Teaching and technology


A long-overdue technological revolution is at last under way

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The idea of personalized education is not revolutionary or new. It has been developed, practiced, and established for at least 4 decades in the ACE curriculum. In the ACE curriculum, there are no teachers only supervisors. No classrooms, only learning centers where every child has an 'office' with a computer that they are to work with. The students use personal PACES and are continually and personally tested.

This was what I used from grade 4 through 7 and I loved it! Oh, and this was all in Nigeria too.

Adam Onge

Khan Academy is basically "Math for Dummies" i.e. for the 99% who can't think for themselves or at least are pretty slow on the uptake (though they might be fast on the download, depends on their internet connection speed, I suppose!).
Khan specializes in dwelling on the trivial and that is the secret of his success. I prefer to teach the elite 1%, even if I don't get rich. Money is not my metric. Greedy "marketeers" can take care of those "baser instincts". I live for the glory of the human spirit, so let there be free education and let there be light for the bright, Amen.


Whenever the Economist opines about the education sector - one which I am intimately familiar with through both study and practice, I get lost in a recurring fantasy in which I become fabulously wealthy and purchase the publication. In my fantasy I set about implementing policies culled exclusively from the opinion pages of the Economist. In response to the squeals of protest that result, which are largely based on some variation of the "journalism is special" theme, I simply tell them all that they sound like a teachers union and then laugh my evil laugh.

Stevaki in reply to yasmarb

Well said. Why do we automatically assume that more technology means fewer teachers? The problem with child-centered education is that its needs were never really properly resourced with pupil-teacher ratios of 30:1 or higher.

For heavens sake education is not manufacturing. We are not producing cars but, ideally, thoughtful, creative, participative and open-minded people. That cannot be done by machines. Children need teachers, coaches, mentors, role models and guides, namely other people from whom they can learn. Teachers should be supported by technology, not the other way around.

Esteban Cafe

Teachers' unions will be a likely impediment to rolling out Khan-like on-line schooling. They don't like that "the money is coming out of traditional education" ? They need to update their thinking. Look to the US Blue Model educational model for failures across the nation.

Hitchslap in reply to Esteban Cafe

To be fair I don't blame any union for doing what they do. Hopefully they will die a natural death.

What we should be doing is limiting their opportunities to slow down or block innovation using the courts.

Better yet get them early, stop student teachers being brainwashed into a "them and us" mindset. Never mind the idea of union dues being deducted from paychecks!

Medicine4theDead in reply to Esteban Cafe

Considering that online schools have graduation rates at about 10%, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about and are simply just another bigot who thinks non-profits that use a democratic model to serve members is evil somehow.

Medicine4theDead in reply to Hitchslap

Mr Hitchslap, brain-washing? Please stop this ignorant tripe based on no facts and no evidence. The US vs THEM mentality comes from parents who want to blame teachers for their ignorant laziness and not from the teacher's union. You clearly think that democracy is evil for that is how unions work. Although, I do agree with you on the automatic deduction of union dues from paychecks; Although, an agent would be guaranteed 10% for the same type of work and no one seems to have a problem with that.

Esteban Cafe in reply to Medicine4theDead

It's called math as related to finance and, if your American schools taught it, you might understand my comment about the school finances. Do you know what you're up against in the world ? Even poor India has more honors students than America has Total students. Think before you reflexively hark back to your Uni Grievance Studies.

On line schools are new and growing--the jury's out on them. Not so with your Blue Model schools--the jury is in and the model is a clear failure. Interestingly these failures mostly occur in American states that are also financial failures. And these states are led by...wait for it...Democrats. And the Teachers Union is in a quid pro quo relationship with them. Imagine my surprise.

What's with the "bigot" comment ? That is what you American Leftists always offer when someone challenges your failed school system. Why is that ? You have to be a bigot to understand math ?

Medicine4theDead in reply to Esteban Cafe

No, online schools are not new. University of Phoenix had been around for about ten years now, so try not to be a total idiot.

Unions are for democrats? Really, then why did the police union in Wisconsin back Walker and in exchange got to keep all their collective bargaining rights. You are just dumb, you are dumber than dumb.

And yes, your stupidity suggests that you are just another ignorant bigot who has come to a conclusion based on no facts and no evidence.

So, are on-line schools successful or not, based on Phoenix stats ? That's right: one, two or a even dozen on line schools do not provide sufficient data--that's why the jury's still out. Your parochial life in your tiny city and state do not represent the world--which is the reach of on-line schooling.

You point out a corner case with some US state, "Wisconsin" and use it to represent that most unions are not populated by and focused on Democrat people and interests ? You have proven yourself intellectually dishonest.

Again, all your liberal projection reveal more about you than anything you might say about me. You sir, have proven yourself to be a bitter person.

Sir, on-line is a tiny fraction in comparison with the current school model and has been around far fewer years, ergo: new and growing.

Unions are not Democratically aligned in the US ? That they are is very well known; so well that your comment makes reason stare. You sir, are a shill for all that is wrong with your country.

