I'm pretty sure that opening quote is from Bye Bye Birdie
Did any read Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age? This sounds an awful lot like what was created as an educational tool in that book too.
The first time I read that book I was unimpressed. By the next time I read it, I had kids and was completely enthralled with the idea of an educational tool that wove happenings from their real life into the story that it told and grew with them.
Just reading this article is making want one all over again - for my kids and for me.
Chris
I have come to a similar conclusion.
100 years ago, books were 'high technology' that could capture people's imagination and transport them to fascinating places. They were well appreciated when people lived in relatively mundane times.
Books still do these things today, but now must compete with exotic multimedia technology. Young people don't think of digital games as exotic. They just accept them as normal.
Our educators need to employ these modern technologies in addition to books to recapture their student’s attention.
Yup, Bye Bye Birdie.
Paul Lynde, too :)
And in some ways, you're hearkening back to the way well-educated people made sure their children were educated for hundreds of years: by hiring older companions with less money and more smarts. (I'm thinking of the era from Galileo to Newton, but maybe it continued into 19C England?).
Rigid state bureaucracies may be necessary when there's 500 million citizens, but those fixed walls probably won't cultivate the top students.
Bob, why don't you return to predicting the next move of Steve. Because the last 3 coloumns were wasted on me. Lets take this last one. What is the message? That schools will change? Yes, they will. So will every industry and human persuit. That schools will be replaced by some gadget? I don't believe that. You started out correctly listing the purposes of going to school. Learning was one of them, but the one I liked is finding a mate. School is a place for socializing, indoctrinating our young. Learning is just part. You may argue that learning will take place elsewhere, and I tend to agree, but all the other functions must be serviced by some institution. Call it the Mating Center for Not-Yet-Grown-Ups.
Bob, why don't you return to predicting the next move of Steve. Because the last 3 coloumns were wasted on me. Lets take this last one. What is the message? That schools will change? Yes, they will. So will every industry and human persuit. That schools will be replaced by some gadget? I don't believe that. You started out correctly listing the purposes of going to school. Learning was one of them, but the one I liked is finding a mate. School is a place for socializing, indoctrinating our young. Learning is just part. You may argue that learning will take place elsewhere, and I tend to agree, but all the other functions must be serviced by some institution. Call it the Mating Center for Not-Yet-Grown-Ups.
Some of us just like to learn and never stop our education: reading non-fiction, exploring new music, single classes at the community college, chatting with experts we bump into. With the web, naturally learners have had a field day with unlimited access that's mostly cost free. But those people who don't enjoy learning for the sake of learning, will never learn what they don't have to. Even if the lesson is rolled into a fun game, they'll find a game without a lesson or just ignore the education content.
Bob, with a major depression looming, you're dreaming. We'll be lucky if we do as well as the Amish in educating our kids without reliable power.
I agree wholeheartedly with this post.
If you would like to read a remarkably insightful book on this, head for James Gee's "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy". Absolutely fascinating.
This 'device' would only need to teach kids to be really good readers. It would learn the student's abilities and use multimedia to keep them interested. Comprehension would develop over time and prodding by the device. After the basics, advanced reading subjects would consist of history, geography, maths, science, etc. After several years of this, the students could go where their interests take them.
This 'device' would only need to teach kids to be really good readers. It would learn the student's abilities and use multimedia to keep them interested. Comprehension would develop over time and prodding by the device. After the basics, advanced reading subjects would consist of history, geography, maths, science, etc. After several years of this, the students could go where their interests take them.
This 'device' would only need to teach kids to be really good readers. It would learn the student's abilities and use multimedia to keep them interested. Comprehension would develop over time and prodding by the device. After the basics, advanced reading subjects would consist of history, geography, maths, science, etc. After several years of this, the students could go where their interests take them. NoScript note: this captcha system really blows!
You wrote:
"We took our kids to Washington, D.C. for Spring Break and I would have loved to outfit them with MP3 players loaded with age-appropriate descriptions of what we saw. That's just scratching the surface."
When I visited the 'Body Worlds 2' exhibit at the Phoenix Science Museum last summer, I and every one in our group rented the audio gizmo that you wore around your neck on a landyard. You keyed in the number on the exhibit item, and got an audio presentation of additional information about that portion of the exhibit. the system seemed to be designed to be used for such exhibits.
It already exists. Pretty soon, it will be part of the ticket price. You're on to something Cringe, but they beat us to it, darn... Is there nothing that hasn't already been thought of?
"Digital games are a bigger business than Hollywood movies, than book publishing, than television, than music." ... Boy would I like to see a footnote on that statement.
Bob, Sorry about taking up so much space on the comments page. You should remind commenters using NoScript to allow the captcha script. Even though the captcha script says that the comment was not accepted, because of NoScript blocking, it is still posted.
In my opinion highly functional PDAs, the future ones that interact and educate you, not just our digital calanders, will be perfect for imparting general knowledge, history, social studies. The facts and stories that stick with you, because you heard the story of the place where you currently stand. Like listening to the history of Washington D.C. while walking the city.
I didn't learn how to write or do arithmetic on a screen, and I can feel the generation gap already, when considering how to teach my future kids. Oh, I'll get a copy of Number Crunchers, hopefully you can still get it from Apple.
Your late!
Exactly that pda-3k was perfectly described by Neal Stephenson in 'Diamond Age', published 13 years ago.
Oops. "Kids" is from Bye Bye Birdie, not Music Man!
Have read and loved your column for years. Keep 'em coming.
You're late!
Exactly that pda-3k was perfectly described by Neal Stephenson in 'Diamond Age', published 13 years ago.
I agree with the first post. The whole time I was reading this, you were just validating Neal Stephenson. If you haven't read it, 'Diamond Age' is one of my favorite books.
Since Socrates time, education has evolved with the new technological advancements. But one thing matters most of all -- parents must drive their children to actually learn.
To really learn a willing person must actually put forth time and concentration to the effort.
And I think it may be possible for an electronic game to actually ENTERTAIN and EDUCATE at the same time. However, I think it will be hard to combine both as very few teachers have that gift as well.
Okay, so maybe playing a well-fleshed-out Beowolf game for 20 hours might get you through a test
BUT
Would those 20 hours be better spent READING?
Would two hours be equally well-spent watching the film before reading?
Would the game garner an appreciation of the form and structure of the POETRY?
Would the game EVER be able to respond to questions in the same way a passionate and informed teacher could?
Would we be sacrificing reading skills for less useful ones?
Will we surrender to short attention spans?
And let's not forget the glaring problem in that you assume PASSING A TEST IS A VALID MEASURE OF EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS.
I could go on. I find this whole concept depressing. In my experience, NOTHING can replace a good teacher.
I'm pretty sure that opening quote is from Bye Bye Birdie
"Part of any answer is figuring out what education is for. We use it for paying dues, for passing time until a certain level of maturity is reached. We use it for networking and finding mates. We use it for acting goofy at the expense of our parents. And we use it, to some extent, to learn what we need to know to get by."
One other part of what education is for adds another need to the "thingy" you're proposing. Education certifies to others that results of your effort can be reasonably expected to have value, because you've demonstrated in controlled testing conditions that you can provide an acceptable answer to a problem.
The "thingy" will need to be hooked into a system that records your capabilities, a system that will need to be reliable.
This reminds me of the bad star trek episode where the alien blonde bimbos steal Spock's brain. McCoy eventually puts it back after acquiring the skills from a knowledge machine. In the future will we only have the skills we need when we are connected to a knowledge machine? What happens when the charge dies on your blue tooth headset and you are now flying the huey but cannot land it?
Hi Bob,
If you haven't read it yet, get ahold of a copy of Neil Stephenson's _The_Diamond_Age_.
The personal-teaching-book-thingy which is a central part of the story fits very nicely with your thinking... I wish I had one!
-David
Ditto, @David Cristensen's comment, all of this seems eerily like Stephensons books. Every time I open Google Earth, I think of the globe in Snow Crash, the only difference being that he never imagined that such technology would be free!
Ditto, @David Cristensen's comment, all of this seems eerily like Stephensons books. Every time I open Google Earth, I think of the globe in Snow Crash, the only difference being that he never imagined that such technology would be free!
Personally, I've been using Realflight G4 to learn to fly helicopters.
But the future would be lots sexier if learning to fly a huey involved downloading into your brain while your eyelids fluttered... :)
So machines teaching our kids.
But what if we build learning machines and our kids actually have to teach the machines to work for them instead of today's working with machines?
This is probably true, speaking as a dinosaur myself.
A couple of quibbles:
"Where we went through a couple career changes they'll go through half a dozen or more"
this holds only if 'career' means something different than what that word currently means. Per Webster, "a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling". By definition it's not possible to have multiple careers, since it takes time to train and time to practice any one career. Becoming an engineer for example takes four or five years of study followed by professional certification, after which you have only the first clue about engineering. Another five or ten years of work in the field gets you to competency. Now imagine retraining for a new career, starting another five years of training on no salary. This time around, with a middle-aged mind and energy levels, plus dependents both familial and inanimate (try maintaining a house without regular infusions of money and see what happens). The interest rates for student loans are now higher, and there are fewer scholarships or grants available. Can't be done, sorry: not even with games instead of lecturers.
