Are Teachers Headed For Obsolescence? 570
dstates writes "One Laptop Per Child reports encouraging results of a bold experiment to reach the millions of students worldwide who have no access to primary school. OLPC delivered tablets to two Ethiopian villages in unmarked boxes without instructions or instructors. Within minutes the kids were opening the boxes and figuring out how to use the Motorola Zoom tablets, within days they were playing alphabet songs and withing a few months how to hack the user interface to enable blocked camera functionality. With the Kahn Academy and others at the high school level and massive open online courses at the college level, are teachers going the way of the Dodo?"
Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, you try to implement something that threatens teacher jobs and just WATCH what happens, sparky. I was once part of an effort to design some online courses (just a few, mind you) for a local school district and learned the hard way to watch my step when treading anywhere near teachers. Unfortunately, my superiors made the STUPID mistake of pitching the program to the district as being a potential money-saver (since fewer teachers would be needed to oversee the online courses than traditional classroom courses). The teachers mobilized like a fucking Roman Legion.
Now, for those of you dumb enough to think that teachers are sweet old schoomarms with low salaries and little power...well, you just keep thinking that. But I know that they broadsided us like the a school bus. Suddenly, those sweet schoolmarms were on every newscast, decrying the courses as a poor substitute for classroom education, something that "cheated the students," as Satan incarnate basically. Their union was all but threatening to break legs. School district elected officials were told in no uncertain terms that the sweet schoolmarms were ready to bend them over and do bad things to them with a slide rule at the next election. We learned the hard way what happens when you threaten the schoolmarms' jobs in ANY way.
Needless to say, our online course plan was SIGNIFICANTLY modified. Most notably, provisions were added to make it clear that the online courses were to be treated exactly like classroom courses, with a teacher getting assigned to each one just as if he/she were in the classroom each day teaching it as a traditional course (even if they basically had to do nothing)--complete with the same class size limitations as a traditional course. Even though this all made no sense with online courses, it's what we had to do to get them implemented. Not a single teacher job was to be lost, nor salary reduced, nor workload increased (only significantly decreased).
Teachers and their unions are masters at playing the emotion card. And they are PR masters too. We're talking teachers, some of whom were making north of $80k a year in this district (and this was in an area with a relatively low cost of living, mind you), who were able to convince everyone that they weren't getting paid enough and needed raises (4-6% annual raises, EVERY YEAR). You fuck with them at your own peril.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Informative)
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where are you that teachers make $80K?
Europe . . . ?
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Try New York City, for one. You do need to eat if for a few years and get your Masters degree, but the pay does become quite good.
Particularly when you consider that it comes with a three month vacation. And before you start with how teachers are doing work during the summer, date a couple of teachers, especially the lower grades.
80k for living in NYC? (Score:4, Insightful)
So... you consider 80k to pay for living in NYC quite good pay, when you got a Masters degree?
You got to be fucking kidding me, that is low pay for a tech flunkie.
And you contract yourself, how many teachers for lower grades got a Masters degree?
My bet is your a republican by the ease by which you select among several made up statistics to combine in a non-existing entity which you claim to represent everything.
Proof me wrong, become a teacher if the pay is so good and the vacations that long, you would have to be an idiot not to switch. So why haven't you? Because you know you are pulling stats out of your ass?
Re:80k for living in NYC? (Score:5, Funny)
And you contract yourself
meet "The Incredible Shrinking... Contractionist!"
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Come on he has the ability to proof you wrong....
Re:80k for living in NYC? (Score:5, Funny)
And you contract yourself... My bet is your a republican... Proof me wrong
Well, your grade school teachers certainly were way overpaid.
Re:80k for living in NYC? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, 80k with teachers' benefits is great pay for someone who is average at their job, even when living in New York City. With teachers' pensions, extra time off, and other benefits, that amounts to more like 120k-150k in the private sector (depending on how you value about 15 paid weeks off per year). That is plenty of money for New York City (not much for a single income family, but very few careers offer enough salary for that).
I do agree that this salary doesn't match what a truly exceptional employee with a Masters degree could make, but that is the teacher unions' fault. I would love for the top 10% of teachers (not based on years of experience) to average $150k in salary, but that will not happen any time soon. Until the unions get out of the way, you can only pay teachers based on what an average teacher is worth.
