Educational Magazine

(About the Naturalist Intelligence) Also, it seems reasonable to assume that a naturalist's capacities can be brought to bear on artificial items. The young child who can readily discriminate among plants or birds or dinosaurs is drawing on the same skills (or intelligence) when she classifies sneakers, cars, sound systems, or marbles

Howard Gardner

Digital Educational Magazine

By Admin (del 01/07/2004 @ 18:28:21, in Creative Projects, linkato 1771 volte)

Introduction
Computers: a gain in power at a price

For many Computer Technology is fascinating. ’We love the simple, clear-cut linear surfaces that computer generate. We love the way that computer reduce(s) 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.

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.

Dance and Hyperlink History
Computer Technology unplugged

What happens when information technology, i.e. the body of knowledge and skills acquired in utilizing hypermedial environments as the Net, is tested in an unplugged context?

This project has been designed so as to allow students to create original pieces of work, weave a net of connections among each individual creation and the ones of the class, and use their own bodies, voices and emotions in retelling their stories in a hyperlinked context. (attentive to their fellow students works)

One of the major purpose of this project has been the creation of new knowledge. In order to achieve that, an eclectic approach has been chosen, characterised by the introduction of elements of play, and graphical display. Students have been asked to play with words, with logical problems, with 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.

Project step by step

Teacher introduces the project and explains how to organize the activities.
Teacher guides a brainstorming session on possible historical themes that could be chosen.
Students divide in pairs and choose one theme. If more than one group want to pick up the same theme, they should agree on dealing with it from different points of view.

Students are asked to collect data, make an outline of their story, dramatize it, and find links with the other themes that have been chosen by fellow students.

Students start researching and creating a first draft of the strip.

Teacher reinforces the assignment, focussing especially on strategies that reduce to the minimum the possibility of coping and pasting information from sources without any manipulation / refashioning / rewriting of it.

Teacher revises the first draft, but peer revision could also be adpted, at least in the initial stages of development.

On the day of the session, students lay their strips on the floor, one next to the other.

Each group starts introducing the topic, and retelling the story using their own words, and while they do so they move from their strip to the others, connecting with a woollen thread their cartoon with pictures or texts found in other nearby strips.

In doing so they should move on the floor, talk about their job, search for connections, and mark them with knots.

Eventually the strips can be scanned and published in digital format trying to save the visual impact of the projects.

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3d Fantasia

Digital Educational Magazine

Introduction Computers: a gain in power at a price

Introduction
Computers: a gain in power at a price