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."

Comments

I blame textbook monopolies.

[Narcocide]

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!

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[ThatsDrDangerToYou]

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!

Well, the American system is flawed in nearly every direction:

• Overemphasis on testing
• Disengaged parents
• Underpaid teachers
• De-motivated and disempowered teachers
• Inadequate funding (especially in poorer neighborhoods)
• Kids used to passive "entertainment"
• Poor diets
• Administrative inertia
• Cultural bias against education

I could go on and on obviously. There is no one cause and no silver bullet solution. Technology can be part of the solution, but in the hands of morons it quickly becomes part of the problem.

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[Billly Gates]

You're right, there's no silver bullet solution, but Open Source curriculum would at least alleviate a non-trivial part of the "Inadequate funding" problem.

No, OpenSource can not be applied here.

By law educators must teach to the test.

For those outside the teaching field there is a ton of state standards that need to be implemented in the exact way. 8.16 students must show understanding between x and y, 18.17 students must apply knowledge of understand between x and y with geographical tessellation, etc. Now imagine you have +90 to go over in just 3 months!! Also it varies by state.

There is a concept of common core for all standards but that is still in the process of being implemented.

Does the Open Source standard certified by the state to cover each and all +90 objectives for each course and by each grade level? If not then it is a waste of time of time for educators as they must scramble to find the appropriate content. Those state standards are difficult to read too. Yes if you know math you can look at hte problems and understand them, but the textual objectives like above can look like they are written by lawyers.

Sometimes it can be subjective to interpret the appropriate lesson for each of the +90 objectives the teacher must cram in which leaves no room for innovation or going off topic with alternative learning sources.
 

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[erroneus]

But it doesn't escape administrative inertia, cultural bias, and more importantly (and not mentioned) extreme government regulation of curricula. There are those who theorize this is all "by design." It's hard to imagine because no one wants to believe it. I had a pretty decent educational experience even if I didn't 'get it' at an early enough age due to a touch of ASD. (I'm actually glad it wasn't diagnosed back then -- I likely wouldn't have been forced to deal with it and adapt. These days when people are diagnosed with a 'condition' they quickly give up and get comfortable in their cozy little category.)

But we also have this culture of blame and lawyers who think the answer is to sue everyone and everything into oblivion. The system is more interested in protecting itself than in doing their jobs well.

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[Gothmolly]

It's what you happens when you divorce actions from consequences.

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[femtobyte]

Give schools the power to fire bad teachers and you can give back power to good teachers.

Well, you may just end up giving that power to upper management, who has no idea who the good teachers are, only who is best at gaming the "teach-to-the-test" system. The only other thing management has to go on is firing people to save the most money (more senior, experienced teachers). Unless you're very careful to give teachers a strong voice in management decisions --- through, e.g., strong, local, democratic unions --- "fire bad teachers" will become "fire teachers who take on difficult students/subjects, and think outside the test."

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[no1nose]

It really does come back to the parents. I have three kids and they each have about one hour of homework per night. I am a single father so I have to help them on my own each night after I get home from work. I have a B.S. degree so I am not a total moron (haha). The problem I run into after work is that I want to be disengaged and play EVE, but I can't. And I cannot parallel-process my help with each of my kids. They are about 2 years apart in age and if I am helping one, then the other two feel like they can stop working on their homework until I get back to helping them. Another problem is that they each act like the homework is new material every night and the teacher did not go over it during the day. I know I am not alone with these problems because I have had the fathers of their friends call me and ask if my kids were struggling with their homework too.

I am 38 years old. Maybe I am not a very good dad or explainer of homework. Maybe the fact that my state (Nevada) is 50th in the nation for education. Maybe the fact that I am alone in raising these kids are all factors in why it is so tough.

What are the rising star countries doing to pump out such smart people? India, Japan, China are all creating brilliant people who want our jobs. We should be embarrassed of what we have become. People, I think as bad as things are in the USA, this is as good as it is going to be.

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[Chris Mattern]

Oh come on, kids have been watching TV, listening music and reading books for many generations.

Kids have been watching TV for about two or three generations. They've been listening passively to music for perhaps four or five (before recording, people who wanted to hear music mostly performed it themselves--having visiting performers was a special occasion). Reading is a much less passive activity than the the other two, requiring the reader to interpret the written text.

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[Chris Mattern]

Unless you're very careful to give teachers a strong voice in management decisions --- through, e.g., strong, local, democratic unions --- "fire bad teachers" will become "fire teachers who take on difficult students/subjects, and think outside the test."

The problem is, if you *do* give strong teacher unions all the power, "fire bad teachers" becomes "never fire teachers at all, under any circumstances."

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[itsdapead]

Oh come on, kids have been watching TV, listening music and reading books for many generations.

You seem to assume that the problems in education have appeared from nowhere in the last few years.

Also, when I were a lad, at least in the UK, Kids TV had a lot more imaginative adventure serials, magazine shows about hobbies and current affairs and game shows where the contestants actually had to know or do stuff; and a lot less cheap cartoons designed explicitly to promote toys, thinly-disguised adverts for music and fashion accessories, mundane soap operas about dull people living dull lives, no-brain-required 'contests' and talent shows designed explicitly to raise money from premium-rate phone lines... all designed on the principle that anything requiring an attention span of more than 5 seconds will hit ratings. Seriously - modern kids television (insofar as it still exists) positively encourages goldfish-level attention spans. Hell, some programmes are flagged 'ADHD' in the listings!

(Boringly, 'ADHD' in the listings apparently means 'High Def' and 'Audio Description available'.)

