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Re: [ICTs in English] Weekly Update - A List of Musings on Demise


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Alastair Crawford <alastair.crawford AT staff.hagley.school.nz>
  • To: "ictenglish AT lists.tki.org.nz" <ictenglish AT lists.tki.org.nz>
  • Subject: Re: [ICTs in English] Weekly Update - A List of Musings on Demise
  • Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 23:32:52 +0000
  • Accept-language: en-NZ, en-US

Malcolm
 Hamish is goading us into responding with calculated hyperbole and we're falling for it! 
But,
How much has Moodle helped any of you to be more engaging in the classroom? 
And,
 do school wide initiatives for LMS work at all?  Is it better if teachers set up things that they want to do?  Might the Ministry consider 'individual teaching styles' as important as the emphasis on 'individual learning styles'?
Alastair
From: Malcolm Law <malcolm.law AT xtra.co.nz>
Reply-To: <ictenglish AT lists.tki.org.nz>
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 22:00:26 +1200
To: <ictenglish AT lists.tki.org.nz>
Subject: Re: [ICTs in English] Weekly Update - A List of Musings on Demise

On 24/08/2012 4:51 p.m., Hamish Chalmers wrote:
“Is the Desktop [computer] Doomed?” Will the big un-movable lump of metal on your desk at home be permanently replaced by more mobile computing devices? Right from laptops, netbooks and tablets down to smart phones, perhaps the desktop will fade into obscurity? I was a bit surprised that Interface magazine’s August issue had directly below the ‘Desktop Doomed’ topic: “Why aren’t teachers playing computer games?” As long as gamers are around (and in this instance obviously not teacher-gamers) the desktop computer will remain supreme ruler imo. From a BYOD educational perspective however, perhaps the desktop will eventually meet its demise. What do you think?

What about LMSs? If their main (non-admin) function is to create digital learning communities, it seems as though they might have been recently surpassed by various other (mostly browser-based) tools. While I could be grossly oversimplifying the function of LMSs, I’m increasingly seeing more and more stuff that teachers used to do with a school LMS taking place in social networking tools and google apps. What do you think?

And what about the demise of every other education tool in your browser apart from this site!!! Seriously though, if you haven’t got the time to become a professional programmer and develop a great-looking UI, its gameification appeal is amazing. If the user generated content keeps developing, there might even be some English content on there for us eventually. Hobo signs definitely comes close. Perhaps you could be the first English teacher to use it for Shakespeare revision! What do you think of its teaching and learning potential and limitations?

Seeing as I’m obviously trying to provoke responses (the list has been quiet lately) what about the demise of all teacher training! Doesn’t the English Teaching and Learning Guides just have it all? Well, perhaps not everything necessary for a comprehensive and effective teacher training programme but I needed to fit it into my demise theme somehow.

Hamish Chalmers
Facilitator: ICTs in English
http://englishonline.tki.org.nz/
Writing about demise simply puts me in mind of a Viking burial or a phoenix rising from the ashes.  I've noticed some colleagues are seeing our LMS as limited and experimenting with Edublogs and Adobe Connect.  I reflect, however that there are others who haven't evn considered using our LMS yet.

-- 
Malcolm Law
Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu



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