Regarding the technical possibilities in 2014, this is an intelligent tutoring system that can interpret and respond to students’ spoken natural language dialogue.

Sure. This kind of natural language parsing has been around since Eliza in the 1960s:

If the student says something recognizable as the tutorial topic (e.g., “We made a circuit”), the system moves forward by asking the student what they know about the topic: You mentioned circuits. Can you tell me what a circuit is?

Maybe I haven’t been clear about the kind of interaction I’m talking about, the kind that’s impossible for all adaptive learning systems in 2014 (AFAIK).

T: “Pick any three consecutive whole numbers. Add them up. What do you notice?”
S: “All our sums are divisible by three.”
T: “Why do you think that is? Can you prove it’ll always happen?”
S: “Easy. There are three numbers so they’re divisible by three.”

A competent flesh-and-blood teacher knows what to do next and it isn’t to respond, “Tell me more about numbers that are divisible by three.”

http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2013-31542-001

I’m sorry I wrote 3 replies to this post–I should learn not to reply until I’ve gathered all my thoughts, but in this case I’m afraid I replied piecemeal.

We need to evaluate new technology in light of learning principles and student performance just like we do with print resources. And we can’t lump all adaptive learning together just like we can’t overgeneralize about all classrooms, all worksheets, or all schools.

There are crucial differences between adaptive learning platforms, of course, but there are valid and useful ways to lump those platforms together.

I’m happy to be corrected here but AFAIK no adaptive learning platform in 2014 can parse a student’s natural language conjecture and evaluate that conjecture as true or false.

That generalization may not be true for all time but in 2014 it’s a fair generalization. And a crucial one, since constructing and critiquing conjectures is one of those eight big things students are supposed to be doing in a CCSS math class.

Surely this is the real problem. Few teachers know or even attempt math as a social process.

That’s why this is a valuable blog for both futurists and practitioners.

Many print and digital learning resources — adaptive or otherwise — are designed so that lessons basically involve students being shown how to execute a particular skill that they then practice. It sounds like Scott has seen the negative impact of this design in one adaptive technology program — where if a student gets a practice problem wrong, the only prescription available for support is more of the same direct explanation repeated again. More cowbell. More Neil Diamond.

We need to evaluate new technology in light of learning principles and student performance just like we do with print resources. And we can’t lump all adaptive learning together just like we can’t overgeneralize about all classrooms, all worksheets, or all schools.