education, teaching and technology

Hi, Its been a long time since the last post. I have been thinking and thinking about how and what to do with my life at 45. This nebulous period of ones life brings us to a lot of deep thoughts and total inaction on many issues that actually require immediate and galvanized action. 

 Lets see the issues I am facing:

 1) As an educator in a private institute I feel great pain in following the prusuits of my duty towards my organisation as it comes at loggerheads with my passion to teach. We educators are supposedly more idealistic than other occupations, specially so for the old lot of us, who still learnt our lessons without multimedia and presentations in classrooms. The two cross purposes we feel pulling us apart are: A- As the number of private educational institutes proliferate, the competition is getting the better of all of them by making the bottomline the overall determining factor, whilst the quality of intake (students) and the delivered output (graduates) hardly matter. 

We educators are observing a very disturbing trend of poorer quality on both counts. (We can think of the process in between as What goes In determines What comes out ). 

B- So as the centre point of the process, we have to lower our standards of teaching and testing to accomodate the managements need for numbers and bottomline. That in itself is not so bad, but when one knows that the graduates are going to lay the future paths for the world, it gets us worried -A LOT! For we know these people dont know anything they are talking about. All they care for is a certificate with their name on it, and a degree to boot.

The second thing I want to share today is relevant to education methods, technologies, and techniques

2) The state of Educational Technology and being a teacher. 

I am proud to say that I am well versed in Information Technology, and can do tasks like creating a webpage, editing photos, making a good simple presentation, and few nifty programming zone tasks along with the use of CAD, and CAE. But if I am fearful of the next wave of education technology onslaught, then it must be a serious thing. What I am talking about is the fact that now educators are not in control of the content they deliver any more. Instead a bunch of tech geeks are creating materials that are impossible for us to rival, and delivering it straight to the organisations we work for. The fear factor of the deal begins after that. Our managements expect us to adopt to these materials, and create or at least "enhance" a better learning experience for our students based on these. 

It is ok to expect us to deliver our lectures and classes using these new media materials, but expecting us to be good at it is getting us very uncomfortable. For one, those EduTech companies do not hire us educators of the past generations so we have no real training or foundation on these media factory methods, and to top it up, the new generations of students are very rapidly changing their choice for consumption.

It is impossible to handle on proactive content creation at our ends. Increased us of tablets and handphones in classes makes it very difficult to keep students on the main topic of discussions. The manners, way of social interaction, changes in the pivot of moral values, and many more apparently smaller but aspects that greatly disturb the divinity of a class, are now beyond repair.

Students try to insult the teachers more often and by default. Peers get cajoled into this behaviour as they think that is the way to look COOL. (When we were studying in schools and even thru graduate school, we never ever tried to talk in the negative light with our instructors. This is not to be seen anymore.) All students have an opinion, no matter how unqualified or ill benchmarked it may be. 

There are many directions my mind is pulling me : Become one of those behind the new media courseware is the first thought that comes. However, there is no entry point to this world for a 45 year old instructor of the old and not so old school of thought. To qualify, one can be a dumb programmer, not even a designer who can make interactive content.

There are many directions my mind is pulling me : Become one of those behind the new media courseware is the first thought that comes. However, there is no entry point to this world for a 45 year old instructor of the old and not so old school of thought. To qualify, one can be a dumb programmer, not even a designer who can make interactive content.

Great Multimedia Sound Collections Here!

3) As we grow into our middle ages we have a lot of commitments to take care of, but in careers that have not really got into mainstream, we get waylaid in terms of salaries, and with each passing year, we find that the people who make hiring decisions, tend to gloss over our resumes as being too old to consider for the less senior positions, and not too interesting for challenging and responsible well paid positions. 

Come on! We all know that for about a few thousands working on SGD $4K a month (all esle being equal in terms of talent, knowledge, and capabilities) there will be only a handful who make it to the next level of SGD $ 7K during their remaining career years. I have begun to notice that too many youngsters are beig pushed up to jobs that we deserve, and with salaries that are just slightly more than ours. Which means the market is slowly pushing the $7K salaries down while taking undeserving candidtates to higher positions. 

