From EDUCAUSE REVIEW | September/October 2005, Volume 40, Number 5:
Is covering content enough? Content-focused learning has a relatively short half-life, particularly since most learners careers will span a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime. Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
I love this quote (originally from George Siemens) we were just talking about this idea in our web design class the other day. I’ve been trying not to give “the right answer” lately in class but instead get students thinking about where they can find the answer themselves…
Continue reading ‘EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’
While taking part in some workshops over the past 6 months I became aware that there’s teachers in TAFE who log in to their email once or twice a week just to delete all the unread email - without reading it! My initial reaction (as someone who loves technology) was “That’s crazy… irresponsible even??”. But when I thought about it from their perspective (as people who don’t use a lot of technology), I wondered if I’d do the same thing in their situation?
Working for a large organisation in the public sector, with lots of people who need to let lots of other people know about stuff, the sheer volume of email that people have to deal can be a huge barrier to effective communication. When you combine this with the fact that some teachers are only in the office for half-an-hour once a week (and don’t check email from home for various reasons), checking your inbox for relevant information becomes near impossible.
And here inlies the problem… a lot of information that ends up in our inboxes is irrelevant to many individuals.
Continue reading ‘Drowning in Email?’
Andy Budd has just posted Blogging in Government - a reflection on his experience speaking to Government officials at 10 Downing Street… the topic? “Blogging in the Public Sector”. Kindof relevant to those of us blogging within TAFE or other public institutions here in Australia!
Andy and his mates talked about:
how governmental weblogs could give a human face to often monolithic organisations and mentioned how Robert Scoble had helped change the public perception of Microsoft
Continue reading ‘Blogging in the Public Sector’
It’s interesting to do a Technorati tag search for TAFE and see what people are writing about their TAFE experience… of course, it’s not always going to be posititve… One student, ‘unwritten’ wrote recently in a post entitled “bored *sigh*“:
Man, i should really get going on my TAFE work, but tis soo soo soo boring, ive been trying to put it off for as long as i can. I mean seriously, this is what we have to do: we have about an A4 sized, 111 paged text book, yea i know it doesnt seem long but we have to summarise each frikkin paragraph of the whole thing! I mean tell me how were supposed to actually learn from that?
Tell me if im wrong and overreacting, PA-LEASE. Cos I sure as hell am learning nothing from it…
…i confronted him about it and the reason he sets the courses up like this is so we fill up the time requirement which is like 40 horus on each module. I mean COME ON! Thats no excuse, it makes me so frustrateddd!!
GRRRR…
Continue reading ‘Students reflecting on their TAFE experience…’