Knowledge of science and technology "has never been more crucially a matter for public policy and democratic decision. The contemporary role of SciTech in maintaining the nation's security, economy, environment, health and intellectual vitality is indisputable" (Kevles, 2003). At an even deeper level, important elements of 21st century technology accent our intellectual vitality, the cornerstone role of "computing" in its most generic sense as intelligence enabler and magnifier for both the sciences and the arts. It is also important to see that this significance is not a new role. Technology for thinking appeared early in human history and has been expanded on ever since. From this perspective, literacy itself could be seen in a new light as the capacity to use our collection of tools for thinking at any age of human history.
Early in the 21st century, basic knowledge of computer designs, trends and history is essential to an even deeper examination of the relationship between education and such intellectual inventions. With it, we can more broadly consider the important issue of how the general concept of "computer" as process (not hardware) and the nature of thinking have interacted through human history. What is especially important for educators around the world is knowing not just the history of the parts and pieces of "hardware and software" through the ages, but seeing how the role of the parts and pieces in each of four major generations of technology served as foundation for accommodating new levels of thinking and advancement in human history. To best follow the trajectory of such innovation and take advantage of what is to come requires a wide range of basic knowledge.
These thoughts set the stage for later consideration of other questions. If such a computing trajectory is embraced, what work must still be done to better assimilate the current and future capacity of computer technology into education and in turn enhance the value of computer technology? What issues has such development created that require new policy and new decisions? Why? What is there about our species that has propelled us through such radical developments? Does our teaching and educational system make the most of these virtuoso capacities of the human species?
Required reading: A Brief Timeline in the History of Computers . This "Brief Timeline..." review of the history of computers is a relatively short list of important dates and facts. Note that for almost every item in the timeline there is a link to a single picture or a set of relevant pictures in Google's image database. Having viewed the set of Google images, more about any single item using the same search term can be found among web pages by clicking the Web tab on the same Google search page. Your goal is to give this a quick read, not visit every image link. After you have read through this Brief Timeline list, return to the next paragraph. |
The historical meaning of the word computer is different from today's use of the term. The historical meaning is more important to educators and gets at the fundamental value of the current use of the term. The very term "computer" implies that its central role is computation (e.g., calculation). An important element of calculation is information sequencing, which also involves storage and prediction. To focus on mathematical functions would miss other important underlying concepts of what humans have chosen to build into computing systems. Though most histories of the computer begin with the abacus around 400 B.C., even this long view is short-sighted. From the dawn of our species, we have sought to extend the power of not only our muscles and senses, but the power of the brain to solve problems, that is, to think. These problems include both recalling information by storing it in a certain way and using stored information to understand, to speculate on or calculate (e.g., predict) what will happen in the future or even to experiment, to poke the future just to see what will happen. This may involve specialized mathematics and it may not.
Though the common use of the word calculate generally means dealing with mathematical operations, there is another meaning. A calculating person is someone who can make things for a deliberate purpose, based on specific designs. Time and again our brain has accommodated then assimilated (Piaget, 1969) a wide range of intellectual developments. From this perspective, it was the human ability to extend this kind of calculating thought that brought the species forward. A review of past changes in calculating capacity further expands what it means to be a human being.
Well confirmed scientific evidence about human history can be used to support four major generations of intellectual and technical developments. The first deals with the spatial knowledge of movement, handedness and tool making. The second is language and speech. The third is writing and reading. The fourth is computer technology. Knowledge of these four generations is important for educators that seek to understand what human minds are capable of so that they can seek the best in each individual.
Our spatial intelligence is one of the many remarkable features of today's homo sapiens. The capacity for curiosity in all organisms, combined with our hominid capacity for movement and manipulation, led to two kinds of spatial thinking. The first is an intelligence about geographic space, beyond what even the eye can see at one time, and second, hand space, what we can control in our hands and arms. Our curiosity and our bipedal capacity for walking upright moved ancient hominid ancestors and eventually homo sapiens over extensive areas of the earth. To thrive in such conditions, the species needed to constantly make mental maps of resources including shelter and food. In later generations of thinking this led to a growing array of tools for survival, including the likely drawing and sharing maps even if only drawn in the sand. The map to the right shows the evidence of the extensive hominid migration patterns some 50,000 years ago, at the edge of the time of the explosive disapora that pushed the human species outward from Africa and around the globe. This map image is linked to a migration atlas that covers a much longer period of time. The orange circles on the map are clickable links to related pieces of information. This work is the product of a joint National Geographic and IBM genetic study and part of a web site titled the Landmark Study of the Human Journey.
