[Squeakland] Assessment

[Alan Kay]

Hi Doug --

Interesting comments ....

The simplest thing I can say here is that there are now enough 
examples from the last 100 years or so to convince at least me that 
children are generally capable of much much more than most adults 
(and especially most schools) suppose. Thus, there is a very sad 
sense in which "adults are children's worst enemies" since the adults 
tend to control the environments in which children can learn things.

I see the Squeak etoys as trying to build on the idea that children 
are capable of much much more. However, I think there are many 
routes, including low-tech ones, in which much better assessment of 
what children are capable of learning can be done.

Another truly important idea about children which should be part of 
any learning environment, is that different children learn 
differently and for different reasons. Though this seems like an 
unremarkable observation, most learning environments do little to 
nothing to deal with these most important facts.

At this point in time it would be great to have either much better 
teaching (which includes much more understanding by teachers of the 
arts they are supposed to be teaching) or much better computer 
environments that can help children better than most adults can. 
Right now, we have neither, and there is great need for work and 
resources for both.

Cheers,

Alan

At 8:13 AM -0800 3/26/04, Doug Wolfgram wrote:
>I hope this isn't off-topic, but it occurs to me that e-toys and 
>Squeak are the perfect tool for what I would like to see change at 
>our school...
>
>Recently, we invited Jill Tarter to come and speak at my daughter's 
>school.  She was very well received and her promotion of math and 
>science was close to my heart, as I believe that all children should 
>have a good foundation in the sciences.
>
>Then I started thinking about Alan's demonstration of Squeak and the 
>gravity exercises, etc. I realized that from my experience (please 
>correct me if I'm wrong) most lower school math and science 
>assessments assess only what a child has already learned, whereas 
>with Squeak and e-toys, we can assess what they are CAPABLE of 
>learning.
>
>Isn't this more valuable information? Do those of you who are 
>educators think this way?  Am I just behind the curve here and all 
>of you regular squeakers are saying "duh, we've been doing that?" :)
>
>This has special meaning to me because my daughter, like me when I 
>was in lower school, tends to make careless errors on math tests 
>from going too fast. So this keeps her out of some of the advanced 
>math pull-outs. Yet the kids in those pull-outs come to her for help 
>because she knows the math and if she doesn't, can figure it out 
>very quickly or knows who to ask and isn't afraid because she is 
>very confident about her ability to understand what she will hear as 
>a response. This seems to me to be a very big failing in this 
>particular school anyway.
>
>D
>
>
>
>
>___
>________________________
>
>"Interactive Media that WORKS."
>___________________________
>
>Doug Wolfgram
>CEO
>GRAFX Group, Inc.
>949.433.3641
>http://www.personalpresentations.com
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Squeakland mailing list
>Squeakland at squeakland.org
>http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland


--