesser degree than <had few options short of replacing the motor>
promotion n.the act of furthering the growth or development of something especially : the furtherance of the acceptance and sale of merchandise through advertising, publicity, or discounting
fizzle v.to fail or end feebly especially after a promising start ― often used with out
idle adj.not occupied or employed
paperweight n. A small, heavy, often decorative object that is placed on loose papers to hold them down.
sort v.to free of confusion : CLARIFY ― used with out <waited until things sorted themselves out>
gung ho adj. extremely or overly zealous or enthusiastic
tweak v.to make usually small adjustments in or to <tweak the controls> especially : FINE-TUNE
stike vt.to affect a person with (a strong emotion) <words that struck fear in the listeners>

七七夕夕UID: 2753801

------------------B--------------------
The brains business
Mass higher education is forcing universities tobecome more diverse, more global and much more competitive, says AdrianWooldridge

Sep8th 2005 | From The Economist printedition

FOR those of a certain age and educationalbackground, it is hard to think of highereducation without thinking ofancient institutions. Some universities are of a venerable age—the Universityof Bologna was founded in 1088, the University of Oxford in 1096—and many ofthem have a strong sense of tradition.The truly old ones make the most of their pedigrees(=histories), and those of amore recent vintage work hard to createan aura(=atmosphere) of antiquity.

And yet these tradition-loving (or -creating)institutions are currently enduring a thunderstorm of changes so fundamentalthat some say the very idea of the university is being challenged. Universities are experimenting with new ways offunding (most notably through student fees), forging partnerships with privatecompanies and engaging in mergers and acquisitions. Such changes are tugging at the ivy's roots.
This is happening for four reasons. The firstis the democratisation of higher education—“massification”, in the languageof the educational profession. In the rich world, massification has been goingon for some time. The proportion of adults with higher educational qualifications in the OECD countries almost doubledbetween 1975 and 2000, from 22% to 41%. But most of the rich countries arestill struggling to digest this huge growth in numbers. And now massificationis spreading to the developing world. China doubled its student population inthe late 1990s, and India is trying tofollow suit.
The second reason is the rise of the knowledge economy. The world is in the grips of a “soft revolution” inwhich knowledge is replacingphysical resources as the main driver ofeconomic growth. The OECD calculates that between 1985 and 1997 thecontribution of knowledge-based industries to total value added increased from51% to 59% in Germany and from 45% to 51% in Britain. The best companiesare now devoting at least a third of their investment to knowledge-intensiveintangibles such as R&D, licensing and marketing. Universities are among the most important engines ofthe knowledge economy. Not only do theyproduce the brain workers who man it, theyalso provide much of its backbone, fromlaboratories to libraries to computer networks.
The third factor is globalisation. The death of distance istransforming academia just asradically as it is transforming business. The number of people from OECDcountries studying abroad has doubled over the past 20 years, to 1.9m;universities are opening campuses all around the world; and a growing number ofcountries are trying to turn higher education into an export industry.

The fourth iscompetition. Traditional universities are being forced to compete for studentsand research grants, and private companies are trying to break into a sector whichthey regard as “the new health care”. The World Bank calculates that globalspending on higher education amounts to $300 billion a year, or 1% of globaleconomic output. There are more than 80m students worldwide, and 3.5m peopleare employed to teach them or look after them.

Enemies of promise

All this sounds as though a golden age for universitieshas arrived. But inside academia, particularly in Europe, it does not feellike it. Academics complain about “the decline of the donnish dominion(=power)” (the title of a book by A.H. Halsey, asociologist), and administrators arelocked in bad-tempered exchanges with the politicians who fund them. Whathas gone wrong?

The biggest problemis the role of the state. If more and more governments are embracingmassification, few of them are willingto draw the appropriate conclusion from their enthusiasm: that they shouldeither provide the requisite funds (as the Scandinavian countries do) or allowuniversities to charge realistic fees. Many governments have tried to square thecircle through tightermanagement, but management cannot makeup for lack of resources.

So in alltoo much of the academic world, the writer Kingsley Amis's famous dictumthat more means worse is coming to pass. Academic salaries are declining when measured against similar jobs elsewhere, and buildingsand libraries are deteriorating. In mega(large)-institutionssuch as the University of Rome (180,000 students), the National University ofMexico (200,000-plus), and Turkey's Anadolu University (530,000), individualattention to students is bound to take aback seat.

The innate conservatism of the academicprofession does not help. The modernuniversity was born in a very differentworld from the current one, a worldwhere only a tiny minority of thepopulation went into higher education, yet many academics have been reluctant(=unwilling)to make any allowances for massification. Italian universities, for instance,still insist that all students undergo(=experience) a viva voce examination by a full professor, lasting an average ofabout five minutes.
What, if anything,can be done? Techno-utopians believethat higher education is ripe(=ready)for revolution. The university, they say, is a hopelessly antiquated institution, wedded to outdated practices such as tenure and lectures, and incapable of serving a new world of mass audiences and just-in-time information.“Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics,” says PeterDrucker, a veteran management guru. “I consider the American researchuniversity of the past 40 years to be a failure.” Fortunately, in his view, help is on the way in the form ofinternet tuition and for-profituniversities.
Cultural conservatives, on the other hand,believe that the best way forward is backward. The two rulingprinciples of modern higher-education policy—democracyand utility—are “degradations of the academic dogma”, to borrow a phrase from the late Robert Nisbet, anothersociologist. They think it is foolish to waste higher education on people whowould rather study “Seinfeld” than Socrates, and disingenuous to confuse the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of profit.

The conservative argument falls at the firsthurdle: practicality. Higher education israpidly going the way of secondary education: it is becoming a universalaspiration. The techno-utopian position is superficially more attractive.The internet will surely influenceteaching, and for-profit companies arebound to shake up a moribund marketplace. But there are limits.

A few years ago areport by Coopers & Lybrand crowed that online education could eliminatethe two biggest costs from higher education: “The first is the need for bricksand mortar; traditional campuses are not necessary. The second is full-timefaculty. [Online] learning involves onlya small number of professors, but hasthe potential to reach a huge marketof students.” That is nonsense. Thehuman touch is much more vital to higher education than is hightechnology. Education is not just abouttransmitting a body of facts, which theinternet does pretty well. It is about learning to argue andreason, which is best done in acommunity of scholars.

This survey willargue that the most significant development in higher education is the emergence of a super-league of globaluniversities. This is revolutionary inthe sense that these institutions regardthe whole world as their stage, butalso evolutionary in that they arestill wedded to the ideal(=perfect model) of a community of scholars whocombine teaching with research.

The problem forpolicymakers is how to create a systemof higher education that balances thetwin demands of excellence and mass access, that makes room for global eliteuniversities while also catering forlarge numbers of average students, that exploits the opportunities provided by new technology while also recognising that educationrequires a human touch.

As it happens, wealready possess a successful model of how to organise higher education:America's. That country has almost a monopoly on the world's best universities (seetable 1), but also provides access to higher education for the bulk of those who deserve it. The success of Americanhigher education is not just a result of money (though that helps); it is theresult of organisation. American universities are much less dependent on thestate than are their competitors abroad. They derive their income from awide variety of sources, from fee-paying students to nostalgic alumni, fromhard-headed businessmen to generous philanthropists. And they come in awide variety of shapes and sizes, from Princeton and Yale to Kalamazoocommunity college.

