Aboriginal Worldviews and Education

Aboriginal Worldviews and Education course starts today at Coursera. It will be not very long (4 Weeks), so it’s just an introduction, but I hope it will be very productive for me. I note that the focus of my attention moves from studying different disciplines to the process of education itself. Aboriginal worldviews are also very interesting for me. Earlier I studied something to this topics during “Listening to World Music” Coursera course. I’ve also studied basic course of Folkloristic in the University. My current area of study isn’t directly connected to this discipline, but it still remains interesting and important for me.

It’s nice that submission period of the first assignment starts at the same day, when submission period of the final work for EDCMOOC ends

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Мелочи

Опечатка: “30 рублей за 1000 знаний без пробелов”

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В рекламе мелькает анонс какого-то глянцевого журнала, обложка с заголовками статей. Один из заголовков – “Когнитивное невероятное”.

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Попытка купить печенюшки в небольшом ларьке. Внезапно ларёк оказывается внутри полутёмным, на прилавке стоят тут и там свечи – отключили электричество. Мужчина-продавец настойчиво предлагает: “Вот тут молочное, а вот вы ещё овсяное попробуйте” (с ударением на предпоследний слог). И самое странное что это мне не снится)

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Словоупотребление

Столь обсуждаемый в СМИ в последние несколько недель “Закон о пропаганде гомосексуализма”, помимо разделения обсуждающих на его сторонников и противников порождает ещё одно разделение, более неоднозначное, менее очевидное и не совпадающее с вышеупомянутым: на тех, кто может произнести вслух название закона, и тех, кто не может и прибегает к разного рода эвфемизмам. Меня это несколько смешит, как даже вроде бы опытные ведущие на том же “Эхе Москвы” начинают, задавая вопрос об оном законе гостю, изворачиваться и на ходу изобретать какое-нибудь косвенное выражение. Но ведь не мат же это в конце концов.

Безотносительно предыдущего, но на ту же тему: вспомнилось сейчас, как меня передёрнуло, когда я впервые услышала слово “полицейский” в бытовой речи. В новостях оно как-то не очень бросается в глаза, а когда в автобусе один парень сказал другому что-то вроде “и тут я у полицейского спросил” – тут я как-то вздрогнула от непривычного звучания.

Тэг “государственная д.” я, вероятно, буду употреблять в той же функции, что и раньше тэг “хочу в Австралию!”

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#EDCMOOC : tablet PC vs. handwriting

I think, tablet PC will never replace pen and paper, especially at school.

Because if you sit in the class at the boring lesson (and even in the best school the lesson can be boring), you could never take a page from your tablet PC, make a paper plane and throw it in the window (or in your classmate ).

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#EDCMOOC: How e-learning affects the process of reading

As we can see on the example of this course and other MOOC, the proportion of visual and textual content is different, than in "traditional" education. We need to deal with videos, pictures, collages, presentations etc., and they aren't just illustrations to text - they have their own role in education process.

In EDC MOOC we also have to read some text - some articles about technology and education. Most of them are represeted as html pages, not pdf files (which I personally would prefer). I have an idea, that the process of reading articles in this form slightly differs from the preocess of reading a common book or magazine.

1. Scrolling up and down vs. turning pages over. Even when I read something important (not news or somebody's blog, but something for long reading), I prefer to download  the text to my e-reader (where I can read from page to page) or even print it on paper. It seems to me, that when I scroll down, I lose a focus and spend a couple of seconds to find a place where I stopped)
2. Making notes. Some text are worth active reading. You make notes, underline interesting places, or use highlighter, draw arrows linking ideas or concepts etc. (Maybe you know a good tool that allows to do such things in a browser? It would be nice to use it). Actually, when working on my degree paper, I bought a graphic tablet just for this purpose - to make free handwritten notes on very big anount of pdf books I need to work through. I see that technology can give new opportunities of making such notes (with certain advantages like using hypertext and links between notes), but hadn't find an appropriate tool yet.
3. Non-verbal information. Even if the books contains just plain text, there are also other layers of information. I've read one article that shows, for example, that Comic Sans is better to use in textbooks for primary schools than Times New Roman, because is easier to read. I know also that some authors of fictional or phylosphycal works insisted that their books shoud be reprinted with exact font, spacing, division to pages etc. Because such things also affect reception of the book. In most cases when you read something at web-page, this layer of information is lost (especially if you don't have an AdBlock or similar app). The text is more flexible, but at the same time it loses partially its structure. And that's why I prefer PDF - it keeps all this features as it was intended by author. 

What do you think? How the process of reading will change when people move more and more to reading web-pages and e-books from usual paper books and magazines? Will this changes affect the effectiveness of learning and of reading in general?

#EDCMOOC Some practical examples of problems in educational system

I work as private tutor in Russia, and I would like to give two examples, wchich, I think, show, what is wrong with our current educational system. Just particular observations, but I think, they are typical.

First: In most cases I visit my pupils at their homes. When I come a bit late, for example 5 minutes later, it's difficult to tell my 10-years-old pupil that we will than finish our lesson 5 minutes later too. So it is not about "spend some time to get some knowledge", it is like "finish this lesson as soon as we can, and go to more interesting things". (Actually, I put much effort to make a lesson interesting, but I don't have much success till now). I think this comes from typical 45-minutes-long school lessons, when all pupils work regardless their own productive work periods etc. They are used to work just when they have to work, and then throw this away from their mind.
Actually, students or school pupils of last year of education who prepapre to exams think already a bit different. They know what they need and why, so it is already not a problem to make a lesson a bit longer. But the problem still remains: In this year, from the 15 first-year university students I asked (I took part at  the exam as professor's assistant), only three have read something behind the basic textbooks. They just do their task from point A to point B and nothing more. 

Second. The same 10-years-old pupil from the example above asked me: "When I asked you, what grade will I get, why do you say "4", not "5"?" Actually, I didn't think about this problem when I gave the answer, I just said fairly what I think. But for the pupil a dream about getting "very good" (5 in our system) grade was more important than real information about her knowledge and what she do to improve it. So here is the problem: Pupils and student (and their parents too) worry about grades more than about getting real useful knowledge.

I think such problems cannot be solved without deep reorganization of educational system, and modern technologies give useful tools for than - we shoul only use them properly.

Словарный запас

Совершенно вылетело из головы два слова, никак не пойму, как это назвать по-русски.

Первое: представим ситуацию: маршрутка проезжает мимо перекрёстка, на котором самый яркий ориентир - небольшая жёлтая постройка. "Остановите вот у этой..." Можно ли её назвать как-то менее общо, чем, собственно, постройкой? Не дом, так как не жилое. Не магазин, так как снаружи нигде не написано, что оно магазин. (Внутри что-то с автозапчастями, на самом деле, но снаружи это далеко не сразу ясно). Самым близким из предложенных мне на этот вопрос вариантов пока был сарай, но и это тоже как-то не то.

Второе: можно ли как-то назвать одним словом кухонную бытовую технику? Т.е. какое-то такое название для разновидности бытовой техники, чтобы туда всякие блендеры-миксеры-кофемолки попадали, а пылесосы уже нет. (Вопрос возник при написани очередного копирайтерского задания).