The Didactron
Educators' Lives in a High-Tech Teaching-Learning Space ©
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Chapter Commentary
1. The Group Space
An exciting lecture on education needs by Professor Rostock in an ultra-sophisticated teaching facility.
2. Controls
His lecture is continued after the break. Recommendation 16 (encountered throughout the book) to students is to sue the university for failure to deliver on an educational contract.
3. The Barn
The setting of the post-lecture and "break" events including a students' podium where speeches are made. The barn-like atmosphere provides large wooden chimes used in an Ides of March event.
4. The Free
The associate dean's reaction to public lecture and Alternative 16 suggesting the university be sued.
5. The Shop
Helen Starity, recruiting staff, explains the controversial for-profit educational system. She claims people should only be educated when they contract for it. She bargains for one-third of a student's pay increase after being taught. No increase, no pay, because the education was worthless.
6. The Mutualists Projects
A professor is involved in teaching optimal sexual intercourse in the Didactron. His wife and a neighborhood family explore the meanings for themselves and others.
7. Cafeteria - I
A conservative business law professor attacks the proprietor of the Didactron's special 'book store' for sale of materials of the mutualist projects. He claims they are pornographic.
8. Curricula
The blood-letting of curriculum revisions is debated in committee and among colleagues. Small behavioral units replacing courses are a key concern. Also debated are cost effectiveness and the constraints on deciding what to teach and the implications of what students already know.
9. The Cafeteria II
Faculty involved with the mutualist conversations continue their discussions, this time about the importance of health and the totality of the intercourse event as a system.
10. Morrowspan
A guerilla force intent on infiltrating the ranks of the environmental agencies is created and unites with staff and facilities of the Didactron.
11. Devoid of Construct
The leader of the Didactron recruits a research director, shows off the facilities and presents the research agenda.
12. The Faculty Meeting
Given teacher evaluation, a faculty member proposes evaluating classes and then combining the evaluations.
13. The Heed
A system has been devised to monitor students in the classroom (heart rate, etc.) in order to assist the teacher and do research on behavioral change and learning resulting from the teacher's actions. The teacher is also "wired up" so students can see on an oscilloscope screen whether he is also sleeping and what might be done about it. The use is in a situation room with computer simulators.
14. The Workup
A comprehensive physical and psychological analysis of each student is conducted. Pressures are on for use of drugs to enhance learning and memory. Brain performance and the chemistry of learning are simply described as one faculty members seeks the goal -- cost-effective changed behavior and prevented losses.
15. The Mine
A restaurant within the Didactron is where the limits of current education are lamented and one despondent faculty member suggests he is being encouraged to pole vault 24 feet in a room with an 8 foot ceiling. He deals with the role of genetics and environment and suggests conventional teaching will not change broadscale social behaviors. He says teachers will never score better than 30% on evaluations by society. Their expectations are too great. Thirty percent is failure in anyone's book and he thinks that teaching must be viewed more broadly if the educational system will ever be a winner.
16. Restorative
The Didactron is proposed and activated as part of a state strategy to deal with prison inmate problems.
17. The Discussion Space
A theologian teaches in the unique conference room or discussion environment of the Didactron.
18. Untenured
Rostock's lecture in the group space and his proposal to cause the needed educational change by suing the university brought unexpected results. Tenured, he was skillfully un-tenured, demonstrating the poverty of the tenure concept in modern higher education and stresses within an optimum space.
19. The Student
The concepts of The Didactron and educational conflicts converge as the university prepares to be sued by students as suggested in Alternative 16 by a professor.
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Last revision March, 2009.