On a personal note, your arguments are a room full of straw men--it's fun to watch them burn but you have nothing left at the end. You might reconsider your intellectually dishonest approach to this thread (and your life).

Connect The Dots

Udacity heralded a new era with a state of the art class on Artificial Intelligence equal to the Stanford University curriculum.
IT was free.
And they enrolled over 50,000 from over 100 countries.
However the completion rate was dismal:
More than half never watched a video.
More than 75% never took a quiz.
Less than 5% completed the class.
Less than 3% passed.
Imagine if normal college classes had a 5% completion rate.
It is no more promising than television broadcast courses.
Or mail order correspondence courses.
Or comic book ads for black belt Karate lessons.
A 3% pass rate is an abysmal failure.
We should be optimistic, but ultimately we must also be realistic.

Adam Onge in reply to Connect The Dots

3% of 50,000 = 1,500. Not a bad class size. Who cares about losers, they can all go to some "real campus" where the football coach earns more than a computer science prof (how much does Stanford pay its football coach?)

greg_not_so in reply to Connect The Dots

yes, that's the risk, but that shouldn't prevent us from trying. with each new medium (books, films, online courses) we move closer to the real thing (in-person classroom teaching). some content more than other lends itself better to MOOC as you can get away with remaining passive (happens in the real world, too) but other requires more interaction. if it doesn't replace it, e-ducation definitely complements other forms of learning...self-taught included.

BarryKayton in reply to greg_not_so

My approach to online learning is to create a dialogue between a virtual coach and the learner. The virtual coach asks thought-provoking questions – and the learner responds – in a text chat. During the conversation the coach introduces videos to watch or material to read. But the dialogue between the coach and the learner remains at the centre. The result is that the learner switches between different modes: actively thinking about an open question; passively watching a video; reading some text; actively reflecting on another thought-provoking question; etc.

Martocciad in reply to Connect The Dots

Yes. An entirely on-line curriculum (or any form of home study) is a poor substitute for actual classroom learning. A balanced approach that inserts technology-based teaching methods, where appropriate, and uses more interactive and personal teaching methods can only help.

An example would be a class in American History. A classroom lecture is quite dull; however, a combination of quality videos and teaching apps can make the class a lot of fun. After 3-4 hours of primarily self-paced learning, include an hour of interactive, instructor-led discussions involving all of the students at the end of the week.

Unqualified Critic

I'll admit that a lot of kids these days are pretty unintelligible and severly lack interpersonnal skills, not to mention common sense. But I caution the baby-boomer generation about labeling this generation as the dumbest, because they're simply peeing into the wind. After all isn't this generation the product of their parenting skills?

I agree. Someone once said "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."
I don't know that we have a'generation of idiots' but a LOT of them are more focused on the device in their hands rather than the person sitting next to them (if they're not texting that person, too). Maybe it's a melding of electronic and human qualities ? If so, the human side seems to be losing.

erniejpdx in reply to Unqualified Critic

No, because parenting today has to deal with a technology that never existed before, so there is no meaningful comparison with the status quo ante.

I grew up in the generation after Edison's hopes for the impact of motion pictures on education were dashed. Mine was the generation for which television was going to utterly reform education. Another washout.

As an early embracer of Internet technology I could see the educational potential, and I've used it for research and personal enlightenment every day since 1985. During the same time I've watched the medium deteriorate to a morass of games, porn, ads, misinformation, etc.

It seems that every new technology since printing has suffered the same fate: announced as a breakthrough in education, it soon disintegrates into mere entertainment for the masses.


The biggest question - one un-asked by this article - is actually whether or not schools have any place in the future of education. When knowledge can be distributed across millions of locations more or less cost-free, why bother to waste time commuting to-and-from particular buildings? Most companies these days persist in forcing their workers to come to the office merely because managers are useless at measuring output. Therefore managers get comfort from seeing people "busy" at their desks. But schools don't have this issue. Output is measured moment-by-moment and, eventually, at test time. Furthermore, the notion that children need "socializing" by gathering together at school is also flawed. For all of human history until the nineteenth-century, children of all ages mixed together. The older ones helped the younger ones and so there was a rich set of interactions. Today, by segregating children according to age, there's a paucity of interaction and often the worst traits are amplified by "mirroring." So on all counts the contemporary school is a disaster: it produces sub-standard outputs (poor grades and poor behaviors). Time, then, to say goodnight and goodbye to this anachronism.

Medicine4theDead in reply to CA-Oxonian

Because of distractions, Harvard did a study and found that people fail at online courses because they are too easily distracted by the environment they are in. That being said, schools do suck, but that is because they are based on a manufacturing model.

Martocciad in reply to CA-Oxonian

I'd prefer that physical schools continue to exist. Keeps the kids off the streets. Because we are dealing with children, strong oversight and guidance is absolutely required. However, I do agree that technology may allow us to reduce the number of buildings, or use the existing ones more effectively.



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