🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <13643@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, by steffen@mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu (David Steffen):

	... Teaching machines simply automated this process.

	This seemed like a good idea at the time, it still seems like a
	good idea to me, and given the wide availability of computers,
	seems much more practical now than then.  Does anyone know
	what ever happened to this concept?  Has it been discredited
	in educational circles, has it fallen between the cracks, or
	is it in widespread use, and everyone knows about it but me?

While not totally "discredited", it certainly has passed out out vogue.

There are a number of things that are "wrong" (i.e. limiting) about
it.

- Skinner, who was very instrumental in proposing the original models,
was quite insistant that the number of "stimulus - response" pairs
required in getting to a level of competence was quite large.  He
estimated something like 100,000 arithmetic "problems" to reach a 3rd
grade level.

- except in rare cases, "programming" instruction along that mechanical
model falls apart quite rapidly.  The human effort involved is
tremendous; arithmetic is one of the nice counter examples.

- most of learning is not "rote" memorization or "stimulus - response"
but "model acquisition".  People try to understand what is going on
about them, how things work, and what they can do next.  Jerome
Bruner, a colleague of Skinner across the street, was one of the
people to point out the difference between "teaching" and "learning".

- learning is most effective when it is "active", ie when the learner
is "setting the agenda" or "in control".  Sherry Turkle's "The Second
Self" shows how quickly kids get bored with the lock step and quickly
learn to "subvert" the "teaching" machine and turn it into a "learning"
machine.  

- as computers, and especially personal computers have become more
powerful, and as instruction has matured, people have learned to make
computers flexible "mind" tools that students can use -- to improve
their hand writing, to improve their reading, etc.  It's frightening
how many "learning handicaps" vanish when students are given a computer
to help them along.  Computers are something that students can
"control" rather than be controlled by.

Basically, the original "teaching machine" model represented a poor
understanding of what learning was all about and what computers could
do for it.  

Ciao
Steve