[IAEP] Sad

[Greg Dekoenigsberg]

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:

> Since I'm mentally trying to turn these kinds of discussions into 
> actionable items it might be worth thinking about how we can for example 
> present that understanding how to use the write-activity and having used 
> it for several years in school is in fact equivalent to having been 
> taught MS Word 200x all your life. Or better yet, find out how long it 
> takes children who have used 'write' to find their way around MS Word. I 
> figure this happens pretty quickly and if we find a good way to 
> demonstrate that then the popular argument of "children need WinXP so 
> they know how to use MS Word because that's a requirement for getting a 
> job" just went out the window...

It's a good point.  Here's a quick argument I always use:

TEACHING, not TRAINING.

You TRAIN someone to use a particular word processor.  If the next word 
processor doesn't have exactly the same features, the student will be 
useless.

You TEACH someone to figure out how word processors work.  If the next 
word processor doesn't have exactly the same features, the student will 
easily figure out what's similar.

--g