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[rcjordan]

"People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology."

"My friend’s 3-year-old, for example, has become so accustomed to her father’s multitouch iPhone screen that she approaches laptops by swiping her fingers across the screen, expecting a reaction."

Worth a read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/weekinreview/10stone.html

[perkiset]

Good read RC. After having grown up in a world with computers, unlike my parents, it would be oddly hypocritical to think that this is a bad thing.

It is simply amazing how fast it is moving now.

[nutballs]

Didn't read but the was the subject of an article a few years ago. They were estimating when college kids would be obsolete in the tech they are educated on, before they graduate. Same for physics and chem and others. It sound like we are there. That's messed up. I wownder how schools will adapt, if ever.

[kurdt]

Didn't read but the was the subject of an article a few years ago. They were estimating when college kids would be obsolete in the tech they are educated on, before they graduate. Same for physics and chem and others. It sound like we are there. That's messed up. I wownder how schools will adapt, if ever.

Yeah, I think I have seen that too. Basically what's going to happen is that once we get claytronics & 3D displays as everyday tool, it will stop there for a while. Or that's my wild guess. Why? Because you really can't get closer than that to a real-life. Unless they can actually make direct uploading to brain work. I think that will have such barrier of entry that it will take a long time before everybody has "input port". When claytronics hit the market, it will be game over for so many manufacturers that you can't even believe it. Schools will buy claytronics & CAD models and then they will use it to demonstrate everything that possible. 3D displays will be the LCD/CRT of the moment so...

Also if it's up to me, I'll personally transform schooling system to use more efficient system when it comes to learning important stuff that you just have to know. For the past 100 years there's been HUGE leaps in the knowledge that shows us how we learn the best. Yet I haven't heard of ANY school that actually uses these. They still use the same models that schools originally started with: classes, teacher and test. This model works when it comes to really complicated subjects like what most universities teach but it's completely unnecessary for the lower level education.

[perkiset]

...classes, teacher and test. This model works when it comes to really complicated subjects like what most universities teach but it's completely unnecessary for the lower level education.

Coming from a family of teachers, and in fact my mother owns a private firm for tutoring people with various learning challenges (dyslexics, discalculics, ADHD problems etc for English and Math) I'm interested in what you think would be better. My personal notion is that since, biologically, we are an interpersonal species with a high level of socialization, that the contemporary notions of robotic pedagogy and computer instructed learning will simply fail to produce anything other than rote memories - and deprive our future generations of real critical thinkers and creative types. I agree that the current model is flawed, but not perhaps the way you see it - I think the investment needs to be more towards highly skilled teachers, lower teacher-to-student ratios and emphasis on critical thinking rather than arithmetic.

[kurdt]

Coming from a family of teachers, and in fact my mother owns a private firm for tutoring people with various learning challenges (dyslexics, discalculics, ADHD problems etc for English and Math) I'm interested in what you think would be better. My personal notion is that since, biologically, we are an interpersonal species with a high level of socialization, that the contemporary notions of robotic pedagogy and computer instructed learning will simply fail to produce anything other than rote memories - and deprive our future generations of real critical thinkers and creative types. I agree that the current model is flawed, but not perhaps the way you see it - I think the investment needs to be more towards highly skilled teachers, lower teacher-to-student ratios and emphasis on critical thinking rather than arithmetic.

The problem is that when it comes to highly factual information, there's no need for teachers because it can be tought be using computers and learning program that uses intervals to enforce learned facts so that they sink into long-term memory. If you are interested, check out www.smart.fm. Teachers should be only used with the topic is something like concept that requires human intelligence to illustrate it. And I agree 100% that there should be investments to get more teachers to get smaller group sizes per teacher.

Also western school system should learn from eastern system where they use tangible examples on everything. That's why eastern kids are always performing better on tests. Western school system relies way too much on the whiteboard and talking. That's the reason why I never performed well in school because that's not how I learn so the problem is that current teaching style works only on part of the population.

