Interactive documentary and education: a field to explore

In our previous posts of this series (Part I – Part II) we tried to argue that although it is clear that the main scope of interactive documentary focuses on the field of audiovisual and cultural dissemination, we believe that there is another closely related field which soon will begin to emerge and explode giving us all their latent potential: the interactive nonfiction genres related to education, teaching and training. That’s why we started toproduce projects in the Interactive Communication Studies at the University of Vic in that direction.

Constructivist and constructionist theories applied to the field of education seem very relevant to our proposal, as they are flexible enough to adapt to the knowledge and multidisciplinary emphasize in the use of information technology and communication as an essential component of learning.

Constructivism is a theory of learning and an approach to education that lays emphasis on the ways that people create meaning of the world through a series of individual constructs. Constructs are the different types of filters we choose to place over our realities to change our reality from chaos to order. Simply stated, it is a learning process which allows a student to experience an environment first-hand, thereby giving the student reliable, trust-worthy knowledge. The student is required to act upon the environment to both acquire and test new knowledge.

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Interactive Narratives

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