Most sensible ideas about learning will come from building the artefacts

(credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook)

I came across this picture of Alan Kay via the Monday Note. Kay is a Turing award winner, and somebody who has thought more deeply than anybody else I know about learning, and the use of computers in learning. The picture was taken in 2008 but his Dynabook was developed in 1972. It does not take much imagination to realise the relation between the physical Dynabook and the iPad.  In academia ideas are almost everything — we prize them above all else for most types of work. But execution and product delivery matter as much is many domains. Ideas are cheap in education, but delivery is our main bottleneck. As Jean-Louis Gassee comments in a slightly different context: ‘We both understand that ideas are just ideas, they’re not actual products. As Apple has shown time and again — and most vividly with the 30-year old tablet idea vs. the actual iPad it’s the product that counts’. I think most sensible ideas about learning will come from building the artefacts.