One common criticism of automated "Skinner-box"-like teaching machines (e.g. in Watters's book) is that they're fascistic, inhumane, etc. In the context of K-12, that's definitely true, but I think the stronger criticism is that they don't really *work*, even on their own terms!
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That is, even if a student mechanically does exactly what the Skinner box (or Khan Academy exercises) asks them to do, the resulting understanding is usually brittle, shallow, and short-lived. *Also* the experience is often awful, but that seems unimportant if it doesn't work!
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It's funny—when I was working on K12 edu, what really bothered me about teaching machines was the fascistic, anti-creative bit.
Now that I'm working on expert learning, I have a different perspective: if such a machine truly worked, I'd *love* to use one for topics I care about.
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The voluntarism makes all the difference for me. In the context of a coercive learning environment, the *affect* of the teaching machines really bother me; but if I'm just trying to efficiently learn topics I need for projects that matter to me, then sure—whatever works best!
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Questions I'd like to understand better:
Intelligent tutoring systems seem to produce more flexible, durable understanding. Is this true? If so, what differences from a Skinner-style machine make it so?
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I can't get my head around Direct Instruction. The Follow Through studies are hard to argue with, but it sure seems like a teaching machine to me. Does it produce more flexible, durable understanding than? If so, why? The teacher's human involvement, even if scripted?
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Am I actually just wrong about such classic "computer aided instruction"-type systems? My conclusion's based mostly on interactions with and small-scale studies of students using Khan Academy. I'm wary of a lot of the empirical work here.
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If Seymour Papert would have had his way, kids would form understandings of things by exploring and interacting with computerized representations, but that doesn't produce enough metrics or keep all kids on the same track so no wonder the world of Mindstorms has not born fruit.
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I'm a huge Mindstorms fan of course, but implicit instruction does seem to have some pretty serious limitations, particularly among novice students; see e.g. expertise reversal effect.
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Interesting! For me the key point of Mindstorms was about getting children to program and simulate things on computers, which while presented as an implicit activity doesn't have to be - perhaps more guidance would help acquire programming skills:
