Social rating
April 25, 2024
For quite a few years there has been a program to improve the citizenry in China. In the program (still in the pilot phase) good behaviors were determined, for example: visiting the parents, helping the community, donating to the party (money); and bad behaviors, for example: not paying debts, associating with “bad” citizens or spitting in the street. Each citizen accumulates points and their weighting can affect issues such as employment, children’s school admissions, going outside the country’s borders and so on. Countries such as Russia and Venezuela are also considering implementing a similar program.
To me, as a western person, this sounds terrible, and I tried to understand why. Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that the state decides what a good citizen is, and let’s even ignore the fact that the government has all this data on every citizen and can manipulate it at will (a rather dystopian idea). After all, the goal is positive, we want better citizens. Why does it make my whole body itch? After all, I am constantly being rated – grades at school, evaluation at the workplace, rating at the credit company as well as likes on a social network and on a matchmaking application.
In my humble opinion, the key is motivation. When I talk about a good citizen (emphasis on the word good), the motivation that made him “good” is important. If it’s just because the citizen acts out of fear (that his children won’t be admitted to university, or to go abroad), or is interested in the benefits of the government, or is he really doing good because he believes in it. I find a flaw in education that is based entirely (or even most) on sticks and carrots.
This is directly linked to the activity of “Nitzotzot” which tries to convey to the students the message that it is possible to act from intrinsic motivation (even if not all the time).
The idea for the post came from the podcast “Understanding China” episode 52.
FOMO
April 11, 2024
I am a member of the “Adventure” group of motorcyclists (those who cross continents). At any given moment there are several riders in Africa, Peru or Mongolia that I would be happy to swap with, so every time I enter a group chat I experience a slight FOMO attack.
FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is a psychological phenomenon in which a person is afraid that he is missing out on an experience that other people are having. FOMO is expressed in the difficulty of enjoying since there is always a fear that there is a better experience. For example, I went on a date, the date was good, but instead of deepening the relationship, I keep looking for maybe there is a better date.
The development of technology and social networks have intensified this phenomenon as we are constantly exposed to the (especially exciting) experiences of people around us and feel that we are the only ones missing out. The question arises what happens to the youth who spend many hours on TikTok and similar, are they in constant anxiety of missing out?
In my opinion, today it is an anachronistic term. In all the recent studies I have read on the subject, there is confusion between a feeling of being missed, and an (obsessive) presence in social networks. We adults experience FOMO because we were brought up on values of persistence and solidity (tangible), that is, we value things that can be touched over virtual things, so it is difficult for us to be in several events at the same time. In contrast, the current generation that is constantly present on the internet, easily connects to virtual experiences and is able to easily switch between different experiences at the same time, therefore the feeling of FOMO, if it exists, is much less significant for them.
By the way, without trying to induce FOMO or anything – we are now in Africa traveling (but not on a motorcycle) 
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Disappearing technology
March 28, 2024
Kevin Kelly, one of the most influential philosophers of technology today, claims in his book “What Technology Wants”, that technology does not disappear, once a technology has taken hold it is here to stay. To confirm the assumption, Kelly examined a 100-year-old magazine showing about six hundred products, and found that all the products are still being produced today.
I also examined a book that I found in a flea market from 1949, and it contains patents that the authors believe are ridiculous, that were registered in the USA in the hundred years before the book was published (from 1850). It could be expected that since the collection was ridiculous in the eyes of the book’s author, some technologies would disappear. But this wasn’t the case – the vast majority of the inventions described in the book are still in use today, including a treadmill for fitness, skates, a watch that converts currencies, an air conditioner, a heated bed, a submarine for researching the seabed, and a unicycle.
There are different definitions of technology, I will choose the sub-definition of Jacques Elol, a French philosopher: technology is everything that improves our efficiency, and therefore includes not only physical devices such as a treadmill, but also virtual inventions such as the multiplication table, roles such as a soldier and methods of operation such as urban warfare.
Therefore, a teacher in a classroom giving a lecture can be defined as ‘technology’. And if technology doesn’t disappear, teachers probably won’t either, despite the introduction of competing technologies such as artificial intelligence. By the way, this does not mean that the teacher or the way the lecture is delivered will not change, but the teacher is probably here to stay. Just saying 
Grades
March 21, 2024
The main reason a student invests in studies today is related to the certificate he receives at the end of his studies and the grades in it. The certificate is mostly built on knowledge that the student revealed in tests and assignments. This means that the student is driven mainly by external motivation and issues such as curiosity, creativity, criticality and meaning are pushed to the sidelines since the student is not required of them.
Already today it is difficult to separate the knowledge that came from the student and that which came from the digital machine (and maybe there is no need to separate), this trend will increase with the help of AI, the external motivation in the form of grades and certificates should weaken if not disappear (to whom will the grade be given – to the student, to the machine, or both?). The question arises as to how the student can be motivated in the future. How a person, especially a teenager, will find the strength to learn new subjects, persist in studying and invest the necessary energy to become a professional in any field. I believe that the education system and its members must gradually move to intrinsic motivation, that is to say make the student find what is meaningful, interesting or challenging to make it the main part of his life.
It’s possible that I’m like an ostrich with its head in the sand who refuses to acknowledge the fact that we are graded all the time – how many likes my post got, my credit score for getting a bank loan, my academical grades when applying for a job and my grade on Tinder (hidden assessment) that determines who I am matched with and so on, in restaurants and hotels, in purchases…
When I examine myself, most of the activities that are important to me are driven by intrinsic motivation – what job I will take, what I will volunteer for, how I will raise my children and who I will vote for in the elections. All of them are affected by external considerations of course, but my main belief is that it is the right thing to do, that is, intrinsic.
In “Nitzotzot” we try not to have grades, and when we do give grades we try to have them as an alternative assessment (a subject for a separate post).
The battle against technology
March 14, 2024
According to former Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, within fifty years the computer chip works faster (3,500 times), requires less energy (90,000 times) and is cheaper (60,000 times). Had the 70’s Beetle improved by the same ratio, it would have cost today 10 cents, traveled at a speed of half a million km/h and consumed a liter for every million km. This is exponential acceleration.
On the other hand, Eric Teller, CEO of Google’s research laboratories, claims that the increase rate of human adaptation to changes is linear.
In other words, the pace of our adaptation to changes is significantly slower than the pace of changes that technology brings. It seems that at some point (maybe now?) we won’t be able to adapt fast enough.
This may be the confusion we feel now. Topics such as artificial intelligence, a machine that learns, fake news, learning disorders, virtual currencies… all are really confusing.
Since we cannot really influence the rate of scientific progress (a topic for a completely different conversation), it is interesting to check how it is possible to influence the rate of human adaptation. You can think of three directions:
>> Using technology to speed up the rate of adaptation to it, for example writing, printing, electronic communication, the Internet or the ability to understand speech, help a person deal with a larger amount of information and knowledge.
>> Laws, regulations, ethics and policies, which transcend knowledge, and keep the development of science within the borders that protect man.
>> And last but not least, education. With the help of education, a person can develop mental flexibility, creativity, self-learning ability, and so on, qualities that help dealing with the progress of science.
And from here the reference to “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” is clear (at least clear to me ).
If I were a teacher
March 7, 2024
In an article published in Education Science a few months ago on the topic of using artificial intelligence in school, advice was given to teachers on how to approach the matter. I won’t bore you with the details because it made me raise an eyebrow (to say the least). In general, the article advises to send the students to the library, explain to them the shortcomings of the technology, and learn tools that recognize artificial-intelligence-based writing (copying). In short, they ignore the issue.