This survey will offer two pieces of advice forcountries that are trying to create successfulhigher-education systems, be theynewcomers such as India and China or failedold hands such as Germany and Italy.First: diversify your sources of income. Thebargain with the state has turnedout to be a pact with the devil. Second: let a thousand academic flowersbloom. Universities, including for-profit ones, should have to compete forcustomers. A sophisticated economy needs a wide variety of universitiespursuing a wide variety of missions.These two principles reinforce eachother: the more that the state'srole contracts, the more educational varietywill flourish.
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pedigree: lineage, history,background
vintage: a collection of contemporaneous and similar persons or things : CROP
aura: a distinctive atmosphere surrounding a given source <the place had an aura of mystery>
forge: to form or bring into being especially by an expenditure of effort <working to forge party unity>
merger: absorption by a corporation of one or more others also : any of various methods of combining two or more organizations (as business concerns)
tug vi.to pull hard
ivy: an Ivy League college
grip n.a firm tenacious hold typically giving control, mastery, or understanding
intangible n. something intangible
man v. to supply with people (as for service) <man a fleet>
backbone n.the foundation or most substantial or sturdiest part of something
don n.a head, tutor, or fellow in a college of Oxford or Cambridge University broadly : a college or university professor
square the circle  做办不到的事
deteriorate v.to make inferior in quality or value
take a back seat: to have or assume a secondary position or status(靠后站)
viva voce adj.: expressed or conducted by word of mouth : ORAL
full adj. having all distinguishing characteristics : enjoying all authorized rights and privileges <full member> <full professor>
utopian n.one who believes in the perfectibility of human society
ripe adj.fully prepared : READY <the colonies were ripe for revolution>
wed v.to link by commitment or custom <was wed to the old ways>
veteran n.person of long experience usually in some occupation or skill (as politics or the arts)
tuition n.the act or profession of teaching : INSTRUCTION <pursued his studies under private tuition>
for-profit adj.established, maintained, or conducted for the purpose of making a profit <for-profit businesses>
democracy n.the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
disingenuous adj.: lacking in candor also : giving a false appearance of simple frankness : CALCULATING
aspiration n.a strong desire to achieve something high or great
shake up v.to effect an extensive and often drastic reorganization of
moribund adj. being in the state of dying : approaching death
crow vi.to brag exultantly or blatantly
ideal n.a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence
hand n.a specialist or veteran in a usually designated activity or region <a China hand>
old hand=veteran

七七夕夕UID: 2753801

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Mandarin 2.0
How Skype, podcasts and broadband aretransforming language teaching
Jun7th 2007 | SAN FRANCISCO | From TheEconomist print edition
IT IS early eveningin Berkeley, California, and Chrissy Schwinn, a sinophile environmentalist,walks ten feet from her kitchen to her home office for her Chinese lesson. Shehas already listened to that day's dialogue, which arrived as a free podcast,on her iPod. She has also printed out the day's Chinese characters, whicharrived along with the podcast. Now her computer's Skype software—which makes possiblefree phone calls via the internet—rings and “Vera”, sitting in Shanghai whereit is late morning, says Ni hao tobegin the lesson.
One might call it“language-learning 2.0,” says Ken Carroll, an Irishman who in 2005 co-founded Praxis, the company that provides MsSchwinn's service, after hearing about these “Web 2.0” technologies from hisslightly geekier co-founders, Hank Horkoff, a Canadian, and Steve Williams, aBriton. The penny dropped at once.
“Tens of millions”of people in 110 countries now download the free ChinesePod podcasts, Praxis'sflagship service, says Mr Carroll. About 250,000 listen regularly and “severalthousand” pay for the premium services, which include individual Skype chatswith teachers. A second service, SpanishSense, is out, and more will follow.
As a businessman, MrCarroll loves the economics behind this scheme. Having taught English inShanghai for a decade, he always knew that the old technology of classrooms andbooks would never “scale” to cover the world. Now he has 35 employees, all inShanghai, serving customers globally. He hires the city's best languageteachers and pays them about $500 a month, a good wage by local standards.
The customers areeverywhere from Berkeley to Alaska and the Vatican. In the past, when languageinstruction—along with haircuts and massages—was a “non-tradable” sector of theeconomy, many people would not have found a native Mandarin speaker as ateacher in their town at all. Now they need only a broadband connection.
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Mandarin n.a form of spoken Chinese used by the court and the official classes of the Empire
geek n.an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity <computer geek>
flagship n.the finest, largest, or most important one of a series, network, or chain <the company's flagship store>
premium adj.of exceptional quality or amount also : higher-priced

七七夕夕UID: 2753801

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Dimming(=lusterless)
Disturbing evidence of a decline in youngsters’brainpower
Oct30th 2008 | From The Economist printedition

Jupiter Images

The hands-on way to budding minds

EVERY year Britain’sschool-children provide gratifyingevidence of their increasing smartness. More leave primary school havingdone well in tests of reading, writing and arithmetic; more get top grades innational exams at ages 16 and 18. Nay-sayers,though, think this progressoverstated, even illusory
(=deceptive). Theyattribute rising marks to dumbed-down curricula, downward-drifting gradeboundaries and teaching to the test. But even the gloomiest assessment, itappears, may not go far enough. Inimportant ways, the country’s children appear to be becoming dumber.

Michael Shayer ofKing’s College London has been testing children’s thinking skills since 1976,when he and colleagues started studying the development of reasoning abilities in young people. In 2006 and 2007 he got14-year-olds to take some of the same tests as 30 years earlier. The findings,to be published early next year, are sobering. More than a fifth of youngstersgot high scores then, suggesting they were developing the ability to formulate and test hypotheses. Now onlya tenth do.

The tests did notchange, so the decline was notcaused by different content or marking. And since they explored the ability tothink deeply rather than to regurgitateinformation or whizz through tasks,the results matter deeply. In the purest test of reasoning, pupils were shown apendulum and asked how to find outwhat affects the rate at which it swings. “Their answers indicated whether they had progressed from the descriptive thinking that gets us through most of our days, to theinterpretative thinking needed to analyse complex information and formulate andtest hypotheses,” Professor Shayer explains.

In 1976 more boysthan girls did well, a fact the researchers put down(=attribute) to boys roaming(=wander) further out of doorsand playing more with tools and mechanical toys. Both sexes now do worse thanbefore, but boys’ scores have fallen more, suggesting that a decline in outdoorand hands-on play has slowed cognitivedevelopment in both sexes. Britain’s unusually early start to formaleducation may make things worse, as infants are diverted from useful activities such as makingsand-castles and playing with water intounhelpful ones, such as holding a pen and forming letters.

British children’sschooling may be hampered(=impeded),too, by the tests that show standards rising. These mean teachers’ careersdepend on coaching the weakest,rather than on stretching all children,including the most able. Thisinterpretation is supported by another, more positive, finding from theresearch: that fewer children do very badly now than did 30 years ago.

When asked tospeculate(=think) further on why fewer British teenagers now display maturereasoning, Professor Shayer eschews(=escape)local explanations and puts theblame squarely on television and computers. They take children away fromthe physical experiences on which later inferential skills are based, he thinks, and teach them tovalue(=appreciate) speed over depth, and passive entertainment over active.That chimes with (=in accord with) otherresearchers’ findings of cognitive gainson tasks that require speed rather than close reasoning—useful, perhaps, asthe pace of life accelerates, but hardlya substitute for original thought.
So what of childrenelsewhere? Britain’s are not the only ones kept inside for fear of traffic orpaedophiles, or slumped in front ofa screen for much of the day. “There is no similar evidence from elsewhere,”says Professor Shayer. “No one has looked for it.” Perhaps they should.
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hands-on:relating to, being, or providing direct practical experience in the operation or functioning of something <hands-on training>
bud vt. to produce or develop from buds
naysayer n. one who denies, refuses, opposes, or is skeptical or cynical about something
dumb down v.to lower the level of difficulty and the intellectual content of (as a textbook) also : to lower the general level of intelligence in <the dumbing down of society>
gloomy adj.having a frowning or scowling appearance : FORBIDDING
sober adj. showing no excessive or extreme qualities of fancy, emotion, or prejudice
regurgitate v.to throw or pour back or out from or as if from a cavity <regurgitate food> <memorized facts to regurgitate on the exam>
whiz v.to fly or move swiftly especially with a whiz <cars whizzing by>
pendulum n.something (as a state of affairs) that alternates between opposites
stretch vt. to extend or expand as if by physical force <stretch one's mind with a good book>
chime v.to be or act in accord <the music and the mood chimed well together
pedophile  n.  有恋童癖的人
slump v.to fall or sink suddenly
proposition n.something offered for consideration or acceptance : PROPOSAL

七七夕夕UID: 2753801

Openingstatements

The moderator's opening remarks

Welcome. Thank you. We havethe opening arguments.

