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Technology and education

Read the question. You agree?

  • Yes

    Votes: 6 18.8%

  • No

    Votes: 26 81.3%
  • Total voters
    32

Peter Grimm

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Simple question: Will the Internet render classrooms obsolete, at the college level?

Robots replace factory workers, mp3 files replaced cassette tapes, and soon traditional classroom-style learning will go the way of the dodo bird, according to me. I arrive at this conclusion from my perspective as a businessman.

Traditional classrooms will continue to exist for students of high school age or younger, I believe, because part of the role of public education is to babysit.

However, for adult students, the benefits of the Internet are numerous and growing. First, consider cost. As the Internet advances and more people gain access, the prospect of college-educating every willing adult becomes increasingly practical and therefore likely. Second, the Internet offers an unprecedented access to informational variety, meaning each person's education can be tailored to their individual interests and requirements.

Finally, it has been my perception that our best and brightest spend entirely too many of their useful hours in school, and not enough time in the real world applying what they have learned. As education evolves to rely more on technology, students can spend more time actually working, either internships or full time positions, and can participate in their studies during non-business hours.


What do you think?
 
The internet is going to take a bigger and bigger role in education, that is a certainty. However, I don't think it will get rid of traditional classrooms altogether. Students need to have interaction with real people. The internet and computers can't answer complex questions that the students have, and it can not replace social interaction and collaborative work, both of which are extremely important in just about every career field.
 

The technology isn't quite there yet, but my question is regarding the future. The Internet gets more interactive every day. Besides, students would ideally be interacting with coworkers, all while gaining real wold experience in their chosen field.

Who knows, maybe more than a few could graduate debt free, paying for their own education in the process of bing educated.
 
You can have a class in real time on the computer now, with students 1000's of miles apart. I think the classroom will become less and less a part of college education until bricks and motar fades away. I suppose some labs will be necessary, but the lecture hall is a dinosaur now.
 
I don't know. Obviously there are significant advantages to online-only classes. The ability to bring people from far-flung locations together, the ability to play and re-play lessons and lectures on demand, the ability to ensure commonality of information across multiple sessions of the same class, etc.... I'm just not quite ready to give up on the idea that there is a value to the ability to interact with a live human being in the same room; to gauge the reactions of your fellow students immediately in your own view; and to be involved in a personal discourse with someone you can see rather than someone on the other side of the world.

Of course, I'm the guy who has a personal library of over 700 titles and still does not own an e-reader.
 
I got a nook for Christmas last year. I did not want to like it. I tried to convience myself I hated it and was going to have to stick with hardbacks. Then I read a book on it. Damn, I love it. I have read dozens of books on it, and some are even free.
 
Peter Grimm said:
Simple question: Will the Internet render classrooms obsolete, at the college level?
Click to expand...

Simple Answer: Yes. Everything we can do in a traditional classroom we are increasingly able to do online.
 

Call me when I can buy the hardcopy book (for a couple dollars more) and get the digital copy as well; like you do with many DVD/Blu-Ray purchases these days. My girlfriend has an e-reader now and while I can see the usefulness for someone who travels a lot or who is constantly on the go, that's not me. I could see myself possibly getting one of the e-reader only ones, but definitely not one with all sorts of other bells and whistles (email, web, etc....) since I already have an iPhone for that stuff.

Yes, I'm olde fashioned. That's also why I'm not sure that I could ever take a college level course via the internet. I just don't think it would have the same feel and exerience that walking into a building has. Besides, it's much easier to blow off logging into a PC than it is when you know you have to go somewhere and actually do something. At least that's my take on it.
 

For some majors maybe it could, but a lot of majors require classes that involved hands-on work. Anything to do with physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, etc. where there is lab work involved won't be replaced by online courses.
 

That's how I'm doing it.
 
molten_dragon said:
For some majors maybe it could, but a lot of majors require classes that involved hands-on work. Anything to do with physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, etc. where there is lab work involved won't be replaced by online courses.
Click to expand...

So instead of colleges we have proctors.
 
Tigger said:
Besides, it's much easier to blow off logging into a PC than it is when you know you have to go somewhere and actually do something. At least that's my take on it.
Click to expand...

I think most people are probably the opposite though. The easier it is for them to do something, the less likely they are not to do it. Logging on to your computer in your pajamas is easier than getting out of bed early, dressing and showering, and walking to a building on the other side of campus.
 

My Dad and brother have one, but so far i've resisted. I love noseying around in book stores, i just lose track of all time and can spend hours there. I also love the smell of a new book :lol:
 
I know exactly how you feel. But my wife bought it for Christmas so I tried it. I read Bram Stoker's Dracula for free because I had never read it. Besides being a great book, I was hooked on the ereader. And I can order a new book pretty much anywhere.
Serenity said:
My Dad and brother have one, but so far i've resisted. I love noseying around in book stores, i just lose track of all time and can spend hours there. I also love the smell of a new book :lol:
Click to expand...
 

