School Architecture and Learning Spaces Virtual Approach

1
School Architecture and Learning Spaces Virtual
Approach

• 3rd LAHC STUDENT CONFERENCECities for People,
  People for Cities
• Máximo Gurméndez
• The British Schools
• IT Department

2
School Architecture and Learning Spaces

• What is school architecture?
• What is a learning space?
• Physical or Virtual learning space ?
• Physical and Virtual learning space ?

3
A Day in Uzmans Life The school in the near
future

• A pupil in a secondary school that is
  effectively integrating e-learning with
  traditional learning techniques.

4
Issues from the text

• Students hand in and receive their assignments
  electronically.
• The school provides a computer to Jenny, who does
  not have a computer at home.
• Uzman is a member of a virtual community.
• The science teacher is not in the class when the
  lesson takes place. However, the teacher is
  available online, but is focusing on students
  with difficulties.
• The geography teacher still teaches, but
  enhances the class with recent visual material.
• An online debate, with feedback from a
  professional.
• ICT broadens the scope of education by making the
  curriculum more flexible.

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Educating, Teaching or Learning?

• Some Quotations
• Personally I am always ready to learn, although I
  do not always like being taught.
• Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten
  everything he learned in school.
• Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

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The goal is to learn

• Can information technology effectively aid
  learning?
• What paradigms must we change?
• At what stage of development are we?
• Is it feasible?
• What problems are we to face?
• What is the social impact of the use of these
  technologies?

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Physical vs. Virtual Learning
Virtual Environment
Physical Environment
Classical Teaching
Combined Instruction
Distance Learning
Use of technology

• Aspects to consider
• Quality of Learning
• Costs
• Universality
• Evaluation
• Time management
• Education and social behaviour
• Curriculum

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Technologies
Ancestors

• WWW as a document resource
• Instant Messaging (synchronous consulting)
• Email, Newsgroups and Forums (asynchronous
  consulting)
• Multimedia and Virtual Reality
• Notebooks, PDAs, Writing Pads
• Software, Educational programs and Expert
  Systems)
• Automated Test Correction
• Digital Projector

• School Library
• Teacher Responding
• Copybook correction?
• FieldTrips
• Copybook and pencils
• Teacher Books
• Teacher Correcting
• Blackboard

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Quality - Advantages
I cannot teach anybody anything, All I can do is
to make them think. Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

• Students will teach themselves at their own pace
  and at their own time.
• Teachers would be liberated from their
  traditional role as the fount of all knowledge.
• Children of all abilities would shape the
  curriculum around their individual needs.
• Lessons delivered remotely by world-class
  teachers and subject experts.
• The best teachers may be involved in making the
  educational software.
• Students have feedback from the computer,
  building confidence and self-esteem.

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Role of the teacher Dont teach!

• The best teacher is the one who suggests rather
  than dogmatises, and inspires his listener with
  the wish to teach himself.
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher
  explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The
  great teacher inspires.
• William Arthur Ward
• It is because modern education is so seldom
  inspired by a great hope that it so seldom
  achieves great results. The wish to preserve the
  past rather that the hope of creating the future
  dominates the minds of those who control the
  teaching of the young.
• Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

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Quality - Drawbacks
If knowledge can create problems, it is not
through ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov

• Educational software cant adapt very easily to
  some students, they do not have the insight, and
  experience teachers have.
• Overuse of technology (Powerpointlessness)
• May give inappropriate feedback
• Some educational software works only on tightly
  defined subjects in which questions have an
  unambiguous answer.
• Technical problems

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What is the result?

• While research by the British Educational and
  Communications Technology Agency (carried out in
  2001) may show a relationship between pupil
  performance and ICT resources, other research
  (such as that carried out by the OECD for the
  recent Programme for International Student
  Achievement PISA) is not necessarily so
  conclusive.

13
Universality The Digital Divide
All animals are created equal, but some are more
equal than others. George Orwell - Animal Farm

• As technologies require money, a new kind of
  discrimination is threatening equality and
  freedom.
• Countries and people with less money will be even
  further away from development, opportunities and
  growth.
• Solutions
• Scholarships
• Government grants
• Financial aid

14
Evaluation Problems
If it is too good to be true it is probably a
fraud. Ron Weber

• Evaluating on-line is quite hard, and in most
  cases, it has failed.
• Has serious consequences on the degree
  recognition
• Problems
• Test surveillance
• World time
• Online access to resources
• Small communication devices
• Naughty nature of students
• Anonymous nature of the internet

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Naughty Nature of Students - Facts

• Almost 80 of college students admit to cheating
  at least once-- The Centre for Academic Integrity
  studies.
• 36 of undergraduates have admitted to
  plagiarizing written material-- Psychological
  Record survey.
• 58.3 of high school students let someone else
  copy their work in 1969, and 97.5 did so in
  1989-- The State of Americans This Generation
  and the Next.
• 30 of a large sampling of Berkeley students were
  recently caught plagiarizing directly from the
  Internet-- results of a Turnitin.com test,
  conducted from April-May 2000.

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Solutions to Plagiarism

• Specialized online database and search engines
  Example www.plagiarism.org
• "Who wants to sit around looking for websites
  trying to find out if a paper is plagiarized or
  not... pretty soon you're a private
  investigator."-- a Stanford University professor,
  from an article in TechWeb News.
• Technical Means (Cryptography, Watermarking)
• We believe if the 'computer' caused the
  problem, then the computer' should help solve it
  as well
• Education and Ethics

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ICT and Creativity

• Are we off-putting our creativity by using IT
  devices that have a functional limit?
• In a recent survey for DfES4 74 of parents
  agreed that computers allowed their child to be
  more creative. 85 also agreed that computers
  made schoolwork more enjoyable for their child.

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Broader Issues

• Digital Divide or equal opportunities?
• Distance Learning
• Widens educational options in rural areas
• Has demographic and ecological effects
• Open Education (MIT Example)
• Loss of skills and judgement
• Loss of face to face contact Community or
  Isolation?
• Economic effects (Welfare?, Unemployment?)

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Will it work?
The Difficulty of Prediction....

• The telephone is so important, almost every city
  will need one.
• Anonymous
• My personal desire would be to prohibit entirely
  the use of alternating currents. They are
  unnecessary as they are dangerous.
• Thomas Edison 1889
• Computers in the future...may only weigh 1.5
  tons.
• Popular Mechanics, 1949
• There is no reason for any individual to have a
  computer at home.
• Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corp.
  1977