Eliminate Fear and Irrationality? Wake Up!
on
GEEK Unions?
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· Score: 1
Katz wrote:
If even a small number of geeks around the country were to call in sick... our political and journalistic institutions might, however briefly, be forced to act rationally and sanely.
Nobody reacts rationally when they are afraid! Think back to the last airline pilot's strike. No matter how justified the grievance, people blamed the pilots, and not the airlines. If this were to happen, there would be hysterical talk about cyber-terrorism, discussion of ways to make the Internet and networks geek-proof (yes, even though it is an oxymoron, and very silly) and finally, quiet discussion about how to settle the entire thing. The end result would be some quiet settlement, winning the battle for the geeks. However, we would have just made a giant move in losing the war for the hearts and minds of the people we live with. I prefer a subtler approach, based on social skills. That's hard to implement in high school, when the *pack leaders* have few real social skills, but it becomes better as time goes on.
Follow the money at national and local levels! The ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) had a standout paper on why good educational software is hard to do. Essentially, you need people who are excellent in the subject, people who are good programmers, and then, most importantly, people who have experience in user-interface and curriculum design. This costs really big bucks. Right now the money is on putting boxes in classrooms, not in making sure that there is meaningful content in the box. I am a trainer of adults and a teacher at a local community college. I do lots of curriculum design. I've had only one request to design meaningful programming/math interfaces, but lots of requests to design application tutorials. I'm playing hooky right now from yet another class I'm writing. I hope to see more on this later.
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Nobody reacts rationally when they are afraid! Think back to the last airline pilot's strike. No matter how justified the grievance, people blamed the pilots, and not the airlines. If this were to happen, there would be hysterical talk about cyber-terrorism, discussion of ways to make the Internet and networks geek-proof (yes, even though it is an oxymoron, and very silly) and finally, quiet discussion about how to settle the entire thing.
The end result would be some quiet settlement, winning the battle for the geeks. However, we would have just made a giant move in losing the war for the hearts and minds of the people we live with.
I prefer a subtler approach, based on social skills. That's hard to implement in high school, when the *pack leaders* have few real social skills, but it becomes better as time goes on.
Follow the money at national and local levels! The ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) had a standout paper on why good educational software is hard to do. Essentially, you need people who are excellent in the subject, people who are good programmers, and then, most importantly, people who have experience in user-interface and curriculum design. This costs really big bucks. Right now the money is on putting boxes in classrooms, not in making sure that there is meaningful content in the box. I am a trainer of adults and a teacher at a local community college. I do lots of curriculum design. I've had only one request to design meaningful programming/math interfaces, but lots of requests to design application tutorials. I'm playing hooky right now from yet another class I'm writing. I hope to see more on this later.