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Of course, technology brings many advantages and benefits to students. With the ubiquitous spread of the internet in the modern day, people have virtually unlimited access to vast resources for disseminating knowledge and promoting learning. Armed with smartphones and tablets, society has never been more interconnected and certainly one of the most powerful tools enabled by technology is this collaborative aspect.
However, technology also brings with it nefarious capabilities that threaten to undermine the very social fabric of our sacred institutions. One of these concerns is that technology can contribute to cheating. And the more technology advances the more difficult it becomes for teachers or administrators to discern the cheating.
A hypothetical example, suppose that time machines are invented in the near future. One of my professors posts the correct answers to his exam questions the day after we take the exam. Today while in the bathroom I was pondering how easy and convenient it would be to simply use the time machine to travel into the future (1 day after the exam), print out the correct answers, return to present day, input the correct answers into my Google glasses disguised as ordinary glasses, and copy down the correct answers on the day of the exam directly from the inside of my lens.
I know what you're thinking. Time travel has many potentially disastrous implications and ramifications. If you travel through time you have the risk of affecting something or someone so that an entire series of chain reactions are set off, impacting other people or the course of history in unexpected ways. But just printing out the answers doesn't really seem dangerous in that regard.
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Yes, the reason I'm writing this is because I just got back my grade and I did bomb the exam.
And I know there are probably way more compelling arguments (or ones that aren't "out there") to prove my point but I don't really care.
  
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The benefits of technology far outweigh any downsides in the grand scheme of things, so how can it be said to "destroy" education? The notion is ridiculous. Cheating doesn't harm education, because those who are there to learn will learn regardless of what others do around them. At worst, it's damaging the education system, as the value of degrees decreases as their legitimacy decreases.
But education in general greatly benefits from technology. There are downsides for education, but they are minor.
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Hopefully with the ease of access of information we will be able to transition to an educational system that values critical thinking, problem solving, and drawing connections better than the one today.
Also I don't really get your point. The only logic-based argument you have against technology is time travel, which is hardly logical as a topic. Mostly I only see/have heard of technology simply being used to copy the work of someone else who has done the same assignment or paper before. If you do that then you may get a good grade at first but then when you actually have to write an essay, defend a thesis, or solve a complicated problem on the spot you will not be well prepared. I know a lot of people who "don't test well" simply because they are bad students who don't actually learn.
I go to a school where the students each have an ipad. The problem mostly seems to be distractions from games, not from very covert cheating. I walk through the cafeteria and all the freshmen are playing some stupid castle game, not even talking to each other. A freshman the other day got in a ton of trouble for looking at porn at school. I also have proctored this kind of academic detention for students that are failing classes mostly from not turning in their shit, so we have to make sure that they do their shit for at least an hour after school with supervision. The main problem I have is students trying to play games or look at le funny memes when they still have homework left to do. A lot of these students are the ones who end up failing out. (This is a high school though).
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United States24639 Posts
On November 01 2013 10:11 Djzapz wrote:
The benefits of technology far outweigh any downsides in the grand scheme of things, so how can it be said to "destroy" education? The notion is ridiculous. Cheating doesn't harm education, because those who are there to learn will learn regardless of what others do around them. At worst, it's damaging the education system, as the value of degrees decreases as their legitimacy decreases.
But education in general greatly benefits from technology. There are downsides for education, but they are minor.
I want to agree with you, but I'm just not sure if I can. Certainly technology has many benefits for learning (I'm thinking mostly in the k-12 range). However, the drawbacks are far from minor in comparison. Cheating is only one small part of the difficulty created by emerging technology in the lives of school children.
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On November 01 2013 10:35 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 10:11 Djzapz wrote:
The benefits of technology far outweigh any downsides in the grand scheme of things, so how can it be said to "destroy" education? The notion is ridiculous. Cheating doesn't harm education, because those who are there to learn will learn regardless of what others do around them. At worst, it's damaging the education system, as the value of degrees decreases as their legitimacy decreases.
But education in general greatly benefits from technology. There are downsides for education, but they are minor. I want to agree with you, but I'm just not sure if I can. Certainly technology has many benefits for learning (I'm thinking mostly in the k-12 range). However, the drawbacks are far from minor in comparison. Cheating is only one small part of the difficulty created by emerging technology in the lives of school children.
Well, what is it that could possibly counterbalance the massive benefits, ignoring the time travel business and great paradoxes...
I go to school, I have my laptop, I can take notes faster with little effort, giving me more time to really listen and let the knowledge sink in. This is especially good for me because handwriting has always sucked for me and it takes a lot of effort. I know many people who are in this situation. I can also use the internet to quickly and effortlessly deepen my knowledge, sometimes even DURING the class. I can google a term or somebody's name for instance, or a concept I'm not familiar with.
The fields of mathematics, physics, engineering and other applied sciences greatly benefit from technologies. Not only are machines able to help us develop theories and give us tools, they speed up the processes which can't be handled by machines themselves. This can lead to a certain form of dependence to those machines but provided that we keep the machines, this allows people to specialize and to spend less time doing the stuff that even dumb machines can do faster than us.
Technology helps tremendously and I think it's part of what allows more people to be educated in our societies. Our current problem is facebook and phones in the classrooms, but I've noticed that either those people have developed multitasking skills (I know a few girls who literally write and listen to the class and remember everything) or they don't belong in the classroom anyway and their facebook is the technological equivalent of a paper plane or doodles.
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dj I'm assigning you Lyotard's "Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge"
smash the machines
tables, chairs, pencils, chalk. all you need. everything else is expensive toys and useless distractions.
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On November 01 2013 10:56 sam!zdat wrote:
dj I'm assigning you Lyotard's "Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge"
smash the machines
tables, chairs, pencils, chalk. all you need. everything else is expensive toys and useless distractions.
Hipsters having opinions: Dark ages & Shit.
Meanwhile in reality
Edit: That book was published 34 years ago. There have been 34 years worth of technological advancements since, many of which are incredibly pedagogical. Just because you don't see the benefits of having more than pen and paper doesn't mean that they don't exist. I suspect that the fact that you can't make use of the new technologies in your learning shows your personal limits.
Edit2: Interestingly, here's a little something about the book that was published 34 years ago: "Short but influential, the book was originally written as a report on the influence of technology in exact sciences, commissioned by the Conseil des universités du Québec.[4][5] Lyotard later admitted that he had a 'less than limited' knowledge of the science he was to write about, and to compensate for this knowledge, he 'made stories up' and referred to a number of books that he hadn't actually read. In retrospect, he called it 'a parody' and 'simply the worst of all my books'." -Wikipedia
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United States24639 Posts
On November 01 2013 10:46 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 10:35 micronesia wrote:On November 01 2013 10:11 Djzapz wrote:
The benefits of technology far outweigh any downsides in the grand scheme of things, so how can it be said to "destroy" education? The notion is ridiculous. Cheating doesn't harm education, because those who are there to learn will learn regardless of what others do around them. At worst, it's damaging the education system, as the value of degrees decreases as their legitimacy decreases.
But education in general greatly benefits from technology. There are downsides for education, but they are minor. I want to agree with you, but I'm just not sure if I can. Certainly technology has many benefits for learning (I'm thinking mostly in the k-12 range). However, the drawbacks are far from minor in comparison. Cheating is only one small part of the difficulty created by emerging technology in the lives of school children. Well, what is it that could possibly counterbalance the massive benefits, ignoring the time travel business and great paradoxes... I go to school, I have my laptop, I can take notes faster with little effort, giving me more time to really listen and let the knowledge sink in. This is especially good for me because handwriting has always sucked for me and it takes a lot of effort. Let me stop you here. First of all I'm glad the laptop seems to be helping you in your classes (honestly... it's great when technology really does help). Having difficulty with handwriting indeed makes it harder to learn, in lieu of appropriate replacements for things such as written note-taking.
In fact, many children, starting from elementary school, have difficulty with handwriting. Of course, their teachers, and sometimes specialists, work with them to improve their handwriting. Even if their handwriting isn't as good as the teacher's, the goal is to help them reach an acceptable level where they can function normally.
However, not every child is able (whether due to their own limitations, or limitations on the part of the teachers etc) to achieve a satisfactory level of handwriting. After working with the child, they realize that the child isn't going to catch up to the other children. What do they do in this case? Fortunately we have alternatives children can do. Maybe this child can type effectively, and will be allowed to type at times when other children hand-write information. This might allow the child to focus on what is being taught instead of mostly on how to write down information.
But what actually ends up happening? More and more, the option to type will start to replace an honest full-force attempt to help the child learn to write better. Children who were borderline, but might have had a shot at learning to write adequately, are ushered towards using the 'typing' option because of how much easier it is in the short term (especially with those extremely emphasized standardized tests coming up... at least in my country) Now, students seem to be learning their content knowledge a little better, but the school district has also noticed that kids' handwriting/abilities seem to be degrading, compared to prior years.
The implementation of a newly available technology in the classroom had the potential to be a positive influence, and for some kids it was, but at the same time it had devastating effects for an even larger number of children. Of course, this isn't the fault of the technology... we shouldn't ban computer keyboards. However, technology is often used in a far-from-ideal way in the classroom.
You see the same thing with calculators. More and more, school children are being taught how to do math on the calculator rather than by hand. This does have some advantages... there are some things you can learn better using the visual aids provided by a calculator rather than solely by traditional methods... but I don't think that outweighs the potential damage due to many if not most children being much worse at doing math by hand. Again, there is nothing wrong with calculators. They are an incredibly useful tool sometimes, and are very useful even well after your education (just like typing). However, how they are used is rarely anywhere near how they actually should be used to maximize student learning while minimizing disruption. My seemingly ridiculous example earlier of flooding weak-handed children with computer keyboards to push them ahead actually becomes very realistic when applied to calculators. When children have trouble in math, they are often given special permission to use calculators. This allows them to get over the immediate hurdle, but makes it that much harder for them to understand the math they are supposed to learn later on. You could teach math k-12 without a single day of calculator use at school or at home, and have much better results than we have now (granted, not solely due to the omission of calculators from the curriculum).
I know many people who are in this situation. Be careful about how strongly you rely on this anecdotal knowledge to draw your conclusions about a complex issue like the effect of technology on learning, both positive and negative. There's a reason why it wouldn't have a place if you were to write an actual academic paper on this topic.
I can also use the internet to quickly and effortlessly deepen my knowledge, sometimes even DURING the class. I can google a term or somebody's name for instance, or a concept I'm not familiar with.
