🚀 go-pugleaf

From: David Petraitis <davidp@mare.ch>

At 17:17 14/05/96 -0400, Interpersonal Computing and Technology wrote:
>From: Frank Bokhorst <bokkie@uctvms.uct.ac.za>
>
>Thanks, Danny Choriki, for your long posting on this topic.
>  I was pushing the point
>about "transfer of information from head to head" because it
>seems that with CMC the proliferation of data, and given the ease
>with which it can now be stored copied, and transmitted, one has
>to re-consider models of learning, discovery, education.

Here I go again, taking just one bit out of Frank's message to expound upon=
 ;^)

I have noticed among my Internet friends that we are not the types to go in
for hours of Web surfing (partly because local calls cost money here 8^(,
but also because that does not fit with what we *do* to entertain or educate
ourselves on the net. I have never gone into a moo or mud, mainly because of
cost and bandwidth but am curious as to whether I could find one (create
one??) which would attract me.=20

There is a fundamental problem on how one chooses the relevant (to me) out
of this proliferation of data, Frank. And the tactics for doing that are (I
think) similar to choosing a new household appliance. Part of it is window
shopping (surfing, browsing, grazing).  However once you have found what you
want a pattern of defending the choice (cognitive dissonance?) sets in and
you don't change. Some of the Web indexing services such as Mckinley or
Strouds software offer opinions on the content of the pages that they index.
This is going to increase. You could see people pointing first to an opinion
page before surfing to see what's new and worthy in the authors view.

I'm not sure the models change as Frank suggests. They move to a different
medium and there is more places to find the information. Sometimes we are so
bowled over by the fact that Frank and Danny and I (and the rest of you
lurking out there) are holding a correspondence that stretches over
continents and time, yet is somewhat *immediate*. Personal contact counts -
even mediated. I am several times more likely to visit a site recommended by
a friend, or one that is acclaimed in a list like IPCT that I follow, than
to click on a banner ad on Yahoo. So the value judgements of mentors is
somehow establishing itself on the net as well. So the way in which we need
to move our research is what constitutes effective electronic mentoring?

I would suggest that there are degrees of consonance that we need to look at
between mentor and  learner. The following things they need to agree (more
or less) on: (excuse my dangling participle!)
Goals of the learning
Roles in the relationship
Somewhat on the methods of transmission of learnings=20
( I think of: how is it that Zen teachers teach samadhi?)
Motivation of the learner (and perhaps the mentor)

For me in adult education I don't have much problem with the motivation of
the learners, but I see in children that development of motivation for
something is the MOST difficult. How can one model and transmit motivation?
Electronically????

Anyway to sum up I believe that the CMC environment provides methods for
transmission of almost any type of learning (maybe except Zen-like
modelling). But that the structure of our learning environment (including
classical schools) is somehow wrong in ability to provide a coming together
in goals, roles, methods and motvations that can lead to learning.

David Petraitis
Mar=E9 Conseil
Marketing and Re-engineering
ch. Sous les Roches
1264 St-Cergue, Switzerland
Telephone: +41-22-360-3181

DavidP@mare.ch
http://www.mare.ch/