3,007 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2022
    1. Sayers, Dorothy L. The Lost Tools of Learning. E. T. Heron, 1948.

    2. For the sole true end of educationis simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whateverinstruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
    3. We have lostthe tools of learning—the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, thechisel and the plane—that were so adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, wehave merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task andno more, and in using which eye and hand receive no training, so that no manever sees the work as a whole or “looks to the end of the work.”
    4. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and everysubject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get themastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effortexpended by the person who has not the tools at his command.
    5. modern education concentrates onteaching subjects, leaving the method of thinking, arguing, and expressingone’s conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along;

      Compared to classical education, modern education concentrates on teaching only "subject" areas and relying on one to osmose the methods for thinking, arguing, and properly expressing one's ideas as they proceed, if in fact they do at all.

    6. Thewhole of the Trivium was in fact intended to teach the pupil the proper use ofthe tools of learning, before he began to apply them to “subjects” at all

      The point of putting the Trivium in front of the Quadrivium is that the student is first taught the use of the "tools of learning" before they are then taught how to apply them to broad subjects as a means of learning how to learn.

    7. Is it not the great defect of our education to-day (—a defect traceablethrough all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned—)that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils “subjects,” we faillamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think? They learneverything, except the art of learning.
    1. she says in contrast to e.g. reading, we don’t know much of anything about teaching programming. There’s no body of work

      Hermans posits that there is no actual body of work about how to effectively teach programming. In contrast to reading.

    1. Czech teacherComenius (1592–1670). He championed universal education, which hepromoted in his Didactica magna, arguing for the commonality of education—itwas for everyone, including, shockingly, females.

      Comenius championed not only lifelong learning in Didactica magna, but he also argued for educating females, something not commonplace in the 17th century.

    2. William Petty, a doctor in Cromwell’s army in 1647, noted that ‘...we seechildren do delight in drums, pipes, fiddles, guns made of elder sticks, andbellowes noses, piped keys, etc., painting flags and ensigns with elder-berriesand corn poppy, making ships with paper, and setting even nut-shells aswimming, handling the tools of workmen as soon as they turn their backs, andtrying to work themselves’ (reported in the Harleian Miscellany, 1810).
    3. Elizabeth I’s tutor, Roger Ascham (1515–68), promotedlearning-by-doing in The Scholemaster: ‘Bring not up your children in learningby compulsion and feare,’ he said, ‘but by playing and pleasure.’
    4. ‘Now, all this study of reckoning and geometry...must be presented to them while still young, not inthe form of compulsory instruction.’ ‘Why so?’ ‘Because,’ said I, ‘a free soul ought not to pursueany study slavishly; for while bodily labours performed under constraint do not harm the body,nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind.’ ‘True,’ he said. ‘Do not, then, myfriend, keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.’The Republic, 536d–e; 537a

      Apparently one couldn't ever force children to learn anything...

    1. but then relocate and roam around freely the rest of the time

      Susan Hrach (author of Minding Bodies) recently tweeted about the need for instructors to have "spatial proficiency" and I think Robert is demonstrating that here. It's not enough to have a create learning space, we need to know how to navigate it with our bodies.

    2. in a matter of seconds

      Don't underestimate this. There are plenty of classrooms where it's theoretically possible to move the furniture around, but practically time consuming.

      Also note that there's space in the room to move things! That's not always the case

    3. so that what students did in class meetings simulated the actual working practices of real mathematicians

      This is really interesting. An active learning space might help students work in the ways that experts in the discipline work. That's an angle on ALCs I haven't heard before.

    1. Thus, syllablessuch as ab, ac, ad, ib, ic were practiced for the sake of masteryof the language. When a child could name all of a determinednumber of combinations, he was said to know his ABC's.

      When did phonics start as a practice historically? Presumably after Mortimer J. Adler's note here?

      The great vowel shift and the variety of admixtures of languages comprising English make it significantly harder to learn to read compared to other languages whose orthography and sound systems (example: Japanese hiragana) are far simpler and more straightforward.

    1. new technologies leveraging techniques like spaced repetition mean it's much easier to remember what you learn

      Such as Anki

    2. In 2019 the UK school inspection body Ofsted went further than this and changed their definition of ”learning” itself to “an alteration in long-term memory”.

      learning = alteration in long-term memory

    3. to get faster at learning you must get more efficient at moving things into your long-term memory, i.e. stop forgetting things you learn. The less you forget the more you'll understand and the faster you'll learn.
    4. To learn more than 4 new concepts we must move some of them into our long-term memory before learning the rest.
    5. You can only understand something new if understanding it requires combining less than 4 new pieces of information.
    6. our working memory has a maximum capacity of roughly 4. When reading about quantum mechanics we encounter new Concept 1 and store it in our working memory. Then when learning about Concept 1 we encounter Concepts 2, 3, and 4 and our working memory becomes full. We then cannot understand Concept 5.

      Our memory is unable to hold 5 new concepts

    1. why is there so little correlation between students’ performance in their physics courses and their ability to do physics research?
    2. Cognitive-science research shows that people improve learning efficiency by practicing the set of specific cognitive tasks required for their area of expertise.11. K. A. Ericsson, R. T. Krampe, C. Tesch-Römer, Psych. Rev. 100, 363 (1993); https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363A. Ericsson, R. Pool, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, HarperOne (2017). Although that approach is based on learning research, it is uncoincidentally quite similar to the ideal master–apprentice method for traditionally teaching a craft (see figure 1).

      The master-apprentice model of teaching and learning in which the master breaks down a problem into a set of subskills which the apprentice solves and practices with regular feedback for improvement is broadly similar to best pathways shown in cognitive science research on improving learning efficiency for building expertise.

      (restatement)

    1. Dwyer, Edward J. “File Card Efficiency.” Journal of Reading 26, no. 2 (1982): 171–171.

      Ease of use in writing and grading with short assignments by using 4 x 6" index cards in classrooms.

      This sounds like some of the articles from 1912 and 1917 about efficiency of card indexes for teaching.

      I'm reminded of some programmed learning texts that were card-based (or really strip-based since they were published in book form) in the 1960s and 1970s. Thse books had small strips with lessons or questions on the front with the answers on the reverse. One would read in strips through the book from front to back and then start the book all over again on page one on the second row of strips and so on.

    1. Breitenbach, H. P. “The Card Index for Teachers.” The School Review 20, no. 4 (1912): 271–72.


      Apparently in 1912, the card index was little known to teachers... this isn't the sort of use case I was expecting here...