Now is the time to argueback. I invite comments and questions from the floor.

Proposition: This housebelieves that the continuing introduction of new technologies and new mediaadds little to the quality of most education.

The opening statements forand against the motion(=proposal) givesome ground for agreement, and much ground for argument.
Both of our speakers, Ideduce, are persuadable that technology couldin principle be a vital source of advancement in learning-if only it was to be implemented withenough brilliance and resources.

But is even this true? Iwould be pleased to hear from commenters who believe that education isprimarily a matter of character building,and, as such, an activity bestconducted among human beings, with the least possible mediation. Willany of our grandchildren look back on his or her schooldays, and credit his or her success in life to "a really good computer"?

Is there an argument forkeeping new technology out of the classroom, precisely because it is so ubiquitous everywhere else already? Cana child who is chatting online or video-gaming for six hours every day reallybenefit from spending even more time staring at a screen in the classroom?

How do we even measure-andhow broadly should we measure-the educational impact of new technologies? Nodoubt, by putting iPods in the classroom, we can improve iPod skills. Nodoubt a newer generation of microprocessors can help the maths class calculatepi to even more decimal places. But what about social skills? Kindness?Common sense? Happiness? Physical fitness? Latin and Greek? Do those go into the metrics?
All of this, moreover,assumes that resources are plentiful.But what about school districts with very limited budgets, or educationministries in poorer countries? Should they see technology as a way to cut thecost of delivering education? Or as an expensive add-on to basic teachingmethods? We are in danger of encouraging them to take the first approach, onlyto discover that new technologies are all too often disastrously complicatedand expensive to implement-as we find often enough in other areas of governmentand industry.
Finally, for now, let usremember that we are talking here about new technologies. Theirapplication is, by definition, a matter of experiment. Do we want toexperiment with our children's education? Do you want someone experimentingon your children? Perhaps you do, and perhaps you should, since only by experimenting can we ever make progress. But if youprefer educational methods tried andtested over centuries, please say so. Likewise, if you feel it would bebarmy(=crazy,foolish) to exclude fromeducation technologies that are commonplace elsewhere in life, please sayso too. These are both defensible-and assailable-positions.


The proposer's opening remarks

Technology has transformedeveryday life in much of the world. Goods that were once the preserve of therich are now household items. Food is abundant and varied. Travel has beentransformed. News and entertainment come to us instantly from around the world.

Technology and the mediahave transformed all aspects of human life - except education!

Politicians still campaignfor 'education, education, education', lamentingthe poor performance of their schools. America, the earliest country to be infatuated with computers in theclassroom, gets mediocre outputs from its school system by international standards. Most poor countries struggle toreach the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. For themuniversal secondary access is a distant dream. Meanwhile rich countries worryabout boys dropping-out of school.

Technology is replacing scarcity by abundance inother aspects of life: why not ineducation?

It is not for lack of prophets. Ever since the invention of the blackboard eachnew communications medium has beenhailed as an educational revolution.Rosy forecasts about the impact ofradio, film, television, programmed learning, computers and the Internetsucceeded (=follow) each other through the 20th century although, revealingly, each prophet compared therevolutionary potential of the newest medium to the printing press, not to theprevious technological white hope!

Why hasn't it worked? Whyhas the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media added littleto the quality of most education? What can we learn from those few applicationsof communications media that are acknowledged successes?

Technology is the application of scientific and otherorganized knowledge to practical tasksby organizations consisting of people and machines. In "The Wealth of Nations" Adam Smithdescribed how applying knowledge to the practical task of making pins led to a factory that produced themwith consistent quality in higher volume and at lower cost than artisans makingeach pin by hand. The technological bases of Adam Smith's pin factory were theprinciples of specialisation, division of labour and economies of scale.Most applications of technology in education disappoint because they ignore these principles and so fail to use technology'sintrinsic strengths to tackle real problems. What are the practical tasksthat challenge education?

In my work at UNESCO andthe Commonwealth of Learning I spend many hours with ministers of education;sometimes individually, sometimes in groups at international meetings. Thepractical task facing ministers of education is to expand access to qualityeducation as economically as possible. They want the same outcomes as AdamSmith's pin factory: higher volume,consistent quality, lower cost.

This is the greatopportunity for technology in education. Tinkeringwith traditional classroomteaching cannot achieve these threeoutcomes because improving any oneoutcome makes the others worse. Increasing volume with larger classeslowers quality. Enhancing quality with more learning materials raises costs,and so on.

Successful ways ofintroducing technology and media to education tackle this challenge head on: cutting costs, increasing volume and assuringquality all at the same time.

The best examples are theopen universities. The UK Open University has created a multi-media learningsystem that enrolls 200,000 students annually, operates at a lower cost thanother UK universities, and ranks 5th, just above Oxford University, onaggregate(=collective) ratings of teaching quality. In a quite differentcontext India's Indira Gandhi National Open University enrolls 1.5 millionstudents and places 17th in the latest web ranking of universities on thesub-continent.

The secret of the open universities' success is twofold. First, they tackle real problems, in this casescaling up(=gradually increase)educational provision and taking it to people who cannot access conventionalteaching. Second they combine people and technology, using the principles ofspecialisation, division of labour, and economies of scale, to create newlearning systems that are scaleable at low cost with consistent quality.
The tragedy, and why youmust vote for the motion, is that these successes are rare. Most attempts tointroduce media into education do not take advantage of technology's strengths.Instead, they continue in the tradition of education as a cottage industry,hoping to make it more effective by providing the individual artisan, theclassroom teacher, with fancier tools.
This approach is doomed to failure. It increases costs because the technology is simply an add-on. The number of learners remainsessentially unchanged. Quality goes downbecause few teachers know how to use the new tools effectively and the students, who often do know how to use them, would rather apply them to other tasks.

Having devoted much of mylife to promoting the effective use of technology in education it saddens methat I have to support this motion because there are still so few examples ofits effective deployment. I only hope that your passing the motion will be awake-up call to educators and make them reflect seriously on why their use oftechnology has been such a disappointment. I suggest three reasons.
First, we assume too often that technology is theanswer without asking what the question was. Successful applications beginwith a clear and difficult problem to solve instead of a vague assumption thattechnology will enhance teaching.
Second, we usually focus on improving existingteaching systems whereas technologyis better used to create new learning systems. Enjoining all teachers to becomeartisans of eLearning is not going to improve educational outcomes.
Third, there is the quest(=persuit) for the magic medium, the ultimate technology that will revolutionise education. Yesterday it was theInternet; today it is Open Educational Resources. But there is no magic medium andnever will be. Each technology has its strengths. The task is to use themto create a world where education of quality is abundantly available.
We are still a long way from that goal. To pretend otherwise is to sell technology far too short.So far, and I say it with regret,thecontinuing introduction of new technologies and new media has added little tothe quality of most education.



The opposition's opening remarks

In this debate I would liketo take the contrary position and claim that new technologies and new media do make a significant contribution tothe quality of education, at least undercertain circumstances. Morespecifically, before the end of the debate, I will demonstrate thattechnology can make a particularlysignificant contribution when coordinated with the training of teachers to integrate technology into theirteaching, with applications that draw on the unique capabilities oftechnology, and with supportivecurricular, assessment, and school contexts that advance complex problem solving, creative thinking, andlife-long learning—skills that areneeded to support an information society and knowledge economy.

