5 ms·

Can Radio Really Educate?

55 points by tintinnabula 5y ago

yboris 5y ago
Very related: Education Automation: Freeing the scholar to return to his studies by R. Buckminster Fuller We had the technology even in the 1950s to do mass education that would arguably be better than status quo in many subjects. https://www.amazon.com/Education-Automation-Freeing-scholar-studies/dp/0809301377 https://www.amazon.com/Education-Automation-Freeing-scholar-...
anthk 5y ago
Back in early 00's I listened to a Spanish radio programme with biographies and historical battles and facts. It was full of sound fxs, truly amazing, 1000x times better than reading a book. In the 60's people could get the GEP equivalent for Spain (Actually in The Canaries) thanks to a radio broadcast. EDIT: Holy sh|t, it's still alive!! (Spanish): http://www3.radioecca.org/ http://www3.radioecca.org/
ghaff 5y ago
And we keep reinventing mostly broadcast forms of instruction--which are fine as far as they go and are very useful for many purposes. But, especially for classroom-type lectures, it's largely incrementally polishing up the part of education (big lectures) that mostly works and for which we've had the tools to listen/watch remotely for decades.
Turing_Machine 5y ago
Trivia: the model wearing the "radio hat" is Academy and Emmy Award winning actress Hope Lange, at the age of 15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Lange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Lange
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Trivum: the singular of "trivia" is "trivium". And "trivia" is appropriate to an article on education, as it is from the Trivium, which is to say, the first of two parts of medaeval scholastic education: the trivium and the quadrivum, together comprising the seven liberal arts. The trivium is grammar, logic, and rhetoric. You might think of these as input, processing, and output. The quadrivium is arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Or quantity, quantity in space, quantity in time, and quantity in space and time. And now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast ... https://www.etymonline.com/word/trivia https://www.etymonline.com/word/trivia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
KineticLensman 5y ago
Yes. In 1978 I learnt from the radio that the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is '42'
- Johnythree 5y ago
  Can very much remember listening to HGTTG in 1978. Was via 2JJ on the AM broadcast band from a thousand miles away, amongst lots of static. (this was before 2JJJ migrated to FM, Australia wide)
Waterluvian 5y ago
Unrelated question: does every single reading time estimate lie to us in attempt to entice us to stay or am I just slow? There is no way I can read this in 10 minutes.
- plorkyeran 5y ago
  I generally find estimated reading times to be significantly longer than it actually takes me to read an article.
- luxpir 5y ago
  Good question. I tested it. 5 minutes to read it for me. Was expecting longer than the 10 but I was in "fast mode" where I selectively skipped placenames, small details I know I'd never retain without masses of unwarranted effort. I read fiction slowly, but when browsing for information I plough through texts. Do you skim read ever? Retention-wise it still feels like I could tell you a rough outline of the article. It might help I'm a radio amateur/ham so have a strong interest in the subject anyway. Let me see, it was something like this, you'll have to take my word I'm not switching tabs (too fiddly on mobile anyway); - invention of radio - mass enthusiasm - mass hysteria - mass education (Wisconsin? I'm not American so my mental map of midwest is weak - Ohio though) - rebroadcasts via larger station for wider reach - I'm blanking on the outro, but now at least I know radio education was a thing over large tracts of land in the US and Australia too, but isn't this how China and Korea are making superstar teachers online now? If the "final event" ever comes, I'll maybe find a way to keep powering the radios to entertain and educate the willing. You're not slow, you're probably just taking it too seriously :)
  - bluejellybean 5y ago
    I don't really consider myself a fast reader, but I was able to get the broad strokes in about 1 and half minutes (timed it). Articles like these are 80% filler and the first sentence of two can generally tell you what the rest is about. If you can find the keywords in those first couple sentences, hint, they're typically the long ones, you can get the gist of everything very quickly. It's typically an idea or group of ideas that is interesting, not a specific line or word, and if I find something curious, it's at that time I'll choose to go slow or even stop to think about it.
morninglight 5y ago
Internet Radio has a few educational sites: Science Zone http://amber.streamguys1.com:4200/live http://amber.streamguys1.com:4200/live Astronomy F.M. http://radio.astronomy.fm:8111/live http://radio.astronomy.fm:8111/live Star Talk http://tunein.streamguys1.com/StarTalkRadio?aw_0_1st.playerid=RadioTime&aw_0_1st.skey=1508066437 http://tunein.streamguys1.com/StarTalkRadio?aw_0_1st.playeri... Jupiter http://n06.radiojar.com/0uk94cu0xrquv?rj-ttl=5&rj-tok=AAABbx6m53oAt4DNjK9gafy4yA http://n06.radiojar.com/0uk94cu0xrquv?rj-ttl=5&rj-tok=AAABbx... Radio Newark http://streamer.radionewark.com:8000/ http://streamer.radionewark.com:8000/ Broadcast radio has morphed into a political propaganda tool.
sien 5y ago
Australia has 'School of the Air' for remote students that used radio for education. I work with some people who did it as a kid and thought it was great. https://www.australian-children.com/school-of-the-air https://www.australian-children.com/school-of-the-air https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2010/08/australias-school-of-the-air/ https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-cultu... https://www.assoa.nt.edu.au/ https://www.assoa.nt.edu.au/
- jfk13 5y ago
  There's even a School of the Air photo, about half-way through the article (although the article text itself is about America).
dredmorbius 5y ago
The May, 1924 issue of Scientific American mentioned in the article is available (without reservation) for download from the Internet Archive. If you'd like a peek at what views of radio were at the time, much of the issue is dedicated to the topic. https://archive.org/details/sim_scientific-american_1924-05_130_5 https://archive.org/details/sim_scientific-american_1924-05_... (Ironically: LibGen's afficiated popular magazines site doesn't have this particular issue of SciAm. Yet.)
makeitdouble 5y ago
The historical review was very interesting. On the hook of the article: > In the 1920s, radio was an exciting new mass medium. It was known for providing entertainment, but educators wondered if it could also be used for education. With every new technology, there is a furry of people coming out of the woodwork to tout it as a way to "revolutionize education" or try to guess if it can be used efficiently. Invariably, the dusts settles after a while to restate that: - kids who self-educate will use whatever mean is at their disposition to learn, be it books, radio, VHS, youtube, the metaverse. Better technology is better, but it's mostly on the convenience part. - kids who need guidance on what we want them to learn will need a human teacher follow them, see what works and doesn't, and bring contents/explainations for them to digest the concepts. - mosts kids aren't self-sufficient in all subjects, and will need guidance to go through everything we want them to learn (basically every kid falls on both above categories, it just depends on the subject). Thus whatever the technology at hand, we need a trained human being to help them learn at some point.

