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The future of Education lay with highly sophisticated technology.
Though adult education in the form of Universities may disappear in the near future, the area of more intense focus needs to be shifted toward improving early childhood education. I think this will be done with better integration of technologies such as voice recognition, kinects interactivity. Does anyone out there have any great ideas for advancing the field of high quality technology implementation? Please share no matter how far fetched the idea sounds to you.
Topics:
educate
Elisabeth Buffard 500+
I've been teaching for 25 years now, from 10 year olds to adults and peers, and I can see how elearning despite all the technology involved only seduces a minority as it implies giving up passivity and "consumerism". The worst impact I've seen is among teachers, who find it so hard working full time, plus some overtime, having to find some minutes and hours on a regular basis for their own life-long training. I should stress I am NOT TEACHING SCIENCE, but foreign languages, and right now it's far from exact when digitized. It makes it even less attractive. So I am convince that technology has to be sort of transparent, invisible. Everything I have seen so far to teach languages is... geting in touch online with other humans, otherwise it's a revamped version of the 1940's methods, at best. What I would like to see is virtual building blocks for sentences that you could used as lego bricks through kinect type of interactivity. Vocal chat bots that get nonsensical when your accent is not correct and your syntax approximative. So far, the biggest benefits of technology evolutions in teaching have been beneficial mostly to science and elementary learning, because it still is too binary, the alternative to right is wrong, and the quite/not quite alternative is hardly seen.
Naveen Kumar Yadav
Altaf Zaki
Gail . 50+
I am not saying that there should be no teachers, doctors, etc. My comment referred to the studies that show that rote-thinking skills do cause people to be motivated by $$$, but as soon as one adds the most minimal amount of cognitive thinking skills, money FAILS big time as a motivator. Cognitive thinking skills are not only not-taught, but are formally rejected.
Studies show that education destroys the cognitive thinking skills that are required for the creativity that causes doctors to find new cures and teachers to find new methods of educating. Studies were also done with respect to cognitive thinking skills and motivation. It turns out that $$$ is counter-productive when it comes to cognitive thinking. Freedom of thought has brought us GNU software and technology that has changed our lives. Most fortune 500 companies use Apache, a GNU piece of software. Look at Mozilla - all GNY. Open office. SKYPE, etc. These are people who LOVE what they do and aspire to do it well. They do better work when not being paid than they do when being paid.
Another study done in a remote village in India showed that people are LESS successful at cognitive thinking when offered $$$ as a reward. So I'm not saying "don't pay teachers". I'm saying that there is another economic model that inspires all the good to which education now blocks avenues or entrance. If you are ONLY because of your pay check, then you are part of the problem.
But if you aspire to (and follow through on) invent new ways to help children find the joy of learning - that is quite different. That's not a blue-collar skill. That requires cognitive thinking, and THAT lies at the heart of passion, which is essential for quality .
Varlan Allan 10+
But you hit exactly what I'm talking about. Just like people doing it for passion there are some who have to consider the economic responsibilities. That is how the concept of pay so well that the person doesn't need to think of money comes in. My only issue is that I don't have the skills to put it all together. I have some of them almost all except for programming knowledge which I've tried many times but find I am just horrible at it.
Now if I could join forces with someone who can do that then I might be able to get somewhere, but look around, how many teachers do you know can do programming? There are so few that it is laughable.
If there are any out there with an interest I'm more than happy to share some of my ideas. I'm hoping to do a masters in education after a couple years of international school stuff and hopefully can find funding. Again I'm by no means sitting idle, I've created an Entirely new system for reading English over the last 3 years and this has led me to some of my statements now.
Gail . 50+
After a summer of successive self-governments established by a group of 8-10 year olds, we went through Democracy, socialism, communism, benign monarchy, dictatorship, and finally what we called the Donkey Kong government. The curious thing was that the only workable government was the Donkey Kong government, that stopped ALL arguments for 6 weeks, and inspired the kids so much that mothers were coming to me asking what "ME" time was and what I had done to help their children. We used the internal rules that allow one to win at Donkey Kong.
My friends young son had problems with adding, so I gave him a program that taught basic multiplication. I explained the rules and left him to his own devices. Soon he was asking how to learn double number multiplication. He's skipped right over adding - assimilating the concept automatically. Later I used the games where one typed instructions into the computer to tell someone what to do. Suddenly he wanted to read & he learned to type. Why did I succeed where his teacher failed? I respected him and reached up to his potential and I encouraged him to look within himself - to his own thoughts, emotions, and feelings - and to honor them.
I hated school. It was enforced degradation. School was pure punishment.
Programs do not talk down to me (call me by my first name while expecting me to call them Mr/Mrs XXX). Programs do not pick favorites. Programs aren't mean. Programs don't ask me to conform.
I learned how to write thanks to Grammatik. I could trust it where I was never able to trust a teacher who obviously didn't respect me and who criticized me for asking questions I thought relevent
Altaf Zaki
Varlan Allan 10+
Look at the iPhone as the example, phones were nothing but phones before the iPhone, now look what phones can do! This is in the span of 5 years.
Imagine where education could be if a similar tech revolution happened?
Altaf Zaki
Once the thinkers are focused to accept and study the capabilities of "younger minds" then they will be agreed to create new ideas how human minds can become capable to "think big" at early age. I'm sorry, if I'm not been so relevant. Thanks for sharing.
Varlan Allan 10+
Feyisayo Anjorin 50+
One impotant aspect of education is one-on-one interaction of scholars. Then the sense of community or society among learners.
No technology can experience what it feels to be human. And that is vital to communication.
Varlan Allan 10+
Gail . 50+
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Varlan Allan 10+
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Varlan Allan 10+
Gail . 50+
Our corrupt economic model is not only responsible for war, crime & violence, poverty, inequality and the like, but it is the cause of the dis-education that passes for education today. You can't take one of the parts of a valid education, pretend that it's irrelevant, and then offer your conclusions as proof.
What technology would help us ALL learn that?
Varlan Allan 10+
I agree that current economic model is terrible, i'm nearly a communist at heart. But sadly human being all value things differently and so such Utopian ideas do not work. So people need a motivator, but people also need to put food on the table and to excel need time to develop things, without money people will not have the time to develop such ideas and implement such advances. But there is good news ahead for people such as you Gail. I think that eventually technology will get to a level where we don't need to think so much about it. Machines/computers will do the majority of our work and you will be able to write more things about how things were better before money allowed technology to make our life so simple. The world isn't perfect, there will always be "good guys" and "bad guys".
Barry Palmer 50+
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Varlan Allan 10+
But this may be that he sees things the way I see them. And he states here the exact idea that I am touching on.
Fritzie you are right there is a large berth of information and studies that point to the importance of social interaction being at the heart of child development. But I do see a very big void that technology can help fill in the school system. It is the social part of the brain that processes most information for children 6 months to 5 years of age but that wanes as it gets older. But I see when a teacher at times has to focus on individuals at times it leaves voids with other children where I believe technology can be a big help if smartly designed.
Barry Palmer 50+
You and I think much alike with regards to education.
I think the video game producers are missing a huge market, the education market. Millions of young children are enthralled by TV shows that have no interaction, teach little, and whose main purpose is to sell junk. Games that are fun and educational will likely replace our top down one-size-fits-all school system.
Another applicable technology will be face recognition. One day soon a game console will greet every new player by name, and will be able to make a pretty good guess at the person's mood.