Hi Gary Le 2011-06-30 18:50, Gary Schnabl a écrit :
Late in my (engineering and other things) career, I taught at both public and private K-12 schools, last teaching back in 2001. All of the schools were long computerized by then. During the computer labs, most of the kids were "taught" by teachers, who only a few months earlier typically taught subjects as social studies and the like and were most often only a day or three ahead of their students in subject matter--if that. Most kids then learned office-suite apps mostly by intuition because those apps were designed that way from day-1. At one middle school, during the computer labs I dropped in on my kids on occasion. Once, one kid asked me to help him with a simple problem. I first inquired what the on-line help suggested. He did not even know (primarily because lazy teachers often do not teach such useful things...) that there even was any on-line help. So, I interrupted the class (although the newly-ordained computer-lab--previously an older social-studies teacher at the school--teacher initially objected) so that they all knew about how to use on-line help from the Help menu. At another school--a private K-5 school where I taught the fifth grade, at one half-day in-session (kids go home early those days) the administration was discussing ways to save money, if possible. Waking up from a short nap, I suggested that the school fire the young woman who taught their computer labs because she was incompetent. To my surprise, that suggestion was instantly accepted, and the teachers were ordered to teach their own classes in the computer lab. One little snag though. Not all the teachers then were computer literate. So, I took over some of the computer labs and had those teachers teach (or baby-sit) my fifth grade class during those times. I again assert that people most often will not employ user guides, or even the on-line help, and will usually ask somebody else for help, as any problems occur. Gary
I agree completely, human nature being what it is, we usually look for the shortest distance between points A and B. If there is a manual in between -- A->C->B, most will ignore the C until they need to go back to it. I find that, when following this teaching method the "going back to C" frustrates too many students and the level of achievement is not too impressive.
To circumvent this, we followed an established programme where use of the manuals is/was encouraged. After a couple of weeks, the students (and staff for that matter) knew how to get around the manuals and referred back to them exactly as they should -- as reference guides. The staff and students had to make use of the reference guides.
So, if the approach is a "guided learning programme" which includes use of manuals, then the success is greater. Students should not be left to "discover" steps in computing, they need to be guided. Although this takes a little longer at the start of the programme, the end results far outstrip the "let them find out on their own" strategy. After going through these initial steps the students may be left to "discover" more on their own (they have now mastered the use of reference guides) and move on to their of personal computing needs -- in our system we follow "Blooms taxonomy" of learning[1] which seems to work quite well with the students (and staff).
Cheers Marc [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_Taxonomy -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
