We have all experienced difficulties in translating our papers and talks into English, and some of our English colleagues have taken up the same challenge when preparing their communication in an other language. The difficulty is classical: translation is not a mere transduction, words from two different languages rarely match. Interestingly, this problem imposes itself with the more important word on our domain: Learning...
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The reasons why the learner, either a child or an adult, needs "teaching inputs" are very often hidden as a corollary of the emphasis on -- and possibly the misunderstanding of -- the constructivist principles of design of learning environments. I would like to suggest here that these needs are especially important in the case of modern environments which are largely distributed and provide a potential access to a huge amount of knowledge and information.
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A research note by Nicolas Balacheff (CNRS / University Joseph Fourier)
The search for authenticity of learning situations is a concern for most designers of TEL environments. Most of them realise soon that this is a desperate project since any environment is a representation of some kind of a reference, often called "reality", which keeps staying at a distance. To be as close as possible to reality does not mean much, unless we can qualify or quantify the closeness. Indeed, this is a challenge and we are not be well equipped today to take it up. A solution might be to find a theoretical framework within which we can formulate the problem, and then search for a solution within this framework. This first step will put limits on this solution, but it will make it much more tangible and so accessible to further progress. Currently we too much lack definitions and references to ensure that we can seriously discuss the issue. But, let's try something...
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