A private school in Knoxville, TN will require it’s 12th grade class to carry iPads.  Students will be able to either provide their own or rent one for $20 a month.  It seems this is the latest in a series of experiments to see whether the tablet can replace the traditional textbook in the classroom.

While I understand that schools and teachers are doing more and more to keep students interested and engaged, I just don’t see this as being a realistic solution.  Here are some pros… and some cons.

Pros

• Lightweight - No more heavy book bags, no more lockers, no more back aches.
• Connected - Question got you stumped?  With the internet at your fingers it’s wikipedia and wolfram-alpha to the rescue.
• Interactive - In theory, this could keep students entertained, provide tactile learning (in addition to visual and auditory) and beats the hell out of overheads and whiteboards.

Cons

• Connected - Question got you stumped?  Why do the work when you can probably have a computer just tell you the answer?
• Distraction - Why would anyone want to do work when  you could be watching youtube, listening to music, surfing for porn, or playing games?  Of course some of this could be locked down if the school controlled the device, but for BYO - I don’t think so.  Remember what the TI-82 could do?  This will be worse.
• Expensive - At $500 a pop, you’re talking $15,000 for an average sized class and $750,000 to furnish a school with a population similar to where I taught.  Don’t even think of saying “What about the money you’ll save on physical textbooks?” because there’s no way those publishers are going to give away that new interactive content for free.  Add software, security, maintenance… cha-ching!

I think that iPads are pretty sweet, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t the solution for our horribly broken education system.  Perhaps down the road we’ll all be enlightened enough to augment our learning with a spiffy tablet, but Steve Jobs will have to make do with fanboys until then.

What do you think?

While doing some holiday shopping for the little ones, like many, I ended up at the ‘Mecca’ of American toy stores - Toys Я Us.

Here are a couple of observations and some photos from my trip:

When I was a kid, toy stores were fun

I’m not implying that kids today are any less excited about the prospect of going to a toy store, but I am suggesting that they are being robbed of a valuable experience.  When I went to toy stores as a kid, most of the toys were on display, and you could actually *play* with them. 

Today, children are forced to determine how much they like a toy by watching advertising between television cartoons, and from the pictures on the box. I distinctly remember some of the cooler-looking toys failing the acid-test of playing with it in a carpeted store aisle.  I’ll also suggest that very few Rubik’s cubes would ever have been sold if people were forced to judge the toy by its box. 

I’ll forever have fond memories of Lego, Star Wars figurines, and Stretch Armstrong.  They are my memories, because *I* decided I enjoyed those toys enough to beg for them as a child.  Do we really want a bunch of Madison Avenue executives to decide what our kids’ memories will be like?

Some toys are still sexist

Since we are on the topic of Madison Avenue executives, when will we evolve enough as a society to discard some of the ridiculous gender roles that we try to force onto our kids?

If a little girl likes playing baseball, she is labeled as ‘butch,’ and if a little boy likes playing with dolls or favors the color pink, many parents worry immediately about their son’s sexuality. 

While not usually in the business of dispensing parenting advice, I will dole out one commonsense tip—your three year-old has not begun to explore their sexuality yet.  Playing with dolls is probably a sign that your son has a good imagination—it is not an indication of weakness, or an action which will lead to spontaneous development of homosexuality.  The imagery on toy packaging seems designed to dictate which children should be playing with it, and how. 

Please don’t feel it is your responsibility to define the toy-playing experience for my kids.

Honey, are the dishes clean yet?  The burgers are just about done.

Some toys are counterproductive

We tell our kids they can be anything they want.  To a degree that’s true.  Not every child can be president or a professional quarterback; but with a little bit of aptitude, a strong will, and a lot of determination, the limitations on what they can do are seemingly few. 

Some kids will have to work harder than others.  With that said, wouldn’t you rather your kids color with crayons, imagine they are a superhero, or even shoot each other with Nerf weaponry than play McDonald’s Drive Thru? 

Personally, I want my kids to get plenty of interaction, lots of exercise and preferably some fresh air while they are at it.  I really hope that all of these over-engineered toys don’t replace playing kickball or hide-and-seek.

Would you like a hot apple pie with that?

Most people would agree that a degree from a reputable educational institution is a huge leg up in your career.  But when did we decide that the only reason to learn was to get a piece of paper?

If you are reading this blog, you are probably a junkie for knowledge, no matter what type of nerd you consider yourself.  Whether you obsess on computers, theater,  comics, or whatever; you are obsessed with knowledge, and that is what defines you.  Most of you already know where to go to find niche information to pursue your interests, but most of us want to be at least somewhat well-rounded, and benefit from a traditional college education.

So if you want a traditional higher education, and don’t have the {motivation/money/time} to get a degree for your efforts, where do you go to feed your hunger for knowledge?  Or what if you are a student, and you are unsatisfied with the curriculum you are following, and thirst for more knowledge?

Lifehacker has put together a list to show us Where to Get the Best Free Education Online.

The article is light-reading, and the most valuable parts are the links, most of which now reside in my bookmarks.

So feed your hunger for knowledge, and keep your money in your wallet for the important things in life—-like that new video card, or that Amazing Spider-Man #129 that you might stumble upon at the flea-market the next time you are there.

I watched a Ted Talk earlier this year, in which high-school teacher, and mathematics enthusiast, Dan Meyer performed a lecture on the current state of education.  Meyer suggested that mathematics curricula need an overhaul.  More specifically—if you want kids to learn, you need to present them with knowledge in an interactive manner which makes the problem appear practical and useful to them; and be less helpful.

Examples are given which illustrate that many mathematics textbooks provide all of the data necessary to solve a problem, however, in real-life information can be incomplete; and often extraneous information is provided, so the problem-solver must determine how much weight to give the information provided.

Society for Science & the Public published a recent article, suggesting that younger children lack the capability to filter data overload, and hone in the relevant data. Examples show that individuals who are given multiple variables in an exercise where they attempt to handicap a car race have a better chance of filtering out the irrelevant data, and focusing on the more relevant data, as they approach adulthood.

I believe Meyer’s hypothesis to be valid, however, a new challenge emerges.  The evidence in the ScienceNews article shows that younger children need more structure to their problems, or they can be lost in the minutia of the exercise.  At what age do we stop leading our kids to water, and force them to rationalize what data is important?