Week+7+-+March+1st+-+March+7th,+2010

My Thoughts on Provincial Standards of web filtering
>
 * I love a good Yes/No debate.
 * I believe I side reasonably heavily into the "No" column with Christopher Johnson. However, both sides have raised some undeniably good points. Mr. Osuna, however, uses a rather common Conservative practice I like to call "Please someone think of the children." He seems to agree with Johnson in saying we still need to educate our kids, but that we should also block all those possible teachable moments.
 * Our curriculum is heavy on "developing critical thinking skills" and yet, we block out some of the gritty, real-world stuff that kids have to deal with. There is no "away" and besides, students will get past filters anyway. Prohibition and abstinence are bunk concepts with limited effectiveness.
 * Therefore, it is far easier to go Johnson's route, a calculated push towards educating responsible online behaviour, searching tactics, and critical thinking skills amongst our youth. Naturally, there is merit in protecting very young children, but that is only because they have not yet developed critical thinking skills.

My Thoughts on Other Student Presentations
>
 * The history lesson that had us linking still photography to a poem was pretty fantastic. I'll be honest: I don't like poetry. This method of delivery made it more than bearable.
 * A community wiki for filling in information on the periodic table was fun too.
 * Overall I thought the "don't use Wikipedia" vibe to be a little strong. We don't want kids plagarizing Wikipedia or using just their pages as research sources, but come on! A Wikipedia article on something huge like an element is more cited, researched, scholarly, and editted than anything any of us would be expected to produce in high school. It's also a good place to **start** a research project. It gives good overviews of topics, and provides sources at the bottom of every page. If anything, educate our kids about that, and judge each Wiki page by the size and voracity of its source list.

eLearning and online courses

 * I like eLearning because it can give access to courses many people otherwise could not take. That's a big advantage.
 * Online courses can be dreadfully boring though. Depending on the audience, too, there is often little social connection to your teacher or class. Workload tends to be dry in my experience. In other words, online courses can easily be as terrible as university courses, or worse.
 * I think the potential quality of the real classroom is therefore better. However, hybrid courses featuring both classroom visits and online environments can utilize some of the benefits of both.
 * Maybe I've just had bad luck with my online courses. Do you know of any great examples of them?

Virtual Classrooms and Adobe Connect and Skype
> > > > **Please leave a comment. It's so empty here!** > include component="comments" page="Week 7 - March 1st - March 7th, 2010" limit="10"
 * I have seen Adobe Connect in use, as I have friends and family that have taken Kaplan courses for LSATs and MCATs. It seems pretty great. It is a technology that relies on bandwidth, so it can only get better as bandwidth increases. The technology is attractive to Digital Natives though.
 * With the participant, presenter, and host options, there's plenty you can do with a virtual classroom in the Adobe Connect environment. It's not quite as good as a real classroom, but at least no one has to drive all the way to campus. I hate my drive to campus!
 * I used Skype a few years back but I haven't found a use for it in recent years. With my dreadful 3-year contract for my Bell cell phone coming to an end, I am considering revisiting Skype as an alternative to the terrible evils of cell phone companies (now in direct competition with Insurance companies for the Evil Company Award 2010).