Snow Day Assignment Week#7 (Due Monday)

This was a fascinating video and I really enjoyed watching it. I think that this guy did stumble across something amazing. I actually found myself laughing a lot while watching this because this guy is just funny with how he researches.

I agree with him in the fact that our school system is obsolete. I think this relates a lot to how our class is structured. Professor Maclin sends us out to learn on our own and write about what we are learning. I think that this is a lot alike because really he only gives us the question and it is our responsibility to come up with the answer. We do need to change how we teach children because it is true that we have amazing technology at our hands so why aren’t we using it? It is like some of the older generations are trying so hard to go against the future that they are actually harming there students because they won’t let them learn as much as they could. I think technology should be incorporated more into school systems now. I think that having a school is important it’s just the teaching styles that need to change. Like I think the social aspect of schooling is very important because the children need to learn how to communicate with others of their age and those that are older. We need to prepare for our futures because generations are becoming so uneducated because of the rate at which the technology is growing. When I am ten years older I won’t be able to do half of the things that middle schools could do at that time because I will have become outdated. In order for us to be able to go into this new age we need to have open minds and try new systems. This way of thinking could really benefit children because they group together and teach each other, which is such a great way for them to develop the social interactions that they will need one day.

Overall I think that Mitra made an amazing discovery and I am glad that he is pursuing his findings. SOLE may just be one more step in the right direction for educating the young in the world. This can also become a huge advantage for the villages and other small areas that don’t have the luxuries other people do.

It's great to have data that can solidify the idea of learning and the new world. This video reminds me of another TED talks video talking about how modern day schools destroy children's creativity. It's probably one of the most amazing feelings to be able to be given something and just learn from it without instruction or someone watching over you to make sure you do it "right". I would be interested in seeing what sort of school idea's this "SOLE" schooling has. Unfortunately, i don't think that it is viable, especially in the united states. I love the idea and will talk about how amazing it is in a second, but I think that it needs to be said that this idea should not be rushed. The teaching force is a deep investment of many people and it is their lifetime job. Maybe we are doing it wrong with as far as schooling goes, but to eliminate some teachers altogether would be devastating.
Now, on the brighter note, this idea of having students learn from actually learning is brilliant. I imagine it will develop the critical thinking skills we are all striving to achieve whilst in college. Sugata Mitra has great data to show that children will learn when you put information in front of them without a formal education. Some of the children used in his examples didn't even know English and yet were still able to learn how different molecules worked or whatever it was they were studying.
I unfortunately have to be skeptical, since it is my job a scientist. I do like Sugata's visions for the future, but I have to be weary that students will lose the human connection they need with teachers/professors. I guess I just want more information on how these "hole in the wall" computers worked in different settings and wanted to see if there were other changes in the children after they used these computers. It would be incredibly invasive to do so, but having the children take different standardized tests to see if their critical thinking actually increased or if they were just better at memorizing information.

Very interesting video and glad I got to watch it.

I really enjoyed watching this video. His way of thinking of the educational system was interesting and made valid points. His studies showed that under privileged children can learn if the materials are given to them. Its not that wealthy children are smart and poor children are not, its that the materials are not limited to wealthy children leading them to have much more knowledge in education and technology. The studies he conducted prove that teachers are needed to give knowledge, "we" as people are able to teach ourselves if we are aloud to.He basically took a position stating that education is outdated and its time to use our knowledge in a different way. We need to learn for the future.
I am interested in seeing how his operation SOLE comes together. I agree that the best way to learn would be self-organized learning. I think of the way I am being taught, as professors go through lecture and we take notes, more than half of the class doesn't really comprehend the information. Then with exams, its like we push ourselves to remember the material just for the exam, then after that its all gone. I feel like this is what he was making a statement on when he was taking about the neurological process of the brain we we fill punished and our brain shut down from processing information.
The information in this video can help prepare for our future in so many ways. One observable keys from this video was his studies. They allow us to see that that the capacity of learning is not limited to certain people. We can all learn in the same way if we all had access to those materials. Another was his project, SOLE, I feel that if that if self organized learning environmental did launch and become a tool we use in the educational system that the scores overall of students would increase dramatically. I think this would be the way of helping students learn for the future.

