When we make things out of fabric, we know the strengths and limitations of the material and work with them. Even more interesting, we turn the limitations into strengths. We emphasize linen’s creases and felt the wool. The other day I read about Orsola de Castro’s take on clothes moths – she leaves a ‘sacrificial lamb’, feeding them with their preferred fibre so they leave everything else alone. I wonder, where am I short a perspective shift, where I am fighting against nature to no avail?
In online teaching, and in a lot of other systems in post-secondary, I am reminded of a tiny glimpse into J. Habermas, from a professor in grad school: Does the system support the lifeworld, or has it colonized the lifeworld? I might be told, design your activity like this, because this is what the tool can do. In order to win against the system, I must know it better than our institutional experts, well enough to design around it, to make it elegant… and I resent it.
I remember in high school music class, learning the ways instruments were designed for the human hand. What would learning management systems look like, if they were designed for human learning?
Toile & Trouble 