One of my favourite things is StumbleUpon. Today it led to me to this site. It'll make you think again about your next visit to a so-called "family restaurant". (At least, it ought to make you rethink what you order.)
And the #1 worst food bothered me for a whole different reason - as an Aussie, I cringe at the thought that Americans might think that here in Oz we would actually eat "cheese fries". We don't even use the word "fries" here. And we certainly don't have "ranch sauce" (or 'ranch' anything else). I don't know where the Outback Steakhouse is, and I don't really care to find out.
Excuse me now, it's almost dinner time and I have to throw a couple of roo steaks on the barbie.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Web + Mathematics -- Take 2
At the end of 2006, I posted a rant about the sorry state of working with Mathematics in the browser. That post elicited some good feedback, but I was still dissatisfied with the overall situation. I still am, to some extent. Microsoft still couldn't bring themselves to add support for MathML in IE7 (along with a host of other things) - at least MathPlayer is still there to paper over the gaping hole. Apple's Safari browser is into version 3 and still struggling with MathML. It's not encouraging.
But there are good things happening. Peter Jipsen of Chapman University has developed a javascript approach to entering equations in a simple syntax (well, simpler than LaTeX, at least, and nowhere near as verbose as MathML itself) and rendering it on-screen with Presentation MathML. It's called AsciiMath. And it works! Not only that, adding it to Moodle proved to be simplicity itself.
There are a few caveats. (Isn't there always?) Because you are using Presentation MathML, you need the MathML fonts installed on your computer. And if you use IE, you need MathPlayer (or a real browser, but let's not go there.) If you use Safari... sorry, try Camino or Flock.
But it's a big step in the right direction. Especially if you are using a VLE like Moodle, since it means that students can enter their own mathematical equations and expressions without needing to resort to other software for its creation and/or editing.
Being able to type in `x^2 +(3x)/5 =0` and getting a good-looking equation on-screen is exactly the level at which students (and teachers) need this to work - a simple, effective way of entering their equations resulting in immediate and effective presentation.
Peter Jipsen - you're a legend.
But there are good things happening. Peter Jipsen of Chapman University has developed a javascript approach to entering equations in a simple syntax (well, simpler than LaTeX, at least, and nowhere near as verbose as MathML itself) and rendering it on-screen with Presentation MathML. It's called AsciiMath. And it works! Not only that, adding it to Moodle proved to be simplicity itself.
There are a few caveats. (Isn't there always?) Because you are using Presentation MathML, you need the MathML fonts installed on your computer. And if you use IE, you need MathPlayer (or a real browser, but let's not go there.) If you use Safari... sorry, try Camino or Flock.
But it's a big step in the right direction. Especially if you are using a VLE like Moodle, since it means that students can enter their own mathematical equations and expressions without needing to resort to other software for its creation and/or editing.
Being able to type in `x^2 +(3x)/5 =0` and getting a good-looking equation on-screen is exactly the level at which students (and teachers) need this to work - a simple, effective way of entering their equations resulting in immediate and effective presentation.Peter Jipsen - you're a legend.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Big Brother Down Under?
A couple of edubloggers in my aggregator have commented on the recent announcement by the new Rudd government about its intentions to require all ISPs in Oz to filter the Internet for homes and schools, blocking pornography and "inappropriate" material. The announcement clearly states that the scheme is "opt-out" rather than "opt-in", as it was promoted in the recent election campaign. The reaction in various quarters has predictably been "censorship". I think censorship is a secondary issue here.
The Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says he makes no apology for making the scheme mandatory. (Having heard Conroy speak on previous occasions, this is hardly surprising - I wonder if he actually knows how to apologise.)
My feelings about this announcement have shifted as I've thought through the likely scenarios. My initial reaction was that it's a positive move that will protect young children - as a father, things that will help to protect my kids tend to get a thumbs up.
As an educator, my initial thoughts were much the same. Then I started thinking about the implementation and implications.
