All, On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:29 AM, Egon Willighagen <egon.willigha...@gmail.com> wrote: > I find it very disturbing that educators are even considering creating > a learning environment where students are restricted in their > learning! That is just another step back to the middle ages... Henry, > I very much appreciate that people use the platform on which they can > perform their work most efficient; do not disallow your students the > same choice!
I like to clarify this point a bit. In was partly in reply to the email from Henry, but also to other emails in this thread. What I observe at many universities is plans where the university has beautiful plans how they like to teach students. This can be a choice for using iPad to show students protein structures, as outed in the email thread. We have seen this for a long time: we select one pedagogical book for a topic. However, that one book may not align best with how all students learn; probably it will with the majority, but not all. Maastricht University expects students to decide themselves which book to pick, and we here offer them two or three options. However, this has as downside that they can only read them at the university, as we do not provide those books for free, nor expect them to buy them (which they would not be able to, anyway). Here, the educational institute 'knows best' how the students will learn. However, all students have their own way of learning. Some prefer learning basic facts by heart, others prefer understanding and apply systems later. Similarly, there are various ways to explain something. Pure mathematics, visual explanation, explanation by example. Books prefer solutions. But who are we to decide what is best? Should we keep acting like a church that describes what is best for the flock? That is where my clumsy referral to the middle ages come from: an institute that decides what it best, leaving no option for alternatives. I should have phrased it like that. My apologies that the email reads like a flamebait; I am strong about teaching students to think for themselves, which requires giving them room to make choices for themselves; I was overenthusiastic about it. Egon -- Dr E.L. Willighagen Postdoctoral Researcher Department of Bioinformatics - BiGCaT Maastricht University (http://www.bigcat.unimaas.nl/) Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/ LinkedIn: http://se.linkedin.com/in/egonw Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/ PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF email is sponsosred by: Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list Jmol-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
