( Six minute read)

When considering the future impact of technology on teaching and learning there is an element of crystal ball gazing so, I am sure that there will be many critics of this post.

We still have a long way to go, though, in terms of how we are taking advantage of technology within the classroom for education is actually a way for telling us how far we haven’t come.

Albert Einstein famously asserted, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Up to now education it is too directed to earning a living rather than the values that allow us to live in the first place.

We live in a fully globalized world in which more people than ever are connected via the web. One of the significant results of this greater communication and access to advanced technology is the deluge of information we receive – news, entertainment, opinions, advertisements and so on but non of them will replace teachers.

Learning is a natural part of us and what defines us as a species.

As artificial intelligence and other technologies transform various professions, the most valued and secure jobs will be those that require complex social skills such as teaching.

They as the world we live in changes to embrace tech, will have to proactively manage how innovations unfold. 

Why?

Because what we teach in our education system will be reshaped to keep up to date with the growing demands of the 21st century.

The problem is what to teach.

When it comes todays education we have intellectualized it too much, we have complicated and over tinkered with something that should be a beautiful part of our existence.

Putting back values in education.

The problems and question now concerning education are.

We are now outsource thinking and rely on supposedly smart tech to micromanage our daily lives for the sake of cheap convenience?

Are smartphones lowering our IQ?

Should creativity be the sole focus?

Is an emphasis on learning how to learn the key, or do children need to develop a vast general fund of information?

Is google responsible for dimming our ability to think for ourselves, making us dumber?

Is online learning the way forward or is the screen right in the palm of our hands—or the screen in front of our faces turning us into digital citizens?

The over-reliance on technology for basic knowledge may be replacing humans’ general fund of information.

The challenge we face worldwide is how teachers, parents, leadership, and communities will help learners design intelligently and innovate with compassion, to teach non-discrimination and respect for others.

To understand that prejudices can hinder the ability to think and live in peace.

To understand the challenges to the natural world and bio-diversity.

To become familiar with examining and understanding different points of view.

To handle social media which now dominates as a real-time feed for news, stories and world sentiment.

To understand sustainability when its comes to values.

In order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these pieces. In essence, knowledge matters, as our brains will not develop ideas that will change—and improve—the world without an adequate general fund of information.

What is needed.

Free education to make educational background irrelevant with a year of citizen conscription without the smartphone, I pad or laptop, to teach respect and a understanding of what it means to be human, to stand on one’s own feet.

Retrieval practice is one of the best methods to learn information. If you aren’t trying to retrieve information to bring it to your thoughts—instead pulling out your phone—this may be problematic for not only a general fund of knowledge but also for the ability to initiate creative contemplations in the future.

Using search engines and voice-assistants for things we previously had to retrieve from our memories is continually affecting our kids (and us) in rather unforeseen ways.

The changes in lifestyle could be what’s behind these lower IQs, perhaps its due to the way children are educated, the way they’re brought up, and the things they spend time doing more and less (the types of play they engage in, ( whether they read books, and so on).

To thrive in the workplace of the future, skills such as creativity, collaboration, communication and problem-solving will become must-have competencies for future specialists as the market will see a huge increase in jobs requiring a set of skills incorporating virtual reality and multiple perspectives on mew platform that will give students an opportunity to learn how to negotiate issues and exchange ideas online.

Due to the need to give education more individual approach with students covering the material with study tools adapted to capabilities of a student online education will become more and more revealing in the cloud as more ubiquitous connectivity drives a significant increase in the blending of informal and formal learning.

In the end it will not be the device that will make the learner smarter, it will be the teacher.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact:    bobdillon33@gmail.com.

( Seven minute read)

Afghanistan is a beautiful country with a long history and rich culture, but for decades it has been torn apart by war.

Since returning to power in Afghanistan the Taliban government has reintroduced a draconian interpretation of Islamic law such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers, as well as amputations for those found guilty of theft.

Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the all-covering burka, girls are banned from  secondary education. (The only gender-based ban on studying in the world.)

Who are the Taliban?

In 1973, a coup deposed Afghanistan’s King Mohammad Zahir Shah. After the coup, the monarchy was abolished and the Republic of Afghanistan was formed, establishing close ties with the then-Soviet Union.

Six years later, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to support the pro-Soviet government, which was facing attacks from armed groups. The decade long war forced millions of Afghans to flee and attracted foreign fighters, including Osama bin Laden, who joined the battle against the Soviets.

In 1989, the Soviets withdrew after agreeing to a peace deal.

The Taliban, or “students” in the Pashto language, emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

By 1998, the Taliban were in control of almost 90% of Afghanistan.

