Monday, November 16, 2009

the brave new world.

in the past we learned at the voice of teachers.

slowly they revealed thier position as we sat for hours listening to thier point...and then putting thier ideas down on paper, to be marked for accuracy.

and we did this for many months at a time, becoming expert on the internal state of the teacher and becoming a clone of thier ideas as we graduated.

many of us emerged from this process in a state of shock, programmed to regurgitate reams of useless information so that we could get our degree and go to work for a decent wage.

now we learn from others who went before us, absorbing thier experience and thier strategies and tactics to prepare us for the next thing in our lives.

we can access a million experienced voices and sort them at the speed of our newly sped up brains.

collectively.

the stress for the old brick-and-mortar style must be agonising.

how dare we teach ourselves....

5 comments:

Matthewzor said...

I know I am very inexperienced, however, after four years of university one of the most important lessons I've learned is how to learn. And the internet, especially for engineers, is an invaluable source of information; even from those sources deemed incredible.

With regard to the program you commented on. It is called MATLAB and it is an engineering tool to do calculations and such. Unfortunately it is expensive and there is no open source version. And, it take a little while to learn.

However, if you ever find yourself gaining access to it feel free to use my code or send me any questions you might have.

Dr.Alistair said...

zor, thanks i appreciate it.

Dr.Alistair said...

and further to your comment regarding the internet, i find it a rich source of information in my field as a therapist, especially video lectures from people in my field.

google video provides hours of lecture material posted by those keen to share thier learning in a variety of disciplines that would have been far outside of my ability to buy elsewhere as many lecturers, especially in nlp, charge of thousands of dollars for seminars which are held in places like mauii and singapore and the bahamas....

Lee @ sjogrens blog said...

i find it difficult to comprehend how children can sit still and listen to 1 teacher after they have been on the internet. Also ADD and ADHD people learn better on computers. My son at 17 has just done his HSC exams (NSW Australia) and is still in this day and age having to learn and "regurgitate reams of useless information so that we could get our degree and go to work for a decent wage" When does it end?

Dr.Alistair said...

add and adhd? those are terms used by teachers and other bureaucrats to describe sped-up learners.

the system is boring people to death and they refuse to admit thier side of the issue.

it only ends when one finds a fielfd that matches the pace and interest of your internal state.

the pace of my internal processing is ideal for clinical psychotherapy. i can rattle away on probable scenarios while my clients tel my how they do what they do, and i appreciate the slowness of thier delivery.

i tell my clients that i make hundreds of mistakes in a session and i adjust and adapt my responses so quickly they don`t notice the changes.

we all make mistakes...just don`t make them slow enough to be obvious......