<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 8:59 AM, Kathy Pusztavari <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kathy@kathyandcalvin.com">kathy@kathyandcalvin.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span>Bill, there is a difference between direct instruction
and Direct Instruction. The latter (big D big I) is usually based on SRA's
products and outlined in the Direct Instruction Rubric. Direct instruction
(little d little i) is usually a general set of guidelines teachers use to
directly instruction - to be a sage on the stage, to teach directly, to teach
first then...</span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span></span></font> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span>I am only frustrated by SRA themselves. The
products are great and would be extremely useful in teaching but they have a
copyright stranglehold. If only I was an attorney and knew how to legally
get around that.... Or if I could find the millions (billions?) to buy it
for public domain use. I'm telling you, people would have a fountain of
curriculum they could use, morph, etc.</span></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>Kathy, I know SRA is calling this Direct Instruction, but I wonder if
we should be. When I think of direct instruction, I think of the
teacher standing in front of the class explaining, which by the way, I
think is sometimes appropriate. However, when I read SRA;s materials,
and certainly my memory of using SRA, involve a lot of time on
structured tasks and relatively little time with the teacher
directly instructing. Your experience is way more recent, what do you find?<br><br>I actually remember SRA fondly from my own 2nd grade experience. We had boxes of SRA material, all leveled and you worked through the levels at your own pace. Because of the way they step up the difficulty and the fact I could set my own pace I think I had good "flow" experiences with the program. I think it was a good match for my learning style.<br>
<br>I was reminded of that experience when I tried out a cognative tutor program in one of my classes. Cognative tutors are programs that take kids through lots of problems, measuring mastery and giving hints as requested. This is a comercial product example of this sort of program: <a href="http://www.carnegielearning.com/">http://www.carnegielearning.com/</a><br>
<br>I agree with the big tent. We need to teach lots of different people, with lots of different learning styles, lots of different things.<br><br>I think well thought out programs that step you through learning with early and often error correction can be effective. <br>
<br>Right now the level of skilled and unified effort to create this sort of content and out economic structures have resulted in this type of content, both on paper and in terms of computer programs, being proprietary. I don't think that means we should dismiss this for Sugar in the longer term.<br>
<br>1. We could support proprietry content at some point.<br>2. Martin pointed out to me that a number of countries have noticed that in the end the government ends up paying for all the content one way or another and they are exploring paying directly for writing the content and free licences.<br>
3. Improved authoring tools and other automation tools might reduce the level of effort required to create this content.<br><br>-Caroline<br><br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span></span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span></span></font> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span></span></font> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span>-Kathy</span></font></div><br>
<div dir="ltr" align="left" lang="en-us">
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<font size="2" face="Tahoma"><div class="im"><b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:iaep-bounces@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">iaep-bounces@lists.sugarlabs.org</a>
[mailto:<a href="mailto:iaep-bounces@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">iaep-bounces@lists.sugarlabs.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Bill
Kerr<br></div><b>Sent:</b> Monday, May 04, 2009 9:47 PM<br><b>To:</b> Kathy
Pusztavari<br><b>Cc:</b> iaep<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [IAEP] versus,
not<br></font><br></div><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<div></div>Kathy,<br><br>I haven't read the books you cite but I do as a teacher
frequently use direct instruction. That was strongly implied in my initial
post. Nevertheless, I'm sure I could do it better. When I read your response my
first thought was that you had not read my post carefully.<br><br>btw this
discussion does mirror an earlier one b/w Patrick Suppes and Seymour Papert -
well covered in Papert's 'The Childrens Machine' and Cynthia Solomon's 'Computer
Environments for Children' <br><br>Both Suppes and Papert argued that computers
could improve education but in different ways. Cynthia Solomon found that there
was a greater need for direct instruction approaches in disadvantaged areas. But
that did not make her a DI only advocate. My own experience in teaching in
disadvantaged schools for the past dozen years is consistent with that.<br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:13 AM, Kathy Pusztavari <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kathy@kathyandcalvin.com" target="_blank">kathy@kathyandcalvin.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span>"<font color="#000000" size="3" face="Times New Roman">eg. I would see direct instruction
as a must for autistic children but don't see that it follows as a general
model for all education "</font></span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#000000" size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span></span></font> </div></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span>The
problem is that at least 20% of our kids in the US qualify as either special
ed or learning disabled in some form. So you would be leaving out about
20% of the population (especially when teaching reading and
math).</span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span></span></font> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span>Math can
be improved greatly through Direct Instruction. If you have not taught
Connecting Math Concepts and other non-DI curriculum, I would like to know why
you would say such a thing. DI would make most, if not all kids LIKE
math at the early levels (Kindergarten - 8th grade). It makes them
succeed because it is mastery based. If you want to see brilliant
curriculum development, you should look at SRA DISTAR I & II, Connecting
Math Concepts (A-F) and Essentials for Algebra.
</span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span></span></font> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"><span>-Kathy</span></font></div><br>
<div dir="ltr" align="left" lang="en-us">
<hr>
<font size="2" face="Tahoma"><b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:iaep-bounces@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">iaep-bounces@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:iaep-bounces@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">iaep-bounces@lists.sugarlabs.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Bill
Kerr<br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, May 04, 2009 5:21 PM<br><b>To:</b> Walter
Bender<br><b>Cc:</b> iaep; Sugar-dev Devel; <a href="mailto:community-news@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">community-news@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br><b>Subject:</b> [IAEP]
versus, not<br></font><br></div>
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<div></div>
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<div></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Walter Bender <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:walter.bender@gmail.com" target="_blank">walter.bender@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">===Sugar
Digest===<br><br>I encourage you to join two threads on the Education List
this week:<br><a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005382.html" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005382.html</a>,
which<br>has boiled down to an instruction vs construction debate; and<br><a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005342.html" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005342.html</a>,
which<br>has boiled down to a debate of catering to local culture vs
the<br>Enlightenment. I encourage you to join these discussions.</blockquote>
<div><br></div></div>Agree that these are important discussions <br><br>Need
to be careful about the use of the versus depiction of these discussions IMO,
this tempting shorthand can create the wrong impression<br><br>eg. I would see
direct instruction as a must for autistic children but don't see that it
follows as a general model for all education (special needs are special) or
that we should even think it is possible to have a correct general model. I
don't think there is one and good teachers swap between multiple models all
the time.<br><br>no one on this list has argued overtly against "the
enlightenment" or that local culture ought not to be taken into account, eg.
Ties said "think practical", the response was of the nature that our context
demands we do <a certain course of action><br><br>however, I do think
the roll back of enlightenment principles is not well understood (<a href="http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nonUniversals" target="_blank">http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nonUniversals</a>) and
that a better understanding might persuade more people of the need to
keep searching and struggling for different ways to go against some of
the tide of local culture - there is a recent interesting comment thread on
mark guzdial's blog which is worth reading from this point of view <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK3F4TMBURELZZK" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK3F4TMBURELZZK</a>
<br><br></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)<br>
<a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Caroline Meeks<br>Solution Grove<br>Caroline@SolutionGrove.com<br>
<br>617-500-3488 - Office<br>505-213-3268 - Fax<br>