Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: the5thforce on 09/03/2017 23:21:51
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If we already have access to all the knowledge humans have ever bothered recording right on our smartphones.. and were all already online dating, we should probably come to terms with public/higher education being inefficient for much beyond experimental research/recreational competition and should work to merge most other social organization with mass communication, importantly our political process now that we have the ability to create a true global democracy which can easily be streamlined with social media
If were expecting the population to continue growing we should get started with settling issues like land allocation for affordable new human development
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higher education being inefficient
A number of institutions have experimented with a MOOC: a Massive Open Online Course.
- They have tried offering courses with low or no fees
- They have attracted thousands of students to start a course
- Watching a video of a lecture scales quite well, but it has proven more difficult to scale things like the ability to ask questions of the lecturer, run tutorials or mark assignments.
- The number of people completing a course is far lower than the number who start it - but maybe if you don't invest much, you won't value it so highly?
Or maybe this is a different style of learning - people just want to get a feel for the subject, and drop out when they have enough.
I like the model of the Khan academy, where there are short classes in many subjects, and you can just pick a topic that interests you or has you stumped at the moment.
we have the ability to create a true global democracy which can easily be streamlined with social media
Social media has been involved in political upheavals in a number of countries (eg Egypt). You can tell when it is gathering momentum because a dictatorial government will shut down the internet.
Obama used social media to gain support from a larger base than previous political campaigns.
Trump seems to be promulgating government policy via twitter. But it is a fairly shallow policy that fits into 140 characters.
Voting via smartphone seems attractive, but it will need to be quite secure - I imagine that many groups would offer to decide an online poll in favor of the highest bidder.
- I am not sure how engaged the public would be when the USA has trouble getting over 60% voter turnout for elections.
- I am also concerned that most voters would just vote for topics that interest them. I think they will be unwilling to invest the effort to make sensible tradeoffs of existing policies against the cost of a new batch of policies.
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I believe the only industries humans will have in the near future will be:
Food(farming, restuarant)
Shelter(material mining, construction, housekeeping)
Healthcare(assistant, nursing, surgeon)
Manufacturing(design, assembly)
Entertainment(performance, sport, gaming, recreation, art)
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Teaching will be replaced by the internet, recreational socialization will become the focus of brick and morter school
Tech design will be replaced by personalized customization, programming will be replaced by native languages
Practical science is close to solved and will be replaced by simulation assisted engineering
Repair is being replaced by increasingly affordable upgrades
Business and politics including marketing will be replaced by mass media/mass communication
Delivery/transportation will be automated though I believe recreational driving/off roading will become even more popular
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Humans are approaching a point of universal understanding of our world where energy efficient engineering is becoming our only obstacle, tech has caused white collar/button pushing jobs to become easier than blue collar jobs which are inherently the last to be fully automated energy efficiently so we need to ensure were paying livable wages for the basic labor that has been equalized by tech with what were once high skilled white collar jobs
Last I believe churches will adapt by continuing to move towards a pantheistic approach like unitarian universalism
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Internet schooling takes more personal responsibility and willpower that regular schooling. This is why many people will start courses, but few have the willpower needed for sustain their effort to the end. In brick and mortar schools, the teacher becomes the surrogate for willpower, encouraging the students to march to the end. To get free internet education to work, you will need to get students back to the old fashion values of hard work, self reliance and long term vision. This allows effort without the need for extra surrogates for willpower.
If you are living in the moment, self education over the internet, will not be sustainable, unless it feeds you like junk food. With junk food, you can stay in the moment of enjoyment, constantly; chips and M&M's. That is Face Book and Twitter. People who faithfully surf the net, but who are short term thinkers, prefer snack food education.
True education is not junk food, but is more like having to eat peas and squash. This is not a good snack food, most people will eat all the time and overindulge. You need willpower, based on a long term vision, like good health. A long term and continuing goal, can get you past the needs of little immediate gratification. Brick and Mortar Schools, helps the studies remain in the future, so they can live on peas.
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Practical science is close to solved
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I have heard that before.
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Internet teaching is wonderful because it doesn't teach skepticism, debate, or observation. It's the best way to turn humans into consumers and obedient taxpayers. Or terrorists.Indeed anything but rational beings capable of thinking for themselves.
