Concept Map

Concept Map on Prezi

Concept Map

Thoughts on TED

Perhaps the schooling system we are looking for is something that is not ethnocentric as it would seem the vision we try and conjure up are, but rather a fluid beast that we can pull up from the visions of the past and the dreams form the future that will live and grow as people change. As anthropologists we are taught to look at cultures as equal, no one way better than the other on one less. Is it perhaps the fact that there seems to be a discord with this thought and the way education is taught (there is a right answer and a wrong answer) that we feel when evaluating today's schooling.


These thoughts are very rough and need to be ironed out a bit before they will make much sense but they were inspired by a morning of watching TED talks including:

http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

Reflection on Changing the Education Paradigm

Reflections on Changing the Education Paradigm

Changing the Education Paradigm
Sir Ken Robinson claims that current education systems are, “alienating kids from school (through) marginalization of self in order to reach new goals.” I suppose this is a fair statement, likely the reason people are pushing for individualized education. The next powerful statement he makes talks about the differences between beliefs and realities in current generations; “If you work hard and did well and got a college degree you would get a job.” He goes on to describe the current economic status and how kids today aren’t guaranteed a job right after college.

 I liked the concept Robinson brought up, the Intellectual model of the mind (an enlightenment view of the mind). Essentially this was a black and white view of intelligence and skill (the academic and the nonacademic person. I believe it could apply to the plasticity that Carr discussed in his book. Perhaps now that we know the mind is not set then we should not try to set the qualities it present either ergo the institutions we have created that are founded on this idea (such as the education system, much of psychology, and government/ politics).

Plague of ADHD

Robinson talks about the interesting new cultural phenomenon perhaps a physical manifestation of our intellectual “now” era, the medication of children (putting kids on medication) when they show too much attention to stimuli outside the chosen stimulus.  Robinson also points out the trend of ADHA rising with the rate of standardized testing. Hmm, I wonder if we should draw that these two are connected or there is some other variable that we are not really seeing.

“The Art especially address the idea of aesthetic experience… not anesthetic or deadening yourself” becoming aware and alive in the present moment

The image of schools being like factory lines (age group= batches, running by bells, separate facilities= different subjects) creating a standard member of society, was shared. This was slightly reminiscent of a speech given to me by an Honors Director (Phame) along with the song “Hey, Teacher leave them kids alone” by Pink Floyd. Very dark views of education aren’t they?

Robinson also talked about how divergent thinking was not creative thinking. Creative thinking was the process of having original ideas that have value (an example was how many uses can you come up with for a paperclip). Score above a certain level means you are a genius at divergent thinking (kindergarten children actually had decreased scores as they went through the education system). Divergent thinking was necessary for creative thinking and creative thinking was necessary for progression in society, according to Robinson.

*Note decreasing in test score is not inherently bad is it? Just like pink is not inherently a girls color?

Robinson then introduced the concept of collaboration vs cheating and other ideas in the gene pool of education. He really raises questions about why we have the system we do. Also I like how he throws around the idea of an education gene pool. Most great ideas happen in groups, the human is a naturally social animal and we’re trying to train people to function in another type of environment Robinson claims.

In another TED talk Sir Ken Robinson talked about how creativity should be treated with the same respect that literacy is treated with. He tells the anecdotal story about a little girl who hardly ever pays attention but did one day during a drawing lesson. Curious the teacher went over and asked what the little girl was drawing. She replied that she was drawing God. The teacher said that nobody knew what God looked like… the little girl responded with “they will in a minute.” He then went on to tell a story about his son and a nativity performance. The moral of both stories was that the children were willing to take a chance, they didn’t see that they would be wrong only that at that point they were trying.

The line Ken Robinson uses over and over in his different speeches is, “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.” Truth.

Robinson claims that no education system on the planet teaches art and dance like they do mathematics and science. “We start to educate people from the waste up and then to their heads, and then to one side.” Why? Does the education system produce ultimately professors and are professors “disembodied” as Robinson claims? Why is this a bad thing? OK disembodied sounds scary but if that’s what happens for people to get the results they desire and people chose it is it bad?