      The general gist of this short note is an encouraging one to suggest that instead of traditional grade books, which are still used heavily in 2022, teachers should use rolodex like cards for keeping attendance and notes on a student's progress.

      Presumably this never caught on. While some elementary teachers still use older paper gradebooks, many others have transferred to digital LMS platforms.

    1. Fourth, students seemed reluctant to come to the office seeking help. They also failed to use with great frequency the able and congenial peer tutor assigned to the course. I suspect there is an increased factor of intimidation associated with being lost in the material and asking a much older male professor for help.

      I wish more people would ask for help more often.

      People often like to help others.

      There should be no shame in asking for help.

    1. I had readBalzac off and on during the forties, and been much takenwith his self-appointed task of " c o v e r i n g " all the majorclasses and types in the society of the era he wished tomake his own.

      We write to understand, to learn, to make knowledge our own.

  2. Sep 2022
    1. Hypothes.is & 📒ShrewdNotes Web Page Annotation

      I'm blogging about how I'm using Hypothes.is as a starting point for documentation about 📒ShrewdNotes Web Page Annotation. Because I'm learning how to organize efficient workflows with 📒ShrewdNotes. Then I can be certain that my documentation is accurate for when I get more people involved.

      So these are practical notes that guide me. In order to become reference material for anonymous learners, followers, subscribers, and members. Also, these notes can become a framework for Hypothes.is-style 📒ShrewdNotes that I can adapt for Sciwheel and other annotation services.

      Hypothes.is Groups and Tags

      I use Hypothes.is Groups as follows: * Public Group for Anonymous Learners. * 🗃ShrewdSubjects Groups. * My Private Group.

      Public Group for Anonymous Learners

      I make most of my Hypothes.is 📒ShrewdNotes in public. Mainly on my own websites. But increasingly whenever I find anything useful or interesting. Especially where I find good content relating to one of my 🗃ShrewdSubjects. So anyone can follow my Public 📒ShrewdNotes.

      To recognize 🗃ShrewdSubjects, I use Hypothes.is Tags. Currently, these are Food, Gout, and Learning. Where Learning includes any topic not covered by the other subjects. In this way, as I recognize new subjects, I will separate them from Shrewd Learning.

      Note that Public annotations for my subject tags include notes from all Hypothes.is users. So, tags are a great way to collect notes by everyone who is interested in a topic. Also, you can mix and match User, Group, and Tag searches. As well as using free-format search.

      Additionally, I've started using Hypothes.is Tags to help me organize my workflows. Currently, I use 4, but I may extend this as I incorporate annotation into my daily life. My current 4 tags are: * New - denotes new content that I'm preparing. * Change - denotes changes I plan to make. * editing - means that I've saved the note that I'm currently working on. Or that I've forgotten to delete my editing tag! I use this to avoid losing text as I'm writing it, as Hypothes.is does not have autosave. Though there are ways round that. * BuildInPublic - read more at #BuildInPublic.

      🗃ShrewdSubjects Groups

      Though I like to BuildInPublic, I also like to collaborate. Now, collaboration is possible using public annotation. But I'm trying to create services built around teams. So I've created private groups for each 🗃ShrewdSubject.

      Currently, joining these private Hypothes.is groups starts by subscribing to one or more newsletters: * Foodary Nexus Newsletter * GoutPal Links Newsletter * Shrewd Learning Newsletter

      My Private Web Annotation Group

      I try to do most of my content creation in public. Or in teams. So I only currently have one group for private notes. But Hypothes.is allows you to create as many private groups as you need. Which is useful where you want to keep notes separate. However, I recommend using tags unless you are sure you want separate groups of notes.

    1. We study whether sequence modelingcan perform policy optimization by evaluating Decision Transformer on offline RL benchmarks
    1. Whenever people ask me for advice on career growth, I share what has worked reasonably well for me: find a growth company, one that really needs you to get work done, and then tackle the unpleasant work that everyone avoids.
    1. In his view, to know nothing about an important subject is to invite problems. Both Munger and Buffett set aside plenty of time each day to just think. Anyone reading the news is provided with constant reminders of the consequences of not thinking. Thinking is a surprisingly underrated activity.

      Es verdad que tiene bastante mala prensa pensar. Por ejemplo: falta de acción, pasivo. poco práctico. aislado de los verdaderos problemas, etc..

    2. A large part of the difference between the experienced decision maker and the novice in these situations is not any particular intangible like “judgment” or “intuition.” If one could open the lid, so to speak, and see what was in the head of the experienced decision maker, one would find that he had at his disposal repertoires of possible actions; that he had checklists of things to think about before he acted; and that he had mechanisms in his mind to evoke these, and bring these to his conscious attention when the situations for decisions arose.

      -- Herbert Simon, Models of My Life

    1. Related Topics

      Historically, the related topics section of each GoutPal page identified relationships using the WordPress Tag feature. However, after I invented WordPress Transmigration, I need a better approach.

      So I must replace this with a navigation map. And create new workflows that enable me to update these maps efficiently.

      #BuildInPublic

    1. The fact that too much order can impede learning has becomemore and more known (Carey 2014).
    2. After looking at various studies fromthe 1960s until the early 1980s, Barry S. Stein et al. summarises:“The results of several recent studies support the hypothesis that

      retention is facilitated by acquisition conditions that prompt people to elaborate information in a way that increases the distinctiveness of their memory representations.” (Stein et al. 1984, 522)

      Want to read this paper.

      Isn't this a major portion of what many mnemotechniques attempt to do? "increase distinctiveness of memory representations"? And didn't he just wholly dismiss the entirety of mnemotechniques as "tricks" a few paragraphs back? (see: https://hypothes.is/a/dwktfDiuEe2sxaePuVIECg)

      How can one build or design this into a pedagogical system? How is this potentially related to Andy Matuschak's mnemonic medium research?

    3. This is not so different from when elaboration is recommended asa “learning method.” As a method, it has been proven to be moresuccessful than any other approach (McDaniel and Donnelly 1996).

      Elaboration has been shown to be the most successful learning approach. (See McDaniel and Donnelly 1996) It is a two step process of being able to write about it and to use it in alternate contexts.

      How is the Feynman Technique similar to/different from elaboration? It would seem to be missing the second portion.

      This is one of the first times I've come across another word for part of the Feynman technique I've been looking for.

