[From Chris Cherpas (970130.1831 PT)]
[re Bill Powers (970130.1645 MST)]
Chris Cherpas (970130.1155 PT) wrote:
Mr. PCT: It _is_ your job to provide some examples if you want the
rest of us lazy bums to do the right thing.
BP:
Provide some examples of what, Chris?
cc:
Examples of on-line exercises, along the lines of the PCT demos,
only with the intent of a user acquiring the ability to
control a variable they hadn't controlled before -- one which
might even be recognized as something kids learn in school.
BP:
When you speak of the "core group of expert PCTers," I wonder what picture
goes through your mind.
cc:
Increasingly, a group of people who have nothing to contribute to
education.
BP:
What's needed, of course, are people who DO have laboratories, or
institutional support, and the means of conducting research into the
application of PCT to real-world problems like education.
cc:
OK, I've got that.
BP:
You have to get experience with how things work in a classroom...
cc:
Fuck the classroom, man. The PCT demos didn't require a room.
Just a _computer_. That's exactly where educational research is
happening. Forget the classroom!
BP:
Certainly, I would trust you to write instructions from a PCT perspective.
cc:
Well, flattery will get me off your back at least.
BP:
Who else is there to do it, but people on CSGnet who have experience in
education? At this very second, I wouldn't trust anyone to write them
correctly, especially myself, but you have to try out ideas before you can
see where they need fixing. That's the bootstrap process called basic
research, and there's no substitute for it.
cc:
OK. I've got the message and my mission. Thanks, although I take
the "especially myself" line as a bold-faced lie. That's OK. The reason
I was griping, I repeat, is that there's been more than just a footnote
or two written by promoters of PCT claiming that PCT is a better way to
approach education, so I thought I could might be pointed to an existing
example of a design to work from.
...I'll get back to you in about a year. Thanks everybody who responded.
But, by the way, the "instruction" manual is more of a "direction" manual:
if you acquire anything from such materials of a *general* nature (which
_is_ the essence of education, friends) it is incidental, not designed.
Or would someone like to argue that having gone through the manual to
"put tab A into slot A" for the bicycle enabled them to not require a manual
the next time they had to assemble a hobby-horse?
Best regards,
cc
My motto for this post: "No meaner than Rick"