I’m putting the tablet-at-work experiment on a back burner for the time being. It is still progressing but slowly so no real news worth sharing.
Je mets l’expérience de la tablette-au-travail de côté pour le moment. Elle est toujours en cours mais avance lentement aussi rien vraiment de nouveau qui vaille la peine d’être partagé.
I titled this post “is there a danger to packaging knowledge?” following a number of articles and posts I read in which I sensed too much enthusiasm in advocating elearning and such without enough emphasis on shortcomings and problems at large.
J’ai intitulé ce billet “y-a-t’il danger à packager la connaissance?” après avoir lu un certain nombre d’articles et de billets dans lesquels j’ai senti trop d’enthousiasme à promouvoir l’elearning and ce qui tourne autour sans insister assez sur les limitations et les problèmes en général.
It also is the result of my own reflection while searching for apps, for the tablet, that would best suit our needs. Sometimes it does make sense to associate apples and oranges ^_^
Cela fait aussi suite à ma propre réflexion pendant que je cherchais des applications, pour la tablette, qui répondraient au mieux à nos besoins. Quelques fois ça a du sens d’associer pommes et oranges ^_^
Plus there is this ‘little’ economy problem, this recession we can’t seem to be able to shake off. Every country is concerned about its own debt which, depending on how important it is, makes it more or less vulnerable to financial vultures. Talking about money leads to talking about cutting expenditures and, consequently, cuts.
Plus il ya ce ‘ petit’ problème économique, cette récession que nous ne semblons pas être en mesure de nous débarrasser. Chaque pays est préoccupé par sa propre dette qui, selon son importance, la rend plus ou moins vulnérables aux vautours financiers. Parler de l’argent conduit à parler de la réduction des dépenses et, par conséquent, de coupures.
I mentioned, in previous post, installing Calc Lite and realizing, as I was giving it a spin, that it would not be possible to edit any spreadsheet I would have imported in. I then resorted to paying a couple of Euros for the complete version. I realized, again later, that I would not be able to transfer anything on Dropbox. Talk about learning the (reasonably painful) hard way ^_^. I then changed from Calc Lite to QuickOffice which is much more expensive.
Je ai mentionné, dans un billet antérieur, l’installation de Calc Lite et avoir réalisé, pendant que je l’essayais, que ce ne serait pas possible d’éditer une feuille de calcul que j’aurais importé. Je me suis donc résolu à payer quelques euros pour la version complète. J’ai réalisé, encore une fois plus tard, que je ne serais pas en mesure de transférer quoi que ce soit sur Dropbox. Vous parlez d’un apprentissage (relativement) douloureux ^_^. J’ai donc changé de Calc Lite pour QuickOffice qui est beaucoup plus cher.
Imagine for a minute that lectures were so perfectly packaged that each student would not even need to go to school anymore, all they would have to do is logging in on their computer and all lectures would be readily available, at their disposal. If only for one reason this would be great for the environment if you think that doing so would save on commuting hence saving on gas for either driving a car or riding a bus.
Imaginez un instant que les cours soient si parfaitement packagées que les élèves n’auraient même pas besoin d’aller à l’école, tout ce qu’ils auraient à faire serait de se connecter depuis leur ordinateur et tout leur serait facilement accessible, à leur disposition. S’il n’y avait qu’une seule raison ce serait formidable pour l’environnement si vous pensez que d’agir ainsi économiserait sur les temps de transport et donc un gain sur le carburant pour conduire une voiture ou voyager en bus.
Provided that aforementioned student would have a good connection, a good computer and maybe enough money to pay for aforementioned lectures.
A la condition que ledit étudiant ait une bonne connexion, un bon ordinateur et peut être assez d’argent pour payer lesdits cours.
I read a lot about how great e-learning is and how an easy and powerful opportunity this would be to offer a standard content to all. I’m not sure there isn’t entities already getting ready to get their teeth on that sector and making it a profitable product.
J’ai lu beaucoup de louanges à propos de l’e-learning et l’occasion facile et puissante ce serait d’offrir un contenu standard à tous. Je ne suis pas sûr qu’il n’y a pas déjà des entités qui ne se tiennent prêtes à planter leurs dents sur ce secteur et en faire un produit rentable.
