It is worth reading the India hole-in-the wall experiment. When so much can be taught without any formal IT education, we should stop teaching the bleeding obvious and concentrate on using the time and money for us to teach what they cannot learn on their own.
<br> <a href="http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm">http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm</a><br><br>I can relate to the part that describes how kids invent their own
terminology. When I was a kid, I didn't have a word to describe a
cash-register. Until I was old enough to handle money, we called it a
"bing-zing" (ala noise). I am also curious about <a href="http://pdchandler.wikispaces.com/">the ideas and models</a> bubbling about in their minds of my students to describe how Internet or programs work, something beyond the fast peddling imps of
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld_%28world%29">Disk
World by Terry Pratchett</a> .. <br><br>Regards Roland<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 24/10/2007, <b class="gmail_sendername">Dr Paul Chandler</b> <<a href="mailto:paul.chandler@yvg.vic.edu.au">paul.chandler@yvg.vic.edu.au
</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div vlink="blue" link="blue" lang="EN-US"><span class="q">
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"> Roland wrote:</font></span></span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span> </span><br>I have
some Sudanese lads who are struggling with renaming files yet can happily play
computer games and chat online. Is it appropriate to measuring their learning
from their understanding of a computer desktop, a metaphor based upon the
workings of a small business office? The different ethnic groups at our school
have vastly different traditions and ideas of what it means to 'be working
together'. I am now not sure if the collaborative, learning model that I carry
about in my head is best and only way forward. <br><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"> </font></span></span></font></div></span>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">I once read (in a scholarly text on metaphor
in the English language) of an ESL student who was wrestling with the
phrase "the solution of your problems". Rather than interpreting
'solution' as akin to 'output', this student had seen it in a chemical
sense, and in his mind was something like the "dancing
mothballs"</font> <font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">demo (if you're not
familiar with this, it's described here: <a href="http://www.science-is.com/bubbleballet.htm" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.science-is.com/bubbleballet.htm</a>)
... so every so often, in his mind, a problem/mothball would float to the
surface, and needed to be tackled head-on ... but most of the time, life
was lived keeping them in motion ("solution") rather than obtaining "the
answers". This strikes me as a rather interesting (but definately
non-Western) way of living life. Cultural context is
important.</font></span></span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span></span></span></font><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">
</font></span></span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">I often find myself surprised that here is
another group of students who I need to explain what a filing cabinet and
suspeded files are. It's a while since someone asked me "what do we need
to save our files from?" (the boogie-man who lives around the
corner?) But it certainly seems true that students (of any
culture) barely have enough knowledge of the workings of a business office
in order to get the most out of the standard computer metaphor, which is based
on that. So we should perhaps stand back and query "collaborative business
office" metaphor on which must of our work relates, and also wonder exactly what
sense of the computer, through the user interface, the student is in
fact constructing.</font></span><span class="q"><br><br>I would like us to engage with what it
really means to transform ICT education, beyond rubbing the latest shiny new toy
or unboxing the latest bit of commercial software. I like asking the big
questions in my IT classrooms so here is one. What can we do to really help our
students make this world a better place for us all to live in?<br><br></span><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">In the spirit of
asking big questions, perhaps it is time to explicitly make the computer, the
user interface and the metaphors which frame them the object of
study.</font></span></span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span></span></span></font> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">Cheers,</font></span></span></font></div><span class="q">
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College<br><a href="http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au">http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au</a><br><br>"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead