GoogleTranslate Service


Thoughts from the Open Source Schools Conference

July 21st, 2009 by Graham Attwell

I had an excellent time yesterday at the UK Becta sponsored Open Source Schools unconference.

As always with Open Source events, the energy and enthusiasm of participants was encouraging.

But this was not just an event about Open Source. It was about how we can make creative use technologies to promote and support explorative learning. My keynote presentation will be available on video and audio next week, I am told. But one of my main points was that the idea of bricolage, as put forward by Levi Strauss – about how we make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand – regardless of their original purpose – to learn and to create – applies to the learning environment just as much as to materials, documents, media etc. In other words, in the process of creating, we shape the learning environment, and the outcomes of the process of bricolage will in turn help to reshape the design of the environment. Open Source is valuable because it affords us the opportunities to shape or design its use in the learning process.

I was greatly impressed with a demonstration of the Sugar Learning platform – originally developed for the One Laptop per Child XO-1 netbook and now available to run on most computers. The sugar platform,  say the developers, promotes collaborative learning through Sugar Activities that encourage critical thinking, the heart of a quality education. Sugar is seen as an alternative to the traditional ‘office- desktop’ software.

I am certainly going to have a play with Sugar. I think most of us in the workshop were greatly excited, despite problems we were experienced with the BT network. But what was worrying some of the teachers was just the possibilities of such interfaces for play and exploration. This, they felt, would be wonderful with 6 or 7 year old children. But, sad to tell, the UKs rigid, overcrowded and overly prescriptive curriculum leaves no time for such explorative play.

Please follow and like us:

Comments are closed.

  • Search Pontydysgu.org

    Social Media




    News Bites

    Cyborg patented?

    Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.

    Please follow and like us:


    Racial bias in algorithms

    From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter

    This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.

    Please follow and like us:


    Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years

    Via The Canary.

    The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).

    Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.

    The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.

    Please follow and like us:


    Quality Training

    From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.

    Please follow and like us:


    Other Pontydysgu Spaces

    • Pontydysgu on the Web

      pbwiki
      Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
      Sounds of the Bazaar Radio LIVE
      Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.

      We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.

      Please follow and like us:
  • Twitter

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Meta

  • Categories