Marcus Duveskog
Tekkie Kids – A learning laboratory for future engineers
Goal: create an interest in kids for science engineering and technology; and provide researchers with a live lab for distance education
What are the key elements that make a tech club successful in developing positive attitudes towards Science Engineering and Technology?
What is needed to support massification of technology clubs among South African primary schools?
Research method: Action Research
Fun factor is important, and so is competition, but there’s a trade-off between engaging and “creating losers”. Planning is hard, being that some kids are “spoon-fed” one of the possible reasons.
As per massification issues, hub schools and teacher training might be good answers.
How should we asess and evaluate the TekkiKids project?
My reflections
- Markus brings out as a main working tool Lego Mindstorms, but states that though it is a very good learning tool, is is quite expensive and out of reach for most schools’ economies. It is important to notice that the same people that developed Mindstorms also developed Scratch, which is based — more or less — on the same concept of making programming easy and very effective. And being Scratch a web 2.0 project, it’s cost is just the one of the access to the network — which might be, of course, also quite an issue.
Muhammad Atif Ishaq
Usability in e-learning
The usability of a learning system is quite tricky as it involves fuzzy concepts and multiple dimensions and factors.
Indeed, developing countries have added factors that make usability even more complex to define, such as:
- Low DOI
- Basic level operating skills
- Digital Divide
- Heterogenous cultures and languages
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