"Today technology is cheap and getting cheaper, while human labor is expensive and becoming more so. "
True only in the first world. The rest of the world still has an abundance of cheap labor.
In the future will we only have the skills we need when we are connected to a knowledge machine?
I think that is the future. Look at colleges that are now implementing distance learning programs via the internet. No need to step on campus when you can talk to your professor online and via email. Some junior colleges are moving towards using the internet only for some classes. Interestingly enough, the prices for these internet only programs are exactly the same as for the bricks and mortar programs. They must be immensely profitable for colleges. Look for the high school/junior highs to follow suite. Public schools of course will have to spend any savings on new administrator to manage this difficult procedure, so expect school headcount to actually go up as the schools are turned into condos and coffee shops.
In the future will we only have the skills we need when we are connected to a knowledge machine?
I think that is the future. Look at colleges that are now implementing distance learning programs via the internet. No need to step on campus when you can talk to your professor online and via email. Some junior colleges are moving towards using the internet only for some classes. Interestingly enough, the prices for these internet only programs are exactly the same as for the bricks and mortar programs. They must be immensely profitable for colleges. Look for the high school/junior highs to follow suite. Public schools of course will have to spend any savings on new administrator to manage this difficult procedure, so expect school headcount to actually go up as the schools are turned into condos and coffee shops.
"Our grandchildren will run a world very different from the one we ran and many institutions will simply have to adjust or die."
Actually, your grandchildren (or maybe great-grandchildren) will be Transhumans - and all institutions are going to die - along with anybody who decides they don't like Transhumans, which will probably be most of the humans alive when the first Transhumans appear.
Unlike Star Trek and Terminator, the Transhumans ARE going to win that game.
Before that happens, however, computerized education IS going to obsolete schools. That's inevitable since there is no more inefficient model of learning than a classroom.
Bob is conflating "PCs" with "computerized learning". He is correct that some other device than a desktop is likely to be the "learning machine", but it still means that computerized learning is going to replace schools. My guess is that will occur within the next three decades - possibly two decades, but things in society move more slowly than technology does.
"What happens when the charge dies on your blue tooth headset and you are now flying the huey but cannot land it?"
Recall that in the Star Trek episode cited, that is EXACTLY what happened. The knowledge was time-limited, and ran out before McCoy finished the operation. McCoy then improvised by getting feedback from Spock (at Kirk's direction, Kirk was always the hero) to finish the operation. This is an example of a skill that is neglected in our current education system: how to make decisions and achieve results when the information available is incomplete or inaccurate.
There is a quote I read recently that goes something like, "I will learn today what I will need for my work tomorrow." But it can be difficult to predict what you will need tomorrow. So you take your best guess and learn what you think you will need, but also be prepared to learn other stuff as well. Because you will almost certainly be at least partially wrong. Sometimes.
In the future will we only have the skills we need when we are connected to a knowledge machine?
I think that is the future. Look at colleges that are now implementing distance learning programs via the internet. No need to step on campus when you can talk to your professor online and via email. Some junior colleges are moving towards using the internet only for some classes. Interestingly enough, the prices for these internet only programs are exactly the same as for the bricks and mortar programs. They must be immensely profitable for colleges. Look for the high school/junior highs to follow suite. Public schools of course will have to spend any savings on new administrator to manage this difficult procedure, so expect school headcount to actually go up as the schools are turned into condos and coffee shops.
"What happens when the charge dies on your blue tooth headset and you are now flying the huey but cannot land it?"
Recall that in the Star Trek episode cited, that is EXACTLY what happened. The knowledge was time-limited, and ran out before McCoy finished the operation. McCoy then improvised by getting feedback from Spock (at Kirk's direction, Kirk was always the hero) to finish the operation. This is an example of a skill that is neglected in our current education system: how to make decisions and achieve results when the information available is incomplete or inaccurate.
There is a quote I read recently that goes something like, "I will learn today what I will need for my work tomorrow." But it can be difficult to predict what you will need tomorrow. So you take your best guess and learn what you think you will need, but also be prepared to learn other stuff as well. Because you will almost certainly be at least partially wrong. Sometimes.
Well, Bob. All very nice but I'll venture that none of the recipients of that "modern education" you propose will be able to build a laminated banister - or do anything else very useful.
Whitehead correctly said that "misplaced concreteness" is the bane of our modern life. This is certainly true for the word "education." You, apparently, think habit formation is automatically educational. Perhaps for flying a plane or helicopter it can be - but not for the critical thinking required by higher mathematics or the sciences. Some people with a bent for that kind of learning will, no doubt, persevere against all the headwinds of modern video nonsense. But PLEASE don't try to dish up the hogswill that computer games constitute education.
About all that modern computer games can offer is the same kind of habit formation that makes one good at, say, crossword puzzles. Certainly a good mental calesthenic but not a very powerful tool for understanding the world.
I think you must be channeling Toffler - didn't know he was dead. According to him we would all have high tech gizmos in our garages churning out plastic parts by the billions to be shipped off to China for assembly. Oh well.
The central problem with education right now is that NO ONE, outside the Amish, know what is a good one or a bad one. Without that the endless blather about this or that technology as a substitute for conventional teaching is just that.
I would suggest that the ability for an abstract thought to occupy one's attention for longer than three minutes is probably a good thing. Do us a service and treat us to an exposition of exactly which popular computer worlds and games are reinforcing this tendency. And I'm not going to take the increased ability to do math in the pursuit of a profitable virtual store that sells cybernetic peni as an example.
The problem with computer worlds is that they are generated from human fantasies. That's the same kind of thinking that gives us CDO's, and SIV's. I'd rather be stuck with STD's thanks.
Fortunately anyone who cares to take the time can check out the accuracy of your predictions. This should allay any apprehension that your scenario might come to pass. Yours is typical techo ballyhoo for one of the top ballyhooers in the known universe.
For example: last I checked, Steve Jobs was not the CEO of Disney. And Cisco is still pretty much in the weeds. And I'm still waiting for Google to take over the world. And on. And on. Still and all, very entertaining speculations. I'm not complaining.
It's interesting that you used the learning to fly a helicopter example. Like when Neo Asks Trinity in 'The Matrix' "Do you know how to fly that?" "Not yet..."
I think it is grim that you just accept the fact that everyone of the next generation to resign themselves to not retiring. This is only the case because fewer people are hoarding larger and larger amounts of money for themselves, and the government has been unwilling to provide some of the services which we are allegedly taxed to receive.
How about imagining a future where the next generation fixes some of the social problems foisted on them by previous generations (or we fix them first), rather than imagining a generation that sucks up the shitty hand they have been dealt?
"Open the Pod Bay doors,Hal"
"I am sorry Dave I'can't do that"!
Artificial Intelligence ?
If someone is sufficiently dedicated right now, they can learn entirely by themselves once they acquire of decent skills with searching the net to follow their interests.
I am almost completely self taught programmer; my original field of Mechanical Engineering didn't work out so great when I graduated into a huge glut of Engineering graduates largely caused by the efficiencies that early mini-computers and PCs brought to the engineering profession. I have already had to change career about six times since 1984.
I think it is grim that you just accept the fact that everyone of the next generation will resign themselves to not retiring. This is only the case because fewer people are hoarding larger and larger amounts of money for themselves, and the government has been unwilling to acknowledge greed as anything they should provide disincentives for, and also unwilling or unable to provide some of the services which we are allegedly taxed to receive.
How about imagining a future where the next generation fixes some of the social problems foisted on them by previous generations (or better yet we fix them first), rather than imagining a generation that sucks it up for the shitty hand they have been dealt?
Bob, you neeglected one of, if not the most important aspects of "old time" education. Socialization. I can't feature dancing with a game boy or an iPhone. Taking a PC or Video game to the movies defeats the purpose. Walking hand in hand with someone, the opposite hand manipulating a hand held device with LED's,electronic noises and a time limit strikes me as ludicrous. There is a time and place for everything but the above examples are neither the time or the place.
Some subjects can be absorbed online or from a gaming device but it's difficult to imagine the game that will seduce a kid into trig or analaytic geometry. Require the kid in Boston to calculate the orbital mechanics to launch a missle in Nebraska to kill the giant chicken heart that threatens Los Angeles? One thing that won't be learned from a machine is perspective or humility. If you figure out a problem solely through your own efforts online, you might tend to over estimate your own cleverness since you've not had to interact with other people with other insights. Chat rooms couldn't replace classes and seminars, unless you want students to think social interactions begin with, "You blistering idiot," followed by insults and snarky putdowns. Can someone truly understand the Great Depression or the Iraq War without hearing the earnest thoughts of someone who believes differently? It's not enough to say that Cheney and Rumsfield were wrong to think Iraq would be a cakewalk. WHY did they believe that? You need a respectful face to face with a true believer to understand how they went wrong, the interchange you'd get in a college seminar.
"Open the Pod Bay doors,Hal"
"I am sorry Dave I'can't do that"!
