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Some Mexican Classrooms Adopt Hi-Tech Teaching
An anonymous reader writes "It what is believed to be the most ambitious project of its kind in the world. In a program called Enciclomedia, giant electronic screens have been attached to the walls of about 165,000 Mexican classrooms. Some five million 10 & 11 year-olds now receive all their education through these screens. 'From maths to music, from geography to geometry, black and white boards have given way to electronic screens. During a biology lesson we watch as pupil after pupil comes to the screen to piece together the human body... electronically. One boy taps his finger on the screen and brings up the human heart. He then slides his finger across the screen, taking the heart with him and places it where he thinks it belongs on the body located on the other side of the screen.'"
In the advanced biology classes, children use the same electronic system to learn where vital organs are and how to remove them, pack them on ice & phrase their auction on ebay as "a functional collection of tissue" so that the auction is successful without technically violating the law by selling an entire organ.
In unrelated news, the United States Department of Homeland Security has moved Mexico from green and sunny to dark red and rainy on the safety/happiness meter for visiting United States citizens.
So you could almost say that this is a "mudslide" of technology.
heheheee...aaahahe...:(.
Photoshop...
I am so tired of these lame ass excuses for fake SS cards. I want to see some quality work!
...
I know it's a slippery slope, but really this technology might make teachers a thing of the past. Looking back on my high school years, the classes I learned more than any others were the classes that had great teachers. Teachers who inspired and were excited about their subject... it was contagious. The human spirit can't be replaced by a machine, but it certainly can be complemented.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
"One boy taps his finger on the screen and brings up the human heart."
This wasn't part of an Aztec ritual, was it?
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Teachers love these gadgets because it relieves them from having to make an effort to teach. Students love them because it relieves them from having to make an effort to learn.
But learning requires work and effort. There's no shortcut.
clips of movies like Gladiator, so children can learn the history of ancient Rome.
Sounds like the typical reponse to fixing the hard job of actual teaching with the easy response of capital spending.
Sounds little more than a glorified TV.
This is great! Now teachers can do even less work while the magic screen on the wall teaches the kids!
I had Bill Nye the Science Guy as a science teacher once. There was also some other guy there, but I think his job was to manage the VCR.
I heard they have stuff with infinite color resolution, tactile feedback, and atomic scale display resolution.
Its called CONSTRUCTION PAPER, you idiots.
How is a computer helpful in this situation? Last I heard, construction paper does require 2A @ 110V, nor does construction paper crash.
Maybe they should teach them that instead of bitching about the US, try to not have such a shitty corrupt government, and thus solve both the US's immigration problem, and improve their own living conditions.
What the fuck is mexicos deal anyways?
Let's see how they like our students illegally crossing the border to go to those schools lol. Everyone knows CA schools suck :P
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
... but too bad some schools in lower-class and rural areas are getting the Enciclomedia equipment, even when they don't even have electrical power, or decent bathrooms for the kids. :(
I know, I've been there.
When will our government realize that what's needed first is more truly dedicated, capable teachers and basic physical infrastructure?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Is why in some variants of English is math pluralized to maths? It seems not to be the case with most other things, for example they didn't say "musics". Where I grew up (southwest USA) it was always math, singular, which makes sense to be. Though there are different facets, it is all the same field much like there are different styles of music, but it is all music.
What's with the plural version then?
I live in Mexico City, Enciclomedia has been used since 2 or 3 years ago.
Omar
If this was a Linux-based solution that fact would be in the submission, but of course it's not so there's no mention even of the technology being used. There's a Word doc here with the specs and requirements.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
What is it with slashdot that it insists on saying "mathS" instead of just simple "math"?
Sounds like people have a speech impediment.
Friggin' foreigners probably.
If it was possible to hack, no matter how hard (they got the AppleTV in one day!), that could cause some serious problems, lawsuits and everything. I'd like to know more about the security in the software, as software is what will make the difference. totaled by one hacker? You bet'cha! Seriously...
"Teachers love these gadgets because it relieves them from having to make an effort to teach."