Certainly, one can not defend the position that all applications of technology make significantcontributions to the quality of education inall situations. There have beennumerous studies from around the world which have appeared in the popular pressthat show no relationshipbetween computer availability or use and student test scores, such as the study by Banks, Cresswell,and Ainley in Australia (2003) and the study by Dynarski, et al., in the U.S.(2007). There have even been studiesthat show a negative relationship between computer use and learning, suchas the Fuchs and Woessmann OECD study (2004) and the Wenglinsky study in theU.S. (1998).
But there have also beenstudies that show a positive relationship between computer use and learning,such a U.S. study published by the National Center for Educational Statistics(2001) and studies in England published by BECTA (Cox 2003; Harrison, et al.,2003).
How do we make sense out of these mixed results?
Often single studies—even those that arewell-designed—are constrained by theparticular context or situation in which they were conducted and this limitsthe generalizability of their conclusions. Let us take as an example astudy conducted in Israeli schools by Angrist and Lavy (2001), which wasfeatured in The Economist severalyears ago. This study examined the relationship between the use of"computer-assisted instruction" (or CAI, i.e. tutorial software) andtest scores in 4th and 8th grade mathematics and Hebrew classes in a randomsample of schools that successfully applied to participate in a nationalprogram to increase the use of computers in Israeli schools. Scores of studentsin these schools were compared to those in schools that elected not toparticipate in the program or were not chosen to do so. Typically, self selection is a fatal design flaw in research studiesbut the researchers went to great lengths to statistically equate the two typesof schools by including a variety of school, student, and teacher variablesin their analyses. They found noevidence that the increased use of tutorials raised pupil test scores;indeed, they found a negative and marginally significant relationship betweenprogram participation and 4th grade math scores. However, as in many similarstudies, there are important features of this study that limit the results. First, this study is limited to aparticular use of computers (tutorials), within specific grades (4th and8th) and subject areas (math and Hebrew) and within a particular timeframe(after one year of implementation) and a particular country (Israel) with aparticular national curriculum. Furthermore,in an analysis of teacher surveys, the researchers found no evidence ofdifferences between participating and non-participating classrooms in inputs,instructional methods, or teacher training. More significant is that fact that even the most activeparticipants (4th grade math teachers) indicated that they used computerssomewhere between "never" and "sometimes". Consequently, the study is particularlylimited by the marginal nature of the intervention. All of these factors constrain the generalizability of the findings andcertainly do not allow the authors to make the general claim, as they do,that "CAI is no better and may be even be less effective than otherteaching methods."
In order to make a general statement about the impact of technology on education, a large number of studies that cover avariety of situations must be included in the analysis. For this, I turn toa meta-analysis (or an analysis of analyses) done in 2003 by James Kulik of theUniversity of Michigan. Kulik included in his statistical analysis the resultsof 75 carefully-designed studies collected from a broad search of the researchliterature. As a group, these studies looked at several types of educationaltechnology applications (such as tutorials, simulations, and word processors),in a variety of subjects (such as mathematics, natural science, social science,reading and writing), and a range of grade levels (from vary young to highschool). His findings across studies can be summarized as follows:
Students who used computertutorials in mathematics, natural science, or social science scoredsignificantly higher in these subjects compared to traditional approaches,equivalent to an increase from 50th to 72nd percentile in test scores. Studentswho used simulation software in science also scored higher, equivalent to ajump from 50th to 66th percentile.
Very young students whoused computers to write their own stories scored significantly higher onmeasures of reading skill, equivalent to a boost from 50th to 80th percentilefor kindergarteners and from 50th to 66th percentile for first graders.However, the use of tutorials in reading did not make a difference.
Students who used wordprocessors or otherwise used the computer for writing scored higher on measuresof writing skill, equivalent to a rise from 50th to 62nd percentile.
By including a large anddiverse set of studies in the analysis, it is clear that technology can makecontributions to the quality of education that are both statisticallysignificant and educationally meaningful. Nonetheless, the classrooms includedin this meta-analysis were, by and large(=ingeneral), conducted within the traditional educational paradigm and the uses oftechnology were fairly ordinary. What if advanced technologies were used to ignite a major transformation of theeducational system? How much more of a contribution could it make under thesecircumstances? These are questions to which I will return later in the debate.

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It seems to me that bothHouses are right. And it appears that, in many ways, both Houses actuallyagree.
Sir John Daniel says that"Most applications of technology in education … fail to use technology'sintrinsic strengths to tackle real problems."
Dr Robert Kozma notes thatnew technologies can make a significant contribution to the quality ofeducation "when coordinated with the training of teachers to integratetechnology into their teaching, with applications that draw on the uniquecapabilities of technology, and with supportivecurricular, assessment, and school contexts that advance complex problemsolving, creative thinking, and life-long learning—skills that are needed tosupport an information society and knowledge economy."
A key here is using technology in ways that draw on its inherent strengths as a tool for humanactivity— in particular to supportthe goals that humans have in producing things and learning in ways thatempower(=enable) them to achieve their goals. Daniels' examples of the OpenUniversity suggest the power of technology when adults have the opportunityto use it for their own learning goals. Kozma's examples of successfultechnology uses include several that have the same quality: children usingcomputers to write their own stories, students engaging in computer-supportedsimulations in science.
It is not surprising to methat some of the failures oftechnology have occurred whenschools have tried tosubstitute(=replace) it for teaching — ratherthan using it as a tool for what students want to do. Angrist and Lavy's(2001) study of "computer-assisted instruction"— which produced nogains and some negative effects — is one of a line of studies finding nopositive effect of prescriptive approaches to teaching basic skills thatessentially turn computers into electronic workbooks. Indeed Kozma notesstudies finding that, on the one hand, young students"reading scoresjumped substantially from using computers to write, and on the other hand, theygot no benefit from the use of computer-based tutorials to teach them reading.
These findings replicatethose of studies of teaching more generally. For example, a study of thecorrelates of reading achievement drawn from the National Assessment ofEducational Progress (NAEP) in the United States found that students scores onthe NAEP were higher when their teachers used integrated approaches to teachingreading and writing, drawing on real books and other outside-of-school readingmaterials, and when they evaluated reading using extended writing assignments.Scores were lower when students were taught with reading kits and scriptedmaterials, and when their reading skills were measured more frequently bymultiple choice tests. If computers are used in the same way as these curriculafocused on drill-and-practice with decontextualized skills, we shouldnot expect they will get much different results.
As we move into the 21st century, the nature oflearning has to change to promote critical thinking and problem solving and toencourage applications of knowledge to new situations. Scientists at theUniversity of California at Berkeley have estimated that in the four years from1999 to 2002, the amount of new information produced approximately equaled theamount produced in the entire history of the world up to that time (Varian & Lyman, 2003). Technology supportsfor learning must enable human beings to learnand use information and tools in more powerful ways, so that they canmanage the demands of changing information, knowledge bases, technologies, andsocial conditions. The effects oftechnology on education will depend onthe extent to which they focus on theseimportant individual and social imperatives(=needs)

紫陌纤尘o0UID: 2745492

4# 七七夕夕
个人建议，读ECO是用来巩固单词和培养语感的
没有必要在准备AW时候这么较真啊，其实只要看看结构，看看论证方式。摘录几个自己感觉好的词语句子背下来就可以了。
After all, bless U!

