Notes & Links by Casey A. Gollan on
art, design, creativity and technology on
education

 

The New York Times recently published a pretty amazing article by Benedict Carey and John Markoff on using robots to teach children. The technology has advanced to the point where South Korea is “hiring” hundreds of robots as aids in teaching English. [Cue dystopian society montage.]

I, for one, welcome our robot teacher overlords. I wrote a first draft of this post from Argentina, where I was vacationing — and struggling to communicate with the non-english speaking locals — for two weeks. Though my high school Spanish came back to me in bits and pieces, the language classes I was offered in school were a complete joke and I would be eager to see them reinvented.

Seth Godin recently posted about two kinds of teachers. One kind is essential: teachers who show you how “to see, learn to lead and learn to solve interesting problems.” In a previously quoted speech, Margaret Edson describes the importance of classroom teaching:

There are those who say that classroom teaching is doomed and that by the time one of you addresses the class of 2033, there will be a museum of classroom teaching.

Ever since the invention of wedge-shaped writing on a clay tablet, classroom teaching has been obsolete. It’s been comical. Why don’t we just write the assignments and algorithms on a clay tablet, hang it up on the wall, and let the students come who will to teach themselves from our documents?

Why, since the creation of writing with a pen on a piece of paper, do we still bother to have schools? Why, since the invention of movable metal type, don’t we all just go to the library? Why do we have to have class? Why do we need teachers? Why, since the advent of the microchip, don’t we all stay home in our pajamas and hit send?

Technology is nipping at the heels of classroom teaching, but I perceive no threat. How could something false replace something true? How could a substitute, a proxy, step in for something real and alive? How could the virtual nudge out the actual?

What Edson is really asking is: how could learning information from textbooks (on paper or on screen) replace learning from a living, breathing human being who teaches you how to think?

The question is slanted because, as Godin notes, the two types of learning are apples and oranges. The scientists in the NY Times article even concede that they’re not trying to replace Edson’s brand of teachers. And even if they did want to try, I don’t see how any technology, from the most primitive to the most advanced, could ever be capable of replacing classroom teaching. But I don’t think classroom teaching needs to include the type of learning Godin defines as “technique, facts and procedures.”

The Spanish words that I’m still able to recall are not the result of what Edson describes as “a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event;” they’re what I hammered into my brain the night before each test with flashcards. The teachers served simply as pop-quiz facilitators, graders, and delinquent classmate babysitters. Edson fetishizes teachers, but I often wished that I could study on my own (in lieu of having a great teacher) because I could have taught myself double the vocabulary in half the time or finished early and taken the remaindered time to meander in my top ideas.

I quit Spanish because I had the opportunity to study outside of my high school for a semester and I came back with strengthened convictions and no patience for my time being wasted in class. At that time I was frustrated, but if I had sustained my Spanish education for 30 minutes a day over the course of several years, I’m sure that I would remember much more. With a bit of will power I could probably do it on my own, and I could definitely keep it up with the assistance of great teacher, but I think that somewhere in between these two options a robot teacher could’ve really helped me.

At a higher level where language branches into culture, dialect, and even philosophy, great human teachers would be reintroduced. But with consistently bad basic language teachers throughout my high school education why not just opt for efficiency? A well-designed language teaching robot could be ruthlessly efficient, mimic your body language to make you comfortable and focused, respond to basic questions—even sensing when you’re confused based on your facial expression, teach multiple kinds of pronunciation with audio, and grade tests in split-seconds. Instead of a one-to-one laptop program* we need a one-to-one robot teacher program!

I highly recommend the full article, titled Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot, as well as the accompanying timeline and infographic (a cropped thumbnail of which is shown above). Top notch reporting from the NY Times.

* which may actually be causing lower test scores—no surprise there…unlike single-serving robots, laptops are too multi-capable, with distractingly weak habit fields

What would I do if I set a curriculum for a school?

God, how exciting that could be! But you can’t do it today. You’d be crazy to work in a school today. You don’t get to do what you want. You don’t get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?

Steve Jobs (via 37signals)

See also, Steve Jobs on creativity:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.
The key to Apple’s success is that the company often takes the time to explain things to the consumer that no other vendor bothers to do. By keeping a laser focus on key features and introducing them one at a time over a period of years, Apple taught and evangelized everything the consumer needed to know to understand the iPad from day one. Without that foundation, it’s not likely the product would have been nearly the success it has been.

Michael Gartenberg, Apple’s secret weapon: consumer education from Macworld

My first Mac included a program on it that taught you how to use a mouse (not that it made that godforsaken hockey puck any better—but, still!).

jennyeagleton:

PROFESSOR OLAFUR ELIASSON.

