This project focussed on answering the question:
Can middle school students be reasonably expected to construct their own resources for learning using a component technology approach?Two possible barriers to success were:
In the case of the technology, it was not clear that it would offer sufficient depth and breadth of functionality to fulfill the needs of the students. Certainly there were some strict limitations to the technology in its current form; in part this was a consequence of the relative instability of the underlying Java language and the immaturity of the supporting development environment. There was also some speculation that the OpenMath component set was not sufficiently comprehensive and would only be able to provide rudimentary tools. Keeping these issues in mind, the objective would be to identify the projected limits of a mature and fully implemented set of OpenMath JavaBeans.
For the students, it was important to determine if they would be able to employ the technology, mature or otherwise. The construction of resources from components requires an understanding of event-driven processes and an ability to visualize the flow of information. These skills are usually acquired through experience in programming and it was not obvious that the students would be able to adapt to the paradigm in a reasonable period of time. On the other hand, similar skills are necessary for popular board and video games6, and so it seemed a reasonable premise that needed to be tested.