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Smart Kindergarten
A UCLA professor is working on set of sensors and data-capture applications to record a school classroom in intimate detail. The project webpage has more information; see also an older story. The professor apparently envisions actually deploying these sensors in a classroom next spring, but doesn't mention what school is willing to participate.
I'm a Kindergartner, Get Me Outta Here!
Starring MC Hammer
Vonal Declosion
Get the kids used to Big Brother early!!! We'll all be living under his gaze soon, so might as well give the tods a headstart!
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Now will all know who's been stealing lunches. And who secretly eats the crayons and glue.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
We'll have statistics on which color playdough is the most popular, as well as the optimal nap time.
Now they're gonna analyze all the "doctor" sessions in great detail.
Privacy for kindergardeners!!!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Wait this is America... it's for the children.
People think if they let fear run their lives willingly it will work out better compared to when governments used to do that forcibly.
Morons.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
By Christian Mignot
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
Electrical engineering Professor Mani Srivastava's seven-year-old daughter Megha provided the initial inspiration for a research project that may provide groundbreaking results in the fields of education and computer science.
Srivastava's purchase of a wireless educational toy that allows parents to survey their child's interactions through a PC spurred him to imagine the larger implications.
Along with his team of faculty assembled from the departments of electrical engineering and computer science and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Srivastava plans to outfit an entire first grade classroom - from inanimate objects like wooden building blocks and tabletops to the students themselves - with tiny electronic sensors.
"We want to use these devices in a classroom setting to see what we can infer from student's interactions and how they are associated with academic performance," Srivastava said.
The sensors are part of a new generation of devices that create sensor networks to sample physical environments and collect data.
The lessons this experiment may provide - including potential insight on teaching techniques, the speech of children, and the application of software and hardware in novel environments - have been deemed important enough for the National Science Foundation to provide $1.8 million in funding grants.
Students will wear caps with sensors called "iBadges" pinned to them, Srivastava said. These badges will track the location of the child and the physical orientation of the child's head, as well as capture their speech with small microphones.
Objects, such as puzzle pieces or board games, will be wired with sensors and used on task tables with magnetic systems under them to track location and usage. This will enable researchers to study the processes a student uses to complete tasks set by instructors.
In addition, a series of microphones and cameras will be placed at various locations around the classroom to further monitor students' activities. Srivastava said sound clips gathered from the microphones would enable researchers to study the speech of children - particularly those who are bilingual.
"With the microphones we can tell, for instance, when the students will switch from using English to Spanish or vice versa," he said.
All data collected by sensors, cameras and microphones is routed through a central computer system utilizing software called Sylph, designed by computer science professor Richard Muntz.
"This isn't the traditional kind of data - it is both multimedia and sensor data which is not very precise," Muntz said. "Capturing it and being able to process it is a complex problem."
Muntz said the program is designed to collect queried data from sensors, store data and query archived data once it has been stored. Most importantly, he said the program includes data-mining capabilities, which implies distinguishing patterns among collected data.
"Data mining has been a growing field in the last decade," he said. "Data collections are too overwhelming for humans to study so we are now using programs to help in the assessment."
Researchers from the UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation of the GSE&IS, which assess the quality of education and standardized testing in the United States, have also been working with Srivastava to determine how the classroom application of sensor technology will affect student learning.
"It's like developing a new thermometer to measure kids interaction," said Gregory Chung, a senior researcher for the CSE.
Chung added that sensors would allow teachers to pay attention to the problems of individual students through the assessment of their performance in small group interaction scenarios.
"The problem for teachers is that they cannot usually pay attention to each student across all groups," he
"We see, Mr. Smith, that your students are fairly unruly in class, and that they often speak to each other in languages that your resume doesn't indicate that you know. Also, for the 14.6 minutes per hour (average, of course) that your back is to the students, a full 26% of your class cheats on exams and other work. We don't feel that you have effective control of your classrooms, and therefore are choosing to terminate your contract."
Thbbttttt....
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Well, there is one possible positive effect of this system.
Currently when students do badly on exams or assignments, they might miss some of the opportunities other children may have, due to being placed in 'lower' classes. This could be one way of watching how a student works - if they are able to come up with good things in a low pressure environment, perhaps this will allow some of the students who have been previously overlooked to have an opportunity to show what they can too can perform, but only in a less pressure intense situation.
