Learning and teaching by making
In previous item I was noticing that the maker of a medieval font didn't try to draw K and W because they weren't in classical Latin. But real scribes weren't writing classical Latin. They were using Latin as a framework for a mix of local languages, and they included the local character set where necessary. Following a theoretical assumption led the fontmaker astray.

While 'building' and animating these old devices, curiosity always drives me to understand the culture and feelings of the era when they were made and used. I'm learning a lot of history, including some fairly important and rarely written history, AS A SIDELINE.

If I tried to read about these times and places in the usual history text, I wouldn't learn anything because THERE ISN'T ANY FUCKING INFORMATION in the usual history text. The usual history text is a list of battles and generals. Battles and generals have NOTHING TO DO with history.

I'm a fake artist using 3d software. I've noticed a similar tendency in the real artists who draw anime-style cartoons with real pencils. They often situate their characters in a specific time and place, and they end up learning and teaching important things about the chosen time and place.

This is my most basic and constant theme, of course. Education by experience, education by making. No subjects, just work. If you want students to learn a certain type of information, arrange the work to create curiosity about the certain type of information.

There are two extra advantages to experiential learning in history and "social studies".

1. Learning by curiosity puts you in touch with the lives of real people, not the lives of the leaders and generals.

2. Learning by curiosity gives you practice in the actual WORK OF A HISTORIAN. You're not doing any historian work when you memorize the battle scheme of the Peloponnesian War. You're just being a dumb computer. When you're trying to understand the background of what you're drawing or making, you explore original sources outside the filter of historians and propagandists.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 6:50 AM