A New Spin on Encyclopedias.
About a year ago I came up with the idea of employing serendipity, and the casual and unassuming nature of randomness, in the service of learning. Learning by discovery, where discovery is not instructed, but based on chance, removing the heavy handedness of courses and curriculums. It reminded me of my early years as a learner, when I despised classes and instead was drawn to open encyclopedias at a random page to see what I could find. I believed it was the perfect way to explore what a learner might not even know to look for.
I fell in love with the idea of the spin-wheel as a learning tool. It was a simple solution, but: “Big problems are rarely solved with big solutions, but by a sequence of small solutions.” (Chip & Dan Heath). I believed in it not just because it allows for organic navigation of educational materials, devoid of commitment to a prescribed journey, but also because it allows for organic addition of content by creators and curators. Just throw in interesting information and the wheel will do the rest.*
I thought it was simple and I thought it would be simple. Little did I know.
2,500 Hours of Work Later
I started with researching, gathering, editing and writing a lot of topics in a variety of subjects and fields.
I was stupid.
It was a herculean task that I was just not not up to. I thought I could have one spin-wheel to rule them all — for topics in all subjects and fields. I soon realized that I can’t spread too much and have to stick to specific subjects. My mind couldn’t handle trying to include a bit of everything. So I divided the work to eight field pairs:
It didn’t make things any easier. Now I felt even more pressure to have enough content in each category. Then it hit me — there’s no reason why I shouldn’t create these topics in “volumes”, in collections of topics that are much more specific.** Why not start in batches and grow over time? One method was also to concentrate on more specific collections. From vast spaces of knowledge such as Celestial Bodies and Aviation I came down to such segments as Black Holes and Aviators. From Fictional Characters to just Animated Characters. From Photography to Famous Photos. From Ancient Egypt to Pharaohs. It made me play around with the hierarchies of knowledge; a playfulness that works well with the spin-wheel. But more on that another time.
This was more manageable, yet took me about 2,500 hours over 6 months to compose 25 such collections, featuring over 1,500 individual encyclopedic entries. I should have known, maybe from the story of the origins of the encyclopedia, that writing one was not easy or quick:
I’m proud of this achievement — a new spin on encyclopedias. A Smart Spin. Ironically it actually instilled in me the sense that this can be done, because here I was doing it. I now enlist the help of other contributors, and the process of aggregating and cataloging the data is becoming more streamlined and efficient. With the endless wealth of information, and a gushing amount of quality media created by some of the most brilliant minds in the world, available and easily accessible online — it is indeed possible to create new kinds of encyclopedias. It is not just a possibility. It’s a privilege and responsibility to do justice to this inexhaustible resource of wisdom, even if at times it seems overwhelming. It did seem that way to me, but I got over it.
Join me in my quest to design and develop new ways to discover, navigate and engage with knowledge.
* What’s So Great About the Spin-wheel?
- It’s the simplest most basic interactive experience. Just click.
- If you want to explore a subject but don’t know where to start, just spin.
- If you don’t want to be overwhelmed with options and information and want to keep it casual, just spin.
- It’s as much about being able to quickly and easily move on as it is to dive deeper.
- It supports the principles of microlearning. You can snack. Or have a three course meal.
- It’s fun and simple to spin a wheel, making it easy and inviting to explore more. It utilizes the principle that makes games so engaging — “one more turn”.
- Because you might be interested in some topics, bored by some and completely excited about others. It works on the principle of “variable reward”, which is proven to drive engagement.
- It nurtures curiosity and embraces serendipity, “…the kind of curiosity that invites just enough serendipity to allow for the discovery of ideas we didn’t know we were interested in until we are.” (Maria Popova)
- It’s cross-curricular in an inspiring way. Collections of topics can be eclectic and surprising combinations of things — every spin, every randomized topic can be used to challenge conventions of how things are connected and what subjects include.
- It only requires minimal planning from the part of the content creator. They don’t need to construct an intricate instruction design but simply feed the database and the navigator automatically generates the “experience”. This point is valid for any of our navigators.
** I’m reminded of the episode of Friends, in which Joey is being convinced by an encyclopedia salesman (played brilliantly by Penn Jillette), yet does not have the funds to procure an entire set of volumes, so he settles on just the “V” book, providing him with knowledge on a very unique range of topics.
