The Power of Arthus
…or a 14 year old talks educational technology.
Just stumbled across a new blog on e-learning and education. The author is 14 years old and has much to say. I found the blog via Stephen Downes’s blog (OLDaily) who in turn had pointed to a post in Steve Hargadon’s blog, (Infinite Thinking Machine) in which Arthus is mentioned.
Steve Hargadon states “To me, Arthus is not representative of most 14-year-olds, but is representative of the kind of independent, engaged, proactive, and self-directed learner we often think will thrive in the flattened and connected world of the Internet.”
Stephen Downes slightly disgrees “Having read his posts, Arthus seems pretty typical to me, except, I suppose, his choice of topic.”
Both agree that is it enjoyable reading and I do agree - it’s always interesting to hear the student’s take on learning technology - they’re so honest, straight to the point and can be extremely insightful.
Steve listing some key points about Arthus such as :
# He thinks that schools teach students to “fear technology” and to really only use it for limited things and not for deeper conversations.
# He’s interested in education because he is in the education system right now. Feels that when students come to school their (technology) “tentacles” are cut off. He knows that there is bad stuff out there, but the problem is that we are fearing the technology instead of the content.
# If teachers are worried about the use of laptops in class for things that aren’t related to class, then maybe teachers should be thinking about why students wouldn’t be paying attention. Students should have an option of whether they want to pay attention. It’s not a given that students will pay attention if you are not talking about something they care about. This whole technology is really good at bringing out the flaws that might be in the system.
(more here)
Read Arthus’s blog Newly Ancient and his post on podcasting and iPods in the classroom (here).
As an aside this is a good example as to how great ideas / info / content is able to reach you through subscribing to someones blog, who in turn as subscribed to another person’ blog. In this case you have a community in which good ideas spread and bad ones don’t. essentially peer review.
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January 27th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Looks like you may have missed the audio interview that the blog post was based on — well worth listening to Arthus himself. See the links at the bottom of the post: http://www.infinitethinking.org/2007/10/14-year-old-talks-educational.html.
Cheers.
January 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Thanks very much for this. I’m amazed I only added this entry recently - how did you pick it up o fast?