How kids react to old technology ...
Beau Schwabe
Posts: 6,566
So the other day I had to explain to my girls what a "Boom Box" was.
...and a friend of mine found this ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk_vV-JRZ6E
...and a friend of mine found this ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk_vV-JRZ6E
Comments
http://www.thevintageknob.org/teac-A-3340S.html
I prefer to play the music that will still play on it. Blue Oyster Cult being my favorite. Sounds better than CD's.
This workhouse kept my 4-track Demo Studio going for many years.
http://www.thevintageknob.org/pioneer-SX-1250.html
http://www.thevintageknob.org/pioneer-HPM-100.html
You can't beat the sound of this great old equipment.
Reliable gear is keeps giving back.
+++++++++++++++++
I'd love to see "How Kid React to Programming" LOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk
And that's an Amazon link because Panasonic still makes the exact same model, in 2014! Looks just as I remember it from back then. Actually I'm pondering buying one to go with my retro computer. But Amazon keeps increasing the price every time I look - I'm sure they do that on purpose. Started on $44 and now at $55. Anyway I'll look for it in Japan I think.
-Tor
He did not know what clockwise was! (And I had a difficult time explaining it being as there were no "analog" clocks around...)
Or the first Beatles tour to Oz.
Or the Sputnik in space, the first monkey, or perhaps you watched Neil Armstrong take that first step on the moon live.
TV shows lkke Leave it to Beaver.
Bought reject ICs like 7400 for $2.00 ea from the UK.
Bought recycled computer boards for the transistors and diodes - no ICs!
Built transistor multivibrators for hiding noisemakers.
Built crystal sets from matchbox size to shoebox size.
Remember punched cards, punched tape, ASR33 teletypes, drum memory,washingmachine sized disc drives.
Computers were the length of a car.
Computers had large switch panels to enter a bootstrap program soit could read a punched tape program which would thenread the punched card deck.
And if you are extremely old you will remember the huge room ENIAC and SILIAC Computers that ranon valves. I have only seen photos of these relics.
well rounded and innovative back then, using what they had, to make the best of it, reaching for the future.
The only question I have is how will the engineers of tomorrow design new products if they have no understanding of older products.
One question I find myself asking a lot is how was this done in the past. I sometimes see designs using older technology and I am amazed what engineers were able to do.
Analog control circuitry especially is like looking at a document written in Latin.
Im a 80's kid, and I remember when portable CD players came out. They did not have any kind of skip protection. So walking around with it required you to hold the player in your hand to act as skip protection.
It was a delight to see how the engineers back then developed a product that relied solely on mechanics...no power...and its playback was quite good.
If you get a chance to examine one up close, it is well worth the time.
I agree...the rate of change is increasing...which is what disturbs many of the older generation.
What is disturbing to me is how fewer and fewer people in this world of technological marvels are so deficient in basic knowledge of science and math...very, very disturbing.
Considering how low the United States ranks in science and math in comparison to the rest of the world, it is a major threat to our country's future...and any parent should be taking steps to assist their school in supporting technological programs.
Contrast to my childhood in the 1960's. In the house we had: An epidiascope, a zoetrope, a victorian magic lantern, an ancient treadle sewing machine, a wind up gramophone, a historic typewriter, a pile of old WWII electronic junk. This stuff was not in use of course, except for the sewing machine occationally, but it all still worked. It had all belonged to grand parents and such and just hung around. It all made great toys for us kids. They were the way us preschoolers did our first experiments in optics, mechanics and electrics, just buy playing with stuff. It was quite common to find such old "junk" in peoples homes.
So by contrast, all the stuff we produced in my lifetime is now gone. Sometines to be found in a museum or turn up on eBay. It's a bit shocking that young kids are so far removed from recent history.
Still, some years after he retired he bought and 8 bit micro a proceeded to teach himself to program in BASIC.
That is a lot of change in a lifetime that was generally handled quite well by most. Not to mention the odd world war that people had to live through.
What worries me about many the current "older generation" is that they have lived their whole lives with technology and still have no clue what is going on.
Conversely, a little while ago I started to chatting to two twenty something year old brothers. The subject of computers came up and the younger one looked at me and made a comment to the effect that "oldies don't know about computers". I bit my lip and continued. I happened to have a Prop ASC board in my pocket which I showed them and I spent the next hour answering their questions, what is it? What's a micro-controller? What you can program it! And control stuff! Wow! As I left them I had to turn to the younger one and say "Seems it's the young'n's that don't know about computers."
Forget it. Public schools are moving toward "total inclusion" in the classrooms thanks to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which is a civil rights thing. That means the special education kids and mentally ill kids soon will be in the same classroom as everyone else. Advanced learners will be used to help "peer tutor" the slow learners. The latest push is for Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, which was originally developed to help special education students but is now being sold to the US education establishment as the way to teach everyone and move the entire country forward. Because UDL is for everyone, everyone will be in the same class - gifted, average, emotionally disturbed, you name it. The National UDL Task Force is led by the National Down Syndrome Society, which has been lobbying heavily to get UDL into Federal Law so it can be embedded in the Common Core. It is already law in Maryland and gets off to a grand start next school year.