[Dave Types Init 0]
Hal:"Oh, Crap......"
"Open the Pod Bay doors,Hal"
"I am sorry Dave I'can't do that"!
[Dave Types Init 0]
Hal:"Oh, Crap......"
Bob, you mention the divide between gamers and non-gamers. I grew up with a C=64 and an Atari 2600 for gaming platforms, with an occasional trip to the local videogame arcade to play Galaga or Donkey Kong.
I loved those old 8-bit games, but put me in front of an Xbox 360 or a PS3, and I'm completely lost, and quickly bored. There are too many details, too many choices, too much to do, and the novelty quickly wears off, at least for me. The games have too many options, too many settings, too many modes, and my 42 year old brain requires massive amounts of play-time and study to reach a basic level of understanding on any of them.
I think that there are quite a few of us over-35s that pine for the simpler days of shoot-em-ups and text adventures, and don't find spending their time in a 3D, virtual-reality holodeck simulation particularly enjoyable. Too much like real life, and I get my fill of that every day at work.
The chaps at Game Theory Show podcast hit on this topic from time to time. I believe Episode 44 had some talk pertaining to this:
http://www.gametheoryshow.com/
Sounds like you're talking about the dynabook - personal dynamic media for education - envisioned my Alan Kay in the late 60s.
Kay's 1972 paper about the Dynabook:
http://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/Kay72a.pdf
The dynabook is living today in various forms in Squeak (www.squeak.org) and etoys (on virtually any PC) and the OLPC (www.laptop.org).
John Maxwell's dissertation on Dr. Alan Kay's educational vision is worth reading:
http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook/dissertation
More at:
http://www.squeakland.org/school/HTML/essays/dynabook_revisited.htm
http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook
brad
My son learned to read by playing the GameBoy.
"Daddy, what does this say?"
"'Pikachu finds an egg', son".
He then learned to type playing Runescape, Maplestory and WoW. He now types faster than I.
There are skills and knowledge. My son has learned a few skills using technology. Gaining knowledge useful in life where those skills may be applied may be hard done solely using technology.
Technology is still a support tool, a conduit through which skills and information can flow.
In Neil Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" there was indeed a "Google in your pocket." Only in order for the information to be effectively transferred real human actors had to take part in the process. Technology was incapable of replacing the human factor that had to be there for the information to be turned into knowledge which must be spun into wisdom.
My son learned to read by playing the GameBoy.
"Daddy, what does this say?"
"'Pikachu finds an egg', son".
He then learned to type playing Runescape, Maplestory and WoW. He now types faster than I.
There are skills and knowledge. My son has learned a few skills using technology. Gaining knowledge useful in life where those skills may be applied may be hard done solely using technology.
Technology is still a support tool, a conduit through which skills and information can flow.
In Neil Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" there was indeed a "Google in your pocket." Only in order for the information to be effectively transferred real human actors had to take part in the process. Technology was incapable of replacing the human factor that had to be there for the information to be turned into knowledge which must be spun into wisdom.
I've been aware of this and struggling with it for a little while. I'm in between generations - growing up computers were around, but I certainly wouldn't say I grew up with computers. However once I got into them they changed my entire life and it would be hard to imagine life without them or the internet.
You talk about this generation changing careers many times but my experience has been even beyond that - I don't know if I can even describe most of what I do in terms of a job or career, and usually when asked what I do I either struggle to explain it or call it 'web design', 'video production', or 'consulting' because it's easy. On any given day though I may swing from producing videos to developing web applications, or more likely some intersection of the two. It's almost impossible to market myself because my combination of skills doesn't fit an easy definition - but I'm busy enough that I'm turning down work on a weekly basis these days.
I have degrees in film & multimedia but I didn't learn anything I do now in school - school basically was a framework in which I taught myself to do most of these things. A good deal of the software & tech I use daily is stuff I wasn't using a year ago, and it might not have even existed a year or two before that - and this is an ongoing cycle. Almost every project I take on involves skills or knowledge I don't have yet but will acquire over the course of the project. I've come to realize that my most valuable skill is not at all related to the things I do - it's my ability to identify the skills & tech necessary to solve a problem, acquire just what's needed and then create a solution in a short period of time.
I do some teaching as well - I find it's one of the best ways to really learn something. My biggest struggle though is how to teach people how to do what I do. I can teach someone how to use a particular application but that's not enough - I know that in a year they'll be back if I don't figure out how to teach them to teach themselves.
The thing is somehow I learned to do all this coming up through the public school system and it didn't involve computers or game systems or network access to the entire worlds knowledge at my fingertips. That's why I laugh when people make the inevitable comments like 'what happens when the network goes down?' or 'that's great until the grid collapses!' - none of this is specific to electronics. If the world went dark tomorrow I'd simply start figuring out how to grow my own food, generate my own power, etc - it's not about having all the answers at your fingertips, it's about taking whatever knowledge/information you have available and using it to synthesize new solutions, test and iterate in a rapid development cycle until you identify the most efficient solution to whatever the current problem is.
The problem solving process is the same regardless of where you apply it, and that's why I think it's the most important thing we can be teaching people. I just haven't yet figured out a way to quantify it in a easily teachable process - and I think that's the biggest problem we face in terms of education. Problem solving is hard to quantify and even harder to test or grade, which makes it difficult to base our educational system on - but it's probably the single most critical skill someone can posses these days.
Like a few of the above commentors,
I too thought of the book "Diamond Age" where
a "smart book" provided education. Note that in the story there were live humans interacting with the child possessed the book.
I was also reminded of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was not a wiki. Its cover was stamped with "Don't Panic" yet some of its entries were rather shallow (eg "Earth: Mostly Harmless")
Since you mentioned "baby boomer's," the baby boomer's are the first generation to be totally subservient to the entertainment industry.
Fred
My two youngest, who spent much of their formative youths rasslin' text-based role-playing games, aced all their spelling tests, commanded amazing vocabularies, and had no trouble with sentence structure and short composition. During that brief period of game evolution, when a textual ui (for story exposition and player communication) was cost-effective, it was as if they'd spent all their time reading animated comic strips.
I think that era has passed -- economical memory and fast audio decompression has made text interfaces obsolete. Sure, kids spend lots of time "texting" one another, but the do so in a stripped-down, highly-compressed language that I certainly don't understand. (And texting will no doubt become old hat in the foreseeable future.)
The medium is a powerful one, no doubt about it. (The old fogey parent in me still cringes at the thought of a generation accustomed to Grand Theft Auto and first-person shooters running the country . . . )
The retirement & Social Security topic is a big one. Once the next generations get wind of what the national debt means, coulpled with the implications of the unfunded Boomer retirement bubble, things WILL change. (Don't count on getting that Social Security check forever, Gomer!)
I urge anyone concerned about the future changes
needed in education to view an absolutely brilliant 18 minute talk by Ken Robinson... download the video podcast from itunes, or visit www.ted.com Funny, informative and truly relevant.
I think the fact that so many of the people leaving comments here chose to "clarify" the quote from Bye Bye Birdie - which was TOTALLY redundant since Mr. C says right in the beginning: "Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way? What's the matter with kids today?-- Paul Lynde, Bye Bye Birdie" -- I wonder about anyone's ability to "learn" from the screen instead of the "class". (Although Lynda.com is a favorite of mine.)
I'm turning 60 very soon and I just finished the second toughest level of HALO 2 on my XBox (which my 62 year old wife bought for me.) I get it. And I don't expect to ever see real educational software on this platform (no keyboard or voice input.)
Where I live (city to remain nameless) the newspaper revealed that we have a 65% dropout rate in the public high schools. Those drop outs don't "value" education. Their parents, most likely, didn't get good educations either and thus don't require the kids to actually hang in there and learn. The parents don't think it will matter. "Come work in the family business...." They can't dig ditches, or expect many other low paying, entry level jobs that are disappearing.
I'm beginning to believe that a small portion of our society will demand good schools for their kids, good tools, good teachers. And they will pay for it. And their kids will run the country in the future. Can they learn online? Sure - but SOCIAL skills are as basic as reading, if you want to survive in this world. So the need to gather "together" for learning will remain a positive in the equation of teaching the next and the next generation.
On Charlie Rose the other night, the head of the Blackstone Hedge Fund said that the real cost of Social Security, Medicare and the Drug Plan - will be $44,000,000,000,000. No country (China, India) will "loan" us that much....so America is really going to change. And our noble ideals of a classless society will have to wait a few generations when the survivors stand up and demand it. Finally - research shows that the Ivy League schools like Harvand and Yale, etc. - were founded by Churches whose members believed that without an educated populace, the COUNTRY they had built would be inherited by those too ignorant to maintain and care for it. They just aren't building anymore "United States of America".
Bob,
I think you're a bit off on this idea. Authentic education takes discipline, not diversion. Like conditioning Pavlov's dog, gaming produces games, not growth.
Tony
This is a no-brainer. OF COURSE we need to be involved in continous learning.
