Information Age Education Blog

The MIT Technology Review is on my regular “must read” list of magazines that I subscribe to. Every issue contains articles that challenge my current knowledge and insights into how the world is changing.

The first issue of 2018 is certainly no exception. Antonio Regalado’s article about gene editing, These Are Not Your Father’s GMOs, caught my attention (Regalado, January/February, 2018). In brief summary, gene editing that merely changes a gene without inserting “foreign matter” is legal in the United States. For example, it is legal to insert an extra copy of a small piece (a snippet) of a plant’s DNA strand into the DNA strand, or to remove a snippet. This can be done with current technology, and it is being done.

Larry Cuban is an emeritus professor at Stanford University. He is a prolific writer about our failures and successes in improving education. A recent article provides a few of his reminisces about the year 2017 (Cuban, 12/29/2017). Quoting from this article:

I was one of the founders of the Math Learning Center (MLC) and have served on its Board of Directors since this 501(c)(3) organization started 40 years ago. During these 40 years, I have advocated for increased use of calculators and computers in math education. Several hundred of my math education and computer education publications are available free online (IAE, 2017). Three of my more widely read math education articles are (Moursund, 2017a; Moursund, 2017b; and Moursund, 2017c).

One of my contributions to the MLC was getting it started in developing some online Math Manipulatives programs (Moursund, 4/19/2013). A catalog of the MLC’s current collection of 11 free online math manipulatives is available (MLC, 2017).

The purpose of this IAE Blog entry is to call your attention to some of today’s robots. I was amazed by some of the materials I read recently.

I think that most people understand robotic equipment doing manufacturing tasks in factories, or working with order fulfillment in warehouses. But, many people have less insight into robots that might serve as personal helpers to the elderly, invalids, and other people needing a high level of personal care.

Almost every day I find one or more science and technology articles that really catch my attention. David Hambling’s article about developing robots to do underwater mining certainly provides a good example (Hambling, 10/23/2017).

The problem that many mining operations face is that of water getting into a mine. The history of steam engines is intimately connected with this problem. Steam engines were first developed to pump water out of mines. Quoting from Encyclopedia.com (n.d.):