Friday, February 18, 2011

Computer Based Learning Continued

To add a little meat to this idea:

  • Students haul mountains of textbooks
    • they are expensive
    • they become outdated rather quickly
    • they consume paper and other resources un-necessarily
    • they’re heavy.  Students haul this junk around in backpacks which ultimately detracts from the learning experience.
  • Teachers are tasked with preparing for the next lesson plan and grading students and have a mandate to elevate average test scores by giving attention to the dolts rather than those who are more gifted and could otherwise excel.
    • this has been going on a long time. I usually lunch with a couple who were teachers for a few decades and who testify that this is the way it’s been for a long time – 30-40 years just by their experience.
    • they are tasked with preparing for the lessons
    • they must distribute, manage and grade tests
    • they must get those test scores into a database
    • they often deal with idiot parents who think their child should get straight A’s
    • they often grade tests while they should be teaching
    • as mentioned, they ignore the intelligent students and spend their time with the dolts in order to get their school averages up to satisfy morons in DC
    • they are not all of an exceptional skill level.  In fact, many are dolts themselves and some are down right certifiable.  Again, this statement comes from teachers who are friends of mine and more than just the two mentioned above.

Contrast the above with computer based learning. 

  • Each student is assigned an iPad that remains on school property.  Students log onto the internet to take their lessons and tests and can proceed at the level/speed in which they are capable.
    • scratch textbooks, obsolescence, and all the physical nonsense associated with hard materials.  Note that the business world abandoned this paradigm decades ago!  The school environment is long overdue to get in step with today’s technology.
    • scratch teachers creating lesson plans
    • scratch teachers grading tests
    • scratch uploading those scores to a database
    • scratch parents demanding their child get straight A’s (The computer is impartial and facts are facts)
    • as suggested above, personalities are removed from the learning environment to a large degree
    • they and their parents can log into the system on their home computers and continue or catch up on lessons and parents who care can go over their child’s tests and details with them at home.

The money saving potential is huge.  The learning potential is huge. Exceptional students no longer have to be chained to the lowest common denominators of the class.

As Arby commented in the last post, there are some subjects that this would work well for and some not so much. I agree.  Subjects like math and science are perfect and other subjects like history would benefit from group discussion and teacher led conceptualizing. 

This paradigm shift is Long overdue in coming.  It’s like schools are stuck in an environment that business worked in pre-computer.  Hand typing General Ledgers, doing inventory management off of scraps of paper littered through the physical inventory, etc.

Additionally, school administrations and teachers unions are completely out of hand.  One might say Insanely out of hand.

Teacher union members, it seems to some degree, are even more rabid than UAW members.  Yes, of course there are many fine sane teachers, but damn, there are a bunch of them who are absolutely postal over this recession/depression we are in and how it is going to affect them.  They demand to remain in a good ship lollipop world where they don’t have to contribute to their Generous health care plans and pensions AND continue to get raises every year.  That’s insane.

The union Head actually sent an email to all the teachers in her local in New Jersey asking them to pray for Chris Christie’s death (Chris Christie is the governor of New Jersey of course)

I’ve been listening to teachers calling into radio talk shows that have not the slightest problem demanding that we the taxpayer in the private sector, who have not had raises in 5 years or more, decreases in benefits, and have been feeling the effects of the recession/depression in our personal lives, should somehow be made exempt from same by having US pay more taxes to keep them in the lap of luxury that was created by economic boom bubbles that simply don’t exist anymore.  That’s insane. 

I’ve got news for those people.  I’ll fight to my last breath to make sure that doesn’t happen as will ever other private sector taxpayer I know.  Additionally, the Money Isn’t Available.  Even if we wanted to, the Money Isn’t Available. 

As a result, you have states like New Jersey and Wisconsin (and this is just the start) who are now forced to make you people live on the same planet as the rest of us by forcing you to either contribute to your pension pans and health plans or be fired.  Get used to the idea.  Cause things are only going to get worse over the next couple years.  This year, we’ve got massive food price inflation and we’ll probably have 4 dollar gas, if not 5 and probably will have 5 dollar gas in 2012 because of all you libtards who think the world can run on Unicorn Shit. It can’t.  And the price of gas will affect the price of everything else because it takes gas and diesel fuel to get it all those products to within a few blocks of where you live.

If you think We are going to pay to keep you on some economic pedestal, you are out of your minds.  And things are going to get worse before they get better.  I honestly think the pain is just starting. Sorry.

You better see the writing on the wall.  The gravy train is over and you should be thankful you had it so good for so long and should have saved for this rainy day.

I think the governor of Wisconsin should warn the teachers who are camped out at the capitol that they are state employees and they have X amount of time (short) to return to work or be fired and replaced.  Just like Reagan did with the Air Traffic Controllers.  They and the Democrat legislature of Wisconsin are all acting like a bunch of spoiled babies.

25 comments :

  1. I believe America is getting a good dose of the Teacher's Union and what's wrong with the Teacher's Union. Computer/Video training works excellent at our Christian School. We have full time teachers, the kids all get personal attention...it's great. I agree....fire them all, wipe the slate clean, we can recover because we have before.

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  2. DeanO, you know what strikes me is (I believe) to a large degree most UAW folks realize that they have it incredibly good and they'll never find that in the private sector, let alone most are not trained or educated to the point that they could even find a Decent Job in the private sector. And so they hang on to their union protection with a death grip and anything that threatens that just puts them on another plane.
    I think the teachers are All That and More.
    Generally speaking.

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  3. PS, I think the way to make this happen is to start with 1st grade. Install the computers, downgrade the teacher's responsibilities and just follow that class through the grades. After 12 years, you are transformed.