    4. But Ebbinghaus laidthe foundation for a long-lasting and influential tradition of learningtheories that separates understanding from learning.

      Because Hermann Ebbinghaus' early studies on memory, retrieval, and spaced repetition focused on meaningless random letter combinations that ha no natural associations, he started a field of learning theories that separated the ideas of understanding and learning. Learning is creating connections between ideas we already know (contextualization).

    1. This Artificial Intelligence Learns like a Baby

      This baby could be learning when they are an embryo. Learning (machine) vectors: * Embryo * Baby * Teenager * Young adult * Adult

    1. Conclusion The role of a learning designer has continued to evolve to make room for emergent technologies and frameworks. Always the goal has been to design the most effective learning using all theories, processes, or technologies at our disposal. In the modern version of the field, there are simply more of these theories, processes, and increasingly advanced technologies to assist us.

      I wonder how much Artificial intelligence and virtual reality enhancements will affect the role of the learner designer. I know we will have to learn the platform, its technology but at what level. Will we have to learn how to code to be able to do an effective learning environment.

    1. In combination with SCA, CERICoffers freedom from the transmission model of learning, where theprofessor lectures and the students regurgitate. SCA can help buildlearning communities that increase students’ agency and power inconstructing knowledge, realizing something closer to a constructivistlearning ideal. Thus, SCA generates a unique opportunity to makeclassrooms more equitable by subverting the historicallymarginalizing higher education practices centered on the professor.

      Here's some justification for the prior statement on equity, but it comes after instead of before. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/SHEFJjM6Ee2Gru-y0d_1lg)

      While there is some foundation to the claim given, it would need more support. The sage on the stage may be becoming outmoded with other potential models, but removing it altogether does remove some pieces which may help to support neurodiverse learners who work better via oral transmission rather than using literate modes (eg. dyslexia).

      Who is to say that it's "just" sage on the stage lecturing and regurgitation? Why couldn't these same analytical practices be aimed at lectures, interviews, or other oral modes of presentation which will occur during thesis research? (Think anthropology and sociology research which may have much more significant oral aspects.)

      Certainly some of these methods can create new levels of agency on the part of the learner/researcher. Has anyone designed experiments to measure this sort of agency growth?

    2. Astructured approach to reading the primary literature creates a moreequitable learning environment when integrated into existingcoursework and learning activities.

      There doesn't seem to be any evidence in this paper to support this assertion.

    3. Even with interactive features,highlighting does not require active engagement with the text, suchas paraphrasing or summarizing, which help to consolidate learning(Brown et al., 2014)

      What results do Brown et al show exactly? How do they dovetail with the citations and material in Ahrens2017 on these topics?

      Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jhu/detail.action?docID=3301452

      Ahrens, doesn't provide a full citation of Brown, but does quote it for the same broad purpose (see: https://hypothes.is/a/8ewTno3pEeydaHscXVaIzw) specifically with respect to the idea that highlighting doesn't help in the learning process, yet students still actively do it.

    1. AAAI 2022 Paper : Decentralized Mean Field Games Happy to discuss online.

      S. Ganapathi Subramanian, M. Taylor, M. Crowley, and P. Poupart., “Decentralized mean field games,” in Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2022), vol. 36, pp. 9439–9447, February 2022. 1.

    1. Yolanda Gibb: How a mindset of Ambidextrous Creativity can get you generating AND exploiting your ideas?

      https://lu.ma/poo355tg

      Ambidextrous creativity is having a balance between exploration and subsequent exploitation of those explorations.

      Small companies and individuals are good at exploration, but often less good at exploitation.

      Triple loop learning<br /> this would visually form a spiral (versus overlap)<br /> - Single loop learning: doing things right (correcting mistakes)<br /> - double loop learning: doing the right things (causality)<br /> - triple loop learning: why these systems and processes (learning to learn)

      Assets<br /> Relational capital * Structural capital - pkm is part of this<br /> there's value in a well structured PKM for a particualr thing as it's been used and tested over time; this is one of the issues with LYT or Second Brain (PARA, et al.) how well-tested are these? How well designed?<br /> * Structural capital is the part that stays at the office when all the people have gone home * Human Capital

      Eleanor Konik

      4 Es of cognition<br /> * embodied * embedded * enacted * extended<br /> by way of extra-cranial processes

      see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7250653/

      Yolanda Gibb's book<br /> Entrepreneurship, Neurodiversity & Gender: Exploring Opportunities for Enterprise and Self-employment As Pathways to Fulfilling Lives https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-Neurodiversity-Gender-Opportunities-Self-employment/dp/1800430582

      Tools: - Ryyan - for literature searches - NVIVO - Obsidian - many others including getting out into one's environment

      NVIVO<br /> https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software/home

      a software program used for qualitative and mixed-methods research. Specifically, it is used for the analysis of unstructured text, audio, video, and image data, including (but not limited to) interviews, focus groups, surveys, social media, and journal articles.

      Ryyan<br /> https://www.rayyan.ai/<br /> for organizing, managing, and accelerating collaborative literature reviews

    1. The consequence argument points out that deterministic laws imply that the future isn't really up for grabs; it's determined by the present state just as surely as the past is. So we don't really have choices about anything.

      Yup, that makes sense to me. I'm fine with that too.

      Still, however, everyone is ignoring the influence of learning on our future state.

    1. They are not meant to prove thatthe student did his or her homework. Rather, they provethat students can make something out of their education.

      Francesco Erspamer's definition of a thesis is proof "that students can make something out of their education."

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. Multidiscpl teams are different from heterogenous ones when it comes to learning. Dense networks useful for incremental steps, but hinder innovative steps (Vgl [[Lurking Weak Strong Ties 20040204063311]]) Provide team design principles.

      Full paper in Zotero

  3. Aug 2022
    1. ☊☋ Shrewd Maps

      Now 🗺ShrewdMaps


      #BuildInPublic: Please let me know what you think about gout topic maps by replying below…

      Please reply

    2. 📒 Shrewd Notes

      Remove space to ShrewdNotes

      New 4 part blog series... - Introducing 📒ShrewdNotes. Members Notes in Progress. - How Keith Uses 📒ShrewdNotes - How You Can Use 📒ShrewdNotes - Why We Might Share 📒ShrewdNotes

    1. Are you a Keith Taylor Follower?

      Congratulations on becoming an Anonymous Learner!<br /> You have learned where to find Keith's free online learning resources. So please click the image to learn your next tier… Are you a Keith Taylor Follower?


