Focus On The Family Podcast

Came across this podcast from Focus On The Family and since then been listening to its contents. you can see and listen to the the contents in the widget below:

I have gone through the series of talk on Creative Ideas for Child Discipline. The links can be seen below:

Creative Ideas for Child Discipline 1 Listen

Creative Ideas for Child Discipline 2 Listen

Creative Ideas for Child Discipline 3 Listen

Creative Ideas for Child Discipline 4 Listen

Creative Ideas for Child Discipline 5 Listen

Creative Ideas for Child Discipline 6 Listen

I gained a lot of respect for this feisty lady who have to take care of her children, one of which had been diagnosed as being hyperactivitive. My experience of meeting parents of hyperactive children had always left me wondering how in the world I would survive if I were to have one. They are truly the unsung heroes of our generation. In this series she talked about the creative ideas she had to come up with regarding discipline and that really blew my mind away at the calmness and extent of ideas she produces. It is worth listening folks!



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About Clifford Stoll 3

After viewing the video from the previous post, these are the gems I derived:

• He described his experience in his school days regarding film strip day where educational films will be screened. One scathing comment he made was that when the film start rolling, the students stop thinking, calling it "edutainment"

• He commented that learning should not be fun, learning is hard work, it takes discipline, commitment, responsibility, means doing your homework, reading, thinking, discussing problems with teachers. the big payoff is an understanding…the payoff is not the instant gratification…it’s a very delayed gratification that may take years

• There is no easy or work free way of solving educational problems

• Information is power vs knowledge is power (using the example of librarian vs politician). He mentioned the huge gaps in the following sequence:

• When we denigrate one skill and praise another, it says something about where our values are in society

• By centering your educational system around one particular technological device, you exclude important aspects of education

• What good is all these glitzy technology to a child who cannot write analytically, who won’t read anything more than 24 lines by 80 columns, whose idea of Mathematics is that I don’t need to know that because we have computers

• Creativity is the inability to follow somebody else’s rules. When these people come across a wall, instead of following somebody else’s rule for getting around it, they create their own solutions, yet we marginalised them calling them dummies and idiots

Thats quite a mouthful but his video is entertaining in its own way. Weird professor with weird antics but HOWEVER do we listen? As parents in this age of IT should be not heed the warnings and be really skeptical about IT being the solve all and the only thing in the future?

IT is good, but without IT we wont die and putting ourselves solely in the hands of IT leaves us extremely vulnerable to its risks as well as its woes. please do stop and...

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About Clifford Stoll 2

I chanced upon this quote:

Guess who said this, in which year and what was he refering to?

If you were like me, the guess was way off. The quote was by Thomas Edison in 1922 talking about motion picture!!

How interesting...much is said about the ebook replacing physical textbooks. Till today it is still a pipe dream. The idea sound revolutionary, high tech and even visionary but try reading a passage of more than 10 pages from your screen and you will know what I mean. Think at least 10 fold of that and you will realise the impact.

This excerpt is just a short take from what I found from a talk by Clifford Stoll seen below, its a little long but enjoy:

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About Clifford Stoll

Been looking at different IT articles and I came across this author called Clifford Stoll. Looking at his background really showed such high tech inclination as his first book entitled "Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage" that talked about how he caught a group of hackers who stole secrets from military computer systems in the US and sold them to the KGB. Since then, he had been considered a computer security expert and given loads of talks to government as well as the corporate world.

Its is interessting that he would follow this up by writing his second and third book called "Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway" and "High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian" respectively which warns about the high price of the effects of internet on real human interaction that we will have to pay in future as well as the assumptions of technology and the role of computers in classrooms. I have not personally read his books which, I hope I can lay hands on them sometime soon, the article in Newsweek about him in 1995 was certainly a thought provoking read.

Very interesting that he did such an about face comment about technology. Maybe some things changed as he became a stay at home dad and a teacher of eighth grader. Its worth our while to listen when someone like that think of technology as something which will cost us dearly in the future. Many a times children are guinea pigs to the system set in place in educational institutes. Many things are tried which may reveal some short term results but the long term consequences are never thoroughly researched on. I believe its about time we learn to moderate and not just jump in with such blind faith.

BEWARE!!

Thats the advice.



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