Comments on: Mentor Teaching Machines: The ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Textbooks

By: Teaching on The Finance World For News and Information Around The World On Finance » Mentor Teaching Machines: The ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’…

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:11:35 +0000

[...] Mentor Teaching Machines: The ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’… An Introduction to SI Metric and Applications of SI Metric, published by Mentor Textbook Teaching Machines of London, 1971. [...]

By: octavia

octavia — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:35:58 +0000

This concept is still around, in the form of interactive (usually computer-aided) learning environments. There’ve been several studies in the field of educational psychology about what kinds of feedback are most effective in helping students learn and retain what they’ve learned. E.g., is it more effective to give them instant or delayed feedback? Is it more effective to simply give them the correct answer when they get a question wrong, or make them try again until they get it right? For an example of this type of study, see Duane Lemley’s article in the Quarterly Review of Distance Education, titled “The Effects of Immediate and Delayed Feedback on Secondary Distance Learners.”

By: textbooks » Mentor Teaching Machines: The ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Textbooks

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:26:27 +0000

[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAt the time of the original post I mocked up how I remembered the pages looked - luckily, after a house move, I’m pleased to say I’ve now found the two textbooks I had, from 1971, and - after the jump - I’ve posted a set of photos to … [...]

By: Kaleberg

Kaleberg — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:27:13 +0000

I’ve never had a textbook like this, but the idea of programmed teaching texts was popular in the late 1960s. Popular Science had an article on it and had a set of in page boxes that you could follow and learn how to prove that the square root of two was irrational. The boxes were perhaps 1/8 or 1/4 page and each ended with a multiple choice question and a page number to go to. If you figured it out, or guessed right, it took you to the next step. If you had trouble, it directed you to a series of diagnostic pages. I suppose you could get caught in a loop, but, hey, that’s programming.

By: Vera

Vera — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:12:49 +0000

Hi Dan,

I hadn’t seen the earlier post (until now). What an excellent topic.

In your previous post which you linked to, you mentioned remembering how great it felt to ‘get’ something when you were a kid. Don’t we continue to feel that kick for the same reason regardless of our age?

The idea that this is for kids and students, an idea which unintentionally excludes the majority of the population, makes me wonder why we insist on seeing it this way.

I spend a good amount of energy focusing on the widening gap between ever more sophisticated technology and the non-tech user. This gap is easy to see through the simplification of UIs in social apps at present, with many developers frustrated by their inability to attract big numbers of non-tech boomers (for example), but it is in the so called semantic or next-generation development that I believe ignoring or even widening that gap will make the biggest difference.

Being a non-techie (who has learned enough to be dangerous :)), I find it amazingly frustrating to be almost always lumped into either the category of the oblivious and inept or invited into the developers’ area(s) where I can only function given a certain level of knowledge and experience. Sometimes I have that level and other times I don’t, but my point is that there are no paths laid out, let alone direct guidance, from the location of first group to that of the second. Anyway, all this is to say that some of the fundamental methodology illustrated here, if applied to creating user advancement tools, could make a big difference for a lot of people, not to mention adoption of your product if you’re a developer.

Vera

By: None of 3

None of 3 — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:03:01 +0000

An easily defeated one. Even pencil writing and erasure will rapidly wreck the paper. But of course there’s this nifty little gadget called the Xerox. And one little page for your own personal use only is surely fair use?

By: Bill Abel

Bill Abel — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:42:16 +0000

Duncan - that’s the first thing I noticed too. I don’t write in my books even with pencil.

Thanks for sharing the textbook Dan. That’s very interesting.

By: Duncan Drennan

Duncan Drennan — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 11:10:32 +0000

Did you ever consider that working in pen could be an “architecture of control” in itself? It renders the book unusable once completed. Pencil on the other hand can be erased and the book reused.