Designing for anticipation, Teaching for anticipation

by | Monday, October 19, 2009

In a couple of previous posts I had talked about the idea of postdiction (see the posts here and here). The argument being that good teaching (among a long list of other good things) is postdictable, i.e. it walks the line between predictability and chaos, and most importantly makes sense post hoc. To make my point I had posted a couple of videos that were good examples of being postdictable.

Closely connected to the idea of postdictable is the idea of creating anticipation and suspense. Once again other artists (particularly those working in temporal media such as film, and advertising) seem to have grasped the importance of this earlier than educators. Good film-makers can create suspense out of pretty much the flimsiest of materials. Think of the first scenes from Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The way the scene builds tension out of a disagreement over whether or not to tip is pitch perfect. There is more tension in that scene than in dozens of other “suspense” thrillers.

However making suspense work is difficult. Navigating this line between predictability and tension over the unknown is a fine art. (This is where, of course, the connection with postdictability becomes most clear.)

Check out the two videos below, which highlight just how fine the line is between succeeding at creating suspense and anticipation and failing to do so. Both of these videos are interesting and well made – both have pace and rhythm but one of them builds anticipation while the other just happens. One tells a story, the other doesn’t.

But before going on further, here are the two videos. Watch both of them and ask yourself which one works and which one doesn’t?

Here’s one…
Blue Thousand and One from Blue Man Group HD on Vimeo.

… and here’s another:

Music Painting by JUL & MAT from JUL & MAT on Vimeo.

So what do you think? Both these videos were cool to watch – but don’t you think the one from the Blue Man Group a tad more interesting, both in its buildup and its dénouement. Even within its its short time frame, the video sets up a narrative arc and creates, something akin to aclassical dramatic structure. In contrast the second video, though visually interesting through out, loses steam somewhere half-way through. The action begins to seem repetitive and the movie lacks a narrative thrust. It lacks drama.

So what does this mean for teaching?

First, everything we do as educators needs a larger goal (the big picture as it were). Too often we get lost in the minutia of of the project and forget the broader, overarching frame. The structure of our lessons, our semester, our mini-activities needs to have a larger narrative thrust, a dramatic flow. A beginning, a middle and an end. A good science activity can have them all. So can a well designed social studies activity.

Second, every thing we do as educators needs to be subservient to meeting that larger goal. The Blue Man group movie works because each frame (and musical note) is part of a larger story being played out in front of us. Not a frame is wasted. In contrast, you could take away a chunk of the second and I doubt anybody would even notice. This is design for anticipation. This is design for postdiction. As educators this means that we can’t give them stupid-work (like most seat work at school) but rather every assignment needs to inform the larger picture and in turn be informed by it.

Don’t you think that as educators need to pay more attention to building anticipation and suspense in our students?

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Design is for life

Quote for the day: Parents look at their children today when they are 3 years old and say "Oh god!, He doesn't know how to operate the computer! How is he going to go ahead like this?" They should instead be worried if their child doesn’t know design. They should say,...

Unpacking TPACK

Suzy Cox is a lecturer in educational technology and educational psychology at Utah Valley State College and also a doctoral candidate at Brigham Young University (working with Dr. Charles Graham). She is currently working on her dissertation which seeks to develop a...

TPACK in Journal of Teacher Education

The Journal of Teacher Education just came out with a special theme issue devoted to innovative uses of technology for teacher learning. The editorial for the special issue frames the issues strongly in terms of the TPACK framework, building on the work Matt Koehler...

Shreya’s blog, new Sci-Po’s

Shreya, my daughter has a blog, Uniquely Mine. An RSS feed from her blog can be found right here (just scroll down and see the right column). Anyway, over the past few weeks she has been doing something for extra credit for the science class. Her fifth-grade teacher...

New video from ITEC

I was recently at the Iowa Technology & Education Connection (ITEC) conference in Des Moines IA. I had a wonderful time meeting old friends and making some new ones. I was also asked to be part of a video that would be shared with ITEC members and other online...

Truth of fact and feeling: Unpacking McLuhan (2/3)

Truth of fact and feeling: Unpacking McLuhan (2/3)

This is the second of three blog posts about how media influence our thinking. The first post, uses the invention of writing and print to unpack the meaning of McLuhan’s statement, “The medium is the message.” The second post, focuses on a story by Ted Chiang that...

India’s Silicon Valley

I arrived at Bangalore (now known as Bangaluru) this afternoon. Bangaluru is known as India's Silicon valley and this my first time here. I am here for a conference (as described here). Incidentally, Bangalore is also on its way to becoming a word in the English...

The TPACK game: ChatGPT version

The TPACK game: ChatGPT version

Back in the day, Matt Koehler and I had come up with a game to help teachers creatively explore the TPACK framework. There are some traces of this on this website (see here and here) but many of these links are dead. One that still exists is this YouTube video by Lisa...

2 Comments

  1. Bob Reuter

    pre-processed not pre-processes 🙂 sorry…

    Reply
  2. Bob Reuter

    Yes I do think that as educators we need to care more about building anticipation and suspense in our students… I feel that too often we try to fill them (and we are expected to do so) with nicely structured and pre-processes knowledge that hardly would correspond to real authentic problems… thus, instead of entertaining their curiosity and sense of inquiry, we entertain them, like TV does (in the best case), or we bore them to death, like a non-believing preacher would (in the worst case). In both cases, students don’t have to think too much, because they can do their part of the “job” by simply absorbing the pre-processes knowledge and will pass the exams (or what ever evaluation we have) by simply recalling what they have temporarily stored somewhere in their no-so-long-term-memory.

    “We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.”
    Oscar Wilde – Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)

    Supporting people in their own grow is certainly also a wicked problem, but at least it defines and serves a larger goal for education.

    Reply

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