12 replies to this topic

[Rogerdodger]

This is the future of education and it will be FANTASTIC for the student who wants to learn rather than be warehoused in a diploma mill.

One of my current tenants spent last year teaching English in China.
Before leaving Tulsa, he installed a SKYPE and a TV Slingbox in his mother's home in Tulsa so that he could visit his mother and watch Cox Cable from his China address, as well as on the airplane flying there!
Although under government contract for a whole year, he couldn't wait to get back home, so a month early he left his China office intact with various online support computers, etc. and fulfilled his contract by teaching English in China from Tulsa, still getting his final pay checks.

So that brings me to this, heard this past weekend on Kim Komando's radio show:

(The guy stole my idea for online guitar lessons!)

In the Future, Who Will Need Teachers?
http://online.wsj.co...0640810820.html

Guitar teacher Erich Andreas works from a basement studio in Nashville, Tenn. His classroom, though, is the world itself.

Across one hour, Mr. Andreas may be giving free video lessons to up to 1,500 people who stream his http://www.yourguitarsage.com broadcasts to points across the globe—Chicago, London, Bucharest, Manila.

But, if the guitar world is any indication, we will still need the kind of teachers who stand in front of a room and talk. We will just need fewer of them.

"I don't know if in-person classes are really necessary," says Thomas Sundboom, a 62-year-old guitar student in Balsam Lake, Wis., who is learning to play Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. He pays $40 a month for access to Mr. Andreas' site, less than half the $100 a month he paid for conventional lessons. "That should put a downward pressure on prices, for sure."

That's why this part of the $9 billion music-education industry shows what lies ahead for all kinds of education, both formal and informal.

There will be big business opportunities for a select group of star teachers and a handful of companies, too.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 29 October 2012 - 10:08 AM.

[MaryAM]

This is the future of education and it will be FANTASTIC for the student who wants to learn rather than be warehoused in a diploma mill.

One of my current tenants spent last year teaching English in China.
Before leaving Tulsa, he installed a SKYPE and a TV Slingbox in his mother's home in Tulsa so that he could visit his mother and watch Cox Cable from his China address, as well as on the airplane flying there!
Although under government contract for a whole year, he couldn't wait to get back home, so a month early he left his China office intact with various online support computers, etc. and fulfilled his contract by teaching English in China from Tulsa, still getting his final pay checks.

So that brings me to this, heard this past weekend on Kim Komando's radio show:

(The guy stole my idea for online guitar lessons!)

In the Future, Who Will Need Teachers?
http://online.wsj.co...0640810820.html

Guitar teacher Erich Andreas works from a basement studio in Nashville, Tenn. His classroom, though, is the world itself.

Across one hour, Mr. Andreas may be giving free video lessons to up to 1,500 people who stream his http://www.yourguitarsage.com broadcasts to points across the globe—Chicago, London, Bucharest, Manila.

But, if the guitar world is any indication, we will still need the kind of teachers who stand in front of a room and talk. We will just need fewer of them.

"I don't know if in-person classes are really necessary," says Thomas Sundboom, a 62-year-old guitar student in Balsam Lake, Wis., who is learning to play Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. He pays $40 a month for access to Mr. Andreas' site, less than half the $100 a month he paid for conventional lessons. "That should put a downward pressure on prices, for sure."

That's why this part of the $9 billion music-education industry shows what lies ahead for all kinds of education, both formal and informal.

There will be big business opportunities for a select group of star teachers and a handful of companies, too.

And computers don't NEED high salaries, pensions or health insurance. My Niece is in her second year of college (community college for now) and is taking French in France via Skype, I don't think she even has to travel to school for anything - most all lessons are on line except for lab work for the science curriculum.

[Rogerdodger]

I am so upset with the local school system that I have to avoid thinking about it for the sake of my health.
I am convinced that the "system" from Head Start, through high school to college and even prison have become government slush funds for crooks who profit from supplying all that goes to support the human warehouses.
Schools too often don't educate and correctional facilities don't correct. They warehouse people.

Last week's local headline:

More than half of Tulsa schools get D or F as state board posts grades on schools.
Overpaid Superintendent Ballard said that if the A-F system had been based on a fair formula, some of those F's likely would be D's. !!!
How IMPRESSIVE!
He took no responsibility but blamed the test itself, even though 2 high schools, Booker T. Washington and TPS-sponsored charter school Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences, each received an A.
Owasso schools, just north of Tulsa received excellent grades.
I didn't hear the Owasso superintendent complain about the tests.

Parents should be able to seek out good schools and good teachers, like:
John Taylor Gatto: Schooling is not Education
John Taylor Gatto on Unschooling
For the Sake Of Our Children

Most teachers feel that the ideal class size would be about four fewer students (if they could select the four students to be removed).

