
iPads &lt; teachers - bootload
https://medium.com/bright/ipads-teachers-e51896af3930
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jvickers
In my experience, the quality variance with teachers is much higher than with
iPads. iPads have never had the attitude problems that some teachers have had
(except some Siri edge cases perhaps).

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sjwright
The headline is a troll; the technology revolution in education is not iPads,
it's reinventing the purpose of teachers in a classroom. The flipped
classroom[0][1] might be the single greatest advance in education in a hundred
years, made possible largely by our ability to rapidly distribute compelling
instruction.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom)

[1]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...](http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education)

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golergka
From outside, US education seems astonishingly bad, especially for a 1st world
country. In US, 14 years old kids just start to learn how to solve for X,
while in Russia it's time to finish trigonometry and move to calculus.

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S4M
Wow, that indeed doesn't look good. In France I learnt trigonometry at 13 (I
gonna turn 34 this year so maybe it has changed by now).

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jostylr
The problem is less about when someone learns math (an easy subject once one
cares), but rather the attitude about math. In the US, people walk away from
math education hating and fearing math. "Math is important, but I can't do
math" is the attitude many have. What is the attitude of general people in
France? Do they take math ignorance as a point of pride as they do in the US
or they take math knowledge and use as a point of pride?

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keithpeter
_" Great teachers aren’t likely to buy into the vision of any single ed tech
company. They want to integrate ideas — likely from several sources,
designers, and companies — into their own creative processes."_

I'd suggest that anyone here thinking of producing _content_ for those iPads
(or any platform) think in terms of _maximum granularity_ and adding tools for
a teacher to select items for use.

Disclaimer: I've been teaching maths for 28 years now and so may be either
part of the problem, or a 'great teacher'. I tend to let the students make up
their own mind about that one.

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mbrock
What I learned from teachers, mostly, was to distrust authority figures. Maybe
iPads can't provide this lesson.

The article says: "Finding and growing great teachers is devilishly hard.
Retaining them is very expensive." How do we even know who is a great teacher?

One of my best teachers told me, after years of me skipping his classes to
play around with computer stuff, that he loved my style of learning. My style
was to mostly ignore school, stay out of trouble, and read and tinker on my
own.

I might be biased and wrong, but from my perspective, it seems like there's
way too much talk about teaching, and way too little about learning.

The kids in that nightmarish Indianapolis "learning center" are being
oppressed. If there's anything they're interested in on their own, they're
probably too burned out when they come home from the "learning center" to
pursue it.

And they learn that learning is something you do with someone else's
permission, guidance, and monitoring. I learned that learning happens when I'm
free to play around, follow my curiosity, and work hard with the natural zeal
of a restless child.

Alan Kay had the idea of building an educational tablet computer in 1972, and
was quite realistic about it. [1] Since he has a humanistic and child-centric
view of learning, he envisioned the tablet as a tool for children to learn on
their own. When interviewed in 2013 about whether new computing devices are
helping in the classroom, he said:

"The perspective on this is first to ask whether the current educational
practices are even using books in a powerful and educative way. Or even to ask
whether the classroom process without any special media at all is educative.

"I would say, to a distressing extent, the answer is 'no.'"

[1]: [http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-
comput...](http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-computing-
pioneer-alan-kay/)

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EGreg
I believe there is a smarter way to reform education with technology. The
iPads are not supposed to replace the teacher, but to maximize goals given the
real economic reality - information delivery is the commodity while personal
attention is scarce.

This is my humble proposal:
[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158)

I intend to realize it in practice and will be happy to work with people who
feel the same. If you feel there's truth in what I wrote, contact me by going
to [http://qbix.com/about](http://qbix.com/about) \- I am Greg there.

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S4M
I would agree in general with your proposal, but I'd suggest replacing the
iPad by a cheap laptop, like a chromebook: it's cheaper, gives the kids more
freedom, and for the ones who will be interested, it can be a first step to
programming.

~~~
EGreg
I agree. It can be a cheap one. One of my friends actually has a company where
they produced a cheat ($50) educatioal tablet and have many schools in Brazil
using it. They are looking for apps. So I can get it to market.

~~~
S4M
I am making an app for education. For now it's a website but I will port it to
Android soon. Wanna talk?

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bootload
read in conjunction with this ~
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9402292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9402292)

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jholman
Relevant link:

Veritasium, "This will revolutionize education".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c)