And forget about comparing salaries to people in other careers with a Masters degree. With only one exception, every person I know that got a Masters degree in teaching just found a diploma mill so they could easily bump their salary 12k per year. They didn't have to worry about the school's credentials or wonder if their degree would actually help further their career. Just pay $30k for a degree, and get back a guaranteed $350k in inflation adjusted lifetime earnings and an extra $10k on top of your pension. (the one exception I mentioned earlier was an SLP, and she was underpaid because her pay scale was tied to the same average teachers that went to diploma mills)
Also, it is rediculous to tell people they should just be a teacher if they think the job is so great. For one, this is tax money paying for teachers' salaries. As long as the government forces people to pay taxes, people have a right voice grievances over how that money is spent. And secondly, being a teacher only really pays off if you start at the age of 22. Their pay is based on years of experience, not competence. I shaped up my career when I was 29, and doubled my salary in less than two years. Someone in their 30s cant just switch over to teaching and enjoy the same benefits as everyone else, as opposed to most other professions where after a few years of experience it doesn't really matter if you have 5 years or 20. Oh, and third, starting a career in education right now is really really tough. Even those who aren't just in it for an easy career can't find jobs because school districts are still paying the outrageous salaries of more tenured teachers.
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Oh, and third, starting a career in education right now is really really tough. Even those who aren't just in it for an easy career can't find jobs because school districts are still paying the outrageous salaries of more tenured teachers.
Keep on contradicting yourself. Either the pay is good or it is bad. Can't be both at the same time, well except in Romney land.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Interesting)
They didn't all make that (I believe the average is $52k in my state). But quite a few of them did. You can imagine what 30 years of 4-6% yearly raises and bonuses for tons of other stuff (incl. a $9,000 a year bonus for becoming nationally certified) would get you to from an already generous starting salary. Teachers were actually some of the better paid people in the county I was in.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Insightful)
More than 80% of students in Chicago public schools are poor enough to qualify for free lunches. Try improving the test scores of a group of kids living under the poverty line.
My wife teaches at an inner city high school. She has kids who skip school to work fast food jobs because their parent is a junkie and they're the only one bringing money in; students who skip to watch siblings while their single parent works; students who can't sleep because they hear sirens all night; students whose parents didn't teach them to wash with soap; students whose parents get drunk and trash their textbooks because they're offended that their kid might try to be smarter than them; students who haven't eaten in days, or whose only meal is the free lunch.
She had a student approach a speaker she brought in on bullying (afterwards), and tell him that he was being raped several times a week by a group of boys in the school.
Every problem to do with poverty shows up in the public schools. Among the many idiocies of standardized tests is that poor kids require a ton of effort just to get them to focus on being in school. You can't even start educating them until you've mitigated the worst of their circumstances somehow. You can't even start on test scores until you've solved basic social issues with poverty that are far out of your scope as a teacher--and in Chicago's public school system, that's a majority of the kids.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:4, Informative)
Standardized tests correlate more strongly than any other measurement with later academic success, college graduation rates, and later life success.
Not true. According to Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education under GHW Bush and Bill Clinton, the one factor that correlates most strongly with achievement on standardized tests is family income. This is the consensus, unchallenged by people who follow the data.
Some standardized tests are validated, like the NAEP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assessment_of_Educational_Progress [wikipedia.org] However, the NAEP measures aggregate scores for groups of students (and for small subsets, it isn't valid). It will tell you how well the school system as a whole is doing, but it can't tell how well individual teachers or students are doing. It doesn't have statistical power to evaluate individual teachers and students. That's the best test we have.
The standardized tests that are used for rating teachers are not validated. That's the big argument against them. A science teacher at Stuyvesant high school ran some standardized statistical tests on the NYC teacher tests, and the tests reported literally a random distribution. Principals were complaining that the tests were giving low rankings to teachers that were doing an excellent job, that they wanted to rehire the next year.
Standardized tests are worthless for rating teachers. They're worse than worthless, because they're used to fire perfectly competent people and reward people who are at best skilled at teaching to the test. How would you like to be a principal, and have a system that removed 5% of your teachers at random every year?
Standardized tests give the greatest rewards to teachers and principals who cheat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Rhee#Test_erasures [wikipedia.org]
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Tests have to be validated to make sure they measure what they're supposed to measure, to make sure they're statistically valid, and to make sure they don't have any of the well-recognized problems of tests.
The NAEP is validated. The standardized tests used by schools to judge teachers are not validated. Even the testing advocates admit that.
