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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=000250302-22102007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>I agree with Bill in just about all his
comments.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=000250302-22102007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=000250302-22102007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>The poorly defined subject area is a clearly an issue which
we need to embrace, and an extention of is to observe that this tends to cloud
the issue of integration. For instance, if we had 2 hypothetical teachers,
one saying "we can integrate all our Year 7 ICT" and the other saying that they
could dream of it being sucessful - it is quite possible that they are talking
about 2 different sets of knowledge/skills which students should master at that
year level.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=000250302-22102007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=000250302-22102007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>I also agree with Bill that the English analogy doesn't
have much milage. Though it does get rolled out from time to time by those
who are proponents of immersion alone. Though, by analogy, we might
observe that English/language teaching has developed a raft of quite
fine-grained techniques for teaching the various dimensions of language.
There is perhaps not (yet) the same breadth of pedagogical strategy in ICT, and
we could well do with investing some more brain power into developing an
increasingly rich resource for teaching ICT.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=000250302-22102007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=000250302-22102007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>The issue of "teacher knowledge" (which can be represented
in a range of ways) as it impacts on pedagogy (ie broadening Bill's mention of
"subject matter knowledge") is a facinating one, and not an area which teachers
(or leaders of professional development) are often well versed in; but it's not
an area which lends itself to being "unpacked" on the list. Maybe at a
seminar sometime ....</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=000250302-22102007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV><BR>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> yr7-10it-bounces@edulists.com.au
[mailto:yr7-10it-bounces@edulists.com.au] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Bill
Kerr<BR><B>Sent:</B> Monday, October 22, 2007 11:41 AM<BR><B>To:</B> Year 7 - 10
Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Yr7-10it]
Year 7-10 IT structures<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>Commenting on a few of the points raised by Paul Chandler<BR><BR>On
10/19/07, <B class=gmail_sendername>Dr Paul Chandler</B> <<A
href="mailto:paul.chandler@yvg.vic.edu.au">paul.chandler@yvg.vic.edu.au</A>>
wrote:
<DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">
<DIV lang=EN-US link="blue" vlink="blue">
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>My PhD
considered "self-taught computer-using teachers", and I'm not going to try to
summarise it all here. There are some observations which can be
made. Firstly, there is remarkably little research on such teachers, how
they teach, what they value, how/what they teach ICT etc etc. We can
make links to studies (also relatively few in number) which have considered
teachers who teach outside of their speciality. Put starkly: sometimes
it works really well, and sometimes it doesn't. One study I read of a
non-legal studies teacher (from Qld) who took up teaching Legal because there
was no-one else to do it showed great success and adapation. In general,
the literature shows very little relationship between capacity to teach
in a particular discipline and formal academic background in that area.
So I would argue that the only ultimate thing stopping our non-ICT colleagues
from delivering good ICT is a desire to do
it.</FONT></SPAN></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR>I think its generally accepted that some subject experts make good
teachers and others are poor teachers<BR><BR>What make ICT different IMO is that
the actually subject domain is poorly defined (unlike English, Science etc) and
people who are described as experts are saying quite different things about what
ICT is <BR><BR>Alan Kay points out that real sciences like physics, chemistry
etc. do not describe themselves as "sciences" (like "computer science" does) and
that it it would be better if teachers of computing would tell their students
that much of it still has to be worked out: <BR><BR>
<DIV style="MARGIN-LEFT: 40px">Perhaps the most disturbing "trend which became
reality" over the last 25 years has been a recharacterization and professing of
the various computing fields as though Computer Science and Software Engineering
have actually been invented and can be taught in ways that parallel fields such
as physics and structural engineering. This is "science & engineering envy"
pure and simple!<BR><BR>The result is that so much of what is taught in high
schools and universities looks backwards—not for historical interest, which is
almost absent, or even to great ideas of the past—but (a) to emphasize what all
too often have been workarounds for what we don't yet know how to do, and (b) to
substitute vocational training for real knowledge and perspective.<BR><BR>One of
the most interesting characteristics of computing in the best universities of
the 1960s was that the professors told the students that nothing much of
importance was known, and it was the duty of all to try to invent a real
computing science and software engineering. This was a very healthy attitude and
led to many good starts towards qualitatively better approaches to our exciting
area of interest. Just as "civilization" is not a place or state, but a process
of people who are trying to be more civilized, real computing is the process of
people trying to make a better notion of computing. The most progress will be
made by young people who have been encouraged to criticize old conceptions and
invent new ones with an elevated notion of what constitutes a high threshold for
a good idea.<BR><BR></DIV></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
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<DIV lang=EN-US link="blue" vlink="blue"><SPAN><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>I would also observe that a full discussion of the parallels between
language learning and learning ICT would be enormously complicated. I'm
not a teacher of English at all, but I know that in the early years of
schooling, immersion is a big part of language learning, but so are
approaches such phonemic awareness and spelling (and a language teacher
would be able to name quite a few other techniques). It is far from
simple to draw parallels between the two. Perhaps, to parallel language
learning closely, we would develop a range of interventionist strategies to
direct student learning about ICT (ie what might be the ICT equivalent of
'phonemic awareness'?)</FONT></SPAN></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR>I don't see much point in attempting to draw extensive systematic
parallels b/w English and ICT. The reasons why we divide up
knowledge into different subject domains is that they are different and have
their own internal logic and ways of developing. I don't see much value in doing
extensive comparisons b/w physics and chemistry, for example. <BR><BR>The reason
I raised the "English question" in the first place was to point out that this
subject has a proud 400 year tradition and for ICT to compete as a standalone
subject that we need to think about it in those terms. What are the fundamental
achievements of ICT that ought to be passed onto all citizens? eg. should all
citizens be taught to program or is that just for those who want to a career in
programming? <BR></DIV><BR>Having said that I nevertheless do see some benefit
in comparing the two domains in a broad sense. <BR>eg. the wide spread use of
written English happened through the use of technology, the printing press
- before that it was apparently confined to monks in Churches writing out the
Bible by hand. <BR><BR>Computers it has been argued represent a new "revolution"
or a "revolution that hasn't happened properly yet" in that all text and all
media can be represented digitally in a much more flexible and re programmable
manner <BR><BR>This is part of a broader, partly historical argument about media
and the affordances they make available to "the masses" as they become
cheaper and widespread. So I do see value in comparing English and ICT as a part
of media studies - since media does have an enormous effect on schools in
general. <BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
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<DIV lang=EN-US link="blue" vlink="blue">
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Language
teachers in the early years use a nice phrase, "barking at text" - kids who
can apparently read the words on the page, but don't understand a word of it.
In our apparently ICT-savvy world, how do we know that students aren't doing
the ICT equivalent of barking at text? I once knew a student who was
writing some relatively detailed PERL in Year 7, and when I met him in a
programming class in year 9 I was amazed to find out that he had absolutely no
concept of a variable, and he struggled for some time to develop
one.</FONT></SPAN></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR><BR>To continue with the point above, I like the description "barking
at text" but would see the issue of the best way of teaching the concept of
variable as one pertaining to the maths or computing domain and that there is
limited value in pursuing the English comparison in any real depth.<BR><BR>ie. a
good way to teach the concept of variable is to have a dynamic system running
where you can change the value of the variable and observe the effects in real
time. I've only discovered recently that computer systems have been around for
10 years that enable you to do this visually (etoys) but which remain
undiscovered by most schools. <BR><BR></DIV></DIV>-- <BR>Bill Kerr<BR><A
href="http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/">http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/</A><BR><BR>_______________________________________________
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