I found this video to be very intriguing. He found that if you ask those you are trying to teach a question they learn better. When he was discussing that rich people told him they thought their children were gifted because they could do wonderful things with a computer, something that crossed my mind was that most of the psychologist we are learning about in this class and others are rich, white, and educated. It isn't that those who are from a different race or poor or both can't learn or that they aren't smart. They just can't afford to educate themselves. He proved this point with the hole in the wall project. The children learned how to run the computer on their own. Not only did they teach themselves the functions of the computer but they also taught themselves English! I can't help but wonder what could have happened in psychology and other sciences if someone would have taken the time to educate those who could not afford it.
I do believe that self organized learning is important. However, I feel that without some sort of structure it could have negative consequences. Children don't have the best attention spans so what happens when the teachers ask their students a question and let them go off and do their own thing? What about the high school and middle school students who lack responsibility and don't feel like answering the questions? I think it has a potential to be a positive form of education I would just like to know more about how it would be structured or what his ideas are about the structuring of SOLE.
His statement about school becoming obsolete is true. As a student in this generation I feel that we go to class, we are told, not taught, the material, we take notes, and then study the information for a test, after the test is over we forget the information. We forget the information because it is either not necessary for another class or because we were not properly taught and didn't retain the information. The test we are taking then determines whether or not we pass the class. How can we pass the class perfectly if we are not properly taught the information. The teachers generally give the information and class is over. Only in a few classes have I had professors make sure we are understanding the material. I feel that teachers no longer care if the student actually understands the information as long as the understand it enough to pass the tests and the class. This is one way that SOLE could help students. Self organized learning makes it so that you teach yourself but have guidance of a teacher if needed. If students are given the opportunity to self organize and self teach I think that they would benefit greatly. Think of everything they could learn at very early ages. He pointed out in the video that some kids were learning things that most children aren't even learning yet! If we could get the next generation to do this there would be so many more opportunities for various advancement in the world. Their scores would improve, they would learn a lot more at early ages, and I believe the over all education system would improve as well. I am interested in learning and seeing how far SOLE goes and by whom it becomes accepted.

It's a lucky thing that I saved this assignment before submitting, because for some reason my post was lost when I pressed submit.

I watched the documentary on the trans-orbital lobotomy for this class because I did the other assignment for Behavior Modification.
Just like the rest of the modern day world, I still cringe even when I hear the word lobotomy. However this documentary has changed the reasons why I cringe.
I used to think that it was something out of a horror movie or a nightmare...that somebody cuts your head open and removes part of your brain, rendering you a zombie. However I now realize that I was seriously misinformed. I understand that Freeman had a 'lightbulb' moment when he hypothesized that disrupting certain brain connections might stop some of the symptoms of mental illness. However, when he analyzed the brains of mentally ill cadavers, he should have stopped once he realized that there was no physical difference between the mentally ill brains and the normal brains.

I do realize that back then the field of psychology was primarily concerned with alleviating symptoms rather than curing mental illness, and I do not blame Freeman for that. He was just going along with what he was taught. However, I think that some of his mistakes are the reasons for why we now have so many strict rules on psychological research and treatment. The fact that there was no way to do non-human trials with this radical operation should have rendered it useless. Also, Freeman swore that the lobotomy would only be used as a last resort, and once he developed an efficient way of performing them, he was performing them way too often.
The documentary made a very good point when it analyzed his personality and explained that these things are due to the fact that he was an enthusiast.

I sincerely feel for Howard Dully. He was only a kid when his vindictive step-mother made him have a lobotomy when he was probably just acting out because he was upset from losing his mother. Had his step-mother been sensitive enough to try to find the root of the problem, this extreme measure could have been avoided. I believe it was cases like these that prove that a fix-all cure is never the answer. Also, we have learned the importance of informed consent. Dully was only told weeks after the procedure that Freeman had given him a lobotomy.

I think it is important to understand that we should not necessarily condemn the actions of people in the past, because these actions may have been a result of the environment of the time, and without somebody making those mistakes we might not have the ethics and policies in place that we do today.

This video was really interesting and I am glad to have learned about the results he found. The information he presented on education was like nothing I had heard before. He talked a lot about the past and the possibilities of the future. I liked the way he correlated the past to the future because it showed how times are changing and how real it is.

When he was talking about how we the education system is not broken, it just needs to be improved, I was interested because I did not really think there was anything wrong with the education system. He presented a lot of information showing how the education system can be changed to fit the growing needs for the future of education. He showed that children can teach themselves how to work computers, just by being given a computer to play with. After someone learns, they use their knowledge to teach others.

Another interesting point he made was how he came up with the idea to present poor, un-educated, people with a computer. The rich people were talking about how brilliant their children were with computers, and how they just knew how to do a bunch of stuff that they were not taught. He decided to see what would happen if he gave poor children a computer and he was not disappointed to see the results.

