Part one of a final paper Introduction

I know I was supposed to write about methods but I found myself writing an introduction. I needed to work on cementing what I was doing before I could write about how I was going do it.



Introduction
In the observing and documenting of learning/education one must use more specific techniques to gather a complete picture than might be used to study a different subject. Before you set out on the task of “observing” and “documenting” learning one must first understand what it is you are trying to observe and document. To define learning one must considered some implication or assumptions. Firstly what is intelligence? For the practicality of this study we shall call someone intelligent if they have the ability to overcome challenges that present themselves in their environment. Granted that is a lose definition and may not be the best definition for all case studies but for the purposes of this study it shall suffice. Next was does it mean to be educated? What is education?

 (Need to expand and introduce some of the articles that have been read over the past few weeks)

For this study it made sense to embody the term education as making use of the culture narrative to manipulate thus enhancing one’s ability to overcome challenges. In this sense one would be educated if they are a farmer who understands the growth of their crops and impact different environmental factors might have on it. They would be educated if they used internet access to read up on articles about increasing production or quality of crop (assuming internet access). They would also be educated if they began talking with other farmers in the surrounding area about their growing methods.

Both the definition of intelligent and education call on the use of analytical skills and a certain amount of cultural currency by the individual (term used properly?) Like sports would not be present without athletes and the physical motion unique to each game, so to education does not exist without the learners and those learning. So, what is learning and who are the learners?

Some Anthropologist have come to view “learners as mentally and physically active seekers of knowledge and skill.” (Zimmerman Pg 614, 1986) Modern western society has created school systems, internships, etc to further the knowledge certain individuals have, but is this to closed off a look at learning and education for a “truthful” interpretation of what is going on. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, the authors of Reflections on Situated Learning Legitimate Peripheral Participation, claim that “learning is a process that takes place in a participation framework, not in an individual’s mind.” (Fave pg 15 Year)

 Anthropologists are familiar with the term participant observation. During the action of collecting data through participant observation one must do a few things. First, establish a credible role within the group being observed. This is the fundamental in the research and data later collected. The research should “work methodically to avoid being identified as the member of any particular group” as this might limit access to information or the quality of information obtained. (Wilson, 254 1977)

In a presentation online the author claims that “Man coming to grips with his environment and to understand the nature through experience, reasoning and research” (Sidhar, 2008) I sought to understand my life, I am a college student after all, and the basic principle behind it.

Upon my initial research period, my question had been “how do the keywords typed impact the knowledge that we would “learn” from what came up and then how we applied that knowledge later in life?” To start gathering information, as every good study starts, I began typing words such as “education”, “learning”, “internet” or similar words into the Google scholar search engine and waited calmly for it to generate a list of articles that I could choose from. I also read Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows. It was a bit of an Ironic way to gather information on the impact keywords would have on our intake and application of knowledge.

The concept that our brain was literally being altered every day as we use technology resonated deeply within Carr’s text. It is a scary concept and it would seem to me one not talked about enough. Consider if you pull through most fast food joints and get a cup of coffee there will be a warning on the side of the cup “caution: Hot fluids”, there’s no warning on the side of your computer “mind altering device, limited time advised”. Why is that?

After reading Carr I began to read some o f the articles that had come up from Google scholar. They began to be on the synthesis of education and technology and were surprisingly oriented in East Asia.  One of these articles focused on the future of East Asian classrooms over the next 20 years. Chan, proposed a few “conjectures”; firstly that a “digital classroom wave- is imminent” (essentially that technology is constantly improving an invading other aspects of our lives thus has to intersect the education sphere at some point, as shown in the image to the right), the next conjecture was that “classrooms undergo radical change over the next 20 years” (for this Chen held his own small experiment on a classroom to create an ‘individualized’ classroom setting), Conjecture 3 was that eventually with both the option of e-books and e-boards people would choose the just as efficient but more practical e-book, conjecture 4 was “individualization will be increasingly emphasized”, for this change in classrooms to occur conjecture 5 must occur “teachers increasingly (become) Mentors” , the final conjecture I will mention though Chen goes on state a few more, is that these new classrooms would solve the age old  “all-up-to” and “mobility” problems.

The “all-up-to” problem is that the education system pushes all students to reach up to the same standard. Think of an industrial packaging line, packing all the minds of students with the same information and expecting to get a uniform result of educated people out. (Robinson, 2011) Even though Chen was discussing East Asian classrooms, Robinson who makes a similar mention of this problem was talking about worldwide classrooms so I think it safe to assume this dilemma crosses cultural boundaries. Robinson when addressing this problem also raises a serious question; is this how we want out students to be treated and to end up?

