(^122) | dEsiGninG for EMErGinG tECHnoLoGiEs
In this regard, computers can be wonderful tools for exploring pos-
sibilities. This is true of young children playing with math concepts,
to geneticists looking for patterns in DNA strands. Interactive models
and simulations are some of the most effective means of sensemak-
ing. Video games also make for powerful learning tools because they
create possibility spaces where players can explore potential outcomes.
Stories such as Ender’s Game (in which young children use virtual
games to explore military tactics) are a poignant testimony to the nat-
ural risk-taking built into simulations. “What happens if I push this?”
“Can we mix it with...?” “Let’s change the perspective.” Computers
make it possible for us to explore possibilities much more quickly in a
playful, risk-free manner. In this regard, physical models are crude and
limiting. Software, by nature of being virtual, is limited only by what
can be conveyed on a screen.
But, what of the mind-body connection? What about the means by
which we explore patterns through a mouse or through our fingertips
sliding across glass? Could this be improved? What about wood splin-
ters and silky sheets and hot burners and stinky socks and the way
some objects want to float in water—could we introduce sensations like
these into our interactions? For all the brilliance of virtual screens, they
lack the rich sensory associations inherent in the physical world.
VIRTUAL MANIPULATIVES
For me, it was a simple two-word phrase that brought these ideas into
collision: “virtual manipulatives.” During an interview with Bill Gates,
Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO of DreamBox, shared a wonderful exam-
ple of the adaptive learning built in to their educational software. Her
company’s online learning program will adapt which lesson is recom-
mended next based not only the correctness of an answer, but by “cap-
turing the strategies that students [use] to solve problems, not just that
they get it right or wrong.” Let’s suppose we’re both challenged to count
out rods and beads totaling 37. As Wooley-Wilson describes it:
You understand groupings and you recognize 10 s, and you very quickly
throw across three 10 ’s, and a 5 and two 1 ’s as one group. You don’t ask
for help, you don’t hesitate, your mouse doesn’t hesitate over it. You
do it immediately, ready for the next. i, on the other hand, am not as
confident, and maybe i don’t understand grouping strategies. but i do
nandana
(Nandana)
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