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Guidelines for Creative Educational Projects Design
Guidelines for Creative Educational Projects Design
For many Computer Technology is fascinating. “We love the simple, clear-cut linear surfaces that computer generate. We love the way that computer reduce complexity and ambiguity, capturing things in a digital network, clothing them in beaming colours, and girding them with precise geometrical structures”.**
 When we use a computer we “feel augmented and empowered”. Of course when things go well (when everything works well), because whenever a system crashes we face all our fragility and impotence. The system may crash at exactly the wrong moment. In that case we feel betrayed, abandoned, lost. As someone said, a crash reduces your expensive computer to a simple stone.
But everything has got a price. “A gain in power (is) at a price of our direct involvement in things.” First of all, computer technology “can cast a spell of passivity on our lives. We talk to the system, telling it what to do, but the system's language and processes come to govern our psychology. We begin as voyeurs and end by abandoning our identity to the fascinating system we tend.”
Another limit is that “computers communication cuts the physical face out of the communicational process.” In so doing it cuts most of the non verbal levels the communication act, reducing it to the textual and iconographic content. It is not only a limit of the medium, but involves more personal and ethical issues.
“The living is the primal source of responsibility, the direct, warm link between private bodies. Face-to-face communication supports a long-term warmth and loyalty.” **
What we produce for the web, our interaction with e-mail or forums, appear not as the  product of our whole personality, but by the “persona” we have created in a web exchange.
When we are in a physical communicative act, both parts involved know that we and what we say will be lost, that our actions are unique, and we must take care of the visual reaction of the other whilst we are communicating in order to adjust what we say.
Another limit is that the body has an intelligence of its own that must be taken into account, if we want to consider a total communication and learning environment.
Influence of Computers on Human Psychology
Let's question the initial statement and ask again why we are so fascinated with computers.
Something must happen whenever we sit and start digiting words and numbers onto the screen or actions are triggered by the gentle click of a mouse.
The so-called “Pet-therapy” exploits the beneficial influence of the proximity of an animal to a human being to treat diseases.
The simple proximity of a horse, a dog or a dolphin induces in the patient a sense of relaxation.
We might wonder what happens to us in the proximity of or even in the fusion with a computer.
 According to John Susan in his MOM, DAD, COMPUTER TRANSFERENCE REACTIONS TO COMPUTERS “users may rely on their computers to clarify and strengthen their sense of identity. (…) As users customize its hardware and software, the computer becomes more and more like a responsive reflection at their needs, feelings and ambitions. (…) By idealising it, by participating in all the amazing powerful things a computer can do, users strengthen their own confidence and feelings of success.”
It's well known that people say and do things while driving a car that they wouldn't ordinarily say or do when they are outside their vehicle. When they become one with a computer, users loosen up, feel more uninhibited, express themselves more openly. They reveal secret emotions, fears, states of mind. In their internet exchanges, they either show unusual acts of kindness and generosity or start using rude language and letting their anger spill on someone else.
Closed and open knowledge
Giorgio Stabile in “Paradigmi enciclopedici” has described the ways we can deal with new knowledge in two major possibilities: solving a puzzle and playing with the building blocks (Lego).
All the pieces of the puzzle have already been made, the only thing a user is allowed to do is to put them back together according to the original design. Behind the initial chaos of the “dispersed” pieces lies an underlying order that is to be reconstructed by the exact combination of one piece to another. It's a model of closed knowledge.
Another model for new knowledge is that that of building blocks, modular pieces of information that can be combined in any possible way. It begins with the construction of basic pieces of information that should be shaped in a modular way (with the possibility to be connected to a pre-existing block and to allow other blocks to be built upon it.
The limitation of the puzzle model and in general of the use of pre-existing models, designs, formats, etc. should lead us to limit the use of computer for educational purposes to only some stages, such as the initial data collection, the processing of data, and the final publication of the products.
Guidelines for designing open educational projects
If the major purpose of a project is the creation of new knowledge, some guidelines could be suggested.
A) Use a varied design approach to the project
Creative design strategies point out that it's advisable not to limit to a front to back or back to front approach (i.e. in the first case, starting from what you have at the beginning of a process and then consider what possible final outcome it might produce; in the latter, starting from the final outcome you want to achieve, then you consider what you need to achieve that goal at the start up stage.)
It should also be integrated a bottom top (i.e. considering the possibility of removing items or integrating new ideas) and a top bottom strategy (i.e. seeing the whole process from a distance and considering the whole thing with a detached mind).
B) Allow systemic integrations and changes
Instead of considering each single part in itself we should let all the parts rest together one next to the other and allow a natural systemic process of adjustment to take place. All things on earth change and develop in mutual influence, just because they are part of a system. Why shouldn't we allow the same possibility to the artefacts of our minds.
Just setting things one next to the other and allowing our systemic perception to start operating, viewing them as a whole and not as fragmented and isolated pieces of information is a powerful strategy for creating new knowledge. Some questions we might ask in order to start the integration process. ***
- What are the common ideas that all the parts share ?
- From a visual point of view, can some icons colours be changed in order to achieve a unity of style and message?
- From a content point of view, can the lack of information in one project be balanced by the abundance of data of another and vice versa?
- Can the content in a project be also used in another one, in order to achieve a more balanced production?
- Do we have sufficient resource to do it?
- What tools can be used?
- Is there another use for each tool/part?
- Can anything be replaced?
- Can we look at it from another angle?
- What is in a nutshell?
- How to subdivide the problem?
- Is there a first step?
- Dow do we feel about it?
- Do we like the way it is done?
- How would others think?
- What information is missing?
- What information do we like to have?
- How accurate are the sources?
- Are there enough facts / figures to support?
- What are the benefits of the project?
- What are the strengths?
- Can a higher target be set?
- What else can be added to it?
- What can be removed or compressed ?
- Are there any similarities between things that are different?
- Are there or can be underlined factors of repetition and progress?
- Can the proportions be changed?
- Can parts be rearranged?
- Can different sensory modes be combined?
- Can latent images be created in order to communicate subconsciously?
- Can any subject or idea be twisted to create new meanings?
- Is there any part that could be divided into smaller parts?
- Can we make fun of our subject?
- How can certain parts be imbued with symbolic qualities?
C) Introduction of elements of play
Play with words, with logical problems, the spatial organization of the items, introduce fictional spokespersons or commentators. Play with the rhythm of the narration and the alternation of visual, textual and audio content.
Roberto Cuccu
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