Sabio Column

By James H. Choi
http://Column.SabioAcademy.com
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If we look back at history for a moment, the introduction of technology in education began with the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press. Before that publishing revolution, all books were naturally handwritten and passed down, and I read that one copy of a book written that way was worth $30,000 today. The way to mass-produce these expensive books was “reading and dictation.” In other words, one person would read the contents of the book out loud in front of the classroom, and the students sitting together would write it down. This “reading” is “Lectio” in Latin, which became “Lecture” in English, and we translate it as “lecture,” but its original meaning is “reading.” Even now, if you look at the classrooms where we go to hear “lectures,” you can see that they still maintain the medieval “reading and dictation” method.

In other words, the introduction of the first technology related to education only helped to widely distribute books, but did not change the form of knowledge transmission. Of course, it was a big change that books became cheaper, making it possible for individuals to own them and learn on their own using them. However, most students still spend more time sitting in the classroom, taking notes, without asking questions, even when lectures are indistinguishable from reading aloud. The next revolutionary technology was videotape. Since recording allowed lectures to be played back across time and place, it seemed like it would bring about a revolutionary change in education, but this also only had a small impact in a few fields such as cooking and aerobics, and did not bring about any change in education overall. Although videos could convey more information efficiently than books (think of learning how to disassemble/assemble an engine by reading text), both videos and books were one-way transmission media, so they had limitations in changing the education system. The DVDs that came out later were the same, except with higher resolution.

The next technology is computer-based education, which is where we are today. Now, it is strange to not have computers in schools, but learning the knowledge/concepts embedded in computers began in the 1980s. The reason why this decades-old educational method has become mainstream these days is because it has become cheaper and easier to distribute, has become smaller and more portable, and the development of the Internet has made group collaboration possible. And because its performance has improved, it has become smarter and has begun to take on some of the role of a teacher. For example, in math, even if the problem is not multiple choice, if the answer is a+b/2, it can be graded as b/2+a or (2a+b)/2. In addition, it has become possible to know when, what, and how students studied, record it, and even report it to teachers/parents, which is the first time in history that the conflicting hopes of “cheaper and more detailed student study” can be met at the same time.

This revolution is finally changing the “reading + dictation” education format with the powerful technology that allows two-way information exchange. On the one hand, online university lectures are appearing, and on the other hand, opposition is rising that can be summarized as “Education is definitely about teachers and students meeting face to face and discussing…” At the same time, the question is being raised, “Is it right for the winner-takes-all system to reach the education sector?” The future is unpredictable, but I think that computers will now take center stage in education and change everything around them. How should our children prepare for this unprecedented world? Ironically, the most important thing is not the ability to use computers well, but motivation. This is because automated education is provided at a low unit price and is almost free, and in such an environment, how much students learn is determined by their will/curiosity/desire. In the past, there were understandable reasons for not receiving education, such as “because their family was poor,” but in the world in which today’s generation is growing up, there will be no other reason than “because they are lazy.” And what is even more important is self-control. Computers that have the ability to teach students in this way can also make students buy products and become addicted to games. In fact, all technologies used in education are technologies developed/distributed for entertainment purposes, so there is no technology that only teaches. Learning with computers always requires the ability to resist such temptations.