七七夕夕UID: 2753801

Rebuttal statement

The moderator's rebuttal remarks

For anyone consideringjoining the debate now, please be similarly emboldened. There is plenty still to resolve. Many basic points have yet to be fully addressed.
Proposition: This house believesthat the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds littleto the quality of most education.
I am delighted to see thatboth Sir John Daniel and Dr Robert B. Kozma have returned confidently to theargument, with rebuttals even a touch tougher than their opening statements.For anyone considering joining the debate now, please be similarly emboldened.There is plenty still to resolve. Many basic points have yet to be fullyaddressed. How do we measure the quality of education, for example? Can we talk of 5-year-olds and 18-year-oldsin the same breath?
I was a little worried whenthe debate began that our speakers were in danger of agreeing. So, too, weresome commenters. As JNOV put it:
"Both Sir [John] andDr Kozma were making the same statement, i.e. technology CAN make a differencein education. Sir John stated that he wished technology was used in a mannermore enhancing to education but from his viewpoint it CURRENTLY is not beingused in such a manner across the general field of "education." Dr.Kozma said technology COULD make a difference and he then listed a number ofrequirements that were necessary for it to do so but at no time did he say thatit CURRENTLY WAS making that difference broadly. And I must say I concur with eachof them."
I will venture to correctthat last statement; Dr Kozma did claim robust evidence of some measurableimprovements. But still, there is much in JNOV'spoint, to which I will return.
I am delighted, then, thatour speakers have held their ground, even dugthemselves in a bit. I am delighted, too, that our debate has not got bogged down in questions ofdefinition. Almost inevitably, as an argument gathers speed, some willobject that the terms of it have not been adequately defined. Here, once ortwice, we did hear, "It depends what you mean by education", "Itdepends what you mean by technology". But just enough to be useful, not somuch as to be deadening.
For "education",the general presumption has been of school or university. Home-schooling ofchildren, and continuing education for adults, has received little mention,although these are areas in which new technologies might have a particularlylarge impact.
Which brings me, in passing(=incidentally, by the way), to a related point: it seems to me that SirJohn, and many of our commenters, are treating quantity and quality as more orless the same thing. For example, the Open University brought higher educationto thousands of people who might otherwise not have received it. That was aquantitative improvement. But was the education of a better quality than theymight have received in a traditional setting? Of that I am less sure.
We might say that increasing the quantity ofeducation is itself a qualitative gain—anargument that DOWNUNDER makes, whenhe argues that new technology is going to be vital to the provision of gooduniversal education in China and India. But still, the blurring of quality and quantity troubles me.
As to defining "technology", weseem to be reasonably happy with a focus on information and communicationstechnologies, and the occasional appealto printing and blackboards. Should we also be arguing about school buses andsolar heating? Perhaps, but I am not yet worried by the opportunity cost. School buses might increase the availability ofeducation, solar heating might reduce the cost of it, but here we stray from a strict notion ofquality.
As I write, the voting isgoing Dr Kozma's way. I judge that it could yet go Sir John's way, depending onhow closely we choose to construe the motion. Nobody (I think) in this debatedisputes that technology could transform education, if intelligently applied—and, probably, used a supplement to traditional teaching methods, rather than as asubstitute for them. The question—to return to I's point—is whether newtechnologies are delivering measurable improvements, now, and not just"little" ones. Sir John is openly sceptical; Dr Kozma affects(=feigns) confidence, but hislanguage is, to my ear, tentative(=hesitate).He says in his rebuttal (the italics are mine) that
"We will see the kindsof impact we were all promised only when applications draw on the uniquecapabilities of technology, when teachers are trained to integrate technologyinto their teaching, and when they use technology to engage students in complexproblem solving, creative thinking, and life-long learning. There are someindications that this is happening."
Some indications? Is thatenough to overturn the motion? You are the judge


The proposer's rebuttal remarks

By a nice coincidence The Economist has published an articleon technology in teaching in its current issue. I did not think it appropriateto cite the academic literature in my opening statement because it should notbe necessary to crawl around learnedjournals with a hand lens to answer a simple question. But I dodraw your attention to the Economist article, 'Top Marks',in the 'Britain' section of the newspaper. Under the subtitle: 'Spending oncomputers is finally paying off — with young children', the piece reportsstudies of the use of interactive white boards in classrooms.
It notes that an evaluationof the use of interactive white boards in secondary schools found no clearbenefits, observing in passing that 'teachers hated taking classes where everychild faced the wall and stared at a screen'. The writer goes on to note thatexperience with the use of these white boards in primary schools is morepositive, especially for children whose native language is not that of theschool. The teacher profiled in the account ensures that her pupils do not loseout on 'tactile experiences with real-world objects', leading the article toconclude with the words, 'welcome to the classroom of the future: mud-pies andfancy computer kit, with no chalk or blackboards in sight'.
This Economist piece istypical of the nuanced(=subtle)style of serious reporting on technology in education. Indeed, Robert Kozma'sopening statement against the motion adopts such a nuancedapproach that it actually makes the case for the motion rather thanagainst it — although he concludes with the aspiration that the use of newtechnology will become more effective than it is today.
I stress, as has theModerator, that we are talking here of new technology. One of the contributorshas asked if that includes the printing press. No; we are focusing on moderninformation and communication technologies (ICTs), although I also include 20thcentury audio-visual technologies.
I noted in my openingstatement that the promoters of each new educational medium compare itsrevolutionary potential to that of the printing press. Why is this? What was sorevolutionary about the printing?
Printing made written wordswidely available and the book remains the most universal and useful educationalmedium. That is because much of education is about manipulating of abstractsymbols. That explains the continuing emphasis on the '3 R's' of reading,writing and arithmetic. Printingrevolutionised access to these symbols. Although later technologies haveembroidered additional features onto the achievements of print, the book retains its central place in education. Ask any African school whatit most needs and the answer will be books, not laptops.
Information andcommunication technologies speed up and facilitate, in a wonderful way, thecreation, manipulation, publication and exchange of abstract symbols. This iswhy academics have welcomed and adopted ICTs with much more enthusiasm thanthey showed for previous audio-visual technologies.
But this debate is notabout whether ICTs are generally useful in academic life; it is about whetherthey have made a significant contribution to the quality of education. I see noevidence that they have and Robert Kozma, in his own opening statement,explains their failure when he observes that most uses of new technologies havebeen conducted within the traditional educational paradigm.
He also, very fairly,refers to the hundreds of studies showing that the introduction of a wholerange of technologies within the traditional educational paradigm produced 'nosignificant difference'. This is only to be expected since in most cases thenew technology (a computer animation here, some PowerPoint slides there) wasonly a tiny proportion of the students' learning task. This is not the way touse technology.
At the end of his statementDr Kozma asks: 'What if advanced technologies were used to ignite a majortransformation of the educational system?' Now we're talking!
This was the thrust(=essentiality) of my own openingstatement: technology will only make a significant difference if it can play to its strengths and create itsown educational paradigm. I cited the world's open universities as highlysuccessful applications of technology. They are successful precisely becausetechnologies — not necessarily all that advanced — were used to create a neweducational system.
Such systems do not, and here I come to our Moderator's wiseremarks, eliminate human contact. Hesuggests that education is 'an activity best conducted among human beings, withthe least possible mediation'. Indeed! Good use of technology in education enhances and enriches the interactionbetween human beings.
A fundamental principle of technology is toidentify the distinct elements in a process and focus on making each element asgood as possible through specialisation.Applied to educational processes this produces successful learning systems thatenhance the interaction between teacher and student.
I was privileged to workfor a period at the UK's Open University and met thousands of its graduates. Atthat time the University had 150,000 students working with it online in ateaching system that was a rich multi-media environment. Nevertheless, when youasked students what were the most valuable components of the system for them,two features predominated. One wasthe printed course texts, which were prepared with great care using a directand personal style of communication and professional instructional design. Theother was the tutors; the 10,000 part-time academics who are trained to commenthelpfully on the students' work and are available for personal and groupinteraction.
This is as it should be. We are not trying to create situations where, inthe words of the Economist article I cited earlier: every child faces the walland looks at a screen. Our aim must beto expand access to education by using technology to create more effectiveinteractions between human beings.
But this is still mostly an aspiration. We arenot there yet. Today the motion istrue: the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds littleto the quality of most education