The fields of mathematics, physics, engineering and other applied sciences greatly benefit from technologies. Not only are machines able to help us develop theories and give us tools, they speed up the processes which can't be handled by machines themselves. This can lead to a certain form of dependence to those machines but provided that we keep the machines, this allows people to specialize and to spend less time doing the stuff that even dumb machines can do faster than us.
Technology helps tremendously and I think it's part of what allows more people to be educated in our societies. Our current problem is facebook and phones in the classrooms, but I've noticed that either those people have developed multitasking skills (I know a few girls who literally write and listen to the class and remember everything) or they don't belong in the classroom anyway and their facebook is the technological equivalent of a paper plane or doodles. Most of what you described explained how higher learning benefits from technology much more so than how k-12 benefits. I won't argue with you on higher learning (the problem is much lesser in comparison to k-12, even if it isn't nonexistent).
The disruptions caused by cellphone related technology, combined with the social expectations imposed by parents that children should be reachable at all times, can create some very disastrous classroom management situations as well. It's easy to try to downplay it, but what your classes were like is not necessarily a good indicator of what happens across the country/world (every place is different, of course).
In conclusion, I think the comparison being made is really the potential benefits of technology in the classroom against the actual drawbacks from the same technology which is hardly a fair comparison.
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that's irrelevant to the argument he makes, which is important
technology in the classroom is a way to make tech companies rich and shuffle kids through the credentials factory. all you need to teach someone is books and time
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On November 01 2013 11:15 micronesia wrote:
The implementation of a newly available technology in the classroom had the potential to be a positive influence, and for some kids it was, but at the same time it had devastating effects for an even larger number of children. Of course, this isn't the fault of the technology... we shouldn't ban computer keyboards. However, technology is often used in a far-from-ideal way in the classroom.
I have two responses regarding this Micronesia, the first one will be strange to many people but here we go.
1- [Before you respond to this point, also read the second] This is going to sound strange but I love pens. I always have. Pens are elegant and awesome. But I don't really value handwriting. I think that the main goal of education is to give knowledge to people, and technical skills like writing are merely tools to develop one's intelligence. Handwriting is just a skill that we learn to be able to "save" knowledge, to write it down. A computer is perfectly adapted to this task. Handwriting is still elegant, but in many cases it almost seems like an artifact of the past now that we all have access to computers. They're both faster and our work is always going to be safer on a computer, with the internet, than on paper.
2- This point supersedes the first for now. I don't know if I'll ever get to a point where I believe handwriting has to go. And the reason why I don't buy OP's argument is that both this and your example about calculator has nothing to do with technology being a detriment, it's a purely human problem and a dilemma that deserves to be looked at. On one hand, we have the "old way", the handwriting, and the writing numbers on pages and carrying the zero... They're slow, and pose problems to certain kids. A potential solution is to "expedite" those and replace them with keyboards and calculators... In this case, yes technology can be a bad thing, but those things don't fall into the hands of students, they're given to them.
What I'm clumsily trying to say is that in this case, PEOPLE make the decisions to bypass the old teaching methods with technologies. Is it good or is it bad? Probably a bit of both. If a kid can't write or doesn't understand the fundamentals of mathematics because they were given tools that do it for them, then perhaps the teaching methods have failed. But it's not because of the calculators, it's because of the teachers, who should be the first to understand that just because we have big computers doesn't mean that we should get complacent.
On the other hand, let's not outright assume that it's necessarily always damaging the person's education. Some kids are not going to university and certain approaches using technologies COULD be more adapted to their personal needs.
Be careful about how strongly you rely on this anecdotal knowledge to draw your conclusions about a complex issue like the effect of technology on learning, both positive and negative. There's a reason why it wouldn't have a place if you were to write an actual academic paper on this topic.
I was just discussing it with you, my point is that many people benefit from technologies. If not in the classroom, the access to knowledge with the internet is undeniable. And I don't need a crash course on what goes and doesn't go in an academic paper. At this point in my life I'm actually the one with the red pen for the most part  .
Most of what you described explained how higher learning benefits from technology much more so than how k-12 benefits. I won't argue with you on higher learning (the problem is much lesser in comparison to k-12, even if it isn't nonexistent).
The disruptions caused by cellphone related technology, combined with the social expectations imposed by parents that children should be reachable at all times, can create some very disastrous classroom management situations as well. It's easy to try to downplay it, but what your classes were like is not necessarily a good indicator of what happens across the country/world (every place is different, of course).
In conclusion, I think the comparison being made is really the potential benefits of technology in the classroom against the actual drawbacks from the same technology which is hardly a fair comparison.
Well I wasn't really talking about k-12 (which I actually had to google just now!). I would agree that not all technologies belong in primary and secondary schools.
On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
all you need to teach someone is books and time
Books are great but they're limited. They have to be published, bought, shipped, they have to be with you physically. Some are dated, not so relevant...
Pdfs, online articles, peer reviewed papers, can be on my computer in the hours after they were published. Surely books can't be dismissed, they're of extreme importance - but to say that they're all we need does leave out a ridiculous amount of knowledge.
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Modernists and po'mos fighting. *popcorn*
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Whats so bad? if someone can get trough only with a calculator, who cares? They will always have a calculator with them in whatever form and they wont take a job where they need a lot of calculations because they obviously hate it.
And in my country, many university classes do not allow any form of help except one paper written on both sides in tests.
So you cant get any help from your calculator.
Also, if time travel would be possible, it would have been introduced instantly at all times. So since it was not, it will never be invented, sorry.
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On November 01 2013 11:56 LaNague wrote:
Also, if time travel would be possible, it would have been introduced instantly at all times. So since it was not, it will never be invented, sorry.
Sorry but your theory doesn't make sense. I agree with the idea that if time travel was invented at some point in the future, we would have "time travelers" from the future in our present day. But these people from the future might be so good at disguising themselves that they blend into the general population. Also, the governments in the future might be using time travelers as spies which would mean they would have to conceal their true identity.
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I read or heard somewhere, maybe it was from Michio Kaku, that if time travel was invented, you could only travel to the future and back to the point where the machine was made. In other words, if you made a machine in 2500, people could come back in time from 3000 to 2500 but they couldn't go all the way back to 5000 B.C
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United States24639 Posts
Note: I did read the whole post before responding.
On November 01 2013 11:42 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 11:15 micronesia wrote:
The implementation of a newly available technology in the classroom had the potential to be a positive influence, and for some kids it was, but at the same time it had devastating effects for an even larger number of children. Of course, this isn't the fault of the technology... we shouldn't ban computer keyboards. However, technology is often used in a far-from-ideal way in the classroom. I have two responses regarding this Micronesia, the first one will be strange to many people but here we go. 1- [Before you respond to this point, also read the second] This is going to sound strange but I love pens. I always have. Pens are elegant and awesome. But I don't really value handwriting. I think that the main goal of education is to give knowledge to people, and technical skills like writing are merely tools to develop one's intelligence.
I disagree. Yesterday I relied heavily on my handwriting. Not only was my careful writing increasing my chances that all the paper forms I filled out would be entered into the computer system correctly by other people (quite important), but I was required to hand-write information on the spot and share it with another person. I had no access to a computer, nor should I have in the particular case (I won't go into the details as this is indeed anecdotal). The point of this reference is to show that the purpose of writing is not just to record information for yourself. You often write for others, at times and in places where you are not using a computer or word processor in order to do so. Also, much of what I was doing was mathematical or required labeled diagrams... you actually do that much more easily by hand than using some type of a computer interface most of the time. It's possible to create interfaces that work as well or better than handwriting, of course, but they are usually less portable than pen/paper.
Handwriting is just a skill that we learn to be able to "save" knowledge, to write it down. A computer is perfectly adapted to this task. Handwriting is still elegant, but in many cases it almost seems like an artifact of the past now that we all have access to computers. They're both faster and our work is always going to be safer on a computer, with the internet, than on paper. Well computers are faster, except for when they aren't. The work is safer, except for when it isn't. You seem to only be willing to see this issue from one side.
2- This point supersedes the first for now. I don't know if I'll ever get to a point where I believe handwriting has to go. And the reason why I don't buy OP's argument is that both this and your example about calculator has nothing to do with technology being a detriment, it's a purely human problem and a dilemma that deserves to be looked at. On one hand, we have the "old way", the handwriting, and the writing numbers on pages and carrying the zero... They're slow, and pose problems to certain kids. A potential solution is to "expedite" those and replace them with keyboards and calculators... In this case, yes technology can be a bad thing, but those things don't fall into the hands of students, they're given to them. Well yea, I mentioned calculators themselves (and other technologies) for the most part shouldn't be blamed directly for the problems they can cause in education. However, let's be reasonable and realize we are discussing the effects the technologies actually have in the classroom, and the benefits they actually have. If you want to say you think technology has the potential to be much more of a positive than negative influence on learning, then I would certainly agree with you.
If a kid can't write or doesn't understand the fundamentals of mathematics because they were given tools that do it for them, then perhaps the teaching methods have failed. But it's not because of the calculators, it's because of the teachers, who should be the first to understand that just because we have big computers doesn't mean that we should get complacent. I just want to point out that the teachers are only on small piece of the pie if you want to list all the people and 'agents' that could be responsible for the 'damage' caused by improperly used technology in the classroom. You probably did not intend to imply otherwise, but I wanted to point that out for the readers explicitly. Many decisions of this nature are actually taken entirely out of the teacher's hands.
Show nested quote +Be careful about how strongly you rely on this anecdotal knowledge to draw your conclusions about a complex issue like the effect of technology on learning, both positive and negative. There's a reason why it wouldn't have a place if you were to write an actual academic paper on this topic. I was just discussing it with you, my point is that many people benefit from technologies. If not in the classroom, the access to knowledge with the internet is undeniable. This too is a double-edged sword. Access to knowledge is a great thing... but that doesn't mean it has no negative effects... and they aren't all minor. I wouldn't argue we need to reduce the access to knowledge we have... just that we need to better understand all of the effects this has on things such as the development of children. It is not as simple an issue as it is often made out to be.
Show nested quote +Most of what you described explained how higher learning benefits from technology much more so than how k-12 benefits. I won't argue with you on higher learning (the problem is much lesser in comparison to k-12, even if it isn't nonexistent).
The disruptions caused by cellphone related technology, combined with the social expectations imposed by parents that children should be reachable at all times, can create some very disastrous classroom management situations as well. It's easy to try to downplay it, but what your classes were like is not necessarily a good indicator of what happens across the country/world (every place is different, of course).
In conclusion, I think the comparison being made is really the potential benefits of technology in the classroom against the actual drawbacks from the same technology which is hardly a fair comparison. Well I wasn't really talking about k-12 (which I actually had to google just now!). I would agree that not all technologies belong in primary and secondary schools.