History: I'm about your age, Bob, and I've been in IT all my life since graduation (MSc in Chemistry if you really want to know). I would not be in the industry now if I wasn't continously learning about new operating systems, programming languages and system design paradigms: I started with Algol 60 on an Eliott 503 and am now writing Java for Linux or XP in INTEL boxes. In between there were detours through assembler, COBOL, PL/1 and RPG and a lot of C and data analysis.
For US readers, the Elliott was a discrete component British scientific machine that occupied a room and spoke only Algol and assembler. Mid 60s tech.
If I didn't continouusly pick up new skills I'd be in the dustbin o'history.
The Broasway play "Bye Bye Birdie" was writen by Michael Stewart, with lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse. Paul Linde's character sings the song.
The Broasway play "Bye Bye Birdie" was writen by Michael Stewart, with lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse. Paul Linde's character sings the song.
I have a choice, do I post to your third article on this subject or not.
I like to think that if I was on the titanic when it hit the ice berg I would be one of those that did not give up and go back and dance, but looked around for a way to build a small boat or something.
In my educated view the planet is in big trouble for many reasons and the next generation after me is most likely not to live as long as me.
Moving the goal posts to suit the situation in a post modernistic manner has happened before in history with crazy results. I used to wonder how anyone could have thought like that back then, but now I wonder how come we do now. I wonder too, when we all agree everything is wonderful, is that when we will be allowed to die. I hope not. The boat has not yet sunk, so I am hopeful still.
I agree with your premise but I feel the need to make three comments:
1. You mention that kids today will have a life-span 20 years greater than ours. That's very pessimistic. I expect 100 to be their 50.
2. The changes you describe will be delayed in Europe because their very low (well below replacement level) birthrates mean their next generation will be a much smaller portion of the population and thus won't wield as much power as ours.
3. Speaking as a 45 year old guy who plays Halo 3 at least once a day, I think these changes will come even faster than you expect.
Lifetime learners? They have always existed, and they'll welcome technology gadgets and educational games as tools for aquiring skills and knowledge. But lifetime non-learners have also always existed. And to them these gadgets will be as useless as they perceive school to be now. "Aw, Mom, do I have to play that computer game again?"
A similar dual-nature exists regarding changing careers. It may become more common to change those jobs or careers which require less training to achieve an acceptable level of competence. But I'm guessing the best business leaders, research scientists, musicians, doctors, etc are men and women who have invested years of training and experience in their chosen field. Sure, the location and assignment may change, and they'll pick up new hobbies on the side. But generally, you can't be among the best in your field in a short time.
I do see technology gadgets helping someone learn more in less time. Games and simulators are great for mimicing real life with no serious consequences for failure. But who's going to write those games? Do you want your surgeon to learn from playing "Surgery Simulator" when it was written by a geeky first year med student?
Bob
Future is in multiple choices. Same as candle manufacturers still do their job same will be with education. Kids will just have more choices than we had. Traditional schools will be available same as multiple other options, Books and newspapers are still around and will be around regardless of digital print. Multiple choices will be available to all. That will give much wider pool of educated and informative people than is available today and that is great thing.
Also Steve Jobs was right - phone and iphone/itouch devices will have enormous impact on our life - including educational material
Also Steve Jobs was right - phone and iphone/itouch devices will have enormous impact on our life - including educational material
Also Steve Jobs was right - phone and iphone/itouch devices will have enormous impact on our life - including educational material
Also Steve Jobs was right - phone and iphone/itouch devices will have enormous impact on our life - including educational material
Also Steve Jobs was right - phone and iphone/itouch devices will have enormous impact on our life - including educational material
I am really sorry for posting so many times last sentence - using this for the first time - it gives me failed post and still posts it
While not a complete miss, it is a common misconception that a magic encyclopedia can teach. While there are always examples of those who have taught themselves from such devices, those people were exceptional and would have excelled no matter what.
The Achilles heel of such a tool is it's complete inability to teach one how to learn and how to think critically. For this to even be within the realm of possibility requires a level of AI that we are not even close to attaining. Even Bob innately realizes this even though he doesn't seem to recognize it with his example of the helicopter. It's one thing to know how to turn the knob but is a completely different thing to know when to turn the knob or even if you should.
Further, there is an extremely good chance for dark and dangerous outcomes on relying on such things to educate. We can't even keep our inbox clear of security problems, imagine the perilous possible outcomes of relying on technology to educate. What happens when governments and corporations figure out they can influence entire generations by fiat or malevolence?
I agree that computers in their current and near future incarnations have wonderful and completely useful place as knowledge augmentation devices. Knowledge augmentation, however is not the same as teaching and computers are not the answer to truly educating a student. A current example of this is the all too common use of calculators in math classes. Students learn to key in numbers and hit operators but they never learn why, to them PI is 3.14 when it is in fact a ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Knowing 3.14 may help you in a test but will never help you visualize the area of a circle or the volume of a cylinder; A subtle but important difference.
>24/7 mobile Google with a conscience
Harry Harrison, "I always do what teddy says".
The potential educational tool, or lack thereof, that fascinates me the most is the humble driving sim. The GT5 preview is outstanding, and for the want of some surburban road craft challenges, the obscene tradgedy of scraping dead young males and their victims from the road might be reduced in both frequency and severity.
Governments increase fines and do so little about using contemporary technology to increase the level of education instead. Boys will be boys but a window into the potential flaws in their driving technique might just help that little bit to moderate their behaviour.
The current head-in-the-sand approach to driver ed ( at least in Australia ) is about as successful as the religious approach to sex ed in the sixties ( A clue - very ineffective ). Using more interesting and familiar technology such as the game boxen might just get a bit more of the message across.
Keep up the good job Bob!
Bob,
Maybe I'm just far off on this, but I still think you're missing something important. Education may be "for" the things you say, but schooling is also for rationalizing social class. And that sort of function doesn't just go away without a fight; it adapts, even to an unstoppable tide.
Here's what I'd ask about the changes you envision. Will there be credit for what's "studied"? If so, will there be standards to make that credit meaningful? And if so, who will determine what "study" deserves credit and what does not? I think professional gatekeeping would likely survive just fine.
Of course, it's possible that in this new environment, there will finally be no usable measure of what one has studied, only a menu of tests for what one has learned. The question then might be, will it be legal to discriminate against someone who hasn't proven their mastery of some material irrelevant to a job? Would gatekeeping survive in the form of (effectively) mandatory testing? GREs for everyone, every year, emblazoned on our profile pages?
There are some darker possibilities for where this could go, and it's important to explore those too.
I wish I knew where the statistic about our students today likely having half a dozen or more careers in their lifetime came from. Karl Fisch uses it in his "Did You Know" video and you mention it here as well. The problem with this is while I don't disagree that our children today will likely change jobs more often than previous generations did I don't think we have the same idea of job or career. It is not like we will need to prepare students to go from one day being a truck driver and the next being asked to perform brain surgery. These careers and jobs will more likely be in related fields. I suspect the whole idea has more to do with the nature of employment shifting from the majority of the workforce being company employees with stable career-long jobs to a workforce of mainly independent contractors. We need to prepare our students for a world in which they will have to brand themselves and constantly sell their services. Business and marketing skills will be essential as will the ability to leverage read-write media tools such as those we currently classify as web 2.0.
I consider myself already among those who have fallen into this type of employment relationship with my career. While I do currently work for a school district I have held and continue to hold many different roles for many different employers. For my full-time job I am a technology curriculum integration specialist, for my part-time job I am an online art teacher, and on the side I do workshops, write, paint, and sell my artwork in galleries. I continually have to market myself as an education technology professional as well as an artist and art teacher. I currently have 3 very different careers but they all work together nicely. I contend that this kind of employment is the type we need to prepare students for, not some economy where individuals will go from one distinctly career to the next.
Okay, so maybe playing a well-fleshed-out Beowolf game for 20 hours might get you through a test
BUT
Would those 20 hours be better spent READING? i.e. you would know more after 20 hours of reading?
Would two hours be equally well-spent watching the film before reading?
Would the game garner an appreciation of the form and structure of the POETRY?
Would the game EVER be able to respond to questions in the same way a passionate and informed teacher could?
Would we be sacrificing reading skills for less useful ones?
Will we surrender to short attention spans?
And let's not forget the glaring problem in that you assume PASSING A TEST IS A VALID MEASURE OF EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS.
I could go on. I find this whole concept depressing. In my experience, NOTHING can replace a good teacher.
Like Bob, I am a (tail-end) baby boomer, a couple of days ago I went to a museum and rented a small device with a commentary selected by numbers on the display cases. An extension of what Bob is describing would see wireless PDAs and EVERYTHING of any interest in our environment would have a number (or numbers for different aspects, e.g historical or architectural references) with a commentary describing it to you on demand. That's what I call an educational opportunity, everyday would truly be a schoolday!
I am always amazed at the world Bob imagines the future will be. It's so so different to that I imagine!
Bob, hows about factoring in the three big issues-
1. In 1980 I watched a program about a mini-Ice Age which had gone missing - and first heard the phrase “Global Warming”. I remember 'cause it was a joke on a (warm) late holiday that year.