What sort of filtering will be used? As a teacher at a school with filtering systems in place, I know full well that even the most recent versions of filtering are far from perfect. Word filters catch words, but not pictures on webpages that don't have those words. Black-lists will always be playing catch-up to the websites that you want blocked. White-lists? They also are always in catch-up mode, and in the meanwhile stifle legitimate exploration of the web. It seems a reasonable assumption that while the ISPs may do their best to conform with the government's policy, they won't catch everything.
So what happens when something gets through all this filtering, and little Johnny goes home and says, "Guess what Billy saw on the computer today at school?"
Right now, if that happened, the parents would take it up with the school; the school would check that its filtering was working, and point to the line in their policy that says that they make every effort to block inappropriate material but due to the nature of the Internet cannot guarantee..., etc., and that's probably where it would end in most cases.
But once the new policy starts being enforced, schools have a new defence: the ISP should have blocked it before it got to us; if it got past their filters... .
When the ISP takes the line "we make every effort to block inappropriate material but due to the nature of the Internet cannot guarantee..., etc.", will that be accepted? Will the ISP be fined under the new legislation? Will the parents and/or the school be able to seek damages in court?
If ISPs will be required only to do "their best" to provide clean feed (i.e. demonstrate that they have filters in place which are regularly updated), the end result is no different from what schools and parents are getting from their own filtering software now - except for one important detail - the consumers (schools and parents) will be paying for this filtering on an ongoing basis.
On the other hand, if ISPs must provide clean feed, they will be vulnerable to prosecution, which will leave the smaller ISPs more exposed than the industry big guns, in the long run resulting in the smaller ISPs bowing out or being subsumed by their larger competition. And consumers will still end up paying for filtering.
The other thing that concerns me is that some parents who have been uncertain or lax about buying filtering software will now think "okay, it's taken care of for me, so I don't need to worry about what my kid is doing on the Internet." No filtering is perfect, and there is no substitute for parental supervision. But this policy may delude some parents into thinking that the Internet just got safer.
Australians already pay too much for mediocre web access - now they will pay even more, and for filtering that in all likelihood will be no improvement over what they can buy (for less). This policy stinks of one-upmanship on the Coalition's offer of giving family free Internet filters for their home computers.
Big Brother? More like Fagin, if you ask me.
The Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says he makes no apology for making the scheme mandatory. (Having heard Conroy speak on previous occasions, this is hardly surprising - I wonder if he actually knows how to apologise.)
My feelings about this announcement have shifted as I've thought through the likely scenarios. My initial reaction was that it's a positive move that will protect young children - as a father, things that will help to protect my kids tend to get a thumbs up.
As an educator, my initial thoughts were much the same. Then I started thinking about the implementation and implications.
What sort of filtering will be used? As a teacher at a school with filtering systems in place, I know full well that even the most recent versions of filtering are far from perfect. Word filters catch words, but not pictures on webpages that don't have those words. Black-lists will always be playing catch-up to the websites that you want blocked. White-lists? They also are always in catch-up mode, and in the meanwhile stifle legitimate exploration of the web. It seems a reasonable assumption that while the ISPs may do their best to conform with the government's policy, they won't catch everything.
So what happens when something gets through all this filtering, and little Johnny goes home and says, "Guess what Billy saw on the computer today at school?"
Right now, if that happened, the parents would take it up with the school; the school would check that its filtering was working, and point to the line in their policy that says that they make every effort to block inappropriate material but due to the nature of the Internet cannot guarantee..., etc., and that's probably where it would end in most cases.
But once the new policy starts being enforced, schools have a new defence: the ISP should have blocked it before it got to us; if it got past their filters... .
When the ISP takes the line "we make every effort to block inappropriate material but due to the nature of the Internet cannot guarantee..., etc.", will that be accepted? Will the ISP be fined under the new legislation? Will the parents and/or the school be able to seek damages in court?