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the question is: if we skip handwriting and manual calculation learnings, will we ever be able to catch up as adults? Will it hurt our learning capabilities?
Right now I'm learning a language that doesn't use the roman alphabet, and I feel like I'll never learn if I don't know how to manually draw each of the characters.
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On November 01 2013 12:11 micronesia wrote:
I disagree. Yesterday I relied heavily on my handwriting. Not only was my careful writing increasing my chances that all the paper forms I filled out would be entered into the computer system correctly by other people (quite important), but I was required to hand-write information on the spot and share it with another person. I had no access to a computer, nor should I have in the particular case (I won't go into the details as this is indeed anecdotal). The point of this reference is to show that the purpose of writing is not just to record information for yourself. You often write for others, at times and in places where you are not using a computer or word processor in order to do so. Also, much of what I was doing was mathematical or required labeled diagrams... you actually do that much more easily by hand than using some type of a computer interface most of the time. It's possible to create interfaces that work as well or better than handwriting, of course, but they are usually less portable than pen/paper.
And given those settings, it's still relevant today to teach kids to write with a pen and paper.
Well computers are faster, except for when they aren't. The work is safer, except for when it isn't. You seem to only be willing to see this issue from one side.
The computers are essentially always faster and safer when used right. Learning how to write with a keyboard and how to make sure your files are safe is a whole lot faster than learning to write properly. That's not to say we should substitute but I'm not just willing to see this issue from one side just because I'm arguing for that position. I happen to have the side that's right in this case.
I just want to point out that the teachers are only on small piece of the pie if you want to list all the people and 'agents' that could be responsible for the 'damage' caused by improperly used technology in the classroom. You probably did not intend to imply otherwise, but I wanted to point that out for the readers explicitly. Many decisions of this nature are actually taken entirely out of the teacher's hands.
Well yes it's likely that most of the blame belongs on the various administrative structures that sometimes take decisions without doing their research first. If a student has difficulty reading and they give him a keyboard instead, they damn better have a justification for it as far as I'm concerned. And that justification should have deep roots in science.
If that is your only point then there's no reason for anyone to argue with you.
You know it isn't, I think you're being a bit disingenuous now. Our positions are very similar. I did casually use anecdotal "evidence" to discuss a case where technology can be useful in the classroom. I gave a bunch of other examples (sciences, applied sciences, research, news, free and readily available peer reviewed papers, etc.)
This too is a double-edged sword. Access to knowledge is a great thing... but that doesn't mean it has no negative effects... and they aren't all minor. I wouldn't argue we need to reduce the access to knowledge we have... just that we need to better understand all of the effects this has on things such as the development of children. It is not as simple an issue as it is often made out to be.
I can't think of a major negative way in which education is affected by technologies. You've brought up a few and they're valid concerns but I don't believe them to be hugely problematic. Regardless, changes to the pedagogic approaches with children should be studied carefully. But also, I would be in favor of seeing how the technologies can help them.
It might be foolish to just shove a keyboard in a kid's hands, but it could be just as foolish not to consider the the possibilities. Technologies can be good. Dip pens are cool and all but when kids got their rollerball pens, they stopped spending so much time dealing with ink and more time writing and learning. Sometimes our intellectual capabilities are bottlenecked by physical limits which we can lessen with certain tools. Sometimes not.
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On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
that's irrelevant to the argument he makes, which is important
technology in the classroom is a way to make tech companies rich and shuffle kids through the credentials factory. all you need to teach someone is books and time
you should be saying the same about books and time. both just commodities for capitalists to rape.
all you need is your brain cells and food.
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United States24639 Posts
On November 01 2013 12:28 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +Well computers are faster, except for when they aren't. The work is safer, except for when it isn't. You seem to only be willing to see this issue from one side. The computers are essentially always faster and safer when used right. I'm not sure what you mean by 'essentially' and 'when used right.' This isn't me trying to be a pain... the 'other' cases aside from the ones you are clearly thinking of are actually very important.
Under ideal circumstances, computers are safer and faster than hand-writing documents (and easier to read when printed). However, ideal circumstances are often far from the situation you are actually in. You don't always have a computer with you... when you do that means you are carrying it around which is common nowadays but not always viable. When you need to write something, it takes a second to get out your pen. Your computer may not be booted at that moment. Some computers are faster than others, of course. My laptop still takes me probably >40 seconds to get from "I need to write something" to "I can actually write something now." When you have some type of a problem with your computer, data can get lost. Paper data doesn't get lost unless the actual paper is lost or it is destroyed somehow. Sure, you can have some type of automatic cloud backup going on, but that requires you to have access to the internet, which is not always instantly available, either. Also I'm not so sure I want every single thing I write down saved in some alternate location.
When you want to share what you just wrote with someone who doesn't also have a computer set up, connected to the same network as you, and ready to receive your file using a mutually agreed upon protocol, you better hope they are satisfied with just looking at your screen (well who is going to control scrolling through the information... you or them?) or that you have immediate access to a printer (usually I find this is a pain to set up even if there is a printer nearby). There are other things you can do like carrying around a usb drive and putting your file on to the stick, but that's still much more unwieldy than turning your paper around and showing it to the other person.
And what if you have to make a diagram? Do math that can't be easily expressed on one line? I guess you can get an absolute latex whiz and type it as fast as most people write it, but I sure as hell can't and don't expect most other people can either. Honestly I have barely scratched the surface with showing ways in which your somewhat absolute claim doesn't match the reality I live in, whether you insist you have the 'right side' in this case or not.
I am not saying that computers can't be helpful in virtually all of these general situations under the right circumstances... just that we have not reached a point where the average person can reasonably expect that computers will satisfactorily replace writing in real life, let alone in a learning environment.
Show nested quote +This too is a double-edged sword. Access to knowledge is a great thing... but that doesn't mean it has no negative effects... and they aren't all minor. I wouldn't argue we need to reduce the access to knowledge we have... just that we need to better understand all of the effects this has on things such as the development of children. It is not as simple an issue as it is often made out to be. I can't think of a major negative way in which education is affected by technologies.
You've brought up a few and they're valid concerns but I don't believe them to be hugely problematic. I'm curious how you are deciding which of these concerns are and are not hugely problematic in education. I find education is one of those areas where everyone is somehow an expert on it.
It might be foolish to just shove a keyboard in a kid's hands, but it could be just as foolish not to consider the the possibilities. Technologies can be good. Indeed. Technology is responsible for some great successes in education in recent years.
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On November 01 2013 12:49 micronesia wrote:
I'm curious how you are deciding which of these concerns are and are not hugely problematic in education. I find education is one of those areas where everyone is somehow an expert on it.
It's just what I think. I could be wrong and that's why I advocate for research to determine which methods are good and which aren't. I can easily be wrong, and I hope that if I am, people will find out.
If the calculator is as devastating as you say, then sure it's a problem. But the internet opens so many doors.
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United States24639 Posts
On November 01 2013 12:53 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 12:49 micronesia wrote:
I'm curious how you are deciding which of these concerns are and are not hugely problematic in education. I find education is one of those areas where everyone is somehow an expert on it. It's just what I think. I could be wrong and that's why I advocate for research to determine which methods are good and which aren't. I can easily be wrong, and I hope that if I am, people will find out. If the calculator is as devastating as you say, then sure it's a problem. But the internet opens so many doors.
Yes it definitely does. Those of us in our late 20s or later (I just barely qualify) remember what it was like before you can learn about almost anything for free whenever you want. There is an encyclopedia sitting next to me (~20 books) that hasn't been touched in like 15 years. Why would I open it aside from nostalgia?
On the other hand I've noticed something else. If you told someone in 1980 that soon we would have the ability to carry a computer around with us anywhere that would have pretty much all of human knowledge readily available for recall, they would say that's the most amazing thing ever, and probably not even believe it. Now, we pretty much have that and most people completely take it for granted.
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On November 01 2013 13:01 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 12:53 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 12:49 micronesia wrote:
I'm curious how you are deciding which of these concerns are and are not hugely problematic in education. I find education is one of those areas where everyone is somehow an expert on it. It's just what I think. I could be wrong and that's why I advocate for research to determine which methods are good and which aren't. I can easily be wrong, and I hope that if I am, people will find out. If the calculator is as devastating as you say, then sure it's a problem. But the internet opens so many doors. Yes it definitely does. Those of us in our late 20s or later (I just barely qualify) remember what it was like before you can learn about almost anything for free whenever you want. There is an encyclopedia sitting next to me (~20 books) that hasn't been touched in like 15 years. Why would I open it aside from nostalgia? On the other hand I've noticed something else. If you told someone in 1980 that soon we would have the ability to carry a computer around with us anywhere that would have pretty much all of human knowledge readily available for recall, they would say that's the most amazing thing ever, and probably not even believe it. Now, we pretty much have that and most people completely take it for granted.
Perhaps our education should take into account that we do in fact have all of human knowledge in our pockets at all time. Perhaps it makes sense, instead of focusing on learning stuff, to spend more time developing our research techniques and our ways to acquire knowledge with the tools that we have.
The fact that we're getting complacent because we have the entire world's knowledge can be bad, but we need to take that into account too. We need to adjust to this new world with our education. Hell, even youtube is a ridiculous amount of knowledge. I've always sucked at mathematics and many years ago I hat trouble with matrices in mathematics and my teacher couldn't help me with them, I just didn't understand the logic. I learned how to deal with basic matrices not with the manual which was useless, not with my teacher who's pedagogy didn't work with me... but with a math teacher on youtube who got through my thick skull. And if he hadn't, 10 more videos were dealing with the same topic.
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On November 01 2013 13:01 micronesia wrote:
On the other hand I've noticed something else. If you told someone in 1980 that soon we would have the ability to carry a computer around with us anywhere that would have pretty much all of human knowledge readily available for recall, they would say that's the most amazing thing ever, and probably not even believe it. Now, we pretty much have that and most people completely take it for granted.
I don't think people take it for granted, they just see it as the new "normal" since pretty much everyone owns a smartphone or tablet. When everyone has Google Glasses or whatever these old smartphones will start collecting dust like how encyclopedias started collecting dust when the internet came to the limelight.
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If there was a time machine and everyone started using it, every time you went back in time, it'd dramatically change because other people are using it as well.
