Explorable explanation
An explorable explanation (often shortened to explorable) is a form of informative media where an
Definition
The term "explorable explanation" was first used in passing by Peter Brusilovsky in a 1994 paper,[1] but did not enter into common use until 2011, when Bret Victor published an eponymous essay[2] (the essay included an explorable explanation of a digital filter). Victor distinguishes explorable explanations from isolated interactive widgets and visualizations by the fact that they deliberately guide the attention of their audience towards particular phenomena within the simulation. In characterizing the concept, Victor explains:[2]
Explorable Explanations is my umbrella project for ideas that enable and encourage truly active reading. The goal is to change people's relationship with text. People currently think of text as information to be consumed. I want text to be used as an environment to think in.
Some of the ideas Victor espoused in the essay occurred to him while during work with Al Gore on the app version of the 2009 book Our Choice.[3] He had proposed that the app should contain interactive models, but this idea was rejected on the basis that all numerical values proposed regarding climate change needed to have a citation, and the interactive models would generate un-cited numbers.[4]
The term has since also been characterized as being about learning through play.[5] The related term "active essays" was used by Alan Kay to refer to text-based explorable explanations,[6] and a major goal of Squeak (the precursor to Scratch) was to allow for the creation of them.[7]
A few video games may be considered explorable explanations. For example,
Educational video games have an overlap with explorable explanations,[9][10] summarized as:
Science-based games [...] primarily focus on creating an experience sparking intrinsic motivation, that is, students play for fun, but learn in the process, as their gaming experience requires learning concepts to proceed or provides an explorative pathway through the game that promotes learning. [...] Explorable explanations (or “explorables”) come at educational games from the opposite direction: instead of “games, but with science communication added,” they are “science communication, but with interactivity added”.
They are similar in that both involve a computer simulation that is visualized, and both have the intended goal that the audience learns something. However, in an educational video game, the simulation is not necessarily a simulation of the game's intended learning content.[11] Instead, learning content in educational video games is usually put in a non-interactive form such as text or voiceover; the educational game then usually has some schedule whereby the audience alternates between seeing the text and, separately, playing a game, usually a game with mechanics from a standard genre, such as a platformer.[12]
Explorable explanations are also distinct from gamification,[11] which has the stated intention of improving the structure of rewards in learning. An explorable explanation may or may not involve rewards, and most involve none.
History
Board games such as The Landlord's Game (the precursor to Monopoly) involve a simulation and so can be described as analogue precursors to explorable explanations.[13]
Many explorable explanations predate the popular use of the phrase.[14][15] For example, the Plato system, a computer-assisted instructional system created in 1960 depicted to the right, used interactive examples to teach concepts to students.[16] In 1996, Mitchel Resnick created an explorable explanation of emergence using Conway's Game of Life as an example.[17]
The target audience for explorable explanations has historically been limited by available
. This allows complex simulations to be accessed instantly and shared on social media.Wikipedia has some examples of basic explorable explanations.[19]
Subject matter
The most prevalent examples of explorable explanations concern topics within mathematics[20][21] or computer science.[22][23] There are numerous explanations of concepts within statistics and machine learning as well as of specific algorithms.
Explorable explanations have a bias towards focusing on these topics, and when the subject matter comes from disciplines of
Additionally, since the simulation requires a visualization, there is a certain bias towards subject matter close to geometry. For example, there are at least three explorable explanations about special relativity[27][28] including A Slower Speed of Light.[29]
Use in media
Explorable explanations are increasingly being created by journalists,
Other newsrooms such as
Structure
Explorable explanations can differ widely in the kind of "guidance" that they give regarding how to interact with and think about their simulations. In some cases, guidance is intended to come from teachers in a school setting; this is the approach advocated for using PhET Interactive Simulations created by Carl Wieman, and they have been found to be an effective complement to traditional chalk and talk lessons.[44]
Most explorable explanations provide guidance using prose. This is the approach used in several explorable explanation creation platforms,[45][46] including Observable[47] created by Mike Bostock. Some others use voice-over narration.[48][49][50]
See also
References
- ISBN 9783540586487
- ^ a b "Explorable Explanations". worrydream.com. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
- ^ Pavlus, John (November 9, 2011). "After Trying To "Kill Math," An Ex-Apple Designer Aims To Kill Reading". Fast Company. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
- ^ "What can a technologist do about climate change? A personal view". worrydream.com. Retrieved May 15, 2019.
- ^ "Explorable Explanations". explorabl.es. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
- ^ "Active Essays". www.playfulinvention.com. Retrieved April 2, 2019.