Some of our most promising scientists could be becoming bricklayers because they can't focus properly when they're stressed out, and get bad marks...
Teachers watch over kids.
What does that make them?
It is bad enough that my 10 year old Usenet posts are available to my potential employers.
Now they can download what I did in Kindergarten?
--ee
Antiquated competence won't be a job skill forever.
Uh, it doesn't say anywhere in the article that this got a signoff from any human studies committee. Shouldn't it have? It seems to me that this study presents an ethical issue or two
Precisely why is it more valuable scientifically to track kids' classroom interactions than it would be to track the interactions of, say, executives working in a corporation?
My cynical answer: it isn't. They're studying kids because no adult would ever be likely to give permission to be studied in that way.
This is uncomfortably reminiscent of the "Fernald Science Club" of the fifties in which MIT scientists fed mentally retarded kids radioactive tracers in nutritional experiments. It wasn't supposed to harm the kids,and it probably didn't, but it was highly unethical anyway--even by the standards of the time.
In That Hideous Strength, one of C. S. Lewis's characters remarks on the fact that performing experiments on children is considered wrong, yet it's perfectly all right to put the children in an "experimental school."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
A UCLA professor does it, and they call it science. My Uncle Murray does it, and all of a sudden it's a felony. The Man offers nought but injustice.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
5 years and 4.3 million dollars later, researchers report their findings: that you can't convince a first grader to wear a beeping, faintly warm hat for more than six minutes at a stretch.
And how will the little darlings day to day behavior be modified in response to all this monitoring?
Students will wear caps with sensors called "iBadges" pinned to them,
"Mom!! Do I hafta wear the stupid hat? All the other kids make fun of us!"
as well as capture their speech with small microphones.
(sotto voce)"Billy is a poopyhead. I'm gonna make him eat dirt at recess."
And then the teacher may jump in..."Johnny...it's not nice to talk bad about Billy"
[Johnny] "WTF? Get outta my head, Lady!"
Objects, such as puzzle pieces or board games, will be wired with sensors
So the child cannot take the puzzle piece across the room and show his friend?
"The problem for teachers is that they cannot usually pay attention to each student across all groups," he said. "The feedback will allow teachers to better instruct their students."
Obviously. You're not supposed to pay equal attention to each and every kid. SOme kids can get on with things themselves. Others need to be hald by the hand. That is why you hire competent teachers. And pay them a respectable wage.
A competent teacher can recognize the attributes and students needing extra attention, by use of the best data mining tool yet discovered, the brain.
"This will be an example of how humans will use computers to create smart environments," he said. "The use of sensors in this manner will allow people to talk and interact with the physical world."
umm....haven't we been talking and interacting with the physical world for a few million years?
When and who is supposed to do this data mining? The person who is in constant contact with these kids every day? When is s/he supposed to have time to do that?
Or does she just get a report at the end of the week?
"Johnny doesn't like Billy"
"Jose' needs a little more help in English"
"Mary is a little behind the curve in motor skills development"
I can see a competent teacher saying "No shit, Sherlock! I see these kids every day, all day, and I know this."
Whereas in the hands of an incompetent teacher....Johnny, Mary, and Jose' will be concentrated on even more, to the exclusion of the other kids.
Kids are not data to be mined. Interaction, play, instruction are what grows respectable adults from these little darlings.
How much could an extra $1.8M do for one classroom for a year?
I couldn't think of a worse thing to do to a bunch of kids - and believe me, they'll know they're being watched.
Anything will pass in America as long as it's slapped with a "...it's for the children" sticker on it. I don't see how this is anything new.
Life is not for the lazy.
Kindergarten learns about kids!
while singing Bingo: "inserted extra clap. clearly not college material"
I'm also the one who's been using the T1 line for updating my own private Debian/Sid mirror daily.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
"1984 - At kindergarden", some would love this.
+3 paranoia.
Remember the monitor Ender had to wear? A little more advanced, but similar idea.
