XBOX 360 and Google...Educators of Tomorrow.
Posted by Oscar at 04:01, 30 May 2005When Microsoft comes out with XBOX 360 and Google starts developing simulation technology form their gargantuan library resources for educational curriculum, we will see the cost of education go down around the world. We will no longer need the silly school districts scattered around various nations and we will see the cost per child go down. Students will learn via virtual reality and will understand the subject matter better by virture of seeing how and interacting with the discipline.
If the cost of learning goes down then education will cost less due to the end of high dollar positions such as Superintendents (in Texas they cost us over 1 billion dollars) and other highly paid administrative educators cost us about the same. If kids learn at their home workstations, think of the savings in school transportation and overhead not to mention the cost of building new schools. There is no reason to use this old form of educational delivery anymore.
I remember when the darkroom went away for photography when Adobe put it in the computer (photoshop). Who needs a darkroom when you have something 100 times better and faster. Publications all around the nation shut down their darkrooms when the operation could be accomplished digitally. The same is about to happen to education. Who needs schools and all the crap that lines up behind the delivery system when one can obtain a better education online and join a larger community for learning via the cyber-classroom.
If Bill Gates wants to, he can create the most advanced means of learning in history. It would give us the kick in the afterburners that we need to create a Phase two civilization. Virtual Reality and Simulation technology is the power of tomorrow.
I have worked on this means for over 20 years now. I think it is about to happen. Anybody for a game of Halo 3?
I firmly believe Gates needs to think about buying Google before Google buys him. Of course my dream would be for Gates, Google, Jobs, Lucas and Spielberg to form an organization for the collective development of this new means of experiencing knowledge and wisdom...with the ability to insert all political and social conditions in a gestalt way so one could see the best tangent to take within any simulation using Virtual Reality.
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Comments
24 January 2005
3 years 25 weeks
Oscar:
I understand the basis for your enthusiasm on this subject. But have you thought much about the possible disadvantages of this simulation technology? I have not much myself, but a couple come quickly to mind.
One, is the potential for addiction, or losing touch, at least partially, with the real world in favor of cyber never-never land.
The second is the potential, and no doubt inevitable, likelihood of ever deeper subliminal and direct brainwashing.
Isn't television and movies already bad enough? Who's interests does the submerging of the masses into alternative reality media really serve? As with television, does this escape from reality really improve one's quality of life? Or will it soon be coupled with chemical enhancement, so the masses become utterly dependent on the 'blue-pill' fix? (We are already 'virtually' there with television and prozac.)
Isn't the World Brave and New enough already? This will increase the powers and expand the horizons of control, manipulation, and exploitation for the ever Benevolent Big Brotherhood and the Corporate Archons. And you can bet your socks that is exactly what they have in mind.
The virtual dreamworld may mean a real nightmare. "We are the Borg"
tronicus
1 May 2004
7 years 32 weeks
As a former educator for some 25 years and a consultant to the Governor's Office of Texas on education... I was on many high tech committees including the State Textbook Committee that addressed the needs of education and the outcome for students. I have seen the power of simulation technology and the background data on video gaming for RPGs and though I know one can get deeply immerced into the virtual realms, I also know one can learn much form these expert systems that doctors utilize to operate on others. If anything I am more afraid of the crap that has come down the pike these last 40 years from Liberal practitioners who have tried to brain change our children with their dogma. I think this new system of delivery would be much better in that one can set the parameters up prior to using the data. conditions and trends can be factored into the programs thus giving the user a gestalt experience. They can then judge what political backdrop they wish to buy into. It is the only way to go and receive all the information created in the infostructure of humanity. I like the fact that one can see all psychological leveraging on the surface of a discipline. Don't you?
O.
24 January 2005
3 years 25 weeks
No, Oscar, there are sometimes hidden things that you cannot see.
I do not merely wish to detract from your enthusiasm for a progressive technological development related to field that is obviously important to you. In fact, in an innocent world I would share your enthusiasm. It just needs to be remembered that all, ALL, technology facilitates evil, as well as good. The trouble with technology is that the flavors of evil it tends to facilitate most is either raw deadly power, or else deception and subterfuge. And an even greater trouble with technology is that it puts by far more power in the hands of the ubermenchen than it does to the less stratospheric layers of humanity. Ultimately, technology is increasingly providing for a very gestalt control of the masses. I just don't think we can afford to remain blithe about that any longer.
tronicus
1 May 2004
7 years 32 weeks
As one who lurks, I know whereof you speak. By the same thought pattern, I have watched education become a bureaucracy that is totlally overburdening the student and the people who are taxed to expand this awesome trash heap. It does not work. It just sits there and eats. We could supply every student's home with a workstation where they could go online and race through simulation episodes of curriculum that would put them lightyears beyond the classroom experience. If I were trying to position this new methodology for development in the public sector, I would not pull any punches. It needs to be straight forward and not represent any agenda but be open ended. Do you drive a technological auto? Or, do you walk?
1 May 2004
7 years 32 weeks
Yes, I love those old shows...but research and development are also necessagy. That work has been done. Have you t ried a RPG lately?
22 November 2004
2 days 9 hours
I think there is a lot to be gained by better forms of learning, and especially by better exposure to expert knowledge. But I would approach it more gradually, and not with Microsoft and Google.
Perhaps when Gates decides to stop being a businessman, retire and spend his energy and some of his wealth on revolutionizing education.