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On November 01 2013 13:29 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 13:01 micronesia wrote:On November 01 2013 12:53 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 12:49 micronesia wrote:
I'm curious how you are deciding which of these concerns are and are not hugely problematic in education. I find education is one of those areas where everyone is somehow an expert on it. It's just what I think. I could be wrong and that's why I advocate for research to determine which methods are good and which aren't. I can easily be wrong, and I hope that if I am, people will find out. If the calculator is as devastating as you say, then sure it's a problem. But the internet opens so many doors. Yes it definitely does. Those of us in our late 20s or later (I just barely qualify) remember what it was like before you can learn about almost anything for free whenever you want. There is an encyclopedia sitting next to me (~20 books) that hasn't been touched in like 15 years. Why would I open it aside from nostalgia? On the other hand I've noticed something else. If you told someone in 1980 that soon we would have the ability to carry a computer around with us anywhere that would have pretty much all of human knowledge readily available for recall, they would say that's the most amazing thing ever, and probably not even believe it. Now, we pretty much have that and most people completely take it for granted. Perhaps our education should take into account that we do in fact have all of human knowledge in our pockets at all time. Perhaps it makes sense, instead of focusing on learning stuff, to spend more time developing our research techniques and our ways to acquire knowledge with the tools that we have.
I find the research abilities of students seems to be worse than it was before the internet age. Here is an exaggeration of a paper a typical student would hand in when asked to write a research paper explaining why the sky is blue:
Why the Sky is Blue, by Johnny Smith
Rayleigh scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere causes diffuse sky radiation, which is the reason for the blue color of the sky and the yellow tone of the sun itself. Rayleigh scattering, named after the British physicist Lord Rayleigh,[1] is the elastic scattering of light or other electromagnetic radiation by particles much smaller than the wavelength of the light.
Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
I'm not even kidding! Instant access to information, of course, does not mean you will understand that information. I think the more readily available information is, the less time a typical kid will be willing to put into analyzing it.
We kinda see the same thing with attention span. Children (and even adults) are used to getting everything they want when they want it. Things like cell phones and computers are probably the major causes, although this has been around since before either were ubiquitous. If someone needs to sit in a waiting room for a while and isn't allowed to use their phone or watch tv they go mad... that isn't how people used to be, typically.
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On November 01 2013 13:37 micronesia wrote:
I'm not even kidding! Instant access to information, of course, does not mean you will understand that information. I think the more readily available information is, the less time a typical kid will be willing to put into analyzing it.
We kinda see the same thing with attention span. Children (and even adults) are used to getting everything they want when they want it. Things like cell phones and computers are probably the major causes, although this has been around since before either were ubiquitous. If someone needs to sit in a waiting room for a while and isn't allowed to use their phone or watch tv they go mad... that isn't how people used to be, typically.
Typical kids don't need to do research, and that's clearly an extreme case.
Here, we're taught to do research, and when we go for it, something good comes out because we have access to the latest and most thorough papers and news from all over the world on the topic. Not just the readily available books and periodicals, not just the local newspaper... We have everything. Sure we can write pieces of shit too. We've always been able to do that.
Our ability to have access to the greatest and latest is truly phenomenal and when we do write good papers, they're up to date, thorough and based on multiple sources.
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On November 01 2013 13:45 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 13:37 micronesia wrote:
I'm not even kidding! Instant access to information, of course, does not mean you will understand that information. I think the more readily available information is, the less time a typical kid will be willing to put into analyzing it.
We kinda see the same thing with attention span. Children (and even adults) are used to getting everything they want when they want it. Things like cell phones and computers are probably the major causes, although this has been around since before either were ubiquitous. If someone needs to sit in a waiting room for a while and isn't allowed to use their phone or watch tv they go mad... that isn't how people used to be, typically. Typical kids don't need to do research, and that's clearly an extreme case. While I agree not every kid really needs to be able to write a good/serious research paper, I do believe being able to do research well is important for everyone.
Here, we're taught to do research, and when we go for it, something good comes out because we have access to the latest and most thorough papers and news from all over the world on the topic. Not just the readily available books and periodicals, not just the local newspaper... We have everything. Having access to more sources also requires more effort and skill with regard to identifying which information to use and how to use it. Like other things we discussed earlier, this means there is improved potential for quality, but not necessarily improved quality overall.
Our ability to have access to the greatest and latest is truly phenomenal and when we do write good papers, they're up to date, thorough and based on multiple sources.
Global collaboration is truly an amazing thing.
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Not you again OP. 1/5 again, poor attempt #1001
If time-traveling was possible than it would do a huge more deal than destroying education. And as other person before said, it will never be invented because it would exist in all times if it did. I mean, what is the first thing you would do if you were a time-traveller? I'm pretty sure what I'd do. Travel back in time, win few lotteries and live a happy and quite life playing SC2 pro (since I don't have need for money anyway). Does any of the lottery-winners/top sc2 players/ etc etc seem to be time-travellers? I don't think so. Your just a paranoid 15/16yr old that keeps making non-sensical threads/blogs all the time.
Let's ignore this time-travelling idiocy from yours, let's assume machines in future will be way more advanced. This can only be good for our education since it would be 1000x more times easier to obtain knowledge and use it. I mean, nowadays we can look any info up we need to broaden our knowledge for goal X/Y. Filtering the good from the bad info is the hardest, but this doesn't mean it wasn't in the past.. I mean, going to library and look into books and filter them to find the info you need takes lots of time you could be using finding other knowledge through the technology we have today. And in contrary of what teachers/professors say, just because something is written in a book doesn't mean it's bad. It all depends on how you filter the collective information from the internet.
Why are you posting these kinds of blogs anyway? No friends to discuss such topics? I'm pretty sure what kind of person you are within your class (based on your blogging/username).
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On November 01 2013 11:42 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
all you need to teach someone is books and time Books are great but they're limited. They have to be published, bought, shipped, they have to be with you physically. Some are dated, not so relevant... Pdfs, online articles, peer reviewed papers, can be on my computer in the hours after they were published. Surely books can't be dismissed, they're of extreme importance - but to say that they're all we need does leave out a ridiculous amount of knowledge.
fetishism of novelty
very little you can learn from papers published hours ago that you can't learn from reading plato and arguing about it
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On the topic of calculators,
I have tried teaching 18 year olds how to do basic math (addition/subtraction/multiplication/division of 2 digit integers) because they've used calculators their entire lives and couldn't do such math by hand. Except they didn't even know to use the calculators when things involved order of operations. It was very sad.
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Luddites, all of you.
On November 01 2013 17:36 KazeHydra wrote:
On the topic of calculators,
I have tried teaching 18 year olds how to do basic math (addition/subtraction/multiplication/division of 2 digit integers) because they've used calculators their entire lives and couldn't do such math by hand. Except they didn't even know to use the calculators when things involved order of operations. It was very sad.
This is a failure with the education system. A student didn't understand order of operations but didn't get the help they needed to learn it or were not motivated enough to put in the effort needed to learn it. A teacher could have easily made a no calculators test to make sure the students learned what they needed to. Make it work through software, and the software can spend time to make sure that any adequately motivated student can learn the subject.
On November 01 2013 13:37 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 13:29 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 13:01 micronesia wrote:On November 01 2013 12:53 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 12:49 micronesia wrote:
I'm curious how you are deciding which of these concerns are and are not hugely problematic in education. I find education is one of those areas where everyone is somehow an expert on it. It's just what I think. I could be wrong and that's why I advocate for research to determine which methods are good and which aren't. I can easily be wrong, and I hope that if I am, people will find out. If the calculator is as devastating as you say, then sure it's a problem. But the internet opens so many doors. Yes it definitely does. Those of us in our late 20s or later (I just barely qualify) remember what it was like before you can learn about almost anything for free whenever you want. There is an encyclopedia sitting next to me (~20 books) that hasn't been touched in like 15 years. Why would I open it aside from nostalgia? On the other hand I've noticed something else. If you told someone in 1980 that soon we would have the ability to carry a computer around with us anywhere that would have pretty much all of human knowledge readily available for recall, they would say that's the most amazing thing ever, and probably not even believe it. Now, we pretty much have that and most people completely take it for granted. Perhaps our education should take into account that we do in fact have all of human knowledge in our pockets at all time. Perhaps it makes sense, instead of focusing on learning stuff, to spend more time developing our research techniques and our ways to acquire knowledge with the tools that we have. I find the research abilities of students seems to be worse than it was before the internet age. Here is an exaggeration of a paper a typical student would hand in when asked to write a research paper explaining why the sky is blue:
Why the Sky is Blue, by Johnny SmithRayleigh scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere causes diffuse sky radiation, which is the reason for the blue color of the sky and the yellow tone of the sun itself. Rayleigh scattering, named after the British physicist Lord Rayleigh,[1] is the elastic scattering of light or other electromagnetic radiation by particles much smaller than the wavelength of the light. Works Citedhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
I'm not even kidding! Instant access to information, of course, does not mean you will understand that information. I think the more readily available information is, the less time a typical kid will be willing to put into analyzing it. We kinda see the same thing with attention span. Children (and even adults) are used to getting everything they want when they want it. Things like cell phones and computers are probably the major causes, although this has been around since before either were ubiquitous. If someone needs to sit in a waiting room for a while and isn't allowed to use their phone or watch tv they go mad... that isn't how people used to be, typically.
That's just an example of a lazy kid who copied Wikipedia and didn't understand any of the subject. What would happen if he had to use a book? He now has to go to the library during library hours, wasting 40(for me, more for other students) minutes walking to and from class to the library. Now he has to search for a book on Rayleigh scattering. If he can't find one he's wasted time and has to go to another library. Once he finds a book on the subject he can still copy the subject matter.
Luddites all of you. You don't have any reasons for why technology is ruining education. You just fear it.
On November 01 2013 09:55 NeuroticPsychosis wrote:Of course, technology brings many advantages and benefits to students. With the ubiquitous spread of the internet in the modern day, people have virtually unlimited access to vast resources for disseminating knowledge and promoting learning. Armed with smartphones and tablets, society has never been more interconnected and certainly one of the most powerful tools enabled by technology is this collaborative aspect. However, technology also brings with it nefarious capabilities that threaten to undermine the very social fabric of our sacred institutions. One of these concerns is that technology can contribute to cheating. And the more technology advances the more difficult it becomes for teachers or administrators to discern the cheating. A hypothetical example, suppose that time machines are invented in the near future. One of my professors posts the correct answers to his exam questions the day after we take the exam. Today while in the bathroom I was pondering how easy and convenient it would be to simply use the time machine to travel into the future (1 day after the exam), print out the correct answers, return to present day, input the correct answers into my Google glasses disguised as ordinary glasses, and copy down the correct answers on the day of the exam directly from the inside of my lens. I know what you're thinking. Time travel has many potentially disastrous implications and ramifications. If you travel through time you have the risk of affecting something or someone so that an entire series of chain reactions are set off, impacting other people or the course of history in unexpected ways. But just printing out the answers doesn't really seem dangerous in that regard. ________________________________________________________________________ Yes, the reason I'm writing this is because I just got back my grade and I did bomb the exam. And I know there are probably way more compelling arguments (or ones that aren't "out there") to prove my point but I don't really care.
