Views of the Teaching Machine

Assignment: 

Write a blog post about what you think of the “teaching machine.” How do the approaches or above thinkers support (or go against) your thoughts? What would they like about the Teaching Machines approach? What would they oppose, and what alternatives would they propose?

My first impression of the teaching machine was to chuckle at the antiquated nature of the machine. Then I realized how predictive this video was of current computerized teaching/learning programs such as ALEK and what we use at CSU with PACe. There is a value to learners being able to move at their pace, receive corrective information to alter their behaviors, and be free of the judgment that can sometimes occur within communal learning environments. Additionally, teaching machines, or computers as we now know them, can support individualization to give learners the exact levels they need to help push them forward.

Yet it is the absence of "connectivism" which I find as an impeding point. With the teaching machine model that Dr. Skinner proposed, there is no connectedness outside of the individual learner and machine. Paulo Freire would have appreciated the knowledge being generated by the learner, yet would have exclaimed that education is a social act. This disconnect with other learners means that what is taught stays at an "information level" and misses the critical thinking exercises promoted by other's questioning that make it deeper learning. It is what take a novice to an expert level by practicing and sharpening what they think and why. 

This communal nature of developing expertise is what communities of practice help support. If computers can support interactivity with others and develop a group of learners into critical thinking experts, then this point of contention can be eliminated. Because it is moving beyond the static what into the more dynamic "why" about the topic studied. I think Freire would advocate for the more vibrant community of learners who don't simply learn to learn, but do so to liberate and promote equity and justice. He likely would caution for the danger of a single story and question who are making the teaching machines and what messages are "they" intending to send. 

Since Freire was exiled from his beloved Brazil because of his free thought, he would questioned whether teaching machines are just a newfangled automated version of the "bank method," which he so opposed. Conversely, he might have appreciated that the technology would make learning more accessible to a wider audience of people. Learning machines could be sent to remote areas where people who may not have access to a wall and mortar school could still have their brains activated with learning. At least I'd like to think he would pontificate such points! 

And I would be in complete agreement with him. If teaching machines are simply a self-paced banking method replacement of a person, they don't contribute to the possible liberation that I hope education works toward. And simultaneously, I think technology has the opportunity to contribute to connectivism with a new method of delivery. Will it ever be as deep as people interactions? I am not sure, but I have never advocated that we have to go one way or the other. I am ultimately a supporter of hybrid models that meet halfway.