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People really only need to learn english, politics, economics, nutrition, physiology, and physical education, the rest are unnecessary in todays society or can easily be learned online, even programming
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People really only need to learn english, politics, economics, nutrition, physiology, and physical education, all the rest are unnecessary in todays society or can easily be learned online, even programming
I have taken part in a number of MOOCs and although quality is variable I can see that with proper design they can be very good. However, I do not think they will replace schools because the the way modern schooling works is very different, there is a strong emphasis on discovery rather than just push education.
Example. We had a forward looking english teacher, rather than all talk and chalk he would suggest we split into groups, picks topic and explain it to the class. My friends were selected, not on their ability to kick a ball, but on their ability to come up with interesting ideas and to discuss science, so while some groups decided to explain the offside rule we decided to explain how an aircraft works. When we came to control we knew it had a joystick and rudder bar, but not how connected. In drawing it out there was the sudden realisation that in order to work the control lines have to cross over. This might seem a trivial discovery, but at 8 it is big and I still remember it today - tell me that or show online it's unlikely I would have remembered.
Yes online teaching does have a role and it's use will grow, but much of modern school teaching is designed to encourage thinking, problem solving , discovery and I think that is why it ought to continue in face to face groups - although some politicians feel differently and want to return to rote learning.
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The most important stuff I learned at school, apart from maths (followed up later by a superb Open University degree course - it is a subject that can be taught remotely) and experimental sciences (the OU does its best with kitchen table experiments but still needs summer schools for supervised hands-on work), was how to speak French in live conversation (Berlitz CDs are OK but a bit stilted), how to play cricket and rugby, basic woodwork and metalwork, swimming, lifesaving and first aid. Not sure how you could transfer these vital skills through a screen.
Flight sims are great! You can walk away from every crash (the last scene of "Sully" is recommended)! Which is why the authorities require actual airtime before granting a licence.
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Higher education is expensive, while Internet access is cheap. However, it seems quite difficult to learn basic sciences strictly from the Internet. In contrast, many peer-reviewed scientific journals are not open access, which is limiting accessibility. Free education is in my opinion the only way to use the Internet as an extension to conventional teaching.
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Based on what I enjoyed and found useful id design public school in 2017 to involve one physical education class for 2-3 hours incorporating exercise strength training physics biology physiology nutrition sports recreation and even survivalist projects both outdoors and indoors, 2nd one open ended collaborative research class moderated by teacher(s) where the students decide the direction of daily research using technology and driven purely by curiosity for 2-3 hours, 3rd one intellectual elective involving experts/teachers giving lectures and answering questions for the last 2-3 hours
1 Body-education class
1 Self-education class
1 Teacher-education class
Homework should be easy enough to enjoy but hard enough to encourage socializing outside of school, my favorite classes were physical education, physics, foreign languages, and art
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Since fulltime minimum wage is the middle class now and all below that are the poor we should raise minimum wage to optimally align with where we think the middle class should be then provide the difference to the poor until they attain fulltime minimum wage, id say 15-20usd per hour is the minimum for a single person, 20-30usd for a parent and we need to encourage those above minimum wage to always spend any money they earn above the minimum in order to accelerate the economy and technology towards energy sufficiency, since we understand how nuclear fusion works we should make oil as cheap as possible and use it to build more fission and fusion reactors along with solar wind water, we have just enough oil to safely expand to mars which infinitely increases our chance of survival even if earth sustains damage
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Why do you all compare online learning with ordinary schooling? These are two types of training. At school they teach not only basic knowledge, but give knowledge of what is training and how to apply it. And the Internet training gives you just a little specific knowledge, no more no less.
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Why do you all compare online learning with ordinary schooling? These are two types of training. At school they teach not only basic knowledge, but give knowledge of what is training and how to apply it. And the Internet training gives you just a little specific knowledge, no more no less.
Traditional schooling forces you to do things, that you may not wish to do, and which you may not think you will ever need. Free internet school gives you the option to stay within your comfort zone. This would allow one to cherry pick courses and/or stop in the middle if you get bored. Although this is more comfortable, this path does not prepare you for life in the real world. Life is not a bowl of cherries and you can't just quit if you get bored. You may not get your ideal job and be able to quit when bored.