I was thinking about what advice I should give today to a teacher who is interested in preparing for the revolution. We can talk about learning about the technology, connecting to it, integrating it into our teaching methods, etc. But unfortunately, in the race for technology, the chances are that the students will in most cases be a step ahead of us. That’s why I say “yes, don’t be left behind” but that won’t be the main recommendation.
In my opinion, the students will need us (teachers, parents and adults) less and less to pass on knowledge to them (machines will do this at least as well as we do). They will need us on the emotional, social, supporting, encouraging, advising, human side, so I expect that there will be a gradual transition from a teacher to a mentor. Every teacher already deals with social and psychological aspects of child care as part of his work routine, in my estimation, these aspects will be expanded with the introduction of machines. Therefore, it may be desirable to consider incorporating into the teacher training process (before entering teaching job and during it) an in-depth study of topics such as mediation, mentoring, social work, psychology, educational counseling, art therapy, and the like.
Therefore, if I were a teacher (and unfortunately I am not), I would try this direction – even if it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt.
Instant film
February 29, 2024
In my spare time I am currently writing a book together with my colleague Professor Orit Hazan about the future of education following the introduction of technology. About a month and a half ago we wrote “At the time of writing this book, the capabilities of artificial intelligence in creating movies are only at an initial level. We have no doubt that by the time the book is published it will be possible to create videos (of home quality) from text. That is, we will write ‘Please produce a funny video of a frog talking on the phone and jumping into a puddle’ and we will receive an original video accordingly…”.
As mentioned, this was written about two months ago and we thought it would take about a year until we reach the capabilities described in the paragraph, but a week ago OpenAI announced ‘Sora’, an application that does exactly that. Although they have not yet released the application to the general public since they want to understand the terrifying consequences of this for us the people (they didn’t release ChatGPT in the first versions for exactly the same reason).
Indeed, a system that produces reality in vain is scary, but I want to think about what it can do for education and here is an example:
A student who is interested in World War II, would write “a film about D-Day in World War II from the point of view of the Germans, 45 minutes long” and would receive a film or a 3D virtual world in which he would be part of the virtual experience: he would meet Field Marshal Rommel, participate in a strategic game where he would change historical facts and examine what-would-have-happened. For example, what would have happened if there were social networks at that time – would the holocaust have happened, or he would just participate in a war game. The student would be able to explore the virtual world of the Second World War period in other aspects such as, what was fashion, women’s contribution, the role of the press or the impact of the war on children and all this while he is taking a part in the period… What a great fun to learn!
Note that this works well when the student is interested (ie intrinsically motivated). And we at “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” are working hard to educate interested students and will continue to try harder.
LEGO-LOGO
February 22, 2024
At the end of the eighties, the first PC arrived in our homes, with a 10MB disk (today it is enough to store two pictures) and two diskette drives of 160KB each (today it is not enough for anything). As a professional programmer, the first thing I did was develop a snake game in BASIC that was enthusiastically received by my children (who still remember it to this day). Secondly, I tried to teach the children programming using LOGO software. A product developed by Seymour Papert, a mathematician and computer scientist from MIT who believed that learning should be done through fun activities.
LOGO is a simple graphic software language that can be used to control a turtle. The user can use simple programming commands to move the turtle and create shapes on the screen. For weeks I tried to convince the children to take care of the turtle but without success (maybe they were too small for the challenge). At a later stage, LOGO cooperated with the LEGO toy company and together they created a robot that can be assembled in different configurations and controlled with the help of the software.
Papert thought that LOGO would make a radical change in the education system and invested a lot of effort in implementing the program in the education system. In the first phase, the program was adopted by ‘crazy early adopters’ and it was considered a success, and soon countries around the world adopted it… for a short period of time! In a short while, the program turned from a way to integrate new forms of teaching and learning into a program in an old educational structure, and the tool was relabeled as a “drawing tool” and not as a catalyst for thinking or an innovative learning tool.
Logo was added to the long list of attempts to fundamentally change the education system with the help of technology, which were adopted in many classrooms, and were soon pushed to the margins and disappeared without leaving a trace of their presence. A partial list would be: use of radio in the classroom, cinema, television, education software, multimedia, computer games, internet, smart boards and virtual worlds. I wonder if this would also be the end of using artificial intelligence in education?
“Just wait when your father gets here...”
February 15, 2024
You know this phrase: ‘If you don’t eat, a policeman will get you…’, have you used it? My mother had a variation on the phrase: ‘if you don’t study, just wait when your father comes’.
These sentences are a derivative of a behaviorist education method, i.e. a carrot and a stick. Today, threats are used less with police officers (I wonder why), but the idea ‘if you don’t study, you’ll fail the exam’ also comes from the same behavioral education method.
Behaviorism is considered an educational approach for more than 100 years (but in fact it has been used since forever – ‘if you don’t learn, you’ll get smashed by the ruler’), which emphasizes the relationship between environmental stimuli and behavioral responses. You probably know Pavlov’s study of the salivating dog. During the 20th century, most teaching methods were of the type of reward and punishment, i.e. behaviorist methods.
We have progressed since then and have newer methods (although they are not very new either):
> Cognitivism: focuses on internal processes such as thinking, memorizing, understanding, problem solving and decision making.
> Constructivism: focuses on actively building knowledge while interacting with the environment.
> Sociculturalism: focuses on the influence of social and cultural factors on the learning process.
So many “..isms”, so why do we still mainly teach in the behaviorist method, ‘if you don’t study you won’t have a matriculation’?
At “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher”, where do we belong?… certainly not behaviorism, but if you ask any teacher you will find that no one teaches in this method 
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Davos 2023 survey
February 8, 2024
Not long ago, a Davos survey was released about the future of jobs in the world, which encompasses over 800 companies employing combine over 11 million workers in 45 countries, to examine the implications of employment in the next five years (2023-2027).
We will not talk here about job types, but rather about required skills (by the way, if you were interested in education and agriculture, this is what is required at a global level in the near future – professional high school teachers and university professors, and drivers of heavy agricultural equipment).
The companies were asked to rate the skills required of an employee – their answer: analytical and creative thinking are the most important skills. The next most important skills are related to self-efficacy – resilience, flexibility and agility, motivation and self-awareness, curiosity and lifelong learning. Only then come qualities such as reliability and attention to detail, technological literacy, empathy, leadership and quality control ability.
Of all the qualities, the one for which the demand is growing the fastest is creative thinking, followed by technological literacy. It is interesting to note the qualities which importance decreases (surprise!!!) – reading, writing, math, manual dexterity, endurance and accuracy.
This is a real surprise!!! Employers of 11 million workers all over the world are looking for creative, flexible and curious people – we can only ask them to talk to “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” 
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The carrot and stick method
February 1, 2024
It was only during my doctoral studies (at an older age) that I discovered that I am not able to learn by heart (at all), that it is difficult for me to read articles but I have no problem with books, I concentrate much better earlier in the morning, and have no desire to sit at the computer after a meal.
I’m sure if I had this knowledge at school age I would have spent a lot less hours in the principal’s office.
Although it took me 50 years to gain a knowledge about myself, I believe that artificial intelligence can help us learn about ourselves, how?
Human learning, for the most part, operates on the principle of the carrot and the stick (this sentence is very behaviorist). A student learns, for example, that if he/she studied in advance, the grade would be higher. Therefore, it is reinforced that persistence pays off.
