Archives for the 'Learning' Category
Shishi Odoshi, or Emergence vs. Threshold
Compare learning with a Shishi Odoshi. The emergent learning is like the ongoing flow which is typical for the largest part of time, before the tipping point of the seesaw is reached. By contrast, the threshold, or “Ah-ha” moment, is only the short point in time where the spectacular, loud, recognizeable event happens. Read more …
Learning as By-Product
Remix of links and quotations about happiness and learning as by-products, and induction vs. transmission. Read more…
Orientation and “experts”
Sebastian Fiedler picked a great quotation by the philosopher Jürgen Mittelstrass:
“In the knowledge society as it is understood today, the location of an orientation knowledge remains empty or is occupied by false conceptions, such as the one that a further increase in the knowledge to our disposal could, at some time, also solve the problems [...]
Contiguity and Outboard Brain
Stephen disagrees with George about the contiguity of the neuro networks in our minds, with the networks of people/ ideas/ things in the external world. The expression, for example, “the outboard brain”, suggests this continuity. Frankly, the outboard brain, and also the contiguity made sense to me, because I have not yet had patience for the philosophical true distinctions. Read more…
Core knowledge
Yesterday’s OLDaily questions “core knowledge”, and I am trying to guess the tacit discomfort behind this misguided idea: Blinkered specialists vs. broad knowledge, shallow generalists vs. deep knowledge, indirect side effects vs. measurable memorization of facts, absurd amount of useless facts vs. exemplary drill-down on diverse topics. Read more …
Confusion or critical thinking
“Courseocentrism” impedes the development of critical thinking skills; only the high achieving minority of students are able to synthesize the disparate views on their own, while the struggling majority are confused by the “mixed messages” they get from their different teachers. But I doubt that harmonized content would help much, instead of growing the connections on their own. Read more…
Opinions on higher education pedagogy
A great position paper has been published on the future of teaching. It deals severly with central institutions of higher-education pedagogy
The Net Generation
A German paper titled “Is there a Net Generation?” has sobering findings about the transfer of IT competencies to learning.
Canned and to the point?
In “Kosslyn, Clear and to the Point”, most of the recommendations were immediately plausible to me, whereas a few guidelines got me thinking about whether they would be applicable to educational powerpoints. But eventually, this problem leads to the question which sort of matter should, at all, be canned into the “get across” transport container of a presentation monologue.
Messy teaching
Teaching done by researchers is often messy, but it brings about a positive effect of informal learning: to cope with the lacking scaffold and structure, the students have to become very autonomous, and they learn how to learn in a very self-directed way. Read more…
