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Re:California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th gra... by smolder on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @08:22PM (#29325923)
Knowledge/skill assessment is more complex than dictation. It's like a O(n) operation that necessarily looks at each student versus the O(log n) of dictating stuff to a class that asks some questions.

The more evaluation and feedback are in the process, the more individualized it gets, the more burdensome and expensive it gets, generally. That's not to say we can't improve our teaching methods to automate some mechanisms for feedback and pace adjustment in the future, though...

Education is due for a genuine upset. I think there are a bunch of ways technology could make general education significantly more effective, given the technology was designed for that. (Current device / OS / app design norms are mostly in service of consumerism, which assumes no one ever wants to learn anything unless someone paid for them to hear it. So, not that stuff.)

Re:California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th gra... by azinman2 on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @11:28PM (#29326922)
Educational technology has existed for many decades now, built by academia and industry alike. It seems to largely have played a very minor role if even that in the successful advancement of the rate of educating children. If you think you have methods that could significantly improve that, you’d have a great impact on the world. I’d love to hear these bunch of ways.
Re:California moves to recommend delaying algebra to 9th gra... by politician on Wednesday November 24, 2021 @11:13AM (#29331475)
I’ll bite.

Take a multimedia corpus, arrange the material for delivery via Spaced Repetition Learning (SRS) coupled with an active reinforcement learning system to gradually introduce and deepen understanding of topics that expand the learner’s challenge boundary.

Instead of teachers and fixed class sizes, allow students to self select into rooms based on noise level. Include a range of furniture from desks to couches. Any adults are only present to monitor for fighting or harassment and need no special training — they are certainly not to be responsible for lecturing or grading. Leave that to the machines. Perhaps direct students that have mastered material help students that have not.

Naturally and smoothly steer learners into vocational or academic studies based on their performance without social discontinuities like the German method.

One challenge with this approach would be how to organize appraisals of essays or long-form written content. Peer review might be one answer. There are, no doubt, many other challenges and criticisms. This scheme would dramatically upend the economics of education and make a large number of positions redundant.