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Re: Wolfram Alpha

by John Mikes :: Rate this Message:

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Kim,
this seems to be a so far undiscussed domain and I have some concerns.
 
First off: the English usage mixes up 'education' with 'teaching'. Schools have a task to transform unformatted teen-beasts into constructive beings, what I call 'education'. That may be a very controversial thing, because the aim of such transformation may be questionable (by many) - e.g. in the Ottoman Empire the education of the Janissaries produced uniform and brainwashed efficient killers. But this is subject to intelligent evaluation.
 
Secondly: relying on 'online' provided knowledge eliminates the shame of the student (Sorry, teach, I did not do my homework) - which is a powerful educational momentum in raising responsible people. More importantly the 'piped' ('wired', or rather: 'wirelessed') science is uncontrolled and depends on the choosing skill of the 'pupil' - if he so decides.
 
There are benedits (besides weaknesses, of course) in having a 'live and knowledgeable' teacher who verbally and demostratingly interacts with his pupils. Benefit: experience and accumulated knowledge plus the chance to simultaneously "educate" (see above). Weakness: the choice WHAT is to be included in such 'knowledge' to be taught.
 
I fully agree with 'creative thinking' to be included. What happened to those who have no resonance to the selected versions of it? (They may be very talented in different domains). E.g. in a music school 'composing' may be considered the 'creative', what only a fraction of talented musicians can muster (master?). How many Eifels. Fultons, Bunsens were among the many million engineers who were instrumental in developing our advanced technology? Creativity should be encouraged, not made a fundmental in 'education'. Disciplined well-founded professional knowoledge should prevail.
 
This maybe a bit conservative position of mine has a side-line to feed it:
electronic libraries cannot replace a hard-copy self-stored one and this is obvious to all who worked with old fashioned libraries successfully. The main benefit: if you can stand before the shelf of the particular topic and browse SOME similar-topic BOOKS you get ideas what you can check instantaneously in a neighboring book - or in the same book sticking your finger to the page where you were. No Googling from 3,467,390 (or more)  entries. Electronics is good for checking and responding once the topic is fixed. Even in responding you get only to a select audience, not as with an experienced teacher, who 'knows' the different schools under divers keys.
 
All that is hard to explain to the generation which never did efficient research using old fashioned hard-copy libraries' lit-search. Whoever did not experienced "better" will not accept that it can exist.
 
I wonder if Bruno would like to give a list of URLs to youngsters and tell them: "here is math/physics, learn it!" - I will teach only UDA and further.
 
I appreciate the efforts vested into AI - as preparatory for the time when we really (will) know the "I" (intelligence and its workings) to make an artificial approach for its mechanisation. Maybe a better contraption is also needed for such than our present binary embryonic - level toy.

John M
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Kim Jones <kimjones@...> wrote:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=10240&m=41581


Universities and schools should now re-invent themselves. We no longer need any "institution" to dole out knowledge because all (non-fuzzy factual) knowledge can be downloaded from the Net.

Education can now only have a future by teaching skills - meaning: what you DO with that knowledge, also how to invent the future without having to continually compare every new idea to existing knowledge - the current paradigm and way too slow. Time is running out fast.

Hint: teach creative thinking

Huh? What's that? Don't we already do that? etc.


cheers,

Kim Jones


There are no surprising facts about reality, only models of it that are surprised by facts




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