The blind leading the blind?

Blue Eyed Ennis' Blog 

Two years since I finished my ICTs course at CQUniversity and I recall my Blog. 16211 other people have "recalled" my Blog in that 24 month period. OMG. What does that tell us? That 16,000 other student teachers have been desperate enough to read a blog written by another student two years ago, in their attempts to research and write their own uni assignments? Worse still, maybe some (even?) less knowledgeable students - perhaps those in the very primary schools in which we now teach - cut and paste some of my drivel into one of their school projects. Scary.

Assessment task 2 - Analysis of digital technologies

Having spent the last few weeks exploring various information and communication technologies (see Blog postings in Appendix 1), I can see how easy it could be for teachers to be attracted by the entertainment and novelty values of some available tools.  Fisher’s oft-displayed hierarchical pyramid (Visual Bloom's, n.d.) seems right on point here.  It is oft-displayed as it looks good, just like another attractive, oft-displayed image:  Edgar Dale’s Learning Pyramid (Dale, 1954, p. 42).  The problem here is one of  presentation vs. content.  The addition of unsupported percentages to Dale’s pyramid has lead to it being taken as fact: whilst an attractive, even useful visual, the percentages are “myths” (Metiri Group, 2008, p. 3).  Fisher’s attractive visual reflecting digital tools’ use alone as a reflection of Bloom’s Taxonomy is just as misleading.  As Fisher states, he wanted “the visual representation to be more fluid...where web tools can live on different levels and change levels, depending on their usage.  I'm sure we could make a case for each of the tools to live in each realm of the hierarchy” (Visual Bloom's, n.d.).  For example, Blogger is at the top of the ‘static version of Fisher’s image, but blogging can be at the bottom of lower order thinking: listing; describing; collating (see Andrew Churches’ “Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Summary Map” (Educational Origami, n.d.)).  It all depends on how you use the tool.

Assessment 2 - Appendix 1

Blogs Entries – Analyses and Reflections

Wiki and Website Model Links

Group 1 Technologies – Online Spaces: Blogs, Wikis and Websites

Blogs as education tools – analysis

PMI in Bubbl.us

Comparison of Bubbl.us and Text2Mindmap

To blog or not to blog – Week 2 reflections on blogging

Wikis as education tools – analysis

SWOT (and Text2Mindmap)

