Electronic Communication Technology in Education. Is it Ready?

Hi Ed,

I see no problem with instituting some computer based education in high school.

The big problem I see, is that even if we could implement a system that worked as an educational tool, the school years, all the way through college, are also, and perhaps just as importantly, about social interaction.

I fear that even if such a system was proven to work, and implemented on a wide scale, we would be turning out people with an adequate education, but socially inept, which probably wouldn't transfer over to the workplace very well.

Kramarat-- Look at how today's youth socially interact. It is mostly by electronic means. Facebook and twitter is what I'm talking about. We are left with just a few short years, essentially the time between when they learn to talk and the onset of puberty, to teach them how to interact with others. After that point they will be lost to us to learn their own way.

I see nothing basically wrong with encouraging older students to interact with one another to complete their education. What we will need is evaluation methods sophisticated enough to make it difficult to "cheat" the system. I think that is doable with technology with a relatively small amount of evaluation by human professionals in face to face interactions. The rest will be informal peer evaluation as students cooperate in the learning process. CR-4 is a small example of how that works.

By some formalization of study groups and their makeup of talents, personalities and especially geographic proximity we would encourage face to face interactions. Also periodic group meetings at a school would encourage socialization and help ongoing evaluations of student progress. This would greatly reduce the need for man-hours of expensive human teacher work.

Ed Weldon

You could think of several things like advanced simulation programs, educational forums or even "virtual teachers". Some of these already exist in the Internet covering many different topics. With severe efforts we could make education more efficient, modern and attractive.

But all of these must be just an educational aid and not a replacement of the "traditional" teacher. I think that a teacher will always have the primary role in the educational procedure. Even the more advanced, future systems with "artificial intelligence" will not be able to replace the teacher himself. Teacher interacts with the students in a way that any kind of technology could not achieve ever. He gives motives and guidance for learning and he explains several issues through the continuous interaction between him and his students. His job is really priceless (and that's why his work is considered as an "utmost office" rather than just a job). And he will always be indispensable.

George -- Thanks for the search words.(in your first sentence) I'm not an educator of any kind. Just an observer of the product of education. I have a lot to learn.

"He (the teacher) gives motives and guidance for learning and he explains several issues through the continuous interaction between him and his students. His job is really priceless." ....... I too have had a few teachers like that. They are the "gold standard". Most of my teachers have fallen well below that mark. And the cost keeps going up.

What have learned is that education, at least in the USA, has gotten horribly expensive. There are a lot of reasons for that, some unique to the USA. As costs go up the class sizes go up and somewhere in the range of class size around the number 20 the value of student-teacher interaction becomes a second order issue. Once we get to that point it is potentially cost effective to replace the human teacher with something else and let the teacher become the architect. That's my point.

We have a few US colleges and universities experimenting with this sort of thing. So far they are not at the point of returning any savings to the customers in the form of lower tuitions and fees. This will require them to reduce staff, something most enterprises both public and private are loathe to do unless they can pocket the difference and direct it toward either "dividends" or investment. In the public sector we are forcing the issue by mandatory cuts in appropriations to the institutions.

What I believe is really needed is systems for student evaluation that take most of the human labor out of things like marking student work and do it by collecting and processing data. I want to see the new technology of social media expanding the concept of study groups to provide a cooperative learning process in which the teacher plays a small but vital part. Here in CR-4 we have a crude model for just that. (I would give the moderator a bit more power to guide the interactions. I would also tailor the format to provide a richer resource of data by which to evaluate student progress)

Ed Weldon

George has provided a good job description with:

the teacher gives motives and guidance for learning and explains several issues

I think we can move past:

continuous interaction between the Teacher and students

there is the opportunity to provide the best content electronically & the teachers being able concentrate on the interaction, rather than the rote repetition of the same lecture hour after hour, year after year

the interaction between the students, can be optimized to teach team building

the teachers time spent troubleshooting the ad hoc teams & individual students.

the availability to access vast amounts information, makes critical thinking & team work more important skills. Life is an open book test :