[Squeakland] Computer as Tutor
Alan Kay
Alan.Kay at squeakland.org
Sat Apr 10 11:19:56 PDT 2004
Hi Gary --
Where is the furrowed brow or the cheer for comprehension in a
printed book? I don't think you can get rid of the dedicated educator
(and I don't want to), but I learned a very large part of what I
think about from reading well written and not so well written papers
and books. And, I would also say that a good book beats the average
not-so-good and not-so-dedicated educator hands down if one has
gotten fluent in reading and learning from prose.
So, I think there is a very important role for much better computer
tutors than we now have. For example, today one could really do such
an intermediary for playing a musical instrument -- especially for
classical music.
An interesting setup would be to see one's human teacher about
once a week and be able to practice all week with one's "practice
helper". The state of the art is high for computers being able to
flexibly listen to music, to follow the human player's changes of
tempo, to note various kinds of phrasing, etc., and would be
especially useful for practicing chamber music where the computer
takes the other parts in a flexible manner.
Of course, this would not at all replace playing the piece with
human players -- computers don't and won't feel music (at least not
in my lifetime) -- but musicians use metronomes quite a bit of the
time when they are practicing, and a flexible computer rendition of
the other parts beats a metronome any time.
The reason this works for music (especially classical music) is that
many (but not all) of the important goals can be characterized well
enough for the computer to notice what is going on, and also quite a
bit of what it means to be flexible about these goals also can be
characterized. Once you decide to use it for practice and not
performance, you've found a sweet spot where most of the computer
involvement is overwhelmingly positive.
We can constrast this with programming (which is a bit more like
creative writing). There have been several computer tutors for
teaching programming, and even the best one's I've seen feel
crushingly oppressive (basically like a bad teacher with Skinner box
approach to teaching). In one of the earliest etoy classes with 20
children, in one of their "figure this problem out for yourself"
sessions (creating a road and a car that will drive down the center
of it) we got at least 7 distinct workable solutions to this, 2 of
them extremely elegant.
Now, it's easy in this case to imagine a computer tutor that
could watch to see if the car did indeed stay on the road, but right
now, giving good advice about what the children actually did do
(instead of trying to get them to do a mythical "standard good
solution" (which I hate)) is beyond what anyone knows how to do with
a computer tutor.
But there is one area in which a really great job can be done, and
this is on some "nugget of goodness" (especially in the beginnings of
learning) in which "everything is known". For example, the "Drive a
Car" project is an excellent way to start learning etoys. There are
about 30+ things that are learned, there are quite a variety of
routes, and there are lots of known snarls that beginners need help
with. Years ago there was a tutor for positional notation subtraction
that really worked extremely well, and this was because the designers
made a net of every possible route the kids could take and every
possible bug they could encounter.
This works on a 15-30 minute project that is deemed important,
but is much too much work and much more difficult in other ways for
even a weeks or months long set of ideas.
So one of the things that I think would be interesting to do, and
that would help people all over, would be to simply do such a brute
force but nicely flexible job on "the first experience with etoys".
Most people finding this stuff on the net don't have your "dedicated
educator"s to ask for help, so a computer tutor that was "pretty darn
good" just to get people well started would be a tremendous aid all
over the world.
Cheers,
Alan
At 11:40 AM -0400 4/10/04, Gary Fisher wrote:
>Alan & all;
>
>A draft of the paper cited can be found at
>http://www.lists.pdx.edu/waoe-views/current/att-0016/Blowing_learning_to_bits.doc.
>
>"The computer as tutor" was a hot topic when I was in college during the
>late '60s and early 1970s, and I was peripherally involved in the
>development of several experimental "learning laboratories" at the time.
>Sadly, "the powers that be" on these projects universally adopted the
>hopeless "programmed learning" concept which replaces pedagogy with a dreary
>form of mechanized pedantry.
>
>Though it could be done much better now (and could have been done much
>better then as well) I lack the imagination to see how genuine understanding
>can be imparted to a child by a tutor unable to discern the furrowed brow,
>or to cheer the sudden gleam of comprehension. I'm sure computers have a
>proper place in education, but not absent a dedicated educator.
>
>Gary Fisher
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Alan Kay" <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
>To: "Doug Wolfgram" <doug at gfx.com>; <squeakland at squeakland.org>
>Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 11:17 AM
>Subject: Re: [Squeakland] Computer as Tutor
>
>
>> Hi Doug --
>>
>> Al Bork is very well known in this area going all the way back to the
>> 60s. There is a great old book called "The Computer as Tool, Tutor,
>> and Tutee" which contains seminal papers by Bork, Papert, and others.
>>
>> I couldn't find "Blowing Learning to Bits" on Amazon.
>>
>> One of the original ideas about all this stuff back in the 60s was
>> that some form of AI would develop enough to allow the computer to
>> "understand" enough of a subject to be able to gently correct and
>> steer. This just didn't happen. Some of the near misses (many done at
>> CMU) are quite interesting. Plato (at the U of Illinois) was a huge
>> system in the 60s and 70s that did a kind of tutorial on many
>> subjects. It's worth studying, but it never got up to what Seymour
>> and I thought would be at all reasonable.
>>
>> There have been some proposals for making a tutorial interface for
>> the Squeak Etoys that use a number of techniques to handle the
>> detecting and gentle correction of errors. I'm hoping to get at least
>> one of these started towards the end of the year.
>>
>> It would be great to hear from people on this list just what "the
>> computer as tutor" means to them.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Alan
>>
>> At 10:56 PM -0700 4/9/04, Doug Wolfgram wrote:
>> >I was recently introduced to Alfred Bork's papers on 'Computer as
>> >Tutor' and am getting very interested in his work. He is professor
>> >emeritus at UCI (U of Cal Irvine) and is starting a company to build
>> >large scale educational systems spanning preschool through adult
>> >education. I don't want to misstate his goals here, but if anyone
>> >else has heard of his book, 'Blowing Learning to Bits', I'd love to
>> >hear about it.
>> >
>> >I believe that Squeak is the perfect environment for having the
>> >'Computer as Tutor'. Are there ay specific papers on this subject,
>> >even if by another name? Are any of you working on projects where
>> >you could stand back and say "yes, we designed this because we saw
>> >the computer as the tutor?" I don't believe that Dr. Bork wants to
>> >replace teachers in any way, he is just focused on that 'additional'
>> >teacher in our lives, technology.
>> >
>> >Cheers!
>> >
>> >D
>> >
>> >
>> >_________________________________________
>> >
>> >"If you're not in e-business ... you're not in business.."
>> >_________________________________________
>> >
>> >Doug Wolfgram
>> >GRAFX Group, Inc.
>> >Cell: 949.433.3641
>> >http://www.gfx.com
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >_______________________________________________
>> >Squeakland mailing list
>> >Squeakland at squeakland.org
>> >http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
>>
>>
>> --
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