RL nonanecdotal examples please.
"Students love them because it relieves them from having to make an effort to learn."
You don't need technology for that.
"But learning requires work and effort. There's no shortcut."
So far no one here has proven that this technology is indeed a "shortcut". More precisely this is an alternative, or a suppliment. The only ones preaching "shortcut" are the usual cliche of cynics, who would never be accused of thinking outside the box.
...is that these classrooms are in Texas and Arizona. ;)
I wonder if the kids will be taught the "new" Economics, you know the one where exporting and encouraging people to leave the country is a viable economic policy.
I live and studied in Mexico some time and some in the US. The differences are: In US there's no government agency that takes care of education. In Mexico, we have the Bureau of Public Education, which handles textbooks, adult education, and every aspect of making the people better informed. We Mexicans are more open to accept that we know nothing- Most of us come from a time when we had so little, that up to this date, there are people who never got past Elementary school. Thus, as adults, we worry about our children, and that the same doesn't happen to them. I've been around americans, and some of my best friends are americans, to know that american people (most, at least the ones I met) trust their schools systems more than we mexicans do. Back in my days (about 15 years ago) my mother got to help build the school where I studied, which is 5 blocks away from my current location. About 6 months ago, my brother, an electrician, got hired by the same school to install those high tech boards the article talks about. In general, Mexican people mind more their children's education, trying not to repeat history. Science is a big thing- I keep hearing the creation vs. evolution in the US. There's no such thing in Mexico. In fact, in the textbooks there were 6 theories of how life could have come to exist, and students were encouraged to seek their own answers. That way, even the most naive pretty girl once came to me, the library worm, to recommend a good book on the Paleozoic period, and sat reading it for HOURS. We were forced to learn through curiosity. Teachers in mexico are TEACHERS- Mexican teachers are hard working individuals who sometimes don't make a living teaching. In a small town in chihuahua where I lived, some alternated between farming and teaching, and one of my best teachers made a living selling wood. Those people knew their stuff and knew that learning was important, to prevent (redundancy alert) repeating a history in which we have to work hard to make a living. (Joke entry starts here) Mexico is a country of former slaves. Our ancestors didn't go through the trouble of shedding their blood for our independance from slave labor so that we would end up in sweatshops! I apologize for the long post (and bad grammar/spelling, I'm to lazy to edit XD); and hope not to make any stereotypes of any people, nor insult anybody. I am aware that people everywhere are the same (and I've been around plenty of different people to know that). Oh, and I don't mean to say that the american school system is bad, it's only that the Mexican school system is designed to get us all out of ignorance, while the american school system is only meant to teach. PS. The time shall come soon when EVERY country will have to either sink or swim , and pretty soon, maybe not in our life time, we will have to start seeing each other as equals through technology, knowledge, etc. I don't know about other countries enough to know what their progress is (but most so called 3rd world countries are stepping out, even faster than mexico), but I do know about Mexico, because I am in Mexico. And I know that someday technology shall unite us all. (Corruscant, anyone?) Peace.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
My worry is that the excitement of new media might overshadow what works pedagogically and we end up pushing a generation of students towards what plays well on screen and away from less visually appealing subjects.
Teaching isn't just about the content, but helping the student to process it and put it into context
I don't see teachers disappearing anytime soon. They aren't only a mindless talking machines whose only function is to read aloud a textbook (some actually are, however).
I mean, if they were just like that and thus replaceable, why stopping there? just ditch the whole concept of classroom and just give the tykes some CDs.
I guess that's why there are also a large number of Mexican religious charities that come to the U.S. on missions to build homes for the poor. (sarcasm)
this reminds of one of my favorite t-shirts
Thats cool....so when are they going to put forth the same effort in getting their water drinkable?
This note is completed out dated!! This project it's almost over due the corruption of mexican authorities and the companys who provided these services, theres a big investigations at federal level, where are contracts for more than 100 millions dollars, and the new administration canceled a lot of contracts. This was a very good project but the corrupction is very powerfull, the people from OLPC should see this example, people in countrys like the USA don't have the idea what the corruption can do!!!!
