[Year 12 IT Apps] Edutainment

[Stephen Digby]

We have a responsibility to maintain the differentiation between school and an entertainment venue.
School attendance is imposed on students and parents by the state (I wish it wasn't) for a limited and
specific purpose of changing students (even if they don't want to) in ways that benefit them and prepare them
to contribute to the success of the state.
Entertainments are personal & optional activities with no necessary net benefit to either the individual of
the state (i.e. they can be bad for everyone e.g., binge drinking, or good for everyone e.g. opera, or
anything in between e.g. most computer games)
As our society is going through a phase of increasing diversity (or fragmentation), "core values" are
increasingly hard to find in schools or out of them.
In this haze, the danger is that anything that keeps the little buggers entertained can pass as education.
The perception that a school needs to offer "edutainment" to keep students from revolt is one reason parents
site in choosing a different school or school system).

Keep the focus on education.  
Get students to list all the things that they find most boring and you will get a significant correlation with
a list of civilisations greatest achievements.

That's why we call them children.....
If they aren't like sheep, then society does not need to pay for shepherds....

====================================================
Stephen Digby, Learning Technology Manager
mailto: admin at cheltsec.vic.edu.au 
Cheltenham Secondary College www.cheltsec.vic.edu.au
Ph: 613 955 55 955  Fx: 9555 8617 Mb: 0431-701-028
====================================================
War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead. Ken Gillespie

-----Original Message-----
From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of David Dawson
Sent: Friday, 10 August 2007 10:58 AM
To: itapps at edulists.com.au
Subject: RE: [Year 12 IT Apps] OT: Computer rollover

Yeah,
I agree with Ros. How can we prepare kids for the real world if all we are trying to do as administrators and
IT managers, is shut down sites like MySpace, youtube and all the gaming they do without understanding its
relevance or relative importance? Remember when TV was the big bad wolf? Radio? Cars? Fire?
Did anyone else go to the Myspace generation in-service? I call it the Ostrich effect - after a slide showing
one with head in sand! Hide our heads in the sand and hope the big scarey computer world will just go away.
Some schools want to switch ON technology and others seem to want to shut it OFF! Which side are we on?


David Dawson
Head of Information Technology
Head of Learning Technologies
St.Kilda Rd Campus
Wesley College, Melbourne

>>> Meadows.Roslyn.M at edumail.vic.gov.au 10/08/2007 9:43:13 am >>>
Personally I don't see the hang up about playing games in the library at
lunchtime:
 - it is THEIR time
 - they can borrow backgammon, chess or a pack of cards in the library and play them at lunchtime, (often with
much more noise) so why not a computer game from a USB Bar or one they have created?
 - they are able to play games in the gym or on the oval at lunchtime
-
why not in the library?

But still - not allowed in OUR library :(

	 Roslyn Meadows
Bentleigh Secondary College
9579 1044
0412 614 062	


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