Idea no.1 for fellow Pakistanis to contribute : Education

[Dubious]

That is another super idea. One thing concerns me is Internet requirement for that. @baqai what you say, what will be BW requirements for minimal operation? Another question is, is there a concept of stored holographic animation? What equipment is required for that?

I think @ps3linux and others in the group started the group for such ideas...then it got expanded to other stuff

 

[fitpOsitive]

I think @ps3linux and others in the group started the group for such ideas...then it got expanded to other stuff

Yup focus is becoming a big problem.
Getting project out of data requires focus, a lot of focus. Anyway let the discussion continue for few more days, let's see where we reach.

 

[Dubious]

Yup focus is becoming a big problem.
Getting project out of data requires focus, a lot of focus. Anyway let the discussion continue for few more days, let's see where we reach.

We need to narrow down and target something do-able

 

[fitpOsitive]

We need to narrow down and target something do-able

That's what I always say. So, let's see where we reach.

 

[ps3linux]

Development of Moral Wealth in Paksitan

Abstract
Ethical formal education in Paksitan is non-existent. We are Islamic replublic of Pakistan, practically living far too away from the essense and teachings of this faith. In "Islamyaat" we try to feed student's brain with awareness about Islam touching the belief component or giving examples but is Islamayaat helpng us build human character? Looking at the social fabric and how leaders are being chosen, we can easily say no. To save children of Pakistan from the abuse of relegious groups, sects and "religio-political" (coined this term) brain washing, there must be a non-biased, well built and independent channel of learning about Islam and Islamic values.

I have been studyign concept of "wealth" since years and one of the best defination about human wealths came from Nepoleon Hill's book "Think and Grow Rich" (Amazon link) where he helped me see 12 types of wealths a human can possess. including;

1. A Positive Mental Attitude (PMA)
2. Sound physical health
3. Harmony in human relationships
4. Freedom from fear
5. The hope of achievement
6. The capacity for faith
7. A willingness to share one's blessings
8. A labour of love
9. An open mind on all subjects
10. Self-discipline
11. The capacity to understand people
12. Economic security

But in Pakistan (and elsewhre in the Muslim world), the concept of learning is fixsated with our ability to generate financial wealth, the last item of the list only. We do not preceive knoweldge, politeness, love, care, respect, empathy, giving, living together, giving time and attention etc as learnable qualities nor there is ever an effort to install these qualities in a human brain ever. If our parents are kind, we learn from them but if they were not, our chance to getting wealth of kindness has came and gone for ever as there is no organised avenue where you could learn about basic qualitiesof a human life.

Creating moral wealth in the heads and hearts of our children is a need. Our National Character is only as beautiful as much Individual of this Nation is - and let's admit we are in pretty bad situation around morality.

I am looking forward to learn from you guys about the Ethical and Moral Problems we rae goign through and how can we tackel them from our platform.

Solution #1: Writing 100 booklets

Create ~100 small books, each under 10 pages in size and dedicated to core concepts about ethics and learning foudnational aspects of being a human.

A while ago, I stated an exercise where I was trying to learn these concepts myself and along the way I kept producing output of what I had leanred. See few examples here;

• How to achiving extreme excellence in life
  
• Learnign to respect (urdu)
• Value of forgivness

If we are able to produce 100-500 such topics, deicated to charity, caring our parents, loving neighbours, feeding the hungry etc... that will lay the foundation of ethical character that students keep building upon throughout their life. Let's put them on a path and help them walk few steps and then tell them how to walk, run and do marathons on those paths.

These 100-500 books will need to be created and can be printed or provided digitally through the platform of ILMA.

May WIll and Help Allmighty be with us. Aamin.

@Microsoft, @Dubious, @ps3linux, @zulu , @fitpOsitive , @baqai , @War Thunder, @war&peace, @Verve,

(Please note, I have created a sub-idea under Idea#1 - Education to discuss this topic in confluence).

I am 100% in, I am even willing to write a few books myself.

@Dubious , @fitpOsitive guys let me recover fully or at least till ramadan's end, idea has its merits but holographic solution I don't know never worked in that direction I am more of a hardware/linux and micro controller person with a knack of reading everything.

 

[graphican]

I am 100% in, I am even willing to write a few books myself.