From this essay I wrote:h nologyHasFailedSchools.html
m l
...
W all.htm
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTec
With all that technological success in other areas, why are schools still
considered a problem area, see:
"To fix US schools, [bipartisan] panel says, start over"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.ht
Or in other words, why has technology failed in compulsory schools?
Clearly something is wrong here -- technology is helping make these other
places more productive and more flexible -- but in schools, there is not
much change, despite a huge expenditure in technology and training.
Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting
"learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite
end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case"
based on someone else's demand.
Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand",
for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or
the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools
to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to
offer, schools themselves must change.
And it also turns out, based on psychological studies, that for creative
work (as opposed to ditch digging), reward is often not a motivator, and
creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if a task is done for gain:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html
This finding calls into question the entire notion of a scarcity-based
ideology oriented around exchanging ration-units for creative goods, as
opposed to a "gift economy", such as drives GNU/Linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
So, if most of what people do is not related to growing food or making
things, then a system based around material rewards doesn't make much
sense. And it turns out, a lot of difficult work is quite interesting, if
you are not forced to do it -- where the work (and success at a
challenging task) is its own reward.
But then is compulsory schooling really needed when people live in such a
way? In a gift economy, driven by the power of imagination, backed by
automation like matter replicators and flexible robotics to do the
drudgery, isn't there plenty of time and opportunity to learn everything
you need to know? Do people still need to be forced to learn how to sit in
one place for hours at a time? When people actually want to learn
something like reading or basic arithmetic, it only takes around 50
contact hours or less to give them the basics, and then they can bootstrap
themselves as far as they want to go. Why are the other 10000 hours or so
of a child's time needed in "school"? Especially when even poorest kids in
India are self-motivated to learn a lot just from a computer kiosk -- or a
"hole in the wall":
http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Interesting what people can misread and misinterpret.
;)
1- As a teacher who has one of those boards hanging in my room right now, 25 feet in front of me (I'm on my planning period, thanks) I can tell you:
THE BOARD DOES NOTHING UNTIL THE TEACHER CREATES THE LESSON TO OPERATE ON IT.
Very, very few high-quality lessons are available on the internet. Teachers are (disappointingly) a very territorial bunch with their lessons. At best, you'll find perhaps two dozen lessons attached to your grade/subject. Of those, at most five will be appropriate for your class/skillset of students.
2- Technology will only eclipse teachers when you show me the tool that will deal well with the kid who got his ass beat by dad last night for trying to get him to stop hitting his mom, who speaks a dozen words of the school's language, and has the unfortunate-but-true "Living for now" survival instincts of a child raised in poverty. When you develop a program that can educate that, all while taking role and helping Sarah get to the nurse because she's having her first period, I'll bow out of this classroom and go on welfare.
3- These boards, as great as they sound, are simply glorified mouse-pads with projectors hitting them. You synch up where the projector is aiming with the board, and you've basically got a supersized tablet that also happens to have the monitor on it. In short, something very similar to bank screens for the last ten years. The difference? Someone made the screen even bigger and got the cost low enough that a few principles caught on, and the rest followed like pigs in a pen, as most things in education go.
Do I use mine? Absolutely. I'm probably using it now while you read it - but it's just a tool (albeit a high-potential one), it's not the Educational Messiah, and technology is surely not going to destroy this field, popular Slashdot views to the contrary.
-A teacher
Technological competence assures no more intelligence than any other form, just more elitism.
If they just bought this system and it's really that useful, what, exactly, is the "teacher" needed for? (More likely, this is just the next generation of fancy filmstrip.)
Or second...computers were a (sad) part of my elementary school education too, and I now have a couple of kids.
"I've been around americans, and some of my best friends are americans..."
That part made me chuckle.
"Well... how is it not, exactly?"
It does nothing to improve the country from which they leave.
"Making your country's unemployed and impovershed go away and be some other country's responsibility? Pretty clever, actually."
