Information Technology Reference
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the topic metaphor. For the human interaction with meme media, it does not
matter whether or not the form of making contents and functionalities available
resembles conventional topics or not.
The author admits, nevertheless, that from a commercial perspective it might
be useful to stick with the traditional book metaphor to get publishers engaged.
For purposes of learning, however, the traditional book format is irrelevant.
What matters are interest attracting and thought provoking functionalities as
well as features which allow for exploration beyond the limits of human beings
left to their own devices.
As already said above, some special emphasis has been put on the paradigm of
direct execution and on game-based learning. Naturally, there is direct execution
which is not playful at all. And there is some game-based learning which does
not need any direct execution. But the intersection of both areas-to use such a
mathematical metaphor-is of particular interest.
It applies to a large variety of learning problems that effects of changing
parameters are not easy to foresee and that finding out actual effects may be
time-consuming and tedious. The field of computability theory as investigated by
Arnold and Reichelt [5] is just an extreme theoretical, but illustrative example.
In those applications, direct execution turns out to be particularly benefical.
Learners may literally play with parameters and observe the effects of settings.
Some learners may be challenged by the task of finding parameters that cause
particular target effects. For the purpose of mastery, they are enforced to exhibit
the deeper reasons underlying the mechanisms under consideration, i.e. to learn.
Further features of Webble technology allow for making approaches to playful
exploratory learning based on direct execution even more affective and effective.
Consider, for instance, the dashboard approach by Sjobergh and Tanaka [29]
by means of which a variety of external data may be sucked into a Webble system
for visualization and direct execution. Approaches like that allow for a situated
e-learning which integrates realistic and up to date information into learning
environments. This seems particularly valuable for bringing the technology into
corporate learning applications. It is definitely motivating for human beings in
learning environments relating to their workplace, if the data are not made up
out of thin air. Furthermore, realistic data are not only motivating, but allow
for more easily understanding relationships.
For other applications such as natural language learning and training, real
texts and phrases are known to be more effective than artificial constructs and,
thus, the dynamic access of Webbles to data from world-wide resources provides
an added value to language learning and language skill development.
To sum up, the present contribution's message is that Webble technologies
provide characteristics valuable for technology enhanced teaching and learning.
Beyond the limits of just saying so, it is the author's intention to provide a few
examples and illustrations. Because studying involved contents usually requires
a certain in-depth engagement, one of the sections above is a bit more elaborate.
Acknowledgements.
First of all, it is necessary to direct the readers' atten-
tion to Yuzuru Tanaka who has been inspired by Richard Dawkins' work [8] and