@Dubious , @fitpOsitive guys let me recover fully or at least till ramadan's end, idea has its merits but holographic solution I don't know never worked in that direction I am more of a hardware/linux and micro controller person with a knack of reading everything.

Thank you very much Sir, that will be a great first contribution towards Nation building.

As a next step, let's prepare a list of topics we all can think of. I will initiate a thread under confluence to handle those topics.

Today I have hosted ilma.pk that can become a publishing platform like an Amazon of books in Pakistan. Its a short name, has beautiful association with the prayer of knoweldge and is secured with us. I have following three domain under the same title.

• Ilma.pk
• Ilma.com.pk
• Ilma.education

I am open for us to pick a different name if we like and I can setup the site up and start publishing.

 

[ps3linux]

Thank you very much Sir, that will be a great first contribution towards Nation building.

As a next step, let's prepare a list of topics we all can think of. I will initiate a thread under confluence to handle those topics.

Today I have hosted ilma.pk that can become a publishing platform like an Amazon of books in Pakistan. Its a short name, has beautiful association with the prayer of knoweldge and is secured with us. I have following three domain under the same title.

• Ilma.pk
• Ilma.com.pk
• Ilma.education

I am open for us to pick a different name if we like and I can setup the site up and start publishing.

@graphican superb name selection couldn't be any better than this. A quote from my wordpress blog which I wrote almost a decade ago, lengthy but I hope you enjoy it, though I would encourage reading the entry "The Logical Islam":

"Over the years I have seen how our society has deteriorated from a peaceful to war torn and non-tolerant one, with everybody becoming intolerant in one way or the other and the most naive and unwise of us are the self proclaimed defenders of Islam by the name of Taliban or Jihadis.

We have become an Ummah(Muslims of the world) who is fond of living in the darkness and dark ages and believe in false practices, and assume that our religion too teaches us to live in the dark past, whereas the fact is that Islam is the most logical and forward religion of all.

The background picture that I have used does depict that the sun is setting on once a great Muslim ummah. But to me there is always hope, the sun that sets, also rises. So if the sun is setting on us, it may and will rise upon us again provided if we wake up and rid ourselves of false believes and practices and try to understand the true philosophy behind every teaching of Islam, not to be misled by mullah and his version of Islam."

 

[baqai]

sorry guys without internet now days, holograms can cost from say around a 1.5 - 2 million onwards depending on different factors, they can even cost a whole lot lower

 

[Yousaf Raees]

I'm very happy to see your concern about developing the nation. I'm also providing my contribution to ILMA in the form of video lectures towards my nation. Please come and join this project and help Pakistan in a difficult time.

 

[graphican]

@graphican superb name selection couldn't be any better than this. A quote from my wordpress blog which I wrote almost a decade ago, lengthy but I hope you enjoy it, though I would encourage reading the entry "The Logical Islam":

"Over the years I have seen how our society has deteriorated from a peaceful to war torn and non-tolerant one, with everybody becoming intolerant in one way or the other and the most naive and unwise of us are the self proclaimed defenders of Islam by the name of Taliban or Jihadis.

We have become an Ummah(Muslims of the world) who is fond of living in the darkness and dark ages and believe in false practices, and assume that our religion too teaches us to live in the dark past, whereas the fact is that Islam is the most logical and forward religion of all.

The background picture that I have used does depict that the sun is setting on once a great Muslim ummah. But to me there is always hope, the sun that sets, also rises. So if the sun is setting on us, it may and will rise upon us again provided if we wake up and rid ourselves of false believes and practices and try to understand the true philosophy behind every teaching of Islam, not to be misled by mullah and his version of Islam."

@ps3linux

Many thanks sir. It have gone through your post and it has taught me a lot.

Where ever we are in our life, we have reached there.

Speaking of Ummah, for good or for worse, wherever it is today, it has reached there by making choices. If we are down in the darkness, we are a victim of our own choices we made by deciding to follow or not follow teachings of greatness. When Ummah had glory, it wasn't people who were glorious but the Character, the Operating System they had in them then, and if Ummah is down in the pit hole today, it is not because people are being born of low quality but because the Character, the Operating System which is running in them is bad. If as an Nation we chose to go up, we must leave what has brought us down - and reinstall our operating system one more time. There is no other way back to greatness.

