On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 13:41, kirby urner <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Edward Cherlin <[email protected]> wrote: [snip] >> The first can be tackled when computers start to be integrated into >> education, and we find that we can teach most topics more deeply and >> at earlier ages. Then we will have some space in which to explore >> without testing pressure, until the tests start to catch up with >> classroom practice. By then, we should have further advances that will >> give us a different set of spaces to work in. >> > > It's easy to change the testing such that computers are required. > Writing an algorithm to produce pi to a million places is not > practical *except* using a computer language atop a sufficiently > powerful library.
Technically easy, politically hard, as long as the South and the rest of the Bible Belt wants everything dumbed down. I hear that many teachers who give calculator homework in math don't want to allow calculators in tests. I, naturally, want Open Book testing extended to Open Computer, Open Internet. >> I do not have a solution to the political problems that currently >> bedevil curriculum development, except to wait them out, and do as >> much as we can on everything else. Some of those political forces, >> such as Republican support for Creationism and against meaningful sex >> education, are predicted to die out in 15-20 years due to demographic >> shifts. I can give you the statistical basis for this prediction and a >> number of instances where we see the effects now, in issues other than >> classroom education. >> >> The ultimate solution to the problem is this: Teachers who dreaded >> having to learn and use OLPC XOs have become their strongest >> advocates. The verdict is clear from multitudes of teachers in the >> field: "I can teach now." Once this is experienced widely enough, the >> education schools will teach the computers to students who grew up >> with computers, and no new teacher from then on will have the current >> problem. >> > > I'm glad we live in a parallel processing system such that if Lower48 > USA gets bogged down in fighting the Scopes Trial, turns itself into a > Monkey Island, To expand what I wrote earlier: We have encouraging polling data showing that the Old South racism and intolerance are shrinking by about 2% annually, almost all from the old dying off and more of the young each year having actual multicultural, multiethnic experience to convince them that invidious distinctions are evil. That means that the tipping point on a number of political, social, and educational issues will come in about 10-15 years, even in darkest Alabama and Mississippi. I can give anyone interested the references. We also have wonderful anecdotes, such as a Klan rally of about 10 at Ole Miss (University of Mississippi, Oxford MS) confronted by about 250 students, many wearing Turn Your Back on Racism T-shirts and standing with their backs to the Klansmen. > we still have other regions chomping at the bit to make > meaningful contribution to the advancement of our collective human > saga. They're not really stuck in line in some sequential pipeline. > We're *not* all waiting for the USA to get its act together, praise > Bob. Amen. > Iceland has been doing a good job, as has Ireland... South Africa. > I'm proud of many nations. Check out Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal. > Some of our newest curriculum modules, for example these four new ones > on Wikieducator coming through my corner (including Martian Math) > maybe won't develop a following in Portland, Oregon, my home town, > despite my being on hand to teach it, share it with other teachers. > > Perhaps my true fan base is in Vilnius or Gothenberg? Certainly Andrius Kulikauskus is there, running Minciu Sodas and working on a math book for Earth Treasury. > Given the Internet, that's not necessarily a problem, although I'd > prefer to have more team members locally (working on recruiting, > including through Pauling House). Thanks to Wikieducator, I'm already > finding a new community of collaborators. We also have the FLOSS Manuals, Squeakland, MIT and other Ed schools, OLE, Creative Commons ccLearn, various museums, and others involved. Also the state of California digital textbook program and the Open Access movement, and more. See Stacy Reed's http://www.librarianchick.com/ for available materials. > Web 2.0 is like that. > OLPC/XO is going to introduce a lot more children into this privileged > way of networking and I'm quite happy about that (during the Duke's > event, we upgraded one of my two XOs, to a more recent version of the > system (767)). Exactly. > Kirby -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
