Readings

The Business of Education
Produced by Stan Correy
Sunday March 14, 1999

What if schools were privatised, and made into profit-making businesses - think of the efficiencies the hip pocket nerve could achieve.
An entrepreneur will sell you all the computers you need, he'll hire and fire your teachers, he'll design the software, and he could even choose what your kids are taught.
The shareholders will make a packet if the students get good marks.
It all sounds ... too good to be true?

Full Transcript:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s20077.htm

Colleges Should Tap the Pedagogical Potential of the World-Wide Web
Alistair B. Fraser

A few months ago, I was in a meeting with a man who was both a director of his university's distance-education program and an adviser to a teaching institute on the campus. We were discussing the future of on-line learning. I discovered, to my fascination, that we had very different visions.

Originaly published in: Chronicle of Higher Education, Section: Opinion & Arts Vol. 48, Page: B8, Aug. 8, 1999
http://fraser.cc/Talks/Chronicle.html

The Einstein Factor
with Robyn Williams
Sunday December 17, 2000

Summary:
Some very gifted children are often condemned as failures in the school system because they learn in a different way to the majority of kids.

Robyn Williams: ‘You will never amount to anything.’ My school teachers implied that to me on many an occasion. One schoolmaster also said those words to another rather distracted lad called Albert when he attended classes in Munich. Fortunately Albert Einstein was encouraged by his family, and they still had money, before hard times fell, to let him have another go at another school.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s223949.htm

Future of Learning Group Publications
The Epistemology and Learning Group
Seymour Papert

http://learning.media.mit.edu/pub.html

Works by Seymour Papert, Ph.D.
http://www.papert.org/works.html

The Map of Life
Professor Peter Doherty at the National Library of Australia.
Produced by Kirsten Garrett
Sunday August 19, 2001

Full Transcript:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s349701.htm

Download the transcript in a printer friendly format:
RTF format | Word 6.0 format

Professor Peter Doherty says the new understanding of genetics is making a powerful statement about our place in nature.

Through the course of the 20th century we came to understand that physically, at least, we are the most extraordinary and wonderful chemical machines.

It is essential that we continue to recognise that the future rests with the young and that we provide resources accordingly. We're seeing that tension particularly in the United States, where schools are funded from the local tax base. And what we're seeing is older people who no longer feel invested in children, are refusing to see tax rates increased to provide better schools.

People before Technology
A conversation with Esther Dyson
President of EDventure Holdings, Chair of ICANN
Interviewed by Ken Freed for Association for Interactive Media.

There are two general visions of interactive media. The vision a lot of people have is that they're just going to interact with some computer, and I don't find that very exciting. The vision I like is the one where a person interacts with other people. A video game is interactive, in the first sense, but to me, what's more interesting is if there are other people there, so that the game becomes a communication medium. That's my concept of interactivity.

http://www.media-visions.com/dyson.html

Scoring Power Points
by Jamie McKenzie
McKenzie, J. (2000). Scoring power. From Now On The Educational Technology Journal, 10(1).
          Retrieved January 18, 2002, from http://www.fno.org/sept00/powerpoints.html

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Last modified: January 18, 2001
Author: Rupert Russell r.russell@ballarat.edu.au
URL: http://www.ballarat.edu.au/~rrussell/readings.html