To Steve Eskow
Good summary of my view! Perhaps one point where I do not follow is that our tutoring is not Intelligent, in the sense of artificial intelligence. All the decisions are made by the designers, not by AI strategies within the programs. Eventually the approaches of artificial intelligence will probably be useful for large numbers of students, but not now. It is critical, I believe, that the student interaction must be frequent. Based on our studies the times between meaningful student actions should not generally exceed twenty seconds. Typically this is a free-form answer to a question from the computer, so the form is Socratic. The reason for the tutorial approach is to allow the learning units to adapt to each student. I see this lack of treating each learner as a unique individual, with different learning problems and interests, is the major reason why current approaches so often fail for many students, in both the developed and developing parts of the world. So this approach is the basis for solving the global problem of education for all, the billions you mention. We have developed at Irvine, a full system for producing such adaptive tutorial modules. I want to begin with a major experiment for young children. I suggest three areas, reading and writing for the first three years, mathematics for the first three years, and science for one year. Some of this work would be done in multiple languages. If the experiment is successful, I think we can attain 'education for all' in twenty years. This, and related matters, are described in the book I am writing at present, as I have mentioned before on this list. Alfred -----Original Message----- From: Steve Eskow [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 8:42 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [DDN] FW: [NIFL-HEALTH:4627] Adult Literacy education Wiki To Alfred Bork: Alfred, since it is your practice not to go into detail on your views and proposals for solving the global education crisis but to send those interested to your books, there is often misunderstanding of what you are criticizing and what you are proposing. I'd like to try summarizing your position in stark black and white terms, risking misrepresenting the position but trusting that you will then correct my errors and add the necessary shadings and nuances. First: you have been since the 1970's a leader in the movement to use the computer and allied intellectual technologies such as artificial intelligence to create what have been called "intelligent tutoring systems." Such tutoring systems have the student interact solely with the computer and the software that guides the process of individualized student learning. You argue that if the system has been well designed no intervention by a live teacher is required for good learning. An important plank in your current position is that the size of the current global education need--billions needing instruction--means that no system of learning that requires live instruction--whether face to face or at a distance--can begin to make appreciable inroads. Thus you reject or criticize most distance learning schemes, built as they are around live teachers who teach 30 or 300 or 3000 students, as being irrelevant, distractions from real solutions to the problem of global ignorance. The Wiki movement, therefore, you would tend to see as part of the pseudosolution. Recently you have incorporated into your thinking the belief that the newer voice-based technologies would allow illiterate students to converse with intelligent software in their native language, and be guided by that software to knowledge and skill. You believe, therefore, that attention ought to be given to raising the comparatively few millions of dollars that would be needed to create such intelligent instructional programs, test and improve them, and put them to w ork solving the world's educational problems. Alfred, am I at all close? Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alfred Bork" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'The Digital Divide Network discussion group'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 1:32 PM Subject: RE: [DDN] FW: [NIFL-HEALTH:4627] Adult Literacy education Wiki > > Yes, Siobhan, I have looked at the wiki. My comment about personal > experiences was not referring to the content of the wiki, but rather to the > idea that it was going to help solve the major problem of adult literacy. > > What is missing is any use of interaction and personalization, critical > ingredients for learning. Librarians sometime think that one need only > display the knowledge, but for most people this is not sufficient for > learning. > > I would be happy to send to readers my proposal on literacy. It is intended > for young children, but the ideas could often extend to adults. Learning > would be highly adaptive to the individual learner. > > > > > Alfred > > _______________________________________________ > DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list > DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org > http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide > To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. > _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
