New report type: teacher guidance?

Hi,

I've been discussing the issue of guidance materials with several 
people. There are several aspects we need to address:
- In order to improve and disseminate our activity sequences, we need to 
share the lessons we've learnt from our teaching experiences.
- A constructionist teaching style requires that the teacher have a 
wider view of the subject matter, so that he / she can reap the fruit of 
unexpected student discoveries.
- We have contractual obligations for dissemination and development of 
on-line guidance materials.

The last item is the least of our worries: at this stage we only have to 
show a prototype, and we practically have it. Still, if we can address 
the other two, and as a side effect get a better response to our 
contractual obligations - why not?

IMHO, the web report system is as good as any other option for sharing 
guidance materials. Documents can be authored in Word, then cut & pasted 
into the system, links to the actual activity materials are easy to 
handle, TT objects and other media can be seamlessly embedded - in 
short, all the features that make it a good tool for student interaction 
are valid for us as well.

The only problem is that guidance materials should be separated from 
student reports. This is not to say that they should be hidden from 
students. Personally, I believe in transparency. Its just that its a 
separate genre, created for a separate mode of work, and mixing the two 
will harm the usability of both.

The bottom line is that I suggest we add a new "type" of report called 
"Guidance", alongside the existing "Regular report", "tool", "template" 
and "tutorial". This type will not show up on the main tabs. Only when I 
go into a topic group I will see a link to "guidance" next to the 
existing links to "home", "members", "reports" and "tools". (by the way, 
shouldn't there be a link to "templates" as well?)

All this, of course, doesn't get us off the hook for writing the 
guidance materials, it just makes it easier to find them.

comments?

- Yishay

-- 
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Yishay Mor
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