Allah has taught payer to beg "best of Duniya" and "best of Aakhira". I understand Muslims have gone astray and are blinded of Aakhira - but wait, despite choosing only one out of two parts, have we earned best of Duniya either? If Duniya was our choice then we must had earned a good deal of it, shouldn't we? Muslims are going through a dual insincerity, a dual failure that they are practically failing on both parts of prayer, they are failing to see Aakhira - we get it, but they are equally a failure in living a great life.

Today my Nation doesn't produce a single technological marvel even though we are the 6th largest population. Nothing we teach at schools is copied by anyone anywhere. No one came to learn about a model or a social system we developed in Pakistan. No one came to translate a book which was originally written in Urdu, no one came to borrow a medicine we developed over time. If laws of randomness are at play, then out of 180 million people living and working every day, there should be some accidental stars, some accidental innovative mistakes, some accidental growth models which we had made by mistake but what a surprise when we left the path - even laws of randomness are not with us.

Its time to reboot sir. Its time to install original operating system back in the Nation and I am willing to give 40 years for it. May we be together and stay to our commitments the longest we can afford and may WIll and Help of Allah be with us.

 

[Wikki019]

Excellent idea, I can guide students and youth About skills that require to get direct Jobs in europe in Engineering companies. It will increase remittances, Pakistan's infleunce as well as experience for our work force when they will return to Pak.

 

[graphican]

Dear friends,

Please allow me to introduce @Yousaf Raees to you, the lone warrior who has been part of my journey of ILMA since over a year.

Yousaf is doing wonderful work by producing series of video lessons around accounts, business and finance. ILMA's youTube channel is being run by him single handedly.

Yousaf has done few intereting experiments including teaching early school kids how to sell soemthing and make profit out of it and that is somethin which we may want to copy and present as an educational activity elsewhere.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1282373228573162

@Dubious

Can you please include @Yousaf Raees into our discussion group, he has great passion and love for teaching and making a difference in the educational world.

Hi All,

I had designed some artwork around ILMA that I am sharing with you to get your opinion.

This 4 part logo was intended to reprsent Paksitan as a 4 provinces of Pakistan, that are all green, together an transform into a leaf. It has central white component and together with the green part, it makes flag of Pakistan.

A green leaf is symbol of growth and prosperity in itself, and the icon also looks like the flame of candel which is a classical symbol of light, education and "noor". This symbol is upright but turned right - indicating "right, green education". Its also a unique symbol which we need to stand-out in the crowed. This is also a thick symbol and will be easy to etch, smbroid, emboss or use in small forms without losing visibility.

This is just one of many options we have . If any one of has better ideas

 

[Dubious]

states

Provinces

Will add yousuf

A green leaf is symbol of growth and prosperity in itself, and the icon also looks like the flame of candel which is a classical symbol of light, education and "noor". This symbol is upright but turned right - indicating "right, green education". Its also a unique symbol which we need to stand-out in the crowed. This is also a thick symbol and will be easy to etch, smbroid, emboss or use in small forms without losing visibility.

That is lovely!

 

[graphican]

Provinces

And provinces it is. I've corrected in my post above.

 

[graphican]

Learning 2.0

I apologies for a long lengthy read, but please bare the pain and go through it as it shows what a better learning model in Pakistan may look like.

What is learning 2.0?
Learning 2.0 is about rediscovering education, the way it is delivered and the much it contributes to the future success of students / professionals in Pakistan. I have been collecting nuggets here and there and they all collectively constitute a new mode of teaching and a new mode of learning that I am calling Learning 2.0.

Inspirations and reference resources

• The Mission (on Medium)

A worthwhile video to watch on ageing school system

Purpose of education

• Purpose of education is to train our brains to think and act - and not to memorise and recall knowledge.
• Memory based knowledge was required in 19th century, when access to knowledge wasn't handy. Its not the case anymore. Then why are we still trying to make students memorise and reproduce knowledge on paper and mark their effort as success? Memorised information doesn't increase brain's ability to think, act or solve problems. No wonder only a small part of what we learn at school is particle and contributes to the over-all success.

Building five pillars of excellence
Financial success of an individual is a result of success is following 4 areas and unless they are equally good at other 3, building educational pillar alone is not going to help.

