Yet, I question this as you all 95% of people do is memorize the steps. You memorize the steps on what buttons to press on your calculator. You memorize the steps on how to do long division. Neither gains you any insights into division as a concept.
Its true, that, when learning long division, all you do is "memorize the steps". However the steps are more generalizable. For example, if you know how to do long division with numbers, its a fairly simple jump to get long division with symbols. Yet, if you're doing division on your calculator, you'll have a much harder time figuring out how to divide with symbols, since you've never been exposed to the actual division algorithm (all your division took place inside of a black box).
In other words, learning to divide using a calculator would be fine if nothing else depended on long division. But we both know math doesn't work like that. Math is cumulative - advanced topics build off basic ones. If you don't have an adequate grasp of long division with numbers, you're going to have a hard time factoring equations using that method.
It was pretty awesome because the teacher could teach much more during the 1,5 hours.
Can you elaborate? Not trying to troll here, but I always thought that the main advantage of digital boards was that one could replay the lesson and not miss the content on the board. That way, if you missed a day, it'd be easier for you to get caught up.
The main point of modern math class is how to translate real life problems into numerical equations. Once you can do that, solving those equations is rather trivial.
While that is the point of the math classes I took in high school, I'm not at all sure that's the best method to be teaching mathematics. My high school used the "Chicago Math" method of teaching, which focuses heavily on "real-life" examples and encourages heavy use of computers and calculators to ease computation.
It seemed like a pretty good method at the time, but when I got into the electrical engineering program in college, I found myself woefully under-prepared mathematically. I found that the de-emphasis on computation had caused my basic knowledge of mathematical formulae to atrophy. And, since math is cumulative, I found that I had a very difficult time catching up (especially in calculus), since my knowledge of basic algebraic principles was never developed properly. Indeed, this lack of basic skills led me to switch to the computer science program, since I found that discrete math and set theory were easier to learn, as I was learning them from first principles, making my lack of algebraic preparation less of a hindrance.
So, while its tempting to say that computation and practice are irrelevant, the fact remains that these things do matter, because its the practice that fixes the knowledge in the student's head. My father learned math in India, which has a much heavier emphasis on practice, and, even now, he's still much better at algebra and calculus than I am, because he's practiced it so much more than I have.
Following your logic, we should all be hunting and gathering instead of shopping for food because now we can't feed ourselves, either.
Not at all. I'm not sure that we should go back to hunting and gathering, but, I am sure that more knowledge of basic survival and emergency preparedness procedures would be of benefit to society. There are far too many people who'd be completely lost if there was even a short interruption in services such as electricity or cell phone service.
Let us retard all progress in the name of tradition because... well, there is no good reason. But it would make you happy, I suppose.
There's a useful quote here: "There are two types of fools. One says, 'This is old, and therefore good.' The other says, 'This is new and therefore better.'" While I'm certainly not advocating a wholesale abandonment of modern methods and technology, I do think there's something to be said for teaching kids to think critically before letting them loose in the ocean of raw data that is the Internet. As anyone who's read blogs or looked at Wikipedia for a significant amount of time knows, there's a lot of information out there that's biased, misquoted, or just flat out wrong. I think its a mistake to think that greater access to this information will solve the issue of people not thinking critically about this information.
We're *far* beyond the 8-bit NES that didn't have an OS. We're in an age where consoles are basically specialised computers. Computers that have an OS which is software, which will have bugs that need to be fixed from time to time. Computers that will have features added.
Why? Why should consoles be "specialized computers"? Why should their feature set change over time? If I wanted a gaming box, I'd go to Newegg and build myself one. I want a console because its guaranteed to just work. By introducing things like upgradeable firmware, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are destroying the only advantage that consoles hold over PC games.
You'll be telling us Einstein was a shit physicist next because he couldn't wire a 3-pin plug properly.
The funny thing is that, I bet Einstein could have wired a 3-pin plug properly. You have to keep in mind then that goods were expensive. If you couldn't fix it yourself, you had to take it to someone and get it fixed for a fee because buying a new widget was prohibitively expensive.
Hell, Feynman earned money as a kid by fixing radios. Who's to say that Einstein was devoid of practical knowledge?
And in the history of mankind this has happened: NEVER!
Reminds me of the old joke about the guy falling off a building - as he sees floor after floor flash past, he keeps thinking, "So far, so good. So far, so good."
All joking aside, there have been situations where civilizations have collapsed because of resource shortages. Look at the Maya, for example. They had a civilization comparable to Rome, with far superior agricultural technology. However, when their population exceeded their ability to grow food, the entire civilization vanished in a paroxysm of war and famine.
First, I'm not sure that I ever came close to spending $50 just "going out" with friends. Maybe we're just poor or uptight, but I have trouble remembering a time I spent more than $20 on recreation.
Second, as a sibling post points out, going out and partying is optional. If I don't have the money to go partying, I won't. I'll find something else to do. However, in many cases, I'm forced to buy the textbook for the course (as a student that lives off campus, I don't have easy access to the school library). Its a question of buying the book or failing the class.
