Comments for JENSTERJUICE

Comment on The FB rants on Education and the Philippines by Guest :)

Guest :) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:04:00 +0000

Interesting discussion. As a recruiter I see many problems in Philippines. No idea what kind of pressure the CS education involves, but when a fresh grad can not answer to a request like ‘choose your favourite topic on CS and present it to me’ because ‘oh, everything was too theoretical, I forgot’, or for ‘what is the best CS book you’ve read’ you get ‘none, I use google and online tutorials’, you can’t really blame the ‘society’. You do something about it and you’ll see how high-end jobs will start coming.

Comment on Overconsumption: The narrative is not the media, it is the sale. by Nicole Sylianteng

Nicole Sylianteng — Fri, 13 May 2011 05:23:00 +0000

yeah, seriously. we don’t need more STUFF. we just need to make the stuff we have work/communicate BETTER.

Comment on Overconsumption: The narrative is not the media, it is the sale. by Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 12 May 2011 18:20:00 +0000

Yeah, the Story of Stuff is amazing! I was just being a smartass about your cheesecake thing, btw. Although I do agree, we should know where everything eventually ends up. It shouldn’t always be up to some guy to clean up our mess. Are you familiar with Seth Godin (http://bit.ly/hUSrvu)? Like we always have that response of “well it’s not my job.” That’s why I’m pretty fascinated with usability. It’s beyond the simple task of just making things look nice. It’s really getting to the core of the problem, rather than just altering something cosmetically.

Comment on Overconsumption: The narrative is not the media, it is the sale. by Nicole Sylianteng

Nicole Sylianteng — Thu, 12 May 2011 16:34:00 +0000

The Story of Stuff is partly responsible for turning me away from Product Design into Interaction Design. I’m really kind of fascinated by the waste industry. Who takes care of all our crap, and how do they deal with it?! It’s because of things like this that I appreciate stuff like Sugru (sugru.com) too… It’s responsible for the dilemma I have everytime I throw something in the trash (ie. my cheesecake container post)

Comment on That Dumb Kid by Jamspree

Jamspree — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:53:00 +0000

I agree 100%. Thanks for articulating what I couldn’t !

Comment on That Dumb Kid by Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:17:00 +0000

Ah, I thought you were referring mostly to the US school system probably because they’re not all that dissimilar. No doubt there is room for improvement at every level all over the world. We’re quickly becoming a nation of latte-makers and burger-flippers…

Comment on That Dumb Kid by Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:07:00 +0000

Yes, I’m not saying that we didn’t have great teachers, but they were few and far between. And thanks, I feel the same way.

Comment on That Dumb Kid by The FB rants on Education and the Philippines | JENSTERJUICE

The FB rants on Education and the Philippines | JENSTERJUICE — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:05:15 +0000

[...] Post navigation ← That Dumb Kid [...]

Comment on That Dumb Kid by Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 02:58:00 +0000

Thanks, this actually proves my point. The American school system lets you try out a bunch of things like programming and drafting as subjects. We never have a choice on which classes we took. Catholicism is part of the curriculum, and it actually feeds into everything we studied. If you make mistakes, you WILL be publicly humiliated, like standing outside or at the back of the class, your exam papers will be tacked up on the board for everyone to see, etc. The culture is just extremely different, but I won’t get into it much more. But I definitely had some great teachers who actually taught me well, who I will always be grateful for – but I can count them with one hand.

I agree with giving kids the basics firsts, sure. I never said don’t teach math. As for details of formulas and such, I think that if you can’t at least break it down in its simplest core to a kid, possibly with simple metaphors, you need to make an effort to be a better teacher. The point I’m trying to get at is – how do we come up with new ways to teach that doesn’t alienate parts of the group? Seriously, the Khan Academy teaches everything from your ABC’s to calculus, but instead of staring at the teacher on and on while trying to stay awake, he teaches kids all kinds of ways to approach math, science, etc. – from YouTube. The homework becomes the lectures, and the classroom becomes a place for assisted practical learning. They do all the problems in class with the teacher, their peers, or themselves – depending on how they prefer to learn. So instead of staring at the clock all day, you’re actually productive. Just simple shifts in method like that.

Comment on That Dumb Kid by R. Yu

R. Yu — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 10:12:00 +0000

Nice post. I can definitely relate to what you’ve gone through – I also graduated from ICA and Ateneo before coming to San Francisco where I’m currently taking up Industrial Design. To be fair, though, I did have some teachers in ICA who really championed creative thinking and tried to train us to think out of the box – but I think the problem there was there there were only a very, very small handful of teachers who were doing so. Everyone else was still going with the rote memorization method. If you didn’t luck out and get that particular teacher, well…you didn’t get taught that way. And having a system in place that stifled their efforts didn’t help at all.

I believe kids today need to be taught that it’s OK to think differently / creatively and that it’s OK to make mistakes and fail as long as you learn from them and use it to further your thinking / apply it to your next attempt. I think that curiosity also needs to be fostered within them so that they become more aware of everything that goes on around them and in doing so, hopefully try to change the status quo.