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it serves to focus (or refocus) or attention on the learner experience. All too often we are distracted by the latest and greatest tool and by the priorities of other stakeholders in the process

                There are many reasons behind deforestation. The main reason that governments and companies destroy trees is to make more usable land. After the trees have been cut down, the area can be utilized for many ways. One of the major uses is to create farm land in order to feed more people. Another way that governments use this land is to make more houses. Usually deforestation occurs because of the growing population in developing countries and new homes need to be built on this land so that people can live comfortably.

The work of coding, I discovered, was an endless round of failure, failure, failure before eventual success. Computer-science students are used to failing. They do it all the time. It's built into the process, and they take it in stride.

Humanities students are not used to failure. They want to get it right the first time.

Perhaps of all the humanities, the creative arts come closest to valuing failure. Poets and painters don't expect to get it right the first time. That's the idea of workshopping as a pedagogy, right? Still, there's a real difference. I'd be willing to bet that most creative writers bring a piece of work into a workshop secretly hoping it's a success. Sure, they know they need help on aspects of their story or poem, but that's not the same as failing. A computer program that doesn't run is a failure. A program that produces no usable data about the text it was set up to analyze is a failure. Why don't those failures devastate the developers? Because each time their efforts fail, the developers learn something they can use to get closer to success the next time.

Educational software and systems are not easily usable for many learners and educators, and for that matter present obstacles for educational institutions.

The necessary business models and key transactions that enable the missions of knowledge-driven institutions are not yet adapted to computers and distributed systems. Equally problematic: educational networks do not yet offer sufficiently high reliability to become a viable alternative to many educational media, such as desktop systems or traditional classroom techniques.

In the current environment, end users will have to wait some time yet until many technological advances such as virtual reality and distributed simulation become preferred tools among trainers and educators.

Another area that's still hazy is the e-portfolio feedback system. As Pirie put it, "If I have no audience for what I'm doing, why should I care?" But the question is, who should do the reviewing and provide the feedback to the student — faculty members, the program adviser, somebody from the career services department or peers in the program?