The opposition's rebuttal remarks

The research results areclear—in comparative studies using technology, increased student learning isboth statistically significant and educationally meaningful.
Proposition: This housebelieves that the continuing introduction of new technologies and new mediaadds little to the quality of most education.
Perhaps Pedro H-R and hisChinese sage are right and it is too early to assess the impact of technologyon education. The research results are clear—in comparative studies usingtechnology, increased student learning is both statistically significant andeducationally meaningful. But there is no doubt, the relationship betweenteacher and student is paramount(=supreme),as some commentators point out. We will see the kinds of impact we were all promised(=hoped) only when applicationsdraw on the unique capabilities of technology, when teachers are trained tointegrate technology into their teaching, and when they use technology toengage students in complex problem solving, creative thinking, and life-longlearning.
There are some indicationsthat this is happening. Let me describe two of many projects that illustratewhat can be done when advanced technologies are used to transform classrooms.The first is SimCalc MathWorlds (http://math.sri.com),developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and SRIInternational. Traditionally, math is taught in a procedural manner. That is,students learn how to operate on a mathematical equation in a step-by-step wayto solve problems in textbook form. MathWorlds takes a very different approachby using the capabilities of the technology to represent math visually,interactively and with meaningful connections to simulated and real worldsituations. MathWorlds engages students in an exploratory environment wherethey use important and difficult concepts, such as proportionality and rates ofchange, to solve complex challenges. In a beginning challenge, students mayinteractively modify a graph of position as a function of time in order to controlthe motion of an animated character in a simulated world. As challengesprogress, students use additional representations, which appear as addedwindows in the software, including tables and algebraic functions. Students maychange one representation and see how it corresponds to changes in anotherrepresentation. For example, a steeper slope in a graph corresponds to a highermultiplicative coefficient in an algebraic function and a larger increase invalues in a table. As students progress, they can model real-world situations,like the tradeoff between a cell phone plan that charges a flat per-minute rateand one which charges an initial fee but a lower per-minute rate. Or they mayexplore when two football players are running at the same speed: is it whentheir graph lines intersect or when the graph lines have a parallel slope? As aresult, students get a much deeperunderstanding of these concepts and are able to apply school learning incomplex real world situations.
This is demonstrated in astudy led by SRI and included professors from University of Massachusetts, TheUniversity of Texas, and Virginia Polytechnic University (Roschelle, et al.,2007). A group of Texas 7th grade teachers volunteered for the study and wererandomly assigned to receive training, a paper replacement curriculum unit, andthe MathWorlds software or to continue with their existing curriculum. Of the95 teachers who completed the study, 48 used MathWorlds and 47 used theirexisting textbook. The MathWorlds students scored significantly higher overall,and the gains were particular strong on problems that require complex problemsolving.
The second innovation isKnowledge Forum (http://www.knowledgeforum.com),which was developed by two Canadian researchers, Scardamalia and Bereiter atthe University of Toronto. Knowledge Forum (KF) was designed around a pedagogical model that puts student investigation and discourse at the center of thelearning process. With this approach, student learning is guided bysignificant motivating questions, often posed by the students themselves, suchas: What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Or, what are the causes ofpollution? The goal of the approach is to engagestudents in collaboratively building on each others' ideas as they posetheories and present evidence. The software allows a student to enter notes onany networked computer in the form of a question, assertion, or warrant, intext or media-rich form. All studentssee these notes and any student can attach a subsequent note, asking afollow-up question, providing further evidence, or refuting an assertion. Thedirection of class discourse often moves deeper into a discussion, as studentsbuild on each others' ideas. But as students begin to see connections acrosswhat were separate discussions they can also integrate them under broadertopics, questions, or theories, and they make connections between pollution andspecies extinction, for example. The teacher can take a more active role byinitiating questions and guiding the discussions around key curricularconcepts. Or they can encourage students to pose their own questions andmonitor their own discussions, the intent being to create a community in whichstudents assume the ongoing(=continuing)responsibility of their own learning. Not all student work is done withinthe software environment; students do readings, conduct experiments, search theweb, go on field trips, and engagein class discussions. But KF is where the learning is formalized, stored, and shared.
KF is being used inhundreds of classes, including history, social studies, science, literature,geography, and math, at all educationallevels. Teachers also use KF, across schools and countries, to develop and share their own body ofprofessional knowledge in a continuous process of professional developmentand educational improvement.
In an early study of theenvironment's impact on student learning, researchers (Scardamalia, Bereiter,& Lamon, 1994) found that, compared to similar students in more traditionalclassrooms, students in KF classrooms scored significantly higher on theCanadian Test of Basic Skills, they performed better on problem solving tasksthat required them to apply concepts to new problem situations, and they weremore reflective about their own and others' learning as evidenced in portfoliosof their work.
In other words, thewell-trained teachers and their students in these studies who used the uniqueaspects of technology environments within restructured classrooms not only didbetter on traditional standardized tests but on measures of skills important toan information society and knowledge economy. I examine next the broader socialand economic issues that policy makers face as they consider the use oftechnology to improve education.

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Featured guest
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Technology is not a silver bullet. A school with poorly trained, poorly educated teachers can be given all the latest educational technology tools, and it will still be an educational failure.
That is the mistake that technology zealots have made over the years: They oversold the potential benefits of technology in education, setting themselves up for(=cause) disappointment and failure, and jeopardizing other promising educational technology projects. We witnessed this in the United States in the 1990s when reams of new educational software products were hitting the market claiming they would transform struggling writers into the next Ernest Hemingway or math phobics into the next Albert Einstein.
Still, I would argue that technology is a powerful tool if it is used intelligently. That is why, in this debate, I would like to make the case that the introduction of new technologies and new media in schools can make a significant contribution to the quality of education. But such efforts must be done thoughtfully, strategically, and critically, with a focus on two important questions: How are new technologies enhancing student learning and motivation? And how will the use of them prepare students to compete for jobs in a technology-driven global economy?
The climate for a more thoughtful approach to the use of educational technology is beginning to take shape.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, educational technology experts in America were largely focused on innovation. Fueled(=supported) by investments by the U.S. government and private groups, educational technology experts were exploring and developing the use of a wide array of products for use in schools. It was an exciting time for many people in the field. But the problem—as noted in "Technology Counts 2007: A Digital Decade", Education Week's annual report on ed. tech.—was that not enough attention was being paid to documenting what impact those innovations were having on student learning.
Eventually, educators and others began to question the large investments schools were making in educational technology programs. But those who believed in the power of technology to improve learning had little evidence to address those questions.
"Not measuring the gains was an absolute error on our part, and we need to go deeper and deeper with good research," Donald G. Knezek, the chief executive officer of the Washington-based International Society for Technology in Education, told Technology Counts.
But the climate has shifted over the past few years, and American policymakers are putting more pressure on developers to prove that their products improve academic achievement. This represents an important swing of the pendulum from innovation to accountability.
That is a good step. But it would be counterproductive if the climate shifted too far in this direction. If technology were to be measured primarily by whether it raises standardized test scores, opportunities would be lost to show its effect on factors such as student engagement and motivation, complex understanding of abstract concepts, changes in teaching approaches, and the link between technological skills and 21st Century jobs.
Moreover, most of the world's most powerful economies were built on innovation. To discourage innovation in educational technology in any country would clearly be a mistake.
A few years ago, when I was project editor of Technology Counts, we examined the use of technology around the globe, including North America, Asia, Europe, South America, Africa, and the Australia/Pacific region. Some countries were struggling with basic infrastructure needs, others were in the innovation stage, and the United States was just beginning to head into the accountability era.
The lesson for the United States and other countries—from that report and more recent developments—is to eventually find a balance between innovation and accountability. That should be everyone's destination, because that is the point at which educational technology is likely to have its greatest impact.

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Maybe it does depend on how you choose to assess quality of education.
I must start by expressing relief to see such a strong consensus that continuing the introduction of new technologies and media can add to the quality of education. I am equally pleased to find so much agreement about the importance of conditions and context as we evaluate strategies for improving and transforming education.
That's an excellent starting point. But, I have to balance that with my concern that there is some tendency to discount(=disregard) increased availability of quality education as an important consideration in this debate. When learners have access to better education through the introduction of new technologies and media than they would have otherwise, that moves the needle toward added quality for most education. When more learners have that access when new technologies and media are introduced, that moves the needle, too. So, germane(=fitting) to my decision to oppose the proposition are the arguments and the evidence presented thus far that the introduction of new technologies and media continue to increase both availability of education and quality educational options for millions of learners around the world.
I'm also concerned with the metrics by which we judge the quality of education in this century. Here's what I think matters: (1) relevance of educational outcomes to empowering the learner to thrive in a digital, global, and media-rich information society (see www.iste.org/NETS-S-2007), (2) existence of an environment that enables learning strategies and learning experiences that are deeply engaging and provide options for educational pursuit, and, finally, (3) a system that enables and rewards variety in demonstration of educational gains through learner productivity and innovation.
If one's metrics are different or one has faith in the ability of an individual to know a single best way to educate the diversity of learners most of us face, then I can understand support of the proposition. If one believes, for instance, that success in printed and verbal expression and discourse is the ultimate quality metric for education—even while elections are won and nations are judged and Nobel prizes are earned through democratized technologies and media-rich expression—then support of the proposition may be a reasonable position.
I recently visited the remote, rural school district where I experienced my childhood education. I saw elementary age students doing far more significant research online than I ever did in my twelve years in that system. Working with co-learners from around the world they were producing compelling and relevant learning artifacts on issues they cared about. And, they displayed a refreshing sense of empowerment. More students are learning that way because of the introduction of new technologies and media, and that looks like adding quality to me.
Furthermore, even in an education focused on text and verbal skills we know students write more, accept and use feedback to revise more often, and score higher on writing and reading assessments when they participate in a significant, well implemented writing program supported by technology.
I've enjoyed this rich and interesting discussion.

