[Year 12 IT Apps] Re: RE: [Yr7-10it] The Learning Federation

[forster at ozonline.com.au]

Stephen:
What are people's thoughts regarding The Le at rning Federation?

Rob:
- many activities feel like they hem you in   - highly scripted, limited
choices, limited construction

Me:
I think what is missing is the opportunity for learners to be creators of content, rather than consumers. The great opportunity with computers and the Internet is for learners to create. You most deeply understand something when you create a representation in another medium.

Will Wright, creator of Sim City talks of rich possibility spaces. Imagine a mental landscape of such richness and complexity that the learner can chose a course where the level of difficulty is optimally matched to their ability. The two related concepts that come to mind are Vygotsky's ZPD and Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's Flow. Keeping the student in an optimal state of learning by matching challenge to ability. We get some idea of what a learning object could be like from Sim City where the learner is free to make choices and watch the consequences.

At the ICTEV conference, multi-award winning teacher Margaret Meijers spoke of getting kids to program models or simulations. Topical news items, for example the disease wiping out Tasmanian devils are discussed, transmission rules are proposed and students build a simple disease transmission model.

The programming language can be any of the easily used visual languages such as GameMaker or Scratch or even a spreadsheet. For examples of open source simulations see http://rupert.id.au/schoolgamemaker/samples3/ Consider these examples of sims that students could make or the starting point for further investigations rather than finished products.

Another opportunity for students to create content includes claymation. See http://etrain08.wetpaint.com/page/Techno+Teams for more ideas of student created content.

What I would like to see more of in the TLF objects is a larger “possibility space” including the ability to create content. One way this could have been achieved is to have made them as open source objects programmed in a language that learners can easily use.

“The computer is a medium of human expression and if it has not yet had its Shakespeares, its Michelangelos or its Einsteins, it will. …. We have scarcely begun to grasp its human and social implications.” 
Computer Criticism vs. Technocentric Thinking By Seymour Papert