Long before homo sapien migration, the evolutionary developments of handedness and thinking led to the
pebble axes of homo habilis over 2.6 million years ago. 
Home habilis showed
a strong capacity for spatial and sequential thinking that continued to grow as the
species advanced. Some 164,000 years ago, complex compound tools were being used (Stringer & McBrearty, 2007) which required the development of precise
and extensive sequential and spatial thinking (NPS: Stories
Rocks Tell). Some 90,000 years ago stone tool kits began to appear. The creation of a single sophisticated
stone tool might have required as many as 250 separate actions. Thus a
non-oral language of gesture and action emerged along with the creation
of this ancient technology.
A non-oral language of demonstration and performance would have been used
for hundreds of thousands of years to educate the next generation to keep 
from losing what they had learned as well as to build on it. From the broader
perspective of the term calculate, people were the first computers, and
non-oral language and hand-tools from the axe to the abacus emerged as the first generation
of technology that extended human thinking.
Today, this spatial area of intellectual capacity is refined under the categories of geographic information systems (GIS) and engineering. Handedness thinking depends not only on eye-hand coordination but on spatial awareness, a trait which some have to a far greater degree than others. Sophisticated tool making designed by engineers, such as the space station on right, remains a hallmark of the thinking of our species (NASA: Space Telerobotics Program). Sadly, in public school curriculum this virtuoso human capacity to engineer is the most neglected of the four generations of human thinking, an absence in U.S. culture that has contributed to the formation of the STEM Education Coalition and the expansion of science-math centers in colleges of education.
The absence of public school science and mathematics knowledge tied to engineering activity contrasts sharply with the significant economic, political and social role of engineering technology in current culture, but many groups are actively pursuing solutions. For example, the FIRST League created a sports-like curriculum with annual themes and hands-on creativity. (To play the video, click the picture on the left, then the "click for video" link; see youtube search for more). 
It currently consists of: the Junior First Lego League for ages 6-9; FIRST Lego League ages 9-14, pictures); and the high school divisions of FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST Robotics (pictures). Each state has its state competition for the different leagues with the state winners going on to national competition in Atlanta, Georgia. For example, North Carolina had some 60 Lego Robotics teams from across the state competing at Greensboro on December 1, 2007. Many state universities are recognizing such activity with college scholarships for active high school participants.
Spatial knowledge comes in many ways. The application 
called Google Earth (wikipedia) might be the most widely used sophisticated example of GIS software available to the general public and classroom use (see Google Earth screen shot on the left, linked to its web site). Google Earth cannot be seen from web pages. It is a separate application, though free, that must be downloaded and installed on a personal computer. It is an Internet application whose use depends on having good Internet access. Fortunately, map reading and making are still skills taught in our schools.
What percentage of today's curriculum and classroom time fosters first generation thinking skills? Should this change? Why? What school curriculums are available that address this neglected area of first generation thinking intelligence?
Second generation technology grew from the first generation needs for better communication and better idea development. The next major thinking technology was the invention of speech and other forms of symbolic thought. Anthropological science has indicated that 50,000 to 30,000 years ago a creative leap occurred in human culture, showing significant advances in art, music, religious expression and tool-making. Genetics markers in the DNA shows that this occurred in parallel with a great outward migration from East Africa leading to the populating of Australia, China, Europe and the Americas (Mayell, 2003; Wells, 2003). Symbolic thinking, important to both art and language, makes its appearance in the creations of people during this time. Moving populations that were dealing with constant environmental change had a tremendous need for such innovation. Anthropology professor Richard G. Klein (2002) hypothesizes that genetic mutation may have made this possible. Oxford researchers have identified a gene that when damaged creates people who "struggle to comprehend spoken or written language, even though they usually score in the normal range on tests of nonverbal intelligence" (Leslie, 2002). Further genetic research has begun to identify the specific genes which underwent significant change which coincided with this and other giant leaps in human intellectual capacity (Evans, 2005). How many genes were involved is not yet known, but it can be determined that the mutated gene called microcephalin which controls aspects of brain growth began its spread among humans around 37,000 years ago. It is also know that the accommodating changes in the brain become noticeable in the fossil skull record around 20,000 years ago coinciding with the growth in the size of the Sylvian fissure and especially Broca's area (speech) in the brain. This changes suggest that oral language development was becoming of even greater significance to humans at that time.