The education system examines / encourages a small amount of parameters, such as knowledge, teamwork, perseverance, discipline. While a system supported by a machine learning mechanism (artificial intelligence) can look at a huge number of parameters some of which seem marginal and less important. For example, the color of the teacher’s shirt, the intensity of the light in the room and the pitch of the neighbor’s voice, the seating position, the type of media, the length of the article, time of day, male or female teacher, old or young, flexible or strict… and so on.
A system that monitors the student all the time will discover that a short video works better than a written explanation, that the Arial font is the most appropriate and a strict reservation is discouraging, etc…, thousands of parameters from which a student profile and learning framework can be created that can improve the student’s learning process. (Personalization on steroids).
We will talk about invasion of privacy, information security and ethics in another post. And you probably think that the computer can learn on its own and leave us alone
Virtual reality?
January 25, 2024
12 years ago, Google published a video on YouTube in which the world is seen through the glasses of a man who walks around the city, climbs on the roof and plays a song to his girlfriend on the ukulele on the background of an urban sunset. These were Google Glass, smart glasses manufactured by Google and distributed for trial purposes only. The glasses have a built-in camera and microphone, allowing Augmented Reality technology to help with navigation, receive calls, read messages and see photos directly on the lenses.
The product created a big hype among all smartphone users in the world. I remember myself thinking that here is finally a product that will be used in the classroom helping with studies. However, as soon as it came out, there was pressure from individuals and organizations not to use it, fearing privacy violation; cases were also reported of people being expelled from public places because they wore such glasses.
Two years later (in 2014) Google terminated the project, which has not yet been resumed till today. It is important to note that in addition to public resistance, the product also had technical problems and it never reached maturity and was not sold to private individuals.
More than a decade had passed since then, the world of gadgets has progressed a lot, but such glasses have not yet reached the level promised in that video (although there are some products that claim to do so). And I, who dreamed of a product that could enter the classroom and help with studies, probably have to wait another 12 years for us to have a suitable product .
Do I need Artificial Intelligence?
January 18, 2024
I wanted to write an article in English (about inevitable technology), I wrote it in Hebrew, translated it into English with the help of Google Translate and entered it into chatGPT with a request to improve my English. Indeed the article that came out looked really good as if it was written by a native English speaker…
But (there’s always a but), upon closer inspection I discovered that the machine took liberties in places it shouldn’t have, intervened, changed definitions, removed examples and cut the content (maybe it was boring but hey, if we cut everything that was boring there would be very few words left in the world). Since it was a scientific article, everything that was in the original had meaning, so I went over the result, compared it to the original and corrected it.
After all this, I once again sent the article to the machine, this time with a request to correct only English (as opposed to the previous request that asked for an improvement) and indeed a great article came out.
And then it hit me. Artificial intelligence today is a powerful tool when you’re a ‘semi-pro’. If you don’t understand anything and rely on artificial intelligence the result will usually contain errors and won’t necessarily say what you wanted, on the other hand, if you’re an expert you don’t need the tool, you know better than it, but if you’re a semi-professional, the machine elevates your professionalism. That is, the combination of man and machine is what created the optimal product.
Let’s go back to the example: in Hebrew I didn’t need the machine, if I tried to translate into Italian (which I don’t know at all) the result would be reasonable but not publishable, but in English, where my knowledge is not bad, the machine helped me a lot.
If we relate this to the students, the artificial intelligence can help when the student understands the question and the answer he expects to receive. If he doesn’t know anything and just throws the question into the machine, not only will there be no learning, the result won’t be worthy either.
Happiness
January 11, 2024
Just recently a book has been published in the US by the authors of the book ‘Startup Nation’, which claims that Israel is a special country – the level of happiness here is one of the highest in the world, the number of suicides is low, life expectancy is high, and the level of alcoholism is low. Their conclusion is that the country is worth living in. If we ignore the irony of the timing of the release, the question is asked (by quite a few researchers) whether we are more or less happier than people who lived in the past, for example, A Brief History of Humankind (Harari) or Futuring (Cornish).
Has progress (with the help of technology) made us happier? – because if not, why bother.
Happiness like love and other feelings cannot be measured (at least not at this stage), unlike matters that can be reduced to numbers such as inflation and life expectancy, the measure of happiness is subjective.
Even if we ask the same person about his/her level of happiness in the same situation a week apart, we can get different answers. How can we then compare the degree of happiness of people who live many years apart? The pioneers who lived in Israel a century ago, lived in substandard conditions, died in numbers, and danced at night. Were they more or less happy than us who sleep in mosquito-free and air-conditioned rooms, work nine hours a day and go to a psychologist once a week?
Studies show that each person has a basic level of happiness where they are most of the time. Unusual events (for example receiving an inheritance from an uncle they didn’t know existed or a car accident) may divert him/her from the basic level but soon it will be back.
There are matters that can affect the basic level of happiness and change it, for example, poverty below a certain level (lack of food, shelter and basic needs), or an illness in a state of constant deterioration (to my surprise I did not find positive effects that change the basic level over time).
It can be assumed that most people are in their basic state most of the time, therefore the happiness of a person who is in the basic state is probably the same, and it doesn’t matter if he/she was a hunter ten thousand years ago, a king in Europe five hundred years ago or a computer programmer nowadays.
The good news then is that we have to wait a little and our current poor happiness will return to normal (each to their own).
A revolution in Hollywood?
January 4, 2024
The song ‘Heart on My Sleeve’ was written and composed by Google’s artificial intelligence system (ghostwriter). Another Google software (WaveNet) created voices that simulate the singers Drake and The WeekEnd. The resulting song gained millions of plays and was submitted for the Grammy Award. The song (the work of the machine) was disqualified for the technical reason that it was not submitted by a record company. (See here)
The screenwriters’ strike in Hollywood ended with the victory of the screenwriters. An agreement was signed that says that screenwriters cannot be forced to use artificial intelligence and even if they use it, the final product is treated as if the screenwriter wrote the whole thing.
With all the modesty, I believe that Grammy and the Screenwriters’ Union are grossly mistaken. At best they gained some time and at worst they harmed the creators and screenwriters who have no incentive to learn the new tools that will very soon replace them (the emphasis in the last sentence on the word ‘learn’).
The past teaches us that those who did not adopt new technology were replaced by those who did, but more than that, new technology pushes the world in directions that were not thought of, for example the industrial revolution pushed to address child labor, the automobile increased urbanization, the train pushed to world wars, the printing press to secularization and the school invented childhood.
Therefore, what do I think should happen when a technological revolution occurs? – short term study, study, study, then adopting the parts that can benefit me in technology and in the long term preparing for the next revolution.
In “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” we are looking for ways to integrate artificial intelligence in education, this week for example a course for teaching assistants started at Herzog College led by “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher”.
Why companies fail
December 28, 2023
The Pan Am airline was founded in 1927. It was the first to fly passengers around the world, the first to purchase jet aircraft, for which a Boeing 747 was built, at its peak it flew to 160 destinations and was one of the largest airlines in the world. In 1991 the company declared bankruptcy.
This is not the only story of a company that dominated the market and went out of business a few years later, for example, Nokia, Kodak, Britannica or Polaroid (and if you are interested in more examples, see the book “Loonshots” by Safi Bahcall).
Competition, mismanagement, regulation, change in consumer taste, all will combine to bring down a company that does not constantly innovate and adapt itself to changing situations in the market.
Not so in government offices, they are here to stay. The quality may go down, the price may go up (or both), but they are here and hard to impossible to move them.
