tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post2217666642954018628..comments2024-03-14T02:53:31.171+00:00Comments on Tom Bennett's School Report: Blocked: Minecraft and the taboos in educationTom Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03211959016018081924noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-58243398641709772802016-11-25T11:46:35.318+00:002016-11-25T11:46:35.318+00:00Hi Tom, I did ask on twitter ...
"confused. A...Hi Tom, I did ask on twitter ...<br />"confused. Are you saying MC is no good, there is no evidence that it is good or we should only do things when evidence is here"<br />and <br />"if you could ref your original comments it would be helpful"<br /><br />but I can understand that you were inundated with a wide variety of comments you were handling (even if it was simply 'filing' them in an appropriate place).<br /><br />This blog post does give far more depth to the background of the story and raises again that whenever anyone talks to someone else, who intends to publish what you say, you can never trust them to give the same focus that was in your head at the time.<br /><br />Part of the problem is the risk-taking approach that happens within education that ranges from people looking for a magic bullet without putting the effort in to find out if they have a gun to fire it with all the way through to those who take the risk on a hunch because they have found that their hunches work out pretty well in the long term.<br /><br />I tend to sit in the latter area, but coming from a service management and project management arena now I also wrap it with measurements to see if the actions had impact and whee they what was expected (this also plays on my background before working in/with schools though).<br /><br />It is not a research-based approach but something more agile and that comes from the sectors I now work with, delivering tools to schools instead of helping schools choose them.<br /><br />With no Becta ICT Test Bed, or Becta Research Network, the central focus goes to personal agendas set up by those running the grass roots generated groups and this is what I see in many places. <br /><br />However, a thing that frustrates me is where I see the term non-teacher as a reference point and knocking others for their opinions. I'm not saying this is how you have used it, but I can see that his is how others cold take it (either as an insult or as something reinforcing a particular viewpoint in a negative way).<br /><br />Sometimes it is used for someone working in education doing roles other than classroom teaching, whether tech support, pastoral support or even librarians ... sometimes it is used for people not working in schools at all, as if schools are the only place that learning takes place, forgetting the range of coaches, instructors, CPD managers that are both qualified and experienced.<br /><br />In the same way I would agree that people need to think more carefully about responding to soundbites, ensuring that the headlines actually portray the full context of what was said, I usually ask people to think about the skills, knowledge and expertise of those not based in the classroom day in, day out ... and consider what they say before stereotyping.<br /><br />Finally I would say that a balance is needed between evidence-based adoption and innovations. Technology changes so quickly, but the goals we are trying to achieve either jump too much due to political instigation or move very slowly because the world is still trying to adapt to changes.<br /><br />Is there a balance to be had? Do we have to look at other sectors to get some ideas on how it is done? If we keep it purely within education, and those at the chalk-face at that, are we risking it becoming a silo?<br /><br />Ideas on a postcard (or email or tweet).Dookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14836523309838842866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-18037098213705574992016-11-22T23:13:26.824+00:002016-11-22T23:13:26.824+00:00I'd like to eduFolk to think of the parents i....I'd like to eduFolk to think of the parents i.e. do more than pay the usual lip-service to [partnership | engagement | involvement | whatever] on this and some other school-side uses of tech which affects us at home.<br /><br />My child is in Y9 so all of the gadgets and online stuff began arriving in her KS2 and although some parents might not care, every one of the many parents I now know is struggling with it. From a child's perspective the use of a game like MineCraft in lessons is a strong, authoritative endorsement (ye olde "But my teacher Miss Faddish says...") of something many of us are finding difficult to time-limit at home and that can involve some serious domestic ding-dongs. Not what you want after both parents have had hard days at t'mill in order to stay on top of 21st century mortgage sizes etc. I think there needs to be enough credible evidence of enough efficient and genuinely educational benefits to also offset at-home cries of "But it's educational!" and the occasional “I HATE YOU!” when it has escalated to parents just switching things off.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15218519804312731199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-53588789342088969602016-11-22T15:27:25.840+00:002016-11-22T15:27:25.840+00:00I do believe much more discussion is needed on the...I do believe much more discussion is needed on the use of tech in classrooms. I'm a proponent, but only if used intelligently.<br /><br />I've seen some benefits in gaming driven education; SumDog and Lumio at my son's school, the latter being quite impressive at visualising the conceptual stuff, rather than just practising simple arithmetic.<br /><br />I see the visualisation of abstract concepts as a central opportunity with the Minecraft (or similar) platform. Voxel technologies were, as I understand it, specifically designed to help the medical profession to see the hitherto unseeable. Why would this not also be enlightening for students?<br /><br />Even just the Minecraft map teaches a cartesian coordinate system, number lines including negative numbers. Surely -3 is pretty believable when your character is standing right on it, and -5 seems like a realistic place to head to. It suddenly becomes a lot less abstract.<br /><br />More broadly, aside from Minecraft, but an interesting example, most people would consider General Relativity a difficult subject to grasp intuitively. This isn't surprising, since we live our lives more or less stationary relative to the speed of light. I saw a 3D demo that allowed the player to drive around a world where the speed of light was simulated at something like 30mph. It was fascinating to see relativistic effects on (virtually) real-world objects.<br /><br />I'd be inclined to believe, had I studied physics, that such visualisations would have played a fundamental role in my subsequent understanding of the equations of Einstein & co.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3019828684971971203.post-29832698751140932862016-11-22T01:51:19.330+00:002016-11-22T01:51:19.330+00:00Hear, hear!Hear, hear!KenSnoreply@blogger.com