As for the 'firing bad teachers' bit - the danger is that will only clear up a tiny percentage of teachers who are dramatically bad, while further re-enforcing the obsession with testing. If your job is on the line based on your test results, you're not going to skimp on the test cramming in order to do something creative or interesting.

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[asylumx]

Good job explaining it and clearing the air.

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[rasmusbr]

Maybe schools should be places where there are enough resources that kids are mostly done learning at the end of the school day. Homework is a nice exercise in and of itself that kids could benefit from doing maybe once a week or so.

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[ImdatS]

During the last 10+ years, I came to the conclusion that the worst things that happens to kids is going to school. I'm basically convinced now that the single-source of dumbing down kids is going to school.

The main reason for me is that kids don't learn really right things in school. They learn by the rote, for tests. There is a standard curriculum for all kids - one curriculum to rule them all. It is all based on tests (whether in the US, Europe, or elsewhere - it is the same everywhere).

I can't see any approach where:
a) Kids learn how they learn best
b) Kids learn based on their strengths & preferences
c) Kids have fun learning and learn having fun learning

I'm afraid, the only thing we do in schools is try to created "standardized human resources" for the economy. There is no learning of "creative thinking", understanding how one learns best, what one's strengths are, etc.

Form many, many direct observations, I have seen kids being "tortured" with standardized curricula though these were kids with strong artistic senses, or strong scientific senses, etc. Why, on earth, does a kid who loves STEM and is really a high-flyer in STEM, need to do well in Arts, Sports, and other topics in order to continue school/high-school/college? Same is true for kids who love Arts, Sports, or so who are tortured with STEM?

If someone loves history, geography, social sciences and is really strong in it, why do they need to do all the other crap?

It is a convoluted situation: We actually teach kids in school how NOT TO think for themselves anymore, how NOT to be creative, how NOT to understand how they learn - we just cram information into them for 10+ years and test whether this information-cramming worked or not with all school-tests...

I have no solution, but at least I believe I have (partially) identified the problem (for me) - next step would be to really try to find solutions.

Caveat: Yes, I believe there are basic things that everybody should learn: reading, writing, basic math, basic history, basic geography - but this is something that can be done "on the side"...

Well, just the EUR 0.02 of a frustrated person - frustrated with the schooling system around the world (and no, I don't go to school anymore, I'm 45, but I also don't stop learning new things and am actually thinking about going to College - again...)

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[cayenne8]

Maybe schools should be places where there are enough resources that kids are mostly done learning at the end of the school day. Homework is a nice exercise in and of itself that kids could benefit from doing maybe once a week or so.

Hear hear...

In recent years, I've been shocked at the amount of homework that kids have. I rarely had to take a book home as I grew up in school. I learned most of it at school, and it was actually rare that I had assignments daily...we did often have in some classes a special project (make a styrofoam mobile model of the planets, etc), but that was not the daily norm.

We seemed to get a decent education, I was in public school for most of my schooling (private in grades 4-5 to avoid being bussed 2 hours across town), and in HS, at the end of my senior year, I had a chemistry class that took me through 1st year college, as well as a calculus class that got me through Cal I and about half of Cal II in college.

And this was in one of the southern states that don't often rank that high in the nation.

What gives with today giving so much homework? That certainly doesn't give much time for kids to play outside after school and get some exercise...

Re:I blame textbook monopolies.

[datavirtue]

Just finished a 3 year stint within a community college and you are spot on. Upper management ("the administration") will reward the teachers who make their lives easy--which is always far from the priorities of providing a good, wholesome, meaningful education to students. The administration can fire bad teachers but they are not interested in legal entanglements with the union. In reality the teachers would back down, in most cases not strike, and get on with their lives...but there is the looming uncertainty, and above all, above every other priority, the administration wants to do their job, get their check and fat retirement, and go home without any trouble or disturbances. There is no incentive to provide a quality education and improve matters--the money just keeps flowing.

Analogies

[Great Big Bird]

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.

Re:Analogies

[shadowrat]

I certainly have a ton of respect for the woz, but this sounds like someone just saying whatever in a desperate attempt to sound relevant. Worse, it sounds like he's trying to channel Jobs. Woz's a brilliant man, but he knows damn well his innovations in computers were not inventing something nobody had seen before. And while they might have made computers more approachable, they were definitely not hiding the technology.

He should also know that innovation is rarely, if ever, inventing something totally new. Usually it involves putting together some stuff that has existed for 20 years in a way that causes people to say, "oh! i never thought that would have worked, but it surely does!" (though in my experience, google glass sucks and doesn't make me say that. still, you can't really innovate without failing a few times.)

Generally, when something totally new is invented, it languishes. Nobody knows what to do with it. It needs to sit for 20 years until someone realizes they could now put it in some eyeglasses.

On Education

[RobertLTux]

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

Re:On Education

[dmiller1984]

2 when they hit K5 1 separate the boys from the girls (outside of Dance Class and Recess)

This has been tried before and it's been found to not work. It's one of the few things in education that has been pretty much proven not to work. I just read an article the other day about seperating by gender, and it just serves to reinforce sterotypes when the genders are not together. Boys are allowed more freedom to move around since "boys will be boys" when there are girls who could use freedom of movement as well. If you were going to break up classes, break them up by the way they learn.

He hit the nail on the head...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

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.

Very smart, will never happen - in public schools

[SuperKendall]

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.

Invisibly advance

[Lord Grey]

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

- Alfred North Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics (1911)

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.

Technology will not cure what truly ails you

[korbulon]

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.

Where Woz is getting his information

[ChrisMaple]

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.