This organisational hiring Bypass Surgery is going to cost both those seeking employment and those hiring into a temporary high, whicle will then go on into a long shallow downturn which will be difficult to notice as it takes the organisations ever so slowly downwards.

For Great Interview Answers Click Here!

Planning for Our Children: How far can we go and succeed

I am presently in the situation where my only child, my son is now 15 years old and in the eleventh grade of school.

He has before him a very vast array of choices to make, on the direction he wants to launch his life into for the next decade wherein he will achieve his educational qualifications that will characterize him in the eyes of his future employers, and determine his trajectory in professional life for the rest of his life.

It is a very big decision to take for a teen aged stuck-in-the middle mind. One awesome decision that can make or break his dreams. How well equipped is he in this humongous task?

I often ask myself this question. But in retrospect, I find him in an enviable position of having a great deal of information at his fingertips, knowledge of fields that did not even exist as possible career paths during my time, and of course parents who are equally well informed and capable of finding out what needs to be known. That puts him into the superleague straight off.

So to answer the question, I would vouch to say on a safe note that he is! As a matter of fact, as our children grow in the next several generations, much of the critical decisions will be taken by them on their own, and parents will be merely told of the outcome, probably the entire game of advising your children on issues will slowly cease altogether.
On the carreer choice we can only weigh in by giving peripheral decision critical information like;
1) Finances- whether we have the resources to support their basic goal in education
2) Sub-trees and branches of streams of choice: Being a doctor is fine but MBBS is not the right end of the story, whether to go on for surgery, radiology, Doctor of medicine(oncology etc.) and other new emerging career fields.
3) Once we find any gaps in our analysis compared to the children's ambitions, we now seek redressal by way of available financing options, alternate paths that either take less time, or are less expensive, or reduce the stress on the way etc.

All this should in my opinion be undertaken ideally the year before the critical uni applications are despatched. This gives us time to ponder our decisions, and look for new alternatives that previously were not visible in the ensuing year. The child also gets a full year to reflect on whether the choice made is well suited to one self. I have attached here links that relate to these inportant stages and their related issues that can help reduce the tension during this greatly stressful period.
A) Guide to Grants available: Grants worldwide for Education!
B)Once having taken a Student Loan, how to get out of the perpetual cycle of debt: Get out of Your Student Loan safely!

Money on the Internet Tap.. Huhh?

New Money making methods on the web:
I came to know but dont really know how:
1) affiliate marketing
2) emoney-
3) blogging
4) website (markets) like ebay, amazon, etc.

I have been studying these for a month or so now, and have come to know that there are millions of people trying out these methods, of which only a few are actually making money at all.

However, I find that as an engineer, anyone with advanced internet skills can do this. As a matter of face, people that do not have any expertise often fall into the trap of internet "metors" that promise outstanding results without any real substantial base at all. They trap people into the field and get them half way thru', then they charge extras just when things begin to get clear to the gullible souls!

Well the gist of it all is :
A) create a blog
B) write up interesting content
C) link your blog to real products and services that are sold by other people, but have them displayed on your blog.
D) Setup a monetary connection to the goods and services you display
E) People normally charge as mentors in the range of $3000 to $10,000.

However, what you really need to do is very cheap and easy:
A'- Create a well thought site, with a definite vision of the range of ideas and related products that would suit your articles
B'- You will need to have access to a blog or a website of your own, so a domain registered for a year is needed, but not essential
C'- Go to vendor market places like Clickbank.com create your own account and select the relevant product that suits your site or blog. then copy the hyperlink provided for the offer, and paste it into your webite or blog.
D'- for every online viewer of your site or blog who visits the accompanying link, and purchase, they will provide a cut to your account on the site you registered with for the link. ( a crude version is in the end of my post here )
E'- Wait and watch your account money grow.

sounds very easy, but to begin with it is quite daunting, you have to grapple with various domain registerations, affiliate program memberships, and get up to speed on various website tweaking, masking, redirecting, and many similar tricks.

I will keep you posted on this monkey business soon as I hit the right buttons.
check back and see how I go!


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