I'm part of a group that put a proposal in for LifeLog. This project seems like a good tie-in. More info on LifeLog: DARPA page: http://www.darpa.mil/baa/baa03-30.htm Please see the following articles if you are interested in reading what others have to say about it: * CBS News: "A Diary That Never Sleeps" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/03/tech/mai n556654.shtml
* Geek.com: "DARPA looking to record lives of interested parties" http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Jun/gee20030 603020240.htm
* The Oregonian: "Step into one man's world, as recorded by the Pentagon's planned LifeLog" http://www.oregonlive.com/living/oregonian/index.s sf?/base/exclude/1055937392327010.xml
* Timesunion: "Your diary's got nothing on LifeLog" http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?sto ryID=140316
A traveling salesman selling farming equipment once came across a large, rather unkempt field located near a shabby-looking farmhouse with a few lopsided barns strewn around it. He turned his truck around and drove along the narrow dirt road until he was near the front porch of the house, where he stopped. An aging, dishevelled-looking farmer, prostrated in his unpainted gray rocking chair, was eyeing him lazily as he got out of his vehicle and offered his greetings.
...
"Sir," said the salesman. "I have with me the literature and the know-how of many qualified farming experts, that can teach you how in just a few short years and with almost no initial investment you can turn your farm around and start harvesting the crops that would make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Would you like to learn how you can improve your business and start making a profit?"
The farmer looked at him with no change of expression, then raised his hand and took the makeshift wooden toothpick that he was chewing out of his mouth.
"Son," he said, "Don't you think I already know how I can improve my business?"
You can throw all kinds of technology at both kids and teachers, but unless the former are motivated to teach, and the latter are motivated to learn, it will fail just like all other educational programs have failed -- be it hands-on science, montessori, three-Rs, and whatever else the smart people with EdD degrees care to come up with.
Education starts at home and at the very core of the society. If the society discourages doing well at school, berates dedicated learners, and offers subtle indoctrination that one doesn't have to be smart or even hard-working to do well in life... well, then whatever insight is obtained in the course of this experiment will be lost on the generation Afternoon Disney Channel.
I know this, for I am a teacher.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
In a society where education runs on a bare-bones budget to come up with a brilliant idea to spend more money spying on children in classrooms. I mean what sort of complete fucking moron comes up with this idea?
Next they will probably promote racial segregation [again... oddly enough] as a means towards a more unified society or something.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
And before you start screaming "INVASION OF PRIVACY!", please consider what it is that many geeks (i.e. many of the readers of this very story) go through in school. I was one of the two 'most picked on' kids in my school throughout my entire childhood (the fat girl was the other one). Teachers will almost never care when a student complains about another student harassing them. It's considered a "normal" (and, by implication, healthy!?) part of growing up. I once got beaten up by an older girl in the hallway, and no one did anything about it. Peppering Elementary and Middle schools with cameras, and enforcing strict penalties against the students who perpetrate violence against other students (and their parents, for raising such despicable brats in the first place), would do a lot more good than sensors and other "non-invasive" measures.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
About 10 years ago I worked in a research lab at an education grad school. We were using simulation software to study the way that middle-school kids learned physics. The idea was to try to get kids to build a "mental model" of how basic mechanics works by doing lots of simulations (and some real-world experiments too).
To study how this worked, we'd basically videotape everything: the kids interacting with the software and with each other, the teachers interacting with the class, and so on. Then the slaves^H^H^H^H^H^H grad students would transcribe the tapes and see if they could find instances of kids working out models for the physics. There were also tests at the beginning and end of the semester, in both the classes using software and some "control" classes. I don't think any of the kids or parents objected to the data collection, though I wasn't too involved in that part of the project. There were some privacy guarantees on the release form that the kids' parents had to sign. This was all pretty standard stuff for education researchers who wanted to collect hard data instead of just theorizing.
As an aside, the outcome of the project was a bit unclear, at least to me. The students in the classrooms that had the software definitely learned more physics. However, I always wondered whether that had as much to do with the extra attention they got as with the software. But then, I'm not an education researcher or teacher.
Interestingly, it's clear why they're picking on kindergardeners. At age 7 and above, the rules require the informed consent of the subject. If the kid says no and the parents say yes, that's a no. And there can't be any penalty for saying no. But below age 7, the parents alone can "consent".
If they tried this on, say, teenagers, they'd probably be blown off, unless they paid out some serious money.