Tram Town
Saturday, July 30, 2005
| Category: Homework Based on the evidence she presents in the first part of her article in the Hun, you'd think Sally Morrell was dead against homework for primary students but no: Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of homework.Yes, that was the exact punctuation and layout including a dependent clause masquerading as a And get this: What a wonderful op-shop for essay-challenged student the internet is, with all those lovely essays just sitting there out in the electronic ether, waiting to be Googled, cut, pasted and called the student's own work.What a magnificent tool for [the] essay-challenged student the internet is, for just about any given topic it provides vast amounts of information from which the student can develop the skills of finding the useful bits and bringing them together, without transcription errors and with the ability to provide accurate attributions that are easily checked by the assessor. It's 2005, Sally, get with the program! She sure seems to have a problem with the internet, does Sally. Perhaps it's because it provides a mechanism outside of the carefully chosen texts where the student can discover that much of the SOSE* syllabus is politically correct claptrap. PSYCHOLOGIST Michael Carr-Grieg found that of a study of almost 1200 students, one in five routinely cuts and pastes from the internet.Are they scare-caps in the word psychologist? My point about Carr-Grieg's research, though, is that the other four are shortchanging themselves. Properly attributed and sensibly annotated cut and paste jobs using the internet is how research is often done nowadays and it will be so even more into the future. Sure, poorly attributed paste-ups are just like cutting paragraphs out of magazines and sticking them on large pieces of cardboard. Wait a minute, isn't that what a large proportion of their projects end up being anyway? Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of homework at the primary level. How it encourages bad work habits and all that. Also, how it makes you wonder how 25 contact hours a week is not enough for an eight year old. and all that. *Studies of Society and Environment |
