Wikipedia and Education

As I've been helping my younger brother with homework, I was thinking about how the world around us changes whereas the education system has a hard time to catch up and adapt.

Certainly when my parents were growing up, and to some degree when I was in school, just finding information for, say, a history project, was quite an undertaking. You had to search and read through books in your school library, and then perhaps find some specific books in a larger regional library, and work to assemble those pieces into some body of work. Perhaps you even interviewed an older member of the family or a friend if he/she had some relation to the events. An those skills of gathering information were indeed quite relevant in the world.

Nowadays, give a class an assignment on, say, The Declaration of Independence, and many of the works you get back might be different variations of the same Wikipedia article. One the one hand, this is quite understandably frustrating to the teacher, who sees how little effort and thought was put into the work. One the other, I don't think the pupils are to blame here. 

The world has changed - the internet brings us a wealth of sources and information on any topic we wish to research, and students should be taught different skills - not of gathering anew information which is already out there but of filtering the relevant findings and analyzing them for insights or distilling the essence of an idea. 

Here is an approximate assignment from a while ago (in Geography class) that I think was an excellent example - "Image you are a travel agent and a client (a family, an elderly couple, a single traveler, etc...) comes and asks you to suggest a trip plan. Choose a destination and tailor a few days' trip to the client." This both gives the pupil freedom of choice as well as requires independent thought - you have to think what kind of trip plan you are preparing (walking outside vs going to museums...), research the country for attractions as well as distances and reduce all the possibilities to some logical plan that combines interesting locations and is achievable in the chosen time frame.

It will however take some time for this change to take place more widely. First, because it is much easier  for teachers to continue teaching the same way they are used to. And second, once each assignment is individual per student - there is no standardized answer sheet, like in a multiple choice exam, where the answers can be checked quickly. Rather the teacher has to evaluate each work on it's own, which takes more effort and dedication on his part.

Google Quicksearch Gibberish Auto-translate

Since I'm writing daily in two languages (Hebrew and English) and constantly switching between the two, it is quite often that I want to search in one language but type in another by mistake, so the result is gibberish.

Here a cool thing I noticed just recently - the correct search result (in the intended language) is suggested. And it works both ways - both Hebrew to English and back, although not in every case of course.

My guess is that this translation was learned based on user search histories, since after such a mistake the user immediately searches again for the correct word. Anyway, another cool idea that just "works" - it took me some time to notice that the (correct) suggestions were actually given for a search term typed in the wrong language. 

Getting Things That Matter Done

A friend made a survey recently about productivity, and wrote a post with some more ideas and how it worked for him. An interesting read, take a look.

When thinking about it, I might imagine two "me"s sitting on my shoulders, battling each other. There is something I need, or want to do, but I somehow waste the time, procrastinate, or get distracted by other things. So I make some task list to stay focused, put my headphones on, maybe even work from home.

But at home there's the danger of just watching TV, or responding to IM or email. So - I actually decided not to own a TV, which saves me a ton of time. And, grudgingly, I close Gmail. And actually working late at night has been quite productive for me. Not only am I more concentrated at night (not much of a morning person, check the time this was published...), but there's less distractions, nowhere to hurry to, just a quiet time when the world is at peace.

And yet, even when I'm in the state of mind when I know I should work, I sometime veer to doing something else which I also should do, but is not as urgent or important. Having an exam or a big assignment was often a great incentive to put a few solid hours of work on cleaning up the apartment, washing dishes, tagging my photo library or even writing a custom script to clean-up the ID3 tags in my music collection. Call it "constructive procrastination".

There is another "trick" that may help with such a case - working on a couple of projects at once. So that when you're tired or stuck on one of them, you can let it go for a while, work on the second one, and come back when you feel you are ready to start again.

However, there was a different idea I mentioned in that survey - "pair programming", in the more general sense. And for me the emphasis was not the better quality of work that results, but the fact that working together improves your focus, and reduces the chance for distraction. I'm not going to check email or blogs when working with someone. And if one gets tired or loses focus - the other can pick up, and so you just push each other to work more productively.

Which leads to what I actually wanted to write about, and that is motivation to do not just the daily tasks and chores, but also bigger things which matter to you, that you want to do or you know you should do, but you delay or avoid them, because of some fear or discomfort.

I'll give an example - I did a bunjy jump in Nepal last year, the third highest in the world. Scary stuff. By the time you get to the jump, you've discussed it with friends, paid for it, took a long bus drive there, got organized, waited for some before you to jump, and now you are standing on the step on the bridge above a 160m high gorge, scared out of your wits. But by that point, you are also already committed. You are too far into it to back off. So you look down, then decide it's a better idea to just look at the horizon - and jump. Then climb the 160m back to the bridge - and do the second jump :).

Here's another one - I just returned from a trek to the Alps, Tour de Mont Blanc, after of which I also climbed the Mont Blanc peak itself. I did plenty of treks before, yet this one was different - my first technical climb, walking on rocks and snow, through some dangerous sections and steep slopes, a hard hike up to the summit at night and back all the way down. But I did it with a friend, and we had a guide with us. Besides the assurance it gives - you are much more committed to each other (if one has to descend - you both do), support each other, and will not back down unless it's for serious reason. And it was a great sense of achievement getting to the top, knowing that this is something you can do.

The point is that stating your goal publicly or doing it with a friend gives you that extra commitment and motivation, besides you own will, that may be the push you need to get over your apprehensions and do whatever it is you want to accomplish.

An example I thought of as I was writing this - Matt Cutts (head of webspam team at google). He sets himself a 30-day challenge every month, blogs about it (and it's a very high traffic blog) and reports on the results. Things like trying meditation, biking into work every day, no caffeine, etc. And I think that stating it publicly on his blog makes it harder to just abandon something midway, because he has already committed himself.

How do I use it in daily life?

I think I did it when searching for my latest job, quite consciously. I didn't choose the exact area in which I already have experience, but a role that will challenge me both technically and personally with situations new to me, which I have to deal with, learn, and get better at. And this is a course I committed myself to by taking the position.

Here's the latest example - Since I enrolled in a nice fitness center, I thought I should start swimming more. Easy to think, but eventually it's slips away, and you start coming less often. So? There's a non-competitive 3.5 km swim across the Kineret every year that a friend goes to. And this year I told him - "sure, I'll come too", and registered myself. And I'm telling about it to all of you as well (all three of you.. :) ). So now I better actually do it, and if I want to finish it - I should better keep training, don't I?