do you think the internet is a better educator than traditional schooling?

[TurdBerglar]

in some aspects...

i use the internet more for information. just random fucking information. I want to know things and how things work and how things use to be. I want to know why farts smell certain ways. I want to know how the universe works. I want to know why girls make so much delightful noise when they have sex. I want to know what people and civilizations were like thousands of years ago. I want to know why dogs walk in a circle before they lay down. I want to know why creationists and atheists think the things they do and listen to them debate.

you can get all this information from the internet very easily. but not so much from any type of traditional schooling. also, I fucking hated school. it was so dreary and forced and so much of it was worthless. especially post high school when they force you to take and PAY for classes that have nothing to do with your major.

current events. I would have no clue about anything if it weren't for the internet. i wouldn't know that something was going down in Syria. i would have no clue at all if i didn't have the world news on my homepage.

[TurdBerglar]

but i guess it only works for people who actually want to know things.

[rirv]

As a teacher I can tell you that schools and teachers here are (mostly) trying to move away from information based teaching (ie. this is a fact, learn it) to skills based learning; like curiosity, research, putting together writing, how do I work out what is a fact and what is opinion etc. etc. You need to have a curiosity and ability to connect things to be able to use the internet like you do. Whether all this will work is another matter.

[TurdBerglar]

as a teacher how many kids that you see just don't give a shit? how many kids are just utterly bored? that was me. i remember always being like.... oh just get on with it!

i had no interest how and why WWI started(now i'd watch a whole documentary about it). and why the fuck did we have to read Beowulf in all it's retarded old English glory that not a single kid understood or even cared about.

how can schooling turn a very interesting subject(WWI) into such a dreary boring mind numbing learning experience and then force you to study literature from eons ago that doesn't even use a language that's used anymore? is this really the correct way to do things?

[Dorothy Wood]

I got out of teaching basically because it was a battle I didn't want to win. I did a lot of interactive multi-media type projects with the kids when I was student-teaching, and they mostly all loved it and we were in a good spot after a few months in, when standardized testing happened. ugh. Their fucking faces, the mood, all the boring rote learning was a real soul-killer for everyone. And then after the two weeks of studying and testing, trying to go back to what we were learning before was almost impossible. It's a very stupid way to educate.

I designed a curriculum once to teach at a private art school, and I thought it was great, kind of a thing where I would just let kids try a bunch of different projects, examine the key players throughout history and choose who they naturally felt an affinity with and then go off in different directions from there. It was not accepted. such bullshit. My rejection letter had typos in it. they didn't get it.

I think the internet will help people get to the heart of what they want to learn and do. If I had today's internet back when I was deciding on a career, I would've had so many other options. No use looking back now though.

I do try to learn as much as I can about things I'm interested in, and I've been teaching myself design and doing okay at it. I may just take a one off class at some point though to learn from people who know more than me, I think that's what school is good for. It's just bad when they really don't know that much, they just have one old set of tools that they just keep on using.

Teachers just need to be open to providing a multitude of learning options. I encountered so many teachers who just used worksheets and did the same shit year after year. I once had a teacher who'd been teaching for over 20 years observe me teaching math and she said "oh, you connected yesterday's lesson with today's, I never thought of doing that." I was like, fucking really? it's math! it builds! you don't just skip around like it doesn't matter the order! wtf?

Or once I noticed some of the kids were bored with the book they all had to read, and not doing very well on tests, and groaning about learning vocab words. So I gave them all special folders they could decorate and keep notes about the book in. They weren't allowed to copy definitions, they just had to look them up and figure out what the word meant and use it in a sentence with some notes in their own words about what it meant. And the kicker was that they could use the folder during tests. So if your folder ruled and was filled with notes, you'd ace the test. It worked really well for the "bad" kids, one perpetually in trouble little dude made the most beautiful folder and packed it with notes, and aced the test. He had never really seen an "A" on a test before, and it was a magical thing to see his face. I also gave him a most-improved student certificate and he got his name read in the morning announcements. He was never trouble for me again. I will say the majority of kids just didn't get the folder, they wanted to copy the definitions verbatim and decorating seemed like a chore. They probably grew up to have very sensible jobs.

[TurdBerglar]

another thing I hated about school was when the teachers tried to do something "fun". it always backfired, at least from the kids' standpoint. like why the fuck in 8th grade did I have to make a fucking group project movie about peru? a fucking movie? who has time for that shit especially when those dickheads are handing out three hours of homework every night. I came up with this idea to make this cracked out puppet show type thing like sesame street. we fucking made puppets and backdrops and fulfilled all the requirements and then some for the project. we got a D because "we didn't take it seriously". these movies were shown to the whole grade over the course of a week. ours was unanimously the favorite amongst every other kid. except the teachers fucking hated it. I think they wanted something like schindlers list.

