Mark Paschal, the creator of the most fabulous Kit Tool for Radio, pointed to some wonderful ranting about educational software. The ranting is done by the creators of Mathematica (way-cool, funky software, btw), and was originally part of a beginner's guide for that software.

Brain Rot.

When software engineers design educational software, there are a few things they take for granted, and reviewers of educational software appear to agree with them:

Software should be "easy to use".... Users should never feel at a loss for what to do next.... Software should engage and keep its users' attention with colorful graphics, sounds, animations, whatever it takes.

A treatise on educational software by a couple people behind Mathematica. From what I've read so far, it sounds like Python is good educational software: it's a set of tinker toys for thinking.

A lot of software apps (*cough* blogs *cough) could be construed as good educational software by their definition, not just certain programming languages or software which allows easy visualization of integrals... But again, the issue is getting it into the building in the first place.

Remember the stories about folks purchasing their own PCs, and sneaking them into their offices? Will the use of blogs in education eventually have a similar set of old-timers stories?

7:09:28 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this    

Adam Curry nails one of the issues facing educators who wish to bring blogs into their classrooms.

As usual, Peter Ford nails it on the head: "However, most educators will not be as tenacious or creative in solving the hosting problem. In fact, without weblogs 'being as easily available as paper' there will be no blogging revolution in schools. We can scream from the roof-tops about our successes with weblogging but if the access to emulate those experiences is not freely available to the average teacher, then all we are doing is blowing our own trumpets to an audience of spectators, who will become increasingly bored with our discussions of tweaking etc"

I find the hardest part of the edu-hosting puzzle is the payment process. So far, unless an educator is willing to draw his/her personal credit card online payments for [weblog] space and functionality, folks just can't get it sold through the 'orgnization'.

Meanwhile, Seb squarely nails some other issues; it's not just about hosting. There is already a fair body of work about technology integration (particularly in education settings), and I see no reason why the use of blogs shouldn't follow the same adoption and growth patterns. Look how long it has taken for the use of email to become accepted in many institutions. Why should blogging take hold any faster?

6:53:10 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this    [ blinked via Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog ]