Eyes On : Roger Schank

In the mid 1980s, the course of longtime educator Roger Schank’s career changed forever.  A professor of computer science and Artificial Intelligence (AI), he radically shifted focus when his own children began their careers as students.  His professional work up to that point had been devoted to developing a successful system by which computers could be programed to learn.  When his children entered the education system he noticed that, while he was trying to teach computers how to learn, the schools were merely teaching his children how to pass.  Schank became increasingly horrified with how little learning actually occurred in these supposedly “educational” environments and devoted the rest of his life to correcting this fundamental problem.  The solution, he believes, is learning with computers.

Continue reading