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Digital Natives, Dinosaurs, Luddites & Dictators ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 21:02

"The problem for schools at the moment is that many teachers do not have the levels of digital literacy held by many of their students. This is magnified by the fact that the 'decision makers' in schools - i.e. the senior management team are less likely to have the skills needed due to their ... 'experience' so see less value in elearning and ict.

They have the power to effect change and innovate but are less likely to use it.

Gavin Holden 11 February 2010, 22:12

And barriers to learning:

"In FE-environments at present, they are staring down the barrel of a gun that spells out a requirement of at least a 75% pass-rate for A-levels. As a consequence they become more interested in bullying lecturers into, in effect, ticking boxes than being creative, let alone innovative."

Eva Arndt 12 February 2010, 14:31
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Design Museum

Wet learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 5 May 2014, 07:29

In an environment in which the coining of phrases is endemic I wish to invent the term wet.learning - learning that is conducted in and around water in relation to teaching people to swim and teaching teachers and coaches how to teach people to swim.

By defintion you cannot have anything electric or electronic around water; this negates e.learning of any kind.

even paper learning (p.learning) can be problematic as the stuff invariably gets wet, goes soggy, tears and is binned.

so we are left with orginal learning (o.learning), which like orginal sin committed by Adam & Eve is done in a semi-naked state.

I mock, I must. I've been involved in education, mostly corporate, and have never deemed it necessary to call it v.learning when we used video, though interactive learning & training became common place (though never called i.learning or i.training) - it was sometimes called 'clever' or 'smart' learning though ... but never c.learning or s.learning.

So back to wet learning ...

undertaken poolside where the acoustics are atrocious we often resort to grunts, sign language and waving our arms & limbs about in demonstration.

Did our ancestors in cave teach cave-kids to paint in such ways?

If there is to be any final definition of e.learning it should be 'effecitive learning,' the alternative be "*.learning."

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Voice recognition is yet to overcome QWERTY

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 5 May 2014, 07:00

Trying voice recognition software and expected to use it fifteen years ago I fail to see its everyday application. (Inform me otherwise, please).

A generation typing in TXT may in time stick with an keyboard that goes ABC/DEF while touch screens and icons are still an expensive novelty, limited yet again by those who create the software in a language that they can use and favour with English often the mother tongue and culturally the was screens are read, the images and colours used, of Western origin.

And within this, take one tiny Empirical-like imposition that took many years to address – all Microsoft dictionaries favoured American English.

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