{"id":2133,"date":"2009-03-10T11:14:58","date_gmt":"2009-03-10T15:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=2133"},"modified":"2020-11-28T18:20:38","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T23:20:38","slug":"harpsichord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2009\/03\/10\/harpsichord\/","title":{"rendered":"Harpsichord"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>My colleague <a href=\"http:\/\/cariaso.livejournal.com\/\">cariaso<\/a> is in Thailand for a few months, teaching computer skills to refugee and impoverished children. He shared his final exam with me \u2013 and I was struck by the first question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><code>1. What is a harpsichord?<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep in mind, we\u2019re on the Thai \/ Burmese border. These kids have some English \u2026 but certainly not \u2018harpsichord\u2019 level English \u2026 and this is a <em>final<\/em> exam. So what is the point? The point is that it would be stone cold impossible to study for this exam in any traditional sense \u2026 but if he\u2019s done his job, then this and other basic definition level questions are beyond trivial. What he\u2019s testing, after several months of exploring the internet with these kids, is whether the core idea of the information age has stuck in their heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As The Matrix put it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cCan you fly that thing?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cNot yet.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He proceeded to a couple of others. One of my favorites was \u201cWhat city is this? (link to a google maps location)\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, at the end, there were the basic office skills questions I was sort of expecting to see up front. \u201cMake a google document with this information, and share it with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that we may finally be living in the future, when refugee kids halfway around the world no longer have to say \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d but instead, \u201clet me google that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My colleague cariaso is in Thailand for a few months, teaching computer skills to refugee and impoverished children. He shared his final exam with me \u2013 and I was struck by the first question: 1. What is a harpsichord? Keep in mind, we\u2019re on the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,45,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charity","category-politics-blog","category-real-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2134,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions\/2134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}