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Children, on-line learning and authentic teaching skills in primary education |
About This Website |
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Main Topics
More information...
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Contents The many pages of this website are the result of reflections based on the in-school observations, conversations with a wide range of practitioners and other stakeholders and literature examined in relation to the project.
Style - Reflective Journal This website is not intended to present academic material as such. Rather it might best be understood as a reflective journal in which ideas are recorded and aspects of the use of ICT in class program are explored. In many instances the thoughts and ideas have been developed directly from the comments of staff members of participating schools. In many instances this has resulted in reframing statements in order to bring more fundamental notions and principles that underpin the specific observations being made or reported.
Language To this end an attempt has been made to write in everyday language as much as possible in order to make its contents available to as many other people as possible.
System approach: text and diagrams The author has a strong (personal) preference for visual and systems thinking. As a matter of course he regularly begins by trying to relate and order ideas visually. This will explain the extensive use of diagrams. In considering these system diagrams it will be important to keep in mind the caveat that 'All models are wrong, but some are useful" [G E P Box]
Navigation There are three ways to find material in the site
Qualifications Some of the contents are highly speculative and/or reflective explorations attempting to make sense of observations and possibilities: what happens in classrooms, why and how, are not always obvious, explicit or know by anyone. Other elements have been consistently observed in schools and classrooms throughout the study. Other material has been acquired from reputable sources and where this has been done consciously recognition has been included.
About the learning contained here-in The contents of this website interweave observations and 'theory' in an attempt to learn. In an ideal rational world the observations would be made and the theory extracted but 'Experience without theory teaches nothing. In fact, experience cannot even be recorded unless there is some theory, however crude, that leads to a hypothesis and a system by which to catalogue observations. Sometimes only a hunch, right or wrong, is sufficient theory to lead to useful observation.' [W.E. Deming, Out of the Crisis, MIT, p. 317, 1986]
Website Plan The focus of development in the writing of this website has changed several
times during it life to date. This is likely to continue. Each class observed
and each person interviewed has provided one or more insights that have caused
attention to be returned to earlier observations and/or reports. Thus this website
is subject to the planner's paradox, viz, The best time to plan a study is when the study is finished.
[according to G.E.P. Box]
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This site is maintained by Ivan
Webb phone 03 6324 3492 |