Today, some still find speaking impossible or difficult. Selective mutism (http://www.selectivemutism.org/) occurs in some 7 out of 1000 cases. Though more common in children before 3rd grade, it does affect adults as well. Various surveys over the years also show that public speaking does not come easily as children mature, that many adults rate fear of public speaking greater than their fear of death itself. In addition to speaking anxieties, there are other speech communication disorders that are developmental and neurological.
The creation of verbal language might be thought of as our
second level
of technologies which came after non-oral language and hand tools
(NPS: Wind Cave Camping). The
creation of oral language is also a technology that stores information
and procedures, but stores them in words. "If you do this, then that will
happen." Language skills were undoubtedly nourished and extended over time
through countless campfires. Through words people can even better communicate
cause and effect relationships and more. Today, skills with speech and public
speaking remain a critical feature of democratic life (NARA: Exhibit
Hall). Oral language and other
symbolisms represents
a second generation of thinking technology.
What percentage of today's curriculum and classroom time fosters second generation thinking skills? Should this change? Why? Which parts of current curriculum support and foster this area?
The creation of symbol based information systems from 17,000 B.C. forward
was a critical step in the creation of today's computers.
Early forms of
information notation began with a collection of pebbles or simple notches on
sticks for counting. Later, reindeer and
other carved bones, referred to as "batons" by archeologists, were used to keep
elaborate notes (CalState:
MesoAmerican Art). These carvings kept track of things such as social
events, the lunar calendar, the sequence of the appearance of different species
during the year, and used art forms to remember other ideas whose social details
we seldom can decipher.
From 12,000 to 700 B.C. the technology of storing ideas moved from
scratching on bone and stone to scratching on clay, skins, parchment and
paper.
Writing systems appeared some 6,000 years ago along with the emergence of Mesopotamia, the first significant civilization.
The alphabet emerges around 700 B.C. Genetic research provides further evidence of brain evolution as the results of such cultural pressure (Tang, 2006). About 5,800 years ago the gene ASPM (abnormal spindlelike microcephaly-associated) began its migration through the human species (Mekel-Bobrov, 2005) further helping to accelerate the growth of the brain. The new writing technology enabled the storage of more complex reasoning skills such
as the mathematical thinking of the ancient Greek called Archimedes whose
mathbook is on the left (RIT: Mathbook
of Archimedes).
Writing technologies represents a third generation of thinking technology.
Human beings created stored sequences of information for others to follow.
When thinkers used alphabet letters they were writing and when they used
Arabic and other notation systems for numerals, that is mathematics, they were
using the more narrow definition of computing.
The skills of this age do not come easily to all either. All cultures still have varying degrees of adults who struggle with literacy skills. For some it is insufficient education. For others, some 3 to 8 percent of the population suffer from reading disorders such as dyslexia. Disorders impact not only reading, but writing and arithmetic thinking as well.
From the abacus at the edge of prehistory around 400 B.C. and into the 1940s, "computer" was a term that increasingly applied to a human being, especially to a person who computed, that did mathematical computations or calculations for a variety of needs and businesses from small shops to large banks, insurance companies and more. That is, the origins of the term and its later electronic computer function was for almost three thousand years mathematical. Both the primary meaning and the function of the concept of computers was tied to mathematical calculation done by human beings.
Each wave of innovation in human culture comes with social consequences.
There are fears about what will be lost, active resistance to change,
and bold experimenters that push new ideas into uses that are impractical
or uses that outright fail. These changes can be painfully disruptive to
people's feelings, ethics, health and economic systems. Effective debate
over change requires respectful consideration of everyone's ideas.
That
a supporter of a technique or idea loses the debate on some innovation
does not mean they were less intelligent or less capable. For example,
no one questions the intellectual ability of Socrates in ancient Greece
(469 - 399 B.C., picture on left) , who argued against writing as destructive of the ability
to remember, and chose to remain illiterate while his pupil Plato (427-347 B.C., picture
on right) used writing to help him create some of the finest philosophical
thinking of all time. In more recent times in the 1800's, when
Sequoia,
a Cherokee Indian, invented writing in the Cherokee language, members of his tribe
burned down his home and writing workshop. It should be noted that Sequoia
eventually prevailed and the Cherokee rapidly took to writing in their
own language.
