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

[Dr Paul Chandler]

 Roland wrote:
 
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. 
 
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" demo (if you're not familiar with
this, it's described here: http://www.science-is.com/bubbleballet.htm)
... 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.
 
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.

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?

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.
 
Cheers,
 

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