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How can children learn faster what brings an ambulance to an emergency sooner how do you get the right man in the right job the answer is computers only computers can cope with a diversity of municipal demands and to help you understand some of the uses of computers we bring you this series computers in modern city government your host for these programs is deputy city administrator Dr Service Today's topic is computers in the schools Dr Service we are in the computer age for better or for worse computers are touching the lives of all of us it is important therefore that we learn to live with this powerful tool and put it to good use the best way to do that is to become more familiar with a computer and the best place to do that is in the public schools by giving children a chance to learn what computers are all about the Board of Education of the city of New York has three programs involved in teaching students about computers one has to do with using computer assisted instruction in the public schools we had a program earlier in this series about that another program has to do with the vocational uses of computers teaching students in business education courses about using computers and also teaching students in some of the vocational schools about computer maintenance the third program is computers in the mathematics program and with us today as our guest is Mr George Grossman director of the Bureau of mathematics of the New York City Board of Education. George what exactly is your responsibility in the area of the mathematics curriculum in the public schools actually anything that involves mathematics instruction curriculum its implementation any of the new materials or equipment that comes up that would make it easier for our teachers to teach and better for our children to learn is our responsibility with computers fit into this picture that computers fit it in so many different ways in mathematics they fit in and at least three ways for the bright student it will enrich the computer program for the bright student it will let him know that the computer is a tool that he can use in college for the normal student it can remote of eight. It can really serve a very useful purpose and we are still in the exploratory stage there and for the young child there was a discovery the computer is a tool for children to play and to explore and to discover it's got quite a big field. Now how precisely thorough that's kind of the the philosophical underpinnings of how come computers find their way into the mathematics curriculum precisely how are computers being used and where are they being used the major way that we are using computers in a course that we call computer mathematics is in the high schools we began this way back in one nine hundred fifty seven when we were able to use computers at Columbia University we didn't have our own at that time we taught some of our better students computer programming and they found out very quickly that a computer is not used just to evaluate a formula you can get the area of a circle by a computer but you don't need a computer as more that's calculator a paper and pencil will do so that students had to find out where can they use this giant monster that works so fast and I bet not only the students had to find this out of the faculty as well I'm still finding out I'm still learning and as a matter of fact different teachers teaching computer mathematics teacher entirely different mathematical topics pure and applied one of my good friends who introduced this program at the High School of Science way back in one nine hundred fifty seven years statistics was one of the major areas his students learned statistics mathematical statistics and use the computer as a tool but meanwhile they were using the computer. What how many computers are used for instructional purposes throughout the public school system I can't tell you exactly but approximately fifty and since one nine hundred sixty or nine hundred sixty one our school system has put. Real automatic digital computers in approximately fifty of our high schools and in some of our junior high schools and there was one desk computer in an elementary school in Flushing is that right what do you what do you do with a lot of one is that the mathematics laboratory or what is that well in P S two nineteen queens in the flushing area we have a wonderful mathematics laboratory program now you're interested you're talking about something even more important for me because how children learn mathematics is one of our major responsibilities and children learn by doing by playing by exploring one of the companies loaned the school a small desk computer just to prove to us and to themselves that the computer does have a place and if you visit to nineteen Queens and see the teacher there you will find out that the children are working with the computer all day long different children. In other words a Z. is a sub desk sized computer located in one classroom and different classes come in a different times of the day to use it this mathematics laboratory is located in one classroom for the older children in the for the primary the very young children there is a central area where there are two different mathematics laboratory set ups two but in this one classroom there are materials all around the room and in one special little corner there are some desk calculators and one there's computer and there's a magnetic card which feeds a program into the computer and the children are certain questions to guess my rule and even to make up other programs so that actually children throughout the day keep on coming into the mathematics laboratory and one of the stations that they go to is the computer what grades ordinarily use that laboratory I am not sure but I would assume about grades four five maybe even grade three about how many computers are located in the junior high schools there must be between fifteen and twenty desk computers in junior high schools also and these are being used in math clubs for the bright students and also for remediation for re motivation there are many of our youngsters who are arithmetic computational skills need bolstering up who hate mathematics who hate arithmetic well we use the computer as one of the best electric trains these youngsters comply with I.C. I see precisely how to vary how does it work what other teachers do one of the students do in the junior high schools wanting wind up using their computer in this way well flowcharting one of the most important techniques that we have to introduce into our school mathematics programming because it forces the youngsters to decide ahead of time each step what is flow charting what I've heard flowcharting is a method by which if you have a problem you have to analyze the problem what shall I do first then when I do this what shall I do next and. What will I do after that and you prepare a flow diagram for the individual steps if I want to find the area of a circle what I must do is find out what the radius of the circle as then I must take that number the radius and multiply it by itself I have to square it then I have to multiply that by the most important number and all the mathematics part then and so on so that what we have to do first of all with some of these youngsters the actual making of low diagrams has a hypnotic effect it really gets them into a very quiet mode for learning and some of them we have been told come back get to like mathematics and can go well many of these go on to college so that there's calculators and there's computers we are learning ourselves how they