Subject: A Model and A Play - Similarities

Posted by Sharon Villines on 1/3/2010
In Reply To:A Model and A Play - Similarities Posted by Gene Bellinger on 1/3/2010

Message:

On Jan 3, 2010, at 9:39 AM, Gene Bellinger wrote:


As such might it be advantageous to consider a model like a play where I provide the audience an overview of the model to develop interest,

I would phrase this "an overview of the the dilemma."


and then each loop in the model is presented as an act in the play with the elements of the loops being the actors, some of which appear in multiple loops. As such a person’s understanding of the model is developed in a piecewise coherent manner which attempts to avoid overwhelming the audience.

Not only coherent but as a moving thing. When I look at models on paper which is how most people see them, they are not only incoherent, they are static. So this complex picture of a complex process reduces it to something frozen and to the ordinary person (like me) unrelated to the dynamic change it is intended to explain.

This could easily be done with a PowerPoint presentation which would be more accessible than a video because it can be paced for explanation and discussion.

Include errors. It's so much easier to see why a thing is excellent if you first see several things that aren't. The steps that didn't work. What happened when things were left out. My appreciation of perfect Egyptian statues was greatly enhanced when a professor showed slides of the worst ones you could imagine. Horribly proportioned and lumpy. Not statuesque at all. They were so bad the Metropolitan insisted she couldn't say who owned them -- obviously that didn't work. They were hidden in the basement but it would have been much more instructive to exhibit at least one.

Sharon