Creative Tools

How do you get a complex geoscience idea out of someone’s head and transfer it to someone else? Furthermore, how do you do that efficiently, effectively, and in such a way that it is scalable? For the last 5 years, or so, I have been building tools that have circled around these concepts. One of these tools is Visible Geology, it is an online geologic block modelling tool that is targeted at introductory and structural geology. Students are able to combine geologic events in any order to create their own geology. It is really good at communicating things like relative geologic time, structural relationships, and visualizing geology in abstract ways (e.g. cross-sections and stereonets). So far people have created a few hundred thousand geologic models, and it is used in a lot of geoscience classes around the world. Having stumbled into (perhaps) a partial solution for geoscience communication, I have been reflecting and researching on why. Some of my heuristics are:

1. These tools must be accessible to both students and teachers. I created the programs when I was learning geology, so I think this is important. By accessible, I mean in terms of the conceptual material, user interface, and delivery.

2. Going beyond static images, animations, and even interactive tools: focusing on creative tools (tools that allow you to create things, see figure below).

3. Communication tools should not be constrained by the need for assessment. Here we are focused on communication not ‘education’. Assessment is really hard, and will drive you towards buttons and drop-down lists.

4. Combinatorial things (in this case, geologic events) that work together such that the programmer doesn’t know what the user is going to do. Allowing the option for emergent creativity and your own discovery of concepts.

5. These tools don’t replace anything, they augment and enhance. You will still need a teacher, a student, and an entire arsenal of other geoscience tools (e.g. paper, a chalkboard, ...).

Geoscience is visual, and we need to think and communicate about processes that work across dimensions of time and space. This is hard! I believe that we need more creative tools targeted specifically to enhance our geoscientific communication. So that when we are having a conversation about a geologic formation or a geophysical process, we can ‘sketch’ it quickly, bring it to life, and add dynamically to the conversation. Aligning our points of view, so we are talking about the same process: making the conversation more meaningful. This is difficult to do in both a static medium (e.g. paper) as well as a highly technical medium (e.g. industry software for trained experts). You must either start from scratch every time or postpone the conversation to twiddle with the thousands of options available in technical software. Both of these media have their place, but there is something missing in between: environments that supports real-time creative thought but also provide constraints. That is, you are working inside a geological or geophysical system with rules that you can see, explore and perhaps break. We should have the ability to sketch a system and then explore it through simulations and visualizations. My hope is that these type of creative tools will drive communication, exploration, and individual discovery of geoscience concepts.