can be used to remote of aid youngsters in the junior high schools how about the high schools the let's say you indicated that they were told a total of about fifty computers being used throughout the public school system one in the elementary schools. About fifteen or twenty in the junior high school so the remainder of my mathematics serves me right the remainder must be approximate thirty four would be in the in the high school's director of mathematics my arithmetic is very bad there are more than thirty four in the high schools there are some big computers in some of the special high schools where hundreds of students have courses one two three four semester courses in what I'd like to call computer mathematics which high schools evolves the Bronx High School of Science Stuyvesant High School Brooklyn Technical High School dramatic or high school Far Rockaway made word high school I could keep on listing the schools but more and more of our schools are getting interested in the computer way back in one nine hundred fifty seven there were just two William Howard Taft where I was chairman of the mathematics department and the Bronx High School of Science. Her doctor of Indonesia was chairman and the two of us developed our own programs completely independently and yet we interacted the place where we interacted was at Columbia's Watson lab where we met you as a matter of fact way back when Yes That's the I.B.M. laboratory on little of university campus right and Columbia was very nice them allowing us to use thousands of hours of machine Time Machine time is expensive and millions of I.B.M. cards to her Well that's the way I get started our students would punch the cards in their school test just read them over to make sure there were no major Observateur errors then bring these packages of cards down to Columbia's Watson laboratory and cross their finger and put the program in to see whether the computer agreed with them what are some of the activities going on with computers in the high schools are you familiar with some of the specific or well I know that we have mathematics clubs in some of the small high schools where youngsters even in the tenth year some of the ninth year I've been told that many of the youngsters who are coming from junior high schools are coming with a background in computers and therefore we're putting three terminals into joinder we high school to do many many different things there will in the new schools we're not putting hardware we're not putting computers anymore because the computer age moves so rapidly that anything that is new today will be obsolete within five years but ten years ago when we were just beginning we had to and use we use federal funds we had to purchase our own computers and we still have them and schools the students learnt the machine language they learned how to program the computer in other words they learned how to communicate with the machine they had to find problems for it either as a mathematics club or as a mathematics class. And they take this in addition to not instead of any mathematics or other course so what I would do is I'd get to my school at seven thirty in the morning because we would put the course at the zero period before the regular day and during every free period my youngsters would go into the computer room or the keypunch room to punch out cards and later when we had our own computer to actually try out the programs for those who are concerned with motivating students now there's an example of students are really motivated to learn if they if they get up early and go to a top class early in the day as an elective class and computers in their math courses not only are they motivated to learn but they are motivated to read mathematics books and look for areas that provide problem opportunities for the computer this to me is the most important thing the teacher is not there to tell or to fill a bottle who is the still the teacher is there merely to guide the student in the world of knowledge there are so many different areas you made an important point here because you're pointing out very clearly that your interest in computers is strictly as an adjunct to the process of teaching mathematics or having children learn mathematics and what you've been able to do with respect to the mathematics curriculum teachers and principal could do with respect to the music appreciation curriculum the literature curriculum the history curriculum or the English curriculum presumably as well as the science curricula. Are there any steps along those directions yet in the high schools this is an area where the colleges and universities or research people in the colleges and universities are exploring with the use of computers and the role of the computer in literature in even in writing music in generating artwork Have there been any steps yet in the public school level with beginning to explore I know that in social studies there is an information retrieval service that is big is beginning to be explored but it's. Hill in the baby stage actually we're only twelve years old it's only since one nine hundred fifty seven that we have been using in New York City and other cities in the country they're beginning to get on the bandwagon until twelve years ago there weren't many colleges that had computer laboratories now every single college has That's right twelve years ago there were almost no high schools now a great many high schools are beginning to take advantage of the fact that we do have the tremendous world of computers and incidentally we use computers for more than just for instruction What do you mean by that right now we are very much concerned with relieving teachers of responsibilities of clerical work there are many schools where we do the scheduling of the school you know every student has his own program so that there will be this June fifteenth high schools in New York City that will be programmed via a computer. And from that point of view it's going to save the teachers and administrators in that school countless thousands of hours man hours and the computer will do in four hours what would take many many thousands of hours I'm delighted to hear about that just the other day my wife was complaining about the fact that too much school time is occasionally spent the beginning of the semester or at the end of the preceding semester where are the children don't get any instruction and it's kind of administrative time for the teachers to sit there and the world needs the paperwork in the planning for the next year the sounds like an area where if computers can be used to do all that massive intelligent clerical work that has to be done that would seem to leave more time for a direct instruction of students the deputy superintendent of instructional services Dr Philip Lester has asked the director of the Bureau of management information and data processing to provide precisely these services to every single one of the hundred high schools that we have in our city vocational academic comprehensive Not in addition in addition to the student scheduling there are so many other bits of information that can be done attendance reports can be handled automatically report cards can be done by computer permanent records can be kept upgraded the transcript that go to colleges can be done automatically so that a parent doesn't have to worry that he can only get three or four transcripts from the school when it's done manually he can get as many now as he wishes once we get the program running right now it's in a pilot stage totally reverting back for the moment to to your program for using computers for instructional