If you want to do basic science, have scientifically validated tests.
The New York Times had a story about a probationary teacher in a middle school. Her students did ve
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where are you that teachers make $80K? That does not jive with national salary rates.
In my school district (Santa Clara, California) elementary school teachers make an average of $78k. Many make more than $80k. If you live in California, you can use this site [sacbee.com] to see what teachers in your district are paid.
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doesn't mean "all teachers are making too much".
The GP didn't say "all". He said "some".
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Chicago
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Chicago [cbslocal.com]
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where are you that teachers make $80K? That does not jive with national salary rates.
Senior teachers. Average teacher pay is no where near 80k, and starting teacher pay is less than half of that. But if you can get a job in teaching and stay in the profession for 25 or 30 years you can get up to 70 or 80 in big cities.
One of my highshool buddies is about 65k, and that's after 10 years. His cost of living makes that not really a great salary for the area, but it's not bad.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Funny)
That does not jive with national salary rates
That don't jibe neither, honky! ;)
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You missed an opportunity to call me a jibe-ass turkey.
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Rochester, NY.
Salaries aren't the whole picture. (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't forget, the teacher's union got teachers awesome perks.
Retirement, bonuses for continuing education, health benefits, etc ... all paid for by the school system.
- Mother was an accountant for a school system.
It's like the cops who complain at the crappy pay they get, but what you don't hear publicly, is all the perks and shift differentials, holiday pay, and also an awesome retirement. If a cop works a Sunday night that is also Christmas, he'll make a weeks pay in one night - and all he has to do is
Re:Salaries aren't the whole picture. (Score:4, Insightful)
awesome perks
You mean standard perks a generation or 2 ago ? Actually people spent the last 20 years explaining how better everyone would be by getting the union and pesky government off the workplace. So following that theory, without the unions the teachers would make a lot more than 80K and have much better perks, no wonder they complain and it is so hard to find good ones.
Re:Salaries aren't the whole picture. (Score:4, Insightful)
When did the U.S. become a nation that hates people who get paid well for doing a job that takes skill and training? When did a job that paid well and offered good benefits and the possibility of a good retirement, become something that you should be ashamed of having, rather than being a core part of the engine of the economy, the middle class?
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When did the U.S. become a nation that hates people who get paid well for doing a job that takes skill and training?
I ask the same, it's like some conspiracy to drive people's salaries to poverty wages and a real shame teachers are taking a huge hit on this. Reality check: A 4-year college degree is a minimum to become a teacher, there's more to it than that. Then once hired as a teacher the pay is low when compared to other degreed professions but higher than minimum wage. Then there is large amounts of work to prepare for the next day, many spend a lot of time at home preparing lesson plans. Some do well but probably i
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Informative)
It's easy to find teachers in North America making $80k. Sometimes that's just handling cost of living in an area like New York, but frequently it comes from a trick education "reformers" have pushed over the last few decades to gut the unions.
1. Offer teachers per student overage fees to handle larger than normal classes. Teachers agree because, hey, the district is going to screw us on class size anyway, might as well get paid for it.
2. Lay off/make redundant/fire every second teacher, dumping those students on the first teacher, who now makes not-double their salary, but quite a lot more. Bitching and moaning ensue, district makes noise about saving taxpayers money, parents who voted in Republicans say "at least our taxes didn't go up..."
3. Wait a couple years.
4. Run for office on a platform of cutting teacher's salaries and point to the gym teacher making $90k/year because he's got a class of 60 students. Cue outraged parents exclaiming "why does my kid's teacher make more than me! I'm a manager!"
5. Salaries are frozen, or experienced/high paid teachers are laid off, and inexperienced teachers hired in their stead who don't get the overage fee originally negotiated.
Unions are the front lines of the class size debate. Every administrator wants to increase class size to economize on the number of teachers. Teachers want to keep class sizes sane so they can actually teach as opposed to doing crowd control. The union negotiates class size limits. This is how districts con the union into breaking class size limits, and it's a trap.
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Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Insightful)
True, the Canadian dollar is worth 0.000371$ less than the US dollar. What a significant difference that makes.
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1 Canadian dollar = 1.0003 US dollars
Things are a bit more expensive in Canada and don't forget the taxes. On the other hand, teachers have a great pension plan.
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Given the 70-80k range, the 0.03% (not 3%, 0.03%) difference is meaningless.
