Getting Started, part 2

[Michael Chow]

generously recommended in response to my previous
posting. I am thinking about leaving public education
to start my own school, utilizing a lot of computer
based tools to provide individualized instruction. 

I realize that most of the ACT-R work is focused on
math and programming applications. Is there any
general consensus in the ACT-R community on the
application of the model to language learning? I am
familiar with the writings of McWhinney and Klahr and
vaguely familiar with the CMU LISTEN project. Is
LISTEN built on a production rule model? 

On a theoretical note, in "The Atomic Components of
Thought", it states, "ACT-R is basicly a hybrid
architecture that has a subsymbolic level performing
connectionist-like computations." Is this still the
prevaling view? Has there been any further work on
ACT-RN since then? 

With the cognitive math tutors, is there an API to the
underlying functionality that allows me to modify or
replace the UI? I have many years of experience
building UI toolkits and I would like to be able to
tune the interface for each student.

I've had the most success introducing middle school
students to programming by having them build LOGO/LEGO
models and I elaborate on concepts as they trip over
them. I then follow up with more formal explanation
and skill practice. I'd like to build a cognitive
tutor that somehow integrates these building projects.
Any ideas would be appreciated.  



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