[Dorothy Wood]

another thing I hated about school was when the teachers tried to do something "fun". it always backfired, at least from the kids' standpoint. like why the fuck in 8th grade did I have to make a fucking group project movie about peru? a fucking movie? who has time for that shit especially when those dickheads are handing out three hours of homework every night. I came up with this idea to make this cracked out puppet show type thing like sesame street. we fucking made puppets and backdrops and fulfilled all the requirements and then some for the project. we got a D because "we didn't take it seriously". these movies were shown to the whole grade over the course of a week. ours was unanimously the favorite amongst every other kid. except the teachers fucking hated it. I think they wanted something like schindlers list.

See now, teachers are often so weird about this stuff. I don't think they know or have the foresight to see that they are squashing creativity at every turn. Some just have this urge to make every kid the same. I saw it so much when I was in schools. Anyway, making a movie about Peru sounds like a great assignment but not if the kids weren't into it.


Luckily I had some pretty good teachers growing up who were very honest and communicative. My AP English teacher in 12th grade told us that she was helping grade essays during some training thing she and the other english teachers had to do, one of the test tester kids got a low score from everyone because his essay mentioned Snoop Dog. My teacher gave it a high score because it was competently written. And she told us all about how they argued about it not being appropriate and she talked about how it was bullshit because the mention of Snoop Dog supported his argument and it was a good essay, ha.

I actually failed my standardized test for writing. I think it was because in my essay I criticized the test at the end. I had AP English all through school, and got A's. I graduated 2nd in my class, but my diploma didn't have an "english endorsement". My dyslexic friend passed his "english endorsement" with the help of tutors and extra time to take the test.

It's all ridiculous. It's making my head hurt thinking about it.

[TurdBerglar]

about making every kid the same. I went to ghetto schools and suburban schools. the suburban schools were such a stifling environment. not just from the faculty but also mostly from the other students. these kids wanted nothing to do with anyone that was remotely different. they seemed to have these perceptions if you weren't this typical white little brat then you were some sort of dirtbag to society. the teachers seemed to want to be accepted by these little cocksuckers and their snooty parents. so they kinda played into pleasing these little shits. I never understood that. in the ghetto schools creativity and being different was much more encouraged by the faculty and the student body. but you were also going to school with a bunch of disruptive dirtbag hoodrats. so it was kinda like pick your poison between the two school systems.

[Waus]

I'll say this - I listened to a metric fuckton of Teaching Company lectures I found online during my commute for a couple years.

I probably learned about as much on my way to and from work as I did getting a bachelor's.

The thing is that it's not that easy to print off a textbook you find online or read a novel on your computer screen (not for me anyways). Lots of learning requires some kind of actual work and investment, and most internet "learning" is really just a repository of factoids to answer trivia disagreements in casual conversation.

[Lyman Zerga]

i wasnt able to learn english in school but i did learn it online (kinda)

[Lex Diamonds]

No. Pretty much never. Tools like Google and Wikipedia are reductive and serve to lower the variance and depth of people's education by channeling them all to the most popular, concise source(s) of information on a subject. In other words, these days everyone just went and read the same shit and has nothing unique or interesting to say about things. Back when people would go down to their nearest library and pore over local newspaper archives and dusty, forgotten reference books they could build a rich and unique understanding of a given subject. That sort of organic, gem-filled quest for knowledge is being all but destroyed by the increasing ubiquity of the web. In my opinion it's making everyone into fucking zombies.

[Waus]

No. Pretty much never. Tools like Google and Wikipedia are reductive and serve to lower the variance and depth of people's education by channeling them all to the most popular, concise source(s) of information on a subject. In other words, these days everyone just went and read the same shit and has nothing unique or interesting to say about things. Back when people would go down to their nearest library and pore over local newspaper archives and dusty, forgotten reference books they could build a rich and unique understanding of a given subject. That sort of organic, gem-filled quest for knowledge is being all but destroyed by the increasing ubiquity of the web. In my opinion it's making everyone into fucking zombies.

