Nov 11, 2010
Notes from today's discussion in PLENK2010
- problem of multiple tools
- individually they're very simple,
- but together they are daunting
- similarity of function
- aggregating functionality
- similar interface
- eg Athabasca Landing
- that end-to-end functionality
- workflow
- role of Education?
- it seems that education is no longer innovating
- now it seems private companies set trends, ed follows
Handbook of emerging technologies
- need a tool that helps me synthesize
- helps me put it all together
Building tools?
- vs building skills and capacities
- Mendalay?
- because I do different things with different tools, I need a level of specialization
The Theory of Everything
- physicist/surfer
- might be different for everyone
- enables me to be online/offline, in my head in my screen
The foundational elements of a discipline
- that may be achievable - eg., critical literacies
- but these would be reflected differently in different tools
- eg., audio - will be different in local radio, satellite radio
- but the core element remains the same - 'listening'
Can we keep the thing that changes hidden so that we focus on the core?
- personal autonomy
- distributed knowledge
- social learning
It's the instantiation that confuses us, not the core idea
- eg., twitter
How do we get at the core?
- 21st century literacies?
- pattern recognition?
- two aspects: technical, and human - tech looks for connections, humans look for ideas
- analysis versus discussion
Pattern recognition
- beginning of theory generation
Pulling patterns together in this course - eg., posts, tweets
- what a computer can do better - patterns of activity
- a content analysis wouldn't get at how I do OLDaily
- more at play than just simply running an algorithm
Human - assigns meaning to pattern - semantic
Machine - assigns structure to pattern - syntax
Tracking change - tracking trends - distinction between form and meaning
In Ed Tech that distinction is sometimes misplaced
- eg you expect a person to do what a computer could do better - eg. lecture
This concept of sense-making, wayfinding, meaning
- these patterns are emerging - what does that mean socially, economically, politically
- eg. a computer can generate income data
- but the person sees the decline in middle class as serious.
Assigning meaning to perceptions
- is this something we do deliberately, or organically?
- Eg., I see a person, I am drawing conclusions, I'm assigning something to that
- When I assign attributes to an individual I am assigning meaning to it
- two people encountering the same person will assign different meanings to it
Maria's presentation (Wednesday)
- distinction between expert and novice is in assigning patterns
- the purpose of thinking is to stop thinking - eg., driving - to drive automatically
- but - the more we have to work, the more we will learn it
Reference - Sources of Power, by Klein
- Cambridge Handbook of Expert and Expertise
- we think in patterns if we're experts, we think linear if we're novice
Our capacity to recognize patterns
- our eyes are moving all over, literally craving patterns
- if there is a pattern to pursue, the mind will latch on
- not just the eye, this is what we do
Is our uber-tool like the eye? Something that creates a certain level of expertise for us, allowing us to achieve some sort of higher expertise?
- problem of multiple tools
- individually they're very simple,
- but together they are daunting
- similarity of function
- aggregating functionality
- similar interface
- eg Athabasca Landing
- that end-to-end functionality
- workflow
- role of Education?
- it seems that education is no longer innovating
- now it seems private companies set trends, ed follows
Handbook of emerging technologies
- need a tool that helps me synthesize
- helps me put it all together
Building tools?
- vs building skills and capacities
- Mendalay?
- because I do different things with different tools, I need a level of specialization
The Theory of Everything
- physicist/surfer
- might be different for everyone
- enables me to be online/offline, in my head in my screen
The foundational elements of a discipline
- that may be achievable - eg., critical literacies
- but these would be reflected differently in different tools
- eg., audio - will be different in local radio, satellite radio
- but the core element remains the same - 'listening'
Can we keep the thing that changes hidden so that we focus on the core?
- personal autonomy
- distributed knowledge
- social learning
It's the instantiation that confuses us, not the core idea
- eg., twitter
How do we get at the core?
- 21st century literacies?
- pattern recognition?
- two aspects: technical, and human - tech looks for connections, humans look for ideas
- analysis versus discussion
Pattern recognition
- beginning of theory generation
Pulling patterns together in this course - eg., posts, tweets
- what a computer can do better - patterns of activity
- a content analysis wouldn't get at how I do OLDaily
- more at play than just simply running an algorithm
Human - assigns meaning to pattern - semantic
Machine - assigns structure to pattern - syntax
Tracking change - tracking trends - distinction between form and meaning
In Ed Tech that distinction is sometimes misplaced
- eg you expect a person to do what a computer could do better - eg. lecture
This concept of sense-making, wayfinding, meaning
- these patterns are emerging - what does that mean socially, economically, politically
- eg. a computer can generate income data
- but the person sees the decline in middle class as serious.
Assigning meaning to perceptions
- is this something we do deliberately, or organically?
- Eg., I see a person, I am drawing conclusions, I'm assigning something to that
- When I assign attributes to an individual I am assigning meaning to it
- two people encountering the same person will assign different meanings to it
Maria's presentation (Wednesday)
- distinction between expert and novice is in assigning patterns
- the purpose of thinking is to stop thinking - eg., driving - to drive automatically
- but - the more we have to work, the more we will learn it
Reference - Sources of Power, by Klein
- Cambridge Handbook of Expert and Expertise
- we think in patterns if we're experts, we think linear if we're novice
Our capacity to recognize patterns
- our eyes are moving all over, literally craving patterns
- if there is a pattern to pursue, the mind will latch on
- not just the eye, this is what we do
Is our uber-tool like the eye? Something that creates a certain level of expertise for us, allowing us to achieve some sort of higher expertise?
