Computers in the Educational System

"The Use of Computers in the Educational System" The processing and uses of information are undergoing an unprecedented technological revolution. Not only are machines now able to deal with many kinds of information at high speed and in large quantities but also it is possible to manipulate these quantities of information so as to benefit from them in entirely novel ways. This is perhaps no where truer than in the educational system. The computer makes the individualization of instruction easier because it can be programmed to follow each students history of learning successes and failures and to use his past performance as a basis for selecting new problems and new concepts for which to be exposed next. With modern information storage devices it is possible to store both a large body of curriculum material and the past histories of the students working in the curriculum. Such storage is well within the capacity of current technology, whether the subject is primarily school mathematics, secondary school French, or elementary statistics at the college level. Thus computer instruction is able to design a curriculum that is best suited for the individual student rather than general groups of students. A second important aspect of computers in the educational system is how computers help for administrative purposes as routine record keeping. Prior to the advent of computers it was extremely difficult to keep track of systematic data on how students succeed in the process of learning a subject. Evaluative tests at the end of learning have a place both in the process of classifying a student and in the process of comparing different curriculum approaches to the same subject. A computer can provide daily information about how students are performing on each part of the curriculum as it is presented, making it possible not only to evaluate individual pages but individual exercises. Thus the use of computers will have important consequences