Money obviously commands more attention that children do. At least that’s certainly what it looks like as we take a stroll around the Internet.
When I go to Amazon.com, the site knows me. It anticipates my future tastes and purchases based on purchases I’ve made in the past and behaviors of other similar customers Amazon has encountered. Similarly, ITunes makes some pretty good guesses as to what I want to hear next by gleaning information from my past listening habits.
So why is there no academic site out there that offers a comprehensive K-12 math (or earth science, or spanish, or whatever) program that quickly learns where kids are at and immediately begins to take them through a progression of learning based on their zone of proximal development? Why are we still downloading worksheets from EdHelper or playing that infernal Math Baseball on Funbrain or watching videos on BrainPop instead of having a website that nails down, over time, that Johnny is a visual learner who is strong on the basic math facts but struggles with multi-step story problems and logic problems, and then works to cure it through targeted (visual!) practice?
Why, in a web 2.0 world for consumers, does the internet still look like a web 1.0 brochure in terms of academic opportunities for kids?
Posted by mpullen 