Finally (and most importantly), its the principle of the thing. I don't think textbook publishers have the right to make profits by simply moving around the homework problems and selling the result as an entirely new work. There is no reason a book on Newtonian mechanics should cost $100, short of it being printed on gilt-edged pages. Same for basic calculus, discrete math, geometry, etc.
The cost of books is only unimportant because you're wealthy enough to make it seem so. For those of us that aren't as fortunate as you, the price of books adds significant marginal cost to our educations.
If you're in engineering, you're usually buying multiple books in the $70-$100 range. Example: I'm in a computer science program, and I paid about $500 for books last year. My friend is double major (physics and computer science), and his textbook bill routinely exceeds $500 per semester.
The other issue is that, while one can pay tuition in installments, one cannot do the same for textbooks.
#1. The answers to the exercises WILL be available on-line. So? If the instructor cannot come up with his/her own exercises then s/he needs to find a new job.
That's already happening. Most textbooks already have their answer keys available on P2P sites. I fail to see how the problem could get any worse if we switched to digital distribution.
Well, what if we take this out of the "virtual world"? I know the local independent bookstore by the University is advertising a "textbook rental" program. Instead of buying the book, you rent it for the semester and give it back when you're done. In exchange for promising to give back the book, you get a steep discount. Isn't this much the same as what the parent poster is proposing? Instead of renting the book from the bookstore, you'd be renting it from the university itself, but otherwise there's no real difference.
I like your idea overall, but let me propose one change. You say that the school ought to add on the price of the e-book license to the price of the course. Now, there are a few books that I've found to be valuable outside of the course as well - for these cases, the student ought to be able to buy a copy outright, instead of having to "give back" the textbook at the end of the term.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet, I question this as you all 95% of people do is memorize the steps. You memorize the steps on what buttons to press on your calculator. You memorize the steps on how to do long division. Neither gains you any insights into division as a concept.
Its true, that, when learning long division, all you do is "memorize the steps". However the steps are more generalizable. For example, if you know how to do long division with numbers, its a fairly simple jump to get long division with symbols. Yet, if you're doing division on your calculator, you'll have a much harder time figuring out how to divide with symbols, since you've never been exposed to the actual division algorithm (all your division took place inside of a black box).
In other words, learning to divide using a calculator would be fine if nothing else depended on long division. But we both know math doesn't work like that. Math is cumulative - advanced topics build off basic ones. If you don't have an adequate grasp of long division with numbers, you're going to have a hard time factoring equations using that method.
True. However, after memorizing "the tables", how much space is there to make connections?
Plenty. Memory space is cheap, and acting as if it was otherwise impoverishes learning.
It was pretty awesome because the teacher could teach much more during the 1,5 hours.
Can you elaborate? Not trying to troll here, but I always thought that the main advantage of digital boards was that one could replay the lesson and not miss the content on the board. That way, if you missed a day, it'd be easier for you to get caught up.
No, English is the language of western science, followed by German(at least historically).
Really? I agree that English is the current lingua franca of science, but I'd argue that the previous common tongue was French, not German.
The main point of modern math class is how to translate real life problems into numerical equations. Once you can do that, solving those equations is rather trivial.
While that is the point of the math classes I took in high school, I'm not at all sure that's the best method to be teaching mathematics. My high school used the "Chicago Math" method of teaching, which focuses heavily on "real-life" examples and encourages heavy use of computers and calculators to ease computation.
It seemed like a pretty good method at the time, but when I got into the electrical engineering program in college, I found myself woefully under-prepared mathematically. I found that the de-emphasis on computation had caused my basic knowledge of mathematical formulae to atrophy. And, since math is cumulative, I found that I had a very difficult time catching up (especially in calculus), since my knowledge of basic algebraic principles was never developed properly. Indeed, this lack of basic skills led me to switch to the computer science program, since I found that discrete math and set theory were easier to learn, as I was learning them from first principles, making my lack of algebraic preparation less of a hindrance.
So, while its tempting to say that computation and practice are irrelevant, the fact remains that these things do matter, because its the practice that fixes the knowledge in the student's head. My father learned math in India, which has a much heavier emphasis on practice, and, even now, he's still much better at algebra and calculus than I am, because he's practiced it so much more than I have.
Following your logic, we should all be hunting and gathering instead of shopping for food because now we can't feed ourselves, either.
Not at all. I'm not sure that we should go back to hunting and gathering, but, I am sure that more knowledge of basic survival and emergency preparedness procedures would be of benefit to society. There are far too many people who'd be completely lost if there was even a short interruption in services such as electricity or cell phone service.
Let us retard all progress in the name of tradition because... well, there is no good reason. But it would make you happy, I suppose.