In a talk by Noam Chomsky on the purpose of education talks about the “crisis of democracy” arguing that certain “institutions are responsible for the indoctrination of the young and that they aren’t doing it effectively.” Chomsky claims that the debt that most students of today face was created in such a way that students once they have gone through this process of indoctrination are so trapped from their limited monetary resources that they are trapped into a light of conformity. He contrasts this to the classical view of learning and education that rose out of the enlightenment era. During the enlightenment era learning was viewed of as harnessing the quest for knowledge. It placed an emphasis on the methods and ability to question doctrine, authority, work with others not simply on the conformity and rope memorization that most standardized education contain.

Later in this interview Chomsky points out the importance of the ability to cultivate knowledge. This is especially important he claims with the access to the internet that many of today’s students have. Without some guidance he claims that students will have a “cultish” understanding of things. If all you know about a subject is a fact here and a different fact there the image that you  have created from these facts will be very different from the image someone who had background knowledge or at the very least the ability to cultivate their knowledge may have created. Ultimately does the education system teach student to cultivate their own knowledge. Are modern classrooms teaching people to be free thinkers who can be trusted to make the right decision or people who cannot be expected to really understand what’s going on?

Over and over these scholars raised the same question essentially what is the final goal of our education system? To me, while this is a very interesting question, I want to look at not what becomes of people as they reach then to of the education system but rather as an anthropologist look at all the modes one might learn.  The contemplation of this question in its many forms leads me in a logical circle. How is technology going to change and alter the way that students of the future learn? Is how students of the present are being taught appropriate for the outcome they want from the education system? How does the outcome they are imaging when they reach the “end” of education differ from the end that the system has in mind? Are there different modes that people could take to achieve a “learned” status? Assuming there are what are they and how do the end results of students then compare to the prized scholars of an education system?

These questions began churning in my mind and I honestly was feeling overwhelmed as I looked into the vast abyss of this thing we call learning. What was I going to finally pick for my research question? It would need to be something that I could research in real life not simply research through the pages of others ideas (though that is a very important part of any research process).

My mentor suggested I create a mind map of what I had learned thus far, so I did. I think this is an appropriate moment to point out the connection in my own personal experience to the guidance that Chomsky refers to. There I was floating of my own free will, wonderfully ignorant among a sea of knowledge, only truly aware of the potential all of this had because of the mentors that guide me. They could have simply told me what to think about certain ideas.

When I think of the many talks that Dr. Griffith and I had when she could have simply said this is what you are supposed to think about this subject. But she didn’t Dr. Griffith asked me questions on what I thought about it, why did I think that, had I heard about an article on a similar subject about this, or a writing by a different author about that always providing me the opportunity to find out more about a topic and allowing me to reach my own conclusions. They may be a bit murky right now in the study, and in all truth probably will be murky for as long as I desire to research, but they feel like my murky ideas and that seems incredibly important.

Feeling this as I was learning in my study, and talking to fellow students who felt frustrated about classroom settings brought up another important issue with learning the feeling that you had control over your learning environment and most importantly the implied motivation that was strengthened by this belief in control or lack thereof.

My question had begun to form itself. I could feel it circling around the relationship between learning modes and motivation (implied in there is the potential access to resources that the learners would have). One day in a meeting with my mentor we narrowed down the question to What factors influence the acquisition and application of knowledge? Perhaps I will do my study on the different forms of education. From the “on-demand” adult learning, to childhood quests for knowledge, to higher academic classroom learning what are the key moments in the learning experiences and how do the end results compare. 

(Need to find a better transition)

Importantly I believe, based on my research so far and my own personal experience, that all people have the potential to have access to learning and with the ability to become learned given a consistent motivation. At the risk of sounding to far removed from the reality of one with limited resources I would propose that anyone could reach the same point of knowledge as anyone else once said knowledge has been made physically present in the world (such as might occur during the printing of a book). Two individuals may have to overcome very different obstacles, one may need to overcome more obstacles than another, but theoretically once the knowledge has reached a physical state all living people have the potential to obtain it.

For example a by living in an American lower income suburb who comes from a home where English is not the native language but has the desire and motivation to learn more about quantum physics has several obstacle to overcome. The boy has several options as I see it that he could take to gain this knowledge. He could learn English, find a way to attend higher education and ensure that he becomes a quantum physicist and use the resources then available to him to answer his questions. On the other hand the boy could forgo the years of education and use access to physics knowledge on the internet (either through a personal computer or a public computer) or in a public written text to the point where he has developed an understanding of the text.

Both ways would have created a deep base of knowledge in physics but through different paths extremely dependent on the motivation of the boy do reach his end result.  The end may not take the classic path that many think of when “learning” is talked about but many an individual has been learned without a college diploma and many have overcome obstacles such as low socio-economic status, war, racial differences, etc. to reach an end desire.