Wikis as education tools – reflections

Reflected on practicality of use

Example of my first use of wiki

Comment on legal/ethical issues

Wikis as education tools - further reflections

Examples of my applied use for Grade 7

Includes hyperlinks, resized images, user-created videos and podcasts

Further, specific examples of uses viz Bloom’s Higher Order Thinking

Covers application of QCAR Priorities in ICTs in wikis

Websites as education tools – analysis

Analysis/comparison between websites, wikis and blogs as digital spaces

General example for school use

Group 2 Technologies – Multimedia: Images, Audio and Video

Images as educational tools – analysis

Examples of use in schools

User-created example of images, combined with PowerPoint Click and Drag

Showed use of Google Docs and DocStoc.com

Podcasts as educational tools – analysis

Examples of use in school

Example on my wiki

Videos as educational tools - analysis and reflection

My videos on my Class 7 Wiki and Website

Examples of pupil-generated videos

Specific examples of use viz Bloom’s Higher Order Thinking

PMI of using videos to deliver teaching

Examples for teacher-generated videos

WOW – Earlier blog on my discovery of the Khan Academy

Group 3 Technologies – Presentation Tools: PowerPoint, Prezi and Glogster

Google Docs - three strikes and you're out  

PMI on Presentation tools, PowerPoint published via GoogleDocs

DocStoc vs Google Docs     

Same PMI on Presentation tools, PowerPoint published via DocStoc

Prezi as an education tool – analysis

Prezi of PMI on Presentation tools

Presentation tools - Glogster

De Bono’s Black Hat analysis

Links to examples of how Glogster being used

PowerPoint use in education – analysis and reflection

Slideshare ppt PMC on Presentation Tools

Group 4 Technologies – Other Digital Tools

Group 4 Technologies - Other Digital Tools’ use in education

Animations and Simulations

Google Earth and Google Maps

Google Documents for Collaboration

Online Concept Mapping – see earlier blogs: Blogs Analysis and Wikis Analysis

Zooburst

Dippity Dawg

Time-line created from Blog Entries

Google Earth as an education tool - analysis and reflection

PMI of Google Earth

General examples of pupil use of Google Earth

Specific examples of use viz Bloom’s Higher Order Thinking

Legal, Ethical and Safe ICT practices

Wiki Links – First attempt:  ICT wiki; Second attempt:  Class Wiki

Website Link – MrWright’s Website

Appendix 2 

Bloom’s  Revised Taxonomy/Learning Engagement Planning Framework with specific reference to illustrated use of ICTs in the classroom driving higher order thinking.

Assessment 2 - Appendix 2

Hover over document, then click Full Screen for clear view.

Assessment 2 - Appendix 2

Google Earth as an education tool - analysis and reflections

Google Earth (GE) is an amazing technology which will no doubt enrapture children, not least due to its similarity to the computer games the love.  For example, check out these videos:-

Helicopter flight simulation on GE

Ship simulator on GE

Underwater in GE

All very entertaining.  But is it educating?

Legal, ethical and safe ICT practices

Teachers are placed in loco parentis regarding their pupils.  They owe a duty of care to take reasonable steps to keep their pupils reasonably safe. In an ever-increasing litigious society, examples of teachers struggling with this duty are prevalent, from intervening (or not) in playground fights, to providing a "safe place" whilst on school field trips.  The area of ICTs bring yet more risks that need to be managed by teachers viz. their pupils whilst in school.  They can be summarised in the following "aide-mémoire" table.

Legal	Ethical	Safe
Copyright infringement/ appropriate attribution	Plagiarism/fraud	Privacy issues, especially children’s personal information online
Discrimination: Disability, racial, religious	“Netiquette”	Security of information: passwords; financial details
Hacking, breach of terms and conditions	Cultural sensitivity, blasphemy, obscenity	Stranger danger – online predators
Theft: piracy of software and digital audio/video files	Intimidation, harassment, stalking, blackmail	Cyber-bullying
Defamation: libellous content	Image manipulation	Exposure to inappropriate content
Sedition	Respect	Health and Safety due to overuse: ergonomics, visual strain, etc.

Dippity Dawg

Mr Wright's Blog on Dipity.

I like Dippity.  I don't like the fact that you can only upload images from Flickr or Picasa, videos from YouTube or Vimeo, and music from Last.fm and Pandora.  Perhaps there are ways if you know HTML code, but I'm not that advanced. 

I did like the way you can auto-populate from blogs and other sources such as news events - a neat alternative presentation of existing content.  If I had more time I could spend more work seeing how to make video links in the blog entries live, etc.

The main use is pretty obvious, i.e. a student project where the subject content is spread over time, be that days (e.g. the Cuban Missile Crisis), weeks (e.g. following an election), months (e.g. Jessica Watson's circum-navigation), years (e.g. the Vietnam War), decades (e.g. advances in ICTs), centuries (e.g. Rise and Fall of Greek, Roman and Ottoman Empires), millenia and more (e.g. geological creation of the continents). Neat.

Group 4 Technologies - Other Digital Tools’ use in education

I’ve skipped through many examples of these tools, much as I did with Glogster.  It’s really hit home to me just how much useful information and how many useful examples are out there, as well as all the irrelevant, useless dross.  It’s easy to spend hours signing up to various tools, trying to learn them and looking at how other people are using them.  Connectivism and collaboration.  If only I, or all teachers, had the time to keep up with the new ICT tools and their application.  No wonder kids feel that teachers are out of date.  They have so much more time on their hands to discover these wonders on the web and every week will no doubt bring the next new best thing.  However, instead of being threatened or overwhelmed by this fact, perhaps we should be utilising children to educate or update teachers on ICTs?  Instead of/in addition to a Monday morning discussion on, say, current affairs over the weekend, what about a discussion (and presentation) of any new ICT tools or useful (education) sites discovered by pupils over the last week?