My hunch is that if your mom is specialized with "hard-learners", she knows all this stuff because it is a common knowledge and she can tell you exactly what's wrong with current schooling system. The problem is that changing schooling would require effort from teachers and it would result more intelligent people. Now that doesn't fly very well with high power people who bank on people being ignorant.

[perkiset]

Ah, I see where you are going.

I assert that factual learning (except in higher learning cases like becoming a doctor, or a lawyer or the like where there are a lot of details that are utterly required to fulfill the task at hand) is utterly unnecessary. Well, almost utterly unnecessary.

@ Tangible examples: actually, my father did his doctoral thesis on educational styles and why we are losing children. He had the benefit (he was an administrator at a community college at the time) to demonstrate that: First, children learn differently and that affects their success in school - this is based on their educational style, not personality or race (although there are some intriguing tidbits there I'll articulate in a moment) - but to put it into two VERY coarse groupings, concrete experiential learners and abstract logical learners. Abstrat logical learners are just fine sitting in the class, looking at a chalkboard and taking notes. Concrete experientials need to be engaged in a more, well, concrete way - to be involved in the actual maths of a problem rather than just hearing about it. A hugely simplified example: I cannot really learn a new language by reading a book on it ... I download it, start coding and failing in it and quickly pick up the rhythm of it, then after I have a sense of context, can go back and absorb volumes of data extremely rapidly.

The problem that he outlined was that as we move higher and higher in education the teaching style becomes more and more logical abstract ... leaving potentially brilliant students behind because they cannot get their arms around the topics.

This became even more intriguing when he demonstrated that certain races have a tendency to be more of one or the other. For example, Asians have more of a tendency to be logical abstracts where Latinos/as as well as Africans tend to be more concrete experiential. Europeans, interesting, tend to be rather balanced.

So here's the deal: he tracked 10,000 students through high school and into their college life. He showed with a laser-like precision that children with a concrete experiental learning style excelled right through high school (where concrete experiential learning is quite common) ... but as soon as they got to college the success trajectories changed dramatically based on discipline studied and teaching style. Since racially there is a predominant learning style, it could easily be perceived that one race is "smarter" than another... when in fact it is the problem of teachers not attending the learning styles of the students that is actually the failing.

So the notion is that if you start with a tangible example, as you point out, then you engage ALL children in the learning process and the net-net is a whole body of children that walk away successful, rather than just some. And yes, my parents and inlaws and wife and and and all recognize this quite fully.

I have no problem with computers being used as a tool in the learning environment - it's the reliance upon them, and the subsequent notion that we can fire teachers because we can outsource teaching to machines that is fatally flawed.

However, to your last point that this would keep people ignorant, I think you are unfortunately spot on. It is a lot easier to control and profit off stupid people than it is with smarties. Ah, unrestrained predatory capitalism combined with lobbyists with obscene amounts of money at their disposal. How I despise thee.

[perkiset]

Oh, so in reading back I forgot to point out why factual learning is unnecessary: the Internet.

Just like spelling, you really don't need to remember as much anymore. I used to be that I remembered every single damn function of languages I learned ... now I seem to remember very little, except HOW to get the answers. To my way of thinking, this is a much more important skill anymore: learn how to get an answer, learn how to synthesize new results ... learn how to NOT be stuck by what you're told.

Critical thinking. It's not just for breakfast anymore. Spread the word.
Thank you, tell your friends, I'll be here all week.

[kurdt]

Well luckily in the future it will be much harder to constrain the information life.

[rcjordan]

closely related:

"what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Like perk said, this isn't necessarily a bad (or good) thing  ...just a change in the information-distribution evolution process.

Going back to the original topic; it is odd to see siblings only 4 years apart in age 'developing' so differently re the technology-du-jour.  It's fairly obvious at family gatherings now; a 20 yr old emailing and phoning while his 16 yr old sister furiously texts 200+ messages a day and never actually uses the phone for calling.