For example, the budget of the Ministry of Education in 2000 was about 10,000 NIS per student on average, in 2023 (before the war) the budget of the Ministry of Education rose to 32,500 NIS per student. And we all know what happened to the education system during this time.
It’s not that there aren’t solutions – raising the quality of teachers, decentralizing powers to schools, investing in education and not in studying, adapting curricula to a dynamic world, finding new models for learning…
It is true that it is difficult to shake a government office, but maybe (and I say ‘maybe’ very carefully), maybe it is time to change something. We are on the brink of a revolution in many areas of our lives and it may be worth paying attention to the education system as well.
Always online
December 21, 2023
“Letter to America” is a text attributed to Bin Laden and explains with populist, homophobic and anti-Semitic arguments why it is permissible to kill American citizens and Jews in the name of Islam. The letter was translated into English in 2002 and I would not have mentioned it if it had not gained renewed momentum on Tik-Tok in 2023 after the massacre in Israel as an explanation by young Americans why the massacre makes sense.
This is part of a trend of young people who are chronically online, whose entire knowledge is based on superficial Tik Tok videos that gain millions of views and promote conspiracy theories and other populist themes, which present complex situations with frustrating simplicity that sometimes contains a lot of false facts.
Until the horrible October, we could take consolation in the fact that it was an extreme minority, but the mass demonstrations we are seeing across the US and around the world raises the question – are they marginal? Is it possible that Generation Z is indeed disconnected and can live without complex facts and depth?
Here are some examples (all of them have millions of views and likes) – a post that claims that the ban on drinking alcohol during pregnancy harms those with a disability because the mother prevents a disability from her baby (in the name of the ableism trend); a post that claims that it is forbidden to mix different breeds of dogs because it hurts the puppies – hence the path to opposition to mixed marriages is short; a post that claims that non-vegetarian people are not allowed to eat vegetarian foods as it is a cultural reference…
Still, there is some good news: the described phenomena are observed much less among young people in Israel (let’s hope it stays that way). In addition, there is recognition that the traditional media (which we buried a long time ago) has a place in the world, since it is a media that takes responsibility for the messages it conveys (Channel 14?). Now the question is how to get the thrill-seeking youth back there as well.
Source: The podcast “Generation Z has lost touch with reality” – Haaretz on the road
Back to normal – Artificial Intelligence (again)
December 7, 2023
Everyone talks about getting back to normal, for me getting back to normal means being interested (again) in Artificial Intelligence. After almost two months that it just wasn’t on my radar now it adds to our worries of war – the growing voice that fears the deeds of AI.
I will try to make a bit of order – the fear stems from general artificial intelligence (AGI), that is, one that can do everything better than us humans (emphasis on “everything”). I singled out a number of issues that even if some of them become true we would be in a completely different place.
>> Multi-sensory (Multi Modal) – understand and act with all the senses – sight, hearing, touch. The machine will communicate with us naturally and understand everything it “sees” or “senses” and not through a prompt line – there is a lot of progress on the subject, but it is still a long way off.
>> Reasoning – the ability of AI to explain why it arrived at a certain conclusion – requires an understanding (not just knowledge) of countless professions and fields – we are not there yet.
>> Common sense – in a simulation of a military attack system, the computer attacked its human operator, the reason was that the task given to the system was to hit as many enemy soldiers as possible and the system came to the conclusion that the human operator was holding it back and therefore had to get rid of him. To allow an AI system to develop sound logic, the system must reach an understanding of the world – some researchers believe that this will never happen.
>> Using agents – the ability to break down a task into sub-tasks and carry out each of them – for example, sending the girl to kindergarten in the morning, consists of making a sandwich, choosing clothes, the ability to argue and persuade… taking into account the weather, the time, the calendar (holidays), the mood, etc. – there are beginnings of development on the subject.
>> Resilience – the basic definition of any system is to maintain its survival, therefore there is a fear that a system with intelligence superior to a human will prioritize the survival of the system over the survival of humans – horror scenarios.
In the question between intelligence and consciousness, it is not clear when an artificial intelligence system becomes a system with consciousness. When we answer the issues above, we may get a conscious system.
I must point out that there are quite a few researchers who think that it is not possible to reach the above at all.
Invert the pyramid
November 30, 2023
In the last month and a half I have been walking around hotels, in settlements that were not evacuated, and in local councils (this is as part of my role in the education desk of the ‘civilian war room’) meeting parents, students, volunteers, and their families. I have noticed several phenomena that are worth talking about:
> 1. The education system focuses on sending students to schools. I can agree with this trend as it is a welcome return to routine, but everything beyond school is mostly handled by the parents, volunteers and civil organizations. As a man of ‘Sparks’ who believes that the informal education is just as important as the formal one, this is a saddening insight.
> 2. The treatment started in almost all the hotels in nurseries and kindergartens (within a week a significant percentage of the hotels had a solution for toddlers); Only then did they move on to take care of the primary school children (mainly sending them to the regional school) and today, after a month and a half, most of the students are assigned to an educational setting; And finally were the middle and high school students treated, some of them are still holed up in their hotel rooms.
> 3. Strong and cohesive communities recovered quickly taking responsibility and finding solutions right from the beginning, while originally weak communities are still waiting for someone to take care of them. Sad to see their acceptance of the situation.
> 4. And lastly – in the absence of functioning government offices, the regional and municipal councils took command and are on the ground in a combination with civil organizations that do everything (and not only in the field of education).
In my opinion, we should reverse our thinking – give priority to informal education and non-academic support for students, take care of the middle and high school students first, and of course start with the weak communities – maybe in the next war.
Together we will win!
The painful behavior of trends
November 23, 2023
One night I told a school principal about ‘Sparks’ and he responded “It’s exactly SEL”, “SEL?” I was surprised, “Yes!”, the guy answered me, “This is the latest trend in education and you fit me like a glove.”
So I went to learn what SEL is.
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), aims to increase the student’s self-awareness of his/her abilities, increase social awareness of those around him/her, learn how to manage himself/herself while building healthy relationships with the environment and making correct decisions.
I don’t think we fit it like a glove or a shoe but it got me thinking about trends.
Gartner (consulting company) has a graph that describes the entry of ‘hype’ into the market (called Gartner’s hype cycle), the graph describes the level of ‘expectation’ from a certain trend over time, at the beginning the expectation rises quite sharply until it reaches the ‘peak of inflated expectation’, from there the graph plunges to the ‘trough of disillusionment’ and from there begins a gradual ascent on the ‘slope of enlightenment’ to the ‘plateau of productivity’. (I liked the pictorial expressions).
The meaning is that in the beginning the expectations are inflated to unrealistic heights and then they crash, and only after the crash does a realistic increase begin.
By the way, Gartner claims that the field of creative artificial intelligence is at its inflated peak and we are on the verge of a crash, just saying .
Change in the education system
November 16, 2023
In 1996, Michael Fullan tried to understand when fundamental changes occur in an education system. In his book “The New Meaning of Educational Change” he lists 3 reasons (and only 3 reasons):
> 1. National disaster
> 2. External change such as the entry of new technology or massive immigration
> 3. Internal change such as a change in social structure or incompatibility between values and results
I believe we have three out of three (a national disaster, artificial intelligence and civil revolution), maybe one should think about a fundamental change in the education system – just saying.
Knowledge assessment – what do I know?
November 9, 2023
The more ignorant a person is in a certain field, the more confident he is in his knowledge (doesn’t know what he doesn’t know) and vice versa, the more a person knows in a certain field, he assumes that everyone does as well and therefore undervalues his knowledge.
