Sec. Duncan on tour for school connectivity

The next fourth dimension your child groans and asks why he has to go to school, or tells you she is absolutely certain that she'll never utilise math, steal a little wit and wisdom from Salman Khan. The Silicon Valley innovator, whose online educational videos have grown to about 200 meg lessons, kept an auditorium full of high school students rapt earlier this week every bit he urged them to consider a future in calculator scientific discipline.

"I think at that place'southward a misperception most it beingness a very, I don't know, kind of dorky field, for lack of a ameliorate word," said Khan to laughter. It helped the joke that he was sitting next to Andrew Ng, the Stanford computer scientist who runs the University'south Artificial Intelligence Lab and adult the platform for Coursera, the plan that allows millions of people to enroll in online courses offered past the nation'south pinnacle universities. "Thanks, Sal," broke in Ng adept-naturedly.

But when Khan delivered the existent punch line, the students were speechless and dorkless. "You go to Google, Facebook, any of these companies right at present; they're offering half dozen-figure salaries to 21-year-olds, and they cannot find plenty people."

Applied science in Educational activity panel at Sequoia High School. From left to correct: U.S. Ed Secretary Arne Duncan, Andrew Ng, Salman Khan, Catlin Tucker. Photograph from event video. (Click to overstate)

Khan, Ng, and Catlin Tucker, the high schoolhouse English language instructor and writer of the bookComposite Learning for Grades four-12: Leveraging the Power of Technology to Create a Student-Centered Classroom, appeared on a engineering science and education console moderated past U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at Sequoia Loftier School in Redwood City. It was the first terminate on Duncan's cross-country "Education Drives America" Dorsum-to-Schoolhouse bus bout, which is aimed at showing students, teachers, and community leaders how "education drives American prosperity and competitiveness in the 21^st century information economic system," according to the U.South. Department of Education.

Dreaming of electronic textbooks

The nearly popular suggestion from the panelists was about switching to online textbooks. Sequoia High senior Alejandro Arreola said he and a friend have felt for some time that laptops would be a lot easier, lighter, and more efficient. "Nosotros won't even need backpacks," he said. "We would have all our files in at that place and nosotros could ship homework to teachers by electronic mail."

His classmate Albert Vargas has another reason for wanting to go digital: "I'one thousand a tiresome reader; if I don't understand something, I can re-read it, but it's going to say the same affair," said Vargas following the console discussion. "If information technology was an online textbook, it would be easier for the creators of the textbook to share links on the site so students that have a hard fourth dimension agreement a certain subject area would have easier access to more information well-nigh the topic."

Interestingly, at the end of the day the console of ed-techies argued that teachers, rather than beingness displaced by technology, would have a stronger role in the classroom.

"More important than student to teacher ratio, is the pupil to valuable time with the teacher ratio.  If the teachers' fourth dimension is all spent grading homework or handling paperwork, that'southward time lost from the students," said Khan.  "Everything we exercise in our mission is how can we apply engineering to make classrooms more man, to liberate teachers so they can exist more than free to pb their students in a self-paced environment."

The biggest applause followed teacher Catlin Tucker'due south comment when she said, "I don't think engineering science is going to relieve education; I think not bad teachers with corking tools is going to save education."

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Source: https://edsource.org/2012/20144/20144