You can say internet usage is ubiquitious but ubiquitous means found everywhere. It's not the right word. Saying "in the modern day" is verbose.
I don't think nefarious is the right word either. Technology has no evil intentions.
How are our institutions sacred?
The social fabric of schools, not institutions, is how people communicate with one another. The social factor in schools is improved. Your opener should talk about ethics if your concern is cheating.
"Discern the cheating" is awkward.
As you mentioned yourself, your example is too "out there." It doesn't help to prove your point.
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On November 01 2013 09:55 NeuroticPsychosis wrote:Of course, technology brings many advantages and benefits to students. With the ubiquitous spread of the internet in the modern day, people have virtually unlimited access to vast resources for disseminating knowledge and promoting learning. Armed with smartphones and tablets, society has never been more interconnected and certainly one of the most powerful tools enabled by technology is this collaborative aspect. However, technology also brings with it nefarious capabilities that threaten to undermine the very social fabric of our sacred institutions. One of these concerns is that technology can contribute to cheating. And the more technology advances the more difficult it becomes for teachers or administrators to discern the cheating. A hypothetical example, suppose that time machines are invented in the near future. One of my professors posts the correct answers to his exam questions the day after we take the exam. Today while in the bathroom I was pondering how easy and convenient it would be to simply use the time machine to travel into the future (1 day after the exam), print out the correct answers, return to present day, input the correct answers into my Google glasses disguised as ordinary glasses, and copy down the correct answers on the day of the exam directly from the inside of my lens. I know what you're thinking. Time travel has many potentially disastrous implications and ramifications. If you travel through time you have the risk of affecting something or someone so that an entire series of chain reactions are set off, impacting other people or the course of history in unexpected ways. But just printing out the answers doesn't really seem dangerous in that regard. ________________________________________________________________________ Yes, the reason I'm writing this is because I just got back my grade and I did bomb the exam. And I know there are probably way more compelling arguments (or ones that aren't "out there") to prove my point but I don't really care.
In the real world you do all your learning by "cheating". I think I have learned more by cheating than by studying. I am someone who needs an answer before I do the working out, it gives my learning purpose.
Highschool and Primary school education is an absolute joke by today's standards. We still do things on paper, and technology is leveraged in the dumbest ways possible in terms of education. There is so many ways we can use technology to enhance learning, and all we have gotten to is LMS's which just makes life more difficult.
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... This Topic seems pretty stupid to me, you might as well start others with titles like:
"Horses --> Cars/Public Transport are destroying human movement capabilities"
"Medicine is bad for the genepool"
"Restaurants are destroying Cooking"
....
I do a a higher education (accounting) atm and they force us to only use calculators, no Notebooks... It's so far off from what we actually need at our Job, sure it's nice to know "how it's actually done"... But it's basically just useless knowledge.
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On November 01 2013 19:43 obesechicken13 wrote:Luddites, all of you. Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 17:36 KazeHydra wrote:
On the topic of calculators,
I have tried teaching 18 year olds how to do basic math (addition/subtraction/multiplication/division of 2 digit integers) because they've used calculators their entire lives and couldn't do such math by hand. Except they didn't even know to use the calculators when things involved order of operations. It was very sad. This is a failure with the education system. A student didn't understand order of operations but didn't get the help they needed to learn it or were not motivated enough to put in the effort needed to learn it. A teacher could have easily made a no calculators test to make sure the students learned what they needed to. Make it work through software, and the software can spend time to make sure that any adequately motivated student can learn the subject.
Oh, I completely agree. My point - and my fault for not bothering to explain why I wrote that - is that even with the existence of technology, there are still people who can't even learn how to use said technology. Do you blame technology for their inability to use technology? Sure, there are definitely downsides to technology but there're more things going on than just that, and I think it's impossible to discuss "technology's effects on education" alone. The fault lies with a lot of parties, and the education system is pretty bad for allowing such students to graduate from high school with such abysmal mathematical skills. For the record, it may not be the teachers' fault when the higher ups are the ones basically forcing the teachers to pass these students; I have witnessed students getting passing grades for merely doing work, regardless of whether it was right or wrong because "the important thing is that they try" (I could go on a long rant about California's public education system [k-12] but that would be quite the tangent).
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United States24639 Posts
On November 01 2013 19:43 obesechicken13 wrote:Luddites, all of you. Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 17:36 KazeHydra wrote:
On the topic of calculators,
I have tried teaching 18 year olds how to do basic math (addition/subtraction/multiplication/division of 2 digit integers) because they've used calculators their entire lives and couldn't do such math by hand. Except they didn't even know to use the calculators when things involved order of operations. It was very sad. This is a failure with the education system. A student didn't understand order of operations but didn't get the help they needed to learn it or were not motivated enough to put in the effort needed to learn it. A teacher could have easily made a no calculators test to make sure the students learned what they needed to. Except for the fact that their supervisors might have told them they can't (happens), or a kid might have special permission to always have a calculator available, or one of several other weird possible causes. Still a failure on the part of the educational system? Probably yes.
Of course like you said the problem also can lie with the student, or their parents, or somewhere else.
Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 13:37 micronesia wrote:On November 01 2013 13:29 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 13:01 micronesia wrote:On November 01 2013 12:53 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 12:49 micronesia wrote:
I'm curious how you are deciding which of these concerns are and are not hugely problematic in education. I find education is one of those areas where everyone is somehow an expert on it. It's just what I think. I could be wrong and that's why I advocate for research to determine which methods are good and which aren't. I can easily be wrong, and I hope that if I am, people will find out. If the calculator is as devastating as you say, then sure it's a problem. But the internet opens so many doors. Yes it definitely does. Those of us in our late 20s or later (I just barely qualify) remember what it was like before you can learn about almost anything for free whenever you want. There is an encyclopedia sitting next to me (~20 books) that hasn't been touched in like 15 years. Why would I open it aside from nostalgia? On the other hand I've noticed something else. If you told someone in 1980 that soon we would have the ability to carry a computer around with us anywhere that would have pretty much all of human knowledge readily available for recall, they would say that's the most amazing thing ever, and probably not even believe it. Now, we pretty much have that and most people completely take it for granted. Perhaps our education should take into account that we do in fact have all of human knowledge in our pockets at all time. Perhaps it makes sense, instead of focusing on learning stuff, to spend more time developing our research techniques and our ways to acquire knowledge with the tools that we have. I find the research abilities of students seems to be worse than it was before the internet age. Here is an exaggeration of a paper a typical student would hand in when asked to write a research paper explaining why the sky is blue:
Why the Sky is Blue, by Johnny SmithRayleigh scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere causes diffuse sky radiation, which is the reason for the blue color of the sky and the yellow tone of the sun itself. Rayleigh scattering, named after the British physicist Lord Rayleigh,[1] is the elastic scattering of light or other electromagnetic radiation by particles much smaller than the wavelength of the light. Works Citedhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
I'm not even kidding! Instant access to information, of course, does not mean you will understand that information. I think the more readily available information is, the less time a typical kid will be willing to put into analyzing it. We kinda see the same thing with attention span. Children (and even adults) are used to getting everything they want when they want it. Things like cell phones and computers are probably the major causes, although this has been around since before either were ubiquitous. If someone needs to sit in a waiting room for a while and isn't allowed to use their phone or watch tv they go mad... that isn't how people used to be, typically. That's just an example of a lazy kid who copied Wikipedia and didn't understand any of the subject. What would happen if he had to use a book? He now has to go to the library during library hours, wasting 40(for me, more for other students) minutes walking to and from class to the library. Now he has to search for a book on Rayleigh scattering. If he can't find one he's wasted time and has to go to another library. Once he finds a book on the subject he can still copy the subject matter.
In actuality, students are apparently better than they ever were before, despite how much we complain. However, in my experience many of the areas where students have fallen back are areas where technology had unintended consequences.
Luddites all of you. You don't have any reasons for why technology is ruining education. You just fear it. Lol I hope you don't really think this. Also it isn't ruining education. However, when technology isn't utilized properly (which is often) it does have negative consequences. We need to continue to use technology as a teaching and learning aid, but just do a better job of it. We also need to be honest about identifying how dependency on technology affects our brains.
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I'm pretty fucking sure that's not an argument at all OP :')
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On November 01 2013 16:13 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 11:42 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
all you need to teach someone is books and time Books are great but they're limited. They have to be published, bought, shipped, they have to be with you physically. Some are dated, not so relevant... Pdfs, online articles, peer reviewed papers, can be on my computer in the hours after they were published. Surely books can't be dismissed, they're of extreme importance - but to say that they're all we need does leave out a ridiculous amount of knowledge. fetishism of novelty very little you can learn from papers published hours ago that you can't learn from reading plato and arguing about it
You're trolling or very misguided. Philosophy has its utilities but we can't just sit with Plato an expect to all of the conclusions that humanity has come to through WORK. Not everything comes through pure intellectual work, sometimes you need to go outside and do stuff. Maybe if you're only looking at modern philosophy but it's clear that you're very narrow-minded. How can plato enlighten me about the social benefits and the implementation of active transportation measures? That's the subject I'm working on.
Not everything is practical. Not everything is part of your philosophy major. There are practical things in life. There are political events that unfold and are difficult to understand. Plato doesn't help with those.
Plato doesn't help very much with the issue of sexism either 
I think it's peculiar that a person who seems to have a background in philosophy would actively limit himself intellectually to that extent just because of an irrational love for physical media.
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Technology is amazing and is a boon to education.
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Do teachers allow their kids to have cellphones in class? Gets way harder to reinforce when they get to high school and college/university. Everything is so easy to look up these days. I remember wikipedia not being allowed in the early days because it wasn't a valid source. >_< Sure, our brains can only retain so much knowledge but I think it's making people very lazy and we're reinforcing bad habits.
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If these 'sacred institutions' are undermined then all the better.
