Educational Computing: Mirrors of Educational Values

SUMMARY

This paper looks at how computers are used in education and discusses how the uses with which they have come to be commonly associated are more a reflection of dominant values about education and knowledge than of the intrinsic characteristics or qualities of computers themselves. The critique of educational computing offered by Michael Streibel is used as the start point. In his critique Streibel suggests that computers are not suitable for epistemological methods such as interpretation, intuition and introspection. Two examples are given in the paper where computers are used to support such epistemological methods.