When involved in such debates about change and the future, participants must be careful not to attack the person, but to critically and creatively think about the new idea, to reflectively weigh the potential losses and gains, to look for opportunities to test ideas that have a chance of being useful and to determine their merits through experimentation where possible.
What percentage of today's curriculum and classroom time fosters third generation thinking skills? Should this change? Why?
With the creation of electronic computers in the 1940's, a fourth generation of thinking technology appeared. The meaning of computer shifted from a person to a machine. Where third generation thinking technology required human presence for the thinking to be carried out, fourth generation technology could operate more independently of humans, just like motors and other machines. The three prior generations of thinking technology were all critical steps to the creation of computer technologies and the fourth generation. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, digital computer technologies increasingly influence major elements of the economy, the military, the environment and medicine (Maier et al, 2002). Fourth generation thinking technology has also brought about three transformations in thinking culture. These changes can be thought of as calculation, communication, and composition. The changes they represent should and will impact future visions for school curriculum and its management and organization.
Computer technology has transformed the nature of calculation. This work is done by the three majors parts of a computer: the CPU or central processing unit; RAM/ROM or memory ; and I/O or input/output. The more recent electronic or digital calculation ability with both computers and calculators has led to extraordinary revolutions in thinking about science and life in general. What previously would have taken several lifetimes to calculate could be done in seconds. The most notable discovery that came from this mathematical and scientific work with computers was an understanding of the value of nonlinear relationships. Nonlinearity involved such numerous and repetitive calculations that they were not pursued by those who could only work with pencil and paper in the early 1900's. Work done on computers in the 1960's began to show that the tiniest of changes in an interactive system can have serious long term consequences. Small changes are not simply lost in the average of the actions of others. The more interactive the system the more rapidly new developments in a system could occur. The electronic computer was critical to the changing of this perspective; it became a kind of complexity scope that enabled researchers to see what was not even envisioned or predicted. However, it should not be overlooked that there is perhaps no system more interactive with itself and others of its type than the human brain. In the 1980's the popular term for nonlinearity became chaos and chaos theory, concepts which have evolved to transform our view of life and approach to research in every field of serious study. Entire fields of study have grown up around computational mathematics and nonlinearity. Applying such capacity to new areas of study, such as genetics and the study of the brain to name just two, suggest that significant opportunity remains for new revelations.
With the development of the concept of computer networking between computers that began in the 1960's the computer could also be seen in a new light. In 1969 the first host computer was connected and by the end of the year 4 host computers were connected together in a network called ARPANET. The first public demonstration of ARPANET occurred at the International Computing Conference in 1972 (Leiner et al., 2003). ARPANET eventually evolved into the Internet. The new view saw the computer as a communication device that could eventually be competitive with other communication networks such as printing, telephone, radio and television networks. Prior to the year 1994 only government and educational institutions and their employees were allowed to use the Internet. By 1994, the commercialization of the Internet began and use exploded. Commercialization allowed the explosion of Internet use to continue unabated to all social groups on the planet along with significant innovation in the types and quality of services. Some might argue that the Internet is not a computer and therefore should not be on the list of significant events in the history of computers. Others could respond that this view does not recognize that the Internet has become the world's largest computer and that the network is more important than any individual computer. This does not remove the meaning of calculation from the definition of a computer, but it does further add the significant new meaning of computer as communication device. Furthermore, the World Wide Web which runs on this network has created a universal standard or language for the sharing of text and characters. This addition also changes an important psychological perspective about computers, that they are centralized authorities that dictate precise directions about what should happen next. Instead, the nonlinear nature of the World Wide Web has functionally created a kind of self-organizing chaos where no individual uses the system to dominate, or rather everyone uses the system to put their ideas to the test of global distribution yet no one person can control everyone through it. This opening of the market of ideas is a quiet but powerful revolution with serious capacity to change the future.
Another trend has emerged that is also transforming the meaning of the term computer, composition. From the beginning of the first calculating devices, computers were used for the composition or creation of mathematical ideas. As computers became more sophisticated, the use of the computer for other types of composition spread. In 1975 the first word processor was made available. Games, simulations and other activities were also being created in the 1970s.
Today, in this fourth generation of thinking tools, it is difficult
to find any area of human creativity in which the computer is not used
to support both the process of creation and its display or communication.