• Subject knowledge
• Communication
• Leadership
• Negotiation
• Goal Setting and achieving

Learning by 1000 questions per subject per year

• Students should be asked to provider answers to 1000 multiple choice questions and they will be considered qualified for a subject. They have to answer 1000 answers and any time they do that, we consider them qualified.
• 70% or 80% passing marks doesn't make sense to me. It has to be "full path" before somebody is considered eligible. Why should we leave gaps and still expect a person will holes will become a future success? (6th Dec, 2017)
• Questions can be solved individually or together as a group. This will promote working individually as well as together with fellow students.
• Students should be allowed to research internet, books or whatever they like. They can even ask each other, seniors or whoever they choose.
• There should be 900 questions provided by the teacher and remaining 100 should be picked / decided by the student, that will make students to think and act in a "research mode" and they will understand that they can synthesise knowledge.
• 1000 questions is quantifiable and measurable. When a student learns this way, he will have confidence that he can at least solve 1000 problems in real life.

Curriculum is garbage
Curriculum was a 19th century tool when British government wanted to crate a pattern of education to meet their empirical needs. They wanted people to learn standard skills, patterns and repeated practices which help the state run smoothly. A system was designed which helped the students think alike and work together to achieve a common goals, desired by the state.

Such a need doesn't exist anymore.

19th century was century of Industrialisation, 20th century was century of services and 21st century is century of innovation. In order for innovation to happen, there must be diversity of thought, diversity of skills, diversity of knowledge an diversity of expertise within the nation. If there is uniformity, which curriculum advocates, innovation will not happen. Look at some of the largest businesses in the world today. Understand what kind of products and service are being produced in the world and you will notice there is no one or standard type. Infect, "new type" of products / services (innovative) are the only type which is able to make its way to success, while large, standardised and non-evolving products and businesses are dying and are being replaced by small, innovative and idea driven businesses.

So what kind of brain force do you think a standard educational curriculum will produce?

A standard mind across the nation which thinks and acts similarly? From which side does such a system makes sense in the evolving world? There should be equality of opportunity and not equality of content. Equality of education means everybody is a studying same subjects, developing same skills and thinking similarly. That means attainment of specialised and non-standard knowledge is left to individuals and their own initaitives with no support from the government.

No two roles are same, no two businesses produce same product. This is how the world is working today. What is our educational system doing to produce people who would fit in this world?

Learning from the ones who are ahead of us
Countries like South Koera, Finland and Israel. Israel is a tiny country, yet it produces more startups and businesses than entire continents.

• Taking knowledge and learnings to unprecedented levels
• Diversity of knowledge
• Diversity of practice. Professionals move into unrelated professions and innovate as never been done before.
• Challenge authority, challenge rules, challenge status quo.
• Read book "the startup nation" to develop deeper understanding of their success pattern.

Watch video on Finland's success of their school system

Continuous evolution and continuous assessment of educational content (curriculum)
Learning 2.0 is about shifting focus of education from a curriculum which is decided by the school (or a board of educators) to a curriculum which is decided by an accomplished professional, market and industry. These decisions on curriculum can go down to the granularity of a topic instead of a book, and should include examples which are real, relevant and teachable. That means people who are subject expert decides how many levels (learning paths) should there be.

IBM has just taken a big initiative which they call "the new collar job". IBM is spending 1 Billion within next 4 years to develop this model and support their "human labor". This is available at the end of the page.

People University - combining professionals 100 years of combined experience
Even though the concept has its inherent risks, a group of qualified individuals can create a "people university" which can take mentees and after training them, reward them degrees of professional knowledge and experience. I have discussed this aspect more in Learning 3.0 section.

Distinguishing aspects of learning 2.0

• Build the system backwards. Draw lines from best results back to class-rooms.
• Its OK to fail, its OK to make mistakes.
• Reward for trying, even when results lead to a failure.
• Believing success lies 144 iterations away. (NASA's experiment)
• Believing there are good failures and there are bad failures.
• Teaching students how to collaborate. How to give space and take space.
• Its OK to be wrong.
• Don't deduct student's marks for making mistakes - it discourages them and prohibits them from attempting. You should only indicate them and reward students marks when they correct those mistakes, thus rewards (marks) should be granted for improvement and not for making mistakes.
• Reward students for trying. reward initiatives, reward kindness, reward leadership and reward selflessness.
• Teach kids difference between happiness and joy. Teach them how to be happy internally.
• Teach kids what internal and external power means.
• Teach kids how to respect themselves and their own promises. Teach how integrity it developed and what is meaning of standing tall.
• Teach value of collaboration.
• Teach value of diversity and how it helps in achieving success.
• Teach meaning and value of respecting.
• Teach what it means to be human.
• Knowledge which is not based on filling your weaknesses, but building further upon your strengths.

