Technology and Education

[Luna]

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html

I found this article pretty entertaining, and it has quite a bit of truth to it. While I have had classes that still use slide projectors, nearly every class these days has computerized projections of some sort. We also have class-wide internet forums available for discussion outside of class, in addition to online classes, and probably several other educational innovations that have appeared in the last five or ten years.

So does Tufte have a point [no pun intended]? I've seen people who cannot make a proper slide show presentation and they abuse it profusely. I've also heard that some in my uni's business department push the use of PowerPoints like your career depends on it. Some professors even take the exact slide shows provided by the textbook publishers and do not deviate or elaborate in the least. So are PowerPoints a valid teaching tool, or have they become a crutch for students and educators alike, a cop out for proper lecturing and communicating? Are they degrading the quality of classes?

I realize many people use PowerPoints to show visual aids, etc. and thus save paper. I'm all for that. It becomes a problem when someone takes half an entire page's worth of text from a book and puts it on a single slide.

On a similar note, are online classes effective? Sure, they're great when you cannot be physically present or have a day job to keep. But how often do people end up trying to teach themselves from a textbook, and simply take quizzes or submit papers online. Is that really what we're calling a post-secondary education these days?

[TW501]

On a similar note, are online classes effective? Sure, they're great when you cannot be physically present or have a day job to keep. But how often do people end up trying to teach themselves from a textbook, and simply take quizzes or submit papers online. Is that really what we're calling a post-secondary education these days?

Back in high school, I took an online geography class (my high school didn't have a regular geography class). I thought that it was pretty good, and I certainly learned a lot from it. I suppose it depends on which online class it is, as I imagine the quality varies greatly.

[blunt_smoker_420]

As time progresses you will see more schools turn to technology to teach because it is what kids know. It's easier to teach someone a subject with technology because you can incorporate sooo many different sources and videos thanks to the net.

[Kairen]

There's a good and a bad side to learning with technology. On the one hand, people can learn things faster and easier. Being able to access learning resources and facilities online permits them to learn things at their own pace, and with information much more easily accessible, it is faster for the student to comprehend their subject. Additionally, information can be made much more presentable online compared to using a traditional blackboard or slideshow. On the other, it also encourages laziness. A very basic example of this is calculators. There are some people who can't even do 4x4 without using a calculator these days, and there exist programs that incorporate econometric functions and models.

[novae]

Technology is a good thing when used right. I, for one, think it is easier to present something on Powerpoint because the information you want to stress is all there and it can be easier on the eye. It is also easier to take notes on a Powerpoint. However, when someone is reading everything off the slide and doesn't do anything with it, its a problem. I've seen too many professors at my university just read off the slide or just teach what is in the book without delving into some of the more recent updates in our knowledge or checking if all the information they are teaching is still valid, even to their point of view.

Therefore, technology and education is a double-edged sword in my book. We need more people to critically analyze the presentations, powerpoints and speech, before this turns into a bigger problem than it already is. Fortuneatly, that is why English classes and Technical Communication classes are required in higher education.

[DarkBunny]

theres advantages of teaching subjects using power point presentations,but as novae just pointed out it can make them too lazy to actually drag up additional research or they might just read off the slides and not make their own speech on the topic.

[Kairen]

theres advantages of teaching subjects using power point presentations,but as novae just pointed out it can make them too lazy to actually drag up additional research or they might just read off the slides and not make their own speech on the topic.

There was this one lecturer in my uni who was not so good with technology and he never used powerpoint. He always wrote everything he had to say about his subject on the traditional blackboard (or the modern equivalent that uses markers instead of chalk). I understood his lectures better than anybody else. This other lecturer I had never even wrote anything. He would just talk and you had to take notes. Often, he would use computers but that's only to show articles based on what he was talking about, and he hardly ever referred to them because of how well he knew the subject, and I had great respect for him as well. Like I said, that's the trap of technology. It makes you lazy and you tend to just read what you wrote.

[DarkBunny]

There was this one lecturer in my uni who was not so good with technology and he never used powerpoint. He always wrote everything he had to say about his subject on the traditional blackboard (or the modern equivalent that uses markers instead of chalk). I understood his lectures better than anybody else. This other lecturer I had never even wrote anything. He would just talk and you had to take notes. Often, he would use computers but that's only to show articles based on what he was talking about, and he hardly ever referred to them because of how well he knew the subject, and I had great respect for him as well. Like I said, that's the trap of technology. It makes you lazy and you tend to just read what you wrote.
yeah i have had great teachers like that,they would occasionally bring up articles on the the subject/topic but then just talk again and i understood them perfectly it certainly was the case with my media teacher,he was a good teacher,but yeah technology can make you lazy i have used powerpoints many times but got people to look at the powerpoints though and i rarely talked.

[NoxieDC]

That's technology for you: simple, bulletpointed, lacking interest and automated.
I've really only had respect for teachers who use computers to spice things up a bit but when the entire lesson is put in that format I'd rather skip.