There’s always been private schools but good teachers are … human after all. I would hate to see this transition to technology not conditional to a social access to as many as possible and not only to the few that could afford it. This is one of the two ways this recession is forcing us to consider matters.
Il ya toujours eu des écoles privées, mais les bons enseignants sont … humains après tout. Je ne voudrais pas que cette transition vers la technologie ne soit conditionnelle à une accession sociale au plus grand nombre possible et pas seulement à quelques-uns qui pourraient se le permettre. C’est l’une des deux façons dont cette récession nous obligent à examiner ces questions.
[…] been ‘fiddling’ with TiddlyWiki ever since I seriously started to use it as my knowledge management system. For anybody who’s not afraid of getting one’s hands dirty (meaning : playing with […]
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Good blog
très bon blog et bonne informations à retenir
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Thanks for the kind comment.
Pascal
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I’m not sure exactly why but this website is loading extremely slow for me.
Is anyone else having this issue or is it a problem on my end?
I’ll check back later and see if the problem still exists.
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Is that so? It works alright for me (it is remotely hosted).
Pascal
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For the reason that the admin of this web site is working, no question very soon it will be famous, due to its feature contents.
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by the way, LibreOffice.org has free spreadsheets
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Thanks for the info Jaap (?) but what I’m really looking for in order to definitely jump ship and not look back is a solid alternative to MS Access. Spreadsheet and Word processors are alright not matter who provides them but Microsoft is still ahead database wise.
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Interesting conversation to follow and a thought provoking post. Though I agree with you Nina that learning can and does open via online – or e-learning, and, like you noted it is not a passive activity. The lecture is the first component, the next phase is the interaction where the student applies – discusses and dialogues about the content via discussion boards, SKYPE, Google Hangouts etc. I would say that deeper learning can and does happen in this format.
Though I do also agree with you plerudulier and the experience that students get when going to college. There is learning that happens outside the classroom, though I don’t know if 4 years is completely necessary to gain such an experience.
I would highly recommend anyone interested in learning and education to enroll and actually participate as a student in such a class, which one can now through platforms such as https://www.coursera.org/. Courses are free, and are taught by a esteemed professors from Princeton, U Penn and Standford. I’m currently taking a class Introduction to Sociology and find it eye opening and enjoyable. More so because we get to hear from students all around the world through the live session through Google Hangout held once per week.
Thanks for this post!
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[…] Comments « Is there a danger to packaging knowledge? | Y-a-t’il danger à packager la connaissance? […]
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Oh, you are absolutely correct, that being on your own is a necessary life skill to be learned. Of course, as an educator, I am wondering if it has to be learned at the cost of academic content (thinking of all the wild parties and so forth that happen when students get to the college and are probably for the first time away from home for a long period of time).
I would take one step further from your statement regarding interactions: the younger the student the more “real learning” is about the interaction between the student and teacher (or caregiver, if we are talking about early childhood education).
So the question remains: how to provide the necessary interactions via electronic media? Can it be done?
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If the lecture is the only reason to go to the university, then all teaching could easily be delivered in elearning format just by recording the lecture and showing the talking head in a webinar. However, the true learning lies in interactions, and for that we need teachers and professors. Can it be done via internet? Yes, very easily, indeed. And as you can then choose when you concentrate on your studies, I would say that virtual learning is much more student centered, too. What still needs to be done is the follow-up, and get the interaction into the picture…. not hard with phones, VOIP phones, skype, mobiles, apps etc. So why is it not used more often? My guess is that many schools desire to have more control over students, and thus they prefer the traditional ways of teaching and learning.
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I don’t know what the true motives of schools are, really. I guess it’s a little bit of what you said as well as a little bit of a certain reluctance to jump ship and totally embrace the digital revolution. Something I appreciated when going to university was being away from family, being on my own having to deal with every day problems and managing somehow. Can this be taught via the internet? I doubt it.
My point is to raise my concern about what I see coming: for the sake of saving money turning to elearning only might do some harm in the long run, that it might not be all benefit if only because what children, young people need in addition to purely learning is interactions, face to face that is. Isn’t it what they’ll eventually have to do when they leave the safety of their parents’ homes?
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