[Cuis-dev] Dynabook and education

Juan Vuletich juan at jvuletich.org
Tue Jun 16 08:39:24 PDT 2020


On 6/16/2020 7:40 AM, Hilaire Fernandes via Cuis-dev wrote:
>
> Hi Hernan,
>
> Regarding doubts on the learning approaches I wrote another note[1], 
> it is more an abstract and there is no much detail but it echos to the 
> concerns you relate on your message.
>
> I think you write it right.
>
>     /The "solution" must include both, the children and the
>     teachers... Maybe focusing more on the teachers will help the
>     childrens?/
>
> I will add: observe the children and the teachers, and deduce what is 
> needed for them, not what we want.
>
> The Appolo program was engineered by scientists educated with a 
> traditional way, before the advent of socio-constructivism. The big 
> difference between then and now is the proportion of educated children 
> in the general population is much more important and culturally more 
> diverse. An effective dynabook for education should address this 
> diversity to be compatible with as much learning model/way of teaching 
> as possible.
>
> We can say for sure, that since Alan Kay in the '70, no dedicated 
> hw+sw was designed for education. It looks very odd if you think about it.
>
> Please, let's continue these exchanges.
>
> Hilaire
>
> [1] 
> https://blog.drgeo.eu/2018/07/the-dynabook-and-its-learning-models.html
>

I think that as tech people, we'd focus on building the supporting 
software and hardware needed to make Dynabook media possible. Not so 
much on how to use them. We are building the new printing press, we are 
not educators, and we are not at school with kids.

Then, instead of just rushing to give it to kids, we'd focus on working 
with teachers on educators on understanding the new possibilities, and 
how to design contents, activities and learning processes that take 
advantage of them.

Usually projects fail because they only do one of these two things. 
Software that ignores teachers will never be adopted, and if it was, it 
wouldn't improve learning much. Projects attempting to build, for 
example, online teaching materials, have huge difficulties because of 
the lack of decent technology to build upon.

Hilaire, you are the most important kind of people here, as a teacher 
that already understands software!

> Le 15/06/2020 à 23:51, Hernan Wilkinson via Cuis-dev a écrit :
>> Hi Hilaire,
>>  what you say in your post, that constructivism focuses on the 
>> children and not the teacher, is a criticism I read a few months ago 
>> about Logo and Papert's ideas, and I think they are about right. 
>> (paper: Hackers, Computers, and Cooperation:
>> A Critical History of Logo and Constructionist Learning)
>> * The "solution" must include both, the children and the teachers... 
>> Maybe focusing more on the teachers will help the childrens?*
>>  Also, not all children share the same interest about science, art, 
>> reading and so on, so it is difficult to think of a solution for 
>> all... for example, I'm not sure that teaching programming to all 
>> kids is a good idea, it looks nice in theory but I remember when we 
>> had programming classes at high school, 99% of the students did not 
>> care about it, did not understand it, did not like it at all... the 
>> same with math for some group of kids or biology for another group 
>> and so on.
>>  I think sometimes we think a solution for all and that may not 
>> exist, and sometimes I also think we are a little bit naive about 
>> what teachers and students want...
>>  Just a few words to add confusion to the matter :-)
>>
> -- 
> GNU Dr. Geo
> http://drgeo.eu


-- 
Juan Vuletich
www.cuis-smalltalk.org
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
https://github.com/jvuletich
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
@JuanVuletich

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