Traditional eduction is better for preparing one for the real world, because it forces you to get out of your comfort zone and stay out of that zone for an entire semester or longer. Internet education is good for continuing education, after the basics of self reliance in the real world are learned. With that background, one will be able take diversified choices, and accept more challenges out of your comfort zone.
Contemporary traditional education in the US is also not preparing students for the real world. College age students need safe zones away from the real world. Then lack critical thinking skills, which require exposure to all sides of the arguments, including those outside your comfort zone. But since they were coddled, like internet education, one can see the result; snow flakes and bullies or one way or the high way.
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The most useful and important things I learned up to the age of 18 were
Latin
French
German
Cricket
Rugby
Classical physics
How to think
Turned out to be a perfect basis for a career in medical physics and engineering, none of which was learned on-line but all from textbooks, experts, and a lot of experiments.
There is a wealth of data on line, but the key to getting anything done in the real world is knowing how to communicate, collaborate and evaluate. Hence the importance of early schooling.
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As my profile clearly states I was not schooled from age 11, but the most important things that I learned when I did attend before age 11 was how to read, write and do basic maths. Without these skills I would not have been able to so easily learn anything else. The music, art, drama and social interaction skills being important, but secondary.
Up until 2010, which was when I was a late comer to the internet phenomenon, I learned from books, by observation or by asking someone. Asking someone has it's draw backs due to the fact that not everyone is particularly nice and I have been purposefully misinformed quite detrimentally on occasion. Learning by observation also has it's draw backs. Often I would feel stupid because I could not understand why a person did something in a certain way, or why a situation should be dealt with as such, only to find in hindsight that I probably should of said something. I could have saved them some trouble.
Learning in this way forces a person to really examine all incoming info very carefully. When I see a toddler introduced to a new toy, their behavior reminds me of my continued learning technique, in that I too will turn everything upside down, inside out, and back to front before I am satisfied.
Learning in the way that I have does have benefits, but for the younger person it also has dangers. Making mistakes can have consequences that could have been avoided by more conventional and structured schooling. As a loose analogy, conventional and structured schooling is a bit like not having to touch the fire to find out that it burns.
In talking to people who have been schooled in state schools, private education and alternative structured schooling, the factor that seems to me to be of the most benefit is not being 'told' what to think, but being taught 'how' to learn. Learning by rote is boring, mind numbing and detrimental to the notion of retaining a pupils interest. I liked the comment that Colin (I think it was Colin) made about group exploratory learning. Coming to a realisation oneself is the bread and butter of educational enjoyment in my experience. Being told what to think doesn't necessarily give the pupil the background detail about why they should think it. I think the main disadvantage in a highly structured education is that children/people all absorb/retain information in different ways. Some children are quite happy to stick within the remit of learning a subject in modules, and other children are better served by approaching the subject as a whole.
If I have any regrets about not having attended secondary school and higher education, this would be because I missed out on the structured learning of mathematics beyond long division... and (of course) the fact that not having any qualifications does rather limit ones career opportunities.
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The biggest problem with higher education is that it has increasingly become a money-making business with everyone being encouraged to rack up massive debt, and that debt usually ends up falling on the heads of the taxpayer. It's fine for taxpayers to pay for people to acquire skills, knowledge and understanding where those things are transmitted efficiently and where they are subsequently going to be used, but the vast bulk of this learning is simply not used (or has very little impact in improving people's performance in the things they end up doing). Our quality of life is then heavily suppressed by the fact we're spending so much money on education that isn't useful.
The problem isn't with people spending a lot of time learning, but the cost and inefficiency of that learning, and any requirement for people to have qualifications that go far beyond the skills and knowledge that are actually necessary for a given job. Much of this has been done in order to keep people out of the unemployment statistics for longer, but it would be a lot less costly just to pay them to be unemployed and allow them to spend their time studying the same things without having to pay extortionate fees. Anyone who is capable of getting a degree should also be fully capable of doing all the learning independently without having to tie themselves to a university, and many of them should be capable of getting their degree without doing anything beyond turning up to sit exams. We are collectively getting poorer as we pour more and more money into education, and this is primarily driven by people's irrational belief that we all need jobs and that we have to create more and more of them. Half the workforce is already tied up in work which is not adding to our wellbeing in any way, but which merely squanders valuable resources for no purpose other than to keep unemployment down. Millions of parents are paying a fortune to have other people look after their children for them badly while they themselves sit in offices doing pointless work that simply doesn't need to be done. It is utter insanity. We are supposed to be liberating ourselves from toil, but we've locked ourselves into old ways of thinking which used to make sense but which are now obsolete. Education is great, but it shouldn't be allowed to cost us the Earth.
