Hi Charlie, just Googling up your earlier suggestion to do more with audio books, for commuters etc.
I agree there's a sense of "so now what" regarding some of those computer labs, i.e. are these for uploading pictures of the neighborhood, comparing with historic archival shots, for studying local infrastructure (sewers, cable TV nets, electrical grids...), for doing object orient math, for making and watching YouTubes...? So many possibilities, so little time. I think we need more think tanks looking into these questions. I was impressed when in England to discover a London Knowledge Lab already set up to explore precisely such questions, returned home eager to start my Portland Knowledge Lab experiment, flattering by imitating the way I saw it, actually renting an office on 8th & SE Main, later trucked it elsewhere. Part of PKL's purpose is to amass a collection of videos suitable for math/computer lab use, something of a PR effort, got some cool stuff out there e.g. Adrian's fine "breathing torus": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcMCou6CrK4 (C++ and POV-ray) -- still growing the archive. Anyway, just reminiscing, plus looking forward to more discussions about computer lab design, best practices, etc., admitting up front I'm getting limited impressions in my current walk of life, e.g. not much interaction with high schoolers these days, though I might have another lab session at Portland State in the spring, a traditional Windows setup, everything preinstalled. One thing I'll say is we should be having students practice more working in pairs, solo coding on significant projects becoming relatively rare thanks to management embracing some hard won lessons from the field. Pair programming does not have to mean sharing a computer however, we can do it with various combinations of free tools (I've been doing Skype some, like with a coder coven in LA, though mostly it's the usual "over the shoulder" approach, one of us driving, though sometimes we project the shared screen, sit around a table): https://wiki.koumbit.net/Remote_Pair_Programming http://andrzejonsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/02/remote-pair-programming.html etc. Kirby On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Charles Cossé <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Kirby, > > On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 1:20 PM, kirby urner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> So once we agree we want some kind of computer lab, the question is, what >> kind? >> > > This sentence sounds similar to something I was just writing > about...though reading on in your post it's not really talking about > the same thing. Nonetheless, I paste the paragraph for your possible > enjoyment .... [delete at will] > > It is fairly obvious that computers can revolutionize education, but > now that every school has them, how does one actually realize all the > latent potential residing in all those computer labs? I don't believe > the details were ever very clear, just the general agreement that > computers _could_ improve education. There doesn't seem to be anything > fundamental about computers which affects some corresponding > fundamental aspect of education, for example, so it's not like it was > a revolution that was going to happen automatically. Furthermore, each > subject can only be "revolutionized" to an extent which depends on > software availability. > > > Keep on keepin' on ... > Charlie Cosse > _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
