In this episode (we’ve gone back and counted them, this is number 59 of our pop culture pedagogy mash-ups!) Rebecca and Mark chat with Richard Treves, a fellow Learning Designer and Educator and member of the Playful Learning Association. Richard has a background in the geosciences—geology, maps, and geography. He works at the River Restoration Centre, based at Cranfield University, and is a huge fan of field trips, as we’ll find out.
We’re also talking about the classic field trip movie, Stand by Me. Based on a novella by Stephen King entitled The Body: Fall from Innocence. We use it as a basis for talking about embodied cognition and then embodied learning.
Rebecca mentions a paper we refer to in the podcast. This is Six Views of Embodied Cognition by Margaret Wilson. You can read it here if you have access https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03196322
Stand by Me is also one of the movies Rob Reiner made during the 80s and 90s – a run that started with This Is Spinal Tap, and also included A Few Good Men, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, The Sure Thing and Misery, and ended with North. So in a few short years he redefined half a dozen movie genres and also redefined how bad a movie can be. Stand By Me is the quintessential coming of age movie so it’s great that we get to pay homage to a greatly missed film-maker (and a great writer again).
In case you’re wondering why we don’t talk about online embodiment – we did – but Mark edited out that bit as he felt that should be a whole episode in itself. So look out for that one.
Although Mike wasn’t in the recording, his fingerprints are all over it as he did a major job of rescuing the various dodgy sound things that happened to it as a result of Mark’s dodgy internet connection. The silver lining is that this was the event that finally persuaded him he needed fibre.
Hope you enjoy it.
Wilson, M. (2002) Six views of embodied cognition Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 9 (4), 625-63