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Modern operating systems are missing a monumental opportunity for turning computers into transformative educational tools. Not only have we not progressed since

by imiric 4y ago

Modern operating systems are missing a monumental opportunity for turning computers into transformative educational tools. Not only have we not progressed since the visions of Engelbart and Alan Kay, we've regressed in many ways. Mobile OSs are walled gardens mainly suited for content consumption and mining user data to sell to advertisers. This is now even spreading to desktop OSs, where most of the time it feels like the computer is using you, rather than the other way around. Despite of how much computers have revolutionized every aspect of our lives, they're awfully primitive at being educational. Think about it: our best online knowledge resource is the equivalent of a classic encyclopedia, with static text, and some multimedia features. There are plenty of free lectures available, but they're limited to video recordings and text. Content is rarely interactive, or presented in a way to guide learning via experimentation. There are some worthwhile resources that do this right, but they're either not very accessible or mainstream. Imagine where we could be as a civilization if operating systems were built with education in mind. I'm not smart enough to design such systems, but having seen what some of the brightest minds in our industry have come up with decades ago, I can't help but feel underwhelmed, to say the least, by what we have today.

belugacat 4y ago
I've worked in education (as a teacher), and in edtech, trying to build such systems. I used to share some of your views and frustrations. Your post brings 2 thoughts to my mind: 1) I disagree with your characterization of "our best online knowledge resource". I assume you're talking about Wikipedia, sure that's one way to characterize it (albeit not the most genuine IMO). But Wikipedia is a tiny part of the picture; we also have YouTube (with millions of creators from all cultures/languages/fields), Khan Academy, the Internet Archive, your local library, and countless other resources. That's the beauty of the internet: it's decentralized. No centralized service can fulfill every single knowledge need because knowledge gets formed when an individual has to integrate multiple sources of information and reconcile it with their experience of the world (sorry, fans of Young Lady's Illustrated Primer; it was always a literary illusion). Otherwise it's not much more than just regurgitating propaganda. 2) Ultimately, software doesn't really matter for education. What matters is that kids have a physically safe (heated/cooled, with access to food, clean restrooms, etc) facility, and are under the guidance of teachers who are in an environment conducive to quality teaching (eg classes of reasonable sizes, administrators that don't micromanage them, etc). I've seen this "we just need the right interactive software to fix education!" fallacy so many times amongst tech people. Sure, in the hands of competent teachers who have the above, tech & software can enhance learning. But it's not the fundamental piece. And many, many schools (in the US and in many "developed" countries) lack those fundamentals. If you want to "imagine where we could be as a civilization", that's where you have to improve things. Sorry, I know "it's not about the tech, it's about the people and basic physical environment" is a terribly boring answer for a hacker. But spend some time teaching, or building fancy software that ultimately doesn't do much for student outcomes, and I suspect you will observe the same.
- imiric 4y ago
  I appreciate your reply, as you clearly have more experience than me with this topic, but bear with me if I push back on some of your points. > Wikipedia is a tiny part of the picture; we also have YouTube (with millions of creators from all cultures/languages/fields), Khan Academy, the Internet Archive, your local library, and countless other resources That's precisely my point. YouTube is audiovisual, something we've had since the dawn of television. Sure, the content has exploded in diversity (which has its own problems of curation), but it's still a fundamentally consumption based, one way, zero interaction, learning experience. Khan Academy and other MOOCs are also audiovisual and text based, and at best, have communication capabilities with the instructor and other students. This is attempting to bring the traditional school experience to the virtual world, and is hardly revolutionary. The Internet Archive, while vast in content, is still only audiovisual, and has the same consumption and curation problems. If we settle for computers being a mere portal to traditional resources, then, yes, there is vast knowledge to be acquired. And this has been invaluable for many people, myself included. But computers are capable of so much more if we step outside the boundaries of traditional teaching. They allow content to be interactive, linked, remixed and experimented with in ways that weren't possible before. For the developing mind of a child, this allows entirely new ways of making knowledge accessible and entertaining. Sure, there have been many attempts at this, and the edtech sector is huge, but none of this is fundamental to how computers are used. At the end of the day, most children will be more drawn to endless media consumption than an educational app, and our OSs are optimized for the former rather than the latter. It's difficult to imagine what such a system could look like today, or the repercussions it could have on education, but I find Alan Kay's ideas very visionary in this sense. > Ultimately, software doesn't really matter for education. What matters is that kids have a physically safe (heated/cooled, with access to food, clean restrooms, etc) facility, and are under the guidance of teachers who are in an environment conducive to quality teaching Sure, this is the traditional school environment. While that certainly helps, and it's a crime that teachers are so underappreciated and underpaid, that system is broken in many ways. From uninspired teachers that fail to raise interest in learning, via teaching practices that encourage memorization of concepts rather than curiosity and experimentation, to the idea that everyone learns the same way or at the same pace, to corruption, bullying, and the list goes on and on. We have the technology to revolutionize every aspect of our lives, yet when it comes to education, we're still relying on traditional methods. So I disagree that software doesn't really matter. All the software _attempts_ we've had so far haven't made a breakthrough, but the potential is there. As examples of the good kind of software, take a look at the articles by Bartosz Ciechanowski[1]. Or in a more commercial sense, brilliant.org. These are isolated examples of what computers can do, but imagine if the same operating system you're reading this on fundamentally worked in a different way, to allow free-form experimentation with concepts in ways we've never seen before. Then imagine that system connected to the modern internet, where billions of people are doing the same thing, and what that interaction could mean for developing new ideas. This goes beyond simple screen and document sharing that we find sophisticated today. And, in many ways, it's unimaginable precisely because it's so far from what we can do today. [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/