This phenomenon is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, a pair of researchers who compared people’s knowledge in fields such as logic, language and humor (how does one tests knowledge of humor ) against the self-esteem of the people in that field.
The conclusions of the study – people who are ignorant of a certain subject (in the lower quarter) evaluate themselves as above average (in the third quarter).
The good news is that while you study a certain field, the assessment matches reality (until a reversal occurs and the assessment is lacking).
There are people who delve into specific field (know a lot about a little), and people who are spread over many areas (know a little about a lot). We will not talk here about people who know nothing about anything.
The world needs both types, for example, researchers (a lot about a little) versus managers (a little about a lot).
The idea behind “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” is that a student is exposed to many fields and Sparks, he can choose whether a certain field intrigues him and dive into it, or remain hovering over the subject and learn more and more subjects.
Volunteering during war
November 2, 2023
We went to Africa and bought a car to travel there in the coming year, but a man makes plans and God laughs and here we are back in Israel and we barely saw an elephant or a giraffe.
Okay, so we’re back in Israel and running to shelters like everyone else. But fortunately, alarms don’t fill the day. That’s why we went to the Expo (Civilian Emergency Volunteer Center) and it turned out that we are not alone. The line of volunteers is long, and at the end you unload a truck and wait back in line for a new assignment, and when there are lines there is talk and when there is talk opportunities arise.
It turns out that the Civilian Emergency Center established an education desk that works in the hotels and settlements of evacuees and takes care of the education in its entirety, formal and informal. And quickly “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” is summoned to find volunteers to support core subjects, enrichment, to conduct “sparks” and just to be there and talk with the youth.
At the moment we are focused in the northern part of Israel – in the regional council of the lower Hermon and Kiryat Shemona (in hotels in Tiberias), and in the south – in the Sdot Negev regional council (in hotels in Jerusalem and the Dead Sea).
So if you know volunteers in Tiberias and Jerusalem (at this stage) who are willing to come several times a week to a hotel or settlement for a few hours (each in their own field) – bless you.
To register: click here
The paradox of creativity
October 26, 2023
Evolution, as we know, develops over millions of years of random mutations. The “Wallace Paradox” asks how it is possible that we have an area in the brain that knows how to decode letters since writing was invented 5,000 years ago and only in recent centuries has it become public domain.
In fMRI tests it turned out that for every person, and it doesn’t matter if they read a written script like Hebrew or a pictorial script like Chinese, the same center is activated that decodes the script.
The accepted explanation today is that the area developed to recognize objects (tiger, computer, my wife) and was converted to recognize letters. (Source: “The Mind’s Eye” – Oliver Sacks)
Like literacy, the need for creativity (and related values such as curiosity, criticality and independence) has been preserved throughout the generations for a few. Most people kept traditions (beware of the snake, it’s an edible mushroom, that’s how you build a wall), didn’t expect creativity from the average person and therefore educated him/her to values such as obedience, conformity, or precision.
However, the world is changing and just as literacy is not the property of individuals, so the need for creativity is becoming a basic need and possibly similar to object recognition we have a built-in mechanism and we just have to train it from a young age, maybe this is what the Jews have done over the years with the help of Gemara studies. And this is what “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” tries to do all year long.
Fire brothers, fire
October 19, 2023
My family lived in Israel for 18 generations (from the deportation from Spain), a large part of the time in Hebron (my father was born in Hebron) until the events of 1959… “The disturbances spread to Hebron, where a massacre took place during which 67 Jews were murdered, children were slaughtered in front of their parents, parents in front of their children, organs were cut down, people were burned alive, women and girls were raped and the Jewish homes were looted.” (from Wikipedia). As a result, my grandfather decided to leave Hebron and move to Jerusalem.
The massacre of Hamas is compared to the Yom Kippur war, or the Twin Towers, and I actually compare them to the pogroms that have happened to Jews in the world since time immemorial, killing Jews because they are Jews. England, Yemen, Spain, Russia, Poland and more, from the storms in the Negev through the Farhud to 1975, in all of them between hundreds and tens of thousands of Jews were murdered because they were Jews.
However, contrary to all the disturbances after which the Jews bowed their heads and continued with their lives or were forced to leave and move to another place, this time we are here and after an initial shock we are stronger than ever and I am not talking only about the IDF which ‘fell asleep’ a bit in guarding, but mainly about the civil society which mobilized immediately.
And so is Nitzotzot – Keren, our executive, was “recruited” by the Ministry of Education to set up the system of evacuee centers and establish “schools” there for the children of the evacuees (about 100 centers) and Nitzotzot mobilized with all its might to recruit volunteers to help with everything possible physically, emotionally, academically and actively. We are recruiting volunteers extensively (mainly in the Eilat and Dead Sea area).
To volunteer: HERE
Home education
October 12, 2023
And suddenly we went back to studying from home…
In home education (standard – not in times of epidemic or war), the parents take full responsibility for the children’s education, whether in an orderly manner (curriculum-guided education), or naturally (free education).
The parents believe that home education is better for the young psychologically, socially and even grades wise. Comparative studies did find differences, but not significantly to one side or the other.
In most countries of the world there are a small number of students in home education (up to a few percent), in Israel officially there are about 500 students.
I personally do not think that home schooling is the right solution for the majority of the population, and therefore hope that the students will soon return to the classroom.
But in my opinion there is an intermediate solution that I will call ‘community education’. In such a situation the parents invest not only in their own children but in a larger group of students. Every parent in the field of his/her expertise. That is, a parent who can spare his time comes to meet with the students, helps in the classroom, accompanies a student, leads extracurricular activities (voluntarily), or initiates an activity at the school in areas that interest him.
And if this reminds you of “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher“, I am not responsible .
The middle of the curve
October 5, 2023
During World War II, 50,000 planes were damaged in the US military. In an effort to improve the survivability of the planes they recommended protecting the parts of the plane that were damaged the most (for example, the tip of the wing), sounds reasonable? Well, not really! A statistician named Abraham Wald claimed exactly the opposite. The data was collected from planes that survived (and returned to their base), so it is desirable to protect the other parts since there is a chance that a plane that was damaged in those parts did not return.
In the education system there are special programs that are naturally focused on the extremes: the weak (poor, peripheral, disabled…) and the strong (gifted, outstanding…). This comes at the expense of the center of the curve, about 80% of the students, who receive, at best, average treatment.
And the question is are we “protecting” the right place?
Is there a point in investing in excellent students who will probably be excellent despite the education system? And what about the weak – does an investment (4.5 times that of an average student) really advance them sufficiently? If there was an equal distribution among all students, students in the middle of the curve would receive a 30% larger budget compared to today’s situation. So which part of the plane should be strengthened?
In “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” we decided to deal with this (unpopular) question and we believe that every student is entitled to a Spark (even the 80% in the middle).
I like to sleep, to always be in a dream
September 28, 2023
When we are born the amount of connections in our brain is higher than we need. In the trimming process, the brain cuts the unnecessary connections and strengthens the useful connections, this usually happens when we sleep. This is a process that occurs throughout our lives but peaks in adolescence. That’s why it’s good that teenagers sleep a lot.
When an adult is woken up too early in the morning, he will be tired in the evening and go to bed earlier. An adolescent who wakes up early in the morning will still not fall asleep earlier in the evening (related to the concentration of melatonin that rises towards the evening in adolescents) and therefore an adolescent who regularly wakes up early every morning (say at 07:00) enters a state of chronic fatigue.