PowerPoint use in education – analysis and reflection

Ok, so the embedded videos don't work, but at least Slide Sharer can show the slides.

What about DocStoc to share a Plex version of the same presentation? Download the document and see if you can zoom in (like Prezi) on this PowerPoint presentation with the free add-in, pptPlex. As I've installed the add-in on my PC, I know I can zoom, but I'm not sure if you can do the same from this downloaded document without installing the add-in on your PC. Perhaps you could let me know? Oh, and then get the add-in! Why wouldn't you? It's great and it's free :o)  See below.

Presentation tools - Glogster

Here is my "quick" first attempt at Glogster. Hover over the Glogster logo to be able to see it in full screen mode.



Mine's not very exciting, but click here to see what the kids are up to.

De Bono's Black Hat: As with all ICTs for children under 13yrs, it takes a bit of effort for the teacher to set up, without the need for pupils to record personal details on the web; the video link is limited to YouTube videos; you can only put one hyperlink in one text box; you have to upgrade the free version to be able to use the "Draw" (as the name suggests, a free-hand tool) or "Data" functions (enabling you to upload documents, such as PowerPoint files, for example) and, finally, the hour-glass makes me want to run to Dunkin' Donuts :o(

Glogster is great for those who like lots of colour, mixed and clashing styles, noise, busy-ness, clutter, bells and whistles (i.e. kids). I think they'd love it and if they love it they're going to work harder on it. I do think this is an example of a tool with the danger of offering children the chance to focus more on gimmicks than content and, as ever, the teacher would find the pupils spending more time on presentation than what they put on their "poster".

That said, there are lots of mature professional examples out there.  Look at this contribution, for example, from an obviously conscientious student and there are thousands more if you have the time to look through them here.  BTW, I clicked on LAST to see how many Glogs there were.  Page not found.  There is no end to the number of Glogs out there.  Who would've known?

Prezi as an education tool - analysis

This takes a couple of seconds to wake up, but you'll see why, and I think you'll agree it's worth it.  Click on the play button (centre, bottom), or better still, click on more and choose full screen. You choose the speed of the presentation by pressing play when you want to move on.  You can move backwards too, zoom in, click and drag, etc.  The videos (and hyperlinks) you see are fully-functional too, so click play (and pause and stop, etc, if you've had enough).

Now that's a bit better, hey?

DocStoc vs Google Docs

Again, trying to combine multiple ICTs, I created a PMI of presentation tools in PowerPoint, then saved it to Google Docs.  See previous post.  Maybe it's me and I'm not using Google Docs correctly.  I can see the advantages of different puplis working on the same document, online, say doing homework for a group project using basic documents like Word, but I have to say I don't think it's very good for anything with any interation in it.

I've posted the same PMI on DocStoc below.  To download, click on the orange download button in the top right corner.  Now I think DocStoc is much more useful and reliable and is easier than Google Docs for accessing documents online.  But, when you download the PowerPoint through DocStoc, the same as Google Docs, the document loses it's hyperlinks and other functionality.  Which is not very useful at all.  Of course, it could be me doing something wrong...


-

Google Docs - three strikes and you're out

Here is a PowerPoint presentation I saved into Google Docs.  Unfortunately, you can't see much unless you download the document.  Even then you lose the functionality of even the hyperlinks, not to mention the embedded videos, etc.  As that's the case, what's the point in having all the pages to scroll through?  You can't do anything with them.  You might as well just insert the text, or even embed a Word doc for all the functionality you're losing.  At least I found that the silly icon in the top left corner takes you to Google Docs so you can find the download function.  Still not yet a Google Docs fan.



Now sometimes even these non-functional pages have disappeared!  They were there when I first published them, then gone, then back.  Grrr!  Is it dependent on whether I'm logged in to Google?  And that's another point.  People can't download from Google Docs unless they have a Google account.  Right, that's it Google Docs.  Don't say you weren't warned!

