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[crankyoldman]

+ It snowed. I hate snow. I am not built for winter.

+ If you haven't hit it up, requestify an EP. Gifts!

+ My other blog thingie is going poof in a couple days, so if you've got the feed friended, lose it. XD Nothing dramatic happened, and I may start up something similar again. I'm just lazy right now.

+ Oh, and Happy Birthday nashidesei!



Alright, despite a lot of other things I've done at work, I'm a bit tripped up today.

When you're a "designer" despite the fact that some of the work is handed out to people, you have to pretty much outline EVERYTHING. Because it's your "vision". The people you work with on it will let you know if your vision sucks and is impossible to carry out. So, the past two weeks has been a lot of back and forth, kind of like this:

Me: Alright, sent the latest iteration of the design doc.
Me: *waits a few hours*
Andrew: Hey, I just talked to VH, they said [insert five billion changes]
Me: Ok... they do realize that will kill half the learning objectives?
Andrew: Alright, I'll have them call you.

So, I've been on IM, and various conference calls on and off during this week. It's kind of exciting, because we're actually getting to the making something part. Just to give you a timescale? The project started when I was hired. Which was in May. Yeah.

Today, though, the issue is not having to change too much. I'm working on the stuff we're doing in house (flash-based, we've got some flash WIZARDS around here, and I get to play with their games and stuff. XD) which basically means that other than a possible, "uh, flash doesn't do that, dummy" I'm in 100% control of the current content and appearance. I wasn't supposed to do the mockups before, but I had down time and Omnigraffle, and it's mostly just fake control panel stuff.

Anyway, I've had to adjust a few of my problems. One because of scripting, but the others because I'd only had a general idea of how they were supposed to work. We're into the nitty gritty actual lessons thing here.

Generally, I'm working with:

- A trajectory problem (which is completely done and figured out--I'm a dynamics and controls minor in Aero, it was a point of pride, really)
- A volumes and resource management puzzle (I need to have a believable way for the "computer" to not know the answer and force the kids to do a little fraction math A "safety feature" that requires human control works just fine for this, considering it's LIFE SUPPORT related)
- My nuclear reactor problem (which is mostly decision making and reading charts--it's the problem that got us the next part of the grant, ironically)
- A rates and fuel problem

Just writing that out helped a little. XD But I really understand you see the same five problems in teacher packets on these subject areas--it's really kind of hard to create something that doesn't insult children's intelligences and isn't impossible. Especially considering the huge ass paper I just wrote about "failure as a better means of learning" I sort of have to live up to my claims (I do a ridiculous amount of writing for work). The goal is to teach the kinds of things in the sciences that aren't typically touched on in traditional schooling.

I mean, think about how you learned in school for a moment. Most of it was based (and in some cases, STILL) on memorization, correct? Oh, and it isn't just the sciences that are starting to question this.

Now, what do most people in the sciences and engineering and all that good stuff do? They look up the specifics, but understand the problem. I'm rambling a little here, but that is how I'm designing most of the problems. That your "computer" will know your constants, and even your equations--but it's up to you to put them together in a way that solves your needs.

Am I making sense?

I can see why it's not catching on as much as the good old book-and-lecture style of teaching. It's hard. It requires the educator (or educational designer) to think critically about the nature of problem solving itself! It gets even harder when you've gotten to the point in your own education in which it's become second nature (I always write "Givens", "Unknowns", "Basic Equations" down, sometimes not labeled, before I attempt most any problem these days).

Not that memorization is bad. I can't tell you how thankful I am for having memorized my multiplication tables and STILL manage to remember them. But there's already tons of resources out there on memorization.

Ok, enough thinking out loud. Time to figure out the rules on this next module.


~Cendri