tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671796277525081500.post1692269829029245465..comments2023-10-24T11:19:29.497+01:00Comments on chris horn's blog: Educators and Technologists: how can we best change Ireland ?chris horn @chrisjhornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03562424333768625107noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671796277525081500.post-73502772838164113362009-04-26T00:17:00.000+01:002009-04-26T00:17:00.000+01:00Excellent post. Great food for thought.
Have you ...Excellent post. Great food for thought.<br /><br />Have you considered joining the Computer Education Society of Ireland.<br /><br />The CESI http://www.cesi.ie have gone a long way to achieve these goals.<br /><br />Many subject area representative groups are members of the Teachers' Professional Networks (TPN) http://www.tpnetwork.ie/ Therfore they would be in receipt of funding to carry out such projects. The monetary outlay would be minimal as the software involved is often of the "open source" variety.<br /><br />Unfortunately, ICT in education has always been in the reactive rather than the proactive mindset of the Dept of Education and Science (DES). DES is firmly in the grip of the Dept of Finance and shoestring solutions will be the order of the day for the next few years.<br /><br />The think tank/wiki model of the business & commercial sector is an excellent idea. However, the goodwill of the profession is central to its success as a continuous professional development (CPD) delivery model. Unfortunately, goodwill is in short supply these days following the pension levy on the public service.<br /><br />Even when training was available through the NCTE www.ncte.ie teachers were not obliged to take part. Many teachers, not only the time-poor teaching mothers, gave the programme a miss. <br /><br />Peer-to-peer training courses may come back into their own now that the teacher must provide certified proof of continuous development to the Teaching Council in order to remain on the approved teachers' register.<br /><br /><br />Joe Molloy<br />@oide<br />http://slua.comJoe Molloyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16099287209697061546noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671796277525081500.post-3447525294499577942009-04-23T20:14:00.000+01:002009-04-23T20:14:00.000+01:00I was a bit fired up when I first read an article ...I was a bit fired up when I first read an article that quoted you in the education section of the Independent on line yesterday. You referred to students believing their teachers knew less than Google and inferred that a teacher’s primary job was to dish out facts. After reading your complete presentation I realized that your emphasis was more on innovation in the education system through the use of wikis. You also referred to the success of teams or small research groups in the tech world to support your ideas. The reason a group effort works is that the members of the group are each working with a different perceptual framework. They may all have the same factual knowledge but differ in their abilities to understand, reason and synthesize. Collectively they have a symbiotic effect and reach more sophisticated solutions.<br /><br />Typically the members of “think tank” teams in business and industry are from different disciplines. Every discipline has a different approach to problem solving. A study that I did in the seventies showed that multidisciplinary teams reached more sophisticated solutions to open ended problems than unidisciplinary teams. One major point of the study was to show that educators could pool their resources to produce multidisciplinary curricula that would be more effective.<br /><br />So it is with your wiki idea to come up with better curricula using limited resources; but, curricula are nothing without good teachers. They should not just dispense facts the way Britannica and now Google do. A good teacher should enable students to develop understanding of the factual material and help them learn to synthesize new ideas. Unfortunately teachers are human and fall into a standard distribution curve like all professions where a few members are stellar, a few horrid and the most mediocre. Skewing that curve toward the upper end is the biggest challenge.chip wamsleyhttp://gmail.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671796277525081500.post-16770581093645162612009-03-26T13:30:00.000+00:002009-03-26T13:30:00.000+00:00Hi Ana, my twitter is chrisjhornHi Ana, my twitter is chrisjhornchris horn @chrisjhornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03562424333768625107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671796277525081500.post-88474650134916604402009-03-26T13:05:00.000+00:002009-03-26T13:05:00.000+00:00Thank you! veru good article, I wonder if you are ...Thank you! veru good article, I wonder if you are in twitter to follow you!anaborghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07332538081489578987noreply@blogger.com