Are those wedding bells I hear? Nope - just Matthew & Cased-Based Reasoning

That's it - all the other previous theories can pack it up, call it a day, and go on home.  CBL/CBR is now my new and all-time favorite.  We're getting married.  The invitations are in the mail. ;)

It took me a few minutes to warm up this week, to be honest.  However, once I got my teeth into the Jonassen and Wang articles - I was absolutely in heaven.  Cases = stories.  Done.  Stick a fork in me, wrap it up.

This week's theory feels like the hunch I've had for awhile now (about stories and storytelling in teaching) and added on another layer of the best bits from my other favorite theories (apprenticeship, situated, etc.).  In fact - as I was reading the Jonassen article I kept reading what felt like really familiar phrases and thinking... checked the references and there it was.  Good ole Kieran Egan - my storytelling theorist.  ;)  (If you've got some free time, reading some of his works is an interesting and fun brain exercise.)  I don't know about you - but I've now got about 4-5 extra readings I'm going to have to go off and do that I got from the refs from this weeks' readings.  Don't ya just love how that happens?

Back to the love fest.  I have to say - and as hard as it is to acknowledge this - that I was wrong about GBS and Schank from a few weeks ago.  Apparently I ate something that changed my mood... or I just wasn't in the right frame of mind when I was reading the Schank pieces because I had no idea - and couldn't see the connection until the past few days in this weeks' readings - that he was so influential in helping to shift the landscape such that narrative could be considered as central to instruction, teaching and learning.  Goes to show - well, goes to show that I can be wrong and should spend more time reflecting before making a judgment. ;)  (Schank's books/articles are on the short-list of things to read, by the way.)

The place that I would love to see instructional design theory "get to" is beyond even boxing in cases/stories just to describe problems... and to aid in the solving of problems.  What if - oh, what if - "objective" truths and reasonings were considered as just another version of a story we tell ourselves??  But I must get back to the topic at hand.

I appreciated all of the readings this week for their thorough treatment of the theoretical background for the narrative approach.  (Also another reason why I you'll find me in the library this afternoon.)  On one level - and I've mentioned this before in my weekly reflections - this theory, the basic assumption that we live and pass on lessons learned via stories and we should find a way to preserve these stories, seems so simple.  Really, rather anticlimactic once you've climbed the mountain and look back down at where you've come from.  I mean - don't get me wrong - the idea that we should be teaching through personal narrative is a huge departure from what has been institutionalized as "learning" - but really?  We learn best by sharing about our experiences in our storytelling.  Duh.  (Hard to hold this paradox together, honestly.)

The first place that my mind jumped to with regards to employing technology to facilitate case-based reasoning methods was YouTube.  How awesome to have YouTube house your "expert"'s (or maybe not "experts") thoughts and reflections about a discipline, problem, or issue?

In fact - try this on for a minute - when parents come to me with questions about math... not easy math, but rational numbers and factoring and things like that - I point them to YouTube.  With a cleverly aligned string of search/keywords you can find just about anything up there.  The jackpot is when you find a video of someone working out/explaining the same problem that you're stumped on.  Eight out of ten times this isn't true - so you end up having to watch and deduce the problem solving patterns - and then figure out how to apply what you've just seen to the problem you have at hand?  Is this not an informal version of CBR?  (Side question/note - can an "informal" application be a "true" exemplar of a theory?)

That's my recommendation.  Go for the video rather than straight to audio.  You wouldn't even have to edit it all that much.  (Although the Wang article really humbled me in terms of developing their search engine.  Whew!)  And you could just use tags to help with the search function.

Enough gloating.  Must share with my peers now.  Hope you enjoyed this week's theory as much as I did.  Gosh - if next week is as good as this one - I don't know if I'll be able to handle it!