What is an Educational Mistake?
This week we turn to questions about what we think good educational software should do, for whom and when it should do it, and what sort of vocabulary/vocabularies we should adopt in evaluating educational software. Today we'll discuss how educational technology, and educational software in particular, can promote and/or enact specific views about the educational experience(s). On Wednesday, we'll talk about alternate frameworks for describing and evaluating the goals and structures of educational programs.
Although we might have discussed Engines for Education in the context of our discussion of psychology two weeks ago, we can also discuss it in the context of this week's evaluative questions. For example, Schank and Cleary lay out what they call the "Top Ten Mistakes in Education, and we can start our discussions this week by getting a sense of how many people agree with their diagnosis and why. How does one's opinion of these "mistakes" color one's evaluation of a program like the 1999 program Building Blast"?
Engines for Education, by Schank and Cleary (1995)
We'll discuss several chapters from the book, led by comments and questions by Vincent.
For next time: Read the articles by Gray and Luiz de Oliveira & Baranauskas if you've not done so already. Begin the book by Sandholtz, Ringstaff and Dwyer if time permits, and keep in mind that the next benchmark for the software project is the storyboard, (two weeks from today!).