Fall 2016 - Professor Kate Poirier

[Abdelmajid Ihda][ Respond to Article and TED talk video ]

Firstly, let me say that both the article  and the TED TALK about substituting teachers by a computer or robots are both depressing to read and watch, they both want to end a job that got our humanity to this level of knowledge, a job that provided knowledge, ideas instructions to so many of us in so many areas in life. There is no doubt that schools and teachers have played an essential role in childhood development and learning, and I’m surprised how some people who have this vision denied that fact and undermined the role of a teacher. It is true that we have everything in one hand click, even though half of it may not be true, as we all know not everything in the internet is accurate. It is also true that the role of a teacher have changed a bet but I will not call it “facilitate”, I will rather call it effective, Because if we combine the teacher and the technology our education system will get its desired outcomes. As a result, i believe that we invented all this technology for education to be teachers friends not enemies. We invented this technology to help teachers to do their job effectively and enhance students learning, we did not invented it to destroy the ability of communication and interaction of our children and society. the vision of both the article and the video just assumed that all children will some how interested and stick with learning everything like they do in schools, from history to science. They forget that the majority of children including adults are only drawn to  social media like Facebook and YouTube and anything that is a form of texting. The speaker even mentioned it in the video, he said they found that kids mostly chatting  or downloading music.

we have to be smart and think about equipping teachers with all the technology invention rather then excluding teachers from the education system. the combination of teachers with technology will have a better outcome for the educations system but thinking about killing the human connection and interaction it is not the solution . teachers and schools are not against technology like the speaker think, instead they implement anything that technology has to offer, they even downloaded  tons of lesson plan and videos to the the internet so they can help students around the world learn and grow. and by the way, that is mentioned in the article. Teachers used  technology from enhancing the learning to proving theorems, a good example is Geogebra software, where we have a visual component to some of the theorems that proven to be true. we have used the drag test to actually show that those theorems are true. In this process the teachers showed the theory side witch is the proof in the theorem and the technology showed a visual and accurate calculation to it. this is a good example of a perfect education that consist of both teacher and the technology should be. and this is what our education needs, not a robot. I’m not just saying this because I’m going to be a teacher, I’m saying this because we don’t want to put the future of the next generations in the hand of a machine.

My opinion about being a teacher will not change, I will get my degree and go into teaching and at the same time go for my master degree then my PHD. Yes the future is unpredictable, this whole idea may be true but I will not lose interest on something that I enjoy. Over all our education needs teachers and technology like geogebra and desmos,  but not a robot.

 

 

1 Comment

  1. Kate Poirier

    Thanks for the thoughtful review, Majid! I agree with you, that technology and the teacher should only enhance each other’s role. I think your GeoGebra example illustrates this perfectly!

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