This includes the more common categories of image, sound, music, animation,
video, virtual reality and electronic sensors and remote control devices.
Increasingly those inspired to creative thinking reach first for their
computer instead of a pencil, pen or brush.
The computer may only help
to develop the rough draft of an idea or might be essential to its completion.
As computers increasingly become "digital hubs" that connect an array of
computing hardware devices, they also become digital hubs for an array
of types of composition (Apple: Digital Hub). The network in turn connects these digital
hubs (both technical and composition) through forms of digital communication
which can reach across the globe in seconds, creating a
higher level hub for finding, framing and solving problems. Such
developments suggest many transformative chances to reinvent and rethink.
Changing the nature of human goal setting or of a "book" or changing the meaning
of "composer" are brief examples of the options in the twenty-first century.
As with other prior ages of thinking, this age too must content with its own anxieties compounded with others, including computer and math anxiety. Though no specific disorder related to computer technology has emerged, as digital technology is a further synthesis of of all ages of thinking technology that have gone before it, prior concerns such as speaking anxieties and dyslexia apply here as well. Educators must keep these concerns in mind as digital technologies continue to spread across curriculum areas.
There was a time in which multiple diverse technologies or machines were required in each of these three areas: calculation, communication and composition. Now one, digital technology, increasingly takes the place of a multitude machines. Where an educational system now uses paper technology to focus on the literacy of writing and reading, the emerging educational system uses digital computer technology to redefine and teach calculation, communication and composition in new ways. The skills of the three C's are in turn applied to the goal of processing human problems using the three P's, problem finding, problem framing and problem solving.
The future of the human race is somehow tied in important ways to this application of calculation, communication and composition to finding and solving problems in our fourth generation of thinking technology. Friedman's best selling book, The World is Flat, is now being widely read by educators. These thinking technologies have used fiber optics and the World Wide Web to create a "flat world" (Friedman, 2007) where the competitive and collaborative barriers between all continents are effectively gone. Learners and entrepreneurs around the globe are pouring into this conceptual space.
What will emerge from this synthesis or rather how we will emerge from our synthesis of these concepts is still evolving. What is striking about this emerging synthesis within computer technology is the comprehensiveness, the depth of its involvement with so many facets of what it means to be human and thinking. Such integration cannot help but to have profound effects on the nature of education and learning in the years ahead. This makes these major aspects of digital technology extremely important to keep in mind as educators design curriculum that further integrates computer technology use with the processes of teaching, learning and thinking.
The profound nature of such changes has been noted by many. "Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new technology does not merely add something; it changes everything" (Postman, 1992). In human history, this has happened over and over. To grasp how significant a new technology can become to a culture and its educational system, imagine a school without instruction in and use of reading and writing. They existed. Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, certainly benefited much from such a pre-text literacy system. We also all have some comprehension of how much the third generation invention of writing transformed the world. Next imagine a school in which networked computer technology is as common as the technology for reading and writing. What will the Socrates of the Internet era contribute to human culture? Whether such development is for the better or the worse depends on the actions educators take today.
These thinking technology generations should not be thought of as epochs in which the start of a new one is the end of the last. Each new generation of thinking technology continued to impact the development of the prior generations and vice versa. Writing still co-exists with speech and tool making. Digital technology continues this trend. In numerous ways the digital age continues the development and the mixing of all four of these generations. Digital technology continually improves the tools that we make and use with our hands, part of the first generation of thinking technology. Through computer networks, new opportunities to use first generation gesture and 2nd generation speech continue. Through computer applications, every form of third generation writing is being enhanced and transformed with new forms of composition. Further, every generation of computer technology is used to enhance the next step in the computer technology of the fourth generation of thinking technology.
Why? There are research indications that the brain is still evolving (Balter, 2005; Evans, 2005; Mekel-Bobrov, 2005). Left to your personal speculation and group discussion is consideration of why our species continues to press forward with new forms for information and thought. Further, presuming that this trend will continue, how best can we educate our citizens to put this capacity to best use? Would the most effective curriculum balance and accent all four generations of thinking or just one? What inferences could one draw from this knowledge for changes in state curriculum competencies and college general education and liberal studies programs? Could a fifth generation of thinking technology be emerging and can educators prepare for it or assist in its emergence?
