Hi Stuart

Thank you for your reply.  



At 17:01 02/09/98 +0100, you wrote:
>Interesting stuff Alan,
>
>I am ingeneral agreement that effective tracking of students has many
>benefits and is more and more essential.
>I have some doubts about how far this can be taken however:

I agree with you. However, I think that it can be taken ( eventually )
quite a long way. Providing that it is done for genuine educational reasons
I have few problems with the security aspects ( big brother ) 


>- While we talk of tracking students learning objectives my worry is that
>these objectives can be very subtle and are very hard to turn into
>crunchable data.

Agreed. Personally I hate performance criteria, and ones ability to
misunderstand their meaning and intent is astounding - however, if you
define an objective, no matter how subtle, and then define the performance
that indicates achievement of that objective, then this problem is reduced
from an IT point of view. The arguments that will be generated by the
educationalist lobby about this issue may continue for some years.... 


>-I have a waryness of a system that aims to be all encompassing but may
>miss out or misinterpret important events. How would a 3 year retreat to a
Zen monastery show up on my learning track. Sounds flippant but we can do
our learning in many places, how do we ensure we dont make value judgements
about the worth of these places?


Unless a penalty was programmed in - this would be irrelevant.  The intent
of the system would be to record learning achieved, not to monitor your
life.  Clearly, learning achieved via. the retreat would not be recorded
but differences in performance related to thinking skills, or some aspect
of knowledge may well show up as improved scores in an area of assessment. 
That is all the system requires.

For instance, I went to a very poor school, and although I finished with
highest scores in exams, these exam results were very poor measured against
the national norm. English, and spelling were not my strong point.  I had
20 years in business, then came into education - did a B.Ed and an M.Sc -
my English and spelling have improved enormously as an examination may
attest. A CAA system would simply have recorded poor English. Like any
system, it cannot know what it does not know and must be treat accordingly.


>-Following form my last question. A lifelong learning record seems like
>something that could become a hinderance for a student. How do you redeem
>the past? Does access to new education become restricted due to past
>boo-boos?

Again, this really is a problem for society not the machine. Can it ever be
justified to deny education to someone simply because they failed in the
past?  If so, I for one would have been excluded....


>These are really worries over implementation rather than the general idea.
>Its the old worry of the students needs getting lost in the data.
>
>Careful to harness the technology and not the student.
>
>Stuart
>
>ps
>I am disregarding any worries about Big Brother of course (personally I
>always thought it comforting that he cared enough to bother)

Me too...

Bye Stuart

>
>
>[ stuart nolan] [ communication media | training | programming ]
>[ 133 nine acre court. m5 3ht UK] [ +44 161 876 6604 ] [
>mailto:[log in to unmask] ]
>
>
>


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%