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Wozniak Gets Personal On Innovation
snydeq writes "Companies are doggedly pursuing the next big thing in technology, but nothing seems to be pointing to the right way these days, claims the legendary Steve Wozniak. The reason? 'You tend to deal with the past,' replicating what you know in a new form. Consider the notion of computing eyeware like Google Glass: 'People have been marrying eyewear with TV inputs for 20 years,' Wozniak says. True innovation, Wozniak claims, becomes more human, more personal. People use technology more the less it feels like technology. 'The software gets more accepted when it works in human ways — meaning in noncomputer ways.' Here, Wozniak says, is the key to technology's role in the education system."
And no amount of technology can save the American education system: "We put the technology into a system that damages creative thinking — the kids give up, and at a very early age."
And no amount of technology can save the American education system: "We put the technology into a system that damages creative thinking — the kids give up, and at a very early age."
Open Source the curriculum, damnit!
A similar comment can be made about movies. I hate remakes and especially reboots. Even movies made from book are better than remakes. Can you come up with something new?
However, I disagree a little with Woz here because it's critical to improve existing technology. True innovation is difficult and important, but improving those first bits of technology is probably as crucial. The obvious case in point is the mobile phone. It has been around quite a while, but our lives are greatly affected by recent technologies (including infrastructure).
It can revolutionize teaching if done the right way. You need structure and a learning environment where the students have freedom to pursue as well.
Bare in mind this citation above was in Mexico where there is a ton less presure on teachers to follow through circulumn to ensure test scores. Teaching today folks is very different than when we went to school thanks to No Child Left Behind. Teachers are handed a list of +90 topics to go over in 3 months! So the time to experiment which has proven test results can not happen as the only goal is to raise test scores based on all +90 topics in a very short window to teach it.
But it is possible and technology can help garner research, display data visually (nice aid for students learning graphing), and can apply math and science principles to projects like Lego mindstorm make learning it easier.
http://saveie6.com/
From the summary: "People use technology more the less it feels like technology. 'The software gets more accepted when it works in human ways — meaning in noncomputer ways.'" Take a world where you have a pen, and then you have a typewriter come along. The uptake in typewriters may have been relatively slow, taking a few decades, never really displaced the pen in many uses. Now computers replacing typewriters - a little faster. Internet replacing non-internet sources of information - definitely happened much faster. But in all these cases it is using technology that feels more like technology. So I don't know what he means by working in non-computer ways.
Idiocracy here we come.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The biggest problem with the Public Education system is
IT IS DOING EVERYTHING WRONG!!
Start with having Standard Reference E-Books on Everything on a EduCORE server network. When a kid starts school issue the kid an EduSlate (something good enough to work but cheap enough to not be a target for theft). As the kid grows up unlock more and more info (redact less and less). For the things where there are recognized Alternate ViewPoints have the Alternate availible if asked for.
as far as how the teaching should go
1 In preschool teach exactly 3 things 1 YOU CAN LEARN 2 HOW TO LEARN 3 The rock basics of learning (numbers letters colors ect)
2 when they hit K5 1 separate the boys from the girls (outside of Dance Class and Recess) 2 teach every kid physically able to how to dance (ballet/gymnastics type)
3 group things into K5-3 4-6 7-9 and 10-12 worry about graduating a kid when s|he can jump bands (btw put the Ladies and Gentlemen together in class during the upper 2 bands)
4 use the older/smarter kids in each band to help the other kids
5 end of the second band and during the third band start sorting kids for where they will be going after graduation (use a "Nut Filter" also)
6 create Sanctuaries for kids to go when they can handle "home life"
In Short STOP KILLING OUR CHILDRENS MINDS.
Challenge for Apple: Create an ISlate and i will front you your Kinder Garden
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What's needed to make STEM pursuits attractive to kids is rock-star status that they see everywhere in entertainment and professional sports (technically entertainment too).
And the tech community says, "Ouchie" and runs back to their offices. I've been lecturing developers on this for years, and gotten little but hostility back. When you tell them "The fucking computer DOES NOT MATTER" they just look at you blankly.
The computer. It's a toaster, OK? It should turn on immediately. Do what the fuck I tell it to do and stay out of my face. It's not even a servant. It's *less* than a servant. It deserves no regard whatsoever.
More to the point, the toaster should not ask me a bunch of questions, steal my input focus, wait for it's little processes to complete in the foreground before moving on, take minutes to start, or stop, refresh my screen randomly, puke out unhelpful pointless error messages that require my attention, and so on. Aside from all of this being a sign of lazy, careless design and programming, all of this will drive consumers to devices that *don't* do this, or do it less. This is one reason among many why Android is taking over the world, while Windows is dying a well deserved death from it's ossified, well preserved stupidity.
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Kids used to passive "entertainment"
I agree with you otherwise, except for this point.
I do not think ANYTHING that holds your interest and takes your mind elsewhere, is passive. Sure you are sitting idle for a while watching/reading. But after that if it was good you are thinking about it, it is affecting how you think about things.
For good or bad that is not passive, it is active in shaping how you think and even what you do (action figures exist after all to "act"ion out the stuff you saw in in the passive medium).
It is why just like food, you should be a bit careful about what forms of entertainment you digest...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You know what is funny though, is that your list is exactly the process that a lot of homeschooled kids go through.
I know, I was one.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Technology that Woz describes is essentially invisible, because the user can focus on the task and not the tool. As tech people, creating such technology should be our goal. I imagine that the vast majority of us want to do that, anyway. What we need to do is convince the people in charge of the money to let us.
