Look and Learn . . .

[viktoras didziulis]

well, then it looks like Revolution Media on steroids :-). An integrated 
decision support system with zillions of templates and wizards in its 
knowledge base (remote server or gigabytes stored locally) to assist in 
filling in those templates. Lots of work and should be based on massive 
feedback from these same professors, and teachers, but do they know what 
they want and will they have time for the feedback ?..

I imagine this would require efforts of many people and is possibly a 
good idea for an "open source" or a "wiki" initiative...

Best wishes
Viktoras

Richmond Mathewson wrote:
> Viktoras Didziulis wrote:
>
> "this is a so called "visual 
> programming" or "dataflow programming""
>
> I know about that, but that is not what I meant;
> what I mean is Agent-guided program creation (as
> demonstrated at
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/RRRThesis/files/
>
> files KALA.zip 1 to 12)
>
> both "visual programming" and/or "dataflow
> programming" still demand thinking which should not be
> required of the specialist who has spent years
> specialising in their field and has not either the
> time nor the inclination of going down that road (nor
> may be capable of thinking in that way).
>
> I worked with Primary School teachers at Greyfriar's
> Primary School in St Andrews who described their
> "computer skills" to me as:
>
> 1. turn on/off Windows PCs
>
> 2. create a document in MS Word
>
> 3. Pop CDs into the CD drives for pupil use.
>
> [Unfortunately this is what education departments
> describe as "computer literacy":
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_literacy    ]
>
> They blew their minds when I showed them the few,
> small things KALA-rev could do . . .
>
> I held out the promise that at the end of a long day
> "whipping the tinies into line" (and Primary Teachers
> work very hard indeed) over a cup of tea they could
> rapidly be guided by an Agent to put together programs
> that could subsequently be used by children to
> reinforce knowledge/information that they had
> previously studied.
>
> -----
>
> On a personal basis, having started with MiniFortran
> (who remembers that?) I think xTalk, and particularly
> the RR version, is wonderful; and rather like my
> attitude to automatic cars; give me a gear-stick any
> day so I don't feel out of control.
>
> However, there are millions of educators, librarians
> and so forth who are just gasping for "an automatic
> car" to do the driving for them.
>
> -------
>
> "But so far they do not seem very popular..."
>
> Of course they don't; they have been developed by
> programmers with a mind-set that still:
>
> expects people to think either "visually" or in terms
> of "dataflow"; both which presuppose all sorts of
> things which historians, doctors, and so forth may not
> be prepared to deal with.
>
> cannot escape from the idea that one has to sweat
> one's way through a steep learning curve to do
> something that, in actual fact, with good GUI
> automation, should require only the following
> knowledge:
>
> 1. Turn on the PC,
>
> 2. Start the automated GUI  [this is if the automated
> GUI is not already configured as either all or part of
> the GUI of the OS],
>
> 3. Mouse-Click on choice buttons,
>
> 4. Type text into text-boxes,
>
> and
>
> NOTHING ELSE.
>
> While that does not (at least as far as I am
> concerned) in any way constitute computer literacy;
> computer literacy should not be required of the vast
> majority of people- they should however be able to
> deliver information relating to their specialist field
> via computers and computer-related media without any
> computer literacy whatsoever.
>
> -----
>
> At the Primary School where I did my alpha-testing
> there was a dedicated classroom containing some 15
> Pentium 3s running Windows 98 just pulsing with
> unrealised potential.
>
> Children were taught (2004) how to use a PAINT
> program, TYPE a letter, use a variety of CD-ROMs
> containing encyclopedias (which would have been just
> as good in book format), and a few fairly mindless
> games of no pedagogical value whatsoever (beyond,
> possibly, giving the poor, overworked and underpaid
> teacher, a few minutes to breath).
>
> All that is effectively rubbish when Runtime
> Revolution (for instance) can produce programs that
> children can interact with to reinforce, reiterate and
> deliver content (and :) allow the teacher a break).
>
> -----
> Imagine a language teacher with 15 vocabulary items in
> a target language. The teacher needs the pupils to be
> able to use the vocab items in context, and does not
> have the time to check the 26 pupils s/he teaches.
> Teacher sits down in front of the PC and is guided
> through to a program that lets children check those
> vocab items against the mother-tongue, and use them in
> a variety of contexts (statements, questions,
> word-to-picture matching . . .).
>
> Now I (and, presumably 99% of the subscribers to this
> Use-lIst) can knock something half-way useful of this
> sort out in 45 minutes. But that is at a price of
> quite a bit of time learning the programming language,
> learning the object metaphor, and so forth.
>
> Most teacher, lecturers, profs, business conference
> presenters do not have the time to learn all the
> above.
>
> ------
>
> sincerely, Richmond Mathewson
>
> ____________________________________________________________
>
> A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle.
> ____________________________________________________________
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