[Year 12 IT Apps] Study design - legislation

[ken price]

Hi Roland and colleagues,

Those who do have a research interest might find this new Australian network
from ACER useful - http://dern.org.au/

*"Digital Education Research Network (DERN) is a network of researchers
interested in research about education and the use of digital technologies
to improve teaching and learning. It focuses mainly on Australian research
although not exclusively. DERN is looking for research evidence about good
educational and learning practices. Please join us to share your insights
into and knowledge of research into teaching and learning using digital
technologies."*

As for the benefits of a further degree - I guess there are better ways to
get a better return financially, but it does have benefits it terms of a
wider understanding. Though Stephen Heppell pointed out that the average
number of times a PhD thesis is borrowed from a research library is (from
memory) about 2. And one of these is probably the author's mother...

Maybe what's missing is a process to make research findings more useful to
school practice, and a willingness/incentive for schools to take on serious
research. For example - the rollout of computers for Years 9-12 across an
entire country under the "Pennies from Kevin" DER scheme seems to be an
ideal scenario for some research (esp given the massive amount of
longitudinal data held by school systems). But this would be well down the
priority list for most schools as there are many more crucial tasks needed
to keep the school operating (and a shortage of people to do them).

But .. there has to be some way to make the act of research more relevant to
school operation and teaching practice in our subject areas. But perhaps
that starts to stray off-topic.

kp

Ken Price
Principal Education Officer, eCentre, DoE Tasmania / President, TASITE
www.tasite.tas.edu.au


On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:04 AM, Roland Gesthuizen <rgesthuizen at gmail.com>wrote:

> No Ken and it cost me a fortune for a nice bound research book. I showed my
> small kids where it lives at Monash Uni when I went there for a visit. I am
> tempted to try for a PhD but after a strong cup of tea, the feeling
> generally goes away. Two decades ago I was a research scientist with Orica,
> you'll probably laugh if you knew what division I worked in. Catch me over a
> beer one day.
>
> Seriously though, I have enormous respect for those on this list that have
> done the hard years and extended their studies to undertake some serious PhD
> research and work at the cutting edge of teaching. I just spent all of today
> doing work for VicRoads for a paper I'll probably publish with STAV about an
> Engineers in Schools program that I ran last year.  Am also editing a video
> of this work. It is enough to keep me distracted.
>
> Has anybody else on this list got a research interest?
>
> Regards Roland
>
>
> On 25 March 2010 09:05, Kent Beveridge <kbeveridge at stbc.vic.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>  Hey Ro!
>>
>> You walking thesauras disguised as a wordsmith...
>>
>> hmmm...M.Ed...did they pay you more when you got that?
>>
>> Kent.
>>  ------------------------------
>> *From:* itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au [itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au]
>> on behalf of Roland Gesthuizen [rgesthuizen at gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, 24 March 2010 6:02 PM
>> *To:* Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
>> *Subject:* Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] Study design - legislation
>>
>>  With a puff of magical ethernet logic, the virtually networked world of
>> wireless, cloud computing has drifted over the topology landscape,
>> smothering any need to look for lost token rings or 50 ohm coaxial
>> terminators. For my Dip.Ed and M.Ed, I frequently tossed in a citation from
>> the UN International Charter of Human Rights to fill a spot in my reference
>> list (not quite the same as our local legislative brew folks!) ..
>>
>> Regards Roland
>>
>>
>
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