Academic ability, all education systems came into being to meet the needs of industrialization. Academic ability has come to dominate our concept of intelligence. Consequently “many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.” The video presented that creativity comes from the interaction between subjects. Thus in trying to create a system where people are judge alone, you are taking them out of their natural environment.

Thoughts for Thought…

The concept that ADHD hadn’t been invented “back then”… so what did people do about it (it surely must have existed)

-Are we medicating things that we don’t understand just to cover them up, slip them under the rug in the hope somebody else will fix it? (In this I’m not questioning the morality of the drug creators but rather the physicians and parents who allow it… so many things in our world could be handle simply by altering the way we react to them, and the way we treat people)

-How can we alter our education system to allow for people to become who they are supposed to be? And what implications does this have for our society? (Firstly how do we know what people are supposed to be? In Anthropology the post-modernist thought is we can never have a truth because of our personal bias, so is it “fair” to say that we could never know the true person because part of the true person is that they are changed by those around them.

Robinson leaves us with the mission: Educate [childrens] whole being, to prepare them for the future.

3 myths of creativity:

·         only certain people are creative

·         you can only be creative about certain things

·         if you’re not there’s nothing you can do about it

Reflections on "Self-directed learning readiness, Internet self-efficacy and preferences towards constructive learning"

Self-directed learning readiness, Internet self-efficacy and preferences towards constructive learning

The article opens pointing out the expansion of constructivist learning environments from real-life classrooms to virtual settings. Despite this expansion modern students are, according to Chu and Tsai, unaware of the constructive learning around them. To be very honest at this point in the article I am unaware of what it is. Chu and Tsai go on to describe the growing disconnect between older adult students (ages 60 and up) and their learning environment.

Internet based learning is the cost-efficient medium for teaching. It allows the student to learn at their own pace and provides a slightly self-directed learning environment. Also adults “tend to bring abundant life experiences to learning processes.” (pg 2) These life experiences often propel the adult into “careful exploration of their preferences.” (pg 2)

The term Andragogy was introduced. It is learning strategies that puts an “emphasis on that adults prefer task-oriented learning content and require quick solutions for their learning needs; otherwise, they will quit the learning activity faster than traditional students” (pg 2) This really makes sense if you think about it, and doesn’t seem like a bad thing, though Chu and Tsai seem to present it in a negative light. The older a person is and the more experience they have the more self-assured they are and the less they feel the need to waste their time. Like the “old” women who make those awkward comments that are slightly rude even if they are true, but just don’t care anymore.

The procedure was a survey that asked the age, computer facilities available, and internet usage. The surveys were not conducted online so as to prevent a bias in the data. Adult learners had a return rate of 85.8 % of the 650 surveys sent out.  The data was then analyzed using the SEM method (?)

In accord with high school students’ findings (I believe Chaung and Tsai supervised the research), gender had no effect on the preference for online learning. Chu and Tsai point out that the lack of questioning from adult learners may be due to cultural pressures. “As previous studies have indicated critical reflection is more common in Western cultures and less portrayed in East Asian cultures.” (pg 9)

Honest to goodness I feel the entire article can be summarized in the following lines:

 [T]his study examined gender, SDLR, ISE and Internet usage effects on adult learners’ preferences for Internet-based learning environments. Furthermore, this research revealed the mediation role of ISE between Internet usage and individual’s preferences. Educators should pay more attention to giving enough practice time for adult learners to motivate them to engage in Internet activities that could enhance their confidence in utilizing technical learning tools.

As an aside I find it interesting that the article thus far on learning and technology in education have been primarily conducted in Asian classrooms. Is this because they have conducted more research or simply the “luck of the draw”? 

Reflections on "Adult Science Learning in the Internet Era"

Jon D. Miller the author of the article "Adult Science Learning in the Internet Era" .

