To be clear, I am not debating the merits of "chopping wood and carrying
water". I take for granted that in order to 'play', students need some basic
level of fluency.
I am saying that the business of teaching software fluency shouldn't be the
goal. Fluency is the means, not the end; such instruction be proportionally
small compared to higher-order activities because they can figure stuff out
pretty quickly once they have the basics.
> That's *you*. There are some employers who need people with those specific
> software skills because they don't want to have to spend the time
> [re]training them. Don't assume that your needs are everyone's needs. The
> resume you "file" may well be the exact one I'm looking for.
I would not assume that. It is probably true that some employers today are
actually looking for employees who can work PowerPoint 2007. And, it is true
that my particular needs today may not be representative of the market place
in general. However, I will happily challenge anyone to anticipate what
specific application skills an 8th grader will need in ten years.
>
> 4. It's not about being a good Excel/Word/Powerpoint user, it is about
> > knowing how to communicate ideas with these stuff
>
> Or about being the expert user who can help someone else communicate the
> ideas with it. One could say that it's not about being a good animator, but
> about being able to communicate a good story. But the animator works
> hand-in-hand with the story person. And if you can be *both*, well, that's
> even better. Walt Disney said that Ub Iwerks was the world's greatest
> animator. But he wasn't a good story person, and the studio he set up when
> he left Disney floundered because of it. Walt was a passable animator, but
> an excellent story person, who knew how to get the animators to communicate
> his story. Both are important.
The thing is that we are talking about students in school (>K-12), not about
what professional career paths that may require specific software/technology
expertise. In the context of elementary/secondary education, I am explicitly
saying that becoming an expert user should not be the aim. If they become
one along the way, even better. If they decide they want to grow up and
become an expert of Maya because they want to get into 3D animation, they
will find a way to do that by getting the instruction that works for them.
As far as Excel/Word/PowerPoint goes, as far as I'm concerned, knowing how
> to communicate with those tools involves knowing how to use them properly,
> and especially so as not to give your audience a headache when they look at
> your presentation.
Agreed. Knowing how to communicate well is a Good Thing, regardless of the
medium.
>
> 7. All specific software 'skills' can be taught by showing someone how to
> > find the 'help' button or how to search google.
>
> So are you saying that all I have to do now when a student asks a question
> is to say, "Look it up yourself?" Don't we have some obligation to at least
> show them the basics before we cast them adrift and make them fend for
> themselves?
>
Yes. The real instructional world is messy. Having thought History and a
roreign language, I can appreciate that messiness. I say, show them the
basics AND use every teachable moment to help them develop learning
patterns.
>
> > 9. Our 'standards' about style, format and form are diminishing in value
> > everyday. Insisting on having a Microsoft Word processed 'essay' will
> > seem
> > like asking for a type-written essay.
>
> Um...it's the same thing. It's typed output on paper. What has changed over
> the past 30 years is the number of people who will accept handwritten
> essays. Even when I was a freshman in college, back in the 70s, the
> typewriter was a relative rarity among students, and many short papers were
> handwritten.
My point was clumsily made. Let me be more precise. There are and will be
many ways to author content. People will ask for work-products to meet
certain professional and technical standards. e.g., "pdf, less than ten
pages, Standard English, CMOS" or "QuickTime, 720p HD, no more than 10
minutes long, lossless, CreativeCommons (Attribution)". But, we won't care
how these products are produced.
> > 12. but the Remix generation is already here (Lesig's term, not mine) -
> > and if we don't get with the program, we'll be the ones taking classes
> > about
> > how to use Flickr circa 2020
>
> And what is the remix generation remixing? Things that were done the old
> way.
>
Yes and no. Remix isn't just re-using old stuff. This is somewhat the crux
of the matter. New is happening as we speak, without our so-called "help".
>
> 15. Nurture the internal geek or be ruled by them.
> But the geeks often misunderstand what regular humans want and need.
>
*chuckle*, I'll leave that one alone :-)
Sincerely,
--
Ernest Y. Koe
The Proof Group LLC
http://twitter.com/ernestkoe
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