[Air-l] Why Am I Only Communicating with Text?

Charles Balch Ph.D. charlie at balch.org
Sat May 26 07:42:27 PDT 2007


Steve E writ:
"These kinds of discussions" are, I think, pedagogic discussions: we try to
learn from our engagements with each other.

Hypothesis: we don't use sound and images for this kind of dialog, this kind
of teaching/learning, because they are essnetially secondary, supportive,
and not central to the work of teaching/learning.

Charlie B:
Text is not the only way to have a pedagogic discussion. Both icons and text
can have huge impact.  Our understandings are not internalized just in text
and thus instruction should include a variety modalities.

I'm reminded of the quote "When the only tool you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail." I can bang away on lots of things with just
text but there are circumstances where there are better tools than text.

At the risk of distracting from my points above, this is the American list
of Internet Researchers. How come all of our text is in US English? The USA
is not the only country in America.

Charlie Balch





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