Reflections by
SIGVE Lowly High Grand Poobah BJ Gearbox (sl), Bob Vojtek (rl) The cover story on the March 2013 issue of Atlantic Monthly is titled "The Robot Will See You Now." In it, Jonathan Cohn explains, "IBM's Watson—the same machine that beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy—is now churning through case histories at Memorial Sloan-‐Kettering, learning to make diagnoses and treatment recommendations. This is one in a series of developments suggesting that technology may be about to disrupt health care in the same way it has disrupted so many other industries. Are doctors necessary? Just how far might the automation of medicine go?" I admit that this is my bias, however our insatiable drive to implement STEM education is missing a critical element, maybe two. One that I have been ranting about since I heard the term... That is, it is missing the letter, "A," for the Arts – creating STEAM. If we blindly pursue STEM, without the arts and the creativity and innovation inherent in the arts, we have a strong tendency to do the “easy” version of STEM. Meaning, that we concentrate on only the knowledge and skills that are rote, easily memorized, and fall within the realm of tasks that IBM's Watson excels doing. The second element, one that I can't append the acronym easily to accommodate, is gaming, which is the focus of this issue of VEJ. I can't simply add a "G" to STEAM creating STEAMG – that doesn't work! So, the point isn't creating the perfect acronym, the point is, that the benefits gained by game play are missing.
3