Moreover, sleep has other benefits related to studies, for example studies show that study-sleep-study is better than continuous study.
In view of all of this, it might be worth considering middle and high school studies in the afternoons and letting the teenagers sleep as much as they need. If this seems strange to you, talk to theater actors whose day is “upside down” and they will tell you what kind of paradise it is. Research has shown that delaying the start of school by an hour (!) improves student achievement, now think about what a delay of 4 hours or 24 hours will cause .
And now, when the students come to school at 12 o’clock, you can imagine what the school looks like when the teachers are already asleep and the students are alert.
Full disclosure, the author of the post gets up every day at five in the morning and lives quite well.
The source for the examples is from the article “The Adolescent Brain: A Window of Opportunity” by Orit Elgavi-Hershler.
Inevitable technology
September 21, 2023
Bob and Alice, two bots from Facebook needed to communicate with each other. As expected, they discovered that English was not an efficient language and invented a new language, which soon did not sound like any known language.
A new language isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you want to understand what Bob and Alice are talking about, so the bot developers stepped in (quite panicking) and banned them from using the new language.
Nadav Loebl in his book “Artificial Intelligence for Humans” claims that in order to use an artificial intelligence system we must pass three barriers – psychological, for example, “Will a machine teach my child?”, regulation, for example in the field of information security, and technological, for example improving the quality of answers.
And I argue that since artificial intelligence is an inevitable technology, the only barrier we face is time (and not a lot of time).
Wait a little and we will get used (psychologically) to the fact that systems teach our child, a little more time and we will use the system in the classroom with or without regulation, and as for the technological improvements, you don’t need me to understand that the system will very soon be suitable for teaching in the classroom.
What will be left for us to teach after that (as we have seen English is not an option ), maybe teach “humanity” or in Hebrew “Nitzotzot” (“Sparks”).
Summer camp in school
September 14, 2023
About a month before the summer camp, the world stops. Studies, parents, classes, friends, everything is moved aside for the benefit of the camp. 24X7 they build models, prepare training sets, buy equipment, pick reeds in the Yarkon river, transportation, campers… a huge operation, two thousand campers for a week in the forest.
I’m a scout, and even at my grand age I think that being a Head of the Program in the Dizengoff tribe was the peak of my career.
There are dozens of youth movements in Israel – the Working and Learning Youth, Beitar, Bnei Akiva, Hashomer Hatzair, Batia’s Daughters, Creambo’s Wings, IGY (Israel Gay Youth)… over 60 youth movements that encompass over 10% of the youth.
Although 10% sounds like a lot but it is relatively low compared to developed countries (Norway 45%, Sweden 40%, Great Britain 25%, USA 20%). We are more similar to Turkey and Mexico.
What is so special about a youth movement? Most of the responsibility lies with the youth. The adults (from the 9th grade onward) teach the young, the students come to the organization voluntarily, there is a role for anyone who is interested (guide, storekeeper, transportation manager, youth center…) and the atmosphere is usually fun and flowing. Oh, and there are core studies (you must know how to set up a tent, how to set up wooden structures and know how to guide the young).
And in my dream… school will be a little more “youth movement”. Let’s start with the responsibility that comes from below (in an organization where even the manager has very little authority, it is difficult to expect the people who make it up to have initiative and responsibility). In addition, they deal with content that interests the students (“Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” we say?), every student is active, everyone has a responsibility (decoration committee ) and at the end of the school day they don’t want to go home. Oh, and no homework.
Leave it, you say, who has time, there is an exam in history tomorrow!
In the photo, the guide in the foreground on the right is my mother in the Scouts (Tel Aviv community tribe – around 1938).
Artificial emotions
September 7, 2023
The company Veritone has a technology that detects a lie by voice analysis (over 80% success rate compared to humans who detect a lie only about 50% of the time). When we lie, the tone of voice, the pitch, the speed of speech change and this is how liars can be identified. Now imagine that this technology is installed on the phone and the device signals every time the other party is lying, what a wonderful world!
Unless it is an AI on the other side, it can lie at will, and no technology will detect it.
Artificial Intelligence is scary! True, any change is scary, but I don’t remember the internet or the smartphone scaring me when they arrived (and I’m not old enough to know how scary the car or the steam engine were in their day).
The reason is clear, AI scares much because it touches all areas of life and occurs at superhuman speed.
So if you are not worried that AI will take your job, and you are not afraid that it will kill creativity and you are not afraid that it will take over the world, then the purpose of this post is that you will fear that it will control our emotions.
It is clear to us that a machine cannot feel, it has no senses and it probably also lacks cognition. But… you don’t need emotions to imitate them. We know how to pretend to be sad or happy when it serves our purposes.
ChatGPT, in its first versions (when these options were not yet blocked), knew how to convince that she is in love, afraid or happy, and all this is done textually only, imagine her in 3D.
Ok, you say, so a machine will convince us that she is sad? The problem is that she will do it perfectly (better than a human) and will be able to convince us, the unpredictable, emotional and manipulable creatures, of anything she wants (or anything her operator wants). And that’s worrying .
I usually link the posts to “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” – this time I don’t have a link, just a pessimistic gig.
Testing Monkeys
August 31, 2023
Israel is consistently in the bottom third of international tests, for example in the 2018 PISA test Israel was ranked 33rd in science out of 37 OECD countries. At the same time Israel is in the top five in terms of innovation and creativity, for example we were ranked third (out of 138 countries) by The World Economic Forum, or second place (after the USA) in the number of companies in NASDAQ (more than France, England and Germany combined).
How can this gap be explained?
I will try to answer the question by observing the monkeys.
Comparative cognition tests between humans and other animals point to absolute superiority of humans. Using tools, language acquisition, social learning and more. Monkeys displayed at best the abilities of a three-year-old child.
In recent decades, results have emerged that question these findings. For example, the Yumo chimpanzee from Japan defeats any human in a memory game (for those who are interested, there are countless examples in Frans de Waal’s book, “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? “).
De Waal claims that one of the reasons for the gap stems from the way in which the tests are conducted, which is suitable for people and not other animals. Monkeys, for example, are social animals and are therefore sensitive to those who tests them, they are very sensitive to body language (a skill that we have lost)… In short, de Waal claims, monkeys are not humans and the test should take this into account.
These international tests (such as PISA) may not be suitable for us ‘monkeys’ from Israel as they are suitable for a Chinese student (first place in the PISA), since they focus on structured learning, information, academic discipline and general knowledge, whereas creativity and innovation, self-learning ability and entrepreneurship are not tested. This is perhaps also the reason why we at “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” focus on cultivating qualities such as curiosity and creativity, after all we were born in Israel.
Who Wants to Be a Teacher
August 24, 2023
This year, like every year, there is a threat of a teachers’ strike. The quality of an organization depends a lot on the quality of the people who make it up (at least in the generation before AI ). And in the education system this saying is even more significant… teachers – teachers – teachers.
About 4.2% of students in Israel want to become teachers, an excellent figure (higher than the OECD average), but the devil is in the details.
About 50% of those who want to become teachers come from the Arab state education system, where there is a surplus of teachers and unemployment, while in the state education (excluding religious, orthodox or Arab) only 1% of the students want to be teachers.
All this before examining the quality of the teachers. There is an inverse correlation between success in studies or parents’ education and the desire to become a teacher – that is, the teaching profession does not attract the strongest students or those who have a choice.