Edited by Rogerdodger, 30 October 2012 - 12:48 AM.

[Rogerdodger]

Speaking of crooks in Education: Here's Today's Local Headline:

Oklahoma auditor accuses education department officials in slush fund spending
Hahn reportedly told auditors that she solicited the donations under the direction and oversight of Barresi's former chief of staff, Jennifer Carter, and former spokesman Damon Gardenhire.

The donations Jones' office could account for include:
$5,000 from NCS Pearson, the state's testing contractor that had been paid more than $24 million.
$575 from Computer Automated Systems Inc., which had been paid $2.8 million.
$3,500 from Teachers-Teachers.com, which the state paid $454,020.

"Our concern is that when vendors and contractors are contacted by (state Education) officials and are solicited to make donations, they may feel compelled or obligated to make those donations in order to maintain their contracts with (the state)," the investigative report says.


And in old local news:
Dr. Gary Johnson, the former superintendent of Skiatook Schools, has been sentenced to 15 years each on four bribery charges and ordered to pay restitution.

Multiply this times thousands of schools, colleges, and prisons.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 30 October 2012 - 09:37 AM.

[voltaire]

Schools are essential and public schools more so. Private schools based on criteria are BAD. Private schooling engenders divisive views. The community needs a society where a mix of views breeds an homogenous society. Home schooling or private schooling breeds isolation or division. An egalaterian society is better than a class or religious or idealogical group. Make education available to all with a mix of all.

[Rogerdodger]

An egalaterian (sic) society is better

In theory only. Non existent in reality.
There are always those who are "more equal" than everybody else.
Check your history.
Those who support equality-of-opportunity support individual freedom.
Those who claim to enforce equality-of-outcome are merely tyrants who try to be lord over others.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 31 October 2012 - 12:32 AM.

[voltaire]

Roger In Australia we have had no class distinction unlike the UK where we came from. Sadly we are now starting to have religious schools that divide society. My kids were amazed that when they attended university they found that they could now understand other "groups". Egalitarianism is the key to a homogenous society. Here, no one feels unequal. A street sweeper can associate with a billionaire. Neither feels any problem with that.

[Rogerdodger]

Sadly we are now starting to have religious schools that divide society.

I think you are in a class which considers those people (and many others) as inferior.

[voltaire]

I don't consider segregationists inferior. I believe in a homogenous society. Seperating people based on religion or class or ethnicity is not a way to engender egalitarianism. I like Jefferson's concept of an open and free university system. He believed that higher education should be open to all free of charge. A place where one could study what they wanted without restriction. Pidgeon holing people to a fixed study is stultifying and restrictive to their development. In past eras people had multiple disciplines not just one. the Vinci was an artist, a studier of form and disector of bodies, a mathematician and designer. Why do we wish to restrict our young to a single discipline. No matter what I edit somehow Vinci appears as the Vinci. I guess it figures I can't spell. Its D a

Edited by voltaire, 01 November 2012 - 06:24 AM.

[Rogerdodger]

It is ridiculous that kids begin their adult lives in debt to Universities the tune of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I have always been in line with Jefferson's stated view that "higher education should be open to all free of charge."
The internet (and Steve Jobs) is making this more possible than ever.

Apple Releases Free iTunesU App & Enhanced University Courses

Personally, I think that I am a Classic Liberal, rather than a Neo-Liberal:
"Liberalism is an idea which (very aptly) renounces social engineering and all sorts of projects of structuring a “perfect” social order. Planning of this kind, even more frequently than economic planning, leads to the enslavement of people; as a matter of fact, it is often linked to regulating economy, results from it or generates it."

For that reason liberalism, that takes a stand on free and spontaneous society, will support the existence of such pluralism. Instead of giving opinion in a debate about the best society, or rather about the best choice of a way of life, it will guard the existence of the choice itself, it will refrain from clearly favouring particular lifestyles and from condemning others.
http://liberteworld....eneous-society/

If your distaste for people with religious beliefs is because they attempt to impose them on others in a school system, then I understand and agree.
However, it seems that you go beyond that in your intolerance and segregation.
But I could be wrong in my interpretation of your views.

If you subscribe to the above definition, then you might have a real problem:
"I believe in a homogenous society" is a belief in itself! Any attempt to force others to your opinion belies your claims.
"it will refrain from clearly favouring particular lifestyles and from condemning others."

In junior high school, I had a T shirt with a picture of war aircraft on a bombing run.
Underneath it read: "Kill for Peace."

Edited by Rogerdodger, 01 November 2012 - 09:50 AM.