When he wanted to see if the students could learn about biology, I was interested to see how the outcome would look. He was expecting for them not to learn anything, but he was wrong. The first time (baseline) he recorded was at a 0. When he came back after a few months he learned that they were up to a 30. He asked a young woman to give the students some motivation. Without actually giving help she gave motivation to the children and raised their score by another 20 points to 50.

I think that his project of SOLE is awesome and can help the educational system. I found it interesting how he called the current system out dated because it is. One of the most interesting things I learned from this video was about the reptilian part of the brain that shuts down when we are feeling stressed. This was related to how taking tests causes parts of our brain to shut down. He made an interesting point about how the educational system can be changed by going back to the process before the effects of the reptilian.

All in all I enjoyed this movie and learned a lot of valuable information on self organized learning. I did not realize that we could learn just by being given the opportunity. Humans are naturally learning species that are constantly evolving from new experiences. I am excited to see how the SOLE program works.

BR
Mitra’s video and theory were very interesting. The statement, “schools are obsolete” made earlier in the video is what started to get me thinking and what set the tone for the rest of the presentation. I never thought about it in that way but after watching the video it seemed to make more sense that schools really aren’t needed or truly required in order for us to learn. This notion isn’t just in the United States either as pointed out in the video, it’s around the world and present in all classes of society.
Schools now should be more of a place to gather and allow children to learn more on their own, and have the teacher more as a bystander or a resource when needed. Teachers should run the show less, and allow kids to explore on their own more to see what knowledge they can obtain on their own, as well with working with each other to progress. I think technology can definitely contribute to education and the workforce significantly and that it will continue to progress more in the future. I think in our education systems we need to make technology more accessible and encourage it more; children are explorers and want to learn, but I think they should teach themselves more than go off a structured curriculum. I think that the structure of learning described in the video would be significant because it could allow for children to learn anywhere, not just at home or in school. This could be an important aspect in the sense that they wouldn’t just “shut off” their brain after leaving school and they could develop questions or curiosity more on their own while away from school. I would definitely agree with Mitra in the fact that he states teachers should just be there to raise the questions in a broad manner, and allow the children to discover the answers and the reasoning behind getting those answers. I don’t think society today gives kids enough credit to learn on their own if given the right resources or technology; this is where we need to change in order to progress to help prepare for the future. His idea of the school of the clouds is a neat idea and I think it’s a really interesting idea that could be significant if followed through.
I really enjoyed watching this video and it makes me like this class more, because Dr. Maclin set this class up similar to what the video wants to achieve. We take what information we want from the class and we discover broad questions or subjects on our own and we learn from what we discover.

RB
I thought that in this video, Mitra made a lot of very intriguing points on the educational system, on both the present and the future. What I found to be interesting right off the bat was that of his comment on the current system of education that we use. As he said it, “Schools as we know them now are obsolete.” The current system that we use is that of the same type that was used over 300 years ago. All the students are expected to read and write at the same level, as well as to be able to do multiplication and division too. This system of education is essentially gone. Now, as a product of that same education system, I never thought that everyone being expected to perform at the same level in every subject was wrong. It never occurred to me that all that system is essentially doing is taking away individuality and making everyone identical. It practically makes sense that we need to find a new system in which to educate the world’s youth. Don’t get me wrong, the system that has been in use does work, but as Mitra also mentioned in this video is that the jobs that we will be doing no longer require use to be skilled in all of those subjects. We now have phones and computers that do math, check spelling and grimmer, and access any information, anywhere, at any given time. The only thing we truly need to know in today’s society is how to read, as Mitra pointed out.

As an education major, to me, this was both an interesting video and an unnerving one as well. I thought it was both amazing and scary when he talked about this self organized learning environment or SOLE for short. I found this to be quite eye opening in that students could now teach themselves and educate others on their own. Clearly this concept is groundbreaking in the field of education. Along with that, I also found it to be slightly nerve wrecking in that if the students can essentially just teach themselves, where will that put us in terms of maintaining full time jobs. I mean, I’m all for the advancement in education, but with this sort of organized education, my future career probably won’t turn out the way I hoped it would be.

That being said, I do feel like children need to be educated more with technology. Traditional education is good for preserving certain aspects of knowledge and discovery, but in an ever advancing technological society, children indefinitely need to be set in fornt of a screen so as to help them prepare for the future. As Mitra said it, who knows what jobs will be like in the next decade or so. For all we know, tomorrow’s technology could require extensive education in different electronic devices.

