[ExI] re-post: covid revolutionized education

[William Flynn Wallace]

Theme of Spike's post about online education: teachers will become
dinosaurs.  Teachers are not necessary for learning.

I think there are quite a few assumptions in those words above. I'll
probably need help in airing them out.  More coffee, please?

bill w

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 7:41 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> I heard gmail crashed yesterday so this post didn’t go to gmail users.
> Retry:
>
>
>
> Perhaps one of the biggest lasting technological changes brought about by
> the shutdown is a forced adoption of online learning.  A laptop isn’t
> necessary: a 300 dollar ChromeBook will do: it has a camera in it for
> controlled testing, a microphone, a receiver for the broadband available
> free from the school.  The county supplied those, not the state, not the
> feds.
>
> Suddenly educating the next generation took a quantum leap downward in
> cost, because real-time instructors are no longer necessary, even for
> grading purposes really.  Software is proving to be adequate, even if not
> ideal, for grading written essay-style assignments.  It isn’t great at
> evaluating content, but one might argue that carbon-based teachers are not
> necessarily any good at that either.
>
> Plenty of students have discovered how easy it is to arrange an online
> meeting to get a project done.  I myself participated in one, a software
> project for the local superintendent, using six selected students.  It came
> together quickly and efficiently.  We may never go back fully to face to
> face meetings.
>
> New content isn’t needed.  Look at how much excellent material is
> available free from Khan Academy.  A student can get one hell of a good
> primary education just by exhausting that material, and every bit of it can
> be done from home with a minimum of bandwidth.  Now everyone on the planet
> has access to that.
>
> Covid revolutionized education.
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
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