[IAEP] Volunteer-driven development of educational software

[Bill Kerr]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 8:25 PM, Albert Cahalan <acahalan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Greg Dekoenigsberg writes:
> > On Tue, 11 Nov 2008, Greg Smith wrote:
>
> 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 can't think of any educational software that is "intended solely for kids"
that is worthwhile.

new slogan - improve the quality of your dog food so that you want to eat it


eg. Scratch or etoys or turtle art or logo is designed largely with kids in
mind (it is deliberately cut down in some way, not fully featured) but
nevertheless is still fun and offers new learning ideas for adults

software that is "intended solely for kids" is phoney, eg. maths blaster
(lets make maths fun for kids by rewarding mundane arithmetic activity with
something totally unrelated to the task), aka dressing up the dog

it might be useful to classify "educational software". Here is a very rough
first attempt which I'm sure could be improved on but might help get
discussion moving:

*group one - extending reach*
most software fits under generalised groupings of extending the reach of
humans

word processing - better than previous writing tools
spreadsheets - better than previous maths tools
image manipulation - better image tools
wikipedia - more accessible encyclopaedia
dr geo II - geometry is more accessible
simulators - x2o, inspired by the incredible machine
Moodle claims to have a social constructivist theory but I think it's really
just for incremental improvement on what schools already do (still looking
at moodle though for more information), social constructivist is a fairly
meaningless phrase anyway
etc

*group two* *- great leap forward*
what bits of software have a specific educational focus based on a more or
less worked out theory, ie. software that can make a claim to being a big
leap forward in educational computing, more so than making something we can
already do more accessible (yes these claims are often dismissed as
grandiose)

cmap - concept mapping, Novak
hypercard - ? (now defunct)
logo, turtle art - Papert, Piaget
etoys - Kay, Bruner
scratch - Resnick
some games (Gee's semiotic domains theory)

*group three - simple training *
(necessary but not very interesting)
eg, typing tutors

*group four - dressing up the dog *
- cute software that pretends to be interesting but isn't:
eg. maths blaster type
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