Last night H and I took S to see the Blue Man Group. Amazing. There have been countless reviews and critiques (positive and negative), so I'll refrain from that sort of commentary. What impressed me the most was the integration/overlay of textual elements throughout the entire show. Social commentary aside, it was an incredibly effective use of text -- as oppositional and complimentary elements to the visual and aural.
I found myself wondering (amid the gut-bouncing percussion) about online learning - particularly about learning styles and learning style assessment. How effective would be the course that literally floods the learner's sensors with information? It's more than just giving the learner the option to mute the narration while the text displays along the marquee. It's a matter of overwhelming the learner with different types of information at the same time. Force the learner to decode and decipher -- to decide how and why the information is important. Gorilla instruction? The problem: Deciding what percentage of information you need to stick to make the learning event meaningful. Hope that the determined "amount" of learning can justify the expense of developing such a media-rich course.
In a perfect world, with the perfect budget, at the perfect school that has half a vision about the possibilities of online learning.
2 comments:
I've never seen them before, and always wanted to, but of course they'd come to Syracuse right when we're hosting a bunch of prospective students. I fantasized about taking them to the show until I saw that ticks were $50 a pop...
cgb
... and I never imagined that I'd drop that kind of coin on a live show. But when your 12 year old shows even a glimmer of interest in something slightly artistist, you pass on the extra tank of gas and process some plastic. It sounds like the student visits went great anyway. Maybe next year we can paint ourselves blue and put on a WP show. I get to leave my shirt on.
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