If ISPs will be required only to do "their best" to provide clean feed (i.e. demonstrate that they have filters in place which are regularly updated), the end result is no different from what schools and parents are getting from their own filtering software now - except for one important detail - the consumers (schools and parents) will be paying for this filtering on an ongoing basis.
On the other hand, if ISPs must provide clean feed, they will be vulnerable to prosecution, which will leave the smaller ISPs more exposed than the industry big guns, in the long run resulting in the smaller ISPs bowing out or being subsumed by their larger competition. And consumers will still end up paying for filtering.
The other thing that concerns me is that some parents who have been uncertain or lax about buying filtering software will now think "okay, it's taken care of for me, so I don't need to worry about what my kid is doing on the Internet." No filtering is perfect, and there is no substitute for parental supervision. But this policy may delude some parents into thinking that the Internet just got safer.
Australians already pay too much for mediocre web access - now they will pay even more, and for filtering that in all likelihood will be no improvement over what they can buy (for less). This policy stinks of one-upmanship on the Coalition's offer of giving family free Internet filters for their home computers.
Big Brother? More like Fagin, if you ask me.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Janus
It seems that the New Year had beguiled a few blogger of renown to make some predictions for 2008.
Tim Bray, in his ongoing blog, actually has 4 predictions for 2008. The one that caught my eye (mainly because of the comments) was 2008 Prediction 2: Windows Looks Bad. Tim provides his own summary:
Stephen Downes took an entirely different tack, looking back at the predictions made a year ago for 2007. [link] It's a timely reminder of the perils of playing Nostradamus. Those who did best, for the most part, made broad predictions rather than specifics (though there was one notable exception).
My prediction for 2009 - we will look back at the prediction made for 2008 and wonder what we were thinking.
Tim Bray, in his ongoing blog, actually has 4 predictions for 2008. The one that caught my eye (mainly because of the comments) was 2008 Prediction 2: Windows Looks Bad. Tim provides his own summary:
The strain due to the fact that most business desktops are locked into the Microsoft platform, at a time when both the Apple and GNU/Linux alternatives are qualitatively safer, better, and cheaper to operate, will start to become impossible to ignore.The comments that followed were quite revealing. While many agreed with Tim's sentiments about how Windows compares to Mac OS X or Linux, a couple of comments stood out:
"wrong, wrong, wrong. Why is it that so many IT guys act as if migrating to Linux is such a simple experience that every novice user should/could do it? The average non-IT Windows user runs it because (a) it comes pre-installed (b) their favorite (pronounced "the one their friends or the sales guy recommended") app "x" was readily available, and (c) it closely matches that computer at work so that the daily mind shift is minimal.
Until inroads are made in all 3 of these areas, the market penetration for home users will continue to be minimal." [link]
and:
"... the people I meet in my part of the world are in quite different position. Architects, designers, photographers, sound engineers, movie makers, ... (Btw., what is the term which describes all the above professions? Are those "content creators"?) simply don't have the tools to run under any free OS. There is no Autocad, nor AllPlan. No Rhinoceros, no AliasStudio. No Indesign, Photoshop (no, GIMP, doesn't count), Freehand (no, Inkscape doesn't count), Quark, Flash, Acrobat (not Reader). FontLab. Avid. Combustion. ProTools. Vegas. Capture One. And Lightroom... To sum it up, Windows may look bad but its applications look superb." [link]though that last comment contrasts interestingly with an earlier one:
"...everything else you mentioned had to do with brain-dead applications from some of the worst companies: Adobe, Sun, and Symantec.Personally, I doubt that there will be much of a shift in 2008, but I don't think that's exactly what Tim was getting at. The point is that business, becoming dissatisfied with Windows (epecially Vista), will be looking even more closely at the viability of alternatives. The issue of lock-in is very real, especially as one commentator noted,And I guarantee you that if we all start moving to Linux or OSX, these companies will start souring those OS's with their shoddy, annoying, anti-user software just as bad and people will keep buying it.
