Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
many more. This is a major subfield of software engineering and has been an act-
ive topic of research for 50 years or more.
Education Software
In one of their final meetings before Steve Jobs passed away, one of the topics of
conversation between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates was a shared disappointment that
computers had not had as great an impact on education as they both had wished.
Note
Readers of this topic will probably find Steve Jobs: The Exclusive
Biography by Walter Isaacson a very rich source of information
about computers and software between the mid-1970s and about
2010. Isaacson's book includes many interviews with software lu-
minaries and gives their firsthand opinions.
There are some very good education tools available for both normal education-
al purposes and also special education for blind, deaf, or handicapped students.
However, ordinary public schools tend to use software for logistical purposes,
such as schedules and payrolls, more than for educational purposes. Even in high
school, software is more or less used in the background, except in some schools
that do teach programming.
In some states such as Pennsylvania, there are corporations that have pooled
their resources to acquire computers and software, which are then donated to
inner-city schools that may lack the funds to acquire such tools. Some of these
corporate donors also invite groups of students to visit offices and see what it will
be like to work at one after graduation. These groups also fund field trips so grade
school students can visit universities, because many young children have no idea
at all what college life would be like.
On the other hand, outside of schools, children start using smartphones and
computers from a very early age. In fact, a number of self-taught hackers have
been found who are no older than 15.
Several school districts, such as those in California, are beginning to replace
paper textbooks with e-books on Amazon Kindles, Nooks, or iPads. However,
computers and software could probably be more effective and more widely de-
ployed than they are today. Conservatism on the part of school administrators and
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