tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6153845628469776909.post3825588092532776982..comments2024-03-24T09:13:28.758+00:00Comments on The Plashing Vole: Ursine defecation newsThe Plashing Volehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13021407602157515927noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6153845628469776909.post-72304436325399007982011-09-16T17:36:35.387+01:002011-09-16T17:36:35.387+01:00Hi Vole.
I genuinely can't see a time when E-l...Hi Vole.<br />I genuinely can't see a time when E-learning fully takes over from traditional teaching. It has its place to enhance and offer a certain degree of convenience within a learning environment but it is otherwise limited.<br /><br />As you pointed out, one of the advantages of face-to-face interaction in education is the opportunity to bounce around ideas and debate, but as a student I feel it goes beyond this. <br /><br />Yes, it would be very convenient to do my studying online, with no human contact or no timetable to have to adhere to, but where is the enrichment in that? We all can remember, at various times of our schooling career, the teachers who bored us when, disinterested in their subject, they lifelessly droned out facts and figures. I can still remember with affection the name of my middle school teacher from over thirty years ago who was passionate about teaching English. Her enthusiasm, charisma and approachability were invaluable teaching tools. Computer learning, as far as I know it, hasn't quite mastered these very human qualities; at best it can replicate the drones who were dispassionate about their subjects. <br /><br />I couldn't give a rat's bottom if the lecturer standing in front of my class knows how to take apart and rebuild his computer on a rainy Sunday, or can do fabulous Powerpoints in his sleep. If he is an authority on the subject I've chosen to learn about, and his passion and enthusiasm fans the flame in me to find out more then I'm a happy learner. <br /><br />It seems to me impossible to even consider that that kind of teaching can be replaced by E-Learning. As for isolation, class teaching, especially group seminars, not only encourage interaction between lecturer and student, it's where friendships between students often begin. Being thrown in seminar groups with people you previously didn't know is scary but enriching. I've had really interesting conversations with students in such situations whom I would otherwise have never met - foreign exchange students, for example - and formed deeper friendships with students closer to home. <br /><br />Human contact is vital to maintain emotional well-being and therefore help people to achieve their potential. I imagine my lecturers feel somewhat invested in me and my student colleagues to succeed. We students also, through our friendships want our colleagues to succeed. That's what being human is about. I can't imagine a computer feeling the same way.Conniehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09275520760565119121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6153845628469776909.post-77935602463335418862011-09-16T13:10:45.187+01:002011-09-16T13:10:45.187+01:00Eee, when I were a lad, back in the '80s, we u...Eee, when I were a lad, back in the '80s, we used to have to huddle round the school's only BBC Micro and play Chuckie Egg until our tiny hands were numb.<br /><br />Then when I got home I had to program - from scratch, mind - some rubbish game about a fox and chicken on t'family's old Acorn Electron, or else I was sent to bed wi' no supper.<br /><br />Them were tech-savvy days, them were.Dannoreply@blogger.com