It seems Australian kids are using digital technology more but understanding it less.
It is one thing to use a computer for common tasks, but it is apparently an entirely different and more challenging thing to use it well or to use it in a more constructive manner.
We all hear stories of kids outdoing us oldies with computer skills … but that is apparently an illusion or only a few bright kids … the average computer performance of kids is declining.
What do others think. How should kids be taught technology?
I saw another disturbing news headline banner (on ABC News channel - i.e. Australian Broadcasting Commission - we call it “Aunty”) the other day - teachers claim that as much as 70% of high school students assignments are being generated using AI prompts!
I reckon in year 10 - there should be some kinda basic computing engineering course where kids learn about binary, octal and hexadecimal and maybe even something like programming some basic assembler like on a Heathkit Trainer? There’s plenty of educational stuff out there even for pre-highschool students - STEM stuff for learning microcontrollers like Arduino, and Python programming (e.g. on the Raspberry Pi)…
Sheeze - many of my colleagues don’t even understand CPU architecture differences… i.e. that you can’t run amd64 binaries on arm64 and vice versa… i.e. they came into IT AFTER the extinction of most RISC architectures like MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha… PowerPC is still going via IBM, and sparc still hanging on in old school Solaris “shops” running legacy shyte… All they’ve even known is Wintel - x86 running Windows…
If you teach science without any reference to the history of science, students have no appreciation of how things are ďiscovered and the impact discoveries had on our world.
Same applies to computing… Digital technology in a vacuum is a very poor education.
My step son passed his degree in computing and communications about 8 years back here in france at one of the top technical universities. He has no interest in history of technology or how things work, he buys technical toys, robo vac for the house, robo lawnmower, servers for sticking his movies latest phones, tablets, once something new comes out he wants it, older toys are just abandoned never recycled. Etc.
We took him to a science museum, no interest at all. All the students from his group we have met are very similar.
Fault of education, fault of parent (he was an adult when I met him) or society today.
My wife and I struggle to order in a fast food resto with electronic selection where a 7 year old just does it.
So it is not only the Australian education system that is failing . It even extends to Universities.
When I was at Uni, it was drilled into us …" You are not here to learn, you are here to learn how to learn"
The human population has a problem . Each generation has to pass its skills on to the next … we dont pass it on in our genes … our genetic inheritance is very limited , we pass it on by teaching … our so-called cultural inheritance. If the next generation does not learn we descend into a very deep hole. Education IS our future.
Some might argue that machine learning could replace our tedious education process. I doubt it. It is more likely to undermine attempts to educate people…“Why do I need to learn all that … I can look it up on ChatGPT?” Do we want to endup with a generation of ‘information consumers’ who only know how to press buttons?
Sadly so. As a general comment most young people don’t want to work… how many turn away from the manual part and look to an easy life. (Sorry to offend some)
My daughter it law stopped working last year because she did not like the workplace environment, (she has a degree in engineering and building) at least 8 companies she has been in over the last 10 years. Always the same reason I think it is her not the company. Her boyfriend is worse it’s 2 years for him without a job, he goes on silly courses just to fill time but no chance of employment or even job seeking. Last course was office training but he still cannot add up in excel and graphs he does not know where to start. Yes they did 1 day a week using excel and 1 day on word per week but still no idea.
The sad thing for the country is they both get paid to stay at home and each month they get more than my pension. So no incentive to work or even look.
We need to get back in society the need to learn not just qualifications to pass exams but to get suitable employment and give them skills for life.
…and how does he/she know WHAT to look up there? …and if the answer is correct at all???
I caught AI more times hallucinating or telling false information.
AI is only part of the problem . Teachers and parents have roles that they are not filling. Education is more than answering exam questions. It involves motivating people to investigate. Arousing interest is key.
My son-in-law sounds almost exactly like your step son. Robo house vac and robo lawnmower. Even had a server for all the movies and shows he has gotten off the internet.
The only problem with the theory of that is the money behind it.
When teaching at a 6th form college we were paid on results… started off ok in we got a bonus if the kids got jobs on leaving X amount if straight into a job, Y amount if job within 3 months etc. luckily most did and most into suitable posts. Computer or secretary fine but electronic was hard to find in our area.
Then the rules change and we got paid on exam results. So each student was worth more passing exams than getting jobs.
Guess what more kids passed and the boss pushed for more results in quicker times. We were offering City and Guilds level 1 in 6 weeks. It then became 4 weeks. It then became level 1 and 2 in 4 weeks. You were told to teach them to pass the exams.
I left at that stage and went into adult training but that was going the same route. So moved on to commercial training where it was about giving skills and knowledge to do the job where I wrote the course and delivered to customer demands.
Problem was recruiting staff to join my team education demanded a qualified teacher not someone who could deliver they are not always the same thing.
By the time I got thru school and Uni I was an expert at getting good exam results. It helped me to get jobs, but it did not help me to cope with work demands. I was fortunate in finding a mentor who showed me how to conduct research… a sort of academic apprentiship.
I think ’ work experience’ during education is part of the solution. Formal apprenticeships achieve a better balance.
Not only science and technology.
Our food is produced by a few specialist farmers … most of us could not produce a crop of wheat.
There was a time when it was possible for someone to know everything … that ceased some time toward the end of the Middle Ages.
The problem we are now reaching is that there is so much to learn we are running out of education time … it already takes about 20 years to produce a raw Uni graduate… and more than a lifetime to know everything. Specialists are a necessity. People who do not wish to learn anything are not contributing.
Only those educated can pass it on to the next generation.
Sorry to disagree with the word educated. Think its more about desire to show others and give them the skill set to be able to learn. To instill the desire to know and progress. Motivation rather than education.
I did a little item of work with a group of farmers, they had to learn excel to be able to keep farming the land they owned and had been In The family for generations. The government was controlling what they produced in each parcel of land, long story, they just wanted to put food on the table but to do that excel knowledge was needed, most of these guys had difficulty with maths but show the a piece of land and they were able to answer.
Hence I would go with motivation the education part is more about job related skills
I have to concede that.
but
you can only pass on knowledge that you have.
One of the best ways to learn a topic is to attempt to teach it to someone else.
There is something about teaching that generates understanding in the teacher.?
When i did 16 to 20 year old students, I delivered they did, very little interaction as they rarely questioned why …
The doing commercial courses for adults or post degree students who had worked in different areas, or medical staff. That’s when I learned more as they had a need and desire to implement in real life situations.
I have been asked so many times to go back to teaching and running courses, I always say NO. But I do ask them to write there own demands down and when they have a list of questions then I will happily run the course. Puts me on the spot on how do you do X but that forces me to learn as I teach. That way we all get something out of it.
Yes shure.
But how do you spot those mistakes?
Let’s add, a human can answer “I don’t know” - I did not experience such a statement from an AI
I think, regarding a question we all have an estimation of the “area” in which the correct answers fit.
If the answer falls out of that “area”, we need to check wether my estimation was incorrect or the answer is incorrect.
This estimation is based on our interests, educations, experiences gathered during our lives, and such.
With a zero knowledge such an estimation can not exist.
