Interversity Quotes"I think it's time to ask the Standardistos: Where's the test for compassion? For honesty? For curiosity? For moral commitment? Until they can answer, let's tell them to shut up." —Susan Ohanian (One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards) Interversity ProjectsEchoes of Orwell:The purpose of this webforum is to promote a lively discussion among students and faculty alike about George Orwell's 1984 and the parallels or echoes found in today's society. |
[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index] virtreal schooling
On Fri, 19 Nov 1999, Dr. Leo Casey wrote: ->We live in a society of a vastly diminishing public life, with a steadily ->declining public square, in which we come together as a community and pursue ->our common purposes and goals. Only if you define 'public' in conventional terms, meaning conventional venues for public discourse. Public life is thriving nicely on the net. "In the 20th century, we have been without any mass medium for serious discourse -- until the creation of the Internet." --Alan Kay Whatcha call ARN-L but people coming together as a community to pursue common purposes and goals? Anyone can subscribe to this list, which makes it quite as public as most conventional public forums. ->For a school to educate well future, involved citizens, it must, in some real ->-- not virtual -- sense, embody the workings of a democratic community. Only if you define 'virtual' as being less than or other than 'real.' I don't. Virtual contrasts with 'physical' not with 'real.' ->How exactly is a teacher supposed to "read" a student's needs and feelings, a ->student's very person, over a computer screen? I can't believe you wish to dismiss written language as a medium for conveying identity and emotion. I know a few poets who provide ample and eloquent evidence to the contrary. Hell, the writers on this list provide evidence to the contrary. Relationships that exist via writing are not less personal than f2f relationships. They are different in quality. Some people are more amenable to them than others. But to dismiss virtual relations as inadequate to support learning is, well, wrong. I don't have any stats to cite, more's the pity. All's I've got to offer is testimony as someone who has been teaching and learning online, a member of numerous thriving virtual communities, for 8 years. --Eric Crump -------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU.
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