TITLE: Reinventing Education by Reinventing Explanation
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 31, 2014 10:15 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
One of the more important essays I read in 2014 was Michael
Nielsen's
<A HREF="http://michaelnielsen.org/reinventing_explanation/index.html">
   Reinventing Explanation</A>.
In it, Nielsen explores how we might design media that help us
explain scientific ideas better than we are able with our
existing tools.

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 ... it's worth taking non-traditional media seriously not just as
 a vehicle for popularization or education, which is how they are
 often viewed, but as an opportunity for explanations which can be,
 in important ways, deeper.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

This essay struck me deep.  Nielsen wants us to consider how we
might take what we have learned using non-traditional media to
popularize and educate and use it to think about how to explain
more deeply.  I think that learning how to use non-traditional
media to explain more deeply will help us change the way we teach
and learn.

In too many cases, new technologies are used merely as substitutes
for old technology.  The web has led to an explosion of instructional
video aimed at all levels of learners.  No matter how valuable these
videos are, most merely replace reading a textbook or a paper.  But
computational technology enables us to change the task at hand and
even redefine what we do.  Alan Kay has been telling this story for
decades, pointing us to the work of Ivan Sutherland and many others
from the early days of computing.

Nielsen points to Bret Victor as an example of someone trying to
develop tools that redefine how we think.  As Victor himself says,
he is following in the grand tradition of Kay, Sutherland, et al.
Victor's
<A HREF="http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/note.html">
   An Ill-Advised Personal Note about "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable"</A>
is an especially direct telling of his story.

Vi Hart is another.  Consider her recent
<A HREF="http://ncase.me/polygons/">
   Parable of the Polygons</A>,
created with Nicky Case, which explains dynamically how local
choices and create systemic bias.  This simulation uses computation
to help people think differently about an idea they might not
understand as viscerally from a traditional explanation.  Hart has
a long body of working using visualization to explain differently,
and the introduction of computing extends the depth of her approach.

Over the last few weeks, I have felt myself being pulled by Nielsen's
essay and the example of people such as Victor and Hart to think more
about how we might design media that help us to teach and explain
scientific ideas more deeply.  Reinventing explanation might help us
reinvent education in a way that actually matters.  I don't have a
research agenda yet, but looking again at Victor's work is a start.
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