Questions on Schon, Sanyal and Mitchell ch 9,10

1) pp. 215 What claims are made for software entrepreneurship, and what assumptions are implicit in those claims?

2) 216 –217 Since the software industry has low entry barriers for physical capital (equipment and money), why not assume that the lack of African American software entrepreneurs is due to a lack of “gumption?”

3) 217-8 Are all self-employed people entrepreneurs? Who tends to be self-employed in terms of race, class and economic background?

4) 119-221 Has the strong demand for corporate software eliminated the market share accessible to small entrepreneurs?

5) 221-2 In research specifically conducted on software entrepreneurs, what were the roles of education and physical capital requirements?

6) 222-3 Who are the “persistent poor?” Compare the percentage of African Americans in this population to the percentage of African Americans in the general urban population.

7) 223 Use the correlation between poverty and education (based on statistic in book) to argue against the biological determinist explanation of poverty (based on your clever analysis).

8) 225 What differences in cultural experience might be a factor in the lower rates of self-employment among African American and Latino workers? When members of these minorities do become high-earning entrepreneurs, what social qualities made that possible? What do the authors conclude about Bill Gates?

9) 227-8 What college majors were most useful for entrepreneurs? What else besides the degree did they get out of it?

10)228-31 What efforts have been made to increase access to computers in poor urban areas? Why doesn’t this solve the problem?

11)238-9 How does this author criticize the idea that IT access will automatically allow poor urban children to “get the information they need to succeed.” What would be the drawback of making that assertion too strongly?

12)238-9 What kinds of vernacular knowledge systems did they find for children in poverty?

13)238-40 What is the significance of the name of Rosa Parks for the students at this school? Why didn’t the researchers just setup the computers for them?

14)240-241 What is meant by “shared principles?” What role did the computer play in the student’s learning experiences?

15)242-3 Why not just integrate the computers and electrical machines into a single working system? What was learned in keeping them separate?

16)244-5 Explain the purpose of figure 10.1 in terms of media and sensory modalities.

17)245-9 What is a “transitional object?” How were gears used as a transitional object?

18)249-253 How was the computer combined with transitional objects?

19)252-256 How does Leon’s experience illustrate the importance of the computer as a transitional medium?

20)257-8 What evidence do we have that Leon was intentionally making use of a 2:1 ratio, rather than just accidentally using it?

21)258-60 What is meant by working “within a conceptual space?” Why work on teachers inventing their own examples?