5 ms·

iPads < teachers

11 points by bootload 12y ago

EGreg 12y ago
I believe there is a smarter way to reform education with technology. The iPads are not supposed to replace the teacher, but to maximize goals given the real economic reality - information delivery is the commodity while personal attention is scarce. This is my humble proposal: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 I intend to realize it in practice and will be happy to work with people who feel the same. If you feel there's truth in what I wrote, contact me by going to http://qbix.com/about http://qbix.com/about - I am Greg there.
- S4M 12y ago
  I would agree in general with your proposal, but I'd suggest replacing the iPad by a cheap laptop, like a chromebook: it's cheaper, gives the kids more freedom, and for the ones who will be interested, it can be a first step to programming.
  - EGreg 12y ago
    I agree. It can be a cheap one. One of my friends actually has a company where they produced a cheat ($50) educatioal tablet and have many schools in Brazil using it. They are looking for apps. So I can get it to market.
    - S4M 12y ago
      I am making an app for education. For now it's a website but I will port it to Android soon. Wanna talk?
jvickers 12y ago
In my experience, the quality variance with teachers is much higher than with iPads. iPads have never had the attitude problems that some teachers have had (except some Siri edge cases perhaps).
jholman 12y ago
Relevant link: Veritasium, "This will revolutionize education". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c
golergka 12y ago
From outside, US education seems astonishingly bad, especially for a 1st world country. In US, 14 years old kids just start to learn how to solve for X, while in Russia it's time to finish trigonometry and move to calculus.
- S4M 12y ago
  Wow, that indeed doesn't look good. In France I learnt trigonometry at 13 (I gonna turn 34 this year so maybe it has changed by now).
  - jostylr 12y ago
    The problem is less about when someone learns math (an easy subject once one cares), but rather the attitude about math. In the US, people walk away from math education hating and fearing math. "Math is important, but I can't do math" is the attitude many have. What is the attitude of general people in France? Do they take math ignorance as a point of pride as they do in the US or they take math knowledge and use as a point of pride?
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    In the US I had trig and the first semester of calculus in 9th grade (age 13-14). It's not about the country. Educational standards written with people who never learn to read in mind aren't binding on everyone. Moving the standard higher decreases the number of kids clearing it, and moving the standard lower increases the number of kids clearing it, but neither has much effect on what people learn.
- hurin 12y ago
  Maybe you are thinking of Soviet Russia. As far as I've heard of late the quality of education in Russia has fallen a lot, not to mention bribery, corruption etc. As for the US - yes it is somewhat astonishing, it's probably on a similar level of dysfunctional as healthcare.
  - golergka 12y ago
    I was 14 in 2002, and it still was true.
sjwright 12y ago
The headline is a troll; the technology revolution in education is not iPads, it's reinventing the purpose of teachers in a classroom. The flipped classroom[0][1] might be the single greatest advance in education in a hundred years, made possible largely by our ability to rapidly distribute compelling instruction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...
bootload 12y ago
read in conjunction with this ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9402292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9402292
mbrock 12y ago
What I learned from teachers, mostly, was to distrust authority figures. Maybe iPads can't provide this lesson. The article says: "Finding and growing great teachers is devilishly hard. Retaining them is very expensive." How do we even know who is a great teacher? One of my best teachers told me, after years of me skipping his classes to play around with computer stuff, that he loved my style of learning. My style was to mostly ignore school, stay out of trouble, and read and tinker on my own. I might be biased and wrong, but from my perspective, it seems like there's way too much talk about teaching, and way too little about learning. The kids in that nightmarish Indianapolis "learning center" are being oppressed. If there's anything they're interested in on their own, they're probably too burned out when they come home from the "learning center" to pursue it. And they learn that learning is something you do with someone else's permission, guidance, and monitoring. I learned that learning happens when I'm free to play around, follow my curiosity, and work hard with the natural zeal of a restless child. Alan Kay had the idea of building an educational tablet computer in 1972, and was quite realistic about it. [1] Since he has a humanistic and child-centric view of learning, he envisioned the tablet as a tool for children to learn on their own. When interviewed in 2013 about whether new computing devices are helping in the classroom, he said: "The perspective on this is first to ask whether the current educational practices are even using books in a powerful and educative way. Or even to ask whether the classroom process without any special media at all is educative. "I would say, to a distressing extent, the answer is 'no.'" [1]: http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-computing-pioneer-alan-kay/ http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-comput...
keithpeter 12y ago
"Great teachers aren’t likely to buy into the vision of any single ed tech company. They want to integrate ideas — likely from several sources, designers, and companies — into their own creative processes." I'd suggest that anyone here thinking of producing content for those iPads (or any platform) think in terms of maximum granularity and adding tools for a teacher to select items for use. Disclaimer: I've been teaching maths for 28 years now and so may be either part of the problem, or a 'great teacher'. I tend to let the students make up their own mind about that one.