I'll give you that the OSX user experience, over all, is much better than XP, but without all the extraneous apps from Adobe, et al, XP isn't quite so bad. The real problem is app and driver vendors." [link]
"...doesn't Office 2007 on Mac not support VBA? ... That is an instant dealbreaker for editors who use Word and heavy Excel users. AFAIK, investment/finance people live by their macros." [link]Following some of the links from the comments led to interesting reading. Mark Pilgrim, in an entry titled 2008 is the year of Linux on the desktop, had this to say:
"So yeah, my parents switched to Linux because — among other reasons — it was easier to use with their iPod. That’s how badly Apple has lost the plot."Far be it from me that I should criticise someone of Mark Pilgrim's stature, but I'm not sure who's really lost the plot here.
Stephen Downes took an entirely different tack, looking back at the predictions made a year ago for 2007. [link] It's a timely reminder of the perils of playing Nostradamus. Those who did best, for the most part, made broad predictions rather than specifics (though there was one notable exception).
My prediction for 2009 - we will look back at the prediction made for 2008 and wonder what we were thinking.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – A GTD episode
About eighteen months ago, I came across a website called 43 Folders, which in turn introduced me to Getting Things Done, which is the title of a book by David Allen, but more importantly it's a work management system, and eighteen months ago, GTD could not have come at a better time – I was up to my ears in work, and struggling to cope.
One thing that I changed was how I was using my PDA (a Palm Tungsten T5). But here I ran into a problem – the T5 works nicely with Palm Desktop, but not much else. My personal choices re software didn't really help – while I like the Mac platform, I don't really care that much for Apple's applications, so I use Thunderbird rather than Mail, and Firefox instead of Safari. As for iCal, I find its tendency to overlap translucent panels a visual eyesore, so I left it well alone.
Of course, this meant that I could not take advantage of the integration that Apple had built between iCal and Mail.
Fast forward six months, and now my Mac-centric workplace has a centralised calendar solution that most of my colleagues subscribe to through iCal. (I'm still resisting iCal, of course, and using Sunbird.)
It comes as a rude shock a little later on to find that iCal can't handle the volume of data being delivered from the calendar. The solution - scale back the data being delivered from the calendar. (Those of you who are shaking your heads at this – yeah, I know, but it wasn't my decision.)
Meanwhile, I'm still trying to improve my work practices, and I've started using Quicksilver instead of the dock and tags rather than nested folders. I've also found GTDTiddlyWiki (by Jeremy Ruston), and using it to manage my projects. Small tasks, however, still live on
my T5. The separation is a bit clunky, but I'm living with it.
But I'm now noticing more GTD-related software appearing. "Kinkless GTD", a set of applescripts for OmniOutliner Pro, iGTD. Time to look into this more closely.
iGTD at first glance doesn't seem to be offering much more than GTDTiddlyWiki. But the devil is in the details, as they say, and there are a couple of key details here - iGTD interacts with two other apps that completely change the ballgame.
The first app in question is Apple's iSync. Naturally, iSync doesn't want to know about Sunbird, but it is tight with iCal, so items in iGTD get synced with iCal. Nice.
The second app is QuickSilver - I can hotkey into QS, switch to text mode, then drop my text into iGTD's inbox, and I'm done and back onto whatever I was working on. Apart from the actual text for the entry, only 7 keystrokes are required.
As nice as this is, the real key to making this work (for me, at least) is getting iSync to talk to my T5. This particular step proved to be the most annoying - what looked like it should work quite easily just wouldn't. I had to dive into Apple's online support forums to find the answer to a very unhelpful message, to wit, that either I had not properly installed Palm's HotSync Manager or I had never run it - wrong on both counts. (It was in fact a permissions problem, but nothing in iSync or its Help files pointed in this direction.)
Having gotten iSync and the T5 to finally talk to each other, I now have a single system (at least in terms of the digital stuff - the paper war on my desk is another matter) that works well.
