Night of the Notables - a web based study

As a research project, Night of the Notables is technologically relevant. Technology is actually shaping contemporary learning and teaching. The Australian Government's rollout of a laptop to every student and enhanced broadband connections provide extraordinary opportunities for students in Night of the Notables. This fortuitous policy allows students to manage their own learning by giving quick and efficient access to information, a much wider range of views and biographies, as well as allowing teachers, parents and siblings to share in the search for information as a community pursuit. In "Notables," students will be shaping their learning themselves while benefitting greatly from their community's human resources.

Educators today recognise that students do not learn in a linear, sequential fashion - and never did - and that access to information, being framed within this research study, can be quite serendipitous too. So Night of the Notables encourages wider searches and values organising and assimilation skills to compress, compound, enhance and deliver information upon her chosen notable that is relevant to the student's life.

Students are encouraged to pursue their own passion in this area of learning, in the assimilation and coalescence of relevant information for understanding their chosen notable from as many and varied sources as possible. The richer the search, the better will be her comprehension of the life circumstances of their notable for understanding their rise to eminence. In this study, the student will be composing not so much a publishable biography but comprehensive personal knowledge about the notable so that the student's own life with its gifts and talents is inspired, understood and better realised for being unique and valuable. The primary outcome is correct living knowledge that can be verbally communicated on the Night itself.

To help in "Notables," librarians and multi-media teachers have become experts in researching with digital tools. They can demonstrate how newer web-based software gives students greater access to the library catalogue from school, home or from anywhere for that matter in the course of research in the run-up to the eponymous night itself. Now digital video resources managed say through Clickview can increase the student's contextualisation of the notable in his or her own society and cultural context. This study then is uniquely close to the student's own concerns, as close as the laptop itself is. For the new technology records insights, collects questions, diarizes the study and enriches the student's own proficiencies as purposeful life skills.

As a school based study within home and community partnerships, this Night of the Notables study is always conducted within community settings so that the local norms and expectations are already evident to the student. Bringing these to bear, parents and teachers are important agents in helping students to process data by compiling, assimilating and shaping the biodata from web sources, data bases, electronic and print sources and personal interviews. Clearly then these life skills so necessary in this information age are practised in Night of the Notables. In this way, this study brings order and purpose upon the chaotic web; it brings order and purpose to any random searching.

Technology is more than just a tool of learning in Night of the Notables. It shapes progress, and tracks and records as you go, and supplies important and reliable means for data analysis and interpretation through new software. In cross-referencing data, contextualising the chosen notable, examining competing claims and managing progress, students achieve desirable personal outcomes not just by compiling endless facts from the web but by judicious selections, compiling a comprehensive overview of the notable's aspirations, talents and opportunities, and establishing personal applications of the notable's life to his or her own gifts, talents and opportunities.

Author and webmaster Greg Smith Posted 22 September 2009.

This page's address is notables. com.au/technology