purposes in the schools how does New York City compare with other cities in the country what's happening in other parts of the country. In one thousand fifty seven I remember speaking of national and state meetings and introducing the subject which we called Computer mathematics at that time there were two or three cities in the country Albany I remember was one buffalo was another that were beginning with computer mathematics in some way at the present time cities throughout the country and small. Suburban communities to our using terminals and shared time facilities to put our colleges that are nearby to provide computer time and all over the country we are beginning to catch up with New York City I think New York City is still ahead in this area as we've discovered in all the programs in the series New York City does still serve as a leader of the nation and of the world in innovative uses of computers and in government and in the related processes I'm delighted to hear that supplies education as well and I'm not surprised Well let me. Ask one thing one thought that occurred to me as we were discussing this you're talking about the you've spoken about the computers that have been placed in the various schools the console's computer console's that are becoming available for students to use how about the teacher side of the picture I can imagine that here is one new tool that is growing very very rapidly computers are a very recent phenomenon more and more people find themselves involved with computers one way or the other I can imagine that the but the problem of finding teachers who are interested in and motivated to learn about computers and who are capable of teaching in this field is not so easy such an easy job for you it is not such a hard job to surprisingly teachers are professional people teachers always keep up with their field the whole development of the new math program. The high schools we have subject matter specialists but consider the elementary schools where there are thirty thousand elementary school teachers each a teacher of mathematics not just arithmetic and yet these teachers continue to want in service courses and workshops the same thing is true with respect to computers in each school that has teachers who are knowledgeable we have been putting in computer facilities and we find more and more schools asking for it. So that the in-service courses that are being given some National Science Foundation funded some local and service courses and some given by companies that manufactures and sell these computers I think we have we have enough teachers who are knowledgeable but our teachers are continually searching which is the mark of a teacher right what evidence do you have this program is successful I know that trying to measure the educational attainment trying to measure the success of an educational program is a is a very difficult and tricky kind of thing to do so I'm not quite you know I'm not asking for a scientific evaluation of your program but how do you know the course is going well how do you know that the the idea is taking root well. We introduced computers without considering that all together but we were concerned with is letting our students know of the world as it exists the world of the future in the world of the present but computer age is the present age so that we wanted that but the tremendous amount of excitement of the youngsters and they come back from college and tell us that they have done that what we have done for them has been very valuable many of them get jobs in the summertime and many of them come develop a disease called Computer riders that we have to be very careful about so many X. What is computer writers computer writers is a name I invented life the game of chess or go or bridge where a youngster gets so excited about this particular activity or going out with girls or boys that he does that instead of the work that he's supposed to do I remember way back in one nine hundred fifty eight when one of the brightest youngsters at the High School of Science went to Columbia University spent all his time at Watson lab with you and myself and almost failed out of college because of that so that there is a tremendous amount of excitement in our youngsters have been winning awards too which tells us in the Westinghouse scholarship awards more and more throughout the country are these awards are being won by youngsters who have developed programs that use a computer and this is not only in mathematics in biology and other areas problems that use a computer the computer covers the whole world of knowledge. Mathematics is really just the beginning and too many of the students there in the New York school system apply or enter the Westinghouse Science Talent Search with kind of computer oriented science projects and many of them have actually one honorable mention and one or two have actually won prizes in there and that is a real honor and it tells us that if on top if you look at an iceberg you only see a very small portion there's an awful lot underneath and the thing that we see makes us realize that there's a lot more below the surface the computer is having its effect and I know how many principals call me and tell me we need more equipment. What about your plans for the future what are your hopes and or plans for the future in this area how do you hope to extend and build upon this foundation that you've laid in computer mathematics we hope that every single high school will have terminals connected to central computers we've passed the stage where we want to buy computers except for the inexpensive desk computers hands on opportunities are important but the computers of today are so fast that we can't afford that and they change so rapidly so we're moving in the area of terminals and right now next year we will be renting eight terminals in eight different schools to be used both for mathematics and for business education in business education data processing will be how you work out the payroll for example or inventory control or other particular problems in business and in mathematics we will be working on all sorts of problems where flowcharting and programming will be used as a tool to encourage youngsters to explore mathematics amused mathematics we hope to reach all of the high schools within a few years we are extending with the desk computers down to the junior high schools and we are in the research and development stage right now in only one of the elementary schools we don't know yet but this is like an acorn just the seed and from the seed a giant oak tree will grow very good well Georgia has been a very enlightening discussion of how the Board of Education has. Found the computer age and has kept pace with it through a rather broad range of innovative programs taking advantage of computers using them properly to work educate students as to what the computer age means for them what computers are giving them kind of comfort and familiarity with a sort of the computer is not a strange alien tool. I'd like to thank you for joining us today our guest has been Mr George Grossman director of the Bureau of mathematics the Board of Education the city of New York thank you Dr Service You've been listening to another broadcast of computers in modern city government if you have any questions about today's program address them to computers W. N.Y.C. New York one triple zero seven and if you'd like a free booklet entitled introducing the computer right to W. N.Y.C. Municipal Building New York New York one hundred seven and join us again next week at this time for another look at computers in modern city government.