      Please let me know what you think about my website marketing list by replying below…

      Please reply

    1. About Shrewdies.com

      Shrewd Learning helps you learn online. With a range of tools to support better knowledge. Read all about Shrewdies.com.

      This page contains 📒ShrewdNotes for the page: About Shrewdies.com. I am preparing documentation for 📒ShrewdNotes. So once I publish that documentation, I will replace this with a link.

      In fact, that explains one of the key purposes of 📒ShrewdNotes. Because they allow me to tell you of planned changes to my articles and new content in progress.

      About Shrewdies.com Audience

      I wrote About Shrewdies.com for people who want to learn:

      • How and why Shrewdies.com exists.
      • Facts about Keith Taylor's Shrewdies brand.
      • Examples of website admin pages.

      So I hope this gives you the facts that you want. Or resolves any concerns that you have. If not, I provide several ways you can find additional information. Including leaving comments. Which is usually the last item on most of my pages.

      Please see all links for extra information and support below...

      Extra Information for About Shrewdies.com

      Extra information about my articles includes some or all of:

      • 🆘 ShrewdOnlineSupport services links
      • 📒ShrewdNotes links
      • 🗺ShrewdMap links

      🆘 ShrewdOnlineSupport Services

      • Public Support: Discussion
      • Issues: none
      • Group Support: As described in 🆘 ShrewdOnlineSupport services.
      • Private Support: Audio or Video calls as described in 🆘 ShrewdOnlineSupport services.

      📒ShrewdNotes

      • Progress notes: none
      • Learning notes: none

      Please see all my Public 📒ShrewdNotes for extra information about many web pages.

      🗺ShrewdMap

      #BuildInPublic


      Please let me know what you think about Shrewdies.com by replying below…

      Please reply

    1. Keith's Learners Resources Feedback

      Maybe this needs a clarification comment??

      I refer to all my readers collectively as Keith's Learners. But the majority are occasional, anonymous visitors. So for people who want to become more involved, I've developed 3 learning subjects: - GoutPal Links for gout sufferers. Which is my current top priority project. - Foodary Nexus for foodies. Which is the working title for my next project. - Shrewd Learning for informal online learners. Which I am currently documenting as a template, as applied to GoutPal Links. Though in the future, it will also serve to evolve new learning subjects.

      #BuildInPublic

    2. ShrewdConcerns is a public place

      Furthermore, I'm adopting a #BuildInPublic approach to all my websites. Because I want to create informal online learning environments that encourage learners to become coaches/mentors. Obviously, that will take time to onboard people and qualify objectives. But I have to start somewhere. And #BuildInPublic seems to me to be my best chance of finding like-minded collaborators.

    3. 📒 ShrewdNotes Web Page Annotation

      I often rush into assessing new applications. Because I learn quicker by applying compared to reading. But one downside is that I frequently miss key features.

      That's only a major drawback if I abandon the application where I can't see how it fits my project. And today I avoided that with serendipity. Because… 1. My application was a Chrome Extension 1. I wanted to test to see if was active and change webpage content accordingly 1. I found I could run the app without an extension - as fully described in the documentation that I skipped reading!

      All of which is an idea for my next blog post. But the real point is I have established a process for starting ad-hoc Shrewd Learning projects "in the wild". Because normally, I start making notes somewhere. Then forgetting where I put them.

      I think we all do that when we spot something interesting that might warrant future research. Now for my established subject areas, I always start annotating new topics within that subject area. So, I can prioritize it in my usual processes.

      Today, I've extended this by tagging public notes with Shrewd Learning. So when I look at the Shrewd Learning Tag, I see all notes that present potential new learning topics. Which opens a great way to collaborate loosely with other people if I can establish some traction with Shrewd Learning.

      For now, this is my reminder to do a personal blog entry based on this. More importantly, I should update this blog entry to reflect recent advances in Shrewd Learning and my other 2 online learning projects.

    1. You can activate Hypothesis by

      Embedding Hypothesis in Websites and Platforms

      Embedding Hypothesis To add Hypothesis to your website or platform, simply add the following line to the HTML source of your page:

      <script src="https://hypothes.is/embed.js" async></script>

      From https://web.hypothes.is/help/embedding-hypothesis-in-websites-and-platforms/

      Which continues with an example of Hypothes.is client configuration.

    1. Second-order thinking is more deliberate. It is thinking in terms of interactions and time, understanding that despite our intentions our interventions often cause harm. Second order thinkers ask themselves the question “And then what?” This means thinking about the consequences of repeatedly eating a chocolate bar when you are hungry and using that to inform your decision. If you do this you’re more likely to eat something healthy.

      Second-order thinking

    1. The instructor may require the submission of the notesas an evidence of pro ress before the writing of the essayis begun, or he may as! for their presentation with the com-pleted essay.

      It's nice to have some evidence of progress, but I know very few students who appreciated this sort of grading practice. I know I hated it as a kid, so it's particularly pernicious and almost triggering to see it in print going back to 1908, 1911, and subsequently up to 1931.

    1. Your guidelines for private and public gout discussions are here on my contact page.

      Is it the best to put private vs public in the Contact Page? Or should it be separate?

      I think it is best to include it in the Contact Page. Because my perception is that it's all about contacting me. But I should do a poll on this.

      Also, this isn't just a Gout issue, so it needs to be addressed in other subject sites. And as it is a fundamental part of successful collaboration, I will repeat it in Food and Learning.

    1. The real issue with "learning in public" is them emphasis placed on "being an expert," which is *everywhere*. It's a capitalist mindset, convincing people that even as beginners they should consider themselves "experts" bc this is how you get exposure aka how u scale.

      The public online commons, by means of context collapse, allows people to present themselves as experts within an area without actually being experts.

      Some of these "experts" or "gurus" primarily have expertise in communication or promoting themselves or a small piece of a topic about which they know a little more than the average public.

    1. Test ways to build earned credentials (certificates, badges, coursework) into degrees; build banks of experience (on-the-job training, internships) that earn credit; admit students simultaneously to two- and four-year institutions; guarantee transfer agreements so students don’t take numerous courses that don’t transfer into a four-year degree; set goals for meaningful employment upon graduation; and work collectively to measure our progress and hold ourselves accountable for the outcome.
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y07l5AsWEUs

      I really love something about the phrase "get them [ideas] into a form that students can work with them". There's a nice idea of play and coming to an understanding that I get from it. More teachers should frame their work like this.