When I'm at home, it would be much easier for me to find something else to do. I can find a million excuses not to log onto the PC. Now, if I know that I have to get up, get dressed, and go to a building, I'm much more likely to work it into my schedule for the day as a regular thing like the gym so it just becomes part of the routine. Then again I'm the guy who went to a college that had an attendance policy for all of its classes....

Most classes met 2-4 times a week for 11 weeks. Lets call that 33 sessions (on average). You got three absences per class. So you needed to be there basically 90% of the time, or you didn't get credit for the class. Kind of like work/life.
 
Traditional colleges will never go away for a few reasons. A) There is way too much money invested in them already for them to go away. I do believe some smaller colleges will go away. However, the larger state and private colleges are "too big to fail". States have put far too much tax payer money into the schools. Boosters have donated far too much money to the schools. Neither will allow their investment to fade away. B) Do we really see teacher unions letting this happen? C) Never underestimate the power of college sports, especially football. If college sports go away, so would baseball, basketball, every Olympic sport, etc, etc. This will NEVER happen. Football alone is a multi-million if not billion dollar enterprise. D) Some degrees, especially in the medical field and engineering, need hands on work to be done. They need equipment that simply cannot be provided to each student individually. This all leads to a traditional college set up being necessary.
 
You can have almost unlimited class size on the internet. No heat bill, no parking etc. I dont know, but I think education will continue to change drastically to the computer for many years to come.
 

Yeah, we have a Kindle Fire. I was the same way about books until I realized that I can get books for free or even have them loaned to me with the Amazon Prime program. Now, I rarely go to a book store at all. If there were a local book store that was locally owned, I'd probably support that. However, the only thing in my area is either Barnes and Noble or McCay's. They can do without one more person.
 
mak2 said:
You can have almost unlimited class size on the internet. No heat bill, no parking etc. I dont know, but I think education will continue to change drastically to the computer for many years to come.
Click to expand...
Oh, I'm not disagreeing that it would be much more cost effective. However, as I said in my post, there are far too many people with far too much money invested in universities to allow that to happen. Unions alone would make this close to impossible IMO.
 
cpwill said:
Simple Answer: Yes. Everything we can do in a traditional classroom we are increasingly able to do online.
Click to expand...
Checking the notes of the guy next to you for the bit you didn't hear? Flirting with the girl at the end of the row? Going for a drink with your friends to talk about the weird way the lecturer talks and how pointless the course is?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for making best use of modern technology to support education but I don't think it can ever or should be attempted to completely replace real world, face-to-face human interaction.
 
HonestJoe said:
Checking the notes of the guy next to you for the bit you didn't hear?
Click to expand...

Even better, I can simply hit "replay" on the lecture or re-read the notes.

Flirting with the girl at the end of the row?
Click to expand...

College (believe it or not) was actually supposed to be an educational experience, rather than a sexual or alcoholic one.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for making best use of modern technology to support education but I don't think it can ever or should be attempted to completely replace real world, face-to-face human interaction.
Click to expand...

Well I would agree. We need to interact with real people. We just don't have to do that in order to learn.
 
Different people learn differently! a simple but true statement.
Some are independent learners, others interactive(hands on), and yet others favor
the structured environment of a classroom.
For some, the physical act of going and sitting down in a classroom, adjusts
their frame of reference for learning.
Classrooms may in time go away (or become virtual), but it will be many years.
 

Colleges aren't as unionized as primary education. And with the way that colleges have been jacking up tuition without increasing the quality of their product for the past couple of decades, I'd say that they are about due for a Ford-and-GM-meet-Toyota-and-Honda experience.
 

I love my kindle. But I can only do fiction. Non Fiction I have to highlight and write notes in the margin and keep for later referencing - and it's just not as friendly with kindle as it is with paper.
 
cpwill said:
College (believe it or not) was actually supposed to be an educational experience, rather than a sexual or alcoholic one.
Click to expand...
Who said anything about sex? You've obviously got a dirty mind. :2razz:

I think College/University has always been about more than pure education but about the wider development of a young person. The social interaction in and around the educational environment is as important as any lessons and lectures in creating rounded individuals rather than robots.

cpwill said:
Well I would agree. We need to interact with real people. We just don't have to do that in order to learn.
Click to expand...
It might not be strictly necessary but I think some direct interaction with the people teaching you and the other people learning alongside you has a huge benefit in education. I don't think 100% remote learning can ever be as effective as something including some direct contact. I think this is recognised by the various remote learning institutions that already exist (at least the quality ones), who help arrange local study groups, events and co-ordination with conventional institutions for their students who would otherwise be learning alone.
 
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