Animations do have educational value, some more than others, but generally marginal. There isn't enough bang for the buck unless a lot more is done to entice students to explore. Students will appreciate a sine function much more by tabulating its values, writing those on a piece of paper, and then graphing them on a piece of paper. They are actively engaged, with knowledge running up the pencil, through the arm, up into the brain, and then hopefully back down again to the pencil. A spreadsheet is a good second-best. Animations, on the other hand, can be viewed passively, like television.
Gregory
On Aug 14, 2004, at 2:23 AM, Erik Hansen wrote:
perhaps because they don't see computers as more than a gimmicky folder file?
when i suggested to a biologist that her plant growth website could do even more with animation showing incremental progress, the reaction was a defensive "oh yes, and i could add some waving arms!" no, she was not a programmer.
a math prof felt that animating the progress of a mathematical function was a cop-out, not real thought.
a class in neural networking i once took had step-wise representation of a function's progress in a Variable Watcher and in a graph. i never would have gotten the idea from the prose.
many "get" the concept of a sine wave only after seeing a visual representation.
maybe the profs should talk to the game writers?
Erik Hansen
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