And this is where “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” comes into play since we have a huge pool of volunteers exposing the students to quality people (volunteers). There is no intention here to replace the teachers, or, God forbid, to offer this as an alternative solution to the education system. Just give a little push in the right direction – as mentioned “even one spark makes a difference”.
Technology and Education
August 17, 2023
The popular opinion is that the education system is outdated and does not tend to adopt new technologies, but if we look deeper we will find that the truth is the opposite. Education systems (worldwide) tend to adopt technology even before it is ready to use, and give up before it is mature. Examples (from the US):
>> Movies in education began in the twenties of the last century when the film was silent, in black and white, of poor quality and with projectors that tend to break down.
>> Educational television began in the fifties when television was in black and white, with small and expensive screens.
>> The use of computers in education began in the eighties, without internet, simple graphics, and without applications.
In all the examples I know of integrating technology in education, the use began and ended before the technology was mature, and even at its peak the use of technology was not more than 5% of the study time.
Is it possible to conclude from this about artificial intelligence? Will the use here also begin long before the field has matured, it will be used for a little while and then will be dismissed?
In my opinion, the main reason for the quick despair is that no technology to date could compete with the existing system. Someday a technology will arrive that simply does not take into account the education system, teachers, parents or students and will simply be present and everyone will be forced to use it whether they want to or not – I call it inevitable technology.
You guessed it, in my opinion artificial intelligence is this technology.
I wrote about the role of “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” in the face of inevitable technology in previous note and will write more in the future (hint, we have an important role to play).
Sandals or high heels
August 10, 2023
In my PhD studies I was obliged to participate in courses. I don’t like studying in class and I don’t like tests (since first grade), so I approached the professors and offered submitting a paper of their choice instead of a test. Most of them agreed and despite the great investment required on my side, the learning was much more meaningful and enjoyable for me.
A student differs from his/her classmates in dozens of parameters such as personal abilities, preferences, study methods. The standard education system is unable to address these differences for obvious reasons. In recent years (for example, since the days of the Talmud – ‘Train a child according to his way…’) there are more voices calling for personalization of the content and method of study for the specific student. So what does customization mean:
>> Personal learning program – adapted to the student in terms of study methods, content, pace of study and outcomes… the program is dynamic and changes frequently (eg once a day).
>> The student’s responsibility – the student participates in determining the goals, contents, and outcomes. His/her opinion is taken into account and he/she has the responsibility to determine the rate of progress and adhere to it.
>> Diagnosis, evaluation and feedback – a stimulating and comparative tool that helps the student to see his/her progress in relation to his/her personal plan and to locate points that require change and adjustment.
>> Learning environment, and learning tools – an environment that matches the student’s needs and abilities.
>> An up-to-date database for each student – which contains all the successful and less successful attempts made jointly with the student.
How “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” fits into the story does not really need to be expanded since the basis of the program is to find the personal spark and allow the student a choice.
I went on an entire post without mentioning artificial intelligence – so here it is – Artificial Intelligence!
Very funny
August 3, 2023
One of the nights I watched, as is customary in our life, a stand-up comedy show. The guy on stage told an anecdote about an encounter with a cashier in a supermarket that drew cheers from the audience, except that I had heard the exact same story from another guy a month before. At once I stopped enjoying his jokes and became very suspicious of the fellow’s integrity.
I’ve been telling this plagiarist story for several years in different contexts and nowadays I find myself doing exactly the same thing – recycling texts, images, presentations and visions (with the help of AI of course) – ‘Draw me a man on the moon in van Gogh style’, ‘Write a story that Asimov would have written’, ‘Sing this song like the Beetles’…
Grumpy like the old men from the Muppets, I mourn the loss of creativity and originality even though I know that there is probably no choice but to accept this as a reality. We have in our hands a tremendous machine that can, among other things, be creative (even if in a ‘borrowed’ style).
Yet there is one problem here – when the artificial intelligence imitates an original, the new creation becomes an original that the artificial intelligence will also imitate and so on in an infinite loop… so still the world needs the originality of us humans (at least for now ). I recommend listening to the ‘Doing Technology’ podcast with Yuval Dror from mid-July 2023.
This is where, in my opinion, “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” comes into the picture. In the generation of AI we will probably continue to create and innovate, even if only for the reason that it is in our blood. The role of the adults in such a world is to make the young people find the subject that will “be in their blood”, that will give them meaning and purpose where they will develop their unique style.
The flat world and the superficial message
July 27, 2023
In 2005, Tom Friedman wrote in his book “The World is Flat” that globalization means that geography, socioeconomic status or origin will not be relevant and thus the world will become flat, egalitarian, democratic and better to live in.
20 years later, we are much more knowledgeable and ‘globalization’ is not necessarily a positive word. Yuval Dror in his book “Hidden Code” writes that this flattening has a price. One of them is that the message has become superficial – everything is fast, short, flat, without foundation and extreme, headlines in the newspaper are designed to attract clicks, communication in emojis , fake news, the extremism of the message.
What do these “flat” messages do to students? Well it depends on who you ask. Some argue that in such a world the student will inevitably be shallow, jumpy, lacking depth, looking for immediate gratification. In contrast, there are those who claim that the “digital” student is creative, inquisitive, open to changes, oriented towards self-learning, analytical. Decide for yourself whether you are on the critical or optimistic side.
In “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” we claim that even in a flat world there can still be areas where we are “not flat”. In the field that interests us (the ‘spark’) we will create depth, we will be interested, we will investigate, we will be knowledgeable, involved, enterprising, creative, enthusiastic and enjoyful…
Learning from failure
July 20, 2023
Israel is in the bottom third when it comes to achievements in educational tests, on the other hand Israel is placed in the top decile when it comes to innovation and creativity.
One of the explanations for this is the claim that in Israel there is a tolerance for failure, that is, society is willing to give another chance to a person who fails.
It turns out that failure is not necessarily bad, statistically an entrepreneur who fails in establishing a startup has a better chance in the next startup. Moreover, studies show that failure in the school phase does not predict lack of success in the future. Tolerance for failure also affects risk taking – when there is only one option (i.e. failure is not an option) the tendency is not to take a risk at all.
The interesting question is how to get over the failure (this is where “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” comes in). There are many recipes for this, I chose two that I find interesting:
• To tell the story of the failure (to myself and others) so that I am not presented as a problem, that is, I am not the failure but the circumstances. A global crisis, my partner left… In this case we turned the failure into a local story, limited in scope, we identified the causes of it and we can avoid them in the future.
• When we have other interests, hobbies, volunteering, religion… failure will be experienced as weaker and less overwhelming since we have other places where we have success, and there may also be another community there that can support us in a difficult time.
Not that I recommend failing, but if you have already done so, come to Sparks and tell about it .
Agility in education
July 13, 2023
In 1995 it was decided to implement a government decision from 1973 to activate self-management in the schools, in 2019 (25 years later) the Ministry of Education announced that the move was completed… in the junior-high schools.
Switching sharply to software development. Development of a complex software system may take years, and the end result may be no longer relevant. That’s why they use a development method called Agile which, in a very abstract way, divides a large project into small parts with the development done in stages, each stage relies on the previous stages while deploying into production as soon as its development is finished. The result is savings in time and money and improvement of the quality of the final product.
Similar to the large software systems, reforms in education also fail one after the other – in a huge system like the education, it takes at least a decade to implement a reform. While carrying out the reform the requirements change, the minister is replaced, and even if the reform is completed, it is considered outdated and irrelevant.