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On November 01 2013 23:16 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 16:13 sam!zdat wrote:On November 01 2013 11:42 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
all you need to teach someone is books and time Books are great but they're limited. They have to be published, bought, shipped, they have to be with you physically. Some are dated, not so relevant... Pdfs, online articles, peer reviewed papers, can be on my computer in the hours after they were published. Surely books can't be dismissed, they're of extreme importance - but to say that they're all we need does leave out a ridiculous amount of knowledge. fetishism of novelty very little you can learn from papers published hours ago that you can't learn from reading plato and arguing about it You're trolling or very misguided. Philosophy has its utilities but we can't just sit with Plato an expect to all of the conclusions that humanity has come to through WORK. Not everything comes through pure intellectual work, sometimes you need to go outside and do stuff. Maybe if you're only looking at modern philosophy but it's clear that you're very narrow-minded. How can plato enlighten me about the social benefits and the implementation of active transportation measures? That's the subject I'm working on. Not everything is practical. Not everything is part of your philosophy major. There are practical things in life. There are political events that unfold and are difficult to understand. Plato doesn't help with those. Plato doesn't help very much with the issue of sexism either I think it's peculiar that a person who seems to have a background in philosophy would actively limit himself intellectually to that extent just because of an irrational love for physical media.
you don't teach "active transportation measures" in school. that's advanced student stuff. not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about general education in which, yes, I think technology in the classroom is worse than useless, no I'm not trolling. I went to a school which was very proud of its advanced, modern classrooms and my education suffered for it.
i don't know why you think my claim is "we should all just be plato scholastics and nothing else."
edit: basically the problem is that technology encourages speeding up when what we all need to do is slow down
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On November 02 2013 01:53 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 23:16 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 16:13 sam!zdat wrote:On November 01 2013 11:42 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
all you need to teach someone is books and time Books are great but they're limited. They have to be published, bought, shipped, they have to be with you physically. Some are dated, not so relevant... Pdfs, online articles, peer reviewed papers, can be on my computer in the hours after they were published. Surely books can't be dismissed, they're of extreme importance - but to say that they're all we need does leave out a ridiculous amount of knowledge. fetishism of novelty very little you can learn from papers published hours ago that you can't learn from reading plato and arguing about it You're trolling or very misguided. Philosophy has its utilities but we can't just sit with Plato an expect to all of the conclusions that humanity has come to through WORK. Not everything comes through pure intellectual work, sometimes you need to go outside and do stuff. Maybe if you're only looking at modern philosophy but it's clear that you're very narrow-minded. How can plato enlighten me about the social benefits and the implementation of active transportation measures? That's the subject I'm working on. Not everything is practical. Not everything is part of your philosophy major. There are practical things in life. There are political events that unfold and are difficult to understand. Plato doesn't help with those. Plato doesn't help very much with the issue of sexism either I think it's peculiar that a person who seems to have a background in philosophy would actively limit himself intellectually to that extent just because of an irrational love for physical media. you don't teach "active transportation measures" in school. that's advanced student stuff. not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about general education in which, yes, I think technology in the classroom is worse than useless, no I'm not trolling. I went to a school which was very proud of its advanced, modern classrooms and my education suffered for it. i don't know why you think my claim is "we should all just be plato scholastics and nothing else." edit: basically the problem is that technology encourages speeding up when what we all need to do is slow down
Well, that's fair. I'll admit that I got confused when you spoke of having arguments about Plato. Arguments about his writings can't possibly yield much in a general education setting. Maybe in a controlled environment.
Anyway I think technology is mostly useful for higher education, but I can agree that in many cases it's not good for children.
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On November 02 2013 01:53 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2013 23:16 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 16:13 sam!zdat wrote:On November 01 2013 11:42 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
all you need to teach someone is books and time Books are great but they're limited. They have to be published, bought, shipped, they have to be with you physically. Some are dated, not so relevant... Pdfs, online articles, peer reviewed papers, can be on my computer in the hours after they were published. Surely books can't be dismissed, they're of extreme importance - but to say that they're all we need does leave out a ridiculous amount of knowledge. fetishism of novelty very little you can learn from papers published hours ago that you can't learn from reading plato and arguing about it You're trolling or very misguided. Philosophy has its utilities but we can't just sit with Plato an expect to all of the conclusions that humanity has come to through WORK. Not everything comes through pure intellectual work, sometimes you need to go outside and do stuff. Maybe if you're only looking at modern philosophy but it's clear that you're very narrow-minded. How can plato enlighten me about the social benefits and the implementation of active transportation measures? That's the subject I'm working on. Not everything is practical. Not everything is part of your philosophy major. There are practical things in life. There are political events that unfold and are difficult to understand. Plato doesn't help with those. Plato doesn't help very much with the issue of sexism either I think it's peculiar that a person who seems to have a background in philosophy would actively limit himself intellectually to that extent just because of an irrational love for physical media. you don't teach "active transportation measures" in school. that's advanced student stuff. not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about general education in which, yes, I think technology in the classroom is worse than useless, no I'm not trolling. I went to a school which was very proud of its advanced, modern classrooms and my education suffered for it. i don't know why you think my claim is "we should all just be plato scholastics and nothing else." edit: basically the problem is that technology encourages speeding up when what we all need to do is slow down
what do you mean "speeding up"?
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On November 02 2013 02:47 Djzapz wrote:
Arguments about his writings can't possibly yield much in a general education setting. Maybe in a controlled environment.
could not disagree more. I think the one of the most valuable things one could ever do in school would be to have a bunch of 8th graders work through the entire text of The Republic, out loud.
On November 02 2013 02:48 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 01:53 sam!zdat wrote:On November 01 2013 23:16 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 16:13 sam!zdat wrote:On November 01 2013 11:42 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
all you need to teach someone is books and time Books are great but they're limited. They have to be published, bought, shipped, they have to be with you physically. Some are dated, not so relevant... Pdfs, online articles, peer reviewed papers, can be on my computer in the hours after they were published. Surely books can't be dismissed, they're of extreme importance - but to say that they're all we need does leave out a ridiculous amount of knowledge. fetishism of novelty very little you can learn from papers published hours ago that you can't learn from reading plato and arguing about it You're trolling or very misguided. Philosophy has its utilities but we can't just sit with Plato an expect to all of the conclusions that humanity has come to through WORK. Not everything comes through pure intellectual work, sometimes you need to go outside and do stuff. Maybe if you're only looking at modern philosophy but it's clear that you're very narrow-minded. How can plato enlighten me about the social benefits and the implementation of active transportation measures? That's the subject I'm working on. Not everything is practical. Not everything is part of your philosophy major. There are practical things in life. There are political events that unfold and are difficult to understand. Plato doesn't help with those. Plato doesn't help very much with the issue of sexism either I think it's peculiar that a person who seems to have a background in philosophy would actively limit himself intellectually to that extent just because of an irrational love for physical media. you don't teach "active transportation measures" in school. that's advanced student stuff. not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about general education in which, yes, I think technology in the classroom is worse than useless, no I'm not trolling. I went to a school which was very proud of its advanced, modern classrooms and my education suffered for it. i don't know why you think my claim is "we should all just be plato scholastics and nothing else." edit: basically the problem is that technology encourages speeding up when what we all need to do is slow down what do you mean "speeding up"?
going faster
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On November 02 2013 02:58 sam!zdat wrote:
could not disagree more. I think the one of the most valuable things one could ever do in school would be to have a bunch of 8th graders work through the entire text of The Republic, out loud.
I believe that you believe that to be elegant but IMO that'd be completely useless.
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On November 02 2013 02:58 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 02:47 Djzapz wrote:
Arguments about his writings can't possibly yield much in a general education setting. Maybe in a controlled environment.
could not disagree more. I think the one of the most valuable things one could ever do in school would be to have a bunch of 8th graders work through the entire text of The Republic, out loud. Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 02:48 Roe wrote:On November 02 2013 01:53 sam!zdat wrote:On November 01 2013 23:16 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 16:13 sam!zdat wrote:On November 01 2013 11:42 Djzapz wrote:On November 01 2013 11:16 sam!zdat wrote:
all you need to teach someone is books and time Books are great but they're limited. They have to be published, bought, shipped, they have to be with you physically. Some are dated, not so relevant... Pdfs, online articles, peer reviewed papers, can be on my computer in the hours after they were published. Surely books can't be dismissed, they're of extreme importance - but to say that they're all we need does leave out a ridiculous amount of knowledge. fetishism of novelty very little you can learn from papers published hours ago that you can't learn from reading plato and arguing about it You're trolling or very misguided. Philosophy has its utilities but we can't just sit with Plato an expect to all of the conclusions that humanity has come to through WORK. Not everything comes through pure intellectual work, sometimes you need to go outside and do stuff. Maybe if you're only looking at modern philosophy but it's clear that you're very narrow-minded. How can plato enlighten me about the social benefits and the implementation of active transportation measures? That's the subject I'm working on. Not everything is practical. Not everything is part of your philosophy major. There are practical things in life. There are political events that unfold and are difficult to understand. Plato doesn't help with those. Plato doesn't help very much with the issue of sexism either I think it's peculiar that a person who seems to have a background in philosophy would actively limit himself intellectually to that extent just because of an irrational love for physical media. you don't teach "active transportation measures" in school. that's advanced student stuff. not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about general education in which, yes, I think technology in the classroom is worse than useless, no I'm not trolling. I went to a school which was very proud of its advanced, modern classrooms and my education suffered for it. i don't know why you think my claim is "we should all just be plato scholastics and nothing else." edit: basically the problem is that technology encourages speeding up when what we all need to do is slow down what do you mean "speeding up"? going faster
what's going faster
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lol let's cut the bullshit, by "speeding up" he means that technology allows students to "use" information before they've actually grasped it or filed it away in their minds in any meaningful way. In very much the same way that Micronesia earlier described, stuff like wikipedia, while being incredibly useful, provides students with a means of appearing like they understand, when in reality, they are merely copying and pasting (or, egads, paraphrasing).
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On November 02 2013 03:02 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 02:58 sam!zdat wrote:
could not disagree more. I think the one of the most valuable things one could ever do in school would be to have a bunch of 8th graders work through the entire text of The Republic, out loud. I believe that you believe that to be elegant but IMO that'd be completely useless.
what do you mean, "elegant"?
I think the point of education is teaching people to think
I've seen a student's entire way of thinking transformed by an encounter with that text. A student who had been completely failed by mainstream education, which was training her to be a drone
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On November 02 2013 03:23 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 03:02 Djzapz wrote:On November 02 2013 02:58 sam!zdat wrote:
could not disagree more. I think the one of the most valuable things one could ever do in school would be to have a bunch of 8th graders work through the entire text of The Republic, out loud. I believe that you believe that to be elegant but IMO that'd be completely useless. what do you mean, "elegant"? I think the point of education is teaching people to think I've seen a student's entire way of thinking transformed by an encounter with that text. A student who had been completely failed by mainstream education, which was training her to be a drone
I think you're completely insane if you think that the average 13-14 year old kid is able to derive much from The Republic. Some of them, sure. I know that when I was 13-14, it wouldn't have been good for me, and many of my classmates weren't quite at that level either.