Meanwhile, there are some schools that have been discouraging hands-on technological anything because of the liability issues. Working with tools, lab chemicals, etc. is especially hazardous for children when some of them in the class can't even recite the ABCs or they believe their lab partner is a witch trying to cast a spell on them. The only way to keep the classroom safe is to have the kids do their "experiments" in virtual reality, where nobody can get hurt. Public education has always had its problems but what's about to happen to it under Section 504 and UDL is, in my humble opinion, a national catastrophe. The whole concept of Common Core has been hijacked by the special interests of the special education lobby and very few parents even see it coming.
Compliments on your father's ability to adapt...but I stand by my comments based what I have seen in so many older people that I know..and that includes technical types...we have all seen engineers who stopped learning when they graduated from college.
And as you have pointed out..it also sometimes applies to younger people.
As I have mentioned before, it is very sad how few people actually have any significant knowledge of science and math...and the less they know the less likely they will be capable to find employment through their lives as technology continues to advance.
I have volunteered in all grades in schools over the years...and have learned as much as I have taught in a volunteer role.
The education problem of America starts at home...not at school...not a popular comment when parents hear it.
When have you seen the local science and math fairs invoke the same investment and ownership by parents that organized sports does?
Those students who have parents actively involved in learning do well in any school.
My kids while they were growing up thought everybody had a robot, a rocket, a microscope, a telescope...well you get the idea...at home and did "experiments" ....which may or may not have worked...but they always learned. They also had access to a wood/metal workshop along with electronics to dabble with.
Our home was the center of "cool things to do" in the neighborhood...and more than once I was told by their friends that they wished their parents did the interesting stuff we did with them and my kids. Several times parents would ask what was our secret for popularity...it was just taking the time and real interest with the kids and their natural curiousity of the world around them.
Like anything...you get what you give.
Is it bad or good?
Erlend
But, if schools are still anything like they were in my day that is a totally different situation, half the kids had no interest and did not even want to be there. Half of the remainder were, well, not so bright and made very slow progress to nowhere.
For this reason we had three streams going on throughout. If we had all be thrown in together I would have committed suicide, or at least come out after five years knowing less than when I started. Even then it was a very tough and miserable five years of high school.
Yes, my experience was at a higher education level. As for the first nine years of my education (elementary school and so on), that wasn't very efficient. We basically didn't learn anything, not really. That was the old school education system.
Some months ago I visited a local elementary school because a friend (who is a teacher) visited town and wanted to (actually we visited two schools). So I arranged it, and went along as well. It was pretty amazing. Eight years ago they had completely rebuilt the internal layout of one of the schools, from the old school that I knew from the past. They have a mixture of children with special needs, children wth no special needs, bright children, everything really. And enough staff to support those with really difficult needs. They moved children between old-fashioned schoolrooms and landscape-style group areas, they had libraries spread out (often as part of the group working areas), and lots of interesting things. The children were a happy lot for sure, they loved not only their teachers but also the school inspector.. now this was lightyears from how I remember my own elementary school. We also had 'group work' but that was pretty useless. They do it all differently now. At the school they told me that this was something built up recently, after years of testing at one particular school. That school now provides support for other schools making the change.
I came out a lot more optimistic about child education than I was before, at least for my town in my country.
Some decades ago women decided they want to work like men and gain some independence. During two world wars it's perhaps a good thing they did as someone had to work at home whilst the boys were out fighting.
The result of that was that couples had dual incomes and could buy bigger better houses and generally have a better standard of living. Which many naturally choose to do.
The result of that is massive price inflation to the point that it's almost essential for both husband and wife to work in a family.
During all of that the children get forgotten about. Nobody has time or energy for them. They have to be parked at school whilst the parent are at work and let's hope school take care of their progress.
Back in the day was it not already true that one learned more outside of school than inside? As I described above I was born into a home full of "scientific junk" to explore. I remember attending music lessons, pottery classes, the HAM radio club, all kinds of things were going on, outside of school, in my childhood. This was all par for the course for my peers. It does not matter much. Those enthusiastic makers will learn what NPN and PNP is when they need to. They have learned how to learn. Which is the one thing school should be teaching, never mind the actual details.
Makes me chuckle, before university I was doing electronics in a technical college, the teacher there told us how we were very lucky because many students of Electronics come out of university unable to solder, build circuit, tell the difference between a choke and a transformer by looking at it or identify common components. We all laughed as many of us had been doing this stuff for years already. When I graduated though, I discovered he was right, many of those EE's around had no clue. Strangely enough, decades later that issue was discussed on a electronics podcast I listened to recently. Seems some things never change.
That sounds great. I have never heard such stories coming out about a school in the States. Only a lot of complaining about how bad it is getting. No idea what goes on in the UK now a days, the last time I spoke to any teachers there they were all very depressed about the situation they were in. From their descriptions it was all much the same as back in the 1960's.
I so do agree. I remember when it dawned on me that what I really had learnt was not about facts and stuff, but the art of learning. Believe it or not, it was only after 11 years at school/college that I finally understood this. Instead of later leaving College of Engineering with an unsatisfactory feeling of not having learnt it all, I left with a powerful feeling of 'I can learn anything' (even Spin).
Erlend