What makes an idea powerful?
We’ve been enjoying an email exchange with Alec Resnick about, among other things, the power of tools and ideas. I’ll reproduce an excerpt here because it crisply summarizes the challenges of effective invention in this space.
Alec suggested:
To me, the only meaning "powerful idea" can have is identical to "powerful tool"—i.e. What can a learner do with it which matters? I think the slipperiest part of this slope is that whether one "can" does not mean one "will." And in that chasm is where the vast majority of school-ish ideas fall. e.g. to make the extreme case, "With algebra II you can ace calculus you can get into a good college you can get a good job where you can make iPods and start a family." Now obviously any definition of "can" which admits that is a farce. Practically, I find it most useful to replace "What can a learner do with it which matters?" with the slightly muddier, "For what which matters to the learner is this tool sufficient to enable?"
I wondered (completely missing his point):
I’d have said a powerful idea "does more" with less—explains more phenomena, generalizes to further explanations, creates more connections, etc… with fewer theoretical/axiomatic/symbolic dependencies. I think that’s nearly the same as “what can a learner do with it," but sharing to see what you think.
One distinction, maybe: is an idea still powerful if it is not immediately actionable for the learner? If they have to learn something else to use it? If they need materials they don’t have at hand?
Alec clarified with this cogent schema (emphasis mine, lightly reformatted for clarity):
“What can a learner do with it" naturally couples our considerations to
the nature of systems in the world
the nature of learners
[implicitly] the nature of learners' desires.
A powerful idea is likely to be deep to the extent that depth means you are likely talking about something which is broadly applicable (i.e. relating to (1)).
Rendering a powerful idea usable is a matter of cognitive (e.g. body syntonicity) and affective (e.g. samba schools) impedance matching.
Making a powerful idea relevant brings us naturally to (3)—i.e. does the learner care about doing what the idea enables.
What a lovely litmus! A spinning top might be usable and relevant but shallow; a robotics textbook might be deep and relevant but unusable; an outstanding calculus lesson might be deep and usable but irrelevant.
But the Logo turtle? Hypercard? Even an activity as simple as Double War? You’ve got all three.