Where is the 'fun' in learning?

Last week, tech enthusiasts in Malaysia was treated to the rare appearance of Steve Wozniak the legendary genius behind the first Apple computer as he made his way to Kuala Lumpur to headline Iclif’s Leadership Energy Summit (LESA).

Steve - or simply known as Woz –spoke for to a hall full of eager participants, including myself. One can’t help but to feel inspired with what he had to say.

For an hour, Woz shared stories about the creation of Apple, the journey and adversities he went through in creating the world’s biggest brands today, his friendship and experience working with Steve Jobs and predictions for the future of tech (a more ‘human form’ of artificial intelligence).

What I found most valuable, however, were stories about his early life and schooling years.

As a child, Woz said he would question everything. And when he couldn’t find the answers, the young tech whiz would create solutions by inventing.

Growing up in Santa Clara Valley, California (area now known as Silicon Valley), Woz cultivated a keen interest in electronics and was able to build working electronics from scratch by the age of 10.

In high school, he fell in love with the basic small computers. Woz learnt to write his own programming for machine language, something which he kept to himself as he was not able to afford a computer to test it on at that time.

His inquisitive nature gave him the drive to invent solutions to problems. And the ‘problem’ he saw at that time was that the ‘coolest computers’ were so expensive and were only made available to governments and big corporations.

During his early years of working on computers and the Internet, Woz said he only had one simple notion- to make a complicated set of technologies available to the people at an affordable price.

The Apple II – to which Woz said was his proudest invention - became one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computer.

steve wozniak

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak delivers a speech during a conference in the framework of the Technological Festival of Mexico, in Mexico City on July 4, 2013. AFP PHOTO/RONALDO SCHEMIDT

Another insightful but simple message reiterated by Woz many times throughout the talk was to always put fun in learning and to never stop having fun. The self-professed geek and jokester, apart from his prowess as tech innovator, is also widely known for playing pranks, alongside co-prankster Jobs. In one of their most famous pranks, the duo had designed a pocket device TV jammer during their college years. What happened was Wozniak would place the device, which emits TV signals, at a room where a group of people were watching TV. He will press the device’s button to make the screen go fuzzy with static and when someone gets up to fix the TV, he would let go of the jammer and the TV returns to normal. Another of the duo’s early ‘prank’ invention was called the Blue Box. The device, when connected to a telephone would enable you to make calls for free, anywhere in the world – much to the annoyance of telephone networks. The prank led to the creation of the world’s first digital tone generator. The story of Woz had me thinking about learning and education, particularly in Malaysia. In my own experience, for a long time, I learned in an environment whereby the notion of intelligence or knowledge is, more often than not, means having the ‘correct’ answer as everyone else. When a child’s excellence is primarily measured by his or her examination results, it impairs the formation of a real learning environment - one that should encourage pupils to ask ‘stupid’ questions, experiment, make mistakes, and maybe, pull pranks on classmates too. As Woz put it, we end up learning a lot of facts and methods at schools but not really learning to think for yourself and come up with your own ideas - which is the heart of innovation. We have geniuses like him who invented technological tools to help us innovate and and add value and even to disrupt education, but have our perception on learning evolved in the same manner? And I wonder if the learning experiences in schools encouraged more openness, inquisitiveness and fun, would we be able produce more of people like Woz?