Jump to content
The Education Forum

Multimedia school books in education.


Dalibor Svoboda

Recommended Posts

Just got back from beautiful Krakow, Poland. In an earlier email I worte:

I’m just off to Poland for a few days. I’ll let you know if the CD-ROM I have been using to practise pronunciation worked.

Yes, it worked! I was able to understand most spoken courtesies and (importantly) numbers, as in prices of drinks, taxi journeys, etc. People seemed to understand me too. So I have been able to acquire a few basic listening and speaking skills in Polish entirely on my own initiative using ICT. I could have achieved the same aim with an audiocassette or an audio CD, but the listen / respond / playback activities offered by the EuroTalk CD-ROMs that I have been using are much, much more convenient.

The EuroTalk CD-ROMs, by the way, are currently bestsellers in the UK and have featured in the language competitions for children at the London Language Show in 2003 and 2004.

Regarding pronunication: A language course that does not offer practise in speaking skills is not a complete course, regardless of the media used to deliver it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 34
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I don't spealk polish, just french.

I have got some answers to my yesterday message, and I have put them online : http://clioweb.free.fr/peda/manuelf1.htm

For our generation, it seems difficult not to mix textbooks and multimedia tools. Even if one of the teachers should be pleased to send away all textbooks.

In geography, case studies are part of the teaching.

This is an easier way for a start. It is possible to find effective websites on a limited subject : I have already quoted this one : http://www.mondes-normands.caen.fr/

On a different approach, I am using the marvellous Web Gallery of Art (Emil Kren and Daniel Marx) to teach the Renaissance Art.

Have you seen these 3 David ?

Donatello - 1409, 1430 : http://www.wga.hu/html/d/donatell/1_early/david/index.html

Verrochio - 1473-75 : http://www.wga.hu/html/v/verocchi/sculptur/index.html

Michel-Ange - 1504 : http://www.wga.hu/html/m/michelan/1sculptu/david/index.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't spealk polish, just french.

Graham was making the point that a well-defined need (the ability to communicate in basic Polish, necessary for a short professional visit to the country) can lead to an appropriate and effective learning solution (a CD-ROM, easily and conveniently accessed at home). When we match well-defined problems with concrete, tried and tested solutions, it's a win-win situation. This is exactly my conviction too and I've made this point over and over again in this thread.

Define the real-world (in our case learning) problem first. Then, and only then, proceed to potential solutions. Don't let the technicians or the information technologists rush us into a digital solution. After all, they have their own problem to solve. They've invented something that looks "cool", but they need investment to develop it. They need customers. And, as the showman P. T. Barnum says: "There's one born every minute". Many of us are blinded by the shiny new packaging. I'm no technophobe - I've owned a computer since 1983 - but I've learnt the hard way to find out about the limitations as well as the benefits of new technology. We have to know about the latter as well as the former if we are to make reasoned judgements about what we do know about: our day to day work as teachers in the classoom. That is what we should start with when we are deciding what resources, digital or otherwise, will support the teaching and learning. Leave the grand(iose) educational ICT plans to the science fiction writers.

For our generation, it seems difficult not to mix textbooks and multimedia tools. Even if one of the teachers should be pleased to send away all textbooks. In geography, case studies are part of the teaching. This is an easier way for a start. I am using the marvellous Web Gallery of Art (Emil Kren and Daniel Marx) to teach the Renaissance Art.

Isn't this what we should be discussing, Daniel, rather than the "big-picture", or "blue-skies thinking" or the "visionary thing", which so often turns out to be vacuous and wasteful of that all too scarce commodity, time?

David Wilson

http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

David writes:

Graham was making the point that a well-defined need (the ability to communicate in basic Polish, necessary for a short professional visit to the country) can lead to an appropriate and effective learning solution (a CD-ROM, easily and conveniently accessed at home). When we match well-defined problems with concrete, tried and tested solutions, it's a win-win situation. This is exactly my conviction too and I've made this point over and over again in this thread.

Hear, hear! I chose a CD-ROM because I could run it on my lap-top anytime, anywhere. I might have used the Web, but few of the websites that I found offered audio materials (100% essential) and none offered listen / record / playback facilities (also 100% essential in my view). I have to admit that I also took a pocket phrasebook with me to Poland - still very useful.

Using ICT in order to learn a foreign language is, of course, not the only solution. I had to learn basic Hungarian in the early 1990s - survival skills that I needed on frequent professional visits to Hungary. Initially I made some progress with a book and an audiocassette, but I quickly got to the point where I needed a teacher. The project on which I was working allowed me to appoint a personal tutor, so I did. She was great, and I became confident in coping with a variety of situations: ordering in restaurants, buying train tickets, making polite conversation, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...

×
×
  • Create New...