Here's the URL link in case you can still be bothered with the effort of downloading the document without its functionality :o(  I don't believe it.  Even this doesn't work now.  Google Docs?  Google Sucs!  Should stick to search engines ;o)

Videos as educational tools - analysis and reflection

A look at the third and final tool in the Group 2 Technologies - Multimedia: Images, Audio and Video.  The use of videos in education are endless.  They are the Twix of multimedia tools as they can incorporate both images and audio, as well as beating them both hands down!

According to Hoogeveen (1995), multimedia is supposed to lead to "a number of psychological responses:

• a high level of stimulation of the senses, at least with regard to the auditory and visual perception systems;

• a high level of involvement, attention, concentration;

• emotional arousal, e.g., fun; the word arousal is used in the psychophysiological sense of emotional, internal arousal, related to arousal of the nervous system;

• strong recognition effects, using mental reference models.

These psychological responses interact in a complex way so that they give people the feeling they experience information instead of acquiring it".  Hence multimedia is thought to improves not only "retention, understanding, knowledge acquisition, but also the entertainment value of systems (i.e., more fun)".  Kids are going to love it!

Podcasts as educational tools - analysis

Flickr.com

This post looks at audio files or podcasts. Boring! Once again, familiarity breeds contempt.  I imagine 5 - 10 years ago the potential of podcasts was very exciting.  But technology is moving so quickly nowadays that I struggled to find many situations when a podcast (sound only) would be preferred over a vodcast (with images, either moving or static).  The same “Twix effect” as websites encompassing wikis and blogs. Vodcasts can encompass both the other Group 2 Technologies – Multimedia: images, audio, video.  Greedy aren’t I?

Woot! Woot! Over 1000 page views!

I really must stop clicking on my own blog ;o)

Images as educational tools - analysis

Wikis as education tools - further reflections

My previous post on wiki reflections was getting a little long.  In terms of focussing on how I could apply my learning as an e-learning design for use in a primary school environment, the original use for my wiki was not very effective.

I was aware of that soon after creating the wiki, having carried the lessons from that wiki learning experience into the first steps at creating a ‘static’ website (see this blog post for benefits over wikis).  I have since started (definitely a work in progress) a new wiki, aimed at Grade 7 students (my first Prac is in this year).  Click here.  The first aim is to engage (rather than merely entertain), bearing in mind the limited amount of engagement in my first attempt at a wiki. 

I have set up certain preliminary “ice-breaker” pages, including:-

Book review – bad or brilliant, a scaffolded page for reviews of school library/reading list books
- Includes inserted, manipulated images and self-created podcast

Fave Funnies, an easy one to contribute to, simply asking pupils to add their favourite joke;

Pets' Park asking pupils to post a photograph of their pet, or an unusual pet
- Includes inserted, manipulated images

Various Vids “A place to store cool and crazy videos, for those study breaks!” with a view to encouraging the creation of pupils’ own videos in time
- Includes inserted videos, both user-created and public

Technology Tips (computer tips to share with the class to make our lives easier), with a view to trialling various ICTs there too (similar to the GDLT course).

I included lots of exclamation marks in an attempt to excite!  Whilst the primary intention of these pages was to break the ice and engage the pupils, you’ll notice technical demands were included – resizing photos, embedding, uploading – and some tasks aim to develop higher order thinking (such as comparing, critiquing and creating), through different learning styles – pictures, texts, audio/visual, etc. 

Tying it all in to QCAR's priorities.  By the end of Grade 7, wikis should be able to help students in:-

Inquiring with ICTs

Wikis enable students to explore, inquire and research across boundaries, identifying, accessing and sharing data and information sources; organise and analyse, experiment with and test data and information from a variety of sources, evaluate data and information gathered for usefulness, credibility, relevance, accuracy and completeness and, to an extent reflect.

Creating with ICTs

Wikis enable students to develop understanding, demonstrate creativity, planning, thinking, learning, collaboration, communication, and develop, organise and present new ideas.

Communicating with ICTs

Wikis enable students to collaborate and enhance communication with individuals in their class, parents or community groups, or wider, global audiences, to enhance interpersonal relationships and empathise with people in different social and cultural context, in addition to establishing their own (or a group) identity.