(y)

[TurdBerglar]

No. Pretty much never. Tools like Google and Wikipedia are reductive and serve to lower the variance and depth of people's education by channeling them all to the most popular, concise source(s) of information on a subject. In other words, these days everyone just went and read the same shit and has nothing unique or interesting to say about things. Back when people would go down to their nearest library and pore over local newspaper archives and dusty, forgotten reference books they could build a rich and unique understanding of a given subject. That sort of organic, gem-filled quest for knowledge is being all but destroyed by the increasing ubiquity of the web. In my opinion it's making everyone into fucking zombies.


how you just described the web is how I see traditional schooling. everything is done to a set standard using the same tools, resources and practices. there's really no variances. send your kid to this building where the are conformed into what is decided is best for them educationally and personality-wise by the faculty, pressure from the other kids and parents and the government. creativity and free thinking tends to be quelled. if that's the intention or not is another story. but I guess that's the most efficient way to educate masses of children.

the ways I think the internet serves a better purpose is being able to choose in what you would like to know more about. never to be used as a replacement. and lets face it, not very many people are going to use a library these days. but then again if you don't want to know anything neither the library or the net are going to serve any educational purpose to those people.

then there's the casual talking to people from all over. expanding one's knowledge and interest in every day things that may have never even known about and it gets them interested enough to do some research on the subject.

[YoungRemy]

the Internet is killing language.

people can't spell shit, don't know the differences between your and you're, there and their, can't figure out how to use an apostrophe, etc...

there are adult members of this board who think that the word "l-o-s-e" is spelled "loose" and I don't have the nerve to tell them that they didn't pay attention in 6th grade language arts class.

[Dorothy Wood]

Back when people would go down to their nearest library and pore over local newspaper archives and dusty, forgotten reference books they could build a rich and unique understanding of a given subject.


I'm old enough to have had to do this for reports for school and it fucking sucked. And books are out of date and contain wrong information all the time. You've been watching too many movies!

the internet rules!

[ms.peachy]

The internet is just a tool, no more no less. Without question, used properly it can be of immense educational value. However children and young adults will still need structured physical learning environments to help develop the skills that will make it possible to use this tool to maximum effect.

[cosmo105]

I'm old enough to have had to do this for reports for school and it fucking sucked. And books are out of date and contain wrong information all the time. You've been watching too many movies!

the internet rules!

I totally (respectfully) disagree! Granted, I'm coming from a scientific background here, but there is nothing like using the library's collection of reference texts and academic journals (which ok you can get easier online but that's content that's not really made for the internet and it's not your standard news site blurb or whatever, moving on) to get a rich, deep understanding of a subject. I had to do a pretty huge research literature review project last semester that was mostly self-driven with some guidance and input from the department head, and I used in the realm of two dozen journals and about five reference books. All very technical and dense. But you know what? I LEARNED that shit. And I still love knowing it as in-depth as I do. Last night at a party a friend of mine started asking me about it and I probably bored us both to tears but he seemed genuinely interested in hearing about produce irradiation so I went to town explaining it. I love nerding out and becoming an expert on something like that, and for me the absolute best way is through the library.

Personally, I am a really active and engaged student when I'm in class. I'm that asshole that sits in the front row and will raise my hand and say the answer when no one else wants to talk just to get the class to move along. I don't care. I'm paying a shitload of money for this degree and I'm here to learn, bitches. Granted, grad school is very different from public primary school, and everyone learns differently, but being in class and taking notes and putting my phone away and not being distracted for three hours versus sitting at home and watching a lecture and pausing it and fucking around on the internet is just no contest. I have to be engaged in it. As much as I love the internet, and oh god do I love me some internet, I agree with Ms. P. in that it is just a tool and I don't personally think it's a good replacement for traditional school. Not to mention that a huge part of growing up and going through school is learning how to socialize and work with others.

[Dorothy Wood]

oh yes, of course, science requires heavy duty learnin' from books. I was more speaking about high school times where it was really hard to find info for research papers. In college, I went to the library a lot, and found things I wouldn't be able to find online today. However, I can find a million little things today that I couldn't find then that would've been super helpful back when I was in school.

It's like when I had to do a research presentation on a coat I had for History of Western Dress class. I pored over piles of vintage fashion magazines (that were in the science library, oddly enough) trying to date the coat and it was really hard. If I had to write that report today, it'd be like *google image search* done.

I was just teasing Padster for his romanticism. I don't really know that the majority of people went down to the library to immerse themselves in information like he said. I think the internet has made me smarter or at least more aware of the world.

[TurdBerglar]

I want to know why girls make so much delightful noise when they have sex.

so apparently scientist believe that the reason why you ladies are so much more vocal than guys during sex is that it was an invite for group sex back in the day. that's also why guys are much more voyeuristic and like porn. they'd go watch the sex act after hearing it and wait their turn or more than likely fight for their turn. then they said the reason guys' dicks are so big(compared to other primates) and the reason why ladies prefer larger dicks and for the shape of the head is that it acts as a thrusting pump and it pumps out the other guys' jizz! larger dick creates a tighter seal and thus a more efficient latent jizz pump. a type of biological sexual competition.

crazy shit. or just slutty dirty minded scientist.

[Dorothy Wood]

And that scientist's name was Dr. T. Burglar....

[TurdBerglar]

hey. I saw that on pbs and pbs don't lie