And yet I'm now looking at an early version of Things, and I like what I see. If Cultured Code add support for QuickSilver and synchronisation that I can make work with my PDA, I may well switch.
So, to sum up: iGTD + iSync + Quicksilver is good; iSync's flightiness with Palm devices and the effort required to find the solution is bad; iCal remains ugly.
One thing that I changed was how I was using my PDA (a Palm Tungsten T5). But here I ran into a problem – the T5 works nicely with Palm Desktop, but not much else. My personal choices re software didn't really help – while I like the Mac platform, I don't really care that much for Apple's applications, so I use Thunderbird rather than Mail, and Firefox instead of Safari. As for iCal, I find its tendency to overlap translucent panels a visual eyesore, so I left it well alone.Of course, this meant that I could not take advantage of the integration that Apple had built between iCal and Mail.
Fast forward six months, and now my Mac-centric workplace has a centralised calendar solution that most of my colleagues subscribe to through iCal. (I'm still resisting iCal, of course, and using Sunbird.)
It comes as a rude shock a little later on to find that iCal can't handle the volume of data being delivered from the calendar. The solution - scale back the data being delivered from the calendar. (Those of you who are shaking your heads at this – yeah, I know, but it wasn't my decision.)
Meanwhile, I'm still trying to improve my work practices, and I've started using Quicksilver instead of the dock and tags rather than nested folders. I've also found GTDTiddlyWiki (by Jeremy Ruston), and using it to manage my projects. Small tasks, however, still live on
my T5. The separation is a bit clunky, but I'm living with it.
But I'm now noticing more GTD-related software appearing. "Kinkless GTD", a set of applescripts for OmniOutliner Pro, iGTD. Time to look into this more closely.
iGTD at first glance doesn't seem to be offering much more than GTDTiddlyWiki. But the devil is in the details, as they say, and there are a couple of key details here - iGTD interacts with two other apps that completely change the ballgame.
The first app in question is Apple's iSync. Naturally, iSync doesn't want to know about Sunbird, but it is tight with iCal, so items in iGTD get synced with iCal. Nice.
The second app is QuickSilver - I can hotkey into QS, switch to text mode, then drop my text into iGTD's inbox, and I'm done and back onto whatever I was working on. Apart from the actual text for the entry, only 7 keystrokes are required.
As nice as this is, the real key to making this work (for me, at least) is getting iSync to talk to my T5. This particular step proved to be the most annoying - what looked like it should work quite easily just wouldn't. I had to dive into Apple's online support forums to find the answer to a very unhelpful message, to wit, that either I had not properly installed Palm's HotSync Manager or I had never run it - wrong on both counts. (It was in fact a permissions problem, but nothing in iSync or its Help files pointed in this direction.)
Having gotten iSync and the T5 to finally talk to each other, I now have a single system (at least in terms of the digital stuff - the paper war on my desk is another matter) that works well.
And yet I'm now looking at an early version of Things, and I like what I see. If Cultured Code add support for QuickSilver and synchronisation that I can make work with my PDA, I may well switch.
So, to sum up: iGTD + iSync + Quicksilver is good; iSync's flightiness with Palm devices and the effort required to find the solution is bad; iCal remains ugly.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Cyberbullies... and their Mums
On Monday I attended a seminar led by adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg on cyberbullying. The one thing that really stuck with me from the day was the problem of boundaries.
Once, the distinction between "school issues" and "home issues" was reasonably clear-cut. If it happened in the school (or on the way to or from school), e.g. a fist-fight, it was a "school issue". Otherwise it was a "home issue". (Yes, I realise that it was never that clear-cut, and there were grey areas, but for most students most of the time, the distinction was a fairly clear and obvious one.)
Enter the Internet, email, instant messaging, mobile phones, SMS. Suddenly the distinction between school matters and home matters is lost in a techological miasma.
