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<title>19.opml</title>
<dateCreated>Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:06:04 GMT</dateCreated>
<dateModified>Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:06:04 GMT</dateModified>
<ownerName>Tom Morris</ownerName>
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<outline text="E-learning: yet another fad, and guess who is paying?" created="Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:06:05 GMT"><outline text="I hate to bang on about this, but it is important: while doing my Master's degree, I never had a single PowerPoint presentation. Lecturers made do with distinctly analogue technology: paper handouts, blackboards/whiteboards, vocal cords and books. Before that, I only had one lecturer who used PowerPoint. I am no great fan of PowerPoint. And I'm sceptical of most e-learning projects. I've written before on &lt;a href= &quot;http://tommorris.org/blog/2009/02/27#When:17:58:42&quot;&gt;Learning Objects&lt;/a&gt;, and most e-learning projects seem to be driven by trying to push what is currently popular, fashionable or on the bleeding edge into the classrom, regardless of whether it actually will benefit learners. Most e-learning is technology for technology's sake. Digital whiteboards? Fine, except they are harder to read for people with vision problems. I remember once having to play a quiz using remote controls - very much like a gameshow. Except half the remote controls didn't work. It would have been a lot easier just to give out a scrap of paper, write the answers on it, then swap test papers with the person next to you and mark the questions. Most technology in the classroom falls into two clear categories: pointless or really pointless. With all the people pushing technology as a magic fix for all that ails education, plenty of us geeks are a bit more reticent about it. For me, it is pretty much a necessary precondition for any useful learning on non-technical subjects to set my computer aside and read a damn book on the subject. In fact, it is often sufficient for technical stuff too - a few hours and a good O'Reilly manual is sometimes more than enough." created="Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:06:05 GMT"/><outline text="Which puts &lt;a href= &quot;http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/5070136.Worthing_school_asks_parents_to_buy_children_iPads/&quot;&gt; this story in The Argus&lt;/a&gt;, Brighton's local paper, that I saw yesterday into perspective. Davison Church of England High School for Girls, a secondary school in Worthing is going to require pupils in year 9 (that is, 13-14 year olds) to purchase an Apple iPad &lt;q&gt;as part of its new elearning project, which will begin in September&lt;/q&gt;. This e-learning project is so well-tested that the school is requiring parents to spend three hundred pounds on a gadget that hasn't even been released yet." created="Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:06:05 GMT"/><outline text="The announcement and sale of early release Apple products has long been said to bring with it a &quot;reality distortion field&quot; - why, Apple's critics charge, would people be willing to purchase the iPod Shuffle, a device that until recently didn't even tell you what song was playing, without the presence of some kind of fanatical craziness reminiscent of the religious enthusiasms of revival-tent preachers? Apple customers are - the critics say - more like Scientologists or Objectivists or those goofy people who take Dan Brown novels or the rantings of Glenn Beck a bit too seriously - it is just a computer after all. As an Apple customer who has no end of problems with his hardware, and who would much rather be in the free world of Linux and GNU but is held back by the pragmatics of the world, I disagree with the idea that all Apple customers are driven by such brazen religiosity. Many of us have a slight aesthetic preference towards shiny objects but manage to keep it under control when faced with more practical concerns of everyday life - like not pissing money away recklessly on anything vaguely shiny and magical-sounding." created="Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:06:05 GMT"/><outline text="Surely, though, an e-learning project needs some thought, some &lt;em&gt;testing&lt;/em&gt;. Before you require parents to go and spend a few hundred pounds on a gadget that will form an essential part of the curriculum, it might be useful to actually get your hands on one and test it out - see whether or not it does the job you are intending of it. It is sad to see the reality distortion field extends beyond the fawning media, the obsessive blogosphere, the cheering and hollering convention centres and out to the humble C-of-E secondary schools in Worthing. This is very sad, but it also points to a lurking travesty: the fact that schools are absolutely failing to teaching their charges that technology is a tool to empower &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, to liberate them and to have fun. It is not about delivering a stream of learning objects with all the soul of a Chicken McNugget. Technology isn't just some gadget you use to coerce Facebook-addicted pupils into giving a shit about GCSE Geography or, worse, some fakakta Business Studies 'diploma' - basically what we used to call a GNVQ or a VCE rebadged for about the seventeenth time this decade to try and persuade people that there is actually parity between academic and vocational qualifications, even though there isn't. Schools love technology to the point where it turns their pupils into little hackers - because little hackers don't fit with the control implicit in the school ethos. They are the ones who moan about wanting to install Linux on everything and point out your inadequacy. They will generally take absolutely no shit and follow a course of enlightened absenteeism - if they aren't learning something useful, they may just stop turning up." created="Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:06:05 GMT"/><outline text="Schools should be teaching children to tinker, to hack, to throw code together hastily and make it do something cool. This is easier than ever these days thanks to virtualization. What happened to the idealism that gave us the BBC Micro? All swallowed up and replaced with proprietary, locked-in entertainment devices - and expensive ones at that. Imagine if you gave every kid a netbook instead and taught them Python. If you can't afford a netbook, give every kid a Xen instance. That will teach them more than all the e-learning initiatives you can brainstorm. If you want to do technology in the classroom, get rid of your bullshit ICT classes. Stop telling yourself that teaching people how to use Microsoft Word is teaching them an important life skill. Teach kids to hack and tinker would be teaching them a useful life skill rather than an expensive, untested, &quot;cutting edge&quot; e-learning project that teaches them even more dependency on hardware and software vendors." created="Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:06:05 GMT"/></outline></body>
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