Re: [seul-edu] Discuss: How software educates.

["George Free" <gfree@linux.ca>]

Kevin wrote:
>I must say though, the pessimism expressed by everyone from Doug Loss to
>Seymour Papert that teachers won't want to use whatever we produce is a
>bit hard on the morale.  It'd be pretty rough to sit down at emacs and say
>"Okay, lets write some code that my target audience is going to shun and
>fear..."


On the other hand, it is very inspiring that we have such brilliant leaders
like Papert, Kay, Schank, Schneiderman and many others. They are being
listened to, I believe, but the institutional realities make implementation
of their ideas very difficult.

What we are facing ultimately is a social and political problem of how to
organize schools and the educational process. I believe that schools will be
forced to change eventually because everyone else will be using
collaborative and constructionist tools in their professional life-long
learning activities and in their day-to-day work.

In general, I think its very important to think not only about the software,
but about how schools should be organized to make use of its potential.

Thanks for your stimulating comments.

George