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TRANSCRIPT
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printing”. His product was a hole‐punched printed page of text to put in his folder. In true Michelle style, I could not stand the pain the poor man was in and showed him how to cut and paste his paragraph into Powerpoint, use Google Image search to find some photos and then he fiddled around copying people around him until he produced a story book for his toddler with a laminated cover . (No we did not laminate Getting started sheets but instead gave everybody free laminating.) He was delighted with cut and paste and the format painter – his new best friends. When his Tutor came back, she told me that cut and paste was in book 3. This man had taken 4 days to do his 4 exercises, and I was told he really was a slow and reluctant learner. He produced a Powerpoint book while his tutor had her coffee and then stayed two days using the Internet to research his family land claim, make notes and print them. I wish I was kidding you about this story. We saw this training model over and over, being inflicted on hapless intelligent adults. We had been told about many failed computer courses and some community managers wondered why we were trying again.
This limited view of learning and training scares me, especially since it is the model preferred in 2009 by all Commonwealth, State and local Government groups and educational institutions in the training tenders we have seen. It is awful, boring and useless, and everyone wonders why they can’t keep students engaged. Promise me, we are not doing it in schools too.
The real learning model In this project we aimed to raise awareness of digital lifestyles, help people learn to exploit the computers they had available to them, and excite them about using
digital devices. We also worked on the belief that a digital lifestyle would be beneficial to people living in remote communities, especially since now many more remote communities have access to the Internet through the Next G wireless system. Without digressing too much with more trivia, Internet and Next G services are far more extensive in Northern Territory Communities than Queensland ones.
So our goal was to help people experience a digital lifestyle through authentic personal projects. We did not know what projects people would want to do and did not have any prescribed course of tasks or instructions on how to do them.
In educator terms, our approach was like task‐based learning, by building tasks on the run. The experience of rebuilding Nauru’s education system completely with Rich Tasks dominated our thinking about helping people learn. It made sense that using tasks (or projects) enables people to
• learn about using computers by simply using them, exploring and playing
• work with local images, knowledge and artefacts (not text books or manuals)
5 Using Step by step manuals as mouse mats
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Using Picasa from Google, people crop and edit photos. The process of editing photos enables success (you can improve the original) and also reinforces the need to take good photos. After a few goes, people begin to take excellent portraits and landscapes. The collages in Picasa enable us to give everyone a quality print very quickly. They soon outgrow collages and slide shows. Then we encourage people to use Powerpoint as a digital photo manipulation tool. I call the products, Digital Scrapbooks. The quality of work and the complexity of designs is astounding. Some people used the Internet to find family and community photos or used our high quality photos to digitise old photos.
People have also used Powerpoint to write children’s stories, searching for images on the Internet as illustrations if they don’t have their own, make recipe books about meals to make from local hunting and what the shops supplies (which is not much), develop instructions, make slides to use in chapters of videos and make cards, certificates , signs and notices.
People also use Photostory 3 to combine all the photos into movies. While family photo videos are the most common, we have had movies made for use in funerals to a documentary on how to skin a buffalo.
Other projects include spreadsheets to keep track of Night Patrol clients, writing reports on illegal fishing and boat people, building maps of country and cattle stations from GPS data, Bepo and Facebook sites, using and editing databases of old images, online photo albums, email systems, making a 40th anniversary video for an Indigenous clothing company, developing digital portfolios of artists work, organising music and so on, a total of 47 different project types. All of this must sound improbable given we were supposed to be running 6 hours of beginner click training. We actually only had 20% of participants who claimed they were beginners. After a few card games and looking through photos we had stored in Picassa, (about an hour), we got them involved in a project.
I think that it is entirely possible to use task‐based learning for vocational training in schools. Young people learn faster, learn more and develop a more rounded understanding of how to use knowledge through authentic experiences. For those teaching computer studies in schools, it has
Conversation at Robinson River
This ain’t training!
But you are learning, aren’t you.
Yeh, but I did not come first day cause I thought this would be like training”
7 Editing photos in Yirrkala
always been evident that task‐based learning works when learning about technology and how to use technology. It still astounds me that the AQTF Certificates 1‐4 have any status in our society, let alone schools.
The experience we had with Indigenous young people was that they loved working on their projects. They learned a huge number of skills incredibly quickly and developed broad knowledge of design, communication and other skills along the way. They have amazing natural talent to work visually and kinaesthetically and are keen to learn to achieve success. We were told of people who had been “apparently”, totally unmotivated to “work”, turn up at 7am and have breakfast with us and still be around at 7.30pm that night. On our return visits we discovered that people had planned to take on incredibly complex and long projects and repeat participants simply sat down and got on with it. We sometimes showed people tricks to make more sophisticated visual effects or software attributes, but otherwise we seemed to teach less and less while people learned more and more.
