re: Interactive learning: Twenty years later
For me, the point of these fancy input devices is *not* to replace the role the keyboard plays in existing computer interactions so much as it is to make it possible to do new stuff with the computer that the text interface just can't handle. For a programmer, I'm a pretty visually oriented person,
as am I.
and these things are really interesting to me.
and to me. Are we still talking about education, directly or indirectly? Art
On Sunday 29 June 2003 12:02 pm, Arthur wrote:
For me, the point of these fancy input devices is *not* to replace Are we still talking about education, directly or indirectly?
In as much as the human computer interface* is important to the student's experience of the computer, I think we still are. I agree that the textual interface is critical to something like programming, where logic and a linear progression of steps are fundamental to the subject. But if you were teaching 2- or 3-D concepts, the ability to simply point and select objects, and express your intent in a visual-tactile mode is just essential. In any kind of visual arts application, whether artistic or technical, I think that's going to be the case. And the mouse is the lowest-common-denominator tool for doing that. I know when we start teaching Gimp and Sketch apps, we're going to be using mice (or trackpoints). Moving up to a tablet would be good, though. Whether we're still talking about programming or python, though, I don't know. ;-) I do think that we're eventually going to see some kind of breakout of visual programming methods for connectivist programs of some kind in the next few years. So far, it's mostly a curiosity: nobody's found a place where such methods are the clear winner for developing programs (or they're such marginal applications that most people won't be affected by them). But I think it will make new things possible once it does happen, just like any new programming language or paradigm has done. And just like all the others, it will have places where it's unbeatable, and places where it's not appropriate. But people will try to use it wrongly anyway. ;-) Actually, I guess there is one exception -- the "spreadsheet". Hardly anyone realizes it *is* a visual programming language, but it is. And I think you could even say it follows a connectivist paradigm. Cheers, Terry * "man machine interface" was so much more poetic, if not very PC ;-) -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
participants (2)
-
Arthur
-
Terry Hancock