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

[Roland Gesthuizen]

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.
     http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm

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 the ideas and
models<http://pdchandler.wikispaces.com/>bubbling about in their minds
of my students to describe how Internet or
programs work, something beyond the fast peddling imps of  Disk World by
Terry Pratchett <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld_%28world%29>  ..

Regards Roland

On 24/10/2007, Dr Paul Chandler <paul.chandler at yvg.vic.edu.au> wrote:
>
>   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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-- 
Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College
http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au

"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
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