Interactivity without gadgets

Once I was fortunate enough to get into VDNH, the exposition of the Polytechnic Museum. It was about 5 years ago, and at that time, perhaps, it was the most interesting interactive exhibition of all that I have ever seen. But as a self-respecting exhibition is supposed to, it gave an impetus to reflections - what is interactivity, and was this exhibition truly interactive? Let's try to figure it out.

The word "interactive" suggests that if something interacts with something, then everything is fine, there is interaction.

But if you look closely ...
')


The exhibition had such interactive guides. Getting up on a big yellow cross on the floor, it was possible to activate the video recording, in which famous people told about the nearest exhibits. Interactively? Of course. But what exactly? The answer is simple: the process of activating a guide is interactive here. The guide itself is easily replaced with a piece of text. That is, the box is changing, and the content is the good old “look to the left, look to the right.”

But since a person came to a science museum, most likely he still wants to learn something. But this is more difficult.

One of the best explanations of the essence of interactive learning is based on the direction of information flows:

1. If the information flow is outgoing, this is intra- learning. A strict lady with a pointer in her hand, explaining something to the students in the ringing silence, is just in a very favorable position of the student. Yes, yes, this is useful primarily for herself, since by explaining to others, she can better understand the subject matter she teaches. If the lady is good enough and gives the student the opportunity to explain something to other students, this student will already receive a profit from this kind of training.
2. If the information flows in, then this is an extra active learning. Subdued students from the class of strict ladies are in this situation. Such training is quite aptly called sometimes passive, since learning is a consequence of the activity of the pointer of the environment.
3. If information flows circulate in a student's head, without going beyond its limits, this is active (internal) learning. This happens while reading, for example.
4. If information flows are two-way, then this is exactly what interactive learning is. The student acts in a constantly changing subject-object relation with respect to the learning system, periodically becoming its autonomous element. So on the crest of a wave of pedagogical fashion today Socrates talks with students about the meaning of life and in general.

How to create such a direction of information flows in practice? This is achieved if practically all students are involved in the process of collective interaction, have the opportunity to understand and reflect on what they know and think about, if everyone exchanges knowledge, ideas, and ways of working in an atmosphere of goodwill and cooperation. The central activator of the knowledge process is the personal life experience of the participants. Interactive learning eliminates the dominance of both one speaker and one opinion over another, allows you to use the synergy property: the intellectual power of a group of students is greater than the sum of the forces of its members. The atmosphere of competition is not excluded.

In order to explain how personal life experience can (and should) be taken into account for organizing interactive learning, let me remind you of another important concept: “the zone of proximal development” .



The “zone of proximal development” is determined by the content of those tasks that the child cannot yet solve on his own, but is able to solve in a joint activity with an adult. What is initially available to the child under the guidance of adults, then becomes his own property (skills, abilities).

That is, if a 15-year-old teenager is explained interactively about the signs of the seasons, and a 5-year-old child has the structure of the atomic nucleus, then we will be far beyond the zone of proximal development in the first and second cases.

Now let's take a fresh and armed look at the interactive exhibits of the exhibition.



Here's a little task for you: try to present this exhibit in the eyes of a girl in pink. Need any comments? I think no. Did online learning happen? And so it happened! To stand on tiptoes, reach the button, do not miss the mark, press the button and get a ridiculous result - all this is completely within its zone of proximal development.

So it's not so bad. If there are a lot of visitors, there will always be someone whose zone of proximal development will somehow integrate into the proposed landscape.

Now we come to the most important thing. If the purpose of the exhibition is learning, and not “wow” the effect of interactive activation of exhibits, how to achieve this?

The answer is this: to do this, you need to create an interactive learning system that, after activation, launches the process of transition of the zone of proximal development to the actual one, offering the child his questions and helping himself (personally or collectively) to find answers to them.

That is, the task is not to give out ready information, but to take information, to extract from it a debatable question, which is desirable with difficulty, but can be answered. If it is too easy - boring, too difficult - also boring. Under no circumstances should the child’s attention and interest be lost; for this, questions should not remain unanswered. Dead ends in the discussion should be avoided, offering clues in time (not too early and not too late).

An example of a bad question : Is the three-letter universal code used to encode proteins? This question implies either the presence or absence of knowledge, no more. Those students who know the answer, will feel like a horse, those who do not know, under the horse. Everyone’s abilities will remain the same. It is even possible that students under a horse, upset by such a small humiliation, will try to reduce the significance of this event by throwing it out of their heads or deciding that it was not so important for them.

