Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:3100] RE: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 388
From: Peter Isackson (pisackson@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun 31 Mar 2002 - 15:00:59 MEST
From: "Peter Isackson" <pisackson@wanadoo.fr> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:3100] RE: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 388 Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 15:00:59 +0200
In reply to Gary Miller:
"What is needed is clear information and excellent examples of what
e-learning can be and a process to design e-learning that will make the best
use of the capabilities of e-learning tools. Unfortunately, most of the
effort seems to be directed at the technical side of the various tools. I
would prefer to leave these details to the programmers and invest my efforts
in learning how to design training for this new technology."
Gary, I couldn't agree more. Technology shouldn't be seen as a solution, but
as an "excuse" for making teaching and learning better. I often point out
the flip chart was a major technological breakthrough which made it possible
to write and store, prepare in advance, write and hide, write and
distribute, distribute and write in parallel, start and complete, write or
draw and display (all around the walls of the room), etc. But if it was just
seen as a chalkless blackboard, as was often the case, a lot of
opportunities would be, were and probably still are missed.
What remained the same with the flip chart was the classroom itself. But to
get full benefit from the flip chart it required rethinking classroom space
in order optimize it, making it more flexible. It also meant modifying the
sclerotic roles of authoritative expression (by the trainer) and passive
reception (by the learners). The flip chart potentially encouraged
communication, expression and the experimentation of knowledge as well as
the discourse of knowledge (making it possible to separate more clearly
these two components of all learning, a distinction usually neglected).
How many people reading the preceding paragraphs won't be a little
surprised? If the flip chart made it possible to rethink the pedagogic
fundamentals, why not the Internet and everything associated with it? The
Internet has unfortunately evolved from a pure communication medium to a
pure publishing medium, something that commercial interests find it easier
to understand and exploit. In other words, it is an inkless page in the way
that a truncated understanding of the flipchart saw it as a chalkless
blackboard.
The challenge we are faced with is to look less at how learning is
"presented" and more at how it is communicated and appropriated. This is
process and involves a lot more than syllabi and multiple choice questions.
It involves the learner's identity in a community of 1) learners 2)
practitioners (of whatever is being learned). "Learner identity" is what
enables competency to be acquired (you learn what can be effectively grafted
onto your personality and used in more complex environments of production
and interchange than the classroom situation). This realization that
learning is a "process" with an impact on "identity" should open the debate
and lead us away from the mere use of technology or the production of
teaching materials for technology.
The Internet and its tools make both publishing and communicating easier for
everyone, trainers and learners alike. Publishing is "formal expression";
communication is often "informal expression". We should be working on the
implications of this -- the relation of the formal and informal -- rather
than technology as gadgetry. Designing training that takes into account the
new technology means reflecting on the nature of what is taught, the process
by which it is transmitted and the conditions in which acquisition takes
place. My personal opinion is that the burden of this will remain
essentially human for a long time to come (like... forever!) but that the
technology, once we know how to manipulate it, will be doing all kinds of
things that the manufacturers of it -- just like the manufacturers of the
flip chart -- never even imagined.
-- Peter Isackson
Paris, France
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