    1. The potential for digital technology to support learners in this process was highlighted in the studies reviewed, but commonly learners lacked the competence to use digital technologies for educational purposes. Learners often required support, especially with the planning and reviewing aspects of self-directed learning, as well as guidance regarding how digital technologies can be used effectively for educational purposes. Importantly, studies that focus on understanding the facilitation of self-directed learning in childhood education are seldom. Further studies on self-directed learning in childhood education are vital – given that this is a fundamental competence for preparing our youth to deal with work and life in our rapidly changing world.

      Learners often required support, especially with the planning and reviewing aspects of self-directed learning, as well as guidance regarding how digital technologies can be used effectively for educational purposes. Importantly, studies that ..

    1. focused on the language that the children used when they were involved in a design and technology activity

      Children’s Use of Technology in Learning

    1. AZ 900

      This is my first every hypothesis note.

      So far I have the done the first test, and found it relevant. Well worth the money so far.

  4. Jul 2022
    1. I didn't start out in 2007 to write a programming language that naturally supports decentralized programming using the actor-model while being cloud-native, serverless, and databaseless. Indeed, if I had, I likely wouldn't have succeeded. Instead picos evolved from a simple rule language for modifying web pages to a powerful, general-purpose programming system for building any decentralized application.

      Lots of concepts ping like hail on a car hood for me. I don't really understand them but they resonate: decentralized programming, cloud-native, serverless, databaseless. It all seems like fungi in nature or the apricot you mention in an earlier post. I especially like the idea of learning systems "evolving from a simple rule language". Yes, I want to evolve and roll my own learning system then I want to teach others how to do it.

    1. 5.1 Recognize that 1) the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions, and 2) decision making is a two-step process (first learning and then deciding).

      5.1 Recognize that 1) the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions, and 2) decision making is a two-step process (first learning and then deciding).

    1. that students lacked strong teacher and social-collaborative pres-ences while watching the videos alone at home—and therefore proposed more onlinecollaborative learning methods to enhance a greater social-collaborative presence dur-ing the out-of-class sessions of a flipped classroom.
    1. because it only needs to engage a portion of the model to complete a task, as opposed to other architectures that have to activate an entire AI model to run every request.

      i don't really understand this: in z-code thre are tasks that other competitive softwares would need to restart all over again while z-code can do it without restarting...

    1. We should think of it as a bill for a public health measure that was taken on our behalf. And it's our obligation now, whether or not we agreed with those decisions, to pay that bill. We can't stiff our children.
    1. why aren’t we doing these things already?

      Amen! Why can't we have "fun" while learning? Like every young child does while playing with blocks or banging on pots and pans? I like Quinn's (and have also seen the term elsewhere) use of "learning experiences" as a way to look at educational design.

      In fact, all "learning" is based in experience, and some students "learn" how to game the system, others "learn" to disengage, etc. What if, instead, learning was exciting and something to look forward to?

    1. In design terms, this begins with the learning experience (LX) of students — but often extends toward the teaching experience (TX), and even the user experience of technologists, instructional designers and administrators. Collectively, I call these the "pedagogical experience" (PX) of an e-learning tool.

      Designing pedagogical experience (PX) encompasses both the learning experience (LX) of the students as well as the teaching experience (TX) of the instructor.

      Educational technology should take both parts of the overall experience into account. Too many focus on one side or the other: the ease of use for the teacher at the expense of the student or the ease of use for the student at the expense of the teacher. Balancing the two can be difficult, but designers should be watching both.

    1. sweller's cognitive load theory is built on badly and hitch's research on working memory models which has loads of iterations the idea is that we can only work with a limited amount 00:02:31 of information at any one time putting a number on it isn't really useful

      Who proposed Cognitive Load theory

    2. pay attention to the parity principle

      What is Parity Principle?

    1. Even the sloppiest manuscript would bring twenty new cards for my hoard.

      This quote is similar to the broad idea (source(s)?) that one can learn something even from the worst books or the man who's a fool.

      I've excerpted the portion of the quote that appears before this in the past. See: https://hyp.is/jqug2tNlEeyg2JfEczmepw/3stages.org/c/gq_title.cgi?list=1045&ti=Foucault%27s%20Pendulum%20(Eco)

    1. One of the risks I heard mentioned is that of becoming/ being perceived as an ”arm of the university bureaucracy”, as CTLs become more involved in decision-making on educational issues.

      Interesting problem. Why is the CTL not seen as an "arm of shared governance" in these cases? Or at least a venue of it?

    2. Dilemma: should/ can the CTL be neutral territory (and can it be?)

      Fascinating to see what "neutral" means here. There's the "non-evaluative"/"non-supervisory" sense, where "neutrality" is essentially with respect to office politics, and the "not advancing an argument" sense, which in the strictest sense seems almost impossible to reconcile with any kind of developmental work.

  5. Jun 2022
    1. This reveals that we have the capacity for sustained attention, but persistence is best understood as a disposition, not a capacity. The triadic model of dispositions allows us to understand better what is going on here. A behaviour becomes a disposition when we combine the capabilities it demands with the desire to use them and an awareness of situations where the behaviour is appropriate.

      I guess it depends on what a "disposition" is too. One definition is "a person's inherent qualities of mind and character." But if it's inherent, then it's not something that emerges from behaviours in the right circumstances.

    1. This means that to design creative instructionalsystems, one must look to other domains (engineering,medicine, computer science, marketing, etc.) for inspira-tion. For example, Peter’s Instructional Strategies course atIndiana University’s School of Education shocks studentsin the second week of class by assigning readings from abook about marketing and customer experiences.

      There's a lot of commonalities between strong marketing techniques and hitting on Merrill's FPI and other LD techniques.

    1. Interleaving is a learning technique that involves mixing together different topics or forms of practice, in order to facilitate learning. For example, if a student uses interleaving while preparing for an exam, they can mix up different types of questions, rather than study only one type of question at a time.Interleaving, which is sometimes referred to as mixed practice or varied practice, is contrasted with blocked practice (sometimes referred to as specific practice), which involves focusing on only a single topic or form of practice at a time.

      Interleaving (aka mixed practice or varied practice) is a learning strategy that involves mixing different topics, ideas, or forms of practice to improve outcomes as well as overall productivity. Its opposite and less effective strategy is blocking (or block study or specific practice) which focuses instead on working on limited topics or single forms of practice at the same time.


      This may be one of the values of of the Say Something In Welsh method which interleaves various new nouns and verbs as well as verb tenses in focused practice.