There's a useful quote here: "There are two types of fools. One says, 'This is old, and therefore good.' The other says, 'This is new and therefore better.'" While I'm certainly not advocating a wholesale abandonment of modern methods and technology, I do think there's something to be said for teaching kids to think critically before letting them loose in the ocean of raw data that is the Internet. As anyone who's read blogs or looked at Wikipedia for a significant amount of time knows, there's a lot of information out there that's biased, misquoted, or just flat out wrong. I think its a mistake to think that greater access to this information will solve the issue of people not thinking critically about this information.
Except that Google Maps isn't Flash. Its AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML).
Ummm, you do realize that that's how evolution works, right? Any mutation (beneficial or not) can be seen as a "random error".
This is /. Did you really think anyone would really get the dating analogy?
Next time, use a car analogy, please.
We're *far* beyond the 8-bit NES that didn't have an OS. We're in an age where consoles are basically specialised computers. Computers that have an OS which is software, which will have bugs that need to be fixed from time to time. Computers that will have features added.
Why? Why should consoles be "specialized computers"? Why should their feature set change over time? If I wanted a gaming box, I'd go to Newegg and build myself one. I want a console because its guaranteed to just work. By introducing things like upgradeable firmware, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are destroying the only advantage that consoles hold over PC games.
You'll be telling us Einstein was a shit physicist next because he couldn't wire a 3-pin plug properly.
The funny thing is that, I bet Einstein could have wired a 3-pin plug properly. You have to keep in mind then that goods were expensive. If you couldn't fix it yourself, you had to take it to someone and get it fixed for a fee because buying a new widget was prohibitively expensive.
Hell, Feynman earned money as a kid by fixing radios. Who's to say that Einstein was devoid of practical knowledge?
Ah. Fair point - it was Eisenhower who put the missiles in Turkey. My bad, I thought it was Kennedy.
Solved? Hell, the problem has been "solved" for a while now. I mean, National Geographic ran this as their headline a year or so ago.
They couldn't grow more food because the soil was exhausted. How could "politics" have prevented that?
And in the history of mankind this has happened: NEVER!
Reminds me of the old joke about the guy falling off a building - as he sees floor after floor flash past, he keeps thinking, "So far, so good. So far, so good."
All joking aside, there have been situations where civilizations have collapsed because of resource shortages. Look at the Maya, for example. They had a civilization comparable to Rome, with far superior agricultural technology. However, when their population exceeded their ability to grow food, the entire civilization vanished in a paroxysm of war and famine.
What's really annoying, though, is when one of your friends has an unlimited texting plan and you don't.
they'll be charging to receive phone calls next.
They do.
I don't think so. TFA mentioned that the PC became noticeably slower as it was bogged down by spyware.
Err, false. The Soviets moved their missiles into Cuba because we moved ours into Turkey. We had the first move there.
First, I'm not sure that I ever came close to spending $50 just "going out" with friends. Maybe we're just poor or uptight, but I have trouble remembering a time I spent more than $20 on recreation.
Second, as a sibling post points out, going out and partying is optional. If I don't have the money to go partying, I won't. I'll find something else to do. However, in many cases, I'm forced to buy the textbook for the course (as a student that lives off campus, I don't have easy access to the school library). Its a question of buying the book or failing the class.
Finally (and most importantly), its the principle of the thing. I don't think textbook publishers have the right to make profits by simply moving around the homework problems and selling the result as an entirely new work. There is no reason a book on Newtonian mechanics should cost $100, short of it being printed on gilt-edged pages. Same for basic calculus, discrete math, geometry, etc.
Hell, sometimes they don't even change the problems - the just reorder them. My discrete mathematics book was a prime example of that.
The cost of books is only unimportant because you're wealthy enough to make it seem so. For those of us that aren't as fortunate as you, the price of books adds significant marginal cost to our educations.
If you're in engineering, you're usually buying multiple books in the $70-$100 range. Example: I'm in a computer science program, and I paid about $500 for books last year. My friend is double major (physics and computer science), and his textbook bill routinely exceeds $500 per semester.
The other issue is that, while one can pay tuition in installments, one cannot do the same for textbooks.
#1. The answers to the exercises WILL be available on-line. So? If the instructor cannot come up with his/her own exercises then s/he needs to find a new job.
That's already happening. Most textbooks already have their answer keys available on P2P sites. I fail to see how the problem could get any worse if we switched to digital distribution.
Well, what if we take this out of the "virtual world"? I know the local independent bookstore by the University is advertising a "textbook rental" program. Instead of buying the book, you rent it for the semester and give it back when you're done. In exchange for promising to give back the book, you get a steep discount. Isn't this much the same as what the parent poster is proposing? Instead of renting the book from the bookstore, you'd be renting it from the university itself, but otherwise there's no real difference.
I like your idea overall, but let me propose one change. You say that the school ought to add on the price of the e-book license to the price of the course. Now, there are a few books that I've found to be valuable outside of the course as well - for these cases, the student ought to be able to buy a copy outright, instead of having to "give back" the textbook at the end of the term.