Your Not Paid To Think

(Credit Photo: Dossy Blumenthal)

Your Not Paid To Think

Make The Right Move To Agile Education

So, unfortunately, our education system in this country is highly troubled

Generally, we teach by strict curriculum forcing children to learn what we consider "the fundamentals".

But they are anything but that and kids come out not knowing how to do the very basics or survive in life. 

Test scores have not been improving--that's not the student's fault, but the education system, which cannot force feed what students minds are rejecting as "old school" and out of touch.

Not only don't we fish for them, but we don't even teach them to fish. 

We throw at them esoteric subjects to memorize, spit back, and forget. 

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

We waste years of their life and the productivity and creativity of society. 

Ever really wonder why GDP growth is only around 2% despite all the rapid technology that we are rolling out. 

It is just not drones that we are rolling off the assembly line, but human automatons as well. 

This is where agile education comes into aspect. 

Like with software development, we can gather requirements and build, and then show the customer, and then refine again and again. 

We let the development grow and mature naturally as the code takes shape. 

No more years of development and voila here's something for you, and with the customer exclaiming loudly, "What the F*** is that!"

So too with education, we need to follow the spirit and train of thought naturally. 

Where we let the students guide the teacher to what their questions are, what they are interested in learning about, where their creative juices take them, and what is relevant. 

Rigidity in the education system leaves our students as dead ends, and not as critical thinkers and innovators.

We have a dearth of leaders we can look up to and a plethora of people that couldn't survive the Spring without their Visa/Mastercard.  

Ever wonder why so many of our great innovators are college dropouts who built their companies in their garages instead of occupying a seat in a classroom and filling their heads with teacher rhetoric. 

Most people learn by seeing, internalizing, and doing useful things for themselves, not by listening and violently rejecting the irrelevant in their lives. 

Let us release the choking reigns of our education system. 

Teachers should be able to follow the questions and interests and natural evolution of thought and creativity and wonderment with their students. 

The mark of learning is not the answers on a standardized test, but the light bulb of critical thinking and innovation from our progeny. 

Exploration and discovery and skills to be self-sufficient and survive are far more beneficial than what we are giving our children today.

We owe them a better education, but we are not delivering because we are the automatons of yesteryear. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Make The Right Move To Agile Education

Smart Technology Makes Smart People

This is a good video on creating a smart house by a company called SmartThings. 

Building on Facebook's social graph where we are all connected in the social realm, SmartThings has developed the concept of the physical graph, where all things are connected and are programmable. 

While most of us still don't see the real need for our toasters and fridge to be connected to the Internet and wouldn't pay more for it, SmartThings has some cool ideas that may just yet help the smart home market actually take off. 

The obvious--turn on/off lights, fans, and appliances; adjust thermostats, and monitor your home through security cameras over the Internet.

The not so obvious--

- Add a "presence tag" and the home can sense when you arrive/leave and take appropriate action to adjust lights, temperature, security system, and so on. 

- Add a open/shut sensor and you can know if you left a door or cabinet open or if someone (like the kids) is getting into the liquor closet or a small child into the cabinet with dangerous cleaners and chemicals. 

- Add a "moisture sensor" and you can be alerted to broken water pipes.

- Add a "smart service" and you can notify the plumber about the water emergency at your home. 

- Add smart apps by 3rd party developers and you can get notification when there is a severe weather alert and you left the windows open. 

- Add "party mode" and you can have the patio lights, blender, music and disco ball going on for some fun.

I like the look of the app they've created to control all these things on your Smartphone--simply choosing your location (home, office, etc.), room, and then physical item that you want to remotely monitor or control. 

Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal (23 Feb. 2013) take this "smart" concept yet further to where we actually start giving up control to the devices themselves and asks "Is smart [technology] making us dumb?" 

Some examples...

- Cars sense when we are tired and attempts to drive for us or they detect we are driving too fast or reckless and notifies our insurance company.

- The scale sees that we put on a few pounds and contacts the personal trainer for an appointment for us or won't allow us to heat up the pizza when we slide it into the microwave.

- The toothbrush senses that we brushed a little too quick today and urges us to brush a little more.

- The trashcan detects that we did not separate out the recyclables and splashes this embarrassing information on Facebook.

- The washer detects high water usage this month and suggests we hold off on the next load.

The WSJ comes to a distinction between "good smart" and "bad smart," where good smart gives us more information for better decision-making and the control to execute on it, and bad smart is where you "surrender to the new technology."

While I agree with Google's CFO who said "The world is a broken place whose problems...can be solved by technology," I also believe that "smart design" means that we remain the masters and the technology remains the slave. 

Technology is a tool that can help us solve-problems, but we are the problem-solvers and we must learn through trial and error and a maturation process so we can continue to address ever larger and more complex problems. 

Giving up control to technology may make sense if we are about to harm ourselves or others--like with having automatic stopping on a car backing out and about to hit a little child--but it doesn't make sense in directing the personal decisions that we see fit for ourselves.

Sometimes we will be right and other times, very wrong, but that is living, learning, growing, and being human beings accountable for our actions--not being another automaton hooked to the physical graph. ;-)

Smart Technology Makes Smart People

Robot Firefighters To The Rescue

Meet Octavia, a new firefighting robot from the Navy's Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR) in Washington, D.C.

Octavia and her brother Lucas are the the latest in firefighting technology. 

These robots can hear commands, see through infrared cameras, identify patterns, and algorithmically make decisions on diverse information sets.

While the current prototypes move around like a Segway, future versions will be able to climb ladders and get around naval vessels.
It is pretty cool seeing this robot spray flame retardant to douse the fire, and you can imagine similar type robots shooting guns on the front line at our enemies.

Robots are going to play an increasingly important role in all sorts of jobs, and not only the repetitive ones where we put automatons, but also the dangerous situations (like the bomb disposal robots), where robots can get out in front and safeguard human lives.

While the technology is still not there yet--and the robot seems to need quite a bit of instruction and hand waving--you can still get a decent glimpse of what is to come.

Robots with artificial intelligence and natural language processing will be putting out those fires all by themselves...and then some. 

Imagine a robot revolution is coming, and what we now call mobile computing is going to take on a whole new meaning with robots on the go--autonomously capturing data, processing it, and acting on it.

I never did see an iPhone or iPad put out a fire, but Octavia and brother Lucas will--and in the not too distant future!

Robot Firefighters To The Rescue