cogdogblog: Building a Fence (real object) and Building Things out of Learning Objects Comments and Trackbacks

CDB Entry: Building a Fence (real object) and Building Things out of Learning Objects

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 18:58:43 -0700

Last weekend I built a fence around a vegetable garden in our yard (view image). I am not really much of a craftsman, but this project came out pretty nice. Working with the hands got me thinking about (reaching for...

comment by: D'Arcy Norman

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 08:12:32 -0700

Yes! Thank you! Oh, and that's quite a fence you built there.

comment by: Scott Leslie

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 08:58:51 -0700

But isn't the point not so much that objects should be easy to build the first time, but that once built, unlike your fence, they can be re-urposed and re-used umpteen times with much less effort than it took to build initially? Are you saying the raw lumber you got at home depot are equivalent to 'objects?' Maybe, but it seems more likely to me that, to stay within your metaphor, the objects are more like the 4 individual sides of your fence, and that it would in fact be easier to create, for instance, a fence for a smaller garden out of this one by simply shortening up two of the sides. Had you decided to make each side of your fence a different height, though, not only would it have been more difficult to make your initial fence, it would likely have been just as difficult to make each subsequent one too.

Do you think the metaphors taken from physical space are coming up short here? I think it might be so, but I do appreciate the attempts to translate the issues into other realms that we are maybe more accustomed to. Cheers, Scott.

comment by: Scott Leslie

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 08:59:22 -0700

Bye the way, nice fence!

comment by: Alan

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 12:53:21 -0700

Well, Scott, you've nit me over the head with the danger of metaphors- I was less trying to deal with what the fence represented as to what building the fence meant.

Many things in the fence could have been objects, yes. Actually, Home Depot had some pre-constructed 6 foot fence sections, but they were solid and 6 feet high, so to re-purpose that would take a whole lot of cutting and be awkward.

So maybe I will hang up my object building hat and spend my days cutting and nailing, etc.

comment by: Scott Leslie

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 13:38:42 -0700

You know what, I re-read your piece, and while I think my first comments still have some merit, I do think I was reading it in not totally the right spirit. As you say, you were focusing less on the 'objects' and more on the process.

And from that perspective (and I don't know that the two can be separated, which is perhaps at the core of some of the recently observed 'paradoxes') I think you're absolutely right. The creation of learning 'content' for others is in fact a learning process in and of itself for the content creator. It's of value both in learning more about the process of creating content and also in learning more about the content itself - by having to wrap your own mind around the various ways to try and explain or demonstrate something you 'already' understand you end up with a deeper, or at least quite possibly different, understanding of it, especially in cases where real empathy has been extended to appreciate that not all people come about understandings in exactly the same ways.

So apart from all of the challenges to mechanistic approaches to learning objects that one can levy because of paradoxes with granularity and re-use or learning designs and contexts or ... whatever ... what I take away from reading your post again is that there's a real valid challenge to be made against mechanistic notions of objects and their re-use because this fundamentally discounts the value of process to both the end product and to the people involved.

Anyways, I am going off on a rant here and I better stop now and take my medication. I really do appreciate your posts on these topics as they come from a place of real practice. So don't stop trying to find metaphors to grapple with these things - the very act of doing so out in public helps us all. Cheers, Scott.