It's worth emphasizing the small size of the "chunks" of information students receive when they use Learning by Exploring environments. You can see in this text how big a typical chunk is. In our video-based systems, the video clips typically run from 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. This small size keeps control in the hands of the student. If they are interested in what a clip has to say, they can pursue it. If not, they can back up and pursue something else. Learning by Exploring environments are able to track students' interests in ways that environments built around lengthy narratives are not. When a teacher shows a 30 minute film strip about the history of the American Revolution, if a student is uninterested, all he can do is fall asleep. In an ASK system, he can change direction to maintain his interest.
Learning by Exploring environments not only allow students to maintain their interest, they allow students to act on that interest. A 30 minute film strip on the American Revolution will cover a lot of ground. If a student finds the material discussed in minute 12 to be particularly interesting, tough luck. He will get but a taste of it. However, in a Learning by Doing environment, a student can dive into a topic that interests him. He can look at it from a number of perspectives, linking in other clips that are related in a variety of ways. The power of Learning by Exploring environments is in their ability to organize the knowledge they contain, bringing up clips only when they are relevant and portraying them in a way which makes their relevance clear to the student.
The Technology of Accessibility
Where am I in the content of the book?
