29 March 2011

Lesson concepts: Issue of authenticity

As my job involves quality assurance, I make it a point to verify the authenticity of reference sources, which content developers use when developing lesson modules.

Oddly enough, it is not uncommon to come across factual and conceptual mistakes in K-12 textbooks. Hence, editors and other professionals involved in quality assurance search for authentic reference materials.  

A few weeks back, as part of my work in this direction, I came across a beautiful depiction of Earth's magnetic field in a New Zealand based web source. The picture was colourful but contained an obvious blunder. Earth's magnetic  poles are labelled wrongly. Intead of showing the Earth's South magnetic pole being near the Geographic North pole and vice versa, the illustration shows the poles the other way round.  As the mistake was uncorrected, when I revisited the webpage on last Sunday, I wrote to them using an option given on the same webpage, requesting them to correct the mistake by explaining as to why the depiction was wrong. I havn't yet received a reply.    

I am sure that you will agree with my point of view that any appropriate learning material presented to students should be authentic, whatever be the source. 


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About Me

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Chennai, Tamilnadu, India
I am a retired K-12 Education Management Professional. I have worked at different levels in K-12 school systems, textbook publishing, elearning and Education NGOs. I have held memberships in The Association for Science Education (UK), American Association of Physics Teachers and The Malaysian Institute of Physics. I hold a 1st class B Sc Degree in Physics followed by B Ed [English and Physical Science] and M A [Childcare and Education] degrees. My published works include 59 articles in teacher development magazines in India and the US and a book entitled `Creative Classrooms and Child Friendly Schools' (listed in Amazon). This book is almost an anecdotal account of my professional experience in six countries (including Cambodia where I worked as Technical Adviser to the Ministry of Education, Youth And Sports). I served as mentor in the Certificate of Teaching Mastery Program offered by Teachers Without Borders.