Re: [zzdev] GZigZag and education?

[Benjamin Fallenstein <b.fallenstein@xxxxxx>]

Hi!

Kimmo Kristian Wideroos wrote:
> I've been really interested in using gzz as a base for
> collaborative learning environment, especially for collaborative
> knowledge building and sharing. However, recently I've been
> thinking that it could be reasonable to start from a small scale
> personal writing tool, which, in turn, could be later used as a
> writing tool in the collaborative environment.
> 
> Don't know whether this makes sense, but I've tried to do some
> pictures which (hopefully) illustrate the idea. Comments, please ;)
> See http://www.jyu.fi/~wikikr/zz/bb2.html

It's definitely interesting, but I doubt I can convince any of my
teachers to work with it, because it's (as far as I see it) not
promising enough for use in the classroom. Once we're talking about a
collaborative environment, that *might* change; I do know that some
people here are working with a web-based collaborative environment, so I
might be able to convince them ZZ is better. Well, we're very definitely
in need of a pedagogical concept for computer use at my school; OTOH,
nobody seems to be willingly to form a group discussing that, so I'm
just not sure.

(OTOH again, the collaborative environment *does* fit with the
educational goals of my school's founder, as I see them, so maybe I
could get someone to work with it... dunno.)

As to your proposal, I was wondering: wouldn't a mind-map structure
(i.e., text is on the connecting lines) be better? I mean, the mind-map
people are against connected boxes because they're "disassociative," the
eye does not move between them as easily, and I think they have a point.
A mind-map where you can move between the elements, where you can put
any element in the middle, would be a very interesting structure, I
should think. Make sense?

Longer texts could be connected in the general gzz applitude
interconnection way: they would be shown near the mind-map stem they're
connected to, and clicking on them would shift the focus to the text and
show the mind-map connected in the margins. (And yes, texts should be
nile streams so that you can use the powerful actions we intend to
develop for it, like real copy-and-paste.)

And we could have an intermediate form of a nile stream boxed in a small
rectangle, like your notes, and usually viewed as a whole -- these we
could also attach to mind-map stems.

- Benja