Question 4

Response: Research skills are going to be really important I think, much more important at school level then they are now because any of us who use the internet know that our ability to find stuff is speaks for how much information we can get.

Response: I think subjects that you want to learn should be integrated into the core subjects, for example, if you wanted to go into web development, if you learnt English in a way that relates to web development for example copywriting for the web, it would be a whole lot more relevant to what you want to do. You could link any subject with core subjects that you do need to know, into what you want to do specifically. It would be quite easily attainable simple to do with this kind of technology.

Response: I think that one of the terms we often use is “just in time” rather then “just in case,” I used to be a maths teacher and I was never very good at quadratic equations, but I vary rarely need to use quadratic equations now in my life, and how many of us do, nobody.

Response: Ok, just one more comment about what you want to do and what you want to learn is, I think that we have to be more specific, when you take English it’s quite a wide range of English, Romeo and Juliet and stuff like that. It would be nice to specialize if you want to be a story writer to concentrate more on writing other things as well.

Response: I think in the whole learning environment I struggle as a teacher with the whole notion of students just focusing on what interests them, and one of the things that as an adult I’ve had recently reinforced is that there is a wide colour and richness to learning. It’s my interactions with other people that introduce me to new things that I can now be interested in, that I wasn’t interested in previously. I think there is a definite place for that guided learning, so that I can pursue the stuff I’m interested in, but also the stuff I could be interested in, that I don’t know is out there (until someone tells me about it).

Response: There were some comments about spelling back here, and one thing I wanted to say that I’m also terrible speller, and I know we need to know the essentials, but for people with visual impairments it’s much harder to be a good speller because people with full sight see spelling were ever they look, on the projector over there, everywhere. If you can’t see it you can’t read as much so you don’t get as much use of spelling as other people.

Response: I think it comes down to, if you read a lot of books, and you read a lot of things, you pick up on meanings of words and how to spell them, and so if someone says that word to you, you learn how to spell it by going back to that book and reading it. So for people with visual impairments or who have no vision at all are not going to be reading as much as a person who is fully sighted, and I think that could affect the spelling and grammar itself.

Response: Reading, reading, reading is vital. Yes we don’t know unless we’ve seen a word somewhere or been told what it is how to spell it, but reading and always being hungry for information helps that. But also having access to a dictionary, that’s the one thing that I don’t know if you guys have had growing up, because I went to Homai  there was a dictionary in the library I could use any time when I needed to. So I don’t know if there’s the same access unless you can find an on-line dictionary that is accessible.

Response: Yeah there’s something called a language master and it’s almost pocket sized, and its full dictionary thesaurus classmates confusables and that sort of thing, and I don’t know what dictionary it takes after – might be the oxford dictionary, but any word you need to look up you can just type it in and it will give you all the tenses, spelling confusables, derivatives – and it’s really quite a useful tool. I have to disagree with the comment that blind and visual impaired people can’t spell as well, I think it totally depends on how much you read. I used to be a bad speller when I was young but I’m quite a good speller now because I read a lot, and I have come to recognize certain words and I’m quite an intellectual person and I’ve learn to appreciate words and so my spelling is actually quite good. I think it all depends on how much you see and how much you read.

Response: I’m pleased that you said that because in reply to you comment about the spelling, I certainly believe that if a student can make a website that is incredibly appealing to the eyes of a sighted person, if they can do that then they can learn to spell. It’s all a mater of choice and convincing them that it’s a worthwhile skill.

Response: Just getting back to the whole spelling grammar thing, but I think this can apply to anything, instead of reading a book it’s possible to listen to a book, most sighted people don’t have access to computer speech,  where as a blind student has a brail note. This could be applied to anything, in the way that digital learning does do a lot of this stuff for you, no mater what it is, even if it doesn’t involve reading. Computers carry out tasks for you and I think the standards of a classroom are always going to be superior to one that’s completely based around computers.

Response: I’d just like to say on the spelling debate, is that I’ve never been a very good speller and I don’t think anyone has ever thought I was stupid, because it’s the ideas that matter. There’s ways around it, you can use a spell check or you can not spell and you can just tell other people to get over it. (Laughter and applause follow.)