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Except it isn't much of a moneymaker. Apparently around 50% of UK student loans will never be repaid.
The reason is simple. Successive governments, embarrassed by the ever-growing dole queues, extended compulsory schooling from 14 to 16, then required a fulltime education or traineeship to 18, and finally decided that everyone who wanted it should have a university degree, for which they would pay.
The net effect is that anyone who knows anything can find an easier life as a lecturer (massive holidays, no serious measures of competence) than in a productive industry, the national economy goes down the drain, university degrees are devalued (as over 50% of the 21 - 30 age group now has a degree, it signifies that you are possibly less intelligent than average) and we have an evergrowing pool of people who are unemployed, carrying a debt beyond their lifetime expectation of repayment, and too old to learn a proper skill or even to take up heavy manual labour.
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Except it isn't much of a moneymaker. Apparently around 50% of UK student loans will never be repaid.
It's certainly a moneymaker for the army of people employed in the education industry. And I'd be surprised if so much as 10% of student loans will ever be repaid because so many jobs are going to vanish over the next decade, which means the government (or rather the taxpayer) will have to pick up the bill. That makes it hard to see why it's such a big political issue, meaning the difference between Labour and the Tories - both approaches will lead to the same high expense falling on the same people, unless Labour also has ideas about forcing universities to drop their fees back down to a more justifiable level.
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I would say it's simple. Without high education, there won't be technology. So education will always be important and won't be outdated.
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Doesn't it depend on what you mean exactly by the "age of the internet". At the moment it isn't outdated as the first issue our world has to deal with is giving everyone across the globe access to the internet. Obviously this isn't taking into account the most important issues of people around the world: poverty, starvation, disease etc. But when we get to the stage where everyone in the world has access to the internet then online education and courses are, in my opinion, the best way forward.
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Not everyone is able to learn on their own. With internet learning it is hard to ask questions if you do not understand. Picture someone trying to learn, Relativity, without being able to ask questions. This can be counter intuitive and often it takes one on one and lots of questions to have it make sense.
In other cases, some things need hands on experience to learn properly. It is easier to understand the practical side of chemicals, by being able to do some lab work. For example, you can teach someone about precipitation of chemicals or they can watch a video, but it is another things to see it happen with you eyes in reality and then toy with the parameters to learn new things.
A third problem is misinformation, fake news, and biased education. A good teacher will epoxies you to all sides and many angles. While internet learning, based on individual bias choices, can focus one until they become a half brain. Sometimes the other half brain needs to be force fed until it is well.
I suppose the discussion forum format, like we do here, could solve this last concern.
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I believe that it is. With the help of i get everything that i need. I believe that it can help a lot of people all around the world.
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Higher education is expensive, while Internet access is cheap.
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No one can exactly say the higher education is outdated infect it is modified with the use of internet.
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The knowledge communicated through higher education is being increasingly replaced by access through technology. Higher education also provides a forum for relationships with other like-minded people and those relationship networks will be much more difficult to replicate with educational technology.
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We are spending a fortune giving people irrelevant degrees to sell hamburgers and clean toilets, and while we train them for jobs they never actually get, we are short of doctors and have to poach them from poorer countries so that they can't look after their own kin. It is appalling mismanagement.
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Facts have been available since printing was invented. Education isn't about learning facts, it's about learning how to use them.
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The biggest problem with higher education is that it has increasingly become a money-making business with everyone being encouraged to rack up massive debt, and that debt usually ends up falling on the heads of the taxpayer. It's fine for taxpayers to pay for people to acquire skills, knowledge and understanding where those things are transmitted efficiently and where they are subsequently going to be used, but the vast bulk of this learning is simply not used (or has very little impact in improving people's performance in the things they end up doing). Our quality of life is then heavily suppressed by the fact we're spending so much money on education that isn't useful.