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  4. Hey Kid - their benefits and job security blows away the private sector...it's unreal

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  5. DeanO. I don't know how it can continue. There simply isn't enough money. They're living in a ponzai scheme created by the union bosses who stole all the money.

    I have no personal beef with them. Honestly. I simply observe that they are living way out of bounds in regard to reality and it isn't going to be pretty when they come crashing back to Earth.

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  6. Textbooks should go out on Kindle. They are obsolete every other years anyway. Can you imagine all the trees that would be saved? She tree-huggers will jump in celebration.

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  7. The unions must go the way of the Dodo. They are part of history and things have changed since the old days when they were formed.

    I don't believe teachers teach anymore. They are in the art of indoctrination (globull warming, wacko environmentalism and socialism). The unions have destroyed any hope of educating the masses.

    In my experience with having a child in school was that only one out of five did her job. She was constantly constrained by the Site Coach.

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  8. Opus, yes, it really is a pre-computer business environment paradigm which puts it about 1979.

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  9. Admiral, I hear you. My friends that quit teaching after 20 years of it did so because the teaching paradigm was Counter to education.

    Plus here is the pizza' resistance'. Why do government workers NEED A UNION?? Because they are afraid of being mistreated by the very people who regulate workers rights ???????????????????????????

    It's wrong from start to finish.
    And we taxpayers, pouring billions upon billions into it are asked even now in this Depression, to pour more billions into it.

    Plus, take a look at the picture of those teachers doing the sit in at the capitol and tell me that even 2 % of them look like 'professionals'. They make a 100 grand a year working 9 months at the top of their scale !

    100,000 -div- 9 = 11,111 * 12 = 133,332. They're being paid at a rate of $133,332 a year Plus benefits. For doing what they do? Please.

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  10. Opus, PS, the IT department I work in phased out paper reports entirely about 2 years ago. No reports are printed anymore. They are all distributed in PDF form through email and/or available through a web interface.

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  11. The problem is kids today are mostly SO badly behaved that I can't see a computer telling them to SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!!!
    How's about computer teaching at HOME?

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  12. Z, that's true, but I don't think it changes the situation. You still have someone telling them to shut up and complete their computer lesson versus 'shut up and listen to what I'm saying'.

    In the end kids that don't want to put forth the effort and don't have supportive parents aren't going to learn. I don't know anything that solves that.

    What can be gained here though is that instead of teacher presenting to an entire class a single lesson plan, bound to strike for mediocre-land, the bright kid on the computer can move forward ahead of everyone else at their own pace. In today's environment those kids lose interest because they are not challenged.

    At the end of the class year, maybe that kid skips a grade.
    Or doesn't skip a grade, but by the time he graduates 12th, he' maybe got a couple college years worth of credits to his name.
    That will never happen in the current environment or very rarely.

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  13. Z, PS, home schooling at home might be even more accepted if it is done on the same computer based lesson plans that come to everyone over the internet. Why not. Another plus.

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  14. The gravy train is over and you should be thankful you had it so good for so long and should have saved for this rainy day...wow KID..aint that the Truth!

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  15. You are on to something here, Kid. This is a great idea, the ipads and such.

    I especially like your last paragraph idea. All those AWOL demotards should be FIRED, along with the teachers who called in "sick". They are sick, mentally. They need a dose of reality.

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  16. Woman, they're in for a rude awakening !

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  17. Bunni, Thanks ! Hopefully they'll come back and do their jobs.

    Has a repub every run away? Even a Rino ?

    I don't believe so.

    Let's Keep Voting Them Out !

    ARG !

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  18. Well.... mom thinks they should be fired too... they can take a nice loooong unpaid vacation.
    there is only one problem, their union contract. We are not sure they can be fired by the Gov.

    If you listened to Rush on friday, you know plenty of people in other states would gladly take those jobs from them and perhaps for half the pay... we all know those brilliant teachers are just busting out geniuses there in Wisconsin -- not.

    bonks!

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  19. Well, that's too bad Pierro !

    I read a survey that stated many unemployed would take just about any job from 24k up.

    Geniuses ? Exactly my thoughts as well !

    BronkBronk!

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  20. I used to be a fan of computer based training until I joined the Navy. It's all we do, and we do not learn a thing. I do think that the century old way we approach education needs to change. But going completely CBT is crap too.

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  21. Trestin, I certainly agree it is not a 100% solution.

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  22. HOMESCHOOL!!
    any parent can teach the basics-
    OK-some cannot because they were not taught the basics (-:
    but- they can learn along w/ their child (ren)
    I learned Latin when I HS my off-spring-decided to HS after teaching 10 years in the pub school-and realizing that the basics were slowly being pushed aside ---that was in the early 80s!
    reading-writing-arithmetic thus learning to THINK on one's own!
    Carol-CS

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  23. Carol-CS, that's why my friends quit teaching after 20 years.
    Makes you wonder who is Still teaching - generally speaking.

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  24. I liked my teachers, K-12 and college..all in Wisconsin. Computers are tools, not teachers. You can waste time gaming on them, waste time data logging for some corporation, or use them what they were made for:
    complex multi-variable computation. Worked for me!

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  25. Hi BB-Idaho. That's what I'm suggesting, using them as tools for subjects that lend themselves to raw data. Math, Science, Language, and the like.

    Unlike you, I viewed the majority of my teachers as certifiable.

    Teachers have been in the position for decades now to teach to the lowest IQ in the class. That's not getting it done.
    I'm open to alternate suggestions but the teacher paradigm has gotten worse by the day for decades.

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