      Compare this with the block form which would instead focus on lists of nouns in a single session and then at a later time lists of verbs in a more rote fashion. Integrating things together in a broader variety requires more work, but is also much more productive in the long run.

    1. higher order learning can lead to greater levels of productivity than lower order or rote methods

    2. the research says is that students often

      the research says is that students often don't use the right learning strategy because they react negatively to effort in fact it even is so well demonstrated that it has its own name it's called the ==misinterpreted effort hypothesis== it says that students tend to see a learning strategy feel that it is more effortful more challenging and as a result they will veer away from that because they feel that that effort means that they're either doing it wrong or that the technique is bad they consider more effortful learning with being a bad thing

      Students will perceive learning strategies that require more effort and work on their part to be less productive in the long term, often when the opposite is the case. This phenomenon is known as the misinterpreted effort hypothesis.

      Link to: - research in Ahrens that rereading and reviewing over material seems easy, but isn't as effective as directly answering questions and performing the work to produce one's own answer. - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010028519302270

    1. the more effortful strategy is the one that often leads to more effective learning.

      The practice or learning strategy that seems to take the most work is probably the most effective.

    2. Well, for one, there was a clear preference for the blocked study schedule, with 68% of participants reporting that they would choose the blocked strategy to study for a test, while only 32% chose the interleaved strategy. Which is interesting, because the research on blocked vs. interleaved practice suggests that in many cases, interleaving is actually the more effective strategy (here’s a great summary of the research on interleaved practice, why and how it works, guidelines for use, and examples of times when blocked may be better).

      Interleaved practice methods are more effective learning strategies than block practice.

    3. the more effort they had to put into the study strategy, the less they felt they were learning.

      misinterpreted-effort hypothesis: the amount of effort one puts into studying is inversely proportional to how much one feels they learn.


      Is this why the Says Something In Welsh system works so well? Because it requires so much mental work and effort in short spans of time? Particularly in relation to Duolingo which seems easier?

    1. Ps) I am trying to post daily content like this on LinkedIn using my Slip-Box as the content generator (the same is posted on Twitter, but LinkedIn is easier to read), so if you want to see more like this, feel free to look me up on LinkedIn or Twitter.

      Explicit example of someone using a zettelkasten to develop ideas and create content for distribution online and within social media.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/vgtyuf/mastery_requires_theory_application_of_theory_is/

    1. Most students taking fully online classes are doing so in relative solitude. In fact, they’re counting on you to make not just the ideas in your class, the content the LMS is so content to deliver, synthesize, they’re also counting on you to make their experience of education synthesize.
    2. The old rule, now practically an adage, “Post once, reply twice” is essentially the epitaph for online learning.

      This sounds godawful and unproductive.

    1. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/bringing-theories-to-practice-universal-design-principles-and-the-use-of-social-annotation-to-support-neurodivergent-students/

      A very brief primer on UDL and how Hypothes.is and social annotation might fit within its framework. There seems to be a stronger familiarity with Hypothes.is as a tool and a bit less familiarity with UDL, or perhaps they just didn't bind the two together as tightly as they might have.

      I'm definitely curious to look more closely at the UDL framework to see what we might extract from it.

      The title features neurodiversity, but doesn't deliver on the promise.

      An interesting reframing would be that of social annotation with the idea of modality shifts, particularly for neurodiverse students.

    2. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework

      Universal Design for Learning framework https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

    1. But, there was a problem. To study biology as a ‘science’ was not the same as experiencing ‘life in the wild’ in the caring companionship of others. If anything, it was wild life’s antithesis:- a competition to be first or best while following strict codes of practice designed to eliminate subjective human ‘error’ and conform to an unquestionable norm prescribed by prior authority.

      The contrast between the direct, immersive, participatory learning of nature and the symbolic learning.

    1. One of my frustrations with the “science of learning” is that to design experiments which have reasonable limits on the variables and can be quantitatively measured results in scenarios that seem divorced from the actual experience of learning.

      Is the sample size of learning experiments really large enough to account for the differences in potential neurodiversity?

      How well do these do for simple lectures which don't add mnemonic design of some sort? How to peel back the subtle differences in presentation, dynamism, design of material, in contrast to neurodiversities?

      What are the list of known differences? How well have they been studied across presenters and modalities?

      What about methods which require active modality shifts versus the simple watch and regurgitate model mentioned in watching videos. Do people do actively better if they're forced to take notes that cause modality shifts and sensemaking?

    1. Real learning cannot happen in a vacuum. Connecting oneself and one’s new ideas with others across classrooms, across the curricula, and into the community build confidence , deepens experience, and maximizes success.
    1. As an autodidact, you will meet many different content formats on the road to understanding. Not all formats are created equal, and some work better than others. Add to that learning preferences, and you’ve got yourself a complicated situation.
    1. How to stop forgetting stuff you read.

      1. Taking notes (highlighting and taking notes)
      2. Re-engage with ideas and your notes to get around the "forgetting curve Review
      3. Integrating (putting it all into a database)
      4. Summarize. Take quick notes on things you've read.

      When summarizing you can put general thoughts and other stuff, like how you discovered it, favorite quotes, etc.

      The whole point is to engage with the material.

      Zettelkasten method is recommended.

      Literature notes are quick notes that should get converted to evergreen or permanent notes.

    1. New insights on infant word learning

      infant word learning

    2. "The idea is that over long periods of time, traces of memory for visual objects are being built up slowly in the neocortex," Clerkin said. "When a word is spoken at a specific moment and the memory trace is also reactivated close in time to the name, this mechanism allows the infants to make a connection rapidly." The researchers said their work also has significant implications for machine learning researchers who are designing and building artificial intelligence to recognize object categories. That work, which focuses on how names teach categories, requires massive amounts of training for machine learning systems to even approach human object recognition. The implication of the infant pathway in this study suggests a new approach to machine learning, in which training is structured more like the natural environment, and object categories are learned first without labels, after which they are linked to labels.

      visual objects are encoded into memory over a long period of time until it becomes familiar. When a word is spoken when the memory trace associated with the visual object is reactivated, connection between word and visual object is made rapidly.

    1. when Britannica conducted followup research on whether or not the books were actually being read, they found that buyers who really read the books were the exception. The two largest sub-categories among buyers who were more likely to have read the books were housewives and men trained in some sort of technical profession.

      Research by Britannica (source?) indicated that the Great Books of the Western World sold well but were not often read.