Little Miss X and her friends are cold shouldering Student Y at school, but also sending spiteful text messages late at night - is the text messaging a school issue, even though it happens outside the school grounds outside of school hours? The answer would seem to be "Yes" - the actions outside the school are intimately connected to the actions and relationships inside the school, and schools that decide not to deal with these things run the risk of being sued for neglecting their duty of care. BUT (and it's no small 'but') we are then confronted with students and parents who want to argue that the school should not be involved (these are of course the same parents who wouldn't hesitate to pursue legal action if if were their child on the receiving end and the school decided not to act).
So the boundaries have been blurred and we now have students and their parents who want to draw the boundaries where it suits them.
An example of this is the case of Anna Drakers, an Assistant Principal of a school in the US who appeared on the Dr. Phil show after two 15 year old boys created a false MySpace account in her name, and then loaded it with defamatory information. Ms Drakers is now pursuing a civil action against the families of the two boys.
The question that was put to us in Michael Carr-Gregg's seminar was whether or not Ms Drakers was right in her pursuit of legal action. Recent neurological research informs us that the brains of 15 year old boys are not sufficiently developed to fully anticipate and evaluate the consequences of their actions. Anyone who's taught 15 year old boys for more than 5 minutes will agree that 15 year olds and stupid decisions go hand in hand.
It's no simple matter to determine whether or not Ms Drakers' action are reasonable or simply motivated by revenge. The action taken by the school was very limited, but the authority the school was allowed to exercise was limited to begin with.
We heard parts of letters from the families. One sounded generally remorseful. Another included this: "He is a good boy and has been a good boy, and the price he is paying is not equal to his actions. There is no possible way I, or any other parent, can monitor every action."
What caught my attention here was that there is an implicit acknowledgment that the actions of the boy are the responsibility of the parents. If the responsibility DOES lie with the parents, is civil legal action then unreasonable? Could Anna's decision to pursue this action constitute a "shot across the bows" of other parents, a wakeup call to them that they need to be looking carefully at what their kids are doing online (not to mention reinforcing their understanding of what is and is not acceptable conduct).
What about a reverse scenario: if the boys had done the same thing, but about someone outside the school (someone's mother, perhaps) and they had done it on the school's computers during school hours, would anyone blink if the defamed person sued the school for being negligent? Would they accept from the school the defence that teenage brains are not fully developed, teenagers make dumb decisions and the school cannot be expected to monitor every single action? I rather doubt it, but if the argument is good enough for these parents to make, why would it not be good enough for a school to make?
Drakers maintained that the issue was not about money but about accountability. The unanswered question in the whole thing was exactly who's accountability is being discussed. Can these boys be held to be completely accountable for their actions, or does the incomplete development of their teenage brains preclude this, in which case, to what extent can and should the parents be held responsible?
Pesonally, I think that the parents should bear a fair amount of the responsibility for the boys' actions - the question is how this should happen. Unfortunately, in Western society, it usually does end up taking the form of legal action.
All of this points to a need to educate parents as much as we educate the students - maybe even more so.
Once, the distinction between "school issues" and "home issues" was reasonably clear-cut. If it happened in the school (or on the way to or from school), e.g. a fist-fight, it was a "school issue". Otherwise it was a "home issue". (Yes, I realise that it was never that clear-cut, and there were grey areas, but for most students most of the time, the distinction was a fairly clear and obvious one.)
Enter the Internet, email, instant messaging, mobile phones, SMS. Suddenly the distinction between school matters and home matters is lost in a techological miasma.
Little Miss X and her friends are cold shouldering Student Y at school, but also sending spiteful text messages late at night - is the text messaging a school issue, even though it happens outside the school grounds outside of school hours? The answer would seem to be "Yes" - the actions outside the school are intimately connected to the actions and relationships inside the school, and schools that decide not to deal with these things run the risk of being sued for neglecting their duty of care. BUT (and it's no small 'but') we are then confronted with students and parents who want to argue that the school should not be involved (these are of course the same parents who wouldn't hesitate to pursue legal action if if were their child on the receiving end and the school decided not to act).
