Monday, April 17, 2017

04.17.17



EDUSOFT

(a BL science fiction tale)

.01


Edusoft was designed to prepare us for life in the new century. Data driven, transparent, personalized, and infinitely flexible, it was a tween-ager’s dream. We could learn anything-anytime-anywhere by jacking our cerebral implants directly into the worldweb.
No schools.
No books. No bells.
We were in control.
Or so we thought. So the software would have us think.
Like a virus, the Edusoft program did what it was engineered to do: it adapted itself to its adolescent hosts. It evolved. It registered the high fructose content of our brain fluid and responded with cotton candy fluff. It read our low boredom threshold and countered by injecting elevated levels of undiluted novelty into our thought streams. History became parody, literature was reduced to a late-night monologue. Again, it was a tween-ager’s dream…and that was the problem.
We were entertained, engaged. Some say indulged. So that when the Blow-Up happened, none of us knew what to do. In a flashing instant we were awakened to a raw new reality without upgrade or reboot.
The computer program engineered to light our way into a bright future became our darkest downfall when the world we knew flickered offline.
We—those of us who remained civilized, remained sane—searched for stability among the rubble.
And we found it. Or we found them, rather, cloistered inside long-neglected buildings still standing in what had once been neighborhoods. They were human beings, those blinking and bespectacled creatures we rediscovered, forgotten yet somehow strangely familiar.
They had survived the blast. The walls, the same brick and mortar structures once reviled by experts and corporations and by politicians seeking to shirk funding, had protected them. There among desks and hallways, gymnasiums and libraries, they had formed a monastic order based on time-honored tenants of rigor and learning. Once obsolete, they had endured like medieval monks in a new dark age.
They welcomed us back into the classrooms.
They had hearts, hands. Names. Warmth. And they had tools, too, technology that could still be leveraged to meet our needs, but technology managed by human beings this time.
They called themselves Teachers.
And the philosophy they embraced, the pedagogy they advanced with its careful melding of human and digital interface, was an ancient idea born anew.
It was called Blended Learning.

4 comments:

  1. PLEASE tell me this is just the first installment of a series?! :)

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  2. Now that's an intriguing idea... Thanks for reading, Tricia!

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  3. Wow, Scott, wow. This is definitely your genre. In the vein of Philip Dick and Robert Heinlein.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the encouragement, Abydos friend!

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