Thanks, Bill Ferriter, for keeping a discussion about scripted instruction going. Bill argues that scripted curricula have a place in classrooms. His statements have drawn comments, including disagreements.

Teachers can consider Mobile PC education software as a form of scripted curricula for a classroom. Teachers disagree about the utility of any scripts in classrooms.

Two sets of ideas come to mind while reading his posts and other educators' follow-up comments: Mobile PC Interests and About Scripted Classrooms.

Mobile PC Interests

Education is arguably one of the largest unsaturated markets for mobile PC equipment and software. This market will be difficult to penetrate without knowing the language, logic, and values of teachers. In the long run, teachers, not administrators, boards of education, et al. control the effectiveness and efficiency of student learning, however anyone measures that outcome.

Tablet PC, Ultra-Mobile PC and other mobile PC education software developers and publishers, as well as equipment designers, engineers and manufacturers, both independents and corporates, large and small, should monitor Bill's and similar blogs (such as Nancy Flanagan's and Renee Moore's). These blogs provide a basis for formulating industry focus group questions. They provide a different slant on classroom reality, openness, and barriers from questions generated through industry interests frequently used in market focus groups and industry conferences for educators.

These blogs represent an ongoing streaming sample (a cohort?) of thinking and commitments by opinion makers among (mostly public school) teachers that public policy makers listen to. A few of the million plus education blogs are written by skilled, thoughtful, accomplished, teachers. Some might call them "master teachers," although I'd prefer a PC neutral descriptor, if I could think of one at the moment. Bill and colleagues arguably rank among the masters.

At some point, education software and equipment promoters will encounter ideas like those expressed on Bill's and similar blogs.

In some cases, the software industry will find hints based on patterns of blog comments about what Tablet PC and other mobile PC programs and equipment teachers will likely use; what they will not use in their classrooms, because they conflict with other commitments, regardless of what empirical data and others say; and what teachers do not consider relevant to fulfilling their classroom duties.

About Scripted Classrooms

When teaching as well as when preparing and observing teachers, I consider these things about teachers using scripts in classrooms. Scripts identify patterns of actions by teachers. I look for patterns each teacher uses to offer each student something to learn.

Patterns, sometimes called scripts, provide ways for identifying rational, ongoing, measurable and informal evaluations of the efficiency of teaching a lesson. They are one part of the teach-test-reteach-retest-... paradigm of knowledge and skill transmission expected of all teachers.

Most good teachers, however you choose to define them, use repeatable patterns, sometimes called scripts, protocols, checklists, procedures, methods, and other reminders about how to sequence parts of a lesson. Lesson plans are crude scripts, even when drafted in defiance of a teachers preference. Some scripts allow more ad libbing than other patterns.

Scripts provide ways for teachers to offer more efficient learning than without them, which in turn means students can learn more in the same block of time and with the same effort. They allow teachers to use what others have done to yield X learning without having to reinvent ways to the result. I think these are strong, humane positive reasons for using scripts.

Direct Instruction (DI) (referenced on Bill's blog) is only one of many kinds of scripts, some identified by label, some by inference from procedures people use. DI uses a formal, repeatable pattern of human interaction drawn from non-school life, with a rational, sequenced body of conventional academic content (such as math, science, and standard English). These patterns existed in and out of schools before Bereiter and Engelmann brought them into schools, and continue in use. You'll likely encounter direct instruction when you take a course in real estate sales, or for using a medical procedure, for example.

DI has existed as a copywrited procedure in several versions since the mid 1960s, and likely is at least found in all teacher prep introductory methods classes. It has spawned uncounted refinements of more instructional procedures than documents indicate.

At the very least, teachers use it as a reference for "what I'm not doing." That's reasonable.

I know no zealots of DI, and many distractors, although I know the originators, have used DI and have seen unusually rapid learning results, as with other protocols such as Try Another Way and S-R programs.

A more recent than DI entrant to schools may also draw cautious reviews by educators. That's Direct Learning software, such as MathPractice for use on mobile PCs and Vista operating systems.

DL's use does not require a teacher as mediator between information and learner. It presents, tests, represents, ... , records, etc. automatically.

More such software and PCs are on the way to classrooms, partly because teachers have, probably unintentionally, opened a market for more efficient learning than through use of less efficient lessons.

A geometric rate of growth appears likely to continue in school electronic and human interface infrastructure in schools at least for two more decades.

As teachers, we will probably have to figure out how to work with these scripts also.

Thanks, again, Bill and others for sharing your ideas. It's good to see so much agreement.

Tablet PC Education Blog