Posts Tagged ‘bbc’
BBC Click
Posted on: December 9, 2011
Have you heard of BBC News Click? Find out more about it here.
If you have, ahem, access to this TV programme, the 3 Dec episode is one not to miss if you are interested in serious games, Khan Academy, QR codes and even urinal games!
One man’s trash…
Posted on: February 8, 2010
Is another man’s treasure.
[image source, used under CC licence]
A new centre in Cambridge is to study computer games and comics as forms of literature consumed by learners.
The short BBC report reveals why:
“If what we regard as trash is popular with young people, we need to know why and whether, as researchers and teachers, we can offer them something that addresses the same needs but also deals with these themes in a critical and ethical way.”
She [Professor Maria Nikolajeva, director of the centre] added many trainee teachers did not understand the significance of the latest children’s books or films when they went into the classroom.
This is something I must definitely keep tabs on!
Pushing the envelope
Posted on: November 18, 2009
When I read the BBC news article Great writers ‘fail’ online test, I was not surprised. Why? Two reasons.
First, one of the writing samples was actually a speech. Writing for a speech is not the same as writing for print. Yes, you are writing a speech, but not for someone to read like a book. The words don’t leap out of the medium the same way when they are delivered by the speaker.
Second, technology cannot (yet) replace complex human judgment, emotion and subjective interpretation. While this might have been a case of pushing the limits of technology, I also thought that this was using technology when it did not fit the situation.
Do educators make the same mistake when pushing the envelope with technology? Sure we do. But the harm is not in trying. The harm is in providing fuel for the naysayers to say “I told you so!”
But to the naysayers I reply:
Or as James Arthur Baldwin originally put it: Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
This BBC article, Multitaskers bad at multitasking, misses the point.
The article describes how researchers tested subjects on their abilities to multitask. The researchers concluded that multitaskers were the worst at multitasking skills.
Of course those were the results! Tests measure a limited range of things. What those tests did NOT measure was whether the multitaskers were effective or efficient in actual play or work. After all, that is where the ability to multitask matters, not the test.
Most academic tests and exams do the same thing. They measure narrow cognitive outcomes and subdomains, e.g, recall and comprehension. They are not designed to measure affective or psychomotor outcomes nor are they contextualised in real life or real problems. The latter is where it matters, not the test.