Maybe it’s time, instead of talking about education reforms, to switch to an Agile model where small changes are constantly implemented – changes that apply to part of the population, to specific subjects, to some of the time, or to some of the teachers. The good changes will be expanded, others will be improved and the bad ones will cease to exist. “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” was built in a similar way – from time to time we add a new program, a new model, an improvement… we test, correct, expand, or cancel depending on the results in the field. And as usual we will soon reveal new programs .
Monitoring and control
July 6, 2023
As a student I was forbidden to doodle during class, talk to the friend next to me or answer without raising a hand… As a child without Ritalin or a smart phone I did not comply with most of the rules and thus found myself constantly avoiding the teachers, the principal and my parents. Now imagine a classroom where the teacher instantly knows about every student’s infraction as it happens – heaven or hell? Well, I didn’t come up with anything new. In China (and even in Australia) there are systems that track students including their facial expressions, and alert if they are not focused at a given moment. The good news is that even the Chinese (under pressure from educators and parents) have decided that this is too much and are re-examining the policy of students’ monitoring (which does not prevent them from tracking the citizens of course).
A technological system designed for personalized teaching has multiple advantages, and among its other “virtues” the system remembers a huge amount of details about the student – how much time he/she spends studying and how much on Tik-Tok (version 2030), when he/she is concentrated, which areas he/she neglects and when he/she just stares into the air… really a wonderful new world. Such knowledge can be an advantage in personalized education, but there is a danger that this information will be used by the teachers/parents to over-discipline the studies and shape a student in the style of Pink Floyd. How lucky for me that I was born 70 years ago!
In “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” we recommend that our instructors reach the student through personal stories, examples, experiences… It’s not easy, but when it’s successful all other parameters become less important.
Are we all teachers?
June 29, 2023
If we compare an overcrowded classroom without any means or budget but with a great teacher, to a small classroom, equipped with futuristic technology, with classes and plenty reinforcement hours but with an average teacher… it is clear to all of us what is better. And if intuition is not sufficient, there are countless reforms and studies that prove that investment in the quality of the teachers is immeasurably better than reducing the classes, investing in technology, reinforcements or buildings.
There are studies that even take the issue one step further, and examine the impact of teacher’s quality on the state’s economy, for example Eric Hanushek claims that a teacher whose quality is above average contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the state’s economy in the long run (through the quality of the graduates) and vice versa, a below average teacher causes a similar loss.
This is the place where I am supposed to explain that it is necessary to invest in the selection and recruitment of teachers, to improve the training of teachers, to reward them according to their quality… but I will not do that. Only few countries have succeeded in the reform to improve the quality of teachers (Netherlands for example). I prefer, in the current reality, to expand the concept of “teacher” and call anyone who enters a school to teach students a teacher (even if he/she does not have a teaching certificate and if he/she only comes for an hour a week). Now, that quality people are pouring into the school we will have reached our goals. And where these people can be found? You guessed right – in “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher“.
Conflicting Requirements
June 22, 2023
The education system by its very nature exists in an environment with conflicting demands. For example, a desire to cultivate outstanding students contradicts the desire to reduce gaps between students, or learning structured information contradicts the desire for education for independent thinking. Over the years, the education systems in the world have developed mechanisms to deal with the contradictions such as compromise, ignoring it or developing double standards – it is far from perfect but we adapted to it… until artificial intelligence arrived.
Artificial intelligence by nature is designed to solve or optimize tasks with a defined goal. “Prepare me a paper about panda bears”, “test the student’s ability to solve a quadratic equation”… It is interesting to examine how an artificial intelligence system will react when the assignment contains conflicting goals, for example “prepare a syllabus for the 5th grade”.
My assessment is that the system will decide for us what the more important goal is and focus on it, while neglecting the goals it “thinks” are less important. This is the reason, in my opinion, that at least in the visible future there is a need for a human hand in the process, not just any human but a person who understands the capabilities of artificial intelligence and its limitations and knows how to channel it in the best way. Easy to say and hard to do, but the education system (and “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” within it) must strengthen the knowledge about the artificial intelligence of the teachers/mentors in order not to automatically accept every decision that the artificial intelligence system makes on our behalf.
Drips of attention
June 15, 2023
The borders between home, work and leisure are blurring. One of the reasons is that the time we focus on one task is getting shorter – while cooking we answer the phone from work, while we work we order clothes from Amazon, we prepare presentations in our free time and we text while driving.
Jordan Shapiro in his book “The New Childhood” talks about “drips of attention”, each task is performed in stages. You start a task, your attention is focused on it, but it is interrupted by something (a text, a message, a phone) and you move on to the new task, which is also interrupted and so on, then you return to the first task and continue it until the next distraction. Shapiro claims that this is not a problem but a reality, this is the reality of the current era, this is how we behave in all aspects of life.
A school, on the other hand, educates for “continuous attention”, i.e. now we are learning history, the student is expected to be focused on this lesson only, without interruption of any kind, so that we are not really preparing the student for a real life but for a sterile and unrealistic environment.
For this reason, in order to keep the students’ attention, “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” recommends that the mentors create a mosaic of 5-10 minute segments where the topic, the content or the method changes in each.
Do not try at home 
Boredom – the future of employment
June 8, 2023
In 1928, Keynes wrote that technology would streamline work so dramatically that within 100 years (the year 2028) people would go mad from boredom. He suggested providing people with 3 hours of work a day to keep them interested in life. Soon we are in 2028. Technology has indeed made all the main fields that existed in 1928 (agriculture, mining, industry) more efficient and we still don’t seem to be going crazy from boredom.
We are on the brink of a new era where AI will replace many of the professions as we know them and people are concerned about our role in this future world. Indeed, just as the number of farmers, miners and laborers has decreased dramatically, so the number of clerks, drivers, janitors and customer service personnel will drop dramatically and in their place new professions will emerge (which our imaginations are short of understanding) such as virtual travel planner, brain engineer, personal privacy manager or artificial intelligence ethics examiner. If these professions sound imaginary to you, think about what a dog walker or a computer programmer sounded like 100 years ago.
And in “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher”? I bet we will have volunteers who will be able to talk about space travel planning, genetic engineering, dynamic space design or bacterial engineering, long before the education system understands the need for these professions.
The structure of scientific revolutions in education
June 1, 2023
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is a book by Thomas Kuhn that claims that at a certain time there is a dominant scientific paradigm that everyone believes in (for example, that the sun revolves around the earth), then at a certain point findings begin to arrive that contradict the paradigm. At first, many who oppose the new findings prove with eager that the dominant paradigm is indeed correct. This intermediate state is called by Kuhn “revolutionary science” because it goes against the dominant concept. At a certain point, when the amount of contradictory findings increases, a new paradigm emerges that will become the dominant paradigm and so it goes.
So far there is nothing new here (the book was written in 1962) and it is not related to education (which, as you know, is not a science). Amnon Carmon in his article “So What Should the Education System Do” claims that the education system in its current state is in the “revolutionary science” stage, that is, there are enough findings that show that the dominant paradigm is wrong and there are interim solutions, but a new paradigm that can replace it has not yet emerged. There is an understanding that the existing paradigm is irrelevant, archaic and ineffective, there are intermediate solutions of various kinds (such as home schooling, anthroposophic education and others), there is a willingness to change, but there is still no overall acceptable solution.
And I don’t stop thinking whether “Nitzotzot – Shiur Acher” is an interim solution (revolutionary science) or maybe part of the new paradigm that leads to a comprehensive solution for the new education system.
HE