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Closingstatements

The moderator's closing remarks
The rising margin of votes(at least as I write, early on Monday morning) against the motion suggests,however, that the difference is either not perceived, or not accepted, by themajority of our voters. And perhaps rightly so.
"The sign of a trulyeducated man is to be deeply moved by statistics", says commenter PAULO LIMA, attributing this view toBernard Shaw.
On that basis, in hisopening remarks and rebuttal, Dr Robert Kozma was by far the most educated ofall of us, grounding his arguments in a wide reading of the academicliterature. In his closing remarks he has shifted(=changed)register. He speaks the powerful language of anecdote and first-handobservation. In effect, Dr Kozma has answered Sir John Daniel's complaint that"Finding a statistically significant difference (sometimes) in theperformance of a small learning task does not address the wider question of thequality of education", even as Sir John was in the process of making it.
Sir John, to, has raisedhis voice a degree or two. He directs it partly in my own direction, on thequestion of quality versus quantity. He points out correctly that a goodproduction process raises quantity and quality alike, whether it be in a carfactory or at the Open University. He also provides a splendidly(=excellent)pithy summary of the main strand of his argument, saying:"[E]ducating people to use technology is not what the motion is about. Itrefers to using technology to educate people, which is different."
The rising margin of votes(at least as I write, early on Monday morning) against the motion suggests,however, that the difference is either not perceived, or not accepted, by themajority of our voters. And perhaps rightly so. If we take the view that computer skills, broadly defined, haveestablished themselves as a core competence on a par with reading, writing and arithmetic. If so, it is not going tomake a deal of difference whether people are learning to log-on, or logging-on to learn.
I confess to worrying thatSir John's conclusion, "You canonly disagree with that proposition if your ambitions for technology ineducation are shamefully limited", is going to leave our technophobes, if any, wondering whereto place their vote. I do not countmyself among them. But, as some commenters have noted, I have sought, forthe sake of argument, to keep the possibility of a fundamental scepticismalive. And, I judge, I have failed.
I worry, too—you will haveme pegged(=restrict) by now as aworrier—about one last aspect of this debate, which has struck me all the moreforcefully as our hundreds of splendidly argued comments have accumulated.Barely one in a hundred of those comments has even mentioned the word"parents". It seems that the peopleoften considered most vital the success of education have little or noplace in our debate. It could be, ofcourse, that their presence is assumed in every line, but that is not my sense.
One possibility is that theabsence of parents from our collective commentary reflects a hope, anexpectation, that technology willperfect the process of education, tothe point at which the parental role willbecome irrelevant in the best possible way. Education will become a highly sophisticated production line that delivers a goodworking product, whatever theprovenance(=origin,source) of the raw materials. That is a noble aspiration, but also, to me, a somewhat scary one.To emphasise: I am not saying that any of us consciously wishes to make such anargument, merely that he accumulations of our arguments calls out for thisexplanation, or another one.
As we move towards the finaltally
, let me record my pleasureat, and gratitude for, the opportunity to join you in this debate. From thetraffic figures, it is clear that many returning visitors have yet to casttheir vote. Early voters have done much to shape expectations, later voters may yet decide the outcome. By the standards of debate we are afinely balanced room, a fact in which our speakers can both take pride. Theirfinal speeches have given us much new information to digest; let us see if thatdoes as much to change the division of our opinion.
Finally, to addressprocedural notes raised in the course of the debate: it is clear that we mustenable the linking or the tagging of comments, if not the threading of them;that we should give commenters more scope for formatting and re-editing theirtext; and that we should highlight those comments raising vital points.
Thank you to those whovoted early; I hope nobody has voted often; I encourage everyone who has notyet voted to do so now.

The proposer's closing remarks
Too often technology issimply used to pretty up teachingyet, as many contributors have noted, technology may increase the reach of apoor teacher but it will not improve the quality of their teaching.
Suppose that instead of thecurrent motion I had had to propose that 'this house believes that thecontinuing introduction of new technologies and new systems adds little to thequality of most transport(ation)'. That would have been a hill to climb! Thatproposition goes against my personal experience.
An efficient bus takes meto work in Vancouver and will soon be augmented by a light rail system thatwill take me to either my office or the airport in ten minutes. My car isreliable, comfortable, energy efficient and rarely needs servicing. I fly ahundred times a year but have never had an incident and rarely a significantdelay or cancellation (I admit I don't often fly in the US!). When I go toFrance next month Eurostar will whisk me from downtown Paris to central Londonin just over two hours.
To propose a similar motionon transport I would have to come at it sideways by complaining about theclimatic impact of carbon emissions and greenhouse gases and the social effectsof congestion on the roads and in the skies. Meanwhile, people in emerging nations(=developing country)would still be desperate to get their first car, convinced that it will improvetheir quality of life.
Were I proposing such amotion I would be surprised if my opponent countered it by detailing studies ofthe relative merits of travelling from New York to Washington by horse andbuggy, rather than by car; by comparing Eurostar to the old boat train; or byanalysing the advantage of making the passage to India by sea instead of byair.
If you have to argue thecase for technology by making the micro comparisons beloved of Robert Kozma youhave lost the case. In other areas of life technologies make quantum(=significant ) changes. You canno longer compare apples and apples. Finding a statistically significantdifference (sometimes) in the performance of a small learning task does notaddress the wider question of the quality of education.
At the risk of beingpedantic let me return to the motion and deconstruct it in the light ofcomments from the floor, which are impressive in both quantity and quality. Istart with our dear Moderator, clearly a traditionalist at heart, who worriesthat too much quantity in education will reduce quality. Let me nail that oneright away.
Throughout history theexpansion of education has been heldback by the insidious assumption that quality and exclusivity are inextricablylinked: you cannot have quality education without excluding most peoplefrom it. This assumption is, of course, the basis of the perceived quality ofour prestigious(=honored)institutions: Oxford, Harvard and the Indian Institutes of Technology. Theirquality is based on a selective admissions policy of 'good little piggies inmake good bacon out'. Quality is defined by those you exclude.
This insidious link between quality and exclusivity has been blown apart by technologyin other areas of life. A good modern production line produces thousands of cars,each one of which is of higher quality than any vehicle that a group ofenthusiasts could build by hand in a garage.
Technology can do the samefor education, which is why I quoted the example of the open universities,noting that the UK Open University ranks above Oxford in aggregate ratings ofteaching quality. Thanks to technology these open institutions achieve greaterquantity as well as better and more consistent quality.
What do we mean by qualityof education? Quality means fitness forpurpose (some would add 'at minimum cost to society'). So, is theintroduction of technology making education more fit for purpose? We have to answer this question at the macroscopic level, not by examining the learning of some picayune(=trival) item. Political discoursein most countries suggests that most education is not fit for purpose, whetherit be President Bush saying that 'average is not good enough for Americanchildren' or ministers in developing countries lamenting their failure toachieve universal primary education.
The most frequent theme inthe comments from the floor is the dichotomybetween education for technology andtechnology for education. Many contributors remind us that in today's world itis important that people be taught how to use information and communicationstechnologies. I absolutely agree. But educating people to use technology is notwhat the motion is about. It refers to using technology to educate people,which is different.
I take an analogy from thecontributor who talked about training people to use microscopes. That is auseful skill, but it doesn't help you to learn history. Acquiring ICT skills ishelpful in many areas of life but it does not seem to have improved the qualityof most education.
Another common theme wasthe absolute importance of students and their motivation. I fully agree andargue that technology has underperformed because it is usually applied to helpthe teacher teach rather than to help the learner learn. The successfulexamples of technology that I have cited involve the creation of learningsystems that create a rich environment around the learner. Too often technologyis simply used to pretty up teaching yet, as many contributors have noted,technology may increase the reach of a poor teacher but it will not improve thequality of their teaching.
The Moderator commentedthat the debate has converged on the middle ground. This is because many ofyou, like me, think that technology cando better even if it hasdisappointed so far.
But this is decision time. I ask you to look the motion squarely inthe eye, to set aside wishful thinking, to fight the subliminal influence ofthe Intel logo grinning at you on the side, and to acknowledge that thecontinuing introduction of new technologies and new media has added little tothe quality of most education. You canonly disagree with that proposition if your ambitions for technology ineducation are shamefully limited.