Train students how to learn better

• By providing focus and training to students, so they spend more focused energies while they are learning.
• By providing speed reading lessons.
• Time boxed training, learning by pomodoro
• Converging and diverging thinking
• Design thinking
• How to slow and fast think (Courserea course)
• Creative and lateral, forward, backward and flip thinking
• Think whole-part-whole

Evaluating students before teaching (an idea)

• Students can be evaluated using a test before they are taught a subject. By this way, we'll open their "learning pores" or turn their "radars on" and make them conscious about things they do not learn about already.
• Asking questions to students in itself is a teaching process.

Evaluate education material continuously

• Our educational syllabus are updated once a while, and it is up to the syllabus designer what and when they update. As a parent (and students) we should have right to question what are we studying and why are we studying it. Parent's can provide continuous feedback on the knowledge, syllabus, complexity and utility/practicality of knowledge which goes into their student's brains.
• Syllabus can get continuous feedback from the professionals and educational experts to know if this is the right syllabus which is going into the hearts and minds of students.
• Note: from my research in Craigieburn, I learned that parents in Australia where not much keen about the educational content schools were offering. I reckon not every parent would be interested in improving education - but such a course review can offer some (may be 5%) parents to contribute and help it improve.

Solve a real life problem (or invent something) as a passing criteria

• When using this strategy, students can be asked to solving one real life problem using their subject or cross-subject knowledge. Japan already uses this method to teach in the classrooms.

Learning from Startup Nation (Israel)

• Startup Nation is about diversity, cross disciplinary education, freedom of doing the job you like and abundance of financial resources.

Self Paced Learning for Students (ILMA's optional mode)

• ILMA can have self-paced learning pathway where students can learn less or more depending upon their own interest or learning speed.

Difference between knowledge and wisdom

• Learning 2.0 provides students with wisdom. It doesn't give them knowledge which they memorise or remember, but Learning 2.0 makes student wise and enable them to use this knowledge around, to solve problems and make something better. Even if it is just a proposed model.

Learning any skill faster and better
Reference: Your Ultimate Guide for Learning Any Skill Faster and Better - Research based Medium blog.

• Study between 30/50 mins max. Anything less than 30 [minutes] is just not enough, but anything more than 50 is too much information for your brain to take in at one time. - Reference Medium's blog with research. Dr. Travis Bradberry suggests doing around 50 minutes of work followed by around 15 minutes of rest.
• Following Pareto's 80/20 Principle. you should focus first on the most important 20 percent of what you’re trying to learn, which will actually cover 80 percent of what you need to know.
• Stop multitasking. Research shows that working on multiple tasks at once detracts from the quality of all of them. And a study found that when you get distracted, it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the task at hand. That’s a lot of time wasted.
• Perform a modified version of the task every time. A Johns Hopkins study found that “if you perform a slightly modified version of a task you want to master, you actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple times in a row.” Reconsolidating — the process in which memories are recalled and modified with new knowledge — plays a pivotal role in strengthening skills and learning.
• Learn from the masters. Nothing is more valuable than to learn from the people who have mastered their skills. Professional teachers are not masters.
• Take notes on paper. Princeton University and UCLA researchers found that taking notes by hand (pen and paper) leads to more active listening and the ability to identify important concepts.
• Prepare for a long run. Learning new skills is not a sprint but a marathon. There are zero "fast learners" but there are "quick-to-react" or "quick-doers". Learning new skills takes it time. (10,000 hours)

Progressive Improvement and iterative learning

• Assignments are one-off efforts in which a student works on something and then submits and then he is judged on. In real life, every project, every product and every aspect of life is iterative. On-off assignments fail to teach us power of iterative improvement, refinement and polishing. Learning 2.0 demands iterative assignments where students submit their work to a teacher and teacher doesn't mark them, but only studies them, sits with students and tries to understand the thought process. Then she helps students to explore new possibilities and sets a new deadline to submit next round of revision. This happens 10 times minimum and after 4,5th iteration, students would have to step out of the box to bring new ideas and new concepts on the table.
• An assignment mat be marked at any stage, but the level of improvement which a student has shown from first round to another need be appreciated. An student may never be given a -ve mark at all.

