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Personal cyberinfrastructure - neat idea...but...

Commentary by brainysmurf () on link by AK, Personal cyberinfrastructure - neat idea...but..., January 24, 2012.

Interesting questions, AK. I think the computer and information literacy stuff should start a lot earlier than college, perhaps in primary or junior grades or as an ongoing part of a multi-year curriculum? Then a person could complete some kind of prior learning assessment as part of college entry to ensure basic digital literacy requirements are met? All that being said if one continues to value the role of formal training institutions, which is becoming rather questionable in my mind lately. :) (Hits Today: 598 Total: 598)

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Re: Personal cyberinfrastructure - neat idea...but...

AdmiralAK, January 25, 2012
Personally I agree that this stuff should be pushed down to lower levels of education (Middle school and high school, at least in terms of proficiency with these technologies). By the same token, many colleges and universities in the US require at least 1 maths course and 2 english courses (stuff that should have been mastered by the time they entered college!)

I'll give you an example - when I went to college I did have to take a placement exam for math and english, but this exam was NOT to indicate whether or not I could skip these courses because I was proficient. The point of the exam was to figure out which courses to place me in because I still had to do one math and two english courses. Perhaps by the same token information and computing literacy can have the same tiers of courses depending on your background, more basic or more advanced. That is of course if we are seen as training (vs. educating) institutions :)

Re: Personal cyberinfrastructure - neat idea...but...

brainysmurf, January 27, 2012
Good point, AK, about having to take exams for the purpose of filtering students into a required course rather than bypass or 'test out of' a course altogether. It's scary how many forms of numeracy and (digital) literacy are expected in younger grades but not reinforced for the sake of keeping kids moving forward with their age groups, which I think is ridiculous.

In some parts of Canada (maybe all of it, not sure), the idea of failing a kid is pretty much non-existent so the struggling ones continue to get fed upstream where their lack of math, English and maybe digital skills become more problematic and either more obvious or more deeply hidden and shameful. A pretty damaging cycle!

Now that 99% of my learning is virtual and I have no idea what age many contacts are, I wonder if we can get away from the age group bullsh&t and just let people learn with whomever they want to?

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