In my study I would examine the different modes people took to learn a concept, examine the different forms of motivation (perhaps even the ways that this motivation is altered by internal and external sources) and look at the over all results. 

Notes:

Research on kindergarteners sounds like it could be good. The students would still have the “fresh” perspective on how to access certain knowledge without the training of formal education but would their physical development impair the research collected?

Need to find a way to work in more outside sources and smooth the transition between definition of learning, intelligence, education and the actual research being conducted.

Needs many more go overs to trim to desired material

Works Cited (Incomplete)

M, Sridhar S. "Introduction to Research and Methods." Research and Methods. SLideshare.com, 17 Dec. 2008. Web. 24 Mar. 2012. <http://www.slideshare.net/mssridhar/introduction-to-research-methodology-presentation>.

YouTube. Dir. Gram Brown-Martin. Perf. Noam Chomsky. YouTube. Learners without Frontiers, 01 Feb. 2012. Web. 24 Mar. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdNAUJWJN08>.

Interesting Guy :)

I wish he elaborated more on bringing computers into schools.
His vision of how to see the future seemed very insightful.

What I have already done? (Part II)

My next "assignment" was a reflection a TED talks by Ken Robinson. The first was titled, "Changing the Education Paradigm" and the second was about how schools kill creativity. These animated speeches were a very interesting way for the information to be presented and raised valid points about the education system. Among these were that every school across the globe places particular emphasis on the value of math and sciences over art and music (this might be because singing won't build a bridge to get you to the other side but science and math might), that schools are designed (right down to the bells) after industrial systems, and that standardized testing isn't really testing the most useful skills, because of this education is not teaching the most productive to society skills that an individual might grow.
Ken introduced the idea that as standardized testing has risen so have the number of cases of ADHD. The thing that Ken repeated and that stuck out to me the most was; “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.” Perhaps this is something I should keep in mind as I plan further study, etc.

I go forth on my revised searching with the idea fermenting in my mind that:

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. Is it perhaps the fact that there seems to be a discord with this thought and the way education is taught that we feel when evaluating today's schooling.

In attempts to focus these searches I have been shown a way to create mind maps online (so cool!)Links or the maps themselves should appear on the blog and the just help the reader and myself to visualize the ideas brought up in this study.

PS I cannot create links the articles I have already read using Popplet (the web mapping source that I prefer right now)but am working on coming up with a creative solution.

What have I already done?

This semester started with a question, a yearning for understanding in essentially the reason why people though the way that they did about internet searches. I was able to, thankfully, conduct an independent study allowing me to research this question through alternative ideas (looking up articles that had similar questions/keywords and gather information pertaining to the subject).

As the weeks progressed I found myself less and less motivated to search the internet for relevant articles, and less motivated to read the longer article I had found. I think perhaps this sentiment expresses itself in my criticism of the authors methods or theories.

My searching started out with me reading The Shallows by Nicolas Carr. It was a very good book, vague at points but written over a depth of opinions and topics so as to be perfect as an introduction to the topic of how technology might be influencing peoples thought process. (Perhaps I will go back and look over it one more time to see what perspective fresh eyes will grant me.)Carr presented a rather bleak, War of the Worlds like opinion of the changes technology might be having on the human brain and thought process.

It was cool and the physical changes were very interesting but they seemed to be entering into a realm of the scientific community I wasn't ready for (not enough background experience) nor that I wanted to explore (I was more interested in the characteristics these changes caused and if/how one might alter them).

The next article that I read was on the changes East Asian classrooms were going to be making over the next 20 years, written by Tai-Wai Chan. It talked about "case studies" in which classrooms had been "updated". Students were given access to computers and the teachers were trained in a different method that would allow the students to "independently" travel through guided lessons. The benefits, Chan claimed, were that the students hierarchy should be erased, students would get to accel through classes at their own pace and under more personal learning environments (though the environment would be virtual).

After this article I happened to have another article on the students beliefs about self-learning. It also happened to take place in the Eastern Hemisphere. This article concluded that students that learn one way would accel if they were tested in a similar manner. Also that students who felt that learning was a constructive scenario, not simply passive, learned better than other students who did not.

Around this time I had been introduced to TED talks from a different class. I watched and review Keith Barry's talk on hijacking the brain. It introduced a very interesting idea to my mind that has stayed, the human mind is incredibly susceptible to illusion and can easily be tricked. People everyday are being influenced by factors unacknowledged.

I then read an article on adult learning in the science era. This article really enforced the differences between the generation that had learned to use the internet and computer technology, and the generation that had grown up learning to use it like a second language.

What am I going to do?

