Re: first brief remarks on Carol Lee's article

From: Luiz Carlos Baptista (lucabaptista@sapo.pt)
Date: Sat Nov 08 2003 - 10:17:52 PST


Hi Steve,

I believe that the question of "non-neutrality" of computer-based tools is
even more general than that. It's not only a question of how the teachers
will design their features, but of how wide is the range of possible
designs - that is, what each kind of tool enables/constrains in terms of
cognitive processes.

Luiz Carlos Baptista
lucabaptista@sapo.pt
lucabaptista@hotmail.com

----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Gabosch
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Sent: quinta-feira, 6 de Novembro de 2003 20:28
Subject: Re: first brief remarks on Carol Lee's article

I very much like Carol's enthusiasm for adapting interfaces and content to
culturally specific situations so students can tap into prior knowledge and
familiar styles of discourse and make effective use of the unique multimedia
and interactive capacities of computer-based learning tools. But Luiz and
Mike bring up a really interesting question: what about the teacher? It
makes sense to apply the same reasoning that Carol applies to the students
that are **using** the tool, to the teachers that are **designing** its
features - and therefore using its programming techniques, which, as Luiz
and Mike point out, cannot be culturally neutral. Here are some passages
from Carol's article - think of them from the point of view of what the
teacher has to do.

from Carol's article:

page 51
Because the CBN is a tool, teachers, curriculum designers, or researchers
can create content and interfaces that are responsive to the community of
students and the particular demands of the texts.

page 52
The tool [the CBN] itself is inherently flexible because it is simply a
structure on which differing content and interfaces can be built.

page 58
In the case of tools such as the Lyric Architecture developed by Pinkard
(2000) and the CBN described in this article, teachers, for example, can
create content, structure tasks, and in some cases create interfaces that
can be adapted to local audiences.

- Steve



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