That was a nice story though.
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I think we expect too little from our students and so they coast along without ever being challenged. the Republic is not hard, there is no philosophical context needed to follow it because it develops all its ideas in the text itself. Make them try to understand it and they will rise to the challenge. the main problem with our educational system today is that school is simply too easy
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United States24639 Posts
On November 02 2013 04:07 sam!zdat wrote:
I think we expect too little from our students and so they coast along without ever being challenged. the Republic is not hard, there is no philosophical context needed to follow it because it develops all its ideas in the text itself. Make them try to understand it and they will rise to the challenge. the main problem with our educational system today is that school is simply too easy
How have you arrived at that conclusion? Sure, many people on this website might feel this way, based on their own experiences, and those of their friends, but that is not a fair representative sample of a whole country, or group of countries.
Personally, most of the students I was teaching couldn't keep up with the standards... it was essentially too hard for them. Making the course harder for 99% of them would not have helped (and would have probably been very helpful for 1% of them). Of course there were ways to make them stronger students so that when they got to my class they could handle it being harder, but there was no 'main problem' for them that their prior schooling was simply too easy.
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On November 02 2013 04:11 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 04:07 sam!zdat wrote:
I think we expect too little from our students and so they coast along without ever being challenged. the Republic is not hard, there is no philosophical context needed to follow it because it develops all its ideas in the text itself. Make them try to understand it and they will rise to the challenge. the main problem with our educational system today is that school is simply too easy How have you arrived at that conclusion? Sure, many people on this website might feel this way, based on their own experiences, and those of their friends, but that is not a fair representative sample of a whole country, or group of countries. Personally, most of the students I was teaching couldn't keep up with the standards... it was essentially too hard for them. Making the course harder for 99% of them would not have helped (and would have probably been very helpful for 1% of them). Of course there were ways to make them stronger students so that when they got to my class they could handle it being harder, but there was no 'main problem' for them that their prior schooling was simply too easy.
I think this has less to do with overt difficulty and more to do with the troublesome relationship between standards based education and actual learning.
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United States24639 Posts
On November 02 2013 04:12 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 04:11 micronesia wrote:On November 02 2013 04:07 sam!zdat wrote:
I think we expect too little from our students and so they coast along without ever being challenged. the Republic is not hard, there is no philosophical context needed to follow it because it develops all its ideas in the text itself. Make them try to understand it and they will rise to the challenge. the main problem with our educational system today is that school is simply too easy How have you arrived at that conclusion? Sure, many people on this website might feel this way, based on their own experiences, and those of their friends, but that is not a fair representative sample of a whole country, or group of countries. Personally, most of the students I was teaching couldn't keep up with the standards... it was essentially too hard for them. Making the course harder for 99% of them would not have helped (and would have probably been very helpful for 1% of them). Of course there were ways to make them stronger students so that when they got to my class they could handle it being harder, but there was no 'main problem' for them that their prior schooling was simply too easy. I think this has less to do with overt difficulty and more to do with the troublesome relationship between standards based education and actual learning.
Well yea, that opens up a whole new can of worms. I should clarify that in my example, I was using the word 'standard' very generally and not to refer to any particular or imposed "standards." I was just referring to the level of expectation/difficulty of the course.
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i think there's a vicious cycle of the easiness and superficiality of education leading to student apathy and boredom leading to further easiness and superficiality.
standardized assessments further vitiates the quality of education (this leads us back to Lyotard)
I think school should be very hard, but also that it should be okay to fail
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On November 02 2013 04:44 sam!zdat wrote:
i think there's a vicious cycle of the easiness and superficiality of education leading to student apathy and boredom leading to further easiness and superficiality.
standardized assessments further vitiates the quality of education (this leads us back to Lyotard)
I think school should be very hard, but also that it should be okay to fail
It's not quite that simple. If you make school really hard, the kids who can deal with it are advantaged, the kids who can't do it don't learn anything instead of learning something like they would if it were easier.
From there, you have a few solutions for the kids who have failed. Either you make them take it all over again, but then you're doing a damn fine job ensuring that they're wasting their time. You can also put them through an easier curriculum, but they're not complete morons, and they'll understand that they're in stupid school and they got demoted to stupid. This just makes an already-existing vicious circle even worse. Kids who have trouble stop giving a fuck because the school system is ill adapted to them, and eventually they drop out.
The kids who don't perform as well should not be failed. The kids who show more potential in school should be put in AP classes and should be pushed toward excellence. Making more kids fail classes is ridiculous because the point of school at a young age is not failing or passing. It's not about grades, it's not about advantaging the smarter kids, it's about bringing out the kids potential. Even the ones who don't perform so well in school, they should be taught classes which are on their level so that they can at least get something out of it.
That's not to say they should never fail. Sometimes, pushing a kid through school before he's ready for it is the worst thing we can do. But imposing high standards on kids who can't achieve those standards demoralizes them and in the end they're less ready for life than they would have been if they had just been taught a bit more slowly.
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Im sure a lot of students would be very happy with failing if there were no consequences.
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On November 02 2013 05:06 Djzapz wrote:
The kids who show more potential in school should be put in AP classes and should be pushed toward excellence.
the AP program should be abolished
On November 02 2013 05:06 Djzapz wrote:
they should be taught classes which are on their level so that they can at least get something out of it.
On November 02 2013 05:06 Djzapz wrote:
they'll understand that they're in stupid school and they got demoted to stupid. .
what's the difference
On November 02 2013 05:06 Djzapz wrote:
Kids who have trouble stop giving a fuck because the school system is ill adapted to them, and eventually they drop out.
this is already the state of affairs
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United States24639 Posts
On November 02 2013 05:17 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 05:06 Djzapz wrote:
The kids who show more potential in school should be put in AP classes and should be pushed toward excellence. the AP program should be abolished Can you explain your reasoning for this, and what it should be replaced with, if anything?
I do get the fact that having a 'regular' and an 'advanced' class is essentially no different than having a 'regular' and a 'slow' class.
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my objection is the test, and also the farcical notion that these credits are equivalent to college-level work
I liked my honors classes until they became AP classes. then I stopped liking them because they were a standardized curriculum based around a standardized test and it was just education-factory stuff.
there can be advanced classes, but they should be simply that: advanced classes. Not AP
On November 02 2013 05:23 micronesia wrote:
I do get the fact that having a 'regular' and an 'advanced' class is essentially no different than having a 'regular' and a 'slow' class.
it's just more american everyone-gets-a-trophy euphemism. kids in "regular" classes know they are in "stupid" classes, just like anyone who buys a "medium" drink when the choices are "medium" "large" and "huge" knows that they are buying a "small" drink.
adults in the educational system like to think that kids don't know about the euphemistic bullshit that pervades the entire system, but that's just a fantasy. kids aren't stupid
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On November 02 2013 05:57 sam!zdat wrote:
my objection is the test, and also the farcical notion that these credits are equivalent to college-level work
I liked my honors classes until they became AP classes. then I stopped liking them because they were a standardized curriculum based around a standardized test and it was just education-factory stuff.
there can be advanced classes, but they should be simply that: advanced classes. Not AP
I don't care what they're called. Kids who perform better should take advanced classes and kids who have trouble should have classes that are better adapted to them. School should not be "hard" for kids who can't handle that.
it's just more american everyone-gets-a-trophy euphemism. kids in "regular" classes know they are in "stupid" classes, just like anyone who buys a "medium" drink when the choices are "medium" "large" and "huge" knows that they are buying a "small" drink.
You only think like that because you're one of those people who spend too much time talking about grades and that shit. Trophies don't matter. You want kids to learn, so try to adjust their education for them, that's all. Don't make them jump through hoops just to see which ones can do it and which ones will fall face-first. There's nothing pedagogical about making school too hard for some people.
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I spend too much time talking about grades?? I went to a college where they didn't tell you your grades. it was awesome (I'm consistently amused by hearing what you think I believe, dj's construction of sam is such a hilarious and strange person)
I think school should be slightly too hard for everyone involved. just like when you are lifting weights, you should lift weights that are slightly too heavy for you. otherwise you will never get better. there should be a little nagging feeling of inadequacy that accompanies everything you do
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This nagging feeling of inadequacy should however be slight. Look at all the people that just "can't do Math" because they feel completely and utterly inadequate and therefore never even bother to learn it.
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On November 02 2013 06:08 sam!zdat wrote:I spend too much time talking about grades?? I went to a college where they didn't tell you your grades. it was awesome (I'm consistently amused by hearing what you think I believe, dj's construction of sam is such a hilarious and strange person) I think school should be slightly too hard for everyone involved. just like when you are lifting weights, you should lift weights that are slightly too heavy for you. otherwise you will never get better. there should be a little nagging feeling of inadequacy that accompanies everything you do
Fine. But I agree with what Recognizable says. If it's too hard, people will give up. If it's harder than it is now, without being better adapted to kids, then we've got a new problem on our hands and it's not better.
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if you want to make people give up this notion that they "can't do math" (which is just a thing that they believe because it's fashionable, not because they actually can't do math) what you should do is give them more individual attention and instruction.
which brings us back to our original topic. the truth is, if you want to improve education, you don't need technology, you need a lower student/teacher ratio. that's the single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of education
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On November 02 2013 06:45 sam!zdat wrote:
if you want to make people give up this notion that they "can't do math" (which is just a thing that they believe because it's fashionable, not because they actually can't do math) what you should do is give them more individual attention and instruction.
which brings us back to our original topic. the truth is, if you want to improve education, you don't need technology, you need a lower student/teacher ratio. that's the single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of education
...and Learning Technology does exactly the opposite!
I know, I run Moodles.
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On November 02 2013 06:45 sam!zdat wrote:
if you want to make people give up this notion that they "can't do math" (which is just a thing that they believe because it's fashionable, not because they actually can't do math) what you should do is give them more individual attention and instruction.
which brings us back to our original topic. the truth is, if you want to improve education, you don't need technology, you need a lower student/teacher ratio. that's the single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of education
Yes, but good teachers are already hard to come by. In the west, we give those jobs to anybody. Teachers for kids, how hard can it really be, right?
I think it's in Finland or something, where teachers are properly remunerated and respected as much as doctors. They get shit done. The kids do better than they do here.
On November 02 2013 06:52 Deleuze wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 06:45 sam!zdat wrote:
if you want to make people give up this notion that they "can't do math" (which is just a thing that they believe because it's fashionable, not because they actually can't do math) what you should do is give them more individual attention and instruction.
which brings us back to our original topic. the truth is, if you want to improve education, you don't need technology, you need a lower student/teacher ratio. that's the single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of education ...and Learning Technology does exactly the opposite! I know, I run Moodles.