I really enjoyed this video along with the lecture style of Mitra. Mitra’s research shed light on the need for change within our educational system. I really liked how he said that our system is not broken, it is wonderfully constructed; we just don’t need it anymore.

Here, we saw that children have the ability to learn by themselves. It amazed me how much these children learned from a simple computer placed in a hole in the wall. Most of these children did not speak English yet they were able to learn concepts well above their years; using the English language they read on the computer screen. Mitra provides us with several examples to display the notion that when asked a question and given a computer, children not only find the answer but they enjoy finding the answer. He kept telling us where education and learning is at today but asking us where will it be? I think that this question needs to be addressed and that we, as scholars, need to evolve into a new form of education.

The education system needs to stray from the traditional "lecture then test every so often" method of teaching. In our day and age, this is not conclusive towards learning and it does not help us advance in the job market. Using things that we learned from Mitra, I think we could benefit from producing more independent learning environments and by praising several answers to a question rather than the single right one.

Reflecting on my own personal experience with education, I realized that I learned the most in classes where I was given leeway and freedom to look up things of interest rather than following a strict curriculum. I have done extremely well in my courses where my grade was determined by test scores. However, I can now recall very little from those classes. The material that I still research and bring into every day conversation is the material that I learned in classes such as these hibrid classes or strictly online classes. In these courses, I am led by an instructor and a textbook but I am allowed to use the web to look more into depth about inquiries I may have. I am not graded by having a right answer. I am graded by simply having an answer-valid it is thoughtful and has research to back it up. I think that this is the way classes should be taught-- allowing freedom to learn what we want.

Dr. Sugata Mitra has proven that children have the ability to learn quickly when given the tools they need. He gave disadvantaged children in slums a computer with internet access built into a wall and then got out of the way. He and his colleagues were astounded at the abilities of children to learn and absorb complex information with minimal or no prompting from adults.

I believe that Dr. Mitra’s SOLE system could work wonders in Iowa, too. If there could be thirty to fifty minutes a day in school set aside for the kids to be able to research using computers in small groups the way that Dr. Mitra recommends, then it could be a start to getting beyond the rote education in our classrooms. There is a downloadable file which explains how the SOLE classroom can be set up in a home, daycare or school: http://www.ted.com/pages/sole_challenge .

The SOLE system can also be used in libraries, recreation centers or malls. I believe that parents can use this system to encourage their children to research information on their own, instead of learning only what is being taught at school. There is a lot of information and the schools have limited time to teach. Children are losing interest very quickly; the information that they are being forced to memorize can easily be brought up on a computer, and they may feel that what they are learning in the classroom is irrelevant or unnecessary. If kids were given time within their schedules to do research in small groups, it could make learning more interesting and relevant to their lives.

The system could also work well in home schooling networks, and the parent/teachers would be more like facilitators. They could pose questions to the kids and then allow them to work in their groups to come up with answers. The SOLE download offers information on setting up these types of learning environments.

I actually really enjoyed watching this video for an assignment in class. The video was pretty good because it brought up some interesting points about learning and how our learning, like ourselves, evolves over time. Also was easy to follow because he had a pretty good sense of humor of the matter at hand.
The thing that can help relate this to our class is how we have learned like our forefathers from as long ago as we can document. Like he said in the video people have looked up at the stars and asked why and never stopped the same learning process from there on out. The argument that he seems to be making is that if everything else in our life evolves with us with technology, why not education also? I agree with this point because an example I have thought of is why dont we drive Model T cars anymore? It's because there is a better, more advanced way to get from one place to another. So why cant we also make a more efficient and more adaptable way to learn for the people of this generation?
I also found it interesting how people were learning and bypassing peole in private schools with more expensive teaachers. The kids using the hole in the wall computers were not exactly well off it didnt seem, yet they could keep up just as well and maybe better with the material given to these other privileged kids.
I feel like in the near future there will be dramatic changes in the way people learn information but it will take lots of participation and effort to get all the school systems on the same page. It will be interesting to see how learning will have moved from a type of "punishment", to a type of enjoyable thing people want to do on a daily basis.

