Primedia and Iterative Formation: part 2

a   n o n - e x a m p l e

Here's what all that information might have looked like when it was combined:




"6543 is 3,000 light years away in the northern constellation Draco."


Now can you learn something from that? Yes you can, provided you can read. And why can you learn something from it? Because there are relationships implied between the several objects in the bundle:
  1. the photo,
  2. the label overlaying the photo (the implication being that the label describes the object in the photo -- although that is never explicitly stated), and
  3. the caption beneath the photo (again, the implication being that the caption describes the object in the photo -- although that is never explicitly stated).
a n   e x p l a n a t i o n

These primedial objects (the photo, the label, and the caption), which alone have no inherent instructional value, can be combined to form more complex "Learning Objects." That is, they can be combined to form objects from which it is possible to actually learn something. (Consequently, as you might have guessed, a Learning Object is not primedial. Why not? Two sides of the same answer: (1) it can still be further reduced to several distinct bits of data, and (2) you can learn something from it.)

If instructional designers and content producers will simply take the time to archive and index the different primedia they create when they work on projects, incredible economies of scale can be realized.