If your dad is a builder, when he buys you a tool for your birthday, he buys a real tool, a real hammer, or plane, or chisel, not a toy one. (Grandma does that.) Same if dad is a plumber or a graphic designer. Or mum. Real tools.The Inuit give their toddlers real knives, real sharp knives, and expect them to use them, appropriately and safely. They model it for them. Just like the plumber or builder or designer.
So why do we give kids iLife - applications that no real filmmaker, web designer, musician, or photographer, would use?
And iLife has got worse in recent versions, more like someone from Microsoft designed it, with more automated features and more templates. The problem with these features is that they diminish the learning rather than enhance it. They mean you never have to learn to do stuff, rather than promote learning. If you make something for dummies, all you get is dummies. A real tool insists that you learn, it doesn't prevent learning.
When teachers know and use real tools themselves they can see the advantages of using them with students and they see the deficits in using the toys. I think we should stop behaving like Grandma and start giving students real tools to make videos, music or websites.
There is also a difference between using a template and providing scaffolding. A template excuses the user from thinking - chooses for the user - while scaffolding supports the learner's own thinking, own choices, and reinforces the learning. Also, in the end, the automatic template is less satisfying for the user because he knows he didn't do it. A cake mix cake always tastes like a cake mix, looks like cake mix. So do iWeb pages, or iMovie credits, or iDVD menus.
So, Creative Suite, Final Cut, Logic Studio, here we come.
Some valid points here yes but then.......
ReplyDeleteWhy be the butcher when you can be the chef?
Good tools that have made arduous and onerous tasks simple have allowed the user to develop and innovate. Rather than sit at the bottom of Blooms revised taxonomy the 'rememberer' can now be the 'analyser', 'evaluator' and 'creator'.
Point number two is that I would never give my young boy an extremely sharp knife. He'll cut himself and cause some potentially fatal damage. Note that I didn't say 'could'. Maybe I am, but I don't consider myself a pessimist. I just know my son.
Instead I would give my son some safety snips. Sharp enough to cut paper but not sharp enough to slice through sheet metal. I, however, find the safety snips very dull and the grips slightly cumbersome.
When is comes to elearning most people in my experience don't want the sharp reality of lethal tools which my be Final Cut Pro, or Dreamweaver, but rather imovie or iweb with it's simplicity and safety cautious elements which allow for play time and 'give-it-ago' tools. Now I sit in the lounge and pick up my Gretsch Gold Top electric guitar and play. I look forward to my boys being able to wield such a beautiful tool, and I'm sure it will be a whole lot better than I could ever play, but for now (and while I have no real use other than to use them to model guitar playing for them) their plastic Warehouse guitars allow them to strum in time and 'play-along' with Dad.