I struggle through Lanny Arvan's posts because he takes a very long time to get to the point (and sometimes never does). I know there's a lot going on in his thinking, but I don't always want all of it when he wants to say something. That said, sometimes the style works very well, at times when it's important to bring disparate threads together. And you can find the point in there, eventually, that in order to teach one thing using role playing with technology, "we have to be overtly about some other use of role playing with technology or some other use of the technology itself." The misdirection - what Larry Pausch described as the 'head fake' in his farewell lecture - is depicted as essential to the teaching of difficult social issues such as racism. Now this may be true - but the much more interesting question is why. This, I think has to do with learning being about experiencing, not telling, and it has to do with education being about what interests the student, not the teacher. I wish Lanny Arvan had explored these. But - in this case - I think it was rather more important that he took the circuitous route he does to get there. Because we need to understand the experience - he is learning too. And that, in its own way, is what today's newsletter is all about.
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