[LINK] Broadband for a Broad Land

Frank O'Connor francisoconnor3 at bigpond.com
Fri Jan 14 10:17:18 AEDT 2011


So it's all too hard, and not going to happen.          :(

				Regards,
---
At 9:15 AM +1100 14/1/11, Tom Worthington wrote:
>Frank O'Connor wrote:
>>At 9:06 AM +1100 10/1/11, Tom Worthington wrote:
>>>... The technique I was introduced to is "Mentored and Collaborative
>>>e-Learning: 
>>><http://www.ijcim.th.org/v15nSP4/P09SEARCC_ComputerProfessionalEducation.pdf>.
>>
>>Mmm .. That probably works fine for tertiary students ... but may 
>>have some problems when applied to the other 90% (Primary, 
>>secondary and other students not paying for, compulsorily required 
>>to do, and not inordinately motivated by, their education).    :) 
>>...
>
>In looking at the design of classrooms, I noticed a similarity 
>between what is now done with university students and the Montessori 
>method for self-directed learning for young children:
><http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/01/book-on-designing-classrooms.html>.
>
>The trick, as with the Montessori method, is to put the tools needed
>within reach of the students, so they have help when needed, without 
>feeling someone is telling them what to do.
>
>>... An inordinate amount of material already exists online, in 
>>cheap digital encyclopedias  ...
>
>Having spent much of the last few years sifting though the 
>Wikipedia, corporate, government and academic web sites looking for 
>educational content, I can say this is not easy. The effort in 
>selecting suitable material is expensive in terms of time. The 
>Wikipedia, which has some excellent information, but I find myself 
>having to make numerous corrections to it before it is usable.
>
>>Surely some of the 40% of the education budget that goes to the 
>>supposedly productive bureaucrats could be used to source and 
>>amalgamate this content (by the bureaucracy). ...
>
>No, to select material for teaching purposes you need people with some
>idea of the field and some expertise in the process of collecting
>information. The people most useful for this are librarians at 
>educational institutions, as that is what they are trained to do.
>
>>Teachers could them pick and choose what they wanted to 'plug in' 
>>to their courseware for different purposes. ...
>
>There are collections of information which teachers can use. These are
>called "textbooks", which are not cheap to produce because of the effort
>required.
>
>>Access to vast libraries of content on their own servers accessible 
>>by a user friendly, content management I suppose you'd call it, 
>>front end isn't exactly rocket science ...
>
>No, providing useful information is not "rocket science": it is a lot
>harder than that.
>
>I attend meetings with scientists at CSIRO who can do a detailed 
>analysis of their specialist field, but can't explain it to a 
>non-expert. It is challenging to translate what they say to 
>something the general public (and students) can understand.
>
>>... LMS systems ... already flag poor performers is good, but how 
>>many primary or secondary teachers have access to this application 
>>or facility? ...
>
>Moodle is free open source and so is widely used in schools and
>universities. Some state governments provide it centrally to schools, in
>other cases individual schools have their own LMS. As an example, 
>here are about a thousand references to Moodle in education in 
>Australia: 
><http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=moodle++school+%22department+of+education%22+site%3Agov.au&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=http://www.google.com/search?q=moodle++school+%22department+of+education%22+site%3Agov.au>.
>Here are 4,500 references to Moodle in NSW Schools: 
><http://www.google.com/search?q=moodle++site%3Aschools.nsw.edu.au>.
>
>But the limitation is not so much with the LMS software but the 
>training the teachers then need in how to work the software and how 
>to incorporate it in their teaching.
>
>Also what is lacking are incentives for providing generally useful 
>materials. Teachers are paid to teach their own students. There are 
>no bonuses for preparing material for use by others, which takes 
>much more work. If this could be done it would produce a better 
>result for the students and reduce costs overall.
>
>
>--
>Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
>PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
>Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
>Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
>Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra




More information about the Link mailing list