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Re: wearables in teaching (a WARNING)

"Techwatcher" <> writes:

> The brain tends to do what it needs to do, and not much more. These
> people were young, and had grown up using their PDA's to tell them
> exactly what to do next (scheduler), and who they were seeing
> (phonebook). They were unable to remember anything other than HOW to
> LOOK UP whatever they needed!

I understand your concerns. After all, we can become too reliant on
computers. In the event of a computer crash, we can lose a lot of data
that cannot easily be recovered. Our dependence on these resources may
put us at a disadvantage when they are gone. This is a valid concern.

But I have reason to be optimistic. Anecdotal evidence isn't much, but
let me share with you some of my own experiences. I invite you to
share your own thoughts and concerns so that we may all learn from
them.

I must confess to relying more on remembering how to look up whatever
I need. I feel that it is more important to learn how to learn - what
references to use if I need to look something up, how to understand
the material, and how to translate that into what I actually need.  I
find this gives me a lot of flexibility, and I use it not just to
solve my own problems but to help other people with their questions as
well.

Then again, that doesn't let me entirely off the hook. I love
reading. I love learning about new things. I love exploring new ideas
and experimenting with them. That's why I'm constantly poking around
my system, trying to think of better ways to do things. The computer
is not a replacement for my brain. Rather, it augments me, allowing me
to know more, to do more, to _be_ more.

As for PDAs... I wouldn't dismiss them quite like that. I find the
calendar function very useful. True, I've memorized the repeating
entries and I don't need any prompting to go to class, but sometimes a
meeting slips my mind and I'm glad that the computer reminds me.

Similarly, I like having contacts stored on my computer. I like being
able to retrieve the mobile phone number of the student who failed to
submit source code to the last lab exercise so that I can quickly get
in touch with her. I like being able to get the postal addresses of my
closest friends, which I don't memorize because I normally correspond
with them through e-mail. However, when I send them postcards or
handwritten letters, it's nice to be able to have their correct
address in my database. Yes, some of them are people I see every day,
but I like being able to store additional information - what members
of their family like as gifts, perhaps, or an interesting story I
heard that they might be interested in.

> address of a friend you see every day, or the content of the material
> you're teaching?

Certainly lecture notes are no substitute for preparation and mastery
of content, and complete information cannot replace personal
interaction. Teachers cannot simply read off their slides. As a
student, I know how ineffective that is!

I am thinking of a system that can help us. Notecards can help
teachers stay on track and remember to cover important material within
the given time, and they can also help teachers gain more
confidence. (As does practice, practice, practice!) Multiple paths and
additional material can help teachers adjust to the students'
pace. The teacher could note particularly effective ways of teaching a
concept or interesting questions that students raised.

Imagine if more than one teacher used this system. Here in our
university teachers often share sets of slides. Could teachers swap
notes on how they're teaching a particular subject? One could of
course already do this with observation and even just e-mailing notes
on the class discussion, but I think that if we made it easier for
teachers (or even students) to make notes, then we'd see a lot more
collaboration.

I believe that teaching is not just about the content you teach, but
also about what and how the student learns. Teachers who handle small
classes may be able to keep everyone's contexts in mind - what
particular students are having difficulty with, how they learn best,
how to motivate them to succeed. Imagine being able to do that with a
large class! Small touches like calling them by their names,
remembering how they're doing...

But I don't know so many things. I'm starting out and I have all of
these ideas. In fact, I'm not even starting out yet. I'm a teaching
assistant (one of twelve in the whole university, I heard! <laugh>),
and I'm having tons of fun. I'm a teacher-wannabe. ;)

For me, this is just an evolution of the small things that I'm already
doing. I have BBDB entries with student names, IDs, contact
information and notes. I have scattered files on my hard disk that
contain the results of their first three assignments and their first
graded laboratory exercise, prepared by a shell script I wrote and
easily greppable. I have some survey results and the analysis I wrote
after looking at statistics generated by a Perl script that parsed
their answers. While I still don't do lectures, I did do remote
control of a presentation through my iPAQ (with ssh+galeon, would you
believe that!), so I know that's possible.

Yes, the teacher I'm TA-ing for thinks I have _way_ too much time on
my hands. <g>

Anyway, what really bothers me about this - the itch I have to scratch
- is that this system is still a collection of parts that don't really
work together well. I have to do a bit of typing to bring up the BBDB
record for the current submission, for example, and a few more
keystrokes to write a message to the student. It's all just cobbled
together with a handful of shell scripts, and it's not even a real
system yet.

I think this can be improved. I think a neat, clean and simple
interface that will stay out of my way as much as possible and yet
make it easy for me to do what I want is something worth the time and
effort I want to put into it. Besides, even if it doesn't work out,
it's going to be one heck of a learning experience. =)

And I'd hate to think of all the duplication of effort if other people
did similar systems from scratch! =)

I can function without a computer. I can think. I can read. I can
program in my head. But I can do so much more with a computer. I can
learn from this list, for example. I can share my ideas with others
who are far more experienced than I am. I can search for instructions
on how to make an M1 battery connection or publications on pedagogy.
It's cool!

I don't doubt that I'll still be able to function with the wearable
"removed" - human beings are pretty resilient! - but there's probably
a great chance that I'll get too spoiled by the wearable system, so if
it's removed I'm going to start hacking on an even better one. ;)

First things first, of course. =) Sketch out a system, try out some
ideas, post experiences to the list...

Note #1: It's _fun_ to have BBDB! I wrote a Perl script that extracted
the records from our online submissions database, so I had their
names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. The Perl script generates
an Emacs LISP script that uses bbdb-create-internal to, well, actually
create the BBDB buffers. Since students sometimes (okay, practically
all the time) don't put their name on their code (should have a talk
with them about that), being able to look up their info just using
their student ID is cool. You should try it. If you don't have the
time to format the data nicely, you can send it to me and I can kludge
it with Emacs keyboard macros or something else. Of course this is
really only useful if you practically live in Emacs, but it's fun.

Note #2: It's easy to control a remote browser through the
commandline. Both galeon and mozilla let you do that, I think? I wrote
this little PyGTK app for my iPAQ that allowed me to control my
web-based presentation while displaying these little speakers notes on
the iPAQ (aforementioned ssh+galeon), so just in case I ever got
nervous I could look at it. Then again, I don't need remote control of
presentations _that_ badly. I can still walk over and hit a key or
click on something. =)

Note #3: Emacs' outline mode is cool. I use it for my school notes.

Thanks for your insights!
-- 
Sacha Chua <> - 4 BS CS Ateneo geekette
interests: emacs, linux, wearables, teaching compsci, making games

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