Very interesting New Media class today: The idea of education becoming a student-level oriented learning process through the use of computer gaming techniques. Very thought-provoking, especially in light of our final project which concerns the future of new media. Very tearing of the mind, very forking of the paths of thought. And I sat there making faces from inspirational glee to worried frowns throughout (animation?).
The idea is a good one: Interactive text in particular to treat the learning as a fact-finding mission with clues to discover, mapping of a growing body of knowledge, a result or goal to discover and claim. This is exactly what learning is about. Accomplished at the pace of the individual student, and taking into account the different methods of learning that we all employ in order to comprehend and retain what we study. There would be a classroom environment, and the topic under study would have definite points in place that would set standards for the course in order to assure that the subject is covered and understood. Help via a teacher, other students, and imbedded assistance within the program would be available–this was one of the aspects that worried me; that the less-computer oriented student would be left behind as surely as the shy one is intimidated and prevented by his own personality to question and thus, fall behind in the course.
The social atmosphere of a classroom would not be usurped by wiring students into monitors and keyboards if the situation is well planned out. I have noticed, for example, that a Philosophy course I took online, while offering student discussion via message boards, still would have been more fully appreciated by real-time interaction especially due to the subject matter. On the other hand, there are students who sit through a semester without asking one question, who have actually fallen asleep in class, who simply show up. The computer based lesson would demand interaction–in other words, at least those personalities would be "actively participating" in the classroom merely by the required movement through the passageways of the onscreen text story. A book can remain unopened, a teacher can be tuned out, and no one is the wiser. But some "trail" is left behind the journey through interactive media.
On the plus side, I have seen that there is often useless information fed to a student during a course that will never be remembered or retained. Let’s say, for example, in the learning of Word for Windows. There would be absolutely no purpose to go through exactly what each and every button, menu, ability, and task available is in some semblance of order, and then expect to remember what to do when the need arises. The easiest way to learn something beyond the basics is often to learn it WHEN the need arises, when the problem comes up. The solution is then more readily remembered simply because it is applicable to the current situation. I’ve taught myself every computer software and hardware manipulation this way, whereas I doubt that had I taken a course, or read the whole book "Using Windows 98" through before hands-on use, I would have recalled any of it. In IF in particular, the basis is that a "problem" comes up, and the input is required to "solve" it immediately. Perfect.
The idea of an extension of computer software becoming the textbook, while at the same time acting as the student’s essays, thought processes in learning, and evolving and combining on an individual basis (recorded somehow?) is intrigueing to say the least. A record of the learning process would be similar to the yellow streaks of highlighting pens, the border notes, the mustaches drawn on the pictures of a textbook at the end of the semester.
Certainly well worth developing more ideas into this format, since we are children of the computer generation and with the technology comes the responsibility and the opportunities.
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