[Squeakland] Computer as Tutor

[Alan Kay]

Hi Diego --

Then what does the phrase "book as <fill in the blank with a word 
like tutor>" mean to you?

The *love* idea is really important (I loved my mentor Dave Evans), 
but he didn't "tutor me", he "illuminated me" on how and why to be a 
scientist in the service of humanity. Most of the "simple knowledge" 
I've picked up has come from reading, thinking and doing by myself.

But, I would really agree that for most personality types, the 
interest of other humans, especially adults, is one of the most 
important motivators for putting in effort for learning. I was 
already extremely interested in learning, and had been doing it for 
my own reasons for many years by the time I got to grad school, but 
still, having Dave be genuinely interested in me made a tremendous 
difference, especially in loosening the amount of self-criticism I 
was inflicting on my ideas.

So, I think the best environment involves people who really know and 
care, and various kinds of tools. The miracle of the book is how well 
it can work when one is not lucky to be around people who know and 
care (and even when one is). This is in part because a good writer 
can transmit more that just information, a lot of their basic 
humanity and caring glows through their words (good examples are the 
writings of Seymour Papert and Jerome Bruner which have affected 
millions of people they have never met -- these are "good guys" with 
"good ideas" and both shine through).

I still think that helping children to be fluent readers is the top 
priority in education, both because of the change of access and who 
can now do what, but also because of the change in how people think 
that comes with fluent reading.

It has been known for some time what has to be done with a computer 
screen to allow it to be as readable and portable as a book, and the 
actual technology does exist today in labs. So we are within a few 
years of having this next level of display be able to encompass all 
previous paper works without loss of legibility. However, just as 
there are tactile differences between vellum and paper that we've 
lost since printing got cheaper and superceded writing by hand, there 
will still be some tactile differences between books and the next 
generations of personal knowledge machines. The ones that are 
important will need to be dealt with.

But the most important thing is to discover what new special content 
can be manifested because we have the new medium of the computer to 
help us represent special ideas, and then to put forth this content 
so that as many people in the world as possible can think their own 
thoughts after "reading and doing" with it.

Cheers,

Alan

------

At 4:27 PM +0200 4/11/04, Diego Gomez Deck wrote:
>Hi,
>
>>  It would be great to hear from people on this list just what "the
>>  computer as tutor" means to them.
>
>It's one the the phrases that scares me most.
>
>IMHO, the relationship tutor/apprentice strongly depends on affective
>links.  I really *love* the people who had teach me well and I try to be
>a good tutor to be loved ;)
>
>The computer can't play the role of tutor. (And don't want to!)
>
>The computer is just a wonderful and powerful tool to be used for good
>human-tutors.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Diego
>
>
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