Psychological aspect: students earn their perception of competence from teachers
and then continue to build on those perceptions which others have towards them. Think, how to use this self perception concept and help students become better version of themselves every year. Learning new knowledge is required, but so is becoming a better student, a better learner, a better thinker and a better performer.

Building fluid intelligence in kids

• Fluid intelligence is trainable.
• Engage in new activities or ponder a new concept, your brain rewires itself in response to these activities.
• Anything that makes you very comfortable is not really good for your brain development. If what you do doesn’t challenge you, don’t count on it to change you. All those mentally exhausting activities are exactly what you need to improve your cognitive abilities.
  
• Your brain needs novelty to grow. The more regularly you pick up a new skill, or study a new subject, the stronger your mind becomes. Try to pick up one new thing every week, then continue working on it as you learn new things.
• Don’t stop looking for answers. If something doesn’t make sense to you, look for ways to expand your knowledge so that you do understand it better.
• Force yourself to use your brain more.
• Focus, strategy, logic, and creativity are just a few of the mental muscles you should be exercising more regularly.

Teach kids how to be organised first

• Organisation, keeping things in the order is first discipline that any human needs to learn. Chaos leads to chaos while discipline can lead to clarity. On part of formal education, students should be taught how to organise their projects, their assets, resources and tools. If organisation is not taught, chaos will continue to exist. (example, Ahmed is not organised in his homework. He spends good deal of time searching, looking for products to finish.

Connecting schools with technology and industry companies.

• Australian Governments are already investing in education - industry collaboration. Example being http://saf.org.au/p-tech-australia/ where Australian Government is investing 5.1 million dollar in establishing this collaboration between educational institutes and professional bodies.
• IBM Has already started hiring students between grade 9-14
• Microsoft has hired early kids after they performed well at MCSE and MCSD certifications.
• 

New Collar Jobs
New collar jobs are the skills which doesn't require a 4 years college degree, but they require some specific skills required by specific businesses. For example, operating a particular robot in a specific environment,.

• IBM CEO Ginni Rometty coined term "New Collar Jobs" to describe jobs that don’t require a traditional 4-year degree, but do require a good amount of skill. https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/new-collar-jobs-1216
• Companies and Colleges Unite to Train ‘New Collar’ Students - SEP 19 2017 - CNBCNews.com
• Toyota, IBM, General Motors and Dow Chemicals are all starting in-house educational programs.
• 15% of jobs in IBM USA were "new collar jobs".
• IBM is investing 1 Billion dollars in "new collar jobs" over the next 4 years.

Questions driven learning

• Courseera is using this method to teach students in MOOCS and this is fantastic. When an answer is selected, it tells you "this shouldn't have been selected' because of this reason. Thus they make you think why you picked an answer and refine your understanding of the concepts as you move forward.
• There is an explanatory note next to every wrong and right question which explains "why" part. and this is the heart of this learning method.
• 
• Reference: Coursera

Sensitising students before teaching them a concept

• Asking students questions before hands raises their sensitivity towards the information which is relevant to questions. As a best practice, we can ask students questions about a topic before we teach them.

and the list goes on and on and on...

• There can be 10s of more aspects to it, learning 2.0 is not a principle or a concept but a direction where growth is lying. Pakistan needs growth more than any other country of the world as it is far behind than the world, and Pakistan is not the only country who is being... a SHIFT in education is needed by entire Muslim world and Ummah. And ILMA is the initiative.

The ILMA Model, Learning 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

I will explain my vision around Learning 1.0, Learning 2.0 and Learning 3.0 in a separate post InShaAllah.

May Will and Help of Allah be with us. Aamin.

@Microsoft, @Dubious, @ps3linux, @zulu , @fitpOsitive , @baqai , @War Thunder, @war&peace, @Verve, @Yousaf Raees