This is a slightly adjusted schedule from the one posted earlier in the semester. I've moved what should have been done in week 5 and week 6 together into one group and taken out the readings by H. Russel Bernard. Instead I'm going to read:

Learning Factors Analysis – A General Method for Cognitive Model Evaluation and Improvement, by Hao Cen, Kenneth Koedinger, Brian Junker.

Abstract: A cognitive model is a set of production rules or skills encoded in
intelligent tutors to model how students solve problems. It is usually generated
by brainstorming and iterative refinement between subject experts, cognitive
scientists and programmers. In this paper we propose a semi-automated method
for improving a cognitive model called Learning Factors Analysis that
combines a statistical model, human expertise and a combinatorial search. We
use this method to evaluate an existing cognitive model and to generate and
evaluate alternative models. We present improved cognitive models and make
suggestions for improving the intelligent tutor based on those models.

Hopefully this article will provide me with the potential implications the research I do might have as well as give me some ideas of what specifically I could study to see the factors of learning in action.

I'm open to other articles as well, and shall probably look for other them during the up and coming week.

Below is the adjusted schedule.


Meeting 6 (Mar. 28th): Brain storm and Precipitate
Research potential observation or testing methods, and potential applications of further research in this area. Write a short paper (2-4 pages) on what these might be, suitable to be inserted in the methods, and conclusion of a paper. Email three professionals (probably within CMU) and ask if they would be willing to read through the paper.

Meeting 7 (April 11th): Back to the beginning
Write Background information of introduction and have proof read by three professionals. Final draft of question should be completed.

Meeting 8 (April 25th): Looking ahead
Smooth out kinks and make adjustments to final paper, prepare to fill out HON 499 paper work.



"Imagination is more important than knowledge." & "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."

Albert Einstein

Cool Psych Fact

www.businessinsider.com/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-2010-11?op=1/


#4 — You Imagine Objects From Above and Tilted (The “Canonical Perspective”)
Why you should believe the research in this blog post even though it’s from 1981 — Whenever I talk about “old” research some people start right away to dismiss it. It’s easy to think that research done in the 1990s or 1980s, or heavens! the 1970s! couldn’t hold any interest for us now. I heartily disagree. If the research is sound and it’s about people, then the chances are high that it still has relevance. Certainly if you are talking about research from the 1980s showing that it is hard to read text on a computer screen, then more recent data is important – the quality of computer monitors has changed so dramatically from the 1980s till now (believe me on this one, as I was around to see the screens of the 1980s. I am aware that many of you reading this blog have only seen a screen from the 80s in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, or maybe you saw it in an old black and white movie (joke), or, as my daughter likes to say to me, “that must have been when you were younger and the dinosaurs roamed).
Have an Open Mind — So the purpose of the above long preamble to ask you to have an open mind about the following research that was done and written up in a book from 1981.
Draw a Coffee Cup — If you ask someone to draw a picture of a coffee cup, chances are they will draw something that looks like this:

Everyone Drew A Similar Picture — In fact, a researcher named Palmer went all around the world and asked people to draw a coffee cup and the pictures above were what people drew. Notice the perspective of the cups. A few of them are “straight on”, but most are drawn from a perspective as if you are slightly above the cup looking down, and offset a little to the right or left. This has been dubbed the “canonical perspective”.
Why Not This? — No one he studied drew this:

which is what you would see if you were looking at a coffee cup from way above and looking down. Of course not, you say, but…. why not? And if you are going to say that the first perspective is the one that we actually see most of the time, when we look at a coffee cup… that it is the angle we are used to seeing the cup on our kitchen tables, I will tell you that this research has been done on many objects. For example, people were shown pictures of horses from various angles and perspectives and they most quickly recognized it as a horse when it was from this same canonical perspective. Yet I am fairly sure that most of us have not looked at horses from above most of the time. And the research was done with people recognizing a very small dog or cat. The canonical perspective still won out, even though when we see cats or very small dogs we are mainly looking at them from high above, not just slightly above. In fact the research shows that when we imagine an object we imagine it from this canonical perspective.
So, Why Care? — It seems to be a universal trait that we think about, remember, imagine and recognize objects from this canonical perspective. Why care? Well, if you want to use icons at your web site or in your web or software application that people will recognize, then you might want to use this perspective. This is probably not so critical if you are using a well known logo, for example, the logo for itunes or Firefox, but becomes important if the icon is not as familiar, such as recognizing below that one of the logos is of a truck, or a photo printer.

What Do You Think? — Should we continue to use the canonical perspective?
And for those of you who like to read research:
Palmer, S. E., Rosch, E., and Chase, P. (1981). “Canonical Perspective and the Perception of Objects.” In Long, J., and Baddeley, A. (Eds.), Attention and performance IX, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Originally published on WhatMakesThemClick.net.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-2010-11?op=1#ixzz1oTmUB6Uc