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A masters degree is almost required to get a permanent job teaching in Canada now. How many MBAs do you know that make only 80k?
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As senior teacher should be making as much if not more than a developer. We programmers like to think we're the shit, but what we do is really quite unimportant when compared to what a teacher does.
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Do you actually _know_ any teachers? Teachers do get some vacation in the summer, but they also have to prepare their lesson plans for the fall. They work long hours during the school year because they have to grade papers and be prepared for each day's lesson. Imagine teaching from 8am to 3pm every day—that's five hours of teaching. How much time would you want to prepare? Now add in correcting tests, quizzes and papers. How long does that take? Yes, they get two and a half months off i
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You wouldn't imaigne the new developments year in, year out, in Algebra, History, and English are staggering.
Imagine the innumerable hours of prep time that were worked re-working astronomy classes once it was determined that Pluto is no longer a planet...
In my district, teachers are paid $50/hour for curriculum development - teachers don't willy-nilly re-work curricullums every year, that's insane.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:4, Insightful)
I was basically going to post this very thing but you beat me to it.
Unionized government employees do not simply step aside gracefully and change jobs or learn new skills. They fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo, with increasing ferocity the more obsolete they become.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is amusingly ironic, considering how Slashdotters lay down and whine like helpless mewling pussies when they can't find a job, blaming offshoring, ageism, non-degreed-ism, and affirmative action.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that only government employees can use the state's taxing power to enforce their demands on the rest of the population. The most everybody else can do is bitch about it.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be too hard on them (Score:3)
TFA is about an OLPC deployment in Africa. So maybe teachers in Africa and other developing nations are more replaceable than their unionized counterparts in the US and other industrialized, or should that be de-industrializing, countries? I see the Orwellian possibilities of replacing skilled or moderately skilled teachers with government minders whose only job would be to ensure that the kids are using the tablets in the prescribed manner. Obviously there would be holes in the most locked-down product, bu
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> (4-6% annual raises, EVERY YEAR)
Am I the only one who thinks a 4% annual raise -- that's ~1.5% annually above inflation -- is a perfectly normal rate of increase? I would hope that a year of experience would be worth a 2% raise. That's going from $50k salary to $51k salary, with inflation adjustment. Not exactly Goldman Sachs.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is what I anticipate something along these lines in the next 10+ years.
1) Students are required to learn via computer.
2) Reduce the number of Course hours by 2 and extend Art, Music, Sports, Ect time by two hours.
3) Students who progress test poorly via computer are forced to have extended after school tutoring with 4 kids per teacher for two hours extra of school per day of your grades slip below a B or you TEST anything below a C.
4) The hours that students report to tutoring is in blocks. Teacher has 8 blocks allowing for 32 dumb students.
5) Kids that get an F require 2 Hours of EXTRA tutoring 1 student per teacher.
Kids are motivated to stay in C+ range because they don't want to be required stay after school later and miss out on sports or whatever they do at home.
Teachers are still on staff for tutoring basis but not as many and hopefully only the ones that work well with students who have learning issues.
If a student wishes to OPT for Tutoring they can do so.
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Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:4, Insightful)
He was clear enough: public unions, which even FDR was against.
A public union is an absurd idea in the first place, who is supposedly 'oppressing' these teachers? They are working for the government, who is this 'evil capitalist' that is oppressing them?
Also who is paying their salaries, is it the politicians that they are negotiating with? NOPE. It's the tax payer and the tax payer is the one who is getting screwed on this deal, he is the sheep that 'participates' in the decision what's for dinner, except the other two sides at the table are 2 wolves (politicians and the public unions).
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding, right? The evil capitalist who is oppressing them is you, demanding that teachers do incredibly hard work for crappy benefits and crappy pay. Just because someone is working a government job doesn't mean that there's no price pressure. The price pressure is actually worse, because jerks like you think it's perfectly fine to just keep cutting their pay year after year, and moreover think that they shouldn't be entitled to complain when you do.
Re:Ha, you threaten teacher jobs and see what happ (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is 'oppressing' these teachers?