Here in the UK, the disturbance of seasons is amazing. I do not meet people who wonder if the climate is changing; we have been watched this happen out of our windows for nearly 10 years. We see it happening.
Weather has shifted, “milded”, moved so February is like April. Now, given a system with an 800 year thermal inertia (Earth's) - should we be able to see significant changes in a lifetime? Nope. Massive slew is happening. That is a Bad Sign.
And all the signs point to things getting worst faster then expected. A year ago, it was though that we would be OK if we made the changes A - L. Around new year (2008) we were told we actually need (as a global society) to make changes A - Q. Meanwhile, politicos talk about the possibility of making changes A - C (but somehow, nothing happens...)
Enough change, in time, will never happen.
2. The oil is running out. There have been very few finds since the 1980's (google for “peak oil”). Our society is one based on freely available energy, stored from the past in vast quantity. Planetary crude oil is about half gone right now; snag is... usage rates are very high. Oil's second half is only good for a couple of decades (see “Half Gone”).
Well, it won't “run out” - under capitalism all that happens is scarcity cost drives the $ price up.
Think x10 for, say, 2020. Fancy a trip to the filling station around then? Are you wealthy enough to get to work?
3. Capitalism wants to put it's money where the growth is. China is growing madly - so ways have been found to suck accessible wealth out of the US economy (i.e. loot people's pockets quietly) and run away with that cash to better places - like China.
It'll come back when US growth exceeds that of China. For that to happen, the US economy will have to fall below that of China's - and start over.
Simply put - as long as US standard of living is above China's (or India's) then it still has a way to fall. Alas, now the society of the West must complete with that of the 3rd World. Cheapest gets to grow.
----
OK, now lets put this lot together and project for - somewhere like 2030-2050
Most of the southern states are unliveable and look like New Orleans. They are flooded by sea water.
In the dry lands, skys and roads are empty. People cannot afford to fill their cars. The dollar crash, raised oil prices and mass unemployment / mass migration from the South have made many 20th century infrastructures untenable. Power cuts are normal, as is heatstroke / dehydration.
Unexpectedly, food supply is a problem. Changed rainfall patterns mean that the grain belt has lowered output. Moreover, industrialised farming consumes 10 units of energy as oil for every energy unit of food delivered (that didn't used to matter, did it?).
In America, starvation has become an issue.
Those who can leave - have left. The wealthy now live in India or Canada, were a British heritage means English is widespread and familiar, soaked into the culture.
America is actually one of the better off places to live; some (Africa in particular) are hit very badly.
Humanity on Earth is dying.
** These scenarios have been known for some time now **
The signs we should expect for now are:
* raising food prices
* raising oil prices
* effective devaluation of the currency vs. Asiatic nations
* a deep recession in the West (perhaps depression in the US)
Bob, that's the future I see a couple+ decades out.
So - let's talk some more about iPods, media based education, retirement plans and aiming for the Moon. And hide away from the falling sky.
Steve
Ok,
a) I'm y'wifes age. But I'm still a neoluddite, despite having written software since 14.
b) my children love wii, but prefer the trampoline. Or the book of Harry Potter.
c) See http://timesup.org for a real alterative interaction with computers.
Ok,
a) I'm y'wifes age. But I'm still a neoluddite, despite having written software since 14.
b) my children love wii, but prefer the trampoline. Or the book of Harry Potter.
c) See http://timesup.org for a real alterative interaction with computers.
Minor point - though most students don't understand it at the time (and may never), Beowulf is taught not for the storyline, but for its place in the evolution of literature. Even as literature moves online and morphs media, it may be that some sense of how it got to its current state may be worth trying to communicate.
Doesn't mean that can't be communicated through a game-oriented path - just that there's a lot that gets "taught," some intended and some not.
Oh you children. The idea is a SF meme from well before The Diamond Age. Fred Pohl did it in detail. For that matter, you can find it in some of Heinlein's juveniles that date from the '50s and '60s.
The challenge isn't inventing the idea. The challenge is rarely inventing the idea (or Arthur Clarke of blessed memory would be fabulously rich). The challenge is actually turning the idea into something actionable. (While we're on the SF theme, one pretty well known SF writer actually invented the "blue light" method for pre-CGI special effects to make a $100 short story work. He decided it actually could be made to work, patented it, MADE it work, sold it, and retired rich. True story.)
Try the key questions: How do we develop interpersonal socialization? Are we at risk of developing a massively stratified society based on a single biological quirk: ease of learning in one specific way? Will human happiness be increased by the loss of idiot social cliques in school? What will replace Friday night football?
Yeah, the future is coming. By definition it will be part what we expect and part of what blindsides us. Getting the details right is what is hard and what is interesting.
PS: Get off the "the world is ending stuff." If true, off topic. If not true, waste of time. Anyway, the world is always ending (cf The Black Death, Attila the Wrath of God, British deforestation, the great influenza epidemic, just about every Polynesian island society, my dear darling daughter); either we get through it...in which case this discussion is interesting...or we don't...in which case it's all moot.
I recently visited an elementary school here in Ulsan. They constantly apologised for being "poor" but all the teachers had a printer, computer, net connection, and big screen TV. What did they want at this school? Why was I there? Because Koreans can't speak English and they know it. They employ about 17,000 of us to speak English with. ESL is a huge industry here in Korea and hasnt been solved by technology. I have spent about $500 on sophisticated dictionaries; I have been here for over 4 years in total but Koreans demand speaking time with foreigners. I also love the odd idea of the panacea of technology, i.e. voting machines and PDAs for the American census. I know you will blame pork barrel politics, bureaucracy etc but arent there aspects of life that cant be improved by technology? Can we accept that there are limits to technology? Social goods may always need to be delivered by and for humans. Let machines do what they are good at but when there are fundamental social issues at hand, democracy, education, medicine Im not sure were ready to entrust many of these things to machines.A valuable part of education is socialization as was stated but then why do you ignore the role that teachers play? What I find interesting, as I get older is the role that context, history, and insight, wisdom if you will, will become more and more relevant in education versus the empty acquisition of facts. I think that only good, experienced teachers will be able to provide context and technology can provide the facts (for rote memorization.)True education, comes from within, shedding past paradigms and developing insights to any given subject and it can be shared, person to person.
Learning is a combination of curiosity and discipline.
The televison age through which we are passing, has had the effect of reducing curiosity to What You See is What You Get. Imagination stands aside.
I was raised in the radio age, when voice and sound effects provided the mise-en-scene. Who knew if jack Armstrong had blond or brown hair. Each listener could visualize the Jack and Uncle Jim, and Betty as he or she wished to.
Imagination is a necessary condition for curiosity. Education provided the tools and the discipline. The act of learning is the act of creation, of understanding.
The good teacher sits at the juncture between his love and respect for the subject matter and his respect for the student. (Sexism is unintended.) Initial learning is abetted by these characteristics.
In my seventy fifth year I remain curious and look forward to the experiences which energize new learning every day. That is continuing education. I was blessed by a love of reading and of numbers manipulation. I was taught precision in each -- phonics of a sort and definitely non-fuzzy math.
A grounding is necessary before one passes into kindergarten. In America, unfortunately, we have an increasing group of households, run too often by single parents, who no longer believe that education is an economic and a social good. That is essentially because society has taught them that interclass mobility is not a desired outcome. Survival, paid for by the state, is enough. The bottom decile, if not upwardly mobile is a sea anchor dragging back the Republic.
Parent input is essential, because the parent is the first teacher (see above). It is clearly the family structure which has driven the interclass mobility through education which we see in our Asian immigrants.
William Faulkner spoke at his Nobel ceremony that "Man must not only endure, he must prevail."
Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" is a marvel (as are all of his books until the most recent one.) I read the interactive book parts to my nine year old granddaughter and she got it.
Devices by themselves will not cut it. The child is placed on the seat of knowledge -- a three legged stool. The legs are: the family, the classroom (or educational device if you will) and the governance. Each must be present and in balance, if knowledge is to be advanced.
Regardless of what others say, the excellence of this sermonette is that it should cause all of us to step back and think about the learning process in the age of technology. I am 66 and spent 25 years in the training and development field, I think you are making some very important statements here. I am trying to understand how the younger generations see and feel about the world around them and you have given me some solid insights to contemplate. Thanks.
I've enjoyed your last three columns; over time I've found myself engaged in the institution of education from lots of different perspectives (parent, teacher, supportive husband to a school board member, etc) as well as being a self-categorized life-long learner, and often ponder what it's all about and where it's going. Your columns point out some interesting directions, but I feel that all this discussion needs to be grounded in two very fundamental definitions:
1. Learning: The acceptance of information by an individual that influences their subsequent decisions.
2. Education: An individual's sum total of Learning.
My essential point is that the essential act of Learning will not change. How it is facilitated will, but technology isn't going to supplant the fundamental skills of reading and observation. Texts (not "textbooks," any information encoded in an alphabet) and face-to-face dialogue will continue to support learning well into any incorporation of immersive and hyperlinked environments into the process.
