Bud; Personal attacks are usually the domain of the losers. In a teaching environment there are those that are easily taught by computers and those that are not, for whatever reasons. With large scale use of what is loosely termed 'artificial intelligence' which usually means multibranched re-entrant programs you can teach up to 90% of even College level courses(excluding labs, and even those are yielding to such programs as 'the virtual frog', a dissection of a frog by computer simulation that is as effective at the beginning biology levels as a real frog.(it of course is not good enough for advanced teaching, but one day....). A few years ago I was involved with I-Net who had developed teaching programs for industry that were more effective than human teachers(higher pass rate on same exams after same teaching time). Of course the computer spent 100% of its time on each student, but the teacher had to spread his time over the spectrum of abilities he/she encountered, and was thus under a handicap. The I-Net programs were fully capable and as long as the person passed the test were quite acceptable. In the same way you could teach most people as well by computer as by human actions.
There is no doubt that at all levels where a child can operate a mouse/keyboard or even a touch screen that computers can carry 50% or more of the load. This leaves the teachers for those hard to teach by computer, and the not so smart. What have you learned from your Mac?, nothing?, So it can teach !!
Some disciplines lend themselves to computer teaching better than others, however virtually all disciplines can benefit from computer use, and that is why there are so many in classrooms today. It will expand dramatically, and even now there are classes given remotely over phone lines/internet etc. The Inet was one of the first to use the browser concept(1992) and it was just for I-Net, and it sent only short coded data, and not full graphic screens(which the students computer had on the hard drive), and it would ask questions of the student after giving them instructions. A correct set of answers allowed progress to the next module, an error routed you over the erred material and you got a new set of questions(different in most cases to avoid eventual passage by endurance) and if you passed that on you go until you had passed all the modules. Every 20 min, you were allowed a game braek, and they hadseveral games, and after you passed a module you got a game break. Carrot/stick. Was picked up by the army for training, and they went public and are now well over $10, but I cannot remember the name they did the IPO under, as they got kicked off the I-Net name by another copyright holder. Gary Kimmons in Texas was the leader. A very effective teaching method(for 1992) and I am sure better are out there now.
So it is a given that computers can teach effectively. A single teacher will probably be better than a single computer. But a single I-Net computer could teach 100 students networked with workstations)local or at home) and was far more effective in a mass sisuation,(which explains the army interest, as in a war the biggest problem is teaching large numbers one on one quickly)
When I was a student there were only analog computers(wiff n proof, etc) as digital did not really get going until the 70's. I worked on one of the first implementations of a microprocessor(Intel 8008 for the Toronto Transit Commission TRUMP system, patented by H White, Len Casciato etc. in 1975 or so, I forget the real dates. At that time the only teaching machines were film strips with light logic gates that you picked on a screen(circa 1963). They used them to teach boolean algebra, hex coding etc, very effective, as each state was defined and your answer light path advanced the film to that state.
I am the sort that can learn well from books, literature searches, computers etc, as I am an experienced reseacher and accustomed to integrating data from diverse sources.
It seems you are unaware of what goes on in the teaching world as far as computers are concerned. Why is this, as you indicated that you are a teacher, did you not?
Bill |