Whenever the teacher said "Hey, wake up, I need you to learn."
Two answers would pop up:
"I'm polite so I'll let you do that first." or "Fuck you, you simple minded, hypocritical prick!"

[Luna]

My most interesting lecturer definitely knew his subject through and through and I have respect for his knowledge on the subject [also for having just received his doctorate], but he abused PowerPoints every single time he used one in class. He does a series of 3-4 classes for my major, so by the second of the series we all knew the "Doug can't find the project remote" and "Sean, can you stand on the table to turn on the projector" routines very well.

We also knew how he would throw 10-15 lines of text from a single quote on the philosophical side of the subject in a single slide and then plow through it like nobody's business. Then of course, while the few of us who wanted to try and take notes on it, we would play the "Can I change the slide yet" game until we finished, gave up or he claimed that he would put the slideshow online for us [which didn't always happen]. He did occasionally have graphics in his slides. His more redeeming quality was the level of elaboration he had from the slides themselves, including some more interesting material regarding more of the personal lives of the people we studied and similar things you don't typically hear about in standard academia.

The only online class I've taken was a psychology class which lasted about 15 days. I wish I had thought to buy the book and start reading it early, but I waited to receive the syllabus. We had quizzes on each chapter that were all available from the start of the class, and a series of 4-5 papers ranging from 1-3 pages single spaced, and often involved some type of observation activity or interviewing another person. I found the text interesting, especially the select case studies, but I didn't honestly think the syllabus served much of a purpose. Considering the course cost around $1500-1600 at the time, I didn't really think I got my money's worth.

[Kairen]

The thing about powerpoint is that even if the lecturer knows his subject like the back of his hand, what's on the screen easily distracts you from what the lecturer is actually saying as a listener. That's why I appreciated the old-fashioned lecturer of mine who never uses powerpoint the most.

[Luna]

What I get annoyed with are professors who use blackboard inconsistently and will outline all sorts of things, provide extensive information about subtopics and tangents, and then once you've written it all down, announce that you don't need to know that.

PowerPoints aren't a necessity by any means, but when used effectively with bullet lists of main points, they can make it a lot easier to follow a lecture as opposed to someone who literally just sits there and talks for an hour straight. Then again, I'm a visual person, so I typically understand and remember things better after reading or witnessing them rather than hearing about it.


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Update:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29634158/

Robot teacher smiles, scolds in classroom
But developers say it's not about to replace human instructors

By Yuri Kageyama
updated 4:31 p.m. CT, Wed., March. 11, 2009

TOKYO - Japan's robot teacher calls roll, smiles and scolds, drawing laughter from students with her eerily lifelike face. But the developer says it's not about to replace human instructors.

Unlike more mechanical-looking robots like Honda Motor Co.'s Asimo, the robot teacher, called Saya, can express six basic emotions — surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, sadness — because its rubber skin is being pulled from the back with motors and wiring around the eyes and the mouth.

In a demonstration, the robot's mouth popped open, its eyes widened and eyebrows arched to appear surprised. Saya pulled back on its lips to make a smile, and said simple preprogrammed phrases such as "Thank you," while its lips moved, to express pleasure.
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"Robots that look human tend to be a big hit with young children and the elderly," Hiroshi Kobayashi, Tokyo University of Science professor and Saya's developer, told The Associated Press Wednesday. "Children even start crying when they are scolded."

First developed as a receptionist robot in 2004, Saya was tested in a real Tokyo classroom earlier this year with a handful of fifth and sixth graders, although it still can't do much more than call out names and shout orders like "Be quiet."

The children had great fun, Kobayashi recalled, tickled when it called out their names. Still, it's just remote-controlled by a human watching the interaction through cameras, he said.

Japan and other nations are hopeful robotics will provide a solution for their growing labor shortage problem as populations age. But scientists express concern about using a machine to take care of children and the elderly.

Ronald C. Arkin, professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said more research in human-robot interaction is needed before overly relying on robots.

"Simply turning our grandparents over to teams of robots abrogates our society's responsibility to each other, and encourages a loss of touch with reality for this already mentally and physically challenged population," he said.

Noel Sharkey, robotics expert and professor at the University of Sheffield, believes robots can serve as an educational aid in inspiring interest in science, but they can't replace humans.

"It would be delusional to think that such robots could replace a human teacher," he said. "Leading scientists, engineers and mathematicians, almost without exception, talk about that one teacher who inspired them. A robot cannot be that kind of inspirational role model."

Kobayashi says Saya is just meant to help people and warns against getting hopes up too high for its possibilities.

"The robot has no intelligence. It has no ability to learn. It has no identity," he said. "It is just a tool."

[novae]

One of my professors used powerpoints to stress some of the more important points and put up pictures to help explain himself (which was often entertaining in itself). He also used the black board to draw pictures or write a different definition on the board to help explain what he is talking about. That really made the class entertaining and helped me understand the concepts.
I have had a few professors that did not use powerpoint and used the black board the majority of the time that were very good and kept your attention. I loved those classes.