Good questions, SJ I think there also needs to be something in there about different learners being different or that learning styles that work for one learner may not work for another. Perhaps those who learn readily without formal instruction are just one subset of all learners. For those people school may well feel like a prison or a sophisticated form of child abuse. Other learners may need far more structure than is fashionable to admit in constructionist study groups. There actually appears to be evidence for this. However, Wheldall is concerned that low-progress readers do not learn to read naturally. "They will only learn to read with careful, systematic instruction to which phonics instruction is central," he says. "The top 25 per cent of students will learn to read with little instruction, and for these students the 'whole language' approach will work well. The middle 50 per cent will learn to read if they get some reasonable instruction, while the remaining 25 per cent of low-progress readers will fail to learn to read if they do not have systematic instruction using phonics," he adds. Wheldall explains that after decades of scientific research we now know how reading works. "We know that children who struggle to learn to read find it difficult to break words down into their component sounds," he says. "There appears to be a phonological ability that some people have in abundance, while others struggle - it is just the way we are. There is clear evidence that those who struggle to break words into their component sounds will have difficulty learning to read. It is the way the brain works."- <a href="http://www.aces.mq.edu.au/musec_news.aspx?id=47">http://www.aces.mq.edu.au/musec_news.aspx?id=47</a>Other important issues: <ul><li>Impact of social class / disadvantaged background on learning (what is the answer for third generation unemployed - there are a whole bunch of hard to solve problems in the disadvantaged areas of wealthy countries - these houses often have a surplus of passive media, eg.TV in every room) </li></ul><ul><li>Are better qualified teachers the answer irrespective of technology. eg. Finland is top of PISA tests and requires masters degrees for their teachers</li></ul> Jaime Escalante succeeded brilliantly with low tech instructionist methods in disadvantaged areas of the USA (watch the movie - Stand and Deliver or look him up on wikipedia) If I am casting the net too wide with these questions then they still might serve a useful purpose of how the net should be cast, what should be in and out and why. Much of this is a war zone but OLPC was prepared to fight some sort of war from the start. Which war(s) are we prepared to fight and which ones not? <div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Samuel Klein <<a href="mailto:meta.sj@gmail.com">meta.sj@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> What does a great education look like?   Is it something attainable, with depth and scope?   Is it an unending cycle of empowerment and self-discovery? What are examples of educational concepts carried out to great success? What are good things for learning alone; and what are good things to learn socially? What are ways for a community of hundreds to learn together over the course of a generation?  What are good things for learning this way?  What are good bodies of knowledge to create this way? Some have suggested that [books] can be a boon to learning, that children and apprentices learn better with them, even when they are working with a teacher or master.   Others say the same about [dynabooks] and [the information superhighway].  What are canonical illustrations or studies of the effects of these (tools|environments)?  What are their advantages and disadvantages?  How fundamental are each to different stages of learning? SJ _______________________________________________ Its.an.education.project mailing list <a href="mailto:Its.an.education.project@tema.lo-res.org">Its.an.education.project@tema.lo-res.org</a> <a href="http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project" target="_blank">http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project</a> </blockquote></div>