[Edu-sig] Low Enrollments - programming as anti-intellectualism

[ajsiegel@optonline.net]

----- Original Message -----
From: Kirby Urner <urnerk at qwest.net>
> 
> In my Classroom of Tomorrow, the teacher has random access to a 
> gazillionvideo shorts in the archive, and during Q&A might pull up 
> just the right
> ones to sustain the dialog.  It's not a matter of the teacher 
> losing control
> to "A/V" (e.g. half- to full-hour documentaries).  I just screen a 
> quickanimation of a fetch instruction:  bits on the address bus 
> trigger RAM to
> dump some content onto the bus, which get loaded into a register 
> on the CPU
> (25 seconds play time).

Sounds expensive.

Seems to me that you need to provide evidence of the effectiveness of your
Classroom, before asking for adoption at beyond a guinea pig level.  

Which I understand is a lot to ask.

But...

It sounds expensive.

And...

Most of these kinds of initiatives have not been able to stand up to any
kind of rigorous approach to assessing their effectiveness.  

It seems that the answer has been that if we ignore this fact 
stubbornly enough, it somehow goes away.

Or - where I think we are going - get the instituional support for a redesign
of our tests until we get the answers we are looking for.

This guinea pig will continue to squeal (or squeak ;)) like a pig in 
the face of that.

Doesn't mean that your approach cannot be effective.  But those of us 
paying attention will continue to press the issue of evidence (and its
interpreatation), particularly in light of what evidence there so far has
been.


Art