It was our attempt to make just-in-case (no compelling immediate need) learning feel more like just-in-time (real-life crisis!) — an approach we feel best explains why the first Head First books were all the leaders in their categories, despite, um, crappy writing and a whole lot NOT to like.

Eric and Beth Freeman, primary authors of Head First Design Patterns (in my opinion the best of the series) said they spent 80% of their authoring time and effort coming up with the right examples. We hope that fact sinks in with new authors (or teachers).

We also keep looking for more useful metaphors for this approach, and “flight-simulator” is in there somewhere. We don’t want to hand-walk you through doing everything right — we want you to fall, scrape your knee, hit your head, and every once in a while explode in a fiery crash because you made the wrong–yet intuitive–choice. :)

A lot of the work I do is focused on making museums and cultural institutions places of dialogue around the content they preserve and display. While there are many educational experiences that are well-served by instructional modalities, equitable conversation isn’t one of them. When museums integrate questions into label copy and programs, they often do it in an insincere way that implies that a. they are just fishing for an answer they already know, or b. they are creating a “participation opportunity” without any real follow-through of a growing, responsive exchange of ideas.

I associate a. with teachers, b. with museums. We all have predispositions to overcome if we want to develop honest two-way relationships with audiences/visitors/students/whomever.

I used their book on PHP to learn some programming for my website that has been invaluable this year teaching.

I really like their approach.