[IAEP] Volunteer-driven development of educational software

[Albert Cahalan]

Greg Dekoenigsberg writes:
> On Tue, 11 Nov 2008, Greg Smith wrote:

>> On the question of Open Source to develop applications which
>> are not necessarily used by the people who write the code.
>> That is a challenge which I think we should address directly.

It isn't fully doomed. Develop software for your own kids,
then accept patches as needed to better support other kids.
This will easily produce software for kids; the result might
not be optimal for a large classroom.

> (b) activities that are not strictly educational but have
> educational uses (Browse, Write, Chat, maybe some games, etc.)

Kids like "real" tools anyway. It works in the physical world
as well. Give a kid a few screwdrivers and turn your back...

> I think that producing useful activities that are intended
> solely for kids, with a strong pedagogical element, is still
> a largely unsolved problem.

It's worse than that.

It's not a problem restricted to activities. It hits Windows
and MacOS as well. It's not merely an unsolved problem, but
a very poorly defined problem.

Put aside the platform for the moment, and the implementation
details. (note: "requires a strong AI" is not just a detail!)
Simply try to imagine some purely educational software that
wouldn't be dreadful. Got any ideas?

I suspect the major issue is that we are seeking a computer
program that can be a teacher, but even the worst teacher is
thinking in a way that an AI is unlikely to match. Teaching
is largely a matter of human interaction.

>> We need more input on the educational research to see if either
>> synchronous or asynchronous is better correlated to the theory.
>> Any pointers or comments welcome.

Synchronous, especially peer-to-peer, is better correlated to bugs.
Even if not educationally ideal, the non-buggy solution is better.