In your fantasies

How does learning happen in your fantasy world? Can people get everything they need to know from a book by smelling the pages? Does it take rubbing their hands on the paper? Are there magic sunglasses they can wear which gives them immediate comprehension of everything they look at?

On a page in WikiEducator: Learner as Protagonist, JRR Tolkein is portrayed as an exemplar for learning with our imaginations:

The fact that an author can create a fantasy world with linguistically analogous constructs with the real world reveals a mastery level of knowledge and skills in that individual - a mastery level which educators strive for at CAA. Students who are able to combine their skills as both artists and scholars and become creators of their own world fulfill a key goal of the learner as protagonist; development of the confident learner identity through creative self-expression.

Perhaps comprehension occurs by simply immersing oneself in a conversation about it. What if understanding came about by writing the unknowns into a story that gets resolved in the end? Learning could even happen by deliberately not learning something, refusing to understand it and stubbornly dismissing the ideas. Then the extreme positional stance would bring about the total opposite without effort.

How does blogging affect learning in your fantasy world? Do learners gains skills from the read/write web? Are their significant changes in their thinking by linking to and commenting on other blogs? Does learning come about by the immersion in so many writers who are obviously learning by expressing themselves, thinking out loud and realizing more insights in the process?

When we bring our fantasies into the process of learning, we empower our love of learning. We see reality in a new light by setting up a desirable contrast to it. We create some suspense in a story that engages our emotions and sets us up to be the hero/heroine.