Post grads and powerpoint
An interesting challenge ...
How about requiring post grads to work with Open Office impress to produce slide shows. Its free and can do a bunch of neat things that you can't do with PowerPoint - for example export to Flash format or save as a ppt file. You won't be able to save a PowerPoint file in Open Office format <smile>
This may be a great opportunity for learners to discover the difference between open standards and closed proprietary formats.
Something to think about - at least I think that a course of this nature should accommodate the freedom for a student to use open source tools. Not all learners may be able to afford legal copies of closed software.
Chat to you soon. W
Thank you for your reply-I am very excited to see as I am very very new to this, so its great to see some interaction. I think what you've got to remember is some students (certainly mine) are new new to computers and your suggestions (whilst they are great) would blow my students away completely, which is why we're working on this resource in the first place. So I think for this particular project, we should stick to thinking about very basic information and not get too carried away with more complicated stuff. My question would be: is there a difference between high school students coming into teriatory education with regards to levels of skills compared to adult learners? I would assume there would be but is that the case?
Welcome to our Wiki family - sometimes you won't get a response, however when you hit a hot topic - conversation will emerge dynamically.
I'm a strong advocate of freedom of choice. As educator's I don't feel that we have a right to force students to purchase proprietary software. When we teach ICT skills, I feel that teaching institutions have an obligation to accommodate the needs of both free software and proprietaty software users.
I work largely in the developing countries in the Commonwealth (thats 49 out of the 52 Commonwealth Countries) and I know exactly what you mean about folk being new to technology and software.
That's why I think your project is a great resource and YES - you need to stick to basic information. You should take a look if the CCNC course materials will meet any of your needs.
Good question regarding the differences between skills of high school students and adult learners. I think that this would differ significantly depending on the country. For example in the US I would expect to see significant differences between school leavers and adults. However, the situation would be very different, for instance, in the Cameroon.