Ethics, issues and ICTs

Whilst being introduced to wikis, students must be made to understand and apply ethical, safe and responsible practices, including codes of practice for safe (including health), secure and responsible (including ethical and legal) use and respecting individual rights and cultural differences

Operating ICTs

Wikis enable students to apply operational conventions, develop their own strategies for learning new ICT operations, managing personal resources and customising their interfaces and online identities.

Wikis provide a unique opportunity for collaborative working in groups of all sizes, located anywhere.  Work on wikis needn't be synchronous, enabling a) pupils to work at their own pace and b) contributions from overseas, for example.

Once pupils have developed the basic skills of locating and retrieving (remembering – say searching) and summarising and explaining (understanding – maybe blogging), their thinking can be extended to, say, editing, organising and questioning (applying and analysing – say commenting on blogs and discussing); to collaborating on group projects or experiments online (evaluating) and creating their own, student-centred and student-designed wiki pages and content (creating). [There would be no restriction for those faster learners, moving up the hierarchy, or peer-assisting others to do so]. In terms of Engagement Theory, this would lead not only to “relate” and “create”, the pupils directing their own learning, but “donate” too, albeit perhaps in a limited context within a private wiki.

See coloured table for specific examples of wiki-activities ascending Bloom's ladder, or Ctrl click here for a clearer view.

Websites as education tools - analysis

shop.snackdispatch.com

Choosing between a website and a wiki and a blog is like saying you can either have a biscuit or a toffee or a chocolate bar, knowing full well that a Twix combines and provides all three :o)

A website can include wikis and blogs, but strictly speaking, in order to differentiate, a website is “static”, its content only being changed by the ‘webmaster’ rather than viewers.  That said, it is possible to lock wiki pages, thus further blurring the benefits and differences.

Blogs as education tools – analysis

I already blogged on blogging a month or so ago under this post – To blog or not to blog...

Since then we’ve been asked to explore all three Group 2 Technologies - Online Spaces, i.e. blogs, wikis and websites, including creating the latter two (links to my first wiki, second wiki and my website here).  We are then supposed to focus on one of those three tools in the group.  Having spent considerable time SWOTting and reflecting on wikis, I don’t have a great deal of time to reflect my exploration of blogs, despite having spent even more time blogging and reflecting on my own learning experience.  However, after I reviewed my original post, I realised how little I have applied my own learning to the practical use of such a tool in a primary school environment.  Partly this is due to the fact that I’ve not been to primary school in 30 years (I have no children) and partly because at the beginning of this course I was doing my best to consider my own learning and that of my cohorts, having little further capacity to apply this understanding to my intended practice area.

In an effort to save time, I have combined this (I think necessary) further reflection with the exploration of one of the Group 4 Technologies – Digital Tools (fairly wide-ranging and open-ended), i.e. Online Concept Mapping.  More about Group 4 later.  Two sites, Bubbl.us and Text2Mindmap were suggested, both with their limitations.  Text2 was perhaps easier to insert and convert text, but was nowhere near as functional.  The greatest drawbacks are a) it's not possible to save their mindmaps for later amendment, only to save a picture of them and b) trying to save those pictures is hard as the mindmaps move around and the bubbles overlap :o( 

Bubbl.us has the same draw back in that the mindmap has to be saved as an image file, but at least the mindmap itself can be saved online for later amendment.  Bubbl.us has more functionality than Text2, is pretty straightforward, though not intuitive to navigate, but my main problem was I kept getting kicked out of the site (fortunately the site auto-saved my work).

If you click on the image below it will open larger, in a new window.  Unfortunately, it will also navigate you away from this blog (unless you Ctrl click, or right click and Open Link in New Window).  Y'all come back now, y'hear? :o)

Wikis as education tools - reflections

The instructions were to set up a wiki.  No content or purpose was prescribed.  There was a notable lack of scaffolding in this course task.  It was interesting to see the various approaches this caused, from “lost sheep” simply going through the motions of setting up a wiki, to those higher thinkers who created a useful or engaging space. 

