[Yr7-10it] RE: Year 7-10 IT structures

Tue Oct 23 19:21:47 EST 2007

I've heard Prensky and MacKenzie speaking live and I found Prensky more 
convincing. Prensky is a little too black and white with his 
native/immigrants theory - but I see examples of his theory in action 
every day at school.....

rie at bigpond.net.au wrote:
> Hello All
>
> Just wanted throw this back into the mix, Jamie McKenzie has done a very interesting piece on Digital Natives and the popularist work of Marc Prensky.  http://fno.org/nov07/nativism.html
> How much do we really know about how students are using technology in all aspects of their lives and how does this relate to teachers in the classroom?
>
> Ilana Snyder did a piece on reading e-learning research which is very helpful.  http://jbowes.edublogs.org/2005/11/05/illana-snyder-critical-reading-of-e-learning-research/
>
> Regards
>
> Anne-Marie
>
> Anne-Marie Chase
> Graduate School of Education, M428
> The University of Western Australia
> 35 Stirling Highway
> CRAWLEY
> Western Australia 6009
>
> Phone +61 8 6488 2300
> Fax +61 8 6488 1052
> e-mail chasea01 at student.uwa.edu.au
> web http://digital-kids.wikispaces.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---- Cameron Bell <bell.cameron.p at edumail.vic.gov.au> wrote: 
>   
>> But Bill, lots and lots of schools have implemented laptop programs - 
>> some for many years now. We have found that you don't need one laptop 
>> per child - in fact, I believe that insisting each child having their 
>> own laptop can stifle pedagogical progress. When each child has their 
>> own laptop or they are working in a lab, the teacher is generally just 
>> using the same teaching techniques and lesson plans they always have, 
>> insisting on personal work, students working in isolation 
>> (communicating, but in isolation) with the whole class doing the same 
>> activity at the same time. The laptop struggles to break out from being 
>> a glorified word-processor, file storage and email client to the off the 
>> shelf tool that gets used as needed, to develop a solution for the 
>> problem at hand.
>> We have run with a one-between-two program here for the past couple of 
>> years (I was skeptical as I had just come from a 1-1 school) and apart 
>> from a couple of dedicated labs, we now deliberately aim for 
>> one-between-two for all our technology infrastructure. It means students 
>> _must_ collaborate as teams on producing work and we are being forced to 
>> develop methods for students to be able to collaborate- but then produce 
>> work that reflects their own knowledge, not the groups knowledge. It's 
>> tricky but I have found a very useful little tool that enables that to 
>> happen in my classes and the rest of the staff have adapted too! Some of 
>> us are creating digital portfolios, this requires group prac work, but 
>> individual reflections. How do you do this with one-between-two? You are 
>> forced to examine individual learning plans, multiple lesson plans 
>> within a lesson, rather than the one-size-fits-all approach that we have 
>> always done. (Primaries have done this for years!) While 1/2 the class 
>> use the laptops for part of an activity, the other 1/2 are doing another 
>> part. For us, this is also essential to break up a 72 min period and 
>> help keep the students focussed.
>> One between two is cheaper too!  ;-)
>> Cheers
>> Cameron
>>
>> Bill Kerr wrote:
>>     
>>> There is a large elephant in the room that no one has referred to so 
>>> far: the OLPC
>>>
>>> The one laptop per child non profit project not only plans to deliver 
>>> millions of laptops to third world children but has also become a hand 
>>> grenade in the commercial world - and has succeeded in forcing down 
>>> the price of other laptops now on offer
>>>
>>> "... the whole global mind-think around technology has changed.
>>>
>>> No longer is low cost computing in education a fantasy, no longer are 
>>> big technology companies secondary, and everyone wants to sell 
>>> technology into classrooms. Intel introduced Classmate PC 
>>> <http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/brazil/olpc_classmate_mobilis.html> 
>>> to Brazil, Asustek is selling Eee PC's 
>>> <http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/intel/negroponte_100_laptop_asus.html> 
>>> in the USA, and even thin-client manufactures compare themselves to 
>>> OLPC 
>>> <http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/competition/stephen_dukker_anti_olpc_campaign.html>."
>>> http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/countries/sales_inhibiting_xo_distribution.html
>>>
>>> How will schools and education departments in the wealthy west react 
>>> to the fact that in a few years we will have the capability for every 
>>> child to have their own laptop?
>>>
>>> Will we treat them like mobile phones and ban them or try to figure 
>>> out a way to utilise them for optimal educational development?
>>>
>>> The use and misuse of computers in schools has up until now been based 
>>> around the idea that computers mainly belong in labs and / or that 
>>> access is limited. The fact of limited access has acted as a powerful 
>>> brake for many teachers not to extend their knowledge much beyond the 
>>> basics.
>>>
>>> Most (all?) of the maths curriculum could be taught using laptops. In 
>>> fact MIT produced a series of books in the 80s for teaching much of 
>>> maths and aspects of language and art using logo.
>>>
>>> Shouldn't we factor this potential into the discussion? If we are 
>>> talking about the future it might be incorrect to assume that the 
>>> pattern of distribution of computers in schools will remain similar to 
>>> the present.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Bill Kerr
>>> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
>>>
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>
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