In Adult Science in the Internet Era the author mentions a few sources where current adults might learn scientific concepts, Nova, the Discovery Channel, and the internet, referred to as just-in-time media. It draws to mind a few ideas. One, I have recently read an article written for the New York Times on mathematician Terence Tao, a bit of a math prodigy.  In the article Tao’s father mused that Tao might have gotten a jump start on learning math concepts from watching Sesame Street. Secondly we learned about a different math prodigy in psychology, Jacob Barnett. He may not have been watching as much Sesame Street considering he was learning algebra in kindergarten, but he too focused singularly on his studies and found a way to relate everything that he learned to the math concepts he was trying to expand. Is this the same as what these older students are doing? Is the human mind trying to singularly focus its attention while at the same time diverging into a million different areas of interest?

Miller begins his quest to understand “the impact of these learning resources on the public’s understanding of science and technology.” (pg 5)  The article talked about how current resources for gaining scientific knowledge outside of the world of academia have changed over the last 25 years. Newspaper sales have declined, TV viewing rose and is now dropping, and the museum has been experiencing a consistent decline. All of these declining uses coincide with the rise in internet use.

The article claims that the rise in internet use is likely because adults “do not rely on a single source for science information”. ( pg 5) Interestingly the amount that adults seem to be learning is increasing despite the decrease in the resources they use to approach this. This trend was not however a result education, as it did not show itself in students.  Miller points out all the things that may impact the resources adults learn from. The sex, age, number of children, age of children, and educational achievement thus far all are taken into account when considering the resource. Miller used a path model to show these relationships (figure 5).  Between the resources (contained by circles) are the connecting lines which have the value with which that resource impacted the collection/attainment of the scientific information.  This is an interesting way to present information.

The article takes turn around page 11 beginning to become critical of middle and high schools for not better educating students causing this “lag” in scientific exposure. Miller claims that “the informal science learning resources should complement the formal learning process.” (pg 11) For example when one hears a story in the news about a virus outbreak one might research that strain of viruses, their infection rate, outbreak history, etc.

Miller approaches the question of what current museums can do to survive in an information now world.  He suggests that it is “essential to re-conceptualize the learning process and to re-define the concept of learning spaces.” (pg 12) This might be a similar re-conceptualization that was talked about when imagining classrooms and the integration of technology. Perhaps the classrooms of the future are truly going to go back to the origin of learning the libraries and museums. Is learning going to be more individual research oriented and aided by the availability of the original resources?  Miller says that current learning systems should embrace the modes of information transportation available to them. The third thing that could be done is for the informal science educators (museums, TV, internet) to provide more accurate and detailed information. Also museums should consider alternative schedules for being open. Miller presents the problem of a student, who has limited time to access this information, resorting to the immediate access of information on the internet as opposed to from a museum. At this point Miller suggests that we recognize “that we are in the early stages of the integration of separate media or learning resources.” (pg 12) For the better survival of museums Miller points out what sites like Chicago have done, imposing a small tax on hotels that goes to “cultural institutions”. 

Arrows and the focus of visoin

Which way are the arrows pointing?
Left or Right?

Keith Barry and the motives we're unaware of

In psych class this week we're studying consciousness. This topic includes hypnosis and subliminal messages, and hypnosis happened to be the topic the student presenter talked about. She played a video from Tedtalks on hypnosis that was the Irish mentalist Keith Barry "tricking" the mind of particular audience members.

Since that class I have been hooked on Keith Barry videos. In his show on Discovery called deception he walks the streets of Los Angeles playing "tricks" on fellow pedestrians. After all this watching aside from wondering what messages I've been picking up without knowing it I've also been wondering about priming people for experiments.

Scientists don't want to prime their test subjects because it creates inaccurate data but scientist aren't on the internet running experiments marketers are. The idea is that the marketing images around articles, the keywords that you used to call up the article, even the presentation of the article is influencing the information that you take up from the articles.

Perhaps to get a better understanding of how people are learning this information I should do a bit of research of our understanding of subliminal messaging and priming subjects of studies. This may information may be helpful in not influencing my interviewees in the next few weeks.