RE: Technology in Education

Ze'ev wrote:

"But I have seen no software yet that provides any real value for a student sitting in a regular classroom as an individual learning tool, over extended period of time. Not even one!"

This reminds me of the "good old days" at SALT (Society for Applied Learning Technology) conferences is Washington, DC where all of us early developers of learning software would walk through the exhibits and listen to the presentations and privately say, "It's all trash!" 

And it is still true, in a way. But I suggest that the reason for this comes partly from the "strait-jacket" we have placed on the classroom: students lined up listeing to a teacher getting in his "platform" hours. As a result, vendors aren't left with a lot of options for producing software that integrates well into a "brave new world" (probably a tragic literary allusion) of learning in this post-paradigm-shift era.

Several actual high schools in California have already broken the mold. They have students in Dilbert-cubicles mostly working on projects alone or in teams and occasionally coming up for air by going to "seminars" in classrooms for presentations and/or larger discussions.

"Software" appropriate for these new institutional models can't be packaged on a slick CD and sold to gullible teachers who discover that they can only be used for 20 minutes during every unit in the curriculum because they are so incomplete. (Not to mention their painfully torturous interfaces.)

Someone I know has developed VAULT (Virtually Anywhere Unified Learning Technology) which is an open-source method of using corporate network infrastructure standards to support learning as a lifestyle.

But this solution is a Vendor-Killer. It removes the overpriced value-added edge of our current textbook publishing mafias and returns power down to the classroom teacher and the subject-matter experts who actually write lesson components.

The only way for this kind of solution to penetrate California schools is by a grass-roots, teacher-based "movement" to boycott the publishers and redirect state education funds towards educationally "green" resource providers.

Lehrern der Welt, vereinight euch!

Phil