Thursday 12 January 2017

Can technology replace teacher?

Can technology replace teacher?

Is teacher replaceable by technology?

The answer to these questions is another question. The question is why do we ask such questions? Has anything as such happened where humans are replaced by technology?

Well, may be there is something of this sort in our subconscious memory that humans are replaceable by technology and tools. Perhaps, collectively we all have memorised that there are very significant spaces which are encroached by technology and tools.
What is it? Where are these spaces? Are these spaces really existent?
Well, there are such spaces in urban and rural spaces where technology and tools have replaced human beings.
It is factories in urban spaces and agriculture in rural spaces.
The integration of technology in factories has minimised use of humans to almost one tenth.
The technological innovation in agricultural equipment has not only reduced human beings but have changed the skills of people working in agrarian societies.  They have readily accepted the change and adapted new skills necessary to work in rural spaces / agrarian society.
In both these spaces, people have forgot old traditional knowledge and skills and have learned new knowledges and skills.
Moreover, what is interesting is the in both the spaces outcome has not only increased but have become qualitatively better.
Is it this in our memory that makes us feel panic about technology as teachers?
Have we turned technophobic because of this in our collective unconsciousness?
Are we more afraid of technology because it's intervention has bettered the outcome?
May be yes.
We question this because of collective memory.
We deny to accept that teachers can be replaced because we fear that it may give us incredible challenge. It may force us to increase and improvise on our teaching skills and knowledge of pedagogy. If we do not do so our unhoned skills and old knowledge will make us obsolete. We as teachers will soon be outdated and updated technology will replace such outdated teachers.
Teachers will have to remember and understand that Google is not their friend. It is an enemy. One shudder know the language and capacities of  an enemy. Today's teachers shall know the language and capacities of Google. And then master all Google can do . . .  And then go beyond what Google can do.
Google can give information. What Google cannot do is connect dots in such a way that innovation and creativity can be perceived.
Teachers should not be mere information giver. They shall be connectors of dots in this networked era.
Google is just a tip of iceberg so far as technology integration in real world is concerned
Lest much more advanced technology is surely going to replace teachers as it has replaced humans, unhoned skills and old knowledge in factories and agrarian society.





______________________________________________________________________________

There are some interesting comments on this in Comments on this Facebook post:






Tuesday 10 January 2017

Hollywood, Foreigners, and the Press

MERYL STREEP'S POWERFUL GOLDEN GLOBES SPEECH



(If you cannot view the video, click here to open in YouTube: https://youtu.be/EV8tsnRFUZw )


Thank you, Meryl Streep for reminding that American multiculturalism is not only Salad Bowl but a Melting Pot where people around the globe has melted in one, global culture. It should have been an illustrious example for the world to follow in the 21st Century. . . and this is the right time to remind that we, as human beings, are regressing and disconnecting in the highly connected, networked world. We cannot allow a few groups of fanatics to make all of us fanatics. A few violent groups should not be victorious to make all think and speak the language of violence.
Whether the disabled reporter was mocked or not; what is important in the speech is a reminder about multi-nationality and multi-cultural identity of Hollywood.
 Thank you for this bold and brave pronouncement against Power. Your resistance will inspire and give confidence to many to who stood for the better world then what is unfolding in our times. 
Read full transcript here:
"Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please sit down. Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all. You'll have to forgive me. I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year. So I have to read.
Thank you, Hollywood foreign press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said. You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places.
I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola [Davis] was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, and grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in -- no, in Ireland, I do believe. And she's here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.
Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick 'em all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts. They gave me three seconds to say this. An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work.
There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life.
And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.
This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists. Because we're going to need them going forward. And they'll need us to safeguard the truth.
One more thing. Once when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor. Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight.
As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art. Thank you."