Artist Olafur Eliasson’s forthcoming professorship at Berlin’s Universität der Künste will be an experiment in art education

image

Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin, 2008

In April 2009, the Berlin-based Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will begin his professorship at Berlin’s Universität der Künste (UdK). This might not sound like ground-breaking news, but for an art school that has endured much recent criticism in the German press for botching its relationships with professors and being woefully behind the times when it comes to hiring local talent, it’s a significant move forward.

Granted, it took almost three years to negotiate a compromise between the structure of the traditional German art academy and Eliasson’s vision for his teaching position. Following the German art education model, Eliasson will take on 15 to 20 ‘spatially motivated people’ from the pool of UdK applicants for the five-year duration of their studies, in addition to a few exchange students and – he hopes – three PhD candidates. But rather than commuting to the University’s studios, Eliasson will teach them in a 550-square-metre space located literally on top of his own studio.

———-

Though Eliasson admires artists who never went to art school, he nevertheless thinks that art education is increasingly important. ‘The world is just so fucked up that it seems desperately to need art around. I think the participants will take away from the school the potential of being productive participants in the world. And I think this requires a sense of responsibility and precision. I hope they’ll learn to be a part of the world or “with the world”.

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/open_studio/

_____________________

foreign exchange to Berlin anyone?

Yes, please.

I started watching The Up Series a few days ago with some friends and so far I’m through 21 Up. This series is more addictive than reality TV, in spite of being way less junky. Also, it’s available for streaming from Netflix.

The Up Series is a series of documentary films that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. The children were selected to represent the range of socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, with the explicit assumption that each child’s social class predetermines their future. Every seven years, the director, Michael Apted, films new material from as many of the fourteen as he can get to participate. Filming for the next installment in the series, 56 Up, is expected in late 2011 or early 2012. (via Up Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The lore around the class is such that incoming students are often desperate to have the once-in-a-lifetime experience. As one student told me, they “arrive with pre-nostalgia.” 

Sarah Thornton — Seven Days in the Art World, 45

I’ve always just thought of it as “high expectations”, but “pre-nostalgia” is a wonderful and apt term.
Group crits are such an established part of the curriculum in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Europe and elsewhere, that only a few teachers reject them. Dave Hickey, an art critic who describes his pedagogic style as “Uncle Buck—Hey, smoke this,” is one of the few. “My one rule,” he says in his freewheeling southwestern drawl, “is that I do not do group crits. They are social occasions that reinforce the norm. They impose a standardized discourse. They privilege unfinished, incompetent art.” He tells his students, “If you’re not sick, don’t call the doctor.” Hickey is not alone in thinking that there is undue pressure on artists to verbalize. Many believe that artists shouldn’t be obliged to explain their work. As Hickey declares, “I don’t care about an artist’s intentions. I care if the work looks like it might have some consequences.

Sarah Thornton —Seven Days in the Art World, p. 54

My sister is reading Seven Days in the Art World, the best-selling quick read by Sarah Thornton, so I picked it up and read Chapter Two, “The Crit”. It only delves shallowly into interesting topics, but seems like a light and sweet overview for people that want to know a little about a lot.

To clarify: this is interesting to think about, but I’m not necessarily sure I agree. See this quote by Albert Brooks about having too much of other people’s opinions.

I’m not convinced that the purpose of a crit is to create good artwork (though it might be a side effect) or that a good crit is most valuable for the person being critiqued. The artist being critiqued is, in my experience, no way obliged to act on the class’s feedback. However, learning how to talk about what’s in front of me is important for me as an artist and being able to engage in a conversation that includes the artist is important for the group-at-large

The Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

“We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund - NYTimes.com

We bring nothing into the classroom — perhaps a text or a specimen. We carry ourselves, and whatever we have to offer you is stored within our bodies. You bring nothing into the classroom — some gum, maybe a piece of paper and a pencil: nothing but yourselves, your breath, your bodies.

Classroom teaching produces nothing. At the end of a class, we all get up and walk out. It’s as if we were never there. There’s nothing to point to, no monument, no document of our existence together.

Classroom teaching expects nothing. There is no pecuniary relationship between teachers and students. Money changes hands, and people work very hard to keep it in circulation, but we have all agreed that it should not happen in the classroom. And there is no financial incentive structure built into classroom teaching because we get paid the same whether you learn anything or not.

Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, “I know how to add two numbers, but I’m not going to tell you.” And they laugh and shout, “No!” That’s so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?

Bringing nothing, producing nothing, expecting nothing, withholding nothing — what does that remind you of? Is this a bizarre occurrence that will go into The Journal of Irreproducible Results? Or is it something that happens every day, all the time, all over the world, and is based not on gain and fame, but on love.

Margaret Edson, Smith College Commencement Speech, 2008

Corrupted files for sale to students to buy extra time.

Hilarious. When else is somebody looking to buy something that doesn’t work?

(via tba)