25. Post haste

Recently i have been mainly constructing my presentation for the last crit, looking into getting my terminologies down as I bring together my notes from my proposal and work on the main areas of my study.

To clearly map out all of the connections between the facets of the study and how they all intermingle is challenging in itself, finding the key words will help me to improve my academic writing and enhance my dissertation. It will also serve to give a more generalised view on my work and concepts, allowing them to become more accessible to a wider audience. 

This will help me to explain how the analogies or the metaphors create new connects and the theories behind it all. I have also been looking into institutions that use the same sort of ethos or that have similar goals be it for more inspiring or visual effects, vs more educational and piratical applications. 

http://the-private-eye.com/html/conservMENU.html

I have discover a great source that is right at the more abstract and creative part of my project its a institution that runs workshop for kids to allow them to be more open and creative in the how they view the world and what they do. "The Private Eye is a program about the drama and wonder of looking closely at the world, thinking by analogy, changing scale and theorizing. Designed to develop critical thinking skills, creativity and scientific literacy - across subjects -"

This incorporates the key ideas that allowing our mind to make its own connections to what it sees, enables a more natural and longer learning process to occur. Learning something a set way is non-constructive to how our brain or how us as individuals form our own meanings. 

Seeing it used in a growing workshop that is already employed over america, lets me see that the project does have a certain amount of value and that it is being increasingly employed to better the visuals and incorporation of visuals within the educational system. 

Another really good spuce that i have found is the The National Science Foundations website as they have yearly visualisation awards where they showcase the best visual interpretations or imagery. Looking at these give me a good insight into what new or dynamic projects are being broached within the sientific realms. It also has very close goals to my own with teaching though new more effective visuals or inspirening images that provoke the mind or showcase the hidden wonders of a topic.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/winners_2012.jsp

I found this game that won an honourable mention in the awards. Its a small game that focuses on teaching the theory's or relativity, which is a very very complex topic to put it ligtly, but  a way of understanding the loose fundamentals or key ideas is well demonstrated here. The reason i like it despite its poor visual style is that its highly interactive and memorable. How it creates a memorable link from relativity is using a little character called velocity raptor, which from the get go plays on the physics term velocity instantly making it a connectable character when thinking about velocity. During the game you must navigate the level using the effects the theories of relativity have on the environment when travelling close to or at the speed of light, this distorts space and angle of the images, the colour and the character itself. Explaining these in classes with just text and static images would never come close to building the imagery and memorability that this game can offer as the viewer can get a 'feel' of what it would be like in an abstract manner that really just enforces the general principals for further knowledge. Its this foundation to a foreign or unimaginable topic that my project aims at visualising. 

The only downside of the game is its target audience and how it is presented, it is a bit condescending and with this advanced topic being brought up too early the connections would not stick or ground themselves into long term memory, rendering it rather arbitrary. If it was slightly more visually pleasing and advanced, but maintained the same humour then it would be in good stead for early high-school students.

From looking at this one of the main points i have grasped more is that the audience is so important, and with teaching i believe that this can be bent in regards to how young children can still be taught complex topics but that it needs to be very well done for it to relate to there stored memories and capita of information they have  acquired.