| Tuesday, February 26, 2008 |
| The iceberg principle |
 I call this next input, the Iceberg Principle ..and what has this got to do with technology .. or educational technology.
Imagine that you have just been to a 2-hour movie, sat comfortably in the cinema armed with the usual fare of popcorns (honey coated of course), perhaps hot dog and the supply of fizzy drinks to wash all of it down.
That 2-hour movie you saw took perhaps 2-years of the directors life to produce, not to mention all other people involved in the production, editing, sound mixing, special effects, costume, lights, dubbing, stunt man, doubles (the ones who got bashed on behalf of the hero) and make-up artists and so on .. this is just off the cuff..
Well ... that 2-year life of those involved is what is not revealed to us. Next time you watch any movie, remember those 'behind' the scenes.
How is this any different from trying to establish an online or computer mediated learning environment. What can we have in a computer mediated format? .. perhaps too many to mention, but the few popular ones such as a video playback, podcast, or audio file .. and power point. Thing is, these things do not fall from the sky .. someone has to produce it. More precisely, it has to be planned, designed, addressing certain needs and recording, editing and upload it.
So when we see a well planned lesson on the Internet, then someone took the trouble to design it as such .. and painstakingly took the trouble to make it student-friendly, pedagogically articulated and loaded with content addressing different learning styles. Is this too much to ask?? Hehehehe ...
 So .. who is actually going to do this ?? The lecturers' themselves, whoa .. no way .. I know the answer .. but then again these are the issues not resolved at institutions of higher learning and even in schools. To obtain excellent learning objects require excellent input .. I say it again, garbage in, garbage out.
This is a major missing link in any institution. The transition from chalk and talk to multimedia computing and web based learning is like walking on earth and taking a rocket into outer space ... and for as long as we don't want to accept this, and put the necessary support mechanisms .. all this hype including e-learning will not work ... something will be there, no doubt, scanned notes, power points, drill and practice, quizzes and wonderful graphics and it looks good. ... yeah . we are good at looking good ... any difference in the students performance ?? ..yeehaaaa ..
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posted by Rozhan @ 2/26/2008 12:53:00 PM   |
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