What I see coming from business and governments are goals for better training of workers, not education of the population. Training is done for some specific job, education ideally just for the individual. Has anyone every tried to achieve more than that? Perhaps within groups of a society that considered it self an elite, but even then the results were mixed.
Perhaps it is best, maybe also unavoidable, that changes in education happen outside the regular, state run systems.
1 May 2004
7 years 32 weeks
In 1985 I was involved with deep research of the potential of virtual simulation technology via the Texas Education Agency. It was great stuff and the dreams held back then by some great thinkers including Ross Perot and many others...pointed to the coming events for education delivered via this dawning technology. It has been 20 years and it is ready. We are there now. In two years we could have a most powerful learning tool. Some will be there...most will not due to their mindsets. Gestalt knowledge delivered by RPG-like means will amplify our students minds one hundred fold. I have seen it and it is indeed very powerful. We, the old ones cannot keep up...unless we joined long ago. The force will soon be with us. My grandchildren and nephew are on the tangent presently. Expect great things and lets hope they read Hall's Conclusion.
24 June 2004
6 years 1 week
Are you aware that Bill Gates is one of the top philanthropists in the world today?
He sister runs an organisation in his name which uses his money to bring assistance to many third world countries and I do not believe it includes computers.
He has arranged that by the time he dies all his money will have been given away.
And millions of people by then will have health and education facilities they are lacking today.
22 November 2004
2 days 9 hours
I'm aware of Gates' philantropy, there are not many people (if any) who give more than he does. I'm perfectly willing to believe he does this out of the goodness of his heart, without considering business interests. This is not the same thing that Microsoft is advocating in higher education. Microsoft does not act to improve the human condition, but rather acts as an extemely profit-minded business. Especially in education issues, the company prefers training people in the use of tools (Microsoft tools if possible) for industrial productivity, as opposed to educating people for their individual good.
I don't know what would happen if everyone would be educated for their individual development, I'm not even sure how exactly you would define that. But since it doesn't have a goal of producing useful for business and government criteria, it is likely to lead to something else.
1 May 2004
7 years 32 weeks
This project is larger than Bill. He has the ingredients along with several other corporate concerns that could change the way we do education. Parents of children who would benefit from simulation technology would pay for any leg up on a future built on interfacing with technology. It would give the edge to those who are Home Schooling. I know that I would do the same for my grandchildren. I am going to write an article for the Post Intelligencer and hope he reads it.
1 May 2004
5 weeks 1 day
Education will come into its own when children are allowed to think and express themselves freely. When we choose to let them lead with insight instead of following by rote. When we allow them to express their own interests & needs fully within the 'room' of learning; and when we work solely to tend to their needs & interests, & not our own. In short, when we allow them to become instead of moulding them into being.
24 June 2004
6 years 1 week
Aurora that was said so beautifully, it shows you have a beautiful soul and do not want chldren to become little robots like they are trying to make them today.
Well done!
shadows
22 November 2004
2 days 9 hours
He's right, although children also have to learn the hard things. I have known some people who never faced adversity until they were young adults, and then were completely helpless. Their parents did not do them a favour by letting them grow up in a protected fantasy world.
1 May 2004
7 years 32 weeks
I cannot believe you state such. I will leave it at that. I have had students who thought the way you state and they are now in prison or dead. If we allow them to think that is no problem, but if we do not correct behavior that is against humanity as some do, we expand upon the evil that is already saturating our civilizations. In short, they do become under a master teacher...and if he/she is good it is due to the gestalt knowledge of existence rather than the statement above. Children need help and I have seen them grow into masters when one is their mentor. If we allow them to grow with knowledge via an interest-oriented curriculum then we will reinforce genius at every turn.
One who does not reflect upon the course of human development and is liberal with every event sequence finds a monster in their pathway. If we utilize the power of simulation technology and explore every sequence in an event, then we learn by doing and having something done to us as a result. The true course of life is built upon Karma or what goes around comes around. it is not a fairy tale as some would tell little minds. It is a world of hard knocks and learning how to survive them. Simulation tech allows Role Playing Events or RPGs. Life is indeed a gambit.
Beware of One who expects beauty from the eye of the beholder. Where has that eye been?
If we learn every event sequence, we see every thing...beauty and the other. Beauty may just be an illusion and hinder our becoming. Read the last Conclusion of Manly P. Hall's Secret Teachings of All Ages.
24 June 2004
6 years 1 week
Are you saying that children who think the way I do will end up dead or in prison?
Because if you are you are sicker than I thought.
Everyone who disagrees with you is always evil and definitely wrong.
Why don't you take your computer simulations crap and stick it where the sun don't shine.
I am sick to death of the hidden agenda in every single thing you write here.
Think carefully before you insult me again.
1 May 2004
7 years 32 weeks
Education is what we are addressing here. Not you.
1 May 2004
7 years 32 weeks
Last night I observed my nephew and his friend play several games on my XBOX...Halo-2 and Star Wars Episode lll. The gaming attitude becomes extremely serious to them as they discuss the utilization of the controls and the dictates of the immediate scene or event sequence they are currently in. It reminds me of how my buds and I once conversed on technique when I played football in West Texas. I don't see this attitude often in the schools that I teach in but when they bring their sophisticated phones and PSPs to class, it does get serious and few discipline problems flare up. If developers of tomorrow's curriculum could create the problem-solving attitude I see from HS and middle school kids today when they are deeply involved in a Role-playing games to solve problems and have fun while they did, we could push education light years down the road. I would dearly love to have the equipment and resources to teach these kids in that forrmat any day.