Of Gurus and Godfathers: Learning Design in the Networked Age

Educators in a school of architectural design and researchers in a school of education explore the design of learning and the learning of design in this networked age. Their discussion revolves around a course on computer-aided design and the introduction and use of Eventspaces, an experimental, online 'neighborhood' for the students in the course. The conversation reveals how frameworks oriented towards improving educational practice—in this instance, a set of concepts known as Teaching for Understanding—hold the potential of offering a common language to probe the impact of innovation and point the way towards redesign. It also shows how reference to more than one framework may be essential to explore fully new arenas of educational practice.

Spicer, David Eddy and Jef Huang. Education Communication and Information (2003). Articles>Education>Design

What's Next for Text?

All text is digital in origin. Fixed print has become printout, one substrate of expression for a preexisting digital code. And it is no longer the only game in town. Other, digital, displays–--regular cathode ray tube computer screens, liquid crystal display flat screens, book-sized electronic display devices, digital screen projectors, heads-up displays, goggles, helmets, immersive virtual reality environments–--now compete with the printed page for final display. These digital displays can recreate the full electronic expressive space, a three-dimensional, dynamic world, as the flat, fixed world of print cannot. Fixity stands at the center of Beatrice Warde's brave declaration: 'not to perish on waves of sound, not to vary with the writer's hand, but fixed in time.' That fixity comes unglued in the diversity of display devices in which text can now become manifest. Text will find its future as the various ways we can now display it compete for the privilege.

Lanham, Richard A. Education Communication and Information (2003). Design>Document Design>Online