Color to the Rescue
Designing this course posed two challenges:
- The subject expert wanted to honor Picasso’s emotional biography by including his struggles with depression.
- The development team wanted to use Ort, our non-speaking alien, as the only other character.
Not exactly a harmonious blending of elements.
The curriculum covered all of Picasso’s career, but I decided to focus on his Blue and Red periods (spans of time when he painted only in those colors). Focusing on color allowed me to translate mature themes of depression to younger audiences. (Blue is easily understood as sad, red as happy.) This angle also let me express the thoughts of the non-speaking character without too much difficulty.
I feature this course because it represents the problem solving I often have to perform when designing story courses. It’s not just about writing a story that teaches. It’s about structuring a story in a way that compliments the material. This course could have easily seemed forced or become overly talky on the part of the Host Teacher. But instead it’s dynamic, entertaining, and translates a lot of information in a short span of time.
Things fell through with our art actor so the course was never made. But the scripts are solid.
Lessons 1 and 2
Ort is finding self-expression difficult and often loses out when dealing with humans. Eve, our art teacher, uses the paintings of Pablo Picasso to teach Ort how to express his feelings (and hopefully defend them).