55 points by tintinnabula 5y ago

Very related: Education Automation: Freeing the scholar to return to his studies by R. Buckminster Fuller We had the technology even in the 1950s to do mass education that would arguably be better than status quo in many subjects. https://www.amazon.com/Education-Automation-Freeing-scholar-studies/dp/0809301377 https://www.amazon.com/Education-Automation-Freeing-scholar-...

anthk 5y ago

Back in early 00's I listened to a Spanish radio programme with biographies and historical battles and facts. It was full of sound fxs, truly amazing, 1000x times better than reading a book. In the 60's people could get the GEP equivalent for Spain (Actually in The Canaries) thanks to a radio broadcast. EDIT: Holy sh|t, it's still alive!! (Spanish): http://www3.radioecca.org/ http://www3.radioecca.org/

ghaff 5y ago

And we keep reinventing mostly broadcast forms of instruction--which are fine as far as they go and are very useful for many purposes. But, especially for classroom-type lectures, it's largely incrementally polishing up the part of education (big lectures) that mostly works and for which we've had the tools to listen/watch remotely for decades.

Turing_Machine 5y ago

Trivia: the model wearing the "radio hat" is Academy and Emmy Award winning actress Hope Lange, at the age of 15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Lange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Lange

dredmorbius 5y ago
Trivum: the singular of "trivia" is "trivium". And "trivia" is appropriate to an article on education, as it is from the Trivium, which is to say, the first of two parts of medaeval scholastic education: the trivium and the quadrivum, together comprising the seven liberal arts. The trivium is grammar, logic, and rhetoric. You might think of these as input, processing, and output. The quadrivium is arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Or quantity, quantity in space, quantity in time, and quantity in space and time. And now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast ... https://www.etymonline.com/word/trivia https://www.etymonline.com/word/trivia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

KineticLensman 5y ago

Yes. In 1978 I learnt from the radio that the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is '42'

Johnythree 5y ago
Can very much remember listening to HGTTG in 1978. Was via 2JJ on the AM broadcast band from a thousand miles away, amongst lots of static. (this was before 2JJJ migrated to FM, Australia wide)

Waterluvian 5y ago

Unrelated question: does every single reading time estimate lie to us in attempt to entice us to stay or am I just slow? There is no way I can read this in 10 minutes.