Looked at over the long range of the history our species and its biology, some of these thinking developments have had time to be incorporated at the structural and cellular level of our bodies (e.g., handedness and learning language), and other intellectual developments have not, though we persist in spite of the difficulty they cause many. For example, dyslexia is the term for major difficulty in dealing with the third generation technologies of reading and writing (Shaywitz, 2003). Some one in five children have some degree of dyslexia (Gorman, 2003). Further, computer and math anxiety are established fourth generation concepts in the educational literature. Such cultural needs and pressures may have preceded and stimulated the emergence of the genetic changes that led to handedness and the capacity for language learning. If so, then one could predict that the emergence of cyberspace with its attendant computer and math anxieties will stimulate new genetic changes in the brain leading to a new leap in human thinking capacity.
The fourth generation distinguishes itself from the three prior ages of thinking technology with its pace of change. Like the exponentially upward moving graph to the left, what began as a slow assent in knowledge and technical capacity over tens of thousands of years, has become a rocket ride of innovation and change. This development merged with the World Wide Web has led to the saying that one human year equals seven Internet years. Moore's Law, Bandwidth Scaling Law, Metcalf's Law and Reed's Law are just some of the accelerating major trends in the capacity and integration of our digital tools and information systems (Houghton, 2008). Such change has created ongoing cultural earthquakes of varying intensities. "We are living in exponential times" (Fisch, 2006).
Our current situation then with computer technology is part of deep historical trends. Having this awareness of these human drives will put us in a position to better think about where our culture is moving and where educators should be leading it with advances in digital thinking technology. In later readings, a review of current trends with our fourth generation thinking technology will provide another level of depth in comprehending the nature of the information technology wave. As a further summary of the wave in the world on which so many are riding, see the inspirational 6 minute video by Karl Fisch, Did You Know? at the youtube.com site.
Bibliography
Balter, et al. (September 9, 2005). Evolution: Are Human Brains Still Evolving? Brain Genes Show Signs of Selection, Science 2005 309, Issue 5741, 1662-1663.
Evans, Patrick D. et al. (9 September 2005). Microcephalin, a Gene Regulating Brain Size, Continues to Evolve Adaptively in Humans. Science, Vol 309, Issue 5741, 1717-1720. Available September 9, 2005 at http://0-www.sciencemag.org.wncln.wncln.org/cgi/content/full/309/5741/1717
Fisch, Karl (2006). Did you know? http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/08/did-you-know.html
Friedman, Tom (2007). The World is Flat. F arrar, Straus and Giroux.
Gorman, Christine (July 28, 2003). The New Science of Dyslexia. Time, 53-59.
Houghton, Robert S. (2008). Major trends of the fourth age of computing that impact educational planning. http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/EDELCompEduc/Ch1/technology_trends.html
Kevles, Daniel J. (August 1, 2003). SciTech: The Forces are with Us. The Chronicle of Higher Education, B11-12.
Klein, Richard (2002). Dawn of Human Culture. New York: Wiley & Sons.
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Leslie, Mitchell (2002). Suddenly Smarter. Stanford Magazine. http://stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2002/julaug/features/anthro.html
Maier, Pauline; Smith, Merritt Roe ; Keyssar, Alexander ; & Kevles, Daniel J. (2002). Inventing America: A History of the United States. New York: W.W. Norton.
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Mayell, Hillary (2003). Documentary Redraws Humans' Family Tree. National Geographic. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1212_021213_journeyofman.html
Wells, Spencer (2003). The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Princeton University Press.
Wells, Spencer (2003). The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, DVD. National Geographic.
Online SUP/FAQ examples. Read the following question and then click the links to read responses. Prior course participants read the question and responded using the online question and answer system provided by Yahoo Answers: What percentage of today's curriculum and classroom time fosters fourth generation thinking skills? Should this change? Why? Same question - different group of responders: What percentage of today's curriculum and classroom time fosters fourth generation thinking skills? Should this change? Why? How Yahoo Answers works. Once a question is created, the question and responses to it form a persistent web address that can be linked to existing web pages. Students from one year can read comments that other students have left. However, with Yahoo Answers once a question is submitted, only 3 days are allowed before new responses are blocked. This regulation helps make the point system for contributors to be more effective, but it also creates a problem as it prevents students from a much later date from adding their own thoughts.
The CROP site tracks a wide range of QnA systems. |
Last Updated September 9, 2007 | Bibliography | History Index | Chapter 1 | Page author: Houghton
