A digital lesson is a useful nugget of wisdom acquired by a learner through experience or study, delivered via internet communication protocols and packaged for maximum content transfer through instructional media design. In the case of learners unable to attend educational institutions because of distance or income disparity, or because the learners' local educational institution is unable to afford instructional staff enabling completion of important curricula supporting matriculation into higher education colleges or universities, a digital lesson can bridge the disparities and disrupt current inequities.

Teaching learners how to weave on a Jacquard loom is considered to be an early prototype of the digital lesson. The mental process of simplifying a perceived complex process into individual yes or no steps is a foundational thinking process for instructional design of a digital lesson, nurturing learners toward the achievement of maximum content transfer. In addition, the punch cards could be carried from one loom to another, an early prototype of an internet communication protocol. Content retention is a topic not covered in this wiki entry.

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The Jacquard loom was the first machine to use punch cards to control a sequence of operations. Although it did no computation based on them, it is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware. The ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming. Specifically, Charles Babbage planned to use cards to store programs in his Analytical engine. At first sight this may seem unremarkable but it was a clear turning point in the ability to store and re-use machine instructions. Whilst Babbage did not live to see that his ideas were viable, they have since been proved to work reliably.
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The sequential pace of learning nugget delivery can be easily controlled using a digital lesson. Because the pace with which each learner completes the transfer of content is unique, a digital lesson can overcome disparities in at least two ways:
-Via delivery at flexible speeds by controlling the flow of content through the internet;
-By controlling the number of repetitions the learner can self-schedule for the entire learning nugget until transfer is complete

19:09, 15 August 2007 (UTC)