Moodle? Or Moodles?
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On November 02 2013 06:55 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 06:45 sam!zdat wrote:
if you want to make people give up this notion that they "can't do math" (which is just a thing that they believe because it's fashionable, not because they actually can't do math) what you should do is give them more individual attention and instruction.
which brings us back to our original topic. the truth is, if you want to improve education, you don't need technology, you need a lower student/teacher ratio. that's the single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of education Yes, but good teachers are already hard to come by. In the west, we give those jobs to anybody. Teachers for kids, how hard can it really be, right? I think it's in Finland or something, where teachers are properly remunerated and respected as much as doctors. They get shit done. The kids do better than they do here. Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 06:52 Deleuze wrote:On November 02 2013 06:45 sam!zdat wrote:
if you want to make people give up this notion that they "can't do math" (which is just a thing that they believe because it's fashionable, not because they actually can't do math) what you should do is give them more individual attention and instruction.
which brings us back to our original topic. the truth is, if you want to improve education, you don't need technology, you need a lower student/teacher ratio. that's the single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of education ...and Learning Technology does exactly the opposite! I know, I run Moodles. Moodle? Or Moodles?
Moodles is a colloquial plural of courses run on the VLE Moodle.
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On November 02 2013 06:45 sam!zdat wrote:
if you want to make people give up this notion that they "can't do math" (which is just a thing that they believe because it's fashionable, not because they actually can't do math) what you should do is give them more individual attention and instruction.
which brings us back to our original topic. the truth is, if you want to improve education, you don't need technology, you need a lower student/teacher ratio. that's the single most important thing you can do to improve the quality of education
I am completely with you. Stop spending money on new computers, fancy buildings, and diversity training for teachers and just hire more people.
On an unrelated note, I wish that it were more common for people to enter college at 16-17 full time. I know many people, including myself, that have effectively been taking fully college-level classes for the past two years. Honestly I feel like the only reason that this doesn't already happen is that there are not enough people doing it to begin with. If it got started through some initiative it could become more common and get kids out of the local system faster, giving more funds to the students who may not do as well academically. Or maybe we should have a developed system of residential state/national level magnet schools.
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I rather think students should start college around 20. Give them a couple of years in between to mature and think about what they are interested in. I would implement a mandatory civil service requirement in this period, but of course that's just because I'm a communist
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On November 02 2013 07:53 sam!zdat wrote:
I rather think students should start college around 20. Give them a couple of years in between to mature and think about what they are interested in. I would implement a mandatory civil service requirement in this period, but of course that's just because I'm a communist
I would implement .5-2 year civil service as well (delayable, though), but that doesn't change the fact that I cannot learn at an adequate pace at my high school. As it stands the expanded curriculum that AP offers does not go far enough to meet the needs of everyone, and still most HS AP classes are very slow since most of them would be taught in one semester at a college, with much less class time. Lengthening HS without big changes to the most advanced classes would simply make high school more stifling to people in a situation similar to mine.
For example, right now I would prefer to take organic chemistry, multivariable calculus, and linear algebra in addition to some classes that I am already taking. However, since AP is the gold standard of HS curriculum at most schools, including mine, I simply do not have those options available to me. If you extend the age at which people start college to 20, you better be adding all sorts of advanced programs and courses, and they should be available at a faster pace than the current advanced courses.
If people like me had the option to enroll in a university early (I know of one college where that is common, but it's not a school that interests me at all) without being socially disadvantaged I still think education would be better for all parties. I think one of the reasons that this doesn't happen is because school administrations want to hold on to their best students to take credit for their abilities.
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Revert to the system of the Second German Empire: tripartite educational system with the Gymnasium admitting no more than 5% of the school-aged cohort. In addition to French, Latin, Greek and the classical canon, we can probably fit the educational content of a typical undergraduate education in there. In the bureaucratic scheme of job qualifications, a German Gymnasium diploma in 1900 was the equivalent of something between a Master's and PhD today, but let us not push our luck.
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I didn't say lengthen high school. I think you should take at least one gap year. You can study on your own during this year if you like. You don't need to be in school to learn things, you can supplement this with self-study (and this would be a valuable thing, judging from my own experience).
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On November 02 2013 08:21 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Revert to the system of the Second German Empire: tripartite educational system with the Gymnasium admitting no more than 5% of the school-aged cohort. In addition to French, Latin, Greek and the classical canon, we can probably fit the educational content of a typical undergraduate education in there. In the bureaucratic scheme of job qualifications, a German Gymnasium diploma in 1900 was the equivalent of something between a Master's and PhD today, but let us not push our luck.
We have created a culture where you can explain away poor performance on "not testing well" and where you can muddle any sort of selective process by making it "holistic." Every parent would try to get their children into that program and there would be a lot of controversy. Hell, there's already controversy about the mere existence of magnet schools as "elitist."
IDK about Canada, but it would be impossible to have a (I assume) meritocratic system like this in the USA without accusations of preferences to certain groups. Germany had a pretty homogeneous population back then, and people cared less about being PC. The USA is not in that situation.
Such a system would be great but I think the public would not accept it.
On November 02 2013 08:31 sam!zdat wrote:
I didn't say lengthen high school. I think you should take at least one gap year. You can study on your own during this year if you like. You don't need to be in school to learn things, you can supplement this with self-study (and this would be a valuable thing, judging from my own experience).
Gap years are a cool idea but I don't know if they are for everyone. I feel like most people would probably just stay at home and work some menial job and party. There's nothing wrong with holding a menial job, but at the same time if you want to get a tertiary education your time would be better spent in school, in my opinion.
I know the suggestion is probably to travel but that is not feasible for everyone. And while studying on your own is fine (I am doing it with two of the three courses I mentioned) it's not something that many people have the work ethic and personality to accomplish. I like the way things currently are regarding gap years, where they are allowed but not compulsory.
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On November 02 2013 08:31 sam!zdat wrote:
I didn't say lengthen high school. I think you should take at least one gap year. You can study on your own during this year if you like. You don't need to be in school to learn things, you can supplement this with self-study (and this would be a valuable thing, judging from my own experience).
taking a gap year is actually becoming more common! there's no reason to flat out force it since people are already doing it anyway
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On November 02 2013 08:38 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 08:31 sam!zdat wrote:
I didn't say lengthen high school. I think you should take at least one gap year. You can study on your own during this year if you like. You don't need to be in school to learn things, you can supplement this with self-study (and this would be a valuable thing, judging from my own experience). taking a gap year is actually becoming more common! there's no reason to flat out force it since people are already doing it anyway
right but I would implement a civil service program which serves a number of useful social purposes
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On November 02 2013 08:36 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 08:21 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Revert to the system of the Second German Empire: tripartite educational system with the Gymnasium admitting no more than 5% of the school-aged cohort. In addition to French, Latin, Greek and the classical canon, we can probably fit the educational content of a typical undergraduate education in there. In the bureaucratic scheme of job qualifications, a German Gymnasium diploma in 1900 was the equivalent of something between a Master's and PhD today, but let us not push our luck. We have created a culture where you can explain away poor performance on "not testing well" and where you can muddle any sort of selective process by making it "holistic." Every parent would try to get their children into that program and there would be a lot of controversy. Hell, there's already controversy about the mere existence of magnet schools as "elitist." IDK about Canada, but it would be impossible to have a (I assume) meritocratic system like this in the USA without accusations of preferences to certain groups. Germany had a pretty homogeneous population back then, and people cared less about being PC. The USA is not in that situation. Such a system would be great but I think the public would not accept it.
In Ontario there is still a de-facto tripartite division of secondary education between academic, applied, and workplace which somewhat corresponds to the modern German system. However, the rate of academic inflation is far more serious in Canada than in Germany. In Germany approximately one-third of the population goes into the Gymnasia, and consequently receives qualifications for higher education. Germany also remains one of the few countries in the Western World where it is still possible to possess a respectable professional career without any academic qualifications, although that is being gradually inflated out of fashion as well. It is merely happening at a much slower rate than elsewhere.
Edit: And because I never tire of citing Tocqueville:
It is evident that in democratic communities the interest of individuals, as well as the security of the commonwealth, demands that the education of the greater number should be scientific, commercial, and industrial, rather than literary. Greek and Latin should not be taught in all schools; but it is important that those who by their natural disposition or their fortune are destined to cultivate letters or prepared to relish them, should find schools where a complete knowledge of ancient literature may be acquired, and where the true scholar may be formed. A few excellent universities would do more towards the attainment of this object than a vast number of bad grammar schools, where superfluous matters, badly learned, stand in the way of sound instruction in necessary studies.
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On November 02 2013 08:44 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 08:38 Roe wrote:On November 02 2013 08:31 sam!zdat wrote:
I didn't say lengthen high school. I think you should take at least one gap year. You can study on your own during this year if you like. You don't need to be in school to learn things, you can supplement this with self-study (and this would be a valuable thing, judging from my own experience). taking a gap year is actually becoming more common! there's no reason to flat out force it since people are already doing it anyway right but I would implement a civil service program which serves a number of useful social purposes
that's the opposite of a gap year
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On November 02 2013 09:32 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 08:44 sam!zdat wrote:On November 02 2013 08:38 Roe wrote:On November 02 2013 08:31 sam!zdat wrote:
I didn't say lengthen high school. I think you should take at least one gap year. You can study on your own during this year if you like. You don't need to be in school to learn things, you can supplement this with self-study (and this would be a valuable thing, judging from my own experience). taking a gap year is actually becoming more common! there's no reason to flat out force it since people are already doing it anyway right but I would implement a civil service program which serves a number of useful social purposes that's the opposite of a gap year
it could be part time, and they give you a stipend
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On November 02 2013 10:11 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2013 09:32 Roe wrote:On November 02 2013 08:44 sam!zdat wrote:On November 02 2013 08:38 Roe wrote:On November 02 2013 08:31 sam!zdat wrote:
I didn't say lengthen high school. I think you should take at least one gap year. You can study on your own during this year if you like. You don't need to be in school to learn things, you can supplement this with self-study (and this would be a valuable thing, judging from my own experience). taking a gap year is actually becoming more common! there's no reason to flat out force it since people are already doing it anyway right but I would implement a civil service program which serves a number of useful social purposes that's the opposite of a gap year it could be part time, and they give you a stipend
Or it could be mandatory conscription like we have here!
Seeing 18yos with no clue what they're doing in college is a guilty pleasure.
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EPT
