Record: Emilia Șipoș, Laura-Nicoleta Ivanciu, and Tudor Cotta, “Easy-E-Home Schooling in Electronic Devices and Circuits” in Journal Plus Education 12A (2015): 35-41. [Article]
Summary: Șipoș, Ivanciu, and Cotta are from the Bases of Electronics Department at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. They designed a program called Easy-E, which they describe as, “a comprehensive instrument for home schooling in electronic devices and circuits, as it provides theoretical knowledge, active learning through examples, and testing through randomly generated questions” (pg. 40).
The authors start with a brief introduction to computer assisted learning and testing. Students find computer assisted learning and testing attractive because it is flexible. Furthermore, these technologies can be very helpful to students with physical and sensory impairments because students can learn without physically attending class.
Easy-E is designed to teach basic electronics and circuits to homeschooled/impaired students. The program is split into two parts: active learning and testing. Active learning contains chapters and subchapters to teach and practice information. Testing, as the name implies, consists of randomly-generated multiple-choice tests.
Appraisal: The Easy-E program is fine for what it is, and as support for homebound students with various physical limitations it seems especially valuable. But this article itself is of minimal use to the homeschooling community as it lacks much of anything by way of actual scholarship. It’s mostly just a description of Easy-E that reads more like advertising copy than academic study.
Along the way the article does, however, demonstrate the dangers of blindly accepting technology. The authors often make bold claims without properly supporting them. For example, “Another major advantage of using computer assisted learning and testing is that it enhances the development of critical and creative thinking, which is not a priority for traditional learning methods.” (p. 35) Where did they come up with such a view? There is no citation, and the conclusion is by no means demonstrated by their own research. What is certain is that both traditional and virtual learning have strengths and weaknesses, and their numerous forms cannot be captured accurately by glittering generalities like those the authors enjoy making.
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