Teaching is hard. It requires talent and a whole lot of effort, in spite of what that ass G B Shaw once sad ("ha HA!"). The problem with technology is that it gives so many people in the school systems the false assurance that it can solve the main problems plaguing the education system (see the recent episode of South Park parodying the ObamaCare website fiasco). But what's really plaguing the eduaction system is that parents are getting less involved and more demanding even as teachers become increasingly overworked, underpaid, and poorly trained.
A big part of it has to do with the squeezing of the middle class. Decades ago you could actually earn a decent wage on a public school teacher's salary, enough to buy a house and raise a family. Who can do that now? And in a metropolitan area? Fuck that. I honestly don't see how people are making it. I think the best teachers now go to private schools or colleges, and many (but not all, mind you) of the ones who remain are the ones who just aren't very good. People love to blame the unions for protecting bad teachers, but without the unions I think the situation would be far far worse.
If I was going to do something crazy, I'd look at getting rid of our screens, and replacing it with voice. That means probably doing better with voice generation, and leveraging and improving voice recognition. I have a thought or two about the idea at a basic level, but I don't have the programming or theoretical chops to make it happen. That would be neat though to see something go that way. Granted that's not all that crazy as evidenced by the movie "Her" but it's a start in the direction Woz was talking about.
maybe the kids can figure out a way
Even comparing teacher salaries to other jobs results in them being paid well in the United States.
You are correct that teachers are very well paid in the US. This is especially true when you look at the quality of applicants we get to apply for our teaching colleges (very poor, literally among the worst of any major). One major problem is how we pay our teachers. We pay them with huge benefits packages that no one ever realizes the value of. People are drawn to high salaries, and teachers don't get that. What they get is a huge amount of vacation days and a huge pension. If more people understood how valuable the pension is then many more people would have been going into the profession, and the quality of teachers would go way up.
Since humans are unlikely to start becoming more future focused in their decision making, the better solution is to raise teacher salaries by 30-40% and get rid of the pensions (which would be a budget neutral solution). We should also enact more summer school programs since we are already paying teachers as much as similar private employees who work around 230 days instead of 180.
Even with a longer work year, I think we would get much better teachers if average salaries were closer to $60k instead of $45k even if the pension went away. Very few people factor in the pension when deciding what career to enter at the age of 18 anyway.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
If someone loves history, geography, social sciences and is really strong in it, why do they need to do all the other crap?
I'll give you the same answer I give my students when they say, "Why do we have to learn this?"
It's very simple. Our nation depends on civil-minded productive citizens, and public education is an exercise in developing, strengthening, and disciplining the mind, very much like regular weight training does for muscles or general exercise does for the cardiovascular system.
Are you going to have to use all, or even a majority of, the information you learn in school? Heavens, no. But you'll be a more civil individual who behaves in a civil manner, which is a very necessary and productive requirement for the welfare and maintenance of our society.
It is certainly up for debate what information is necessary, or how it is presented and "exercised", in order to be successful at this endeavor. But there is no question that public education's primary purpose is not for an individuals rote memorization of facts as much as developing civil minds for the preservation of our nation.
Why would anyone think that schools were trying to develop innovators ? Why would anyone think more than a very few can innovate anything or even know what innovation is or that any innovators go anywhere near a school ? If everyone was an innovator who is going to pick up the garbage anyway ? Schools just train as many cogs for the big machine as possible and babysit the rest.
Woz is talking out of his ass. His proposal for 1:1 teacher:student ratio has been shown non-optimum. How would you like to have a teacher hovering over your shoulder 6 hours a day, like a slave's overseer?
Most students do well in moderate sized classes, 20 to 30 well-behaved children. Those with behavior problems and those with learning disabilities may need more attention, but they're not "most students".
There are about 50 million school-age children in the US. The total workforce is about 150 million. Assuming 20% overhead for administration and maintenance, a 1:1 teacher:student ratio means 60 million people in the education industry without even considering college. Where are those people going to come from? How are they going to be paid? Where is the production going to come from to feed, clothe, house (etc.) the 1 person in 5 who is engaged in nothing but teaching?
The more carefully the idea is examined, the worse it looks.
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I'm currently reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which gives a little insight into what education was like over 150 years ago. (T.S. was written in 1876.) There was much more rote memorization than today, including memorizing long poems. Lots of attention to literature (particularly the Bible), geography, history. Math was primitive but thorough. Science and technology was practically nonexistent. Debating was standard fare.
The net was that people's minds were filled with enough information to be able to judge political affairs and to be able to handle daily tasks, and in addition filled with heaps of useless garbage. Careers were learned outside of school.
Today's schooling has just as much garbage, but its nature has changed. Math is less thorough but covers much more ground. Science education is greatly improved, in part because its value is so obvious with 150 years of progress. Graduates are woefully unable to judge political affairs, and have their minds filled with historical irrelevancies and bias.
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I'm an old guy and after periodic immersions in STEM classes have started thinking we should reverse the way subjects are taught. I'd get more out them if they were used to build a house (on paper) or flashlight with its parabolic reflector, or in the market (stock and super) to find best prices, etc. So we'd work from the finished product back to the concepts of parabolas, statistics, electronics, weight distribution and vectors. I guess this is the case study method and seems better than word problems as I've never had to determine when I'd meet someone driving towards me on a road at 50mph when I was moving towards them at 60mph, but did have to understand how much dirt a buried house roof could carry. Is this reasonable?