Prologue
April 17th 2010. It seemed that thousands of travellers queued in the
lines for tickets –although there were some ticket machines
at every platform in Roma Termini where I managed to get my ticket to
Verona.
I write down my thoughts while the train moves thinking about the
promise I gave to write something about the am-learning project. This
is about the possibility to change the use of language , to prevent the
development of “Newspeak”.
Upon my arrival in Rome I found out that the hotel could not provide
access to any one of the usual international TV programs- More than 200
italian programs could be received in brillant digital quality
– a good example what Newspeak is all about. The reason for
that is economic- they say that it needs extra fees to feed in
international programs. There is no need for a ministry for language.
“Thoughtcrime” is unheard of , language –
this uttering of needs and deeds, pittoresque timekiller machinery
vanishes even from television, Big Brother needs not to watch any
longer.
It did happen during the lifetime of my children: They partly lost our
language – in earlier childhood still creative with
developing new words and concepts, fluently spoken and understood by
our culture. After a couple of years of schooling the teacher found out
that the language of these my children became
“poor”. Nobody in the family thought about Newspeak
because I doubt that there has been intentional planning.
The train moves with increasing velocity, the view revealing small
towns in beautiful promontories, springtime floating by. In
Rome I noticed large sheets of linen hanging in front of houses and
imprinted with the image of the former or the future house behind, in
order not to disturb the impression of this view when a photograph is
made. These curtains have a strong philosophical association. Virtual
reality dyed into cloth, stained for the time of reconstruction like a
veil: an oriental touch of Roman reconstruction architecture.
We assume that work is done behind that veil. Is this a veil or just a
theatrical curtain? What play is going to be given when the curtain
opens, when the veil of the vulcano ashes disappears?
Will there be a balcony to the room of my hotel in Verona, what role do
I expect to play?
Meanwhile yellow fields pass by and my coach is rolling, passing many
realities, different languages, beautiful settings of so many stages,
with all the same curtain of possible rain near Firenze- another
curtain or a veil..
The young man across the seat uses an I-phone and appearantly had
booked the place via that gadget, the conductor holds his handheld near
the customers and prints out the ticket on paper-.ticket via telephone.
After Bologna there is much green, flatland: the story retold by
Watzlawick, originally by Edwin A. Abbot, of this square, an
inhabitatnt of the two-dimensional world, dreaming himself into the
other dimension, into line-land and trying to convince the king of
line-land, naturally the longest line, that there really is another
dimension. No discussions at point-land.
Verona: Neither nightingale nor lark but just birds woke me up and rain
towards the window.
Good coffee downstairs after dinner with vegetables from a buffet
– all cars of europcar sold out and prenotations possible for
the time after 48 hrs. No train information nor booking, no telephone
hot lines. The nice young man (with that I-phone) had booked a room in
a Verona hotel for me to his special rate and I had walked all the way
. I like walking a city from the station through rotten fiera premises,
dead houses, dead factories and the fiera with two church
choirs practising. Walking gives the good impressions. Like in that
small bar where I asked for the hotel, the waiter answering with a
voice that made me want to engage him for a
medieval a-capella choir.
Next morning back to the itinerary: At the station” No
tickets here for the train to Munich: buy on train!” Now
finally sitting in the first class compartment together with five other
people and their luggage. And coming back to writing a little and
reading in the Watzlawick book.
I am fond of his words on human communication like “It is not
possible not to behave”
So finally, the others stuck in Rome and I on my way home.
End of Prologue in front of the curtain made of Icelandic ashes.
Teaching strategies- artifice to reach a learning goal
vocabulary training or message modulation
From my point of view the
am-learning project still has to cope with the difficulty to make a
clear distinction between the individualization of the learning process
and the acquisition of a “jargon”.
Whenever the teaching goal is in the realm of acquisition of a jargon
we have for many years experiences with programmes like
“Coach”, a vocabulatry training programme developed
at FernUniversität from the early nineteen-nineties
on. In June 1996 e.g. I summarized the ideas behind such a
vocabulary training programme: Error oriented tutoring is part of the
didactical framework without which distance education would be nothing
else but a special organizational form of teaching. I don`t mind
talking about theory of distance education as long as the concept does
not claim to be something really different from other teaching
processes.
Error oriented tutoring is a concept from didactics - each
error made should be taken as a chance for additional teaching,
for corrections in the learning paths of students. We know from early
learning behaviour studies like from Pavlov, that extinction takes much
more effort to be achieved, than conditioning. So it is a merely
economic issue to achieve correct behaviour at the earliest stage
possible.
This means that errors made should be taken care of at the earliest
possible instance.
In my life as a father of
children I witness that schools tend to commit many a crime in this
respect by not correcting errors when teachers administer tests but
just indicating that at a certain place in a test an error ocurred. Is
it lazyness of teachers? I think most of the teachers would reject this
and argue that it is merely impossible to make a "positive correction",
indicating not only the error but presenting the correct answer and
trying to begin a process of additional input for remedy because of the
number of tests to be corrected.
This is a severe argument and I dont have the solution for direct
schooling at hand: but in distance education I think it would be waste
of time and energy to go along that line of correction as just
indicating: "You are wrong". For years I propose error oriented
tutoring as a chance for an additional teaching effort - at an early
stage of the learning process.
Students are used to being
tested.
Tests will give at least some indication of quality, and although I
dont want to step into the discussion of efficiency of grades for
motivation and for real comparability of learning efforts, I think
tests are good for training. It is just one known form of presentation
of content. And we know of cultural differences in this field: In
Germany a test in a classroom which has been failed by more than one
third of the learning group either has to be repeated or to be approved
by the administration. The idea is, that always the results of a test
in a learning group will turn out to have the typical form of a
Gauss-curve; in the anglo-saxon culture a notion of achievement up to
100% of the tasks is more prominent- at least it can be discussed.
One of the features of COACH is that the learner will go for a 100%
while working with the system: One of the inbuilt elements in Coach is
a small stochastic program that ensures that a student will be
presented items not perfectly known before again and again - until the
student has given the correct answer for the third time - . So the
learner can be sure to really have
mastered all items when the program finishes.
The main features of this vocabulary training program were:
Now we come to the issue that
I want to transmit : sensitivity for error oriented tutoring
Epilogue
on the need of "definitions" in the times of derivatives, certificates and hedgefonds : write down what you think today!