The Education Index

The previous post made the observation that the ibook as interactive textbook opens to a new form of education, which can be termed iducation characterized by active learning combined with passive teaching.

The spectrum of education can be described as follows:

1. active learning + passive teaching = iducation = motivated students + few lectures
2. passive learning + active teaching = non-motivated students + many lectures
3. active learning + active teaching = motivated students + many lectures,
4. passive learning + passive teaching = non-motivated students + few lectures.

This leads into the Education Index EI defined as

• EI = Learning Result/Teaching Cost = Course Grade per Euro ,

which is something a Minister of Education understands and is interested in knowing in order to properly allocate resources.

Let us compare the EI for the above cases 1 - 4 covering the spectrum of education:

1. EI = 10/1 = 10
2. EI = 1/10 = 0.1
3. EI = 10/10 = 1
4. EI = 0.1/1 = 0.1

Swedish Minister of Education Jan Björklund prescribes a system with many lectures for which the EI is at most 1, to be compared with EI = 10 for iducation.

But is it true that iducation forms motivated students?

Yes, the iPad as educational toy is met with great enthusiasm by both children, teachers and parents. With the iPad kids will learn to read, write and count already in preschool, because they want to learn, and they want to learn because they are motivated, and they are motivated by the iPad. If you don't think this is true, give a child an iPad and see what happens!

And if you know to read, write and count, then you are ready for a university education, right after preschool!

The Free Open Web-University

Wilhelm von Humboldt: True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united.

The free open university of Wilhelm von Humboldt of the 19th century, originating from the Enlightenment leading into the liberal arts education of our time, was in the second half of the 20th century replaced by the non-free closed university with the students locked into fixed educational programs characterized by ownership and control:

• universities own and control educational programs
• educational programs own and control courses, teachers and students
• teachers own and control students in classrooms through text books
• texts books own and control student minds by exercises and problems preparing for exam.

The program ownership generates income to the university, because students (or the state) pay and the control secures that students get prepared to pass exams, which is required to cash the money.

This non-free closed university is today troubled by decreasing enrollment and/or examination, and is now also challenged by the web-university as the modern form of Humboldt's free open university.

The web-university is run by the best scientists giving their science for free to free students owned by nobody. University bureaucrats have good reasons to be worried...

The Interactive Text Book

A classical math text book has limited interactivity.

Since the digital CD has replaced the analog vinyl record, it is natural to expect that the digital ebook will replace the analog printed book, and this is in fact already happening.

But how long will the CD and the ebook last?

The CD has already largely been replaced by iTunes and iTunes is now being replaced by Spotify and The Cloud: You no longer need to store your music yourself in your book-case or your computer, since it is better handled by The Cloud. With an Internet connection you can listen to any music you want, at a very small cost.

Will the ebook face the same fate? In particular, narrowing the question to the educational text book and learning, what will be the role and form of the text book in the education of tomorrow, in what can be called iducation?

I have met this question when trying to find the proper medium for math education as

1. ebook,
2. Apple iBook
3. or something else?

Both 1 and 2 pose difficulties in conversion from pdf to ebook formats, and the lack of support of Latex in iBook Author, by Apple announced as a revolution in text books for education.

I have then been led into something else, into the idea of the interactive book as the new ibook

which I am now testing as Mathematics Simulation Technology on Wordpress.

The basic features of a ibook, making it different it from a standard ebook or printed book, are

• an ibook is interactive
• an ibook is connected to the web.

The idea of a classical book is to capture the mind of the reader and lock it into the book. Although the reader is supposed to be active, the reader cannot directly interact with the book, because the book is has no input window, only a loudspeaker for output.

Realizing that learning basically comes from trial-and-error in conjunction with interactive feed-back, it seems pretty clear that the interactive ibook with feed-back will be the best book for education.

The university of today seeks to lock the student into educational programs (to access the money coming with the student), which fits with the classical text book, but not with the ibook.

The idea of iBook Author is to open for authors to introduce interactive multimedia of the form offered on the web by HTML5.

One may the ask what iBook can offer which the web cannot?