terça-feira, outubro 28, 2008

Jiddu Krishnamurti


For Krishnamurti, education is
  1. educating the whole person (all parts of the person),
  2. educating the person as a whole (not as an assemblage of parts), and
  3. educating the person within a whole (as part of society, humanity, nature, etc.) from which it is not meaningful to extract that person.
From the above it probably goes without saying, though it can not be said often enough, education is not about preparation for only a part of life (like work) but is about preparation for the whole of life and the deepest aspects of living.

Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education.

In the central concerns of education, which is to do with inner liberation, both the students and the teachers are learners and therefore equal, and this is untouched by functional authority.

The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time.


segunda-feira, outubro 27, 2008

Critical Success Factors and Effective Pedagogy for e-learning in Tertiary Education

This background paper was commissioned by ITPNZ to provide information about effective teaching and learning practices for e-learning in tertiary education, that would assist the wider ITPNZ project to enhance learning outcomes for Mäori e-learners. It complements a separate report analysing 2004 Ministry of Education data on tertiary students and their participation in courses using ICT. What we have aimed to do is to distil the main messages coming from recent thinking on effective teaching and learning, and the main messages coming from recent evidence on the use of e-learning in blended tertiary courses. These show consistencies. These messages are presented in the context of the data on e-learning in New Zealand tertiary institutions, and material related to indigenous learning in overseas countries, and Mäori e-learning. There are three useful examples of the latter; but we found very little material related to indigenous elearning overseas. We conclude with an overview of some issues and challenges related to teaching and learning in tertiary environments.