by Clifford Stoll

About the author: Clifford Stoll is the author of Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway.

Remember filmstrips? I used to look forward to Wednesday afternoons when our fifth-grade teacher would dim the lights, pull down the screen and advance the projector to an electronic beep. All the pupils loved filmstrips. For the next hour, we didn’t have to think.

Filmstrips and Learning

Teachers liked them, too. With arms folded in the back of the class, they didn’t have to teach. The principal approved. Filmstrips were proof that Public School 61 in Buffalo was at the cutting edge of educational technology. Parents demanded filmstrips, the modern, multimedia way to bring the latest information into the classroom. It was a win-win approach that bypassed textbooks and old-style classrooms. But no learning took place...