- ^ "Active Essays". wiki.squeak.org. Retrieved April 2, 2019.
- ^ "The theory of everything in sandbox city: Will Wright's keynote at ACADIA 2014". Archinect. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- ^ "FAQ | Explorable Explanations". explorabl.es. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- doi:10.1117/1.OE.61.8.081809. This article incorporates text from this source, which is available under the CC BY 4.0license.
- ^ a b "Explorable Explanations". Nicky Case's Blog. September 8, 2014. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
- ^ "Can Educational Be Fun?". www.cc.gatech.edu. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- ^ "Nicky Case: Seeing Whole Systems – The Long Now". longnow.org. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
- S2CID 21614588.
- S2CID 13014326.
- ^ "PLATO and the History of Education Technology (That Wasn't)". Hack Education. January 2, 2018. Retrieved March 27, 2019.
- ^ "Exploring Emergence". www.playfulinvention.com. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- ^ "Reaction-Diffusion Media Wall". www.karlsims.com. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- ^ "conic section interactive visualisation". upload.wikimedia.org. Retrieved March 27, 2019.
- ^ "Math | Explorable Explanations". explorabl.es. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
- ^ Benziane, Chakib (April 3, 2019), A curated list of awesome explorable explanations.: sp4ke/awesome-explorables, retrieved April 5, 2019
- ^ "Programming | Explorable Explanations". explorabl.es. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
- ^ Benziane, Chakib (April 3, 2019), A curated list of awesome explorable explanations.: sp4ke/awesome-explorables, retrieved April 5, 2019
- ^ Horti, Samuel (July 3, 2017). "The Evolution of Trust is a cute explain-o-game about cooperation". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
- ^ Bliss, Laura (December 10, 2014). "An Immersive Game Shows How Easily Segregation Arises—and How We Might Fix It". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
- ^ Glen Chiacchieri, Storytime with Jonathan Blow at PAX East 2016, retrieved January 21, 2019
- ^ "Inside Einstein's head - an explorable explanation of relativistic spacetime". www.lucify.com. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
- ^ "Velocity Raptor". testtubegames.com. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
- ^ Admin, Game Lab. "A Slower Speed of Light". MIT Game Lab. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- ^ Joho, Jess (September 2, 2015). "Your brain on anxiety: an interactive explanation with Nicky Case". Kill Screen. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
- ^ a b Evershed, Nick; Ball, Andy; Liu, Ri; Davey, Melissa. "Hooked: how pokies are designed to be addictive". the Guardian. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
- ^ Bui, Quoctrung (May 21, 2015). "Will Your Job Be Done By A Machine?". NPR. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
- ^ Barry-Jester, Anna Maria (August 4, 2015). "Should Prison Sentences Be Based On Crimes That Haven't Been Committed Yet?". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
- ^ "Could 'explorable explanations' help tell a new kind of story?". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
- ^ "A list of recent newsgames". www.robinkwong.com. February 24, 2018. Retrieved April 1, 2019.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved January 25, 2019.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 25, 2019.
- ^ "What's Really Warming the World?". Bloomberg.com. June 24, 2015. Retrieved October 17, 2020.
- ^ Roston, Eric (June 2, 2015). "Bloomberg – What's Really Warming the World?". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved January 25, 2019.
- ^ Jones, Maya A. (July 1, 2016). "FiveThirtyEight breaks down the more than 33,000 annual U.S. gun deaths". Andscape. Retrieved January 25, 2019.
- ^ King, Ritchie (August 1, 2015). "Science Isn't Broken". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved January 25, 2019.
- ^ "PhET Interactive Simulations". PhET. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- ^ "The Parametric Press | Issue 01 Call For Proposals". parametric.press. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- ^ "Idyll". idyll-lang.org. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
- ^ "Observable". observablehq.com. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
- ^ "Visualizing quaternions, an explorable video series". eater.net. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
- ^ "Neurotic Neurons". ncase.me. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
- ^ GitHub – matryx/calcflow: A virtual reality tool for mathematical modeling!, MATRYX, January 1, 2019, retrieved January 19, 2019
External links
- http://explorabl.es, a website compiling many examples
- https://distill.pub/, an online peer reviewed based on explorable explanations
- https://beta.observablehq.com, a creation and sharing platform for explorable explanations with a notebook interface
- https://minutelabs.io/, a set of explorable explanations connected with the YouTube channel MinutePhysics
- https://github.com/stared/science-based-games-list, a collaborative list of science-based games in physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, health, mathematics, sociology, economy, and humanities