Funny, one would think it is the ultimate disrespect for your own citizens.
Or, more accurately a political crutch to avoid solving your own ineptness.
But hey, let's continue to praise the Mexican govmt. for supporting such a policy. That's sane. (sarcasm)
This is kind of a rant. Oh well. I have had some of the worst teachers and some of the best. The problem is that the teacher is just a medium between content and the student. In all reality I learned more when we worked in groups and used a reference then when the teacher lectured for hours on end. There are a lot of teachers right now that have not even adapted to use a computer effectivly, which is appalling.
After going through the educational process I realized that good teachers are by far a minority. Not to mention that just because a teacher is good at math, that should be the only think in life they know. Nothing is more pathetic then someone with a doctorate who can't even relate to the modern skills they are teaching. A great example of this is a hippie biology teacher I had, who refused to use a computer. He didn't think he should be required to learn anything more then he did when he attended college and his students suffered for it. On several occasions I called him on his inabilities and the fact he was only a teacher because he had been around so long they couldn't fire him.
My wife is getting her degree right now and I have to sit back and laugh at the teachers and their ineptitudes. How can a teacher be taken seriously when the students are helping them run their classes by setting up their discussions and organizing the email lists. Why should students suffer because a teacher hasn't joined the 20th century, let alone the 21st.
Learning doesn't end when your holding a degree. We need to hold the teachers in the US to higher standards. If they have been teaching for 30 years, but they are still teaching as they did 30 years ago, they either need to retire or modernize. Teaching is one of the only professions where they can remain as backwards and ineffective as they want and not lose their jobs.
Some Mexican classrooms adopt wrestling masks. They say the use of a uniform dress code helps students' concentration, and since the teachers are usually bigger than the students, nobody starts any trouble.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Or at the very least, put "Here be dragons" on the northern part of their maps.
I just heard a couple of weeks ago (I live in Mexico City) in the news that this encyclomedia system turned out to be a flop. Almost half of all the installations don't work anymore because broken parts, missing parts, plain non-functioning hardware... This system was pushed by former president Vicente Fox. I really don't know the policy of the new administration about this system. What HAS worked excellent for decades, and even has received acclaim and prizes from United Nations via the UNICEF, its called TELESECUNDARIA. It's like Junior High School on TV. Think of it like what Discovery Channel airs in the mornings but produced by Mexican studios under contract from the Bureau of Public Education (the same that makes free textbooks and mantains all the teaching programs of all grades). Let's say, at 8:00 am the station broadcasts to a satellite, and the schools in rural areas pull the feed the same way anyone watches DirecTV or DISH Networks. The only thing the school needs is electricity (not all but most has), a TV set and the antenna. Then a teacher makes the students watch the program and after that he/she answers questions and refers to the same chapter in the textbook so they can go on doing exercises, quizes, and then the teacher dictates homework.
That's good use of technology. Remember the K.I.S.S. rule!
In the UK we call it "maths" short for mathematics. I am not sure what other English speaking countries prefer.
"Interesting what people can misread and misinterpret."
No wonder we cringe when our future is mentioned. We can see our handwriting on the wall.
As an educator, I must say that I'm quite opposed to most uses of computers/TVs/projectors/etc in the classroom. While interactive math games might be good for memorization (the least important part of learning, in my opinion), it's useless for teaching using other paradigms such as the Socratic Method (my personal favorite) or facilitative teaching (the paradigm preached by my public school system).
Also, unless you have both the source code and plenty of time on your hands, it takes control of the curriculum out of the hands of the teacher and school and puts it in the hands of the company doing the programming and politicians. Somehow I fear there will poor messages in the material, such as commercialism, materialism, sexism, ageism, and other ideas that are often pushed in commercial kids TV (and TV in general), among many other concerns that occur when either career politicians or private businesses are involved.
