[Yr7-10it] VELS and IT

[Bill Kerr]

I am v. torn by this discussion

on the one hand I also would like to take the "high ground" of advocating
for higher order thinking, the importance of abstraction - I can see an
argument for that

on the other hand I can see that learning the messy idiosyncratic detail of
the user interface of its day and becoming fluent in its operation is simply
essential

Alan Kay once wrote, "user interface is worth 100 IQ points". It sounds like
a crude reductionism but Alan Kaye is not that sort of guy.

Could it be that computers and AI research (Minsky, Brookes) will lead us to
rethinking Blooms taxonomy? Computers can beat Kasparov at chess but they
can't yet do "simple" things like make a mud pie.

-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr.blogspot.com/
http://beam.to/billkerr
skype: billkerr2006


On 6/10/06, Tony Forster <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:
>
> > I'm teaching "about IT", I find it _really_ hard to move beyond
> knowledge.
> > To do things such as summarize, describe, interpret, apply, demonstrate,
> > calculate, analyze, separate, order, explain, connect, classify,
> combine,
> > integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, assess, decide, rank, grade,
> > test,
> > measure, or recommend ... All the "higher order" skills is just so hard.
> > I'd suggest that this is because we are too bothered with ensuring that
> > the
> > students have "the skills" rather than "the concepts".  If we were
> > orientated towards "concepts", then then higher order stuff would come
> > easier.
>
> Imagine that its 1986, you are learning Wordstar on DOS or CPM. With the
> wisdom of hindsight, what are the generalised, higher order skills which
> will  still be useful in 2006? More importantly, how would you have
> recognised them back in 1986? If you can answer that, then you are on the
> way to knowing what is important to teach now.
>
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