di: di Digest, Vol 97, Issue 1

[Charles Arthur]

I must agree.  Good idea.  Much needed.  


Charles Arthur
Founder: Arthur Academy Charter School
Early Child Literacy Consultant
arthurreadingworkshop.com 
971-544-7341
The most effective reading programs  carefully structure instruction around mastery of small learning increments that leads to student proficiency of advanced applications and higher student self-esteem.


> On Sep 22, 2020, at 12:00 PM, di-request at lists.uoregon.edu wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>   1.  Tough love for the DI community (Christopher Duss)
> 
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2020 19:51:47 +0900
> From: Christopher Duss <duss.christopher at gmail.com>
> To: di at lists.uoregon.edu
> Subject: di: Tough love for the DI community
> Message-ID: <8988433B-4D67-426E-BA9F-DD0520501151 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> ?Dear DI Community,
> 
> I have been a member of this forum and daily user of DI products for a few years now.
> I have now spent hundreds of hours developing supplemental materials (practice videos, progress checksheets for better parent communication, etc.) for the Language For Learning program, as I found it to be the only program necessary to teach beginning learners English. Given the vested interest I have in this program surviving and thriving amid the development of other effective learning resources, I have some comments about the state of the DI community that I would like to share.
> 
> First of all, it gives me no joy to have to say these things. I had hoped that Zig?s passing would spark a renewed interest in his work and passion for further developing the programs he invented. What has seemed to happen instead is those very programs dying with their creator. By sharing the following I hope to invigorate the response I expected or at least expose where I am wrong in my thinking.
> 
> In short, we are falling short from a user experience perspective. 
> 
> Let me start with this forum. I am aware that there is some consideration within NIFDI about improving this, but we can?t hope to promote these programs and the collaboration necessary to improve them via the current e-mail forum construct. We have to move this to a webpage online at the very least. Only then can we properly warehouse past discussions in an accessible way and incentivize regular contribution. Quora, Gear Slutz, Adobe/Dell/Microsoft product support come to mind as effective forum systems. Less fancy and developer-intensive frameworks can be implemented cheaply in Wordpress. We may also be able to piggyback on existing software by setting up a Stack Exchange community or subreddit.
> 
> Now the programs. I am currently using Funnix, Language For Learning and DISE. They are all aging but Funnix is the worst. I have heard there is an update coming soon, and I am looking forward to it. As product developers and implementers we must seek continual improvement. If we don?t improve, someone else will and their product will replace ours. The fact that it has taken almost 20 years to get v2 of Funnix does make me question how good it is. Language For Learning and DISE could both be Apps (mobile or otherwise). We should keep our minds oriented to the best user experience possible. For these programs that would be NO teacher interaction and students acquire the program skills. How do we get there? 
> 
> I have ideas, some expertise with executing the above programs, some software tools that could help. I imagine many of the thousands of DI teachers around the world do, but we don?t have the right venue yet to hear their voices. I think the first step is to create a great forum, then allow that to grow into a place where we share supplemental materials, expertise and ideas to make these programs better and better. I am interested in hearing from others about what our priorities should be at this juncture. 
> 
> I believe there is still enough energy in this community to move DI to a more prominent place in the education world, but feel we are at dire risk of allowing that to slip beyond where we will be able to recover.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Chris
> 
> 
> 
> End of di Digest, Vol 97, Issue 1
> *********************************

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