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.

[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.

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.

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.