David Riley

I worked closely with David from 1983 until 1990 - his friendship, together with an inquiring and methodical mind gave me opportunity to discuss many ideas in depth ranging across pedagogy, design and management.

Reflection: The decision making inherent in simulations we created was important but the creativity and analysis demanded in modelling itself was more powerful for learning.

2012 David Riley.jpg

David had a particular interest in modelling and background in geography leading simulations of gas pipelines, software for evluating location decisions and ultimately to the proposal to develop the Planet Earth CD-ROM as part of the Renaissance Project.

Together we explored how best to offer the learner a toolkit to work with multimedia in a constructivist sense.

We also worked to offer design advice to colleagues in the Computers in the Curriculum project.

Finally we saw that simulation, although valuable, did not achieve the depth of understanding that modelling could.

(Words: 165 )

Lewis Carroll describes a fictional map that had:

"the scale of a mile to the mile."

A character notes some practical difficulties with such a map and states that:

"we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."
— Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Lewis Carroll, 1893