The late Steve Jobs on Technology and Education

Q: Could technology help by improving education? 

Steve Jobs: 
I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent....

Full interview @ Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing 



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'Long-term harm' of too much TV for toddlers

The more TV a toddler watches, the higher the likelihood they will do badly at school and have poor health at the age of 10, researchers warn.

Go to BBC to read the original article.

TV 'ban' for Aussie toddlers

SYDNEY - CHILDREN should not watch television until they turn two because it can hurt their language development and ability to concentrate, according to new guidelines for Australians.

The government recommendations, expected to be released next week, also say that children aged two to five should watch no more than an hour of television a day, The Australian newspaper reported Monday.

The draft guidelines, which have been designed for childcare centres but also offer advice for parents, are intended to help curb the spread of the obesity epidemic which has left Australian children heavier than ever.

'Based on recent research, it is recommended that children younger than two years of age should not spend any time watching television or using other electronic media (DVDs, computer and other electronic games),' they say.

'Screen time... may reduce the amount of time they have for active play, social contact with others and chances for language development,' a draft copy of the guidelines obtained by The Australian said.

'(It may) affect the development of a full range of eye movement (and)... reduce the length of time they can stay focused.' The government would not confirm the report, saying that the guidelines were still being finalised. -- AFP

- From Straits Times 12th October

Singapore youths addicted to games

SINGAPORE students spend 27 hours a week playing video games like Maple Story and World of Warcraft.

The statistic, uncovered by an ongoing National Institute of Education (NIE) study, is raising concern over the impact of such games, and the extent of gaming addiction here.

The three-year study, the biggest of its kind in Singapore, is looking at more than 3,000 primary and secondary school students' gaming habits, and will be finished at the end of the year.

NIE declined to reveal more about it pending an analysis of the results.

One thing is clear though: Singapore youth really like video games.

Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew, who revealed the 27-hour statistic at a Singapore Press Club event last month, said he was 'quite surprised and a little bit shocked' that the figure was so high.

From ST

Project Wonderful

The video is from Google's Project 10^100, a platform for people to help others. People across 42 countries submitted their ideas for making the world a better place -- and Google has committed $10 million to turning up to five of those ideas into a reality.

You guys can also gain inspiration from CNN's Impact Your World.

De Bono's Six Thinking Hats

"Six Thinking Hats" is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives. It helps you make better decisions by pushing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking. As such, it helps you understand the full complexity of a decision, and spot issues and opportunities which you might otherwise not notice.

Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint, and this is part of the reason that they are successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at problems from emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoints. This can mean that they underestimate resistance to change, don't make creative leaps, and fail to make essential contingency plans.

Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive, and people used to a very logical approach to problem solving may fail to engage their creativity or listen to their intuition.

If you look at a problem using the Six Thinking Hats technique, then you'll use all of these approaches to develop your best solution. Your decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.

This tool was created by Edward de Bono in his book "6 Thinking Hats".

How to Use the Tool:

To use Six Thinking Hats to improve the quality of your decision-making, look at the decision "wearing" each of the thinking hats in turn.

Each "Thinking Hat" is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

• White Hat:

  

  With this thinking hat, you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.

  This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

• Red Hat:
  Wearing the red hat, you look at the decision using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally, and try to understand the intuitive responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.

• Black Hat:
  When using black hat thinking, look at things pessimistically, cautiously and defensively. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan or course of action. It allows you to eliminate them, alter your approach, or prepare contingency plans to counter problems that arise.

  Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans tougher and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance, leaving them under-prepared for difficulties.

• Yellow Hat:
  The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, and spot the opportunities that arise from it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

• Green Hat:
  The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here.

• Blue Hat:
  The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, and so on.

You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of defusing the disagreements that can happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.

A similar approach is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors, architects, sales directors) or different customers.

http://www.learnerslink.com/questioning_card.htm

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm

JC vs Poly

A RECORD number of school leavers fresh off the O-level boat have made it to the polytechnics this year.

And, continuing a trend that began a few years ago, many of these poly students did well enough in the O levels to have gone to a junior college (JC), but chose a polytechnic education instead.

About 20,640 of these school leavers have been posted to the five polytechnics, where they will earn diplomas in three years. The intake is 800 more than last year.

The new high comes despite there having been fewer O-level candidates last year than in 2007. As a consequence of that dip, the number posted to the polytechnics, JCs, Millennia Institute and the Institutes of Technical Education under the Education Ministry's Joint Admissions Exercise was also smaller.

The polytechnics' gain shrank the overall intake for the JCs, and also for Millennia Institute, where students take the A levels after three years. (See chart.)

One school leaver contributing to the tilt in favour of the polys is former Anderson Secondary student Ranjini Visvalingam, 17, who scored six points in her O levels. She could have made it to just about any junior college, but opted for Republic Polytechnic's biomedical science course.

Noting that her friends have queried her choice of a polytechnic over the more academic junior-college track, she said: "But I've already decided what I want to do – get an advance diploma in biomedical science and go on to Monash for a degree – so there is no need to go to a JC."
Melbourne's Monash University has a programme with Republic Polytechnic where students get on a fast track to a degree.

In response to the demand, the five polytechnics have opened up 25,700 places, about 700 more than last year.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic raised its number of vacancies by 150 to 5,250.
Republic Polytechnic principal Yeo Li Pheow has seen a 60 per cent leap in applicants who made the poly – the newest among the five – their first choice.

And they are coming in with stronger grades too.
"It's definitely a good sign for polys that students eligible for JC choose to go to the polys. It's a personal choice they make," he said.

Among the 18 JCs, the high-end ones have had no change in intake size, though a few, like Serangoon and Tampines, have smaller intakes this year.
The heads of JCs and of Millennia Institute contacted are not overly concerned that their schools now seem less popular.

Millennia Institute's Tan Chor Pang said a core of students will always pick the A-level route, which is still regarded as better preparation for higher education.
But he conceded that the JCs and Millennia Institute can do more to court potential students; the polys, he said, "are more aggressive and define their courses in a very attractive way, being up to date and relevant to industry. Students are attracted to that".
He added that this year's single intake for JCs might have also shrunk the demand for JCs.

Previously, students admitted provisionally could try out JC life until the O- level results came out in March, but "in the absence of the first three months of JC, there is no longer a natural platform to experience JC education", he said.

Ms Helen Choo, the principal of the mid-tier Tampines Junior College, said students may be going to the polytechnics because they are focused and know what they want, be it mass communications or hospitality studies.

JCs' future intakes could be uncertain, she said, given declining enrolment resulting from a declining birth rate and an explosion of choices for school leavers.

Yishun Junior College, on the other hand, took in slightly more students this year, just under 600. Vice-principal Wong Mun Wah said the JC's efforts at selling itself as a "value-added" school have paid off, as has the flexibility in subject combinations that it gives its students.

janeng@sph.com.sg

Where the O-level students have gone

Number who sat for the O levels

2008: 36,640
2007: 38,450

Number posted to their next school under Joint Admissions Exercise

This year: 34,400
Last year: 34,800

Number posted to junior colleges

This year: 11,008
Last year: 11,484

Number posted to Millennia Institute for the three-year A level course

This year: 344
Last year: 696

Number posted to polytechnics

This year: 20,640
Last year: 19,836

Number posted to ITE

This year: 2,408
Last year: 2,784

NOTE: The figures are calculated based on rounded-off percentages provided by the Ministry of Education and may not be exact numbers.

The Last Lecture