Mitra had a lot of interesting things to say in this video. I think he is correct in saying that the way we are doing school now, while it was what the system needed in the past, is not improving today’s society. I remember going to elementary through high school wondering through most of it, ‘why will I ever need to know this?’ Anymore, if I have a question about anything, I can pull out my smartphone and google it. In five years, I might be able to ask my glasses!
I think what we need to take from this video is yes, our educational system is broken, but we can make small changes that will greatly improve it. Everyone seems to learn better when they feel like they are choosing to learn instead of having the information drilled into them and then tested with the possibility of failure. I think we need to let kids take a control over some of their own learning. I am not sure letting a computer do all of the teaching is the right way to go about it, as that takes away much of the adult interaction that children get, and for some children, a teacher is the only responsible and caring adult in their lives. I think it would be very cool to make it a “special” class like music, gym, and art.
I really enjoyed this video and think this man is has some very good ideas, but they are raw. We need more research and more people investing in this area to understand it better.

I liked that Mitra was brave enough to challenge a the system of education especially since it is so old. Our education program hasn't really changed for a long time and I agree with him that it is obsolete. You always hear kids say when am I going to need to know this stuff for real life. I think they are right.
I think we need to take what we learn from this video and what we learn in class and apply it to real life. It can't be a drastic change though because that would just be to much at once. We need to slowly change the school system to adjust to the times. We need to focus more on subjects that will help us in the real world. We also need to adjust the way we teach. Teaching to the test is not the best method. Maybe it was when it first started but now a days with the knowledge that kids learn in such different ways we need to adjust how we teach. I understand the concept of no child left behind be we are approaching it all wrong. For example when a child has ADHD we see it as a disadvantage but if you modify their teaching ADHD kids can be just as if not more creative and smart than the average child. I think a big thing we need to get into our education program is not that kids have disabilities but abilities. We look at kids with mental or learning illness as if they have disabilities when really they don't. We teach kids like they are all the same when in fact they are all special and unique in their own way. We need to adjust our education to the times and to our kids. The education is for the kids so why aren't we molding it to their needs?

I loved this video, and I think that he had some very important points and he is right about our obsolete school system. Something that caught me off guard was his remark that reading being the only tool humans will eventually need. Growing up and to this day my dad is always saying how appalled he is that ‘young’ cashiers don’t know how to properly give change back because they don’t have to use their brain when they have a machine in front of their face telling them what to do. In a sense he is right, but after seeing this video he’s also stuck in a different generation. After being in both of the Dr. Maclin’s classes my eyes have been opened up so much in the way of learning and teaching for that matter. In middle/high school and even college I would get so frustrated because a teacher would stand in front of me and ramble on and on about a subject ( that they obviously already know) using terms and examples that I had no clue what they meant, and then expected the students to fully understand the information. Then I would get all nervous because I didn’t want to fail a test so I would cram information that I could have cared less about and the sad thing is I’ve relearned so much information in college that I knew I already had been taught, it’s just that I couldn’t remember it because I personally didn’t really learn it. The video really does offer up such a valid point and I think our school system does need to change, why can’t classroom time be more about social interaction or giving students a few questions and asking them to find out what it means to them; even if their technique in finding information involves the internet, essentially isn’t the internet like a dictionary or a textbook. We all learn in different ways so why does our society see education being taught as only one way. I gave a 3 year old an ipad and then sat a 2 year old next to him and I told the 3 year old that he had to help the 2 year old learn how to play the games on it; and god behold he actually learned. I didn’t tell or show them what to do at all, and I think we forget the aspect of observation and interaction within our school system. I personally think that we as humans can learn far more from each other and bouncing ideas off of each other then we can by sitting and listening to a teacher talk( unless that teacher is relating info learned to daily living) because of the fact that we’re talking and learning in the same growth range. If that makes sense, and we all have different views or perspectives.

Who said that learning meant knowing a term word for word or a diagram mark for mark, that’s memorizing if you ask me not learning. Were handed a textbook and told what to learn and how to learn it, were not handed a textbook on life and told how to live. Life is about learning, observing, making mistakes, accomplishments, etc. so why can’t learning be about the same thing. Too often in class I’m scared to speak out or raise my hand because I’m afraid of being wrong, to many times I have been able to recall what answer I got wrong on a test instead of why it was wrong and what was the correct answer. Why shouldn’t learning be about using the resources we have at hand such as the internet or our peers. From both of the Dr. Maclins’ I have learned that it’s not about if you know a term word for word or know every single fact about a historical person, it’s about how you retain that information and are able to relate it to everyday living; I have learned so much more now that I know how to ‘learn for myself’ instead of learning to get a good grade. Our learning ability shouldn’t be based on a scantron, last time I checked you couldn’t express yourself inside a bubble.