11 points by bootload 12y ago

EGreg 12y ago

I believe there is a smarter way to reform education with technology. The iPads are not supposed to replace the teacher, but to maximize goals given the real economic reality - information delivery is the commodity while personal attention is scarce. This is my humble proposal: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 I intend to realize it in practice and will be happy to work with people who feel the same. If you feel there's truth in what I wrote, contact me by going to http://qbix.com/about http://qbix.com/about - I am Greg there.

S4M 12y ago
I would agree in general with your proposal, but I'd suggest replacing the iPad by a cheap laptop, like a chromebook: it's cheaper, gives the kids more freedom, and for the ones who will be interested, it can be a first step to programming.
- EGreg 12y ago
  I agree. It can be a cheap one. One of my friends actually has a company where they produced a cheat ($50) educatioal tablet and have many schools in Brazil using it. They are looking for apps. So I can get it to market.
  - S4M 12y ago
    I am making an app for education. For now it's a website but I will port it to Android soon. Wanna talk?

jvickers 12y ago

In my experience, the quality variance with teachers is much higher than with iPads. iPads have never had the attitude problems that some teachers have had (except some Siri edge cases perhaps).

jholman 12y ago

Relevant link: Veritasium, "This will revolutionize education". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c

golergka 12y ago

From outside, US education seems astonishingly bad, especially for a 1st world country. In US, 14 years old kids just start to learn how to solve for X, while in Russia it's time to finish trigonometry and move to calculus.

S4M 12y ago
Wow, that indeed doesn't look good. In France I learnt trigonometry at 13 (I gonna turn 34 this year so maybe it has changed by now).
- jostylr 12y ago
  The problem is less about when someone learns math (an easy subject once one cares), but rather the attitude about math. In the US, people walk away from math education hating and fearing math. "Math is important, but I can't do math" is the attitude many have. What is the attitude of general people in France? Do they take math ignorance as a point of pride as they do in the US or they take math knowledge and use as a point of pride?
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  In the US I had trig and the first semester of calculus in 9th grade (age 13-14). It's not about the country. Educational standards written with people who never learn to read in mind aren't binding on everyone. Moving the standard higher decreases the number of kids clearing it, and moving the standard lower increases the number of kids clearing it, but neither has much effect on what people learn.
hurin 12y ago
Maybe you are thinking of Soviet Russia. As far as I've heard of late the quality of education in Russia has fallen a lot, not to mention bribery, corruption etc. As for the US - yes it is somewhat astonishing, it's probably on a similar level of dysfunctional as healthcare.
- golergka 12y ago
  I was 14 in 2002, and it still was true.

sjwright 12y ago

The headline is a troll; the technology revolution in education is not iPads, it's reinventing the purpose of teachers in a classroom. The flipped classroom[0][1] might be the single greatest advance in education in a hundred years, made possible largely by our ability to rapidly distribute compelling instruction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...

bootload 12y ago

read in conjunction with this ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9402292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9402292

mbrock 12y ago

What I learned from teachers, mostly, was to distrust authority figures. Maybe iPads can't provide this lesson. The article says: "Finding and growing great teachers is devilishly hard. Retaining them is very expensive." How do we even know who is a great teacher? One of my best teachers told me, after years of me skipping his classes to play around with computer stuff, that he loved my style of learning. My style was to mostly ignore school, stay out of trouble, and read and tinker on my own. I might be biased and wrong, but from my perspective, it seems like there's way too much talk about teaching, and way too little about learning. The kids in that nightmarish Indianapolis "learning center" are being oppressed. If there's anything they're interested in on their own, they're probably too burned out when they come home from the "learning center" to pursue it. And they learn that learning is something you do with someone else's permission, guidance, and monitoring. I learned that learning happens when I'm free to play around, follow my curiosity, and work hard with the natural zeal of a restless child. Alan Kay had the idea of building an educational tablet computer in 1972, and was quite realistic about it. [1] Since he has a humanistic and child-centric view of learning, he envisioned the tablet as a tool for children to learn on their own. When interviewed in 2013 about whether new computing devices are helping in the classroom, he said: "The perspective on this is first to ask whether the current educational practices are even using books in a powerful and educative way. Or even to ask whether the classroom process without any special media at all is educative. "I would say, to a distressing extent, the answer is 'no.'" [1]: http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-computing-pioneer-alan-kay/ http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-comput...

keithpeter 12y ago

"Great teachers aren’t likely to buy into the vision of any single ed tech company. They want to integrate ideas — likely from several sources, designers, and companies — into their own creative processes." I'd suggest that anyone here thinking of producing content for those iPads (or any platform) think in terms of maximum granularity and adding tools for a teacher to select items for use. Disclaimer: I've been teaching maths for 28 years now and so may be either part of the problem, or a 'great teacher'. I tend to let the students make up their own mind about that one.

iPads &lt; teachers

iPads &lt; teachers

iPads < teachers

iPads < teachers