Some cohorts simply created an empty space, using the application’s default template.  Others changed the look and feel, but added little content.  Others still added “entertainment” content.  Finally, others created useful, interactive, collaborative spaces, for sharing relevant pedagogical or child-focussed topics.  There were some excellent ideas mainly repository-knowledge based (for example recommended books for children and fun recipes for children to get involved with) and others chose to scaffold their reflections in a wiki and have other students contribute to SWOTs, PMIs, etc.  As previously comments on wikis suggest, their educational use is highly constructivist and connectivist and should be collaborative, though this latter aspect cannot be taken for granted and must be encouraged (enforced) by a teacher in a classroom environment.

Wikis as education tools - analysis

Ok, so I tried combining one of the Group 4 Technologies - Online Concept Mapping, with a SWOT on wikis.  I used but I'm not a fan.  As you'll see, the image of the "floaty" mindmap that is created has overlapping bubbles, so you can't read the text.  Well, what a waste of half an hour.  Thanks very much Text2Mindmap.  See a plain old, boring table below...

Assessment 1 - results

Image from http://www.coolbuzz.org

In just over an hour, it will have been two weeks since we had to submit our first ICT assignment (click here).  It will also be two weeks until the deadline for our second assignment.  Gulp.

The tension is building, despite the fact that Assessment 1 was "only" worth 20% (Ass 2 is 40%).  One fellow student said "I feel worse than I did on the day of my HSC being mailed to me!".  My goodness, we're all graduates, more than 50% of us are over 40 (at a guess) and more than 70% have at least one (in some cases, several) kids.  Interesting how nervous, anxious, expectant we all are for results of this "minor" element of our whole GDLT course (7 assessed courses, plus teaching prac, so ICT Ass 1 is worth a measly 2.86% over all).  So why such an impact? 

Quote of the week

Image from
http://quotes4all.net/aristotle.html



"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well".

Mr Aristotle, sir.

"You don't need a license to have kids, but you do to teach them".

Mr Wright, sir.

Wow

Having spent a short time looking at learning theories and pedagogy within the limited scope of the GDLT coursework, we are now delving into the information and communication technologies themselves a little more.  It seems that many of my fellow learners haven't spent a lot of time with digital images or podcasts or videos and are as unfamiliar with them as they are with placing hyperlinks in online documents.  Much as some cohorts were uncomfortable or inexperienced with blogging or had trouble getting their head around the idea of wikis, there was also a sizeable percentage that had a fair amount of experience in these technologies.  I wait to see what my fellow students come up with, but one thing is for sure, the best, most fun, original ideas are not necessarily likely to come from those of us who think we know a fair bit about computers and the web.  It is perhaps these fresh, uncluttered minds that may come up with the most amazing ideas.

Not particularly original, but...

I have created a wiki called Mr Wright, Sir. 

The first use for this space is for the student sub-group I call the "Tail-Enders", made up of us CQU GDLT students with surnames from S - Z. From time to time it may be useful for us to use a wiki for online collaboration, rather than other available, less flexible and clunky tools, such as Moodle Forums. 

That doesn't mean to say if your surname ends in a letter other than S - Z that you can't join us. Click here to join the wiki'd gang :o)
 
We were asked to contribute, collaboratively, to an Experts' Jigsaw on "Literacy in the Classroom".  We'll soon see how useful wikis are for this sort of task.  Learning about learning, in action!

Assessment 1 - Learning Design

This blog entry is a little different to the preceding postings, in that it is submitted as Assessment 1 of the ICTs for Learning Design course for the GDLT at CQU Rockhampton.  The assessment requirements prescribe that it be written in academic style, so no smiley faces :o( 

It is a conclusion synthesising our learning, and posting recommendations for our own practice when participating in, and designing eLearning, drawing together our reflections from three previous blog reflections: My Profile Wiki, Learning Theories Wiki and Mobile Phones Wiki.  Due to the limited word allowance, prior reading and understanding of theories, descriptors and tools has been assumed, for example, there is no detailed explanation of my understanding of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy, as that is taken as read.  For amplification on these areas, please refer to my earlier blogs. 