In the wake of the 11 September 2001 World Trade Centre attacks in New York the attention of the world was drawn to the Taliban in Afghanistan.  The Taliban were accused of providing a sanctuary for the prime suspects, Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda movement

In October 2001, the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to hand over the Al Qaeda leader and author of 9/11. By December, the Taliban had surrendered control of the country, but already in 2006, Taliban attacks were intensifying in the form of raids, ambushes, rocket attacks, kidnappings and assassinations.

Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011.

In February 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban that included the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan by May 2021.

The agreement was upheld by President Joe Biden, who extended the deadline to Aug. 31, two decades to the day since the felling of the World Trade Centre.

US President Joe Biden announced in April 2021 that all American forces would leave the country by 11 September.

By 15 August, the Taliban were at the gates of Kabul and we all know what happened then.

Departing American forces along with the Brits abandoned millions of dollars worth of weapons, vehicles and other military equipment, which was immediately seized by the Taliban after they returned to power.

Now years later, militant Islamic extremism has hardly recede, with his replacement, Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed on July 31, 2022, in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan.

The withdrawal was criticized for being rushed, disorganized and chaotic with millions are now struggling to survive.

More than 40% of the population is living on less than one meal a day and 97% are expected to be living under the poverty line by the end of the year.

The war in Afghanistan was America’s longest conflict, lasting almost two decades. In that time, 2,248 U.S. soldiers lost their lives and 47,245 Afghan civilians were killed.

The death toll for members of the Afghan National Army and police is 66,000, while the number of Taliban fighters and other insurgents killed during the war is 51,191.

The U.S. government spent more than $2 trillion funding the war.

For the most of the last 20 years, the US have supported the government in Afghanistan that was put in place following the war. As global leaders sought to economically isolate the Taliban, their policy approaches have crippled the economy, destroyed the banking sector and plunged the country into a humanitarian catastrophe that has left more than 24 million without enough food to eat each day.

In one short year, the economy is now on the brink of collapse, millions are unemployed and close to starvation with anyone opposed to the Taliban rule risking being tortured.

Is there a difference between al-Qaeda ISIS  and the Taliban?

Al-Qaeda grew out of battlefield bonds forged in the Afghan insurgency against the Soviet Union its primarily targets being the United States and Europe as their far enemy. Its propaganda tries to convince Muslims over time to follow Al-Qaeda’s vision of “global jihad.”

ISIS prioritizes the creation of an Islamic state in the Muslim world but its military losses has undermine its appeal and ultimately discredit jihadist groups in general. They have  metastasized into Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab. And so continues to be very much a threat that the world have to focus on.

However one does not have to be a military, political or a Taliban to know that the magnets for jihadi recruitment is the continuing killing, whether its by legalizer violence in the form of war or not.

If the world now stands by an allows the children of a nation die by starvation as a form of revenge it will be committing the very things it has fought against since world war two.

We can rest assured that those who survive will be looking for revenge.

You only have to look at the number of young people fleeing high levels of violence, crime, natural disasters, food insecurity, and poverty to realize this.

It is naïve to demand that Taliban give up terrorism — the very method that has given them some significance for more than a quarter of a century. Terror is the very raison d’etre of this outfit.

Why should the group listen to Western powers when they have neither a coherent policy nor the hard power needed to back any of their policies other than the gun.

In the final analysis, however, a regime that treats its own people with utter contempt is unlikely to offer foreigners, especially the “infidel,” a better deal.

But the choice is not limited to another full scale invasion or abject surrender or to recognize the gun-toting “religious students” as the legitimate government of that long-suffering land.

The conditions set by the Defeated are about giving up terrorism, respecting human rights, allowing Afghans who wish to leave the country to do so, and stop oppressing women.

Isn’t that all a bit premature?  As the Taliban actually do not control Afghanistan in any meaningful way.

The key concern right now is the disarray in the so-called democratic camp, thanks to  the war in the Ukraine

Right now, the Talban need the outside world more than the outside world needs them.

Confront the reality of the situation” in Afghanistan.

In other words, while admitting that they are there, we have two options.

The Taliban have won, militarily, however there wasn’t really a healthy democracy bringing widespread freedom, there was a corrupt client government siphoning off cash in return for doing the occupying powers’ bidding, and this came at the cost of brutal war which caught up entirely innocent Afghans.

Without Aid and the realise foreign-held funds Afghanistan even with food aid cannot pay hospital workers or the people who maintain urban water supply or deliver the food aid.

One way or the other we have a very short window of opportunity now to make it happen through our decisions we make in terms of international aid and the relations we form with the current Taliban.

If we ignore Afghanistan, denying the aid we will drive a fissure between the moderate wing of the Taliban, the Kandahari Taliban and the hardliners, the Haqannis, and there is every like hood  we will have created a civil war upon Afghanistan, inflicting  upon Afghanistan a catastrophe that follows this disaster.