      Link to: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking Owen Gingerich Copernicus

    1. one of the best ways to diversify complexify your search space your assumptions is through experience and one of the great ways to 00:01:18 do that is actually through technology so we think about technology and most of our technologies are good technologies but what defines a great technology what is a transformative technology 00:01:30 the good technologies are the ones that enable us to do what we can already do faster easier more efficient and that's because so much of our society focuses on efficiency it's about maximizing performance right 00:01:42 we're great engineers but we're crap philosophers right we're very good at making things more efficient but that's only one side of innovation we also need the other side of innovation which is creativity 00:01:55 right and so the best technologies are the ones in my view that make the invisible visible they enable us to see things that we can never have seen before 00:02:06 they create assumptions they expand our space of assumptions

      Indyweb is a transformative technology ecosystem that can allow each individual in the group to understand the underlying epistemology of social intercourse, dialogue and symmathesy as a lived experience. Each individual in the open source Indyweb network can have a lived and granular experience of how his or her knowledge and wisdom is growing. This is made possible by having a private information repository that collates all the participant's digital interactions. The interpersonal computing environment puts the human INTERbeing at the center of the digital universe and all the participant's data is not stored in fragmented silos across the web, but all in one central, interpersonal and private repository which (s)he has access to. This creates new possibilities of seeing how your understanding grows from one moment to the next, from one social interaction to the next, and how social, collective learning proceeds and is completely entangled with individual learning.

      Indyweb makes one's learning, previously unconscious and invisible, visible.

    1. Dr. David Sousa, student engagement can be defined as “the amount of attention, interest, curiosity, and positive emotional connections that students have when they are learning, whether in the classroom or on their own” (2016, p. 17).

      This is a great working definition of student engagement and helps to tie in ideas about mindset, motivation and metacognitive skills! McGuire's 3 M's!!

    1. The first is: always take notes inyour own words-I mean, of course, facts an1 ideas garneredfrom elsewhere, not statements to be quoted verbatim. The titleof a book, an important phrase or remark, you will copy as theystand. But everything else you reword, for two reasons: in thateffort the fact or idea passes through your mind, instead of goingfrom the page to your eye and thence to your note while you remainin a trance. Again, by rewording you mix something of yourthought with the acquired datum, and the admixture is the be-ginning of your own thought-and-writing about the whole topic.Naturally you take care not to distort. But you will find that notestaken under this safeguard are much closer to you than meretranscripts from other books; they are warm and speak to youlike old friends, becau se by your act of thought they have be-come pieces of your mind.

      Barzun analogies notes as "old friends". He, like many others, encourages note takers to put ideas into their own words.

    1. Around 1941, Barzun took on a larger classroom, becoming the moderator of the CBS radio program “Invitation to Learning,” which aired on Sunday mornings and featured four or five intellectual lights discussing books. From commenting on books, it was, apparently, a short step to selling them. In 1951, Barzun, Trilling, and W. H. Auden started up the Readers’ Subscription Book Club, writing monthly appreciations of books that they thought the public would benefit from reading. The club lasted for eleven years, partly on the strength of the recommended books, which ranged from Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” to Hannah Arendt’s “The Human Condition,” and partly on the strength of the editors’ reputations.
    1. determine the caliphate; and another group led by Mu'awiya in the Levant, who demanded revenge for Uthman's blood. He defeated the first group in the Battle of the Camel; but in the end,

      this is another post

  6. May 2022
    1. Question: What happened to Eligibility Traces in the Deep RL era? This paper highlights some of the reasons they are not used widely and proposes a way they could still be effective.

    1. Question: What happened to Eligibility Traces in the Deep RL era? This paper highlights some of the reasons they are not used widely and proposes a way they could still be effective.

    1. I explore how moves towards ‘objective’ data as the basis for decision-making orientated teachers’ judgements towards data in ways that worked to standardise judgement and exclude more multifaceted, situated and values-driven modes of professional knowledge that were characterised as ‘human’ and therefore inevitably biased.

      But, aren't these multifaceted, situated, and values-driven modes also constituted of data? Isn't everything represented by data? Even 'subjective' understanding of the world is articulated as data.

      Is there some 'standard' definition of data that I'm not aware of in the context of this domain?

    2. Frequent testing to monitor children’s ‘expected progress’ through a tightly defined curriculum reflects a limited view of how children learn, in which children are seen as “functional machines” who should all automatically progress at the same rate (Llewellyn, 2016).

      This seems like an over-reach. There's nothing about testing that inherently implies that students 'should' progress at the same rate.

    1. making anki cards is an act of understanding in itself

      I'm always struck here that no one in these spaces mentions the idea of modality shifts as a thing of value.

    1. Informationbecomes knowledge—personal, embodied, verified—only when weput it to use. You gain confidence in what you know only when youknow that it works. Until you do, it’s just a theory.

      motivational...

    1. structural imaging studies of a group of highly trained spatial learners (London taxi drivers) has demonstrated enlargement of specific hippocampal regions corresponding to spatial memory [30],

      Nice to see the taxi driver study pop up here.

      Maguire EA, Valentine ER, Wilding JM, Kapur N. Routes to remembering: The brains behind superior memory. Nature Neuroscience. 2003;6(1):90–5. pmid:12483214 https://doi.org/10.1038/nn988

    2. The use of physical location, even in an imagined environment, as a memory aid likely arose as a result of the fact that so much of the essential information stored in memory can be linked to foraging-type behaviours.

      I've thought this before, and sees like I've possibly read, though not captured it. Is there any solid proof of this fact?

      Rat studies of mazes show this sort of spacial memory, but are there similar learned studies in lower animals? C. elegans, drosophila, slime molds, etc.?

    1. Online Learning & Tools

      I would like to see how PowerNotes compares to Hypothes(is). I think annotation is a major opportunity for the digital, online space in education.

    1. Active reading to the extreme!

      What a clever innovation building on the ideas of the art of memory and Raymond Llull's combinatoric arts!

      Does this hit all of the areas of Bloom's Taxonomy? I suspect that it does.

      How could it be tied more directly into an active reading, annotating, and note taking practice?

    1. in human memory they call it external context um so we have 00:35:59 so the external context for instance is the the spatial cues and the other items that are kind of attached to the note right

      Theory: The external context of one's physical surroundings (pen, paper, textures, sounds, smells, etc.) combined with the internal context, the learner's psychological state, mood, etc., comprises a potentially closed system where each part props up the other for the best learning outcomes.

