Strategy, Technology, and Teaching?
The game of chess is a strategic two-person board game. It is a game in which you maneuver against your opponent by cornering them into a position in which they ultimately have to surrender.
If you are looking to understand how to better play chess, or where it was originated then I suggest you go to google. The purpose of this post is to show you a new perspective about teaching. Now you are probably wondering “What does chess have to do with teaching?”
Let’s try this: I suppose chess can be used metaphorically to describe teaching. The person who wins lays out a foundation for the person who loses to learn and understand how to play the game better. Okay that was a weak attempt, now let’s dive into the post.
My Grandfather was an avid chess player. He would play everyday without fail against his neighbour.
When you do something repeatedly everyday it doesn’t make you better. Doing something everyday that’s challenging you does.
I want to stop here and examine this fact. Playing against someone of the same level as you will not make you any better. Playing against someone weaker than you will make you worse, and playing against someone better than you will make you better.
Studies have proven this and I will write a new post about the level of skill you want to be competing against.
Playing chess against my grandfather was something I did not look forward to, and that’s strange because naturally I love competing. I don’t see the point in any game unless there can be a loser or a winner. Fuck the playing for fun crap.
I was young, it was in my childhood days, and from what I remember I did not like the game itself. Not because it was challenging (okay maybe a little bit) because of this, but also because I had no patience in sitting and playing the game.
Some children amazingly have the patience to sit there and play. Beating your opponent in anything is a rush on its own. Tactically mastering your way to defeating the other person, who wouldn’t like it? It makes you feel smarter and you accomplish it all by yourself.
My grandfather was a great chess player, and I sucked at it. When I would make a move he would give me this funny look. It was a look of confusion followed by disgust. He would always beat me. I would get so frustrated, but worst of all I felt I was not learning how to play better each time.
My moves as he would call them were “irresponsible”. He would tell me what I did wrong and sometimes he would correct me and tell me what I should do. But, I never excelled, or at least that’s what I thought.
Was my grandfather a good teacher or a bad teacher or somewhere in between? How do you define what a good teacher is? Does everyone have there own definition of what a good teacher is? Could a teacher be considered good to one student and not good to another?
In the book Average Is Over, Tyler Cowen the author tells us how computers have taken over the chess game. There are computer versus computer matches and computer and human vs computer matches. The ones that perform the best are the human computer combo.
By making wild unpredictable moves the computer and human combo are changing the way the game is played traditionally. Now any person who barely has the qualifications to be a world class chess player is beating Grandmasters, as long as that person has a thorough understanding about the rules of engagement and coding.
What does our future look like?
Certainly computers are taking over many of the jobs and monotonous tasks of workers and the author Tyler Cowen brilliantly points out that the job demand for the future will be the IT guys, rather than the traditional professionals.
So why do institutes still teach the same way they used to 500 years ago?
I am not talking about online teaching; I am talking about in class teaching.
Sure anyone now can learn anything they want by simply “You Tubing”, searching on “Google Scholar”, or finding courses online from business’s who are willing to share and teach you.
“We are evolving and we need to adapt or become irrelevant.”
There are people with zero experience who can go out and out-perform people who have experience. How? By applying the self taught principles.
In Drive, Daniel Pink explains that motivation happens because of these 3 levels: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. People who excel at what they do continue to stay motivated to keep doing.
So why isn’t this applied in schools? How can we better motivate our students without boring them to death with the traditional way of teaching?
Technology is rapidly evolving, and jobs are doing great at applying this technology to replace the low wage earners. By doing this they cut down costs thus cutting down the price for the customers.
I am not saying we should replace teachers with computers or robots. Instead I am suggesting that we implement the use of technology in the class room. Let the students research and find things relevant to the subject that is being discussed.
Sure social media might be this evil that we take a stand against. Why not leverage this and instead of disallowing the use of social media, we encourage it? We ask our students to tap into their vast networks and ask questions related to the class discussion to bring in new insight.
Instead of now limiting the class to 30 students it can become a class of 100 students. I know Malcolm Gladwell in his book David and Goliath suggest otherwise. That the perfect number of students per class is between 18–24. But I am not talking about a traditional class room.
Okay I am not a teacher, at least I don’t think I am. I have been a student and always will be. I understand how technology can be bad for us (I have written about it before). There are always two sides to a coin, and sometimes there is that gray area.
I watched an incredible TED talk about redefining how schools should teach. How schools have been taught the same way for 500 years before the first book ever made it into print.
The teacher would read the book and students would take notes. Now the students read the books and take notes. What has changed? Well technology has been evolving yet we are still using the same old tools and principles. Don’t get me wrong-I love books.
Are we scared because we don’t want to “fix it” if it’s not broken?
Instead of yelling at students to put their smart phones away, lets use those same smart phones to actually learn more efficiently.
I have so much more to say and I can go so many different ways with this post.
What should we teach in schools? Why are students distracted in schools? How can students learn best? How do cities with highly educated populations thrive? Why do people in Vancouver who are well educated have a tough time finding good paying jobs? Are we getting smarter, or are we measuring differently now as opposed to before? What are the different styles of teaching?
I don’t have all the answers for you, but I feel I want to leave this open-ended. There is no right or wrong, but a way to think critically and analyze. That is what learning is about.
What I do know is that we want to be a part of the evolution not the revolution. Okay that was cheesy. We want to embrace technology and make it apart of our ecosystem, not resist against it.
In some schools the teachers have boxes into which students have to put their phones before entering their classrooms. Why not use technology instead to record students’ individual insights and add this to the data base so that others can gain.
Starting off the class without trust in your students is more damaging. Teaching has a lot to do with trust. If you cannot trust your teacher, why should you believe what they are teaching you. That’s a topic for another time.
I learn better now than ever before because I am excited about learning. I am excited about the challenge. I am hungry to know what I don’t know because I want to be the best at what I do. Writing these posts is a way for me to learn.
“The best way to learn is by teaching.”
How can we get other students excited about learning? What is the goal of our education system?
“The best CEO’s I know are teachers, and at the core what they teach is strategy.” Michael Porter
I want to thank you for taking the time to read this. A note to teachers: we cannot blame technology or the students, they will always evolve, it’s the system that needs to adapt to the ever-changing demand. To be continued….
Image copyright by dailymail.co.uk
If you found this post relevant please hit the ❤ so that other people can find this too!
Originally published at karasingroup.com on July 13, 2016.