We saw in many Indigenous communities, considerable energy being put into Literacy and Numeracy programs, both in schools and in general training. We stayed in the same guest houses as some of the literacy consultants monitoring or running these programs. Not one of them, not one, was using technology to motivate children or young adults to develop
communication and literacy skills or numeracy concepts. Not one of them was using photography, images or video at all, not even as a motivator. We saw one young man being taught how to read a ruler from a white board diagram. I suggested when walking past, that he could actually measure something for me and got a nasty look for my trouble from the trainer. It astounded me that the failed system of literacy acquisition was being used again with these highly capable people. We observed very strong visual literacy skills and a terrific design talent, which simply transferred into the digital mediums. Why doesn’t anyone else see?
The most powerful work we saw with computers was by rangers in Arnhem Land, who were photographing “country”, developing illustrated google maps and producing highly visual reports for Government on illegal fishing and lost boat people. They used the features of software to improve grammar and spelling. They were very excited about using the audio capacity of Photostory to develop reports . To me, that is highly intelligent use of visual literacy and probably a more powerful communication strategy than textual reports. We really need to question definitions of literacy, especially standards being applied to Indigenous people and other multiple language speakers and allow them o use technology in ways that make sense to them. Do our schools allow that?
The Internet provides a new medium for communication and yet we saw no evidence of any Indigenous school‐age student using email. There was also no use of the Internet by trainers of Indigenous adults. We have only had one sympathetic ear about using technology and the Internet to develop communication skills and so for our next holiday, we are off to Lockhart River (always the
8 Galiwinku Girls
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photography talent was also amazing. They took the most intriguing photographs of each other and their families.
I think it is essential that schools in Indigenous communities rethink what digital literacy means and help families develop contemporary practical digital skills and knowledge. In some ways, schools have been irrelevant in urban family use of computers and we should not allow this situation to occur in Indigenous families. In urban areas, very few students learn to use a computer at school and now the uptake of computers is such that home
computing is more likely than school computing. That’s not a criticism folks, but rather a statement about the gap between the use of technology in remote communities and urban centres, as well as a statement about the numbers of computers in schools.
In saying that, I do think that it might be time to think about helping young people become digitally literate at school. I know using technology for learning is all good stuff, but it seems to me that families want their children to be able to set up and use a computer and use digital devices. Schools could fill in the gaps in students’ knowledge that they don’t get, by exploring on their own. It might seem like an old fashioned view but I think helping children learn how to use a computer is increasingly important. It is most so, in communities where family ownership of computers is only beginning. Indigenous families in remote communities need schools to help them acquire computers and learn how to use them for leisure and family pursuits. Digital literacy means something entirely different in these circumstances and Indigenous community schools could lead the way in developing practical digital literacy programs to help young people improve their lives and those of their families, by using technology. No‐one will be surprised to hear me say that task‐based learning would be a suitable pedagogy for this.
The political soapbox And so this brings me to a final point. I think the Commonwealth’s Digital Education Revolution strategy is fantastic. I wish it had happened as announced in the election build up. Shame on those educational systems across the country who have watered it down and used computer security and other scaremongering tactics to not GIVE computers to kids. I wish every Indigenous child could be given their computer. They need it. Their families need it.
In reports we developed on this project, we advocated strongly for Government to support personal ownership of computers rather than development of public facilities, with many rationales for this including the capacity for digital micro businesses to be developed. It would have been a good stimulus package! I don’t know why Kevin Rudd does not listen to me!
11 Portrait photography mastered
What messages are in this tale for schools Training models for adult learning and general vocational training can engage those learners who had no success at schooling if they enable people to learn through authentic projects of relevance to them.
Personal computing skills for lifestyle computing are significant ways of assisting people to develop high end digital literacy skills. There is a huge place in schools for ensuring that students become digitally literate for lifestyle use. Using ICT in curriculum is not sufficient for this goal which the community assumes students will get at least, by using computers in schools.
Use of computers by Indigenous people is another gap that needs to be bridged. Schools can assist by helping Indigenous families with computer advice, assisting them to get the most out of their computers and helping their children become digitally competent and confident.
For schools with indigenous students, particularly Indigenous community schools, use technology to engage students in schooling and literacy and enable students to develop their visual literacy.