Article
September 12, 2005
Sadly, the audio for my presentation in Manchester died, so all we have are the
PowerPoint Slides and some very useful blog commentaries, one by
Derek Morrison, another by
Christopher D. Sessums, more (in Dutch) by
Marc Dupuis, and some stream of consciousness from
Juliette White. Despite the glitches (which included a visit from the Fire Brigade just a few hours after having landed) I enjoyed my time in Manchester, and especially the jet-lag assisted
bloggers meet-up. And if you enjoy my photos, you won't want to miss my stunning new collections from Britain: from
Manchester, from
Lancaster, and the pièce de résistance, from the
Isle of Man
[
Comment]
OLDaily
In the news today, it turns out that driving a car will do nothing to improve your equestrian skills. And in similar news, "none of the (e-learning) projects made a significant impact in encouraging students to pursue studies in maths or science, or on students staying in school." This project especially, which appears to have consisted of teachers being "dumped on" with Generation XP Microsoft educational products and told to "make do". I don't know why anyone would think that digitizing a bunch of content would magically make students want to learn math or stay in school. Or even that it would constitute good e-learning. [
Comment]
More on what is becoming a pervasive trend, the call for free access to publicly funded research. "The eight UK research councils, which control most of the public funding, have proposed making free access a condition of getting grants." [
Comment]
So much good stuff out there, and yet readers of the traditional press have to make do with sloppy work like this article, one in which parents are (laughably) advised to "limit a child's Web surfing to three or four sites a day to keep their focus on studying." The main thrust of the article is that there is too much information on the web, and so it - and other 'technology gizmos' - ends up being a distraction. Oh, sure, there's a point there; after all, I too have been pulled away from my work by a silly web game or too fascinating a site on Greek theology. And many of the gadgets out there are indeed junk. But it is misleading to lump the internet in with pens that play music when you draw pictures. And the way to solve information overload is not to hide from it, but to learn how to deal with it. After all, it's not like it's going away or anything. [
Comment]
As the website says, "Twenty e-learning networks have been funded under the Networks Project and are now up and running! The e-learning focus of these networks varies across client groups, areas of discipline, type of registered training organisations (RTOs) and a range of technologies." I haven't actually joined any of these networks, so I can't vouch for them. But it is worth noting that they exist. The networks use EdNA groups and include Chats, Forums, Resources, and Scorms - yes, Scorms, that is, learning objects (first time I've seen it used as a noun like this - I tried to browse one but of course guests cannot browse). [
Comment]
Why do people think that schools should fully equip students? Why, for example, do they think schools should provide computers, email, blog hosts, and the rest? It's not that I don't think students should have access to these things, but rather, that, that I think such things should be permanent and personal. Here, Dave Warlick describes the 'information-rich classroom' - and includes in his list a number of things that should belong to students, not the school. In the comments, I offer my own alternative to the list. [
Comment]
Magnus Enger:
colLib September 12, 2005
This is pretty neat. "colLib harvests metadata-records from OAI-PMH-compliant repositories and enables manual 'tagging' of these records to cluster them by subject or other meaningful categories. Tags are represented by pages in a wiki, that can be annotated with links to related tags, external links and any other text deemed relevant." [
Comment]
"In a democratic society," writes the author, "schools must go beyond teaching fundamental skills." For example, how much schooling is focused on happiness? Schools should address such topics as public participation, moral and social issues, and the sense of community and trust. Interesting take. [
Comment]
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