      Do neurodiversity effects help/hinder this process? What if people are missing one or more of these bits of contextualization? What does the literature look like in this space? Research?

    1. Eighty-seven percent of students who report feeling understood are satisfied with their experience overall compared to just 45% of students who say their institution doesn’t understand what's important to them.
    1. The idea is that reasoning from first principles is reasoning like a scientist. You take core facts and observations and use them to puzzle together a conclusion, kind of like a chef playing around with raw ingredients to try to make them into something good. By doing this puzzling, a chef eventually writes a new recipe. The other kind of reasoning—reasoning by analogy—happens when you look at the way things are already done and you essentially copy it, with maybe a little personal tweak here and there—kind of like a cook following an already written recipe.

      TL;DR

      Chef: Breaks things down to its fundamental principles and then mixes and matches them to create something new.

      Cook: Gathers inspiration from what solutions has already been done, understands it, and tweaks some parts to personalize it for their needs.

    1. The student doesn’t have a strong preference for any of these archetypes. Their notes serve a clear purpose that’s often based on a short-term priority (e.g, writing a paper or passing a test), with the goal to “get it done” as simply as possible.

      The typical student note taking method of transcribing, using (or often not using at all), and keeping notes is doomed to failure.

      Many students make the mistake of not making their own actual notes. By this I don't mean they're not writing information down. In fact many are writing information down, but we can't really call these notes. Notes by definition ought to transform something seen or heard into one's own words. Without the transformation, these students think that they're taking notes, but in reality they're focusing their efforts on being transcriptionists. They're attempting to capture something for later consumption. This is a deadly trap! By only transcribing, they're not taking advantage of transforming information by putting ideas down in their own words to test their understanding. Often worse, even if they do transcribe notes, they don't revisit them. If they do revisit them, they're simply re-reading them and not actively working with them. Only re-reading them will lead to the illusion that they're learning something when in fact they're falling into the mere-exposure effect.

      Students who are acting as transcriptionists would be better off simply reading a textbook and taking notes directly from that.

      A note that isn't revisited or revised, may as well be a note not taken. If we were to consider a spectrum of useful, valuable, and worthwhile notes, these notes would be at the lowest end of the spectrum.

      link to: https://hypothes.is/a/QgkL6IkIEeym7OeN9v9New

    1. faciliter l’accès aux données des systèmes du MES, notamment par rapport à laréussite de groupes ciblés d’étudiants (par exemple, les étudiants en situationde handicap, les étudiants autochtones, les étudiants issus de l’immigration, lesétudiants de première génération3, les étudiants internationaux)
  7. Apr 2022
    1. The connections will still make it easier to remember and understand.

      Linking one's ideas together is a means of contextualizing them as well as situating them in a particular location with respect to your other knowledge. This creation of structure and place (loci) helps to quicken one's memory of not on the new item, but the items to which it is attached.

    1. lack of common learning goals among the student

    2. Institutions may supply learning environments that facilitate social interaction and collaboration and assure effective support to students with technological difficulties. Technological difficulties can cause student frustration as well as communication problems, which hamper collaborative processes such as explanations, sharing answers, and negotiation (Ragoonaden & Bordeleau, 2000).

    3. students may struggle with the development of a sense of interdependence and intersubjectivity (Lushyn & Kennedy, 2000) and must abandon subjective, individualistic conceptions of learning (Dirkx & Smith, 2004)

    4. Despite the pedagogical advantages of collaborative learning, online learners can perceive collaborative learning activities as frustrating experiences.

    5. the technology can be the source of either frustration or motivation

    1. solo thinking isrooted in our lifelong experience of social interaction; linguists and cognitivescientists theorize that the constant patter we carry on in our heads is a kind ofinternalized conversation. Our brains evolved to think with people: to teachthem, to argue with them, to exchange stories with them. Human thought isexquisitely sensitive to context, and one of the most powerful contexts of all isthe presence of other people. As a consequence, when we think socially, wethink differently—and often better—than when we think non-socially.

      People have evolved as social animals and this extends to thinking and interacting. We think better when we think socially (in groups) as opposed to thinking alone.

      This in part may be why solo reading and annotating improves one's thinking because it is a form of social annotation between the lone annotator and the author. Actual social annotation amongst groups may add additonal power to this method.

      I personally annotate alone, though I typically do so in a publicly discoverable fashion within Hypothes.is. While the audience of my annotations may be exceedingly low, there is at least a perceived public for my output. Thus my thinking, though done alone, is accelerated and improved by the potential social context in which it's done. (Hello, dear reader! 🥰) I can artificially take advantage of the social learning effects even if the social circle may mathematically approach the limit of an audience of one (me).

    2. the development of intelligent thinking is fundamentally a social process

      great quote


      How can social annotation practices take advantage of these sorts of active learning processes? What might be done in a flipped classroom setting to get students to use social annotation on a text prior to a lecture and have the questions and ideas from these sessions brought into the lecture space for discussion, argument, and expansion?

    3. Researchdemonstrates that students who engage in active learning acquire a deeperunderstanding of the material, score higher on exams, and are less likely to failor drop out.

      Active learning is a pedagogical structure whereby a teacher presents a problem to a group of students and has them (usually in smaller groups) collectively work on the solutions together. By talking and arguing amongst themselves they actively learn together not only how to approach problems, but to come up with their own solutions. Teachers can then show the correct answer, discuss why it was right and explain how the alternate approaches may have gone wrong. Research indicates that this approach helps provide a deeper understanding of the materials presented this way, that students score higher on exams and are less likely to either fail or drop out of these courses.

      Active learning sounds very similar to the sorts of approaches found in flipped classrooms. Is the overlap between the two approaches the same, or are there parts of the Venn diagrams of the two that differ, and, if so, how do they differ? Which portions are more beneficial?

      Does this sort of active learning approach also help to guard against "group think" as the result of comparing solutions from various groups? How might this be applied to democracy? Would separate versions of committees that then convene to compare notes and come up with solutions improve the quality of solutions?

    4. A 2019 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences supports Wieman’s hunch. Tracking the intellectual advancement ofseveral hundred graduate students in the sciences over the course of four years,its authors found that the development of crucial skills such as generatinghypotheses, designing experiments, and analyzing data was closely related to thestudents’ engagement with their peers in the lab, and not to the guidance theyreceived from their faculty mentors.

      Learning has been shown to be linked to engagement