voyeurism

coming aboard #3

just wanted to put on record my thanks to all the new chaperones who have signed on recently - Frank Ho, Tang Wen Ai, Andrew Lim, Jonathan Lee, Jeremy Cai, and Uchenna Eze.

in addition, i'm very pleased to have Teo Jie Hua do his Industrial Attachment in association with this project, between May and June this year. Jie Hua is a second year student doing a diploma in Mobile Computing at Ngee Ann Polytechnic's School of ICT. His cohort is the pioneer batch to take this diploma :-)

MID803 second report

had the second face-to-face session of MID803 today.

we were tasked to debate the positions of Clark and Kulik / Kozma with regards the extent to which media influences learning.

it's quite topical because there's currently this question with regards the extent to which Chinese can be taught using English. i think one's position on this would betray one's allegiance to either Clark (yes it can) or Kulik / Kozma (no it can't). so we raised questions about the functions and purposes of language (mere acquistion of grammar and vocabulary, or something else (eg, socialisation / enculturation)?).

my main takeaway and learning point is that Clark's 'method' would be of greater service were it divided into 'procedure' (eg, orienteering, Structured Academic Controversy) and cognitive process (the black box of the mind); in other words, externalities and internal goings-on.

with this further 'schism' (to use Clark's vocabulary), I would agree with Kozma et al that the learning outcome for a given method is indeed media-dependent. this is because the learning is dependent upon the procedure, and the procedure, in turn, both delimits and is delimted by the choice of medium (eg, the usage of SAC delimits the choice of medium to, inter alia, handphones with texting-capabilities, and, conversely, the procedural steps of the SAC are delimited by the nature of the mobile technology (which allows full-duplex synchronous texting with delayed reading) respectively).

our position won the debate - for the first time since she instituted it, according to Prof Bopry :-)

she also gave the flattering comment that she had gained new insight into this twenty-year-old issue :-)

Technorati Tags: cognition, discourse, education, learning, media, technology

God's grace :-) #3

today i received news that my application for exemption from taking certain modules (night classes) has been approved :-)

thank God indeed.

this means that i only need to take two modules (instead of four) in fulfilment of my candidature. in His perfect timing, i have already taken one (MID 816) and am currently in the midst of another (MID 803). as such, i can potentially finish this compulsory requirement within the first year of my candidature, leaving me to concentrate on the really important things, such as data collection and analysis.

hooray :-)

however, i might audit additional modules subsequently, if i do find their course descriptions interesting :-)

on another note, i had a meeting with john today - gave him copies of the SMS / MMS transcripts from the pilot (those which have been completed to date). john suggested that since the pilot is going well (again, thank God), i can start writing the methodology part, as well as do some preliminary analysis of the data collected thus far.

momentum gathers apace

had a meeting with john today. showed them the data gathered so far. john suggested investigating whether the snapz pro software might be used to capture pupil navigation on-screen. i'll look into it.

orienteering sessions have been ok. not easy for them to complete. chaperones have been excellent. last minute niggles with the roster for pupils. not very pleasant.

details of time and space #3

spent the day designing the recording instrument with which to transcribe the exchange of messages.

very tedious but the time should be worth it further down the year because data entry each evening should be that much easier.

had been cracking my head for a long time how to design a proper instrument - whether to use an external server, whether to use the Nokia connectivity suite, whether to use the Filemaker database...

in the end the answer came to me in a dream :-) that was five nights' ago - giving me just enough time to get a rough draft ready for the inaugural field intervention last Friday.

prayed very hard that He would stay the rain, and indeed that was so :-)

thank God.

everything went very smoothly - we could have left for the field site a little earlier even, had i been able to recognise our minibus sooner. as things turned out, the pupils were indeed able to complete their task just in time (His perfect timing yet again :-) )

anyway, it's all about the process, not the product :-)

looking forward to continuing the field interventions over the next couple of weeks :-)