The Free Software community in Mexico has strongly rejected Enciclomedia since its announcement (around 1.5 years ago) as it is simply a grant to Microsoft to provide contents and get licensing for nothing too useful. It employs, yes, very cool high-tech gadgets as the electronic blackboard - But it is, after all, just an expensive, useless gadget (believe me, there was one 10m away from my office at the National Pedagogic University that was very seldom used - and far more seldomly taken advantage. We could just have had a white board and be merrier).
But even if we Free Software pushers were all wrong, Enciclomedia has become one of the most exemplar and laughable exhibits of Vicente Fox's administration - Full of what we want to clean our country's image of: Corruption, broken promises, not delivered goods, etc. Take as an example the following news that surfaced during the last few weeks (and this comes just from a brief search at news.google.com):
MX$60 million (around US$5.5 million) missing from Enciclomedia
Gigantic frauds found in Enciclomedia and in the Megalibrary (of course, the José Vasconcelos megalibrary is another aborted PR stunt from Vicente Fox's administration)
Fears arise that a full audit might shut down Enciclomedia
so... Please tell me if we should be cheering about this. Of course, Vicente Fox's term has ended, but while six years ago we were all hopeful that Mexico was heading out of its antidemocratic past and the perfect dictatorship of a single-party rule, our new president came from one of our nation's history's most spectacular electoral frauds. And he seems committed to continue on Fox's line.
Not only do I applaud you but I applaud the entire Mexican people. FFS you've got a constitution that won't alow you to be charged with more time if you break out of a prison because you have the *RIGHT* to *SEEK* freedom. Here, we punish those that try to seek freedom, in prison or not. You care about your education, our educational system is so fucked up that we quit teaching basic law in elementary school back in the '50s (according to my grandfather, born before the depression-era) and most students are just mindless sheep repeating what they've been told, instead of actually understanding how it works.
To add to that, the Mexican people will gladly handle jobs that most of us uptight and snooty people won't do. Construction? Roadwork? Major physical labor of any sort? You guys are all for it (as am I,) but it seems a vast majority of the US population wants to get by on brains alone, with as little physical work as possible. Mexicans work hard and they work DAMNED hard, while the rest of us tend to slack off.
I say give every illegal Mexican immigrant a job, and our economy would probably grow in those areas. Hell, at least shit would actually get done, for once.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The only one saying there was a fraud its Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador the PRD candidate (suposedly from the left, but now it seems really more like a kind of Hugo Chavez populism) and his zealots
I voted for him... and feel betrayed by his immaturity and power hungry antics since the election even after a very excrutinized and reviewed vote recount (his own party droped the case, just couldnt prove a different result... the errors where few and equally distributed)
I knew he was not perfect (just from the corruption during his goverment of mexico city... his left hand Bejarano was caught on video receiving bribes but wasnt found guilty because of the crappy legal system)
I believed his lies, he made me have fait that a different outlook could bring something better... but latter made me feel ashamed of my error (I believe that as a voter my duty its to change the group in power, for the next one... because all of our politicians suffer from the same: selfish and corruption... they must be, to climb up our political system)
Get over it, we lost (i did since i was fooled by amlo) i wish their (now tiny, but very vocal)"left" worked for the good of the country instead of just making averything worst
Funnily enough, we are Mexican.
She only has 40 years of experience teaching at primary and secondary level (6 to 15 years old children).
She says "mijo, dile al señor en la computadora que es un soberano pendejo".
I would translate it for you, unfortunately Mexican swearing words are not my speciality when it comes to translation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At least we are not teaching creationist nonsense in our schools....
One of the few things that really works in Mexico is the educational system. It is far from perfect, but it has been churning our people that could do better if the economic situation had developped at the same speed. Shame really.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Mexico's federal auditor has discovered massive irregularities in this program, on which Microsoft is the principal contractor. Thousands of the US$4,500 machines cannot be accounted for. Machines were delivered to villages without electricity. The Beeb is rewriting the press release here, and Slashdot is blogging the rewriting of the press release. Classic noise machine engineering.
b eeb-20-touts-enciclomedia/
http://cbrayton.wordpress.com/2007/04/06/bbs-the-