Administrators who suddenly decide to have a 3 hour meeting at the very end of the work day. Administrators who fire qualified teachers and hire their unqualified good buddy for the same position. Administrators who refuse to purchase enough text books for the number of students in a class. Administrators who don't plan man-power properly and have 40-50 kids in a classroom built to hold 30 max. Administrators who give performance reviews based on the attractiveness of a teacher. Administrators who maintain physical environments that are not condusive to learning (too hot, too cold, dirty, depressing, interruptions to class time). Administrators who assign extra duties that interfere with student's education, at no extra pay. Administrators who create a schedule that does not allow for even a lunch break, much less a restroom break for the teachers.
All of these examples are things that actually happend in the district that I worked for, and had clauses in the contract that were added, negotiated by the union and the school district.
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[citation needed]
In the district my taxes go to, teachers start at $39,400, plus salary credits for experience, retirement contributions, 85% medical coverage, and tuition reimbursement. So maybe there are a couple first-year teachers making south of $40k. This is not a good or rich district - below 50% graduation rate and 80+% students on free and reduced lunch.
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Are Teachers Headed For Obsolescence? (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
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Agreed. There will always be a need for good teachers, but maybe we could dump a bunch of the shitty ones.
Re:Are Teachers Headed For Obsolescence? (Score:4, Interesting)
Teacher no... The 19th century teaching methods Yes.
The problem with a lot of the current teaching methods, have focus on a lot of humdrum skills that are being replaced by computers. There needs to be more focus on creativity, and research and less on raw fact remembering.
Re:Are Teachers Headed For Obsolescence? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Talking Heads are headed for obsolesence
Leave David Byrne out of this.
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+1
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let me continue. No because it is better if you have a good mentor. No, because you can't easily put wisdom and life experience onto a laptop / the internet. (sadly it is the widsom of the teacher that is most of the time lacking in schools with poor teachers)
Two Things (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that a third world nation can spend little and utilizes said technologies is critical to their economic success and transitioning to second and first world status.
Yes, these things will successfully replace teachers where there were no teachers in the first place. Everywhere else they are important as augmenting tools on the path of education but the place where they will make the most progress for us is where they need teachers but have none.
Re:Two Things (Score:5, Insightful)
good teachers will be replaced the day that someone creates software which can teach a student something, have them explain it back, understand their explanation and the subtle ways in which they are wrong and correct them.
bad teachers on the other hand will be replaced the day that someone videos a teacher scribbling half legible stuff on the board while students try to copy it down.
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bad teachers on the other hand will be replaced the day that someone videos a teacher scribbling half legible stuff on the board while students try to copy it down.
Nonsense. Public school teachers are not replaced for something as trivial as being unable to teach. At my daughter's school (Chaboya Middle School in San Jose, California), her science teacher received so many complaints about her unintelligible accent, that she assigned each student a chapter to present, and the kids taught themselves. She is still employed.
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The idea that pieces of software and one way communication videos can compete with responsive human beings and solely provide first world education is laughable.
If you actually visited a classroom that uses these methods you might stop laughing. My son attends a public school in San Jose, California. They spend an hour a day using Khan Academy [khanacademy.org] and IXL [ixl.com]. Each day the teacher has a parent come in and supervise the class. On Fridays, that is me.
The kids work at their own pace. They start with basic third grade math, but can quickly move on to other subjects once they master that. Most of the kids have already mastered long division, graphing, etc., some are learn
Stupid headline, stupid conclusion. (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot's obsession with the disaster that is OLPC is laughable, as is the conclusion that it could replace teachers.
Is an OLPC better than nothing? Yes. Is it better than a proper teacher and resources? Heck no.
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Maybe he's had 31 phenomenal teachers and he's counting in binary.
I can see it now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can see it now (Score:5, Funny)
Siri will replace all teachers in the future.
Siri, what is one divided by zero?
No they are not. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have five kids. The only reason they left high school with reasonable math and science skills is that they had a geek for a father [...]
How many of those five were in the control group?
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The fun they had! (Score:4, Interesting)
Asimov wrote a short fictional story about this in 1951 [wikipedia.org]. It' about a kid who finds an old-fashioned paper book in the attic. In the story, there are no classrooms, kids all learn from computer terminals.
Re:The fun they had! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they are, but not from this (Score:3)
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are teachers going the way of the Dodo? (Score:5, Informative)
1. See Betteridge's law of headlines.
2. No. But the current methodologies of teaching are. Unfortunately, teaching methods do not adapt fast enough, and this in turn causes a lot of trouble, e.g. kids not having enough and up-to-date knowledge and information about certain fields so as they can properly choose their further study fields, which can even result in badly planned and chosen careers (yes, this is a bit on the extreme side, but true nonetheless).
