Hi,
I end up my thinking on looking at the Dynabook from the perspective of teaching approaches. The truth is there is no such things as an unique teaching approach, teachers blend the way they teach with various approaches. A successful Dynabook could/should allow that.
http://blog.drgeo.eu/post/2018/Dynabook-and-learning-models%2C-final-words
In this conclusion I try to see which pedagogical features will be valuable to allow that. It is not easy to keep balanced though.
Another point of view to take is the pedagogical artifacts. I like this word artifact, although it conveys several meanings. It is here understood as "any object made by human beings, especially with a view to subsequent use."
Looking at the Dynabook from the pedagogical artifacts point of view needs to think from the teachers point of view, and their respective fields of teaching. A geography teacher and math teacher think about their field with different perspectives. A geography teacher may think geography map, a math teacher geometry sketch. These two artifacts can be thought as simulation or micro-world. On the Dynabook, the later turns as DrGeo canvas, the former as interactive geography map.
Most pedagogical artifacts can be expended as computerized and/or simulations in respect with the inherent laws of the artifact domain. A geometry sketch expend to a geometry simulator where the rules of the euclidean geometry are observed. The artifact expend to a multi-parameterized computerized form. The etoys tools gave a taste of that.
When you examine the contents produced by teachers for their students (at least mine for sure). It is still mostly text with included graphics, tables, equations. Those elements are static and could be replaced by computerized artifacts, if this is easy and not time consuming to do. The reality is it is very difficult for a teacher to produced computerized teaching document with more than text and static elements.
Whatever should be a Dynabook dynamic media document, I am convinced it will be centered around text and Smalltalk/Morph. Text is part of our culture since 6000 years and Smalltalk+Morph are the brick for computerized visual pedagogical artifact.
Hilaire
Thanks to Chao-Kuei Hung, Michael Davis, John Pfersich and David Lewis to review the texts, it was very kind.
Thanks Ron for your valuable insights, I was impressed how clearly you articulate it.