Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2014 14:04:57 +0530
Subject: Re: [MTC Global] A cloudy future for education
From: vemugantiramesh@gmail.com
To: join_mtc@googlegroups.com
Experience is several notches above Qualification in many aspects of Education.
Which qualification can be compared to or equivalent to this experience.
I know how the Computer industry became IT industry -- Programmable Calculators to Mini computers to Mainframes to PC Hardware to Laptops to Application software to Servers to Powerful Workstations to Systems Software to AMC services to LAN to WAN Networking to FM services to Storage revolution to Printing revolution to Outsourcing to BPO to KPO to LPO to Cloud to Ubiquitous computing & 24*7 connectivity to Social media to Crowdsourcing ,,,,,,,,,,,,
Yes, Technology is only a tool, an aid & will always be so,
regards
3/6/14
--A cloudy future for education
Date: May 22, 2014 Margie Sheedy
Could computers do away with teachers and classrooms? Margie Sheedy reports.
Teachers will soon be obsolete, say the proponents of computer-based learning. The schools of today will be a thing of the past, replaced by schools in the virtual cloud. Children will learn on their own, guided by nurturing mentors who won't need to be educators.
One of the most high-profile proponents of this line of thought is Sugata Mitra. He caused a tidal wave of comment following several TED web portal speeches entitled ''Kids can teach themselves'', ''The child-driven education'' and ''Build a school in the cloud''.
His hypothesis is that children can learn without the help of educators or schools. He has tested this in a series of experiments with rural Indian kids, whereby they were given free access to outdoor internet kiosks, which he calls ''Hole in the Wall'' computers. The children, between the ages of five and 16, took to the technology, teaching themselves basic computer literacy with the help of non-educator mentors who simply gave them encouragement.
From this, Mitra hypothesises further: the future could see schools and teachers, as we know them, ceasing to exist.
Professor Michael Jacobson, co-director of the Centre of Computer Supported Learning and Cognition at the University of Sydney, has heard this kind of talk before. ''Even back in the 1970s, people were saying computer-assisted instruction would replace teachers,'' he says. ''Now it's the flipped classroom and the cloud that will replace teachers.
''Self-directed learning is the concept that students can learn things on their own: that they'll 'just figure it out'.
''The Indian kids [in Sugata Mitra's experiments] learnt about computers by picking up factual information and declarative knowledge. But this doesn't mean they have a deeper understanding to solve creative problems.
''It's naive to think that kids will learn hard ideas, such as difficult knowledge and skills, on their own. However, when they're supported in a variety of ways, they can learn anything.'' He thinks that what is often forgotten in this discussion is that computers are just another way of transmitting knowledge. ''We know how people learn: you have some ideas and you build on them and construct new knowledge,'' he says. ''Good teachers facilitate this process. They are absolutely essential.
''To see if someone understands deeply, they need to be given a new problem or concept and asked to solve it. Students often call it a 'trick question' in a test or exam. If you really understand it you will actually be able to work it out.''
For him, education is about helping students construct new and deeper understandings of the world around them.
''The technology might be able to give them experiences of things they may not have access to through information and videos,'' he suggests. ''For example, we're working on virtual realities where biologists don't have field trips: they do field work in the virtual world. They collect data based on computational field work. ''The cloud is just a way to put the information on a platform and then synchronise it. It's a place to store your information that you can access from different places. There's no way it's going to replace teachers.'' From the viewpoint of Dr Kirsty Young, who has a background in special education and lectures at the University of Technology, Sydney, the education sector will always need teachers.
''I am a great advocate of computer-mediated learning,'' she says. ''However, the end is not nigh for teachers. There's a context that technology needs to be placed in.''
She thinks that there are two groups of students. ''There are the learners that can learn independently and learners who are not engaged or who have disabilities or have some behavioural problems. ''The use of games, simulation and social media is incredibly effective for the second group of students. It can lead students to write with a real audience in a blog/social media setting. ''While computers can give students with learning difficulties the exposure over and again, if they don't understand the basis of what they're doing - I don't think a computer is going to go back and teach it in a different way.'' For students who have trouble organising themselves and concentrating, ''the idea of individual instruction is important for their learning,'' she says. ''But the bigger thing is monitoring their progress and filling the gaps in their learning. This is where good teachers come into their own.''
Educate, Empower, Elevate
Prof. Bholanath Dutta
Founder, Convener & President
MTC GLOBAL- Educate, Empower, Elevate
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MTC GLOBAL- Educate, Empower, Elevate
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