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Economy: Are you better off?
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Advise on Education Reform
To whom it may concern:
The economy has a drastic effect on our current educational system. However, I believe there is a way to better improve the system that could keep the students in school in the absence of teachers (or less-qualified ones) while allowing them to effectively obtain the most valuable knowledge regardless of class privilege or limited technical resources among some institutions. The proposal could even eliminate the need to raise taxes for further support.
The method would require utilizing current technology such as knowledge-sharing database, YouTube-style voting system, and real-time video-based lectures through device-to-device transfer.
The idea is simple but would require further suggestion/improvement. Replace the blackboards in classrooms with monitors so that teachers could use the internal camera of the iPad (as an example) to project their speech or notes written on the device onto real-time monitors/screens. Notes written could be backed up in the database system based on subjects then topics. Students will gain access into the system to select the topics of interest. Allow the database to be linked nationally as a knowledge sharing database. The intention is to allow enough notes saved from different teachers, which would eventually be sequenced based the popularity to allow students to have easy access to knowledge that’s most easily understood. Students will also have access to save these video-based lectures in their phones or computers. This method provides equal opportunity in learning since federal or state would require teachers to upload their videos and allow the end-users, i.e. students, to judge and select the most comprehensive lectures that are most suitable to their learning needs.
Teachers would also benefit since they could evolve in the type of teaching styles that are most accepted or understood by students. In addition, the use of video-based systems can help teachers avoid many health-related problems due to long-term exposure to chalk and long durations of standing. Finally, for those teachers who are currently out of jobs, they can continue to lecture by creating and uploading lectures at home. For those who get the most views, they could even be sponsored by companies that are willing to support and/or maintain the website to make our future even brighter.
By the way, I am a Taiwanese immigrant and have a Mechanical Engineering degree from University of California, San Diego. I have so far benefitted greatly from the American education. However, the current economy has made it hard for many people, including myself, to acquire decent jobs without knowing the right people to open the right doors or knowing how to get through those tricky interviews. These pyramid-style filters make it unfair to those individuals who are just as good, if not better, in succeeding a given role. I believe having the knowledge sharing database would allow many people to gain access to information that are sometimes only available in the elite institutions or groups. I see that there are still rooms to grow and would only hope that my advise could somehow improve people's lives, especially for the underprivileged ones.
Best Regards,
Caregiver
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