Just Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
Just imagine what they could do if they had electricity.
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Just imagine what they could do if they had electricity.
It sounds as though these kids would do a better job of replacing most outsourcing teams..
Very Simple: No (Score:5, Insightful)
Short answer: No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps even more importantly, a good fraction of education lies in not just learning facts, but in doing: in learning how to research a topic so as to produce a compelling argument, in learning how to solve problems, in learning how to perform laboratory experiments. These experiences are irreplaceable.
But perhaps most crucially: most people just aren't self-motivated enough to educate themselves. And even for those that are, it isn't easy to do it yourself.
Samzenpus at a new low (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Samzenpus, when you hit rock bottom, STOP DIGGING!
Sure, I can see it now. 2000 kids in high-school, no teachers.
After the break, can monkeys be employed as caretakers for banana plantations. Next week an in-depth look at the results of giving the lunatics the keys to the asylum, test case: slashdot.
For those who are terminally stupid/libertarians, most people need oversight at least part of the time. Give kids a tablet and they will indeed use it, just as easily as my generation used a dictionary. To look up dirty words and hitting other kids with.
Yes some kids will indulge in self-study without encouragement, these kids need teachers most of all, to stop the other kids from beating them up.
A tablet is not anymore a teacher then a TV is a baby sitter.
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I hate to be the one to tell you this, but teachers don't make kids study. Parents make kids study.
For what it's worth, I don't think we'll ever get rid of teachers entirely. But I do think their role will just change dramatically.
It's not the simple stuff kids need help with (Score:2, Insightful)
A computer might be able to teach anyone how to program, math, English, etc. if they have the desire to learn, but it's the teachers job to give them that desire, and to assist, control and monitor the children.
If a child has a problem, then a teacher can easily help, especially if the child needs another way to look at the issue.
It's the teachers job to control the classroom and to make sure they don't start to beat up each other; another hard job at 2pm on a Friday.
It is the teachers job to monitor the ch
Some kids don't need guidance (Score:5, Insightful)
But others do. A kid who has someone who can understand his thought processes and teach accordingly will come out better than if left alone (talking about the average kid here, not Mr G&T who'll be a physicist no matter what). So, I guess good teachers will always be needed, bad teachers have always been obsolete.
teachers are guides (Score:2)
With video we can have great lecturers present the topics and even have streams where things are presented different ways so that individuals can select the stream that present things the way the learn. These can be covered at whatever rates the indiduals like.
Teachers then can provide more individual help with problem solving.
Online learning is not good enough for the masses (Score:5, Insightful)
I know Slashdot loves to pull up these kinds of articles every time they're available. TED is susceptible similar lectures as well, so we who have actually worked in education have to keep our eyes open before the "computers will solve all our complex problems" crowd runs away with an invaluable source of social evolution.
Before the average Slashdotter writes off brick-and-mortar schools in favor of online learning with justifications like, "I was always bored in class", "I was smarter than my teacher", and "Just be open to change!" consider this: Is your average Slashdotter ANYTHING like your average American student?
The answer is that they simply are not. Slashdotters likely grew up in smaller than average social groups with access to technology. We adapt to new technology with little issue. We understand the underlying concepts of nested menus and function taxonomy. We are nerds and geeks who thrive on learning.
The rest of America's children do not thrive on learning and providing online education will not change that.
Having worked in middle schools, high schools, with community college transfer students, and then the resulting university undergrads, I have to say: If the general population doesn't HAVE to learn something or if there isn't something someone sufficiently passionate to help them learn something new regardless, they won't bother. Humanity is curious about the universe in that we consistently have some extremely smart people come to global acclaim for their works, but most people just want to live easy, have sex, and do so as long as possible.
It's the role of the educator to affect everyone, regardless of station or passion, and get them the minimum (plus) standard of knowledge and analytical capability so that they can learn more things and more complex concepts at the next level. This is something a computer with programed or limited responses cannot do.
Yes, OLPC can get kids excited about new things. Those children will NOT be starting hospitals in their villages with simple access to online education. They will not become cultural philosophers through online education. They will not begin building Motorola Zoom tablets with they learned via online learning. The concepts required to do any of those complex actions cannot be taught in a single plug-and-play manner. It requires a talented individual and as social an environment as possible to adjust the content to the user, to adjust the lesson plan to the person that day.