Another Learning Design Framework?

Ok, so the Word published file formatting went a little haywire, so here it is embedded through http://www.docstoc.com/.  Great idea.

Learning Experience Plan

A blessing in disguise

So with my ICT notes being held hostage by my desktop PC (on the blink, see last post), I was forced encouraged to read my Pedagogical Content Knowledge notes.  It's two weeks since I was introduced to the subject at Res School, so I'm playing catch-up (fortunately, I'm a speed reader).  Nagging at the back of my mind when doing the previous ITC course task was the thought that I'd come across a pretty good Learning Design Framework somewhere before.

Here it is - http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/file.php/11801/EPL_templates/2010_LEP_Final.doc. I assume it was drafted (or at least posted) by the PCK Course Coordinator, Rickie Fisher. 

Whilst it does not explicitly combine Bloom's Revised Taxonomy (Bloom's) and Kearsley and Shneiderman's Engagement Theory (ET), these can easily be encompassed.  For example, Bloom's fits neatly under "Intended Learning Outcomes" as can the the Donate principle of ET.  The Relate and Create elements of ET fit well within the main body of the "Learning Processes and Procedures" to be employed, e.g. a learner-driven collaborative project.

I have attempted to get Word to publish the linked Learning Experience Plan/Learning Design Framework directly to this blog.  Word tells me it has done so, but I've not seen it post yet.  Fingers crossed...

In the meantime, note to self: "Keep up with the your reading in all subjects!".

If cars were like computers

Thank goodness for my seven year old Sony VAIO.  My super-duper HP desktop has crashed again locking me out from my ICT notes.  Looks like I might actually have to start my PCK reading ;o)

Computers are like cars.  Or our reliance on them both, more like.  We love our cars and our computers and take them for granted, until the day they let us down (nothing to do with us not servicing or maintaining them properly, of course).  Anyway, this reflection of the similarities between the two technologies (thus enabling me to blog about them here) reminded me of the (apocryphal) spat between Microsoft and General Motors.  Old, but amusing, reproduced here (for your amusement) from snopes.com:-

At a recent COMDEX, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1,000 miles per gallon."

Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement: "Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?

• Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.  
• Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.  
• Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept this too.  
• You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought Car95 or CarNT. But, then you would have to buy more seats.  
• Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive - but would only run on 5 percent of the roads.  
• The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.  
• The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.  
• New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.  
• The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.  
• If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened."

 :o)

Designing a Universal Learning Design Framework

…is not an easy task, or there’d already be one design template or framework out there, right?  Whilst invited/instructed to read considerable warnings and guidance on working legally, safely and ethically online, I haven’t read the small print that no doubt says that CQU owns the copyright to anything useful, or (more usefully) valuable that we come up with during our studies - yet.  Once an ex-lawyer, always an ex-lawyer.

 The course reading leads us to accept that there are three detailed, multi-faceted areas  that need to overlap and combine productively, to create the best learning experience: C = Content, P = Pedagogy and T = technology.  That’s why it’s complex.

From cartoonstock.com



I’m not sure I agree that these should be seen as three distinct areas.  I think there have always been technological pedagogical aids, from slates to abacuses, pencils to word processors.  Certainly, there is a proclaimed technical revolution, but I think of it more as evolution, albeit very rapid.  For example, we talk of the permanent nature of wikis, enabling learners and teachers to gauge progress, and to return and reflect.  Think of the leap in this exact area when learning technology progressed from slate to paper.  Looking more from the learner’s perspective, look at the increased efficiency from quills to Biro (and, of course, White Out ;o).  Consider how much quicker a classroom could progress with the impact of that ‘basic’ technology.  The current ICT evolution is astounding in the explosive nature of its growth, its breadth, its complexity, and its potential, but it still remains just one tool, one facet of a teacher’s effective pedagogical content knowledge strategy.  So perhaps rather than thinking of technology as a separate T, it should be considered an integral T, integral to both P and C?