The problem isn't with people spending a lot of time learning, but the cost and inefficiency of that learning, and any requirement for people to have qualifications that go far beyond the skills and knowledge that are actually necessary for a given job. Much of this has been done in order to keep people out of the unemployment statistics for longer, but it would be a lot less costly just to pay them to be unemployed and allow them to spend their time studying the same things without having to pay extortionate fees. Anyone who is capable of getting a degree should also be fully capable of doing all the learning independently without having to tie themselves to a university, and many of them should be capable of getting their degree without doing anything beyond turning up to sit exams. We are collectively getting poorer as we pour more and more money into education, and this is primarily driven by people's irrational belief that we all need jobs and that we have to create more and more of them. Half the workforce is already tied up in work which is not adding to our wellbeing in any way, but which merely squanders valuable resources for no purpose other than to keep unemployment down. Millions of parents are paying a fortune to have other people look after their children for them badly while they themselves sit in offices doing pointless work that simply doesn't need to be done. It is utter insanity. We are supposed to be liberating ourselves from toil, but we've locked ourselves into old ways of thinking which used to make sense but which are now obsolete. Education is great, but it shouldn't be allowed to cost us the Earth.
I totally agree with you. I have the same analysis after recently passing out from one of the renowned university. The practical implementation of this money making machine concept gradually become inaccessible to highly skillful students due to lack of money. This mindset is getting worse in many countries now.
Secondly, I also feel that our professors must acquire knowledge of growing Internet-related Industry, most of them really lacking with the knowledge and that's where students suffer alot.
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The internet is moderately effective at conveying data, information and knowledge. I've seen only minimal evidence it has any hope of success in conveying wisdom.
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Facts have been available since printing was invented. Education isn't about learning facts, it's about learning how to use them.
Yep...
Actually, it is about accumulating some facts, as well as learning how to apply those facts.
Life will change in the future as huge databases of information are being built and at one's fingertips. But, a person also has to be able to make connections between very different information.
Think about basic physics, and the relationship between distance, velocity, and acceleration. All the equations are there at one's fingertips, but it would be easy to get lost if one doesn't even know which questions to ask. Integrals? Derivatives? Constants? etc.
And, also knowing how to communicate between individuals is important. I.E. learning the language of the field of interest. Again, the information is available, but one has to know how to look for it.
But, say writing a novel, or a research paper takes practice, and probably a fair amount of training too.
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This thread surely has aged very well, I see all the comments are pre-pandemic so post-pandemic world is yet to be considered.
The way I see it, the biggest problem with education is that is not and shouldn't be a one size fits all, meaning we cannot expect all students to learn the structural way is established now. I always one the kind of student that would be fascinated to listen to a lecture, hence I liked school and I was a "good" student. I was lucky enough to have back then good teachers that would teach me "how to think and how to learn" instead of just "you have to learn this because it's the way it is and that's it". But now with all of this technology, free online apps and many other educational resources I see how it opened a new way for students that have a more independent way to approach learning. My niece for example at school is labeled as an "ok student" because even though she's smart she likes to play with her friends and sometimes she gets distracted. But here's the thing, at home when doing her homework she gets to a stage of high concentration and zero distractions, so whenever she gets stuck let's say with a calculus problem she would open up this app (https://www.studypug.com/pre-calculus) or khan academy and get help instantly and move forward. Back in the day we wouldn't have all these resources mainly because technology wasn't at that stage and I know it could have helped many of my friends, did that mean the life of said friends went into and end? Of course not, which illustrates the point I want to make, both current education system and education with the age of the internet are needed, it's not like we only can have one or the other. Rather that discussing if one is better than the other or if the old one is not needed since there's a new one, I think the discussion should be "ok, how can we merge the new one with the old one in a way that we could benefit all ways of learning". Which I believe it's what the education has been moving towards.
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The issue with simply replacing the entire education system with "the internet" is that you don't know what you don't know. Without any additional experience. pedson You can't be sure you're not missing something important when curating a curriculum; for someone going into electrical engineering, I'd think this would be a particularly obvious flaw in the plan. What if you didn't properly Google certain safety features or best practices, and there was no one around to point out that you'd missed something crucial?