This has been a busy week -- too busy to write much after my rush of work last weekend. I’ve been working hard on my project and exploring different ways to display content. For now, I have a flat colored option, a gradient of colors, and “map tacks”. I’m not sure how the map tacks bring any more value to the map, maybe if multiple items are displayed per county.
I shared my file with my coworker Keith on Monday. He’s been able to connect it to our servers and feed live data to it. He’s shown me how the connection works, which I hope to have a chance to explore a bit myself.
At the moment, I’ve been preparing for the dress rehearsal tonight. I’ve been trying to solve two problems that are proving impossible to solve. Both involve trying to build an accordion type menu (sliding bars that move on a vertical axis). I’ve done it two different ways and both have some problem connecting my variable names to my buttons or movieclips. It’s hard to describe. Nonetheless, after too many hours struggling with this, I’m willing to give it up and try to use the form components that Keith has used. I hope he can tell me how they work, then I can concentrate on accomplishing this project!
Learning actionscript can be a real pain sometimes. I’m at the point again where I don’t feel like I have many places to turn for help. I can’t figure out the terms for what I’m trying to solve and it is frustrating. I guess that’s good in some way, it means I’m at the edge of my own experience and knowledge and trying to push forward. This would be relative to that gratifying, albeit painful, muscle burn after really pushing my body physically. Except now it’s my mind. My thinking muscle.
This reminds me of Papert’s article A Word for Learning. How am I learning this? What are the processes? Do I know how I’m going about it and where this comes from? I’m not so sure sometimes -- how I pick up what I do. It seems like a lot of it is hard work and other times the knowledge and solutions just fall into place. I think the latter is a result of previous hard work and really making connections between various events, facts, experiences, etc. I like having a problem to mull over. Sometimes, I just let it be for awhile and just wait for the solution to manifest itself. I know this comes from somewhere, but it can be a surprise. Patience is not always easy, nor is this method always timely.
On the method of learning and teaching people how to learn, or “mathetics”, this is a hard concept to pinpoint. Certainly there are strategies that can be shared with other people. The real learning, the moment when things crystallize, is that something that we can even describe? That to me is so innate and instinctive. Essentially, the brain constructs itself. Do you tell which part of your brain to encode new knowledge? Not really, although the environment, actions, context, and emotions surrounding the knowledge certainly have a weight in how experiences are encoded – perhaps as background, or crucial reference points for future recall. That said, an improperly tuned situation could be disastrous for encoding, and, in effect, learning and retention.
Project testing this week:
References:
Papert, S., (1996). A word for learning. In Y. Kafai & M. Resnick (Eds.), Constructionism in practice: Designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world (pp. 9-24). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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