The only way teachers will ever go obsolete is if we are ignorant to assume that computers will ever substitute for the adaptive human mind.
I'm a teacher . . . (Score:5, Informative)
The thought that children will be able to learn anything by watching a video is just laughable...
I teach middle school math, and the level of apathy and carelessness in work is very high. There is no substitute for students being in a classroom, actually doing work.
However, if all you want to do is compare a LECTURE to a VIDEO, then sure, "teachers" can be replaced. However, "Teacher" in that context really is just "Lecturer".
There's a lot more to teaching than being on a stage and talking at people. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant, selling something, or both.
Printing Press (Score:3)
Yes, as soon as the printing press was invented, teachers became fundamentally unnecessary and put on the road to extinction, decreasing in number every year.
[/sarcasm]
Re: (Score:3)
so soon (Score:2)
'withing a few months' speaking a Saxon dialect. Maybe they would discover the spellchecker 'withing' a few years.
Kiddies hacking their way thru a tablet :-) (Score:2)
Soon to be getting emails like this... (Score:2)
On the contrary, if you are a potential buyer, then a fresh agreement would be reached in respect of this transaction. I am looking forward to hear from you in respect as soon as you receive this fax.
Antique teaching method. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a teacher (university). I'm afraid that I often use a rather antique method in teaching: the Socratic method. Since I teach philosophy, most often one-to-one or one-to-two, perhaps it isn't such an inappropriate method.
If you can get a machine to do the teaching nearly as well and as inexpensively (although it isn't an inexpensive method), have at it.
Best wishes,
Bob
Nah (Score:2)
In general, no (Score:2)
I taught myself how to program in BASIC at the age of six. In 6th grade I switched from BASIC to the more structured way of programming in Turbo BASIC. Then a year or two later I taught myself C++ using Turbo C++. I even accidentally discovered how to do a recursive descent parser along the way.
However, it wasn't until I went to university and began to learn formal algorithm theory (from teachers), programming language theory, and computational theory, compiler design, that I was really able to put it al
Scientific Data or STFU (Score:4, Informative)
Current issue of American Educator has an interesting article -- 10-year study in Philadelphia, comparing rich and poor sections of town, in libraries where a multimillion dollar grant allowed them to provide equivalent resources in books and computer learning software. The results seen by those researchers are that the rich kids were guided by their parents in using all of those things, while the poor kids without any assistance or background knowledge failed to use them successfully. End result: poor kids actually fell more behind the rich than when they started out.
"Over the 10 years we spent in these two libraries, the gap in the amount of time adolescents spent reading increased substantially. Regardless of technology (books or computers), reading tends to predominate in Chestnut Hill but not in Lillian Marrero. After years of technology improvements, there is now a larger gap between these two communities in the amount of time spent reading than before. In fact, our rough estimates indicate that 10- to 12-year-olds at Chestnut Hill were reading more than twice as many words as their peers at Lillian Marrero." [p. 23]
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2012/Neuman.pdf [aft.org]
These are dedicated researchers studying the issue for 10 years. This is not the head of OLPC pitching questionable and unverifiable extraordinary claims, in the quest for more funding (“If it gets funded, it would need to continue for another a year and a half to two years to come to a conclusion that the scientific community would accept,” Negroponte said, FTA).
Maybe not in the 1st world but... (Score:3)
In the 3rd world this is the model for how education will be done in the future. How many Stanford professors would be willing to travel in person to the African continent to conduct lectures? Not many I'm willing to bet. But prerecorded lectures could be easily available on cheap tablet computers. The main problems with university education is logistics (you have to travel to the class) and cost (it's too expensive - even for 1st world students). Prerecorded lectures are not ideal but they are a heck of a lot better than what is available to them now. And they can be delivered 1000 times cheaper than in person lectures.
Because of the unions, and the political implications of campaign contributions, this is going to be difficult tower to topple. Universities are already starting to provide distance learning, partly to keep up with places like University of Phoenix and partly because of the sheer economics of it. Recorded lectures are way, way cheaper to provide. Eventually it will be like the news broadcasts - you have attractive actors reading from scripts. Presentation will become more important than content and content will become a commodity. One day you might see professors working as independent contractors and selling lectures by the download.
However, as someone that has worked in Higher Ed I can tell you that things change there very slowly. If they are not careful the new technology will simply leapfrog over them.