Loren describes on June 12 why he’s still programming, including for Tablet PCs, Ultra-Mobile PCs and other mobiles, after 30 years.
What strikes me as I sit here and reflect on my years of programming, is that what interests me today is very much the same things that have excited me all along–the things I do not know… I had a great teacher and a couple of friends that were as enthusiastic about learning … that we just figured things out as we went along.
… there are so many things that would be interesting to work on. All of which I don’t know how to do. That’s the best part. That’s what keeps me going. There are so many things to learn and discover. It’s why I keep programming.
Loren’s an alumnus of the first Direct Instruction experimental preschool class at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1964. He took 20 minutes of instruction in 120 minutes elapsed time 5 days a week on a university schedule in standard English, reading, writing, mathematics (not arithematic calculations), and sciences. They showed him how to break each of the codes (the few simple core steps or formulae) that organize each of these areas. He took that head start through schooling and into advanced technology.
So have other productive people. It’s a puzzle why so many teachers continue to hide these codes from students rather than directly, promptly showing learners quickly (in minutes) how to demonstrate these basic competencies.
Among his other programs for mobile PCs (Ink Gestures, MathPractice, Fraction Practice, … available on TabletPCPost), Loren has written software for learners to increase their acquisition rates through Direct Learning.
Kudos, Loren. Thanks for your candor. We look forward to your next program release.
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Loren doesn’t say anywheere on his website that he was a comparison student at the University of Illiinois Urbana-Champaign during the development of the Bereiter-Engelmann Direct Instruction project. He’s my son. My desk as a doctoral student was outside the door of Carl’s office (maybe 3.5 feet away). They wanted comparison preschool students in the Direct Instruction portion of the government funded preschool experimental program run by Merle Karnes, so I volunteered Loren the first year and Loren and Layne the second year of that project. What a great head start DI and its thoughtful people gave both Ls. Yes, balderdash about many “nots” of DI.
Bob, what do you think about the computers for the One Laptop Per Child?I was thinking that something like that would be a great replacement for textbooks even at early first or second grade levels. I was also wondering if curriculum developed on wiki sites (wikibooks, wikiversity, wikieducator) would be designed in such a way that it could be downloaded onto the cheap laptop and used for reading and homework. How about a tablet pc and cheap laptop combo (think smaller, more durable, greyscale tablet pc)?
Thanks for your comments and questions. I think schools should issue a mobile PC to each student for use in school and and at home to complete assignments. Then, teachers should offer one-on-one learning protocols for all students. School boards should be planning now to deploy mobile PCs and future state-of-the-art PCs in all grades. It sometimes, with notable exceptions I’ve posted elsewhere on this site, takes a couple of years to gin-up the process. Tablet PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs are fully functioning notebook PCs, plus they have Ink, speech recognition, writing recognition, writing to speech functions, etc. Almost all students can use them to increase their learning rates. Wikipedia serves a useful purpose as an introductory source to a topic, as do other online sources. Yes, online curricula exists that exploit or can be made to exploit mobile PC functions. tabletpcpost.com offers authorized free downloads of some of these curricula. I prefer for students of any age or background to use primary sources vs. “textbooks,” and other edited sources. That’s because biases of primary sources are identifiable, so students can learn to address these biases objectively. With committee written texts and anonymous source postings, no one can know how much confidence to have in that information. Mobile PC cost: For the past two plus decades, state-of-the-art PCs have cost around $1,800. That’s the case today, too. Several manufacturers have released prototypes and more are in the works for lower cost mobile units. They will offer fewer functions that today’s SOTA PCs, but some school people said they would rather use them than to pay for SOTA PCs for students. Someone will probably calculate the cost of such decision on the life chances of students. Please let me know of such data when you come across it. I will link to it for others to review also.