Don't get wrong, I am very excited to be participating in the incorporation of new ways to facilitate Learning (Google - instant access to information, Second Life - immersive environment for reinforcement, etc...), but all of these things are just facilitators for the essential act of Learning.
Late to the conversation and this thought-provoking series, but I wanted to mention a few things:
1. Why public schools are the way they are: read John Taylor Gatto. This brief presentation on his site provides a good introduction. Gatto is a libertarian, but a tolerable and thoughtful one. He's also a former NYC teacher of the year who finally left the system in disgust.
2. What should be the paedagogical priority from ages 11 to 18 (whom I will refer to as "kids" here): critical thinking and problem solving, both of which are prerequisites for the sort of practical "search-based" and "game-based" lifelong educational processes you discuss. Right now, critical thinking skills come, if at all, as a by-product of learning about English, or algebra, or chemistry; the reverse is more likely the better model.
Teachers still have great value in this model, and so do schools. If administrators (and parents) are willing to accomodate the healthy questioning of authority that comes with critical thinking, such a system can work -- with one proviso: the kids have to be at school voluntarily. I know, I know ...
3. Why would a kid want to go to school? Well, there is that interpersonal socialisation factor. Kids need places to meet and engage with other kids in different contexts. When the context is romantic, they go to under-21 clubs. When the context is physical competition and excercise, they have baseball or soccer or basketball or the gym. When the context is cultural, they have movies or TV or videogames. And when the context is misbehaving together, well ... I'm sure you know all about the options there.
The first, positive, common factor of those contexts: all relatively free-wheeling, all voluntary activities where they have choice. And yet, when the context is intellectual exploration, they're stuck with a rules-bound, hierarchical factory that they're forced to attend.
The second, negative, common factor of those contexts: they don't usually encourage a diverse social milieu. One of the things public schools do well is give kids the opportunity to meet other kids from different social, racial and economic groups (and they've discovered over the years that forced busing isn't the only way to achieve that goal). And it's a constant, regardless of generation, teenagers like that idea a lot.
So ... allow for alternative learning choices and venues (made by kids or families on a day-day basis -- some days it's better to learn math by building a wooden bannister), set the conditions for school to become a place intellectually curious kids want to go (but don't have to go), amd empower teachers at those schools with one primary mission (teach critical thinking skills) alongside sharing their personal or professional interest.
What's needed to make this happen: a recognition and acknowledgement that technology (not specific proprietary solutions) has removed the educational monopoly from schools; trust in kids (and families) to make their own educational decisions (and trusted means for evaluating what educational content has credibility); and a willingness to jettison educational models that were outmoded at least a decade before Apple ][s and TRS-80s and Commodore-64s started appearing in American households.
Since there are heavily vested interests opposing all of this from the "top-down" direction, it's more than likely that educational change will be driven from the "bottom-up," whether the authorities and experts like it or not. Home schooling and charter schools; kids texting in class and Facebook study groups; Wikipedia and Google; the MIT and Phoenix online courses: all a start. But as a great entertainer (OK, two: Jolson and BTO) once said, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."
Now this is forward thinking, leaving the 'agricultural mindset' behind. We need children to develop a fast paced 'mindset' to cope the the rapid changes now, and the faster ones in the future. This is right thinking, future thinking and totally incomprehensible to those stuck in 20th century. Those stuck are like the indigenous people of Australia who can't cope with today's society, and are still stuck in the 'hunter gatherer mindset'. I am heartened by the flavor of discussion, and feel ‘The Pulpit’ readers are mentally prepared.
I am with the others on Diamond Age and have read it several times. But, remember there was an actual human behind the book that interacted with the young girl (Nell), personalizing the experience- becoming her mother figure in the end.
I think good video games would be an excellent way to learn. They need to get progressively harder and build upon skills learned earlier. That being said, these are mental skills. You need real world experience (tactile) to fly that helicopter.... with me in it.
Oh come on, why haven't any of you bozos mentioned VIVO? With talking computers, our children will not need to learn to read or write! Of course, all of us old farts will say, "Kids that cannot read or write?!?! WTF?!?!" Yet if we force them to read because of tradition, those third-world bozos who are not bogged-down with such archaic knowledge will blow us away when they enter the workforce.
I concur with your analysis of the education process.
I have experienced all that you write about ( I'm you father's age ).
I also think you might find a companion thinker in Gerald Hawkins. His book "Mindsteps to the Cosmos" deals with the progress in thought brought about by great breakthroughs.
There is a disturbing aspect to his analysis – that the acceleration of change is not sustainable.
Thank you for your sermons.
I concur with your analysis of the education process.
I have experienced all that you write about ( I'm you father's age ).
I also think you might find a companion thinker in Gerald Hawkins. His book "Mindsteps to the Cosmos" deals with the progress in thought brought about by great breakthroughs.
There is a disturbing aspect to his analysis – that the acceleration of change is not sustainable.
Thank you for your sermons.
I am with the others on Diamond Age and have read it several times. But, remember there was an actual human behind the book that interacted with the young girl (Nell), personalizing the experience- becoming her mother figure in the end.
Stephenson contrasts Nell's bespoke version of the Primer, which includes a contract with a human "actor" to supplement the tech, with the bootleg versions (sans "ractor") distributed to the Chinese girls. One of the points he's making here is that technology alone isn't enough to nurture creativity and independence. The bootlegs give Nell a very effective and educated "Mouse Army," but they're soldiers rather than leaders.
Stephenson was making this point in reference to contemporary Western (open-ended, nurturing, flexible) and Eastern (rote, impersonal, "automated") ideal approaches to education.
I'd further argue that it's by leaning toward the Western ideal, recognising the dysfunction of the factory school model and trying (albeit in a very imperfect way) to make up for its shortcomings, that the US was able to maintain its global lead in technological innovation for so long.
Unfortunately, at the same time that Eastern countries are recognising this, and setting up systems to balance both approaches (e.g. elite Western style schools for cherry-picked students), the U.S. is regressing back toward the Eastern-style factory school model by implementing programmes such as NCLB (i.e. "teach to the test"). Combine this with the population stats, and this does not work out in America's favour.
C3P0 where are we?
By the second decade of the twenty-second century, assuming humanity hasn't destroyed itself, or if the fabled Singularity hasn't come to pass, there will be new definitions for what it means to be literate to function at any basic level in society. Alphanumeric symbols as we know them will be drastically different to reflect communication skills and requirements in the digital world of the 22nd century. Very few people will write or even type words, sentences, paragraphs or essays - it will be something more drastic and reduced than George Orwell's Newspeak, except instead of the governments imposing this reduction of language, the culture and the technology will be the culprits. English as written and spoken now may very well become the New Latin among scholars of many different studies. Arthur C. Clarke's idea of a Braincap - where education, skills, knowledge, experiences are downloaded directly to a person's brain - will replace rote type education - what will be stressed in learning environments of future is ability of how to apply knowledge, develop innate skills and creative abilities and learn and appreciate value of working with other individuals. Working together won't necessarily mean being in same room, much collaborative work will be achieved via wireless networks through portable devices or even through Braincap - electronic telepathy. If war is still a major problem, the most damaging device one could inflict on a large technological culture would be a wide range EMP device detonated at correct height to afflict an area the size of Europe or North America, East Asia or Australia. Because future society is most likely to be very dependent on hi-tech, and knowing human nature, back-up for such a catastrophe may still be woefully inadequate, this option may not be used by any nation or alliance but more likely nationless terrorist factions.
Bob,
1) several posters have alluded to the issue of the rise of the entertainment industry during our life times. to my mind this giant artist and creative imagination employer, is not interested in education unless you can prove that it EARNS money in return SALES.
2) I was working on problem-solving software to be embedded in training software in the 1980's for Northrop. At that time I was dreaming of how that technology would be transferred over to education. Well I am still dreaming. I don't see any off-the shelf educational software for someone OLDER than 8 that is as advanced as the labor-intensive cumbersome to write stuff we did back then.
3) The reason I see is that the people who buy games don't want to spend money to learn something that slows them down, unless persuaded otherwise they will choose to be entertained. Who is going to persuade them to choose otherwise? The free market?
4) Some have mentioned the social interaction angle, BUT what does that "social interaction" assume? It assumes VALUES. How do you teach values, like honesty, self-sacrifice, consideration, humility, care, kindness, piety, courage, self denial, detachment, etc. (52 of them if you go to
virtuesproject.org) using ipods?
