Category: General Forum Communication Computers Profession Social Aspects

Author

Message Text For: Is M.I.T. Giving Away the Store? By Robert C. Heterick Navigation: Select Threads Forums

Discussion

Date Posted: Tuesday May 15, 2001 11:46:48 AM Robert C. Heterick and Carol A. Twigg are forceful proponents for the transformation of education through the use of information technology, as evidenced by the following thought-pieces. Reply Top Bottom Next Previous

eriktderek

Date Posted: Tuesday May 15, 2001 01:25:18 PM The unintended consequence of this distribution of education will be for more nut cases to gain knowledge & therefore be more destructive. For example, to become a nuclear scientist one has to attend school with other students. The students party & get to know one another. A schitzo or religious nut will be seen identified & probably wont make it to graduation. With the web, any socially pathological person with a web connection can sit in their room & learn powerful techniques to destroy. Everyone talks about how the web enables each of us to be more powerful, but just like driving a car, it comes with responsibility that web learning bypasses. There should NOT be online courses in hard technologies like nuclear, chemistry, biotech, etc without the students coming in to classes or some form of sociallization. Look at what the computer hackers do with a little knowledge. Just imagine computer viruses being real viruses released by 17 year olds! As Austin Powers once said "With freedom comes responsiblity" :-) ------------------------- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Is evolution dead, or just evolving? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Reply Top Bottom Next Previous

risak

Date Posted: Wednesday May 16, 2001 07:10:41 AM As a teacher at Salzburg University (Austria), Dept. Computer Sci. I like this plan very much and will give some comments to it: + Students which can not (regularily) attend the lectures, can easily find out, what they lost. + It will not be necessary for students to write down everything and make copies for their friends. + It can give interesting hints for teachers of other univiersities. + These Texts can give a good feeling, what is done at MIT. I agree that this proposal is not telelearning with all feedback, free pahts througt the material. ... I think that the distinction of having only access to the contents or having the possiblitiy to communicate with the best experts and to have social contacts in seminars, research-projects, ... is so important, that many people will pay for these additional services. I disagree with the fear of possible misuse. Criminals can get their information on so many sources ... A closing remark: I offer to my students and all others interested the (short) contents of my lectures and seminars, but not the full text in the WWW (see for http://cosy.sbg.ac.at/~risak) This short notes are actual on a daily basis; the are well accepted by students. Best wishes for this ongoing project V. Risak University of Salzburg Computer Sci. risak@cosy.sbg.ac.at ------------------------- Dr. Veith Risak University of Salzburg Austria Computer Science Reply Top Bottom Next Previous

epepke

Date Posted: Thursday May 17, 2001 10:00:51 AM It seems to me unlikely that putting course notes on the Web will result in a terrorism explosion. For one thing, all of the information is available from other sources anyway. For another, doing genetic engineering is really not the same thing as writing computer viruses. The modern computer viruses are nearly all exploits of stupidly designed software from a certain house in Washington. It's just too easy to write a virus--you don't even have to be a hacker to be a cracker. For another, there is a lot more to becoming smart than having information. There do exist people who do not understand quantum chromadynamics, in spite of the fact that information has been available for decades and it's so simple. Reply Top Bottom Next Previous

Navigation: Select Threads Forums

[ACM]   [Ubiquity]   [ACM Privacy Policy]