Liza Loop





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About Liza Loop
See the 2-minute 2008 video interview of Steve Wozniak at http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3171. In this in interview, Wozniak indicates that he bought the first commercially-shipped Apple computer, and he gave it to Liza Loop to use in her elementary school teaching of students and teachers.

Liza Loop runs LO*OP Center, Inc., a nonprofit, public benefit organization incorporated in California in 1976. Aside from being a pun on her last name, LO*OP stands for Learning Options * Open Portal. "Learning Options" was inspired by her desire to create new ways for people of all ages to learn more effectively, sometimes with the aid of computing. "Open Portal" signifies the unlocked gateway to the learning options. Of course, since choosing the name, the computing and education industries have adopted the term "open" to indicate free or low cost educational materials and software. The term "portal" did and still does refer to the mechanism for connecting to a computer in addition to its use as place from which to launch ships and other things.

LO*OP Center's activities were not limited to computing. Quoting from an early LO*OP Center brochure:


 * Under Liza’s leadership, LO*OP Center Inc. has functioned as an educational R & D and training company since 1975. LO*OP, an acronym for "Learning Options * Open Portal," pioneered the introduction of microcomputers into school classrooms in the '70s, designed effective home computer documentation in the early '80s, promoted international citizen diplomacy in the '80s, and expanded to teach inter cultural communication in the late '90s. With the new millennium, LO*OP has focused in on ecological themes, sustainability and public science education in the NIS [former Soviet Union]. These activities reflect the changing social and technical context for learning and teaching brought about by worldwide demographic movement and socio-technical advancement.

Liza has created a Wiki Web site on LO*OP's current project, History of Computing in Learning and Education Virtual Museum [(HCLE)] This wiki serves as the "loading dock", "storage basement" and "conference room" for the HCLE will be working with IAE-pedia to make sure the lessons we learned during the last50 years of experimenting with using computing to help people learn are not lost or forgotten. We made lots of mistakes, LOTS of mistakes. But we got other things right. We can learn from the mistakes so we don't make them again. We can repeat what we did right to the benefit of ourselves and generations to come. HCLE is a work in progress. Please contribute your time and effort, artifacts, documents, images and code and, of course, any spare money you happen to have in your mattress.

Quoting from an earlier, now defunct, Website:


 * Hello, I'm Liza Loop.


 * I am setting up this Wiki Web site to capture the story of how learners, teachers, schools and the emerging microcomputer industry interacted. I invite you both to join in and to enjoy this effort.  I'll organize and post images of the people, equipment, documents and perhaps even software I have collected since that time.  As I have time, I'll add a little essay about each image and link it to related images. The purpose of this Wiki is for you to do the same.


 * As you wander through this web site please add your thoughts directly (here's how?) or email them to me (liza@loopcntr.org). Perhaps you too have some images or documents that will expand this collection. (Here's how to add images.)


 * Many other web sites provide glimpses into computing's past. I'll link to them rather than duplicating their content.

This site will remain focused on the dreams and the historical realities of learners and educators of the second half of the 20th century. I hope that by revisiting the past we can enlarge our possibilities for the future.

In a July 2008 interview, Steve Wozniak indicated that he purchased the first commercially available Apple computer and gave it to Liza Loop to use in her elementary school. See the short video clip at http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/.

Questions and Answers
Q. Liza, drawing upon your years of experience in the field of education, what do you think are some of the very best ways to improve our current informal and formal educational systems?

A. When searching for ways to improve something, I always begin with the beliefs and assumptions of two groups of people: Those who are attempting to enact change and those who will be effected by the change. In the case of educational systems, all the stakeholders -- learners, teachers, administrators, parents, surrounding community members -- will be changed by any significant changes. Our current educational system is that far-reaching. I'll come back to this impact after each point I raise.

I've been working with a concept I call the "Open Educative System" (OES). I came up with this by asking myself: If we had all of today's electronic and social technology but we didn't yet have an educational system, what would we invent?

The OES would have to fulfill all of the functions that schools do today and then some. Today, schools 1. provide educational experiences 2. provide custodial care for young students while they are away from their parents 3. counsel students and parents about what courses students should take 4. evaluate students in order to place them in courses appropriate to their skills and experience 5. test and certify students as having mastered specific knowledge and/or skills 6. keep records of students academic progress 7. develop new educational materials and courses

That's a lot to ask of our schools. Why don't we have seven separate institutions, each specializing in one of these functions and working together to optimize the learner's experience. As early snapshot of such a system can be found in my 1983 paper ... Then it was a futuristic dream. Today, many of the organizations we need to implement broad Open Educative Systems exist. As I expand this essay, I'll explain and give examples of how home schoolers, independent scholars and recreational learners are creating OES's for themselves.

Before addressing OES organizations, let me say a few words about traditional, classroom-centered schools. These are terrific venues for learning for many children and adults. Traditional classroom instruction should always be an available option. However, this form of delivery of educative experiences is expensive in terms of physical plant and movement of people. And, a few students who would rather not be there can completely disrupt a classroom environment. For these reasons, cost-benefit and stability, classroom education will be a priviledge, not a requirement, for most OES courses.

(To be continued)