GZigZag and education?

[Katariina Ervasti <cat@xxxxxxxxx>]

A strange thing happened indeed. And this might be
a very good thing from our project's point of view.

I was raiving about the school system in Finland on a mailing
list (- I really don't know how we ended up in that topic -)
and I was suggesting that if somebody has some spare time
this person could renew the whole bloody system.

Anyway, someone who used to belong to the Development 
Group of the Department of Teacher Education at the University
of Helsinki, answered that things - very similar to
my opinions (which have been influenced by my own sleeping experiences at
school, Peter Hoeg's novel Borderliners and Ted's thinking) - 
are being done.

Under the title 'TRYING OUT THE PHENOMENON-BASED LEARNING' is
a paragraph that summarizes pretty well what these people 
are trying to do. 

"Our aim was to find a way to study completely as one of our main thesis
was that a human being observes the world as a whole. We believed that
phenomenon-based learning would enable the holistic construction of the
world. In our multidisciplinary studies all sciences focus on the same
phenomenon. They mix together and support each other in understanding the
phenomenon. No separate subjects take place. Instead of studying the
nature of some science separately in phenomenon-based learning the aim
itself is to understand the phenomenon with the help of different
sciences. This naturally requires a lot of support from different
experts." 

A Complete Chaos? 
The Introduction to the Work of the Development Group 
http://www.helsinki.fi/kasv/okl/kehitys/innone.htm

Sounds familiar, eh? ;-)

Yeah, so we've been talking (especially with Kimmo)
about developing a GZigZag-based learning environment
and we would like to find some partners, some people
doing teacher education or something, but haven't
been able to find anyone crazy enough. These might
be the right people, if they happen to be interested
or if they happen to have time.

I've mailed to the person who answered to me, 
asked her some more info and who I should contact
etc. There's no answer yet, but let's hope for
the best. 

(Eh maybe I should not be raving about this 
at the moment, because nobody has answered to
me yet, but --- who cares. ;-)

And I'm sorry I haven't had time to update the
user's guide, but I've been working with an 
article --- 

cat