It's true that any amount of technology can't substitute for a good teacher who understand the motivation level of students. Still, here are some ideas.
Computers allow the kind of interactive immersion that one teacher can't provide for many students. Making a creative virtual environment with sounds and images that provides feedback on correct learning would help let students explore lessons for themselves at a pace they help choose.
The best test for learning anything is if a student is able to explain it in turn to someone else- having students create Flash animations with recorded dialogue that illustrate what they've learned is a good activity even for technophobes if they are given a basic checklist with the option of doing more.
Part of language is grammar and vocabulary, which is easy to test on a computer; but the majority is face-to-face usage and exposure to native usage, and those would require creative assignments, like "use a webcam to ask a native speaker what they're weekend plans are" which is pretty advanced.
The best experience of Space Camp was joining with the other cadets to design a lunar base. I remember well the debate on how much area we would have to devote to the oxygen-producing forest. (yes, hardly mobile.)
Now that I've established my expert credentials: If you're going to be on an energy budget there are almost certainly going to be higher priorities than the energy required to lug everything around. Orders of magnitude difference- think of all the other things you could be doing.
Pick a good place with as much water as possible and start building the telescope, is what I say.
until you've spent Chinese New Year in Shanghai. The sights and sounds are amazing, and fantastically diverse. Beats the most expensive 4th of July out of the park. And, of course, amazingly dangerous.
I wish we had more holidays like Earth Day- where people are encouraged to participate. Modern life in the US has sort of lost the old idea of holidays- where you'd interact with a community, at the very least building relationships.
How helpful are the UN's "Special Days"?
It's possible to imagine a company, knowing there is a risk, convincing someone to sue and lose, to deter future lawsuits. Wonder if this has happened?
Wireless media distribution is great, but even harder to search and find what you're looking for than text. If anyone can broadcast, the people who co-operate to create something creative and engaging will come out on top. If you create something worth seeing, it ought to make it onto a conventional TV network, though they seem to have lost the concept of "worth seeing."
I've been in the middle of China (not the very-nearly-western Shanghai, Beijing, or Shenzhen) for two years now.
The patriarchal culture is changing, a little. And the values of questioning authority will hopefully catch on even more- it's a concept that does lead to success in science and business as well as politics.
Yesterday I took my students through a review of controversial US/China govt policies. Censorship wasn't even on their list.
Maybe the problem has something to do with how science tries to be objective and rather disembodied- which can make it tough for humans (predisposed to play psychological games with each other) to relate. An untestable hypothesis: in the past, survival may have depended as much on accepting sensationalistic narratives and understanding tribal intrigues as applying critical thinking and technology, if not more so. Carl Sagan and Feynman added a personal touch to the quest for understanding. Many people are entertained by the story of a creative underdog trying to get at the truth.
That said- if mainstream media would do a better job of citing sources, critically evaluating credibility (even when less credible sources say more entertaining things), and giving reasons and deductions instead of rote facts, people might learn that science is a process, not a dogma.
The same problem exists for science ed- if you don't tell students how we got from Darwin's observations and theories to empirical tests, the compelling stories of trusted parents and friends will outweigh the rare knowledgeable biology teacher. For every fact, people should have an idea of the process of thinking behind it. (And maybe the world could use more stories of heros who succeed with knowledge, rather than manipulation and smokescreens.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's true that any amount of technology can't substitute for a good teacher who understand the motivation level of students. Still, here are some ideas.
Computers allow the kind of interactive immersion that one teacher can't provide for many students. Making a creative virtual environment with sounds and images that provides feedback on correct learning would help let students explore lessons for themselves at a pace they help choose.
The best test for learning anything is if a student is able to explain it in turn to someone else- having students create Flash animations with recorded dialogue that illustrate what they've learned is a good activity even for technophobes if they are given a basic checklist with the option of doing more.
Part of language is grammar and vocabulary, which is easy to test on a computer; but the majority is face-to-face usage and exposure to native usage, and those would require creative assignments, like "use a webcam to ask a native speaker what they're weekend plans are" which is pretty advanced.
Now that I've established my expert credentials: If you're going to be on an energy budget there are almost certainly going to be higher priorities than the energy required to lug everything around. Orders of magnitude difference- think of all the other things you could be doing.
Pick a good place with as much water as possible and start building the telescope, is what I say.
I wish we had more holidays like Earth Day- where people are encouraged to participate. Modern life in the US has sort of lost the old idea of holidays- where you'd interact with a community, at the very least building relationships.
How helpful are the UN's "Special Days"?
It's possible to imagine a company, knowing there is a risk, convincing someone to sue and lose, to deter future lawsuits. Wonder if this has happened?
Wireless media distribution is great, but even harder to search and find what you're looking for than text. If anyone can broadcast, the people who co-operate to create something creative and engaging will come out on top. If you create something worth seeing, it ought to make it onto a conventional TV network, though they seem to have lost the concept of "worth seeing."
I've been in the middle of China (not the very-nearly-western Shanghai, Beijing, or Shenzhen) for two years now. The patriarchal culture is changing, a little. And the values of questioning authority will hopefully catch on even more- it's a concept that does lead to success in science and business as well as politics. Yesterday I took my students through a review of controversial US/China govt policies. Censorship wasn't even on their list.
That said- if mainstream media would do a better job of citing sources, critically evaluating credibility (even when less credible sources say more entertaining things), and giving reasons and deductions instead of rote facts, people might learn that science is a process, not a dogma.
The same problem exists for science ed- if you don't tell students how we got from Darwin's observations and theories to empirical tests, the compelling stories of trusted parents and friends will outweigh the rare knowledgeable biology teacher. For every fact, people should have an idea of the process of thinking behind it. (And maybe the world could use more stories of heros who succeed with knowledge, rather than manipulation and smokescreens.)