plorkyeran 5y ago
I generally find estimated reading times to be significantly longer than it actually takes me to read an article.
luxpir 5y ago
Good question. I tested it. 5 minutes to read it for me. Was expecting longer than the 10 but I was in "fast mode" where I selectively skipped placenames, small details I know I'd never retain without masses of unwarranted effort. I read fiction slowly, but when browsing for information I plough through texts. Do you skim read ever? Retention-wise it still feels like I could tell you a rough outline of the article. It might help I'm a radio amateur/ham so have a strong interest in the subject anyway. Let me see, it was something like this, you'll have to take my word I'm not switching tabs (too fiddly on mobile anyway); - invention of radio - mass enthusiasm - mass hysteria - mass education (Wisconsin? I'm not American so my mental map of midwest is weak - Ohio though) - rebroadcasts via larger station for wider reach - I'm blanking on the outro, but now at least I know radio education was a thing over large tracts of land in the US and Australia too, but isn't this how China and Korea are making superstar teachers online now? If the "final event" ever comes, I'll maybe find a way to keep powering the radios to entertain and educate the willing. You're not slow, you're probably just taking it too seriously :)
- bluejellybean 5y ago
  I don't really consider myself a fast reader, but I was able to get the broad strokes in about 1 and half minutes (timed it). Articles like these are 80% filler and the first sentence of two can generally tell you what the rest is about. If you can find the keywords in those first couple sentences, hint, they're typically the long ones, you can get the gist of everything very quickly. It's typically an idea or group of ideas that is interesting, not a specific line or word, and if I find something curious, it's at that time I'll choose to go slow or even stop to think about it.

morninglight 5y ago

Internet Radio has a few educational sites: Science Zone http://amber.streamguys1.com:4200/live http://amber.streamguys1.com:4200/live Astronomy F.M. http://radio.astronomy.fm:8111/live http://radio.astronomy.fm:8111/live Star Talk http://tunein.streamguys1.com/StarTalkRadio?aw_0_1st.playerid=RadioTime&aw_0_1st.skey=1508066437 http://tunein.streamguys1.com/StarTalkRadio?aw_0_1st.playeri... Jupiter http://n06.radiojar.com/0uk94cu0xrquv?rj-ttl=5&rj-tok=AAABbx6m53oAt4DNjK9gafy4yA http://n06.radiojar.com/0uk94cu0xrquv?rj-ttl=5&rj-tok=AAABbx... Radio Newark http://streamer.radionewark.com:8000/ http://streamer.radionewark.com:8000/ Broadcast radio has morphed into a political propaganda tool.

sien 5y ago

Australia has 'School of the Air' for remote students that used radio for education. I work with some people who did it as a kid and thought it was great. https://www.australian-children.com/school-of-the-air https://www.australian-children.com/school-of-the-air https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2010/08/australias-school-of-the-air/ https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-cultu... https://www.assoa.nt.edu.au/ https://www.assoa.nt.edu.au/

jfk13 5y ago
There's even a School of the Air photo, about half-way through the article (although the article text itself is about America).

dredmorbius 5y ago

The May, 1924 issue of Scientific American mentioned in the article is available (without reservation) for download from the Internet Archive. If you'd like a peek at what views of radio were at the time, much of the issue is dedicated to the topic. https://archive.org/details/sim_scientific-american_1924-05_130_5 https://archive.org/details/sim_scientific-american_1924-05_... (Ironically: LibGen's afficiated popular magazines site doesn't have this particular issue of SciAm. Yet.)

makeitdouble 5y ago

The historical review was very interesting. On the hook of the article: > In the 1920s, radio was an exciting new mass medium. It was known for providing entertainment, but educators wondered if it could also be used for education. With every new technology, there is a furry of people coming out of the woodwork to tout it as a way to "revolutionize education" or try to guess if it can be used efficiently. Invariably, the dusts settles after a while to restate that: - kids who self-educate will use whatever mean is at their disposition to learn, be it books, radio, VHS, youtube, the metaverse. Better technology is better, but it's mostly on the convenience part. - kids who need guidance on what we want them to learn will need a human teacher follow them, see what works and doesn't, and bring contents/explainations for them to digest the concepts. - mosts kids aren't self-sufficient in all subjects, and will need guidance to go through everything we want them to learn (basically every kid falls on both above categories, it just depends on the subject). Thus whatever the technology at hand, we need a trained human being to help them learn at some point.