by imiric 4y ago

belugacat 4y ago

I've worked in education (as a teacher), and in edtech, trying to build such systems. I used to share some of your views and frustrations. Your post brings 2 thoughts to my mind: 1) I disagree with your characterization of "our best online knowledge resource". I assume you're talking about Wikipedia, sure that's one way to characterize it (albeit not the most genuine IMO). But Wikipedia is a tiny part of the picture; we also have YouTube (with millions of creators from all cultures/languages/fields), Khan Academy, the Internet Archive, your local library, and countless other resources. That's the beauty of the internet: it's decentralized. No centralized service can fulfill every single knowledge need because knowledge gets formed when an individual has to integrate multiple sources of information and reconcile it with their experience of the world (sorry, fans of Young Lady's Illustrated Primer; it was always a literary illusion). Otherwise it's not much more than just regurgitating propaganda. 2) Ultimately, software doesn't really matter for education. What matters is that kids have a physically safe (heated/cooled, with access to food, clean restrooms, etc) facility, and are under the guidance of teachers who are in an environment conducive to quality teaching (eg classes of reasonable sizes, administrators that don't micromanage them, etc). I've seen this "we just need the right interactive software to fix education!" fallacy so many times amongst tech people. Sure, in the hands of competent teachers who have the above, tech & software can enhance learning. But it's not the fundamental piece. And many, many schools (in the US and in many "developed" countries) lack those fundamentals. If you want to "imagine where we could be as a civilization", that's where you have to improve things. Sorry, I know "it's not about the tech, it's about the people and basic physical environment" is a terribly boring answer for a hacker. But spend some time teaching, or building fancy software that ultimately doesn't do much for student outcomes, and I suspect you will observe the same.

imiric 4y ago
I appreciate your reply, as you clearly have more experience than me with this topic, but bear with me if I push back on some of your points. > Wikipedia is a tiny part of the picture; we also have YouTube (with millions of creators from all cultures/languages/fields), Khan Academy, the Internet Archive, your local library, and countless other resources That's precisely my point. YouTube is audiovisual, something we've had since the dawn of television. Sure, the content has exploded in diversity (which has its own problems of curation), but it's still a fundamentally consumption based, one way, zero interaction, learning experience. Khan Academy and other MOOCs are also audiovisual and text based, and at best, have communication capabilities with the instructor and other students. This is attempting to bring the traditional school experience to the virtual world, and is hardly revolutionary. The Internet Archive, while vast in content, is still only audiovisual, and has the same consumption and curation problems. If we settle for computers being a mere portal to traditional resources, then, yes, there is vast knowledge to be acquired. And this has been invaluable for many people, myself included. But computers are capable of so much more if we step outside the boundaries of traditional teaching. They allow content to be interactive, linked, remixed and experimented with in ways that weren't possible before. For the developing mind of a child, this allows entirely new ways of making knowledge accessible and entertaining. Sure, there have been many attempts at this, and the edtech sector is huge, but none of this is fundamental to how computers are used. At the end of the day, most children will be more drawn to endless media consumption than an educational app, and our OSs are optimized for the former rather than the latter. It's difficult to imagine what such a system could look like today, or the repercussions it could have on education, but I find Alan Kay's ideas very visionary in this sense. > Ultimately, software doesn't really matter for education. What matters is that kids have a physically safe (heated/cooled, with access to food, clean restrooms, etc) facility, and are under the guidance of teachers who are in an environment conducive to quality teaching Sure, this is the traditional school environment. While that certainly helps, and it's a crime that teachers are so underappreciated and underpaid, that system is broken in many ways. From uninspired teachers that fail to raise interest in learning, via teaching practices that encourage memorization of concepts rather than curiosity and experimentation, to the idea that everyone learns the same way or at the same pace, to corruption, bullying, and the list goes on and on. We have the technology to revolutionize every aspect of our lives, yet when it comes to education, we're still relying on traditional methods. So I disagree that software doesn't really matter. All the software _attempts_ we've had so far haven't made a breakthrough, but the potential is there. As examples of the good kind of software, take a look at the articles by Bartosz Ciechanowski[1]. Or in a more commercial sense, brilliant.org. These are isolated examples of what computers can do, but imagine if the same operating system you're reading this on fundamentally worked in a different way, to allow free-form experimentation with concepts in ways we've never seen before. Then imagine that system connected to the modern internet, where billions of people are doing the same thing, and what that interaction could mean for developing new ideas. This goes beyond simple screen and document sharing that we find sophisticated today. And, in many ways, it's unimaginable precisely because it's so far from what we can do today. [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/ https://ciechanow.ski/