So the boundaries have been blurred and we now have students and their parents who want to draw the boundaries where it suits them.
An example of this is the case of Anna Drakers, an Assistant Principal of a school in the US who appeared on the Dr. Phil show after two 15 year old boys created a false MySpace account in her name, and then loaded it with defamatory information. Ms Drakers is now pursuing a civil action against the families of the two boys.
The question that was put to us in Michael Carr-Gregg's seminar was whether or not Ms Drakers was right in her pursuit of legal action. Recent neurological research informs us that the brains of 15 year old boys are not sufficiently developed to fully anticipate and evaluate the consequences of their actions. Anyone who's taught 15 year old boys for more than 5 minutes will agree that 15 year olds and stupid decisions go hand in hand.
It's no simple matter to determine whether or not Ms Drakers' action are reasonable or simply motivated by revenge. The action taken by the school was very limited, but the authority the school was allowed to exercise was limited to begin with.
We heard parts of letters from the families. One sounded generally remorseful. Another included this: "He is a good boy and has been a good boy, and the price he is paying is not equal to his actions. There is no possible way I, or any other parent, can monitor every action."
What caught my attention here was that there is an implicit acknowledgment that the actions of the boy are the responsibility of the parents. If the responsibility DOES lie with the parents, is civil legal action then unreasonable? Could Anna's decision to pursue this action constitute a "shot across the bows" of other parents, a wakeup call to them that they need to be looking carefully at what their kids are doing online (not to mention reinforcing their understanding of what is and is not acceptable conduct).
What about a reverse scenario: if the boys had done the same thing, but about someone outside the school (someone's mother, perhaps) and they had done it on the school's computers during school hours, would anyone blink if the defamed person sued the school for being negligent? Would they accept from the school the defence that teenage brains are not fully developed, teenagers make dumb decisions and the school cannot be expected to monitor every single action? I rather doubt it, but if the argument is good enough for these parents to make, why would it not be good enough for a school to make?
Drakers maintained that the issue was not about money but about accountability. The unanswered question in the whole thing was exactly who's accountability is being discussed. Can these boys be held to be completely accountable for their actions, or does the incomplete development of their teenage brains preclude this, in which case, to what extent can and should the parents be held responsible?
Pesonally, I think that the parents should bear a fair amount of the responsibility for the boys' actions - the question is how this should happen. Unfortunately, in Western society, it usually does end up taking the form of legal action.
All of this points to a need to educate parents as much as we educate the students - maybe even more so.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Learning, Conversation and the Web
I found this via Stephen Downes' website: Learning is Conversation - Revisited.
There's a lot to like about this blog post - I've been working on some materials for a workshop I'll be doing with colleagues, and in thinking about how the Read/Write Web impinges on learning in the 21st century, the significance of dialogue as a fundamental component of education has been very much in my mind. That post, and the original its drawn from, nicely capture the essence of such conversation in a wired school setting.
Of course, not all learning is conversation - some learning is definitely experiential. But the lion's share of learning that happens in schools is through discussion among teachers and students. Recognising how the Read/Write Web fits into this picture is something that schools simply must do.
The last line from John Pederson is spot on:
There's a lot to like about this blog post - I've been working on some materials for a workshop I'll be doing with colleagues, and in thinking about how the Read/Write Web impinges on learning in the 21st century, the significance of dialogue as a fundamental component of education has been very much in my mind. That post, and the original its drawn from, nicely capture the essence of such conversation in a wired school setting.
Of course, not all learning is conversation - some learning is definitely experiential. But the lion's share of learning that happens in schools is through discussion among teachers and students. Recognising how the Read/Write Web fits into this picture is something that schools simply must do.
The last line from John Pederson is spot on:
We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.
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