DON E TINKLER Australian
Educationist
Freelance researcher/ consultant in education. Former school teacher, deputy
principal and teacher of post-graduate educational studies. Background in
business and public relations with post-graduate qualifications in instructional
design and educational administration; active as a policy analyst at State
and National levels in Australian education; specialist in learning, teaching,
instructional design, policy development; educational use of technology; and
education 'futures'.
- Participant in more than forty national and international conferences
in Australia and overseas; skilled in project design and management; facilitator
in professional development programs; involved in think tank activities on
education, social, economic and political 'futures'; regular contributor to
professional journals and public radio; presenter of several 'Ockham's Razor'
science talks for Robyn Williams on Australian Radio National.
- Interest for 25 years in research and development of a 'constructivist'
model of knowledge acquisition, and the implications such a model might
have for curriculum design and pedagogy.
Continues to develop his interest in 'constructivism' as an appropriate theory
of knowledge acquisition; the importance of the mind in learning; the implications
for education and learning of the notion of 'memes' transmitted from one
mind to another; and writings in the new science of 'memetics'.
- Designer of the Humanities Core Curriculum (1982, 1989)
-- an innovative social studies curriculum chart covering Years
K to 6 in elementary schools and author of Social Education for Australian
Primary Schools: The Humanities Core Curriculum, A "Futures" Perspective
(1989, 1990), an accompanying teacher handbook.
- Investigation team leader and author or co-author of four reports
concerning state-of-the-art information technologies (ICT) applied across
the whole sphere of education to enhance learning:
- Effectiveness and Potential of State-of-the-Art Technologies in
the Delivery of Higher Education (1993). Report of the Ministerial
Modes of Delivery Committee for the Department of Employment Education
and Training (DEET Higher Education Division, Occasional Papers), AGPS Canberra
.
- Report on the Educational Use of Broadband ISDN (1994) for
the Broadband Services Expert Group of the Federal Ministry of Communications
and the Arts.
- Technologies for Enhanced Learning: Current and Future Use of Technologies
in School Education (1994), Report of the Victorian Government Working
Party on the use of Technology as an Education and Communications
Facility in Schools, Directorate of Schools Education, Victoria, Australia
(a report that has had a seminal influence on ICT in schools across Australia).
- Education and Technology Convergence: A survey of Technological
Infrastructure in Education and the Professional Development and support
of Educators and Trainers in Information and Communications Technologies
(1996), Employment and Skills Council of the National Board of Employment
Education and Training (NBEET), Commissioned Report No. 43, AGPS Canberra.
- Consultant in instructional design and education liaison with Global
Vision Productions, Richmond, Victoria, in developing One Destiny! The
Federation Story, an Internet ready CD-ROM telling the story of the people
and events of the period leading to federation of the six Australian colonies
on 1st January 1901. The CD-ROM (8mb), largely drawing on his learning theory,
was distributed free to all Australian schools in 1998 by the Australian Curriculum
Corporation. Revised CD-ROMs (16mb, 32mb) were subsequently distributed to
schools or available on the public market prior to the centenary.
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