We must swallow our pride and support the moderate wing of the Taliban, who are not committed to international terrorism and want a conservative country which will not be in line with Western values but will be better than the extremism of the Taliban.

At the same time one must ask where are the liberal Afghanistan opposition voices, over 100,000-plus Afghans left.

The media, which focused instead on claims of “betrayal” by the United States in order to avoid discussing the depth of the defeat and deep failures of the Afghan occupation, avoiding the question how long before the west recognises  a humanitarian crisis or even a civil war in Afghanistan.

I just don’t think there is a political will in the West to avoid a disaster of biblical proportions that will spill over and destabilize the rest of this part of the world.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact:  bobdillon33@gmail.com

Evolution endowed us, like other creatures, with sleep that is malleable in its timing and readily interruptible, so it can be subordinated to higher priorities.

Around 350 B.C., Aristotle wrote an essay, “On Sleep and Sleeplessness,” wondering just what we were doing and why. For the next 2,300 years no one had a good answer.

Most of what we know about sleep has only been discovered in the last 25 years.

Maybe, we’ve been asking the wrong question about sleep, ever since Aristotle.

The real wonder isn’t why we sleep. It’s why, with such an incredible alternative available, do we bother to stay awake?

Sleep is ancient, its original and universal function, is not about organizing memories or promoting learning but more about the preservation of life itself.

The problem is that in the modern world, our ancient, innate wake-up call is constantly triggered by non–life-threatening situations.

Every animal, without exception, exhibits at least a primitive form of sleep.

Giraffes sleep less than five. Horses typically sleep part of the night standing up and part lying down. Dolphins sleep one hemisphere at a time—half the brain sleeps while the other half is awake, allowing them to swim continuously. Great frigate birds can nap while gliding, and other birds may do the same. Nurse sharks rest in a pile on the ocean floor. Cockroaches lower their antennae while napping, and they’re also sensitive to caffeine.

While we humans nod off into a surreal descent of sleep, into an alternative world, our heart rate slows and our core temperature drops. Any remaining awareness of the external environment disappears.

Our sleep-wake pattern is a central feature of human biology—an adaptation to life on a spinning planet.

The average human today sleeps less than seven hours a night, about two hours less than a century ago.

The floodlit chaos of our waking life of mobile screens are now overworking our neurons, (some 86 billion of them, the cells that form the World Wide Web of the brain, communicating with each other via electrical and chemical signals) and has made sleep deprivation a lifestyle, overloading the sleeping brain to be able to consolidate the information that’s been collected during our awaking hours.  

What makes us sleepy?

Everyone needs sleep, but its biological purpose remains a mystery.

Sleep affects almost every type of tissue and system in the body – from the brain, heart, and lungs to metabolism, immune function, mood, and disease resistance. 

Many mysteries remain about the association between sleep and  health problems.  Does the lack of sleep lead to certain disorders, or do certain diseases cause a lack of sleep?  These, and many other questions about sleep, represent the frontier of sleep research, like what effect do different foods have on sleep. 

The strength of one’s nightly spindles, some experts have suggested, might even be a predictor of general intelligence.

Sleep literally makes connections you might never have consciously formed, an idea we’ve all intuitively realized that it may be more essential to us than food. 

We have yet to find a truly sleepless creature however there’s is only one species that has been called ‘biologically immortal.  Jellyfish do not breath and there are plenty of other unusually long-lived species that seem to defy the passing of time.

We all love life and we wish to live as long as possible, but in spite of this we sacrifice about 1/4 of more of our lives to sleeping.  

James Webb can see the origins of the universe – something our minds can hardly begin to grasp as we sleep into the future.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

(Two-minute read) 

I suppose we could look at it in many ways. 

I don’t have an issue with him mourning someone in his family, he was the Duke of Edinburgh’s son.

So, you know, really, he is just as entitled to be there as his siblings.

However it’s one thing to accept that he should attend his father’s memorial service, it’s quite another thing to then give him quite a prominent role.

It reopens yet again the whole can of worms about a man that has just settled for millions out of court for sex trafficking. Striped of all royal duties.

Whatever you think the Queen being assisted by her shamed son Andrew is a bit rich to swallow.

He could have sat in the congregation with others, with his relatives, but it was actively decided that he would have this role of supporting her.

Despite paying millions out of court earlier this month to settle a civil sexual assault case she has chosen, in essence, to remind people that he hasn’t admitted any wrongdoing, he’s not guilty of anything, he’s innocent. 

While it is a complicated situation on a very personal level for the Queen as his mother she’s very clearly stating that he has a role on family occasions, trying to rehabilitate his image, even at the expense of her own.

That’s what makes it uncomfortable.

If one step back from it and see how it is seen around the world, I don’t yet know what that judgment will be.

All human comments are appreciated. Al like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.