A Potential Discrepency in The Internet Playground

Ellen Seiter’s The Internet Playground concludes with her deeming the internet “an educational boondoggle” (102). I would largely agree with this assessment, and perhaps see some of this confusion translating in sections of Seiter’s argument.

In her description of the computer usage of both the well-funded Clearview and struggling Washington schools, Seiter seems to argue both for and against standardized enforced computer usage in school systems. For Clearview, she argues that the SuccessMaker program is little more than a capitalistic ploy for statistics that educationally is little better than traditional paper worksheets (5). She expresses frustration with those parents’ conviction that technology is the best method to instigate a breakthrough in their children’s learning. This position would in turn imply that she believes traditional learning methods with direct student-teacher interactions to be a more effective means of educating youth.

But on the other hand, she telegraphs disapproval in her description of the Washington school’s administration, which favors a “back to basics” teaching strategy, raking computer usage a low priority. The principal explicitly states that she puts "basic reading and writing" over computer time (10). Could basic computer literacy have helped the children in a fundamental way when there isn’t even money to make the computers run correctly? By the end of the excerpt we read, however, she seems to rescind her earlier implicit critique: "Forget about computer literacy: literacy is more important now than ever." (49)

Perhaps she is simply stating that SuccessMaker is essentially an elitist waste of money, at that there is better technology that schools should be investing in. If so, she should make suggestions about what that technology does or should look like, in order to make the thrust of her argument clear.

And if she is stating that computers could be made a vital tool to get Washington out of its dire score straits, than she should suggest in what way this could be made to happen.  

Obligatory Grad Student Self-Abnegation: I point out this apparent discrepancy more of a question to the class than a critique, since I have no doubt there are those who have read this book far more thoroughly than I, who can better attest to its true argument and potential faults.