[dundee] Taylug Weekly Articles 8 - POMS

[Robert McWilliam]

On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 01:31:47AM -0800, Gary Short wrote:
> Well all righty then. I think the investment should be in teachers because:
>
>  1. Its what happens in the developed world, which is not to say its
> best just 'cos its what we do, but it does mean that it is a proven
> model. Its been done for centuaries; everyone does it, which means
> they've not come across a better way of doing it; because its a
> established, proven model, there are lots of empirical studies
> around what works and what doesn't work.

There is considerable disagreement on what the best class room model
of education actually is. Is it directed learning where you have
someone to ask questions of, is it someone standing up in front of a
class and explaining something to them, is it groups of peers getting
together in a classroom and figuring stuff out and the 'teacher' is just
there to maintain discipline. There are conflicting studies on which
of those (or the infinite variations on the theme) work best (or at
all). I point this out to note that there are huge variations in the
way people are educated in developed countries and over recent history
so you can't really say that there is a proven model. 

One thing all the models used in developed countries have in common is
that they are incredibly expensive (US education spending is in the
order of $10k/year/pupil). The idea of the OLPC and similar
initiatives is to bring down the cost of education. You can have all
your text books on the computer (which pays for the computer if you
can eliminate a handful of books), and it offers comms capabilities so
that you can have the interaction part with a teacher anywhere (even
volunteers on teh other side of the planet).   

> 2. Even when the pupils are remote from the teacher there is already
> a model for dealing with that, both here in this country with
> schools programmes on TV and radio and (if you need more
> interaction) in Australia with the short wave radio serivce.

I see the OLPC as the extension of this. It offers greater flexibility
in the communications in that you can have email, IM, VOIP, etc to
suite what is required. Why build a new system using less featured
communications just because that is what is used else where?

> 3. In short the problem that OLPC tackles has been solved, there are
> tried, tested and proven methods and techonologies in this area
> already; why throw that away and spend millions developing a
> solution to a problem that has been solved? Why not invest in the
> current (proven) solutions? 

The OLPC model of using computer based communications, and reference
material for education is actually one that has been tried
successfully in this country for courses where the numbers taking them
at any one school don't justify a teacher there. I was one of the
guinea pigs that it was trialed on: http://scholar.hw.ac.uk/ 

> It does smack a little of NIH.

I'm going to show my ignorance and ask what NIH stands for. All that
google comes up with is National Institutes of Health, and that
doesn't seem like the right expansion.

________________________________________________________
Robert McWilliam     rmcw at allmail.net    www.ormiret.com

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