Last week, in our sessions about the book by Tiffin and Rajasingham, we discussed questions about the value of virtual environments for learning, and specifically the educational value of simulations. These questions led us to more basic questions about experience, and how we go about judging the educational value of any experience, whether actual or virtual. Clearly, this has always been an important question in education, but today it seems even especially pressing, as the spatial and temporal boundaries of education become more fluid (thanks to technology) and the purpose of compulsory education is called into question (thanks in part to technology).
The challenge of using computers in education can be stated quite simply now: How can computers, whether through software, networks or virtual environments, provide experiences superior to those available without computers? While everyone might define "superior" differently, the context of the experience being very important, the next question might be whether there are examples of such superior experiences made possible by the computer.
Of historical interest in thinking about this last question is Glenn Gould's essay, "The Prospects of Recording", which appeared in High Fideltiy Magazine in 1966. The essay is fascinating from the perspectives of both art and technology, and concerning the experience made possible by the recording Gould wrote:
"...the habit of concert-going and concert-giving, both as a social institution and as chief symbol of musical mercantilism, will be as dormant in the twenty-first century as, with luck, will Tristan da Cunha's Volcano; and that, because of its extinction, music will be able to provide a more cogent experience than is now possible. The generation currently being subjected to the humiliation of public school solfège will be the last to attain their majority persuaded that the concert is the axis upon which the world of music revolves.
"It is not. And considering for what a brief span the public concert has seemed predominant, the wonder is that pundits allowed it ever would be."
Among the quotations included by Gould in the margins of his article, the first was by the Goddard Lieberson, then president of Columbia Records:
"The concert is an antique form as it now stands. Most towns cannot afford the best concert artists and I don't see the advantage of seeing a second-rate artist over hearing a superb one."
Gould's essay seems to me a fitting reading for CS92/ED89 because it provides a compelling argument for the possibility of a superior (not just additional) experience made possible by technology. The question we should be asking is how our software could provide students with such a superior experience.
On Tuesday our guest is a teacher from the St. Andrews School, in Providence, who has kindly agreed to talk with us about her use of educational software in her classroom. On Thursday, we will begin the presentations of the project prototypes and testing strategies.