The opposition's closing remarks
Okay, let me be emphatic;I'll set nuance aside. Technology IS making a positive difference in education,as it is in the rest of our lives. This calls for a vote against theproposition. Let me explain why there should be no debate about this. First,without new technologies there literally would be no debate here. I posted myopening statement in San Francisco. I was in Amsterdam when I submitted myrebuttal. I'm now in Jerusalem. I will be in Amman when I read your finalcomments and your votes are tallied. Sir John is in Vancouver. You are inChina, England, Peru, Canada, and all over the world. In preparation of myarguments, I could do free-text searches of hundreds of documents and articleson my hard drive and millions more on the Internet. Technology is changing forthe good the ways we communicate and our access information.
Likewise, newtechnologies—computers, the Internet, digital media—are benefiting education.In fact, it is difficult to identify anyother factor over the last hundred years that is affecting as much change ineducation as is happening now withtechnology. Let me give a variety of examples.
I asked a secondary teacherin Uganda if he would rather keep his new computer laboratory or have morebooks for his school library. Contrary to Sir John's assertion, he was emphaticabout his choice, "When you get books, they are immediately out of dateand each is on only one topic. But with a computer connected to the Internet, Ihave access to the latest information on millions of topics." Hisstudents, standing on an earthen floor and in uniform but for bare feet, said,"We are doing a collaborative project with students in Canada and SouthAfrica. Before this project, they did not know we existed. Now we are citizensof the world."
Emphatic, too, were farmersin rural Kenyan village, where I did volunteer work, when they asked me to helpthem build a community learning center connected to the Internet, "We needinformation on improved seeds and fertilizers, on new farm practices, and onmarket prices." For them, the need for information was the differencebetween having barely enough to eat and having enough left over to put a metalroof on their house and to pay tuition for their children's schooling. Theyknew that if they walked to the agricultural agent's office 10 kilometers away,he was likely to be elsewhere and probably did not have access to the latestinformation anyway. They were convinced that new technology would give themaccess to the information they needed.
Similarly in rural Chile,most children attend one-room schools; their teachers are isolated from othersin their profession and from the Ministry of Education. With technology, theseteachers can communicate with colleagues around the country and they can accessa portal(=entrance) with the latestcurriculum materials. In each of these cases, networked computers providedstudents, teachers, and communities with access to others and to neededinformation that were not otherwise available for lack of local expertise,distance, impassable roads, and lack of transportation.
Teachers all over the worldare using technology to change their teaching. Like the primary school teachersin rural Catalonia whose students created a website on the history of theirlocal villages by taking digital photos of churches and local monuments andaudio recordings of songs and stories told by their grandparents. And teachersin a secondary school in Norway whose students collaborated with students inthe US to follow two women (one Norwegian and one American) as they traversedAntarctica on cross country skis. The students communicated with the women andwith weather and research stations in Antarctica to learn about the continent.And teachers at an all-girls secondary school in the Philippines where teams ofstudents developed their understanding of biology concepts and their criticalthinking skills by using amicrocomputer-based lab kit and probeware to collectand analyze data as they solved a hypothetical murder case. Students andteachers all around the world are conducting ThinkQuests and WebQuests, attendingvirtual courses, and collaborating with scientists on the GLOBE and JasonProjects. None of this would be possible without new technologies.
Many of you have pointedout that educational systems are notoriouslyslow to change. But change is not just happening with a few innovativeteachers. Ministries of Education in Chile and Singapore, Finland and Jordan,Korea and Costa Rica are redesigning their education systems around theopportunities that new technologies provide. Ministries in these countries andmany others are affecting changes in curriculum, pedagogy, and school structurewith the certitude that new skills related to and enabled by technology willprepare their students for the 21st century ahead. Millions of teachers inthese countries and others have been trained in the use of technology forcollaborative student projects. These teachers are not just teaching studentsto use the latest technology—many of you have stated that students already knowthis—rather their students are taking advantage of the technology to applyschool subjects to solve difficult real-world problems, to work in distributedteams on complex tasks, to think critically, and to create new knowledge, newproducts, and new cultural artifacts. These students are using technology tolearn the skills needed for a knowledge economy and an information society.
I urge you to vote againstthe proposition that the continued introduction of new technology adds littleto the quality of education. Although change is currently slower and lessdramatic than any of us would want, does it mean these countries and teachersshould abandon their efforts? Change is happening now but technology will makeeven greater contributions in the future. A "con" vote from you willaffirm the efforts of these countries and the millions of teachers around theworld who are moving forward with technology to make changes in education andto prepare their students for the challenges of the century ahead.

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infatuate v.to cause to be foolish : deprive of sound judgment
hail vi.to pour down or strike like hail
white hope n.one from whom much is expected especially : a person undertaking a difficult task
economy of scale n.a reduction in the cost of producing something (as a car or a unit of electricity) brought about especially by increased size of production facilities ― usually used in plural
tinker vi.to work in the manner of a tinker especially : to repair, adjust, or work with something in an unskilled or experimental manner : FIDDLE <always tinkering with his car>
scale vi.to rise in a graduated series
fanciern.one that has a special liking or interest
ultimate adj.the best or most extreme of its kind : UTMOST <the ultimate sacrifice>
sell short 1 : to make a short sale
2 : to fail to value properly : UNDERESTIMATE
marginal adj. not of central importance <regards violence as a marginal rather than a central problem> also : limited in extent, significance, or stature <had only marginal success with the business>
by and large adv. on the whole : in general
draw on :to use as a source of supply <drawing on the whole community for support>
opportunity cost :the added cost of using resources (as for production or speculative investment) that is the difference between the actual value resulting from such use and that of an alternative (as another use of the same resources or an investment of equal risk but greater return)
thrust n.salient or essential element or meaning <the thrust of the argument>
field trip n.visit (as to a factory, farm, or museum) made (as by students and a teacher) for purposes of firsthand observation
silver bullet n.something that acts as a magical weapon especially : one that instantly solves a long-standing problem
relevance n.practical and especially social applicability : PERTINENCE <giving relevance to college courses>
empower v.to promote the self-actualization or influence of <women's movement has been inspiring and empowering women ― Ron Hansen>
register n.any of the varieties of a language that a speaker uses in a particular social context
strand n.one of the elements interwoven in a complex whole <one strand of the novel's plot>
par n.common level : EQUALITY ― usually used with on <judged the recording to be on a par with previous ones>
tally n. a state of correspondence or agreement
room n. the people in the room
pretty vi.to make pretty ― usually used with up <curtains to pretty up the room>
whisk vt.to move or convey briskly
sideways adv.in a lateral direction or downward to one side <hopped sideways> <slump sideways>
pedantic adj.narrowly, stodgily, and often ostentatiously learned
insidious adj. harmful but enticing : SEDUCTIVE <insidious drugs>
dichotomy n.a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities <the dichotomy between theory and practice>

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4# 七七夕夕  
个人建议，读ECO是用来巩固单词和培养语感的
没有必要在准备AW时候这么较真啊，其实只要看看结构，看看论证方式。摘录几个自己感觉好的词语句子背下来就可以了。
After all, bless U!
紫陌纤尘o0 发表于 2010-3-11 11:36

谢谢紫的建议～～
我education这块比较弱～～所以看得比较仔细哈～～～
发上来是给其他education也没有灵感的童鞋～～希望能和我一样得到启发～～～不过也不要太一样啦～～～～呼呼～～