Bob, Your example of Beowulf opened a world of possibilities to me. I remember being in high school and suffering (although I loved literature) through this story. It was dry and virtually unintelligible for me, and I only tolerated it, because of its stature in the history of Western literature. However, I have always been able to understand how the story must have stirred earlier generations, who did not read a dry text, translated into an archaic version of their own language. Imagine sitting around a fire, darkness encroaching from every direction, firelight dancing eerily off the surrounding rocks and trees, as an old, wise man, who is telling because he loves to do so, chants the great struggle. Do you not think that the real meaning of the myth might sink in to your very soul? Now, remember your own experience attempting to answer your teacher's questions, such as, "What was Beowulf feeling as he slew Grendel?" "Who does Grendel's mother represent in today's society?" Who the hell cared? And how has it made a difference to your life? Now, imagine a future in which your grade depends upon how you play the virtual reality game. You can only answer questions that are posed by Grendel, or someone else in the game. And you can only know the answers by having progressed through the game. You must survive. What will you feel and what will you say as some character points to Grendel's slain mother and says, "Who is that? What does she mean in modern life?" Now you have felt it and know it on a completely different level. I, myself will never have an emotional attachment to Beowulf, don't care who embodies the evil wench in my world, etc. But my intellect tells me that it is important that we understand Beowulf's struggles, so that we can understand our own. With technology and its possibilities, I think we will not only have come full circle with this particular tale, but we may well have made several orbits. Applied to all sorts of literature from authors through all the ages, there might be something to this new way of educating.
"In the Diamond Age" by Neil Stephenson predicted this with a lot of flair by creating an interactive book that taught through lessons performed extemporaneously by paid actors. It is one of my favorites and highly recommended. I'm from your generation Robert, and I hope these kids can hold their pants up long enough to get smart enough to buy ones that fit.
Society decides what it wants to pass on to the next generation. It is up to this generation to convince the next those things are important enough to learn.
By the principle of regression to the mean from genetics, the best bet to make right now is probably that more things will stay the same than change.
If you consider this carefully, it seems obvious, and the ramifications are profound.
"-"
The beginning is already here with distance learning. I live in Qatar and an associate is getting an MBA from a school in North America over the internet. My daughter will do summer school over the internet so that she can work and fashion school around her schedule. The next step is a morphing of this distant learning to a more personal form.
'with an on-off switch' - and therein lies the problem with this neat idea. People will turn them off.
Thank heavens we cant turn our *real* consciences off! (well, most of us can't)
We will increase our need and desire for continuing education in adult life but the classroom will not go away because young students cannot gain social and interpersonal skills from a digital device. Many children have a rough time at home and no PDA can give them the help they need.
Brings to mind the "Illustrated Primer" in Neil Stephenson's _Diamond_Age_.
I agree education is a necessity throughout our lives but children need structure and guidance not just facts. To prepare children for the world is more than giving them a computer, cell phone, and software. The classroom of the future will be a creative discovering one - sort of virtual reality and interaction with other students and teachers. After all we are still human and social beings.
This concept fits well with the recent "nerve tapping neckband" - text to speech advancements... (http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13449-nervetapping-neckband-allows-telepathic-chat.html) I would love to be the smartest man in the room - always having an informed opinion - think of the opportunities!
.... I know kung fu!
Bob was almost on target with this vision, but as a technophile he is too quick to assume that a gizmo could replace flesh and blood mentors and peers. The PDA that gives us constant access to training and analysis/editorial content about whatever subject we currently need to be informed is feasible. The digital wise counselor doesn't work as well as choosing your friends wisely and finding experienced mentors you respect. The most effective teachers are highly relational, and that will become even more apparent as access to content becomes trivial and education revolves around learning what to do with it.
A correction that somehow curiously does not seem off-topic— "...that lever attached to the floor, which is called a cyclic." The one on the floor is the collective. This brings to mind the issue Wikipedia and others are having trouble tackling: determining what is or is not authoritative. You certainly don't want to try to fly a helicopter if your PDA accidentally latched onto some "wanna-be" pilot's semi-fictional handbook and is feeding you information that just happens to sound authoritative.
I read your column every week to learn about things out of my sphere. This week's column is in my sphere, and I think it's likely that you've mostly got it wrong. One reason for thinking so is that this prediction has been made for several decades, and it hasn't come true yet. Each time it doesn't come true, if anyone notices, they blame it on immature technology but assert that we're finally there. I think there are many reasons why role plays, simulations, and self-directed haven't become central. Some of the barriers have been economic: can such interactive software find a sufficient market to attract dollars for support, marketing, etc. before the software becomes obsolete (the more interactive the game, the more vulnerable it has been to changes in operating systems, etc. and that's not counting changes in the content, the interface, and current ideas of what it's most important to learn).
Rather than go on, I'll point out that the usual Cringely column is full of incident: people doing this, companies doing that. These three Cringelly columns have been far more conceptual and detached from such details. Make this more Cringely: do we see any such changes in some number of people learned in 2007 (versus say 2000). Are those changes of a sort that indicate that, in the near future, what has been an important enrichment strategy for the last decade will become instead the skeleton and muscles of the education for a significant minority of children or college/adults? I don't see any such signs, just a long, long line of predictions.
I am not sure which is worse admitting to watching The Osbournes or knowing that the "older companion" was in fact the sibling of Jack and Kelly. She had a modicum of good taste and opted out of the reality TV scene.
As the antithesis of cool I am proud to say that there are no video games in my household with the exception of a Gameboy which my 9 year old son rarely plays. He opts for riding this bike, skateboard or snowboard.
I am a firm believer that "place" is more important now more then ever and that the future belongs to the creative class.
The Wachowski-esque view that you will be able to jack in and learn kung fu is just as naive as Lake Wobegon, "Where all the children are above average".
Thanks for what you said this week. I have often thought that the current education system is set up to fail the majority of students for the sake of the few who get it, which is as true in Australia where I live as it sounds in the US. I have found that "the system" seems to have become geared to content, rather than concept, and teaches people what the system thinks they need to know, rather than how to think and find information for themselves. Part of this is probably due to the fact that the pay for teachers isn't enough to attract the people who can teach the right way.....
Why would anyone wish to watch Ozzie when Johnny
Bravo is so much better and more educational.
I was hoping with some darwinian weeding of the gene pool that obvious rejects like the Osbornes would be eliminated. Ozzy followed the maxim that if you want chix go into Rock and Roll. Under no other circumstances do I see this troll procreating. England is not known for being the repository of "the beautiful people" and he and his children clearly demo this. They compound the issue by being dumb as a bag of rocks. Yikes they're ug. Thus you can sense my dissappointment they have enough money to buy their kids handlers. I was thinking a high priced luxury car or motorcycle combined with their stupidity would do them in. Thus while your article suggests optimism, in this feature I find dread of a world full of extremely spoiled and dreadfully ugly children. I know its not nice to talk about someones children this way but they are just that bad.
I was hoping with some darwinian weeding of the gene pool that obvious rejects like the Osbornes would be eliminated. Ozzy followed the maxim that if you want chix go into Rock and Roll. Under no other circumstances do I see this troll procreating. England is not known for being the repository of "the beautiful people" and he and his children clearly demo this. They compound the issue by being dumb as a bag of rocks. Yikes they're ug. Thus you can sense my dissappointment they have enough money to buy their kids handlers. I was thinking a high priced luxury car or motorcycle combined with their stupidity would do them in. Thus while your article suggests optimism, in this feature I find dread of a world full of extremely spoiled and dreadfully ugly children. I know its not nice to talk about someones children this way but they are just that bad.
I was hoping with some darwinian weeding of the gene pool that obvious rejects like the Osbornes would be eliminated. Ozzy followed the maxim that if you want chix go into Rock and Roll. Under no other circumstances do I see this troll procreating. England is not known for being the repository of "the beautiful people" and he and his children clearly demo this. They compound the issue by being dumb as a bag of rocks. Yikes they're ug. Thus you can sense my dissappointment they have enough money to buy their kids handlers. I was thinking a high priced luxury car or motorcycle combined with their stupidity would do them in. Thus while your article suggests optimism, in this feature I find dread of a world full of extremely spoiled and dreadfully ugly children. I know its not nice to talk about someones children this way but they are just that bad.
Sorry for the multiple...got stymied and flummoxed by the captcha........additional note: Did you read the anti-capitalist rant that included MMGW? .... dang these commie mmgw adherents really are chicken little incarnate!
Of course we don't want the equivalent of the pyramidal personal digital assistants in Frederik Pohl / C. M. Kornbluth classic "Wolfbane", in which the pyramidal PDA's went from teaching children to eventually enslaving humanity.
Is there anyone else who thinks that decentralizing everything isn't a good idea? Think of people trained by the 24x7 google bluetooth to fly planes, and then they crash a commercial jetliner. What do the Feds investigate to prevent such problems in the future? The Internet? Good luck with that.
There's a reason why things are the way they are, and that's accountability. Lawyers are big on that. Can you imagine what would happen if lawyers got a hold of some of these improvements in education and they turned out to not work to spec?
While technology may push education in one direction, lawyers and accountability will push education in quite another. And the two won't necessarily mix well.
One additional thing is that if decentralized education makes it more difficult to find canaries in the coal mine (like, say several suspected terrorists sign up for flight training ala 9/11), how do you track such things in the future without resorting to incredibly invasive measures?
I think you have forgotten the all important function of "baby sitting" that school provides? Are we to leave are kids home alone with these machines?
And socialization, which is really what school is about? Sorry, but I think "virtual" socialization ala the SIMS is a very poor substitute. This is a larger issue with the internet and a bad trend in general in my book. Would our kids not be better of at a playground than online?