An example of a good question : how can the universality of a three-letter protein coding code serve as proof that we are all descendants of a single cell? Information will be received approximately equivalent. But in the course of the discussion, the newly acquired knowledge (and already existing) will be applied, logical chains are built, the personal significance of the question will ensure interest. Efforts to find an answer and pleasant memories of how, finally, managed to find a solution, will increase the chance that all this will not fly out of my head back.

Obviously, the discussion questions have nothing to do with testing. The result of interactive learning is the development of a child’s intellectual and communication skills. The test result is the sorting of children for suitable and, apparently, unsuitable.

In my practice, in order to give a discussion to a question, I use four main methods of transforming educational information into a research question. The trick is to show perspective based on dynamics and contrast:

1. change of subject in time (past / future)
2. change of object in space (change of nature from north to south)
3. intrinsic diversity (species diversity)
4. change in size (macro / micro)

For example: what of what is shown in the figure can be viewed under a microscope? In each subsequent picture, an object or creature is 10 times larger than the previous one. The first thing that comes to mind when answering is different microscopic objects and creatures - blood cells, poppy seed, etc. But who said that the Earth can not be viewed through a microscope? Or what will a proton be seen through a microscope?



By the way, if we talk about organizing the interactive space in the school (in my case in additional education), then often a handful of pieces of paper successfully replace the interactive board.

For example, here's a question for kids: who lives in a house? (I mean not dogs / cats, but any less expected creatures - ticks, flies, mosquitoes, spiders, etc.). On an interactive whiteboard, you can put such an illustration and ask everyone to find and name:



And you can draw or print all these creatures on small pieces of paper and hide them in the classroom. Mole in a fur coat, a cockroach under a crust of bread, a spider into a corner, etc. Search for all in 3d-space, children will enjoy much more.

More information about the details of the transformation of information into questions can be found in the previous article .

Let's return to the technical exhibition guide. Why am I getting to it so much? The exhibition can be gorgeous. The best minds of mankind reveal the secrets of the universe and present the fruits of their brilliant insights on saucers with a blue border. These discoveries will remain with us now, in all the splendor of their completeness, forethought, and proof. But will the passer-by be ready to realize what exactly is thrown at his feet?
We cannot know this in advance. All will come with different levels of training. And what we can do to get knowledge to get to the child, is to make and solve a simple equation.

Given:

1. the amount of visitors with a very different zone of the nearest development. The age here is not really a helper, as practice shows, there is no simple correlation between age and the level of interests and knowledge.
2. scientific truths are constant. It is what it is
3. visitor guide

It is obvious that the guide is a variable that allows (in theory) to equalize the possibilities of understanding by chance (or not by accident) of the person who came and the level of complexity of scientific exhibits.

And now the question is interesting: who or what could be such a guide?

I think it’s obvious that they can’t have a simple audio, video or paper guide, as they are the same for everyone, the level is strictly pre-set. They do not allow for interaction and adjustment to the visitor level.

With a man, everything is also not easy. Scanning the level of each visitor, the constant organization of interactive learning based on the data just received - this is certainly very cool. But I can hardly imagine a person who works as a guide for 8 hours a day, serving 5-6 groups of visitors and coming up with exactly the situations that are necessary for everyone. That is, in theory, it is possible, but it will require the highest scientific and pedagogical qualifications of the guide, an incredible exertion of forces and iron restraint (someone in response to this whole fountain of knowledge can also smear his trousers on his pants). Although such a stunning tour guide will provide interactivity at the highest level, and without any gadgets.

The conclusion suggests itself that, perhaps, artificial intelligence could cope with the task of the superguide better than anyone. However, teaching such an AI to expressly determine the level of knowledge and interests of a visitor in a pleasant conversation, building a chain of questions and clues that will lead to an understanding of the scientific essence of the exhibits is a completely different story.

Instead of an epilogue

Bad question:
“Who knows how words were recorded in Phenicia?” Anyone? No one?
In Phenicia, only consonant sounds were used to write words. The meaning of the vowels was left to the reader's understanding, that is, the basis of this understanding was intended as a hidden background, the general life experience of all those who used this script.
Good question:
- Imagine that you are a Phoenician and read what is said.