Horses for courses…

At Learning with ‘e’s, Steve Wheeler muses that it is:

“…interesting after all these years that people still want to come together face to face to do workshops, seminars, participate in lectures and demonstrations, and generally network in a co-present manner. This despite all the issues of travel pollution, rising fuel prices, travel delays, terrorist threats, stress and anxiety, and so on.”

It happens that I have just been asked to attend and contribute to a conference in Spain. All expenses paid, which raises the additional issue of how money is spent and how it might (or might not) be better directed. It also happens that prior commitments prevent me from accepting … but, putting that aside, what would I feel about attending?

Truth to tell, despite my passionate belief in the importance of synthetic simulations as replacement for “co-present experience”, there are some things that can’t be done through them. Some things need physical, not virtual interaction. And which things those are is not a constant: they vary for each individual and, especially, for each learner.

The interaction around (rather than in) many conferences, workshops, whatever, can in the words of my invitation “create important and helpful synergies“. I value the (physical) research group meetings which I attend roughly every other month, and some professional development activities which involve actually being in the same room as other people; but there are those who do not, who regard them as a waste of time. I am generally less than fully energised by physical attendance at conferences, but I know colleagues whose professional passion depends upon it.

I do about ninety percent, perhaps a little more, of my educational work using electronic means of delivery, but there are subjects, groups and individuals for which this is not suitable. I have a very rewarding voluntary involvement with mathematics and science learning by groups of disaffected teenagers, for example, who need their courage validated and confidence boosted by every interpersonal cue available: they just wouldn’t get what they need from computer mediated communications. And seeing one of those groups wander in shared wonder around the Natural History Museum or across a wetland habitat I cannot imagine an adequate computer mediated substitute … supplement, yes, very certainly: but not substitute. On the other hand, there are a couple of similarly disaffected teenagers for whom social contact is difficult and painful, but for whom CMC provides a way forward.

Horses for courses; most (not all) of us need some sort of professional interaction in physical person, but there’s no “one size fits all” way to provide it for everyone.

The culture of conference as jolly junket, a sort of paid holiday perk of the job, certainly needs attention. So does knee jerk rejection of the new (still sadly all too common). But technology is a glorious enrichment of the available communication options, not a wholesale replacement of them.

For the past ten years or so, I have been running an introduction to ICT in Teaching and Learning for trainee teachers, lecturers and instructors. I have seen the attendees go on into practice. Those who make the richest contribution to their students’ learning are not those who embrace ICT as a new paradigm, nor those who view it as an interesting add on extra; they are the ones who eagerly seek to integrate its advantages into the broadest possible spectrum of educational experience.

[contributed by Felix Grant]

Experiments with a one-per-student computer

Asus’ EEE PC, though useful in many other areas (see more extensive review here), is a computer designed specifically for education. A wireless platform cheap enough, light enough, robust enough, small enough and powerful enough to be seriously proposed as a go anywhere, work anywhere, one per child point of wireless entry into a networked school system. We don’t know whether this vision is about to become reality at this moment, but we don’t doubt that it will come about in time – and the EEE PC is certainly closer than anything else we have seen to the keystone which would make it possible.

Over the past few months we have been sharing a set of these machines, moving them around different groups for a week or two at time and comparing notes on the results.

The machine is small enough to just about go into a handbag, as some of our young female teenage students demonstrated, is big enough for adapted touch typing after some practice, has on board wireless or wired network connectivity, is provided with three USB ports plus microphone/headphone jacks and is remarkable resilient.

Prices start at £167 (about $300 or €230 at time of writing), although the the ones we used were those with two or four gigabytes of storage at £220 or £250 respectively ($400/€300 or $450/€340). Each machine in our set was also provided with a one gigabyte SD/MMC card, on which the default documents folder was configured to reside.

Despite some remarkably rough treatment, the complete set survived and were returned to the supplier in full working order.

That’s it for now. We will follow up with individual posts on our separate experiences over the trial period.

[Contributed by Chandra on behalf of the whole trial group]

After time of drought and famine…

For a wide variety of reasons (most of them educational!), the education pages have been quiet over the past few months.

Things are coming together again, however, and I hope that things will be busier  from April 21st (when most Spring breaks end) onward.