I agree with most of what you've said, but you have overlooked the real reason most of us leave school: to earn better money. At some point in every student's life, the "real world," with its demands, comes calling. Those of us who can keep one foot, or at least a toe, in the fount of knowledge by taking classes. Almost all of us though continue learning either through on-the-job experiences, or reading books and magazine, or even meeting and having dialog with interesting people.
Still, there is a transition from the more-or-less full-time pursuit of knowledge to the more-or-less full-time pursuit of money. I worked almost all the way through high school, but not in any field I later worked in. Still, learning to handle customers and be reliable in my duties was a critical development for me. In college I started doing money work that related to my school work. This was even more true as a grad student. But eventuallly I reached a point where I had to change my focus from what I love to learn to something that will support a family, home buying, various hobbies, and in the end, retirement. I'm fortunate to have always had work that I love and to have time to learn on my own. I think that is a trend already and that it will continue to gain momentum.
I'm truly interested to hear how you foresee this transition from being a student to a worker shaping up in our futures and specifically, will it start earlier or later in the lives of students in coming generations.
Great articles,
D
Bob,
Go read 'The Diamond Age' by Neal Stephenson. Then we'll talk.
-Bob
That last paragraph sounds a lot like the matrix... the idea of downloading knowledge directly to my brain sparked my interest then, and it has just become somewhat realistic with your words. Like apple's tv advertising of the iphone on ski trips to download the trails, instead of guessing and waiting until you reach the bottom, to figure out where you are. Who wants to pick up a pamphlet at every new destination when you could just use a PDA to get your desired info everywhere you go? One platform, endless possibilities..
Continuing full time, formal education after high school is a waste of time and money with a few exceptions that require intense study (doctors and lawyers come to mind). No one knows what they are really suited for at 18 years old, no matter what the tests say, so any work towards a 'major' is likely to be wasted. I know numerous people who majored in one thing, and then did something completely different for a profession.
But, continual learning as you work is phenomenal. Many jobs really aren't that difficult or need too much education at first. Anyone can learn most introduction skills. Then work, learn what you like, and learn some more. Don't stop. I'm almost 50, make 6 figures writing code, and started out with BASIC. Then assembler, COBOL, C++, PERL, Java, C#, Ruby, etc as I needed them, not as some school thought fit to teach it so I would forget it by the time I needed it or technology would obsolete it.
Wouldn't it be great to learn programming and debugging by video? Write code to defeat the dragon!! Fix this code segment to annhilate the monstor!!! What a great idea. Syntax and flows would become second nature, just like moving through a virtual world.
Where do I sign up!!! (And yes Bob ... I ROCK at Guitar Hero and DDR!!!)
John, where do you make 6 figures writing code? Most developers I know (and I used to be one of them) are griping about losing their jobs to offshoring.
Alot of globalization nimrods( new hunters ) posting in the comments. I will now educate and inform. Globalization is here to stay. Gripe all you want. You appear as children. OR...you can realize there is only one reality in this world. The world that IS. Lawyers or no lawyers this is going to get done. When the internet and all associated influences are done there will be no herding the cats back into their respective bags. Education WILL be liberated. I could hardly stand public school in the 60's and 70's for the lack of quality. I can only imagine what its like now where everyone is force fed crap information like "global warming". I shudder to think. These children will be liberated. They will outsource themselves as I have to Brazil. They will live more inspired lives than the cry baby union members and anti-capitalists have ever imagined or would allow for fear of independent thinking undermining their power.
.... as useful and accurate a commentary as the paperless office.
The technology of teaching has and will change, from writing on cave walls to peeps on twitter, but the important thing to understand is that how humans learn is remarkably constant. It's an issue of "wetware" not hardware or software ... and more of a learning problem than a technological teaching solution.
.... as useful and accurate a commentary as the paperless office.
The technology of teaching has and will change, from writing on cave walls to peeps on twitter, but the important thing to understand is that how humans learn is remarkably constant. It's an issue of "wetware" not hardware or software ... and more of a learning problem than a technological teaching solution.
The change in education has already begun. Look at the home schooling movement.
The change in education has already begun. Look at the home schooling movement.
The change in education has already begun. Look at the home schooling movement.
Bob - excellent insight as always.
There's a great soon to not be fiction book on just this: "the Diamond Age", by Neal Stephenson. This novel describes this same new world, with amazing what if's, in an astounding way. A world with no money, borders of a different kind, information determines rulers, and constant virtual learning - all through the novel eyes of a child; it's fascinating!
Hey Bob,
Did you know that Neal Stephenson wrote The Diamond Age?
Regards,
Reader of Comments.
"Educational" digital games are only fun for pre-schoolers who haven't been introduced to drift racing techniques yet. Your idea will never work and here's why: education is about deliberate change, which is always difficult without immediate reward. That is directly opposed to our predatorial instinct: to consume high-calorie foods and conserve physical energy as much as possible. (Education requires a lot of brainpower, and brainpower consumes a lot of physical energy). Why in heaven's name would a gamer waste any time on an educational game when he/she can zone out on World of Warcraft instead? I tell you, I have a 14-year old & I witness this phenomenon first-hand.
And it's way easier to clean a virtual room than a physical-reality room -- it's no wonder virtual reality is where kids like to spend their time most.
And why are companies like Microsoft and Google and video game publishers such industry giants all-of-a-sudden? It all has to do with various kinds of obsessive-compulsive addictions and manipulations thereof. Microsoft controls the PC and charges a tax per installation (that's how they got rich). Google provides an endless supply of freely published virtual territory to explore that hooks people obsessively-compulsively to click & search & explore endlessly for no real purpose after awhile. And video games are pure addiction: and the way they work is by shaming the gamer when he/she fails, and then providing a sense of accomplishment when he/she succeeds. It's the sense of accomplishment that is so addictive, artificially enhanced by the mockery they had to endure to earn it. I know, that sounds so absurd, huh: but it's like absinthe. Ever try that vile green witches brew? And yet it was so highly addictive in the '20s. Who has even heard of that crap today?
The digital gaming industry is in a spiral of escalating costs of mammoth productions and diminishing customers -- if the industry hasn't peaked yet, the zenith is close at hand. People are losing interest in droves -- they are being replaced faster by new kids -- but interest is waning in general.
For example, why do so many software packages have that function to search for updates on the internet these days? I believe, it is to tap into that obsessive-compulsive energy: to keep clicking to keep yourself up to date, and to always keep it just out of reach. Eventually we will grow weary of all that psychological manipulation & dump that nonsense en masse. I actually shudder to turn on this computer any more: what with Vista / AVG / Firefox / Miro / CCleaner / etc all scanning for a zillion updates the second it turns on, I tell you it is really getting out of hand! Half the time I cannot power on without requiring a reboot for all the 'updates'.
I am not 100% right about all this but I am at least partially correct about some things.
sigh... I have been waiting for a game with intellectual depth for some time. I am still waiting.
It just proves that all new ideas are first found in Science Fiction. Firstly The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson as mentioned above. Also this is similar to Raf's Fox in Arabesk trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood.
Not quite the same but in The Matrix Trinity needs to fly a helicopter and Cypher uploads the skill directly to her.
My 16-year-old daughter reads science fiction, as did I. She knows more about what's going on in the world because of that than many other kids (and adults) who read other stuff or don't read at all, regardless that they all rec'd the same public education. I think reading pretty much mirrors gaming. If written well, you can learn a lot, but still, some folks can't sit and read; probably some can't sit to view or interact with a screen either.
After reading many comments, I'll try to pull out some of the hidden assumptions.
1. Dealing with people is _always_ better than dealing with a computer program. Totally untrue. My daughter has a class called AIM (Applications In Mentoring) where they are supposed to 'bond' with these classmates--they'll be together the entire 3 years of high school. They are idiots. I would not let her go over to many of their houses. She wouldn't want to. The type of person you bond with is as important as the actual bonding process.
2. Nothing can replace a good teacher. That is true, but even a good teacher cannot teach every student. And conversely, a good student can learn despite having a bad teacher. Here's the technological fix tho: a good teacher cannot be cloned. Teaching schools demonstrate this principal completely. A good teaching program/game however, can be cloned.
3. Deciding on a curriculum is a key component of education. What does need to be learned by everyone? I'm not sure but here's a task for the U.N.: design a history of the world text/class/knowledgebase for a one semester class that _all_ nations can use. I'll bet there will be very little in there specifically about America, Canada, Russia or even China. We ought to be looking at history textbooks from other nations and seeing what other people do with the same set of facts.
As a game developer, one of the most important aspects we look into when developing games is how to train the player into using the gameplay mechanics we provide. The best modern example of this is in the game Portal (It's short, cheap and amazing). The trouble is most "educational" games come in trying to teach a lesson. A game doesn't work trying to teach lessons. It works when it provides tools to explore the world given and rewards curiosity and critical thinking. It could be done and change everything, but it will require one really good team to provide a template and really good salesman.
P.S. I have no association with Valve besides admiration.
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it's fun that xou concentrate on education lately becauese i think switching form programmer to teacher as a ful-time job - in the moment its one day a week - thanks for your input.
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