Mr. Favaloro’s House of Science Education

Dr. Kearney’s latest post on the use of video medium talks about the  advances of the video medium. These new ways are welcome – as from my experiences as both a student and student teacher – video time could be renamed to sleepy time. I think allowing students to make their own videos is a great idea (at least much better than making students watch videos they have no interest in) – but the cynic in me thinks its going to take some time for schools to be funded in order to allow it to happen to any great extent – and again – it would take a lot of time and effort to integrate this technology into science teaching, without it being gimicky. Check out my review of “What the research says about digital video in teaching and learning” – up in a second

Ms Jiang’s made an interesting post here. I’m still somewhat struggling with exactly how cyber-bullying is allowed to continue. Are the perpetrators so oblivious to the fact that they are going to get caught? Surely things can be done – IP tracing, for example… Then again, I’ll never understand bullying – and much less cyber-bullying – but this sort of thing, I guess, may be viewed by bullies as a victim less crime – like punching someone in the dark…

Phew – glad to see we share the same opinion about this post! Miss Ng’s post here pretty much reflects my views here – the problem, in my opinion, lies deeper than any problem with ‘digital immigrants’ issues with technology – I think the problem is with the ‘optional’ professional standards – why is it acceptable for teachers to use dated methods? Surgeons can’t perform surgery without maintaining their professional knowledge – sure teaching isn’t a life or death situation – but it does put students futures at stake, does it not?

This is a reaction to the ‘post of the year‘. Nothing academic here…

Proud of being technologically illiterate? I think Fish misinterpreted pride in statements about being mathematically and technologically incompetent. I disagree with answering so called ‘depressing’ questions – the fact that someone is asking means that they are trying to find the answer – I’ve worked many years assisting seniors (I say that with the knowledge that many of them are still sub 50) who would obviously be considered digital immigrants – I’ve had to repeat processes that are so simple to many of us – logging on to the internet, checking email etc. This is not depressing to me, the fact is they are trying, they aren’t proud of being technologically illiterate. People often say things they don’t truly mean in order to mask their own insecurities, and yes, these things have the potential to be misinterpreted, but the fact remains – they want to know how to use new technology! While this isn’t an exact parallel to teachers who, according to Fish, are proud of being technologically ignorant, it certainly demonstrates a different world view. I’ve met many people who don’t know who to use many forms of technology, both so called ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’, and not once has one of them refused assistance.

In all honesty I’m finding TOO much emphasis on the need to incorporate technology into lessons – sure it is important – but I just came from a tutorial where one of my peers mentioned an inability for students, in a highly funded school, to extract information from a text book – A TEXT BOOK! THESE STUDENTS RELY SO HEAVILY ON TECHNOLOGY THEY CAN’T USE A TEXT BOOK!

What I find truly depressing is that people actually read posts like this and vote them post of the year… And now that depressing view is reflected in my posting

OK check out LOLcats – that always cheers me up (despite the horrible LOLspeak)