What an amazing place that would be. Imagine reading about Olaudah Equiano's frightening voyage on the slave ship and being able to drive home his terror and helplessness with firsthand experience of the stifling darkness, the nauseating stench, and the incessant, surrounding sounds of despair. His narrative may be a primary source document, but his 19th century style requires a good deal of imagination.
Maybe that is actually an argument against this type of instructional environment, though. If we experience literature literally on a holodeck and not virtually in our imaginations, do we lose our personal reaction to the literature? It's an interesting reversal of circumstance since the holodeck experience is truly virtual reality! At the same time, is our imaginative recreation of a scene or experience literal or virtual? I think I should have paid more attention in my philosophy class!
In my literal classrooms, however, I do try to help my students approach their reading from both directions: First, to appreciate the details of imagery in the writings so they can imagine what the author is describing; and second, to go beyond the words, to learn more about the situation being described, to understand the cultural, political, social, as well as physical environments.
Even though we don't have holodecks available, technologies change rapidly and teachers continue to use whatever we can get our hands on to help our students learn. Since I first sat in a school desk over 50 years ago, the world has become much more immediate in classrooms. Sometimes schools put up barriers because no one can figure out how to "protect" children from the improper uses of new devices. Carbon paper was once an evil thing, but so once was the lead pencil. Now we have to block instead of embrace smart phones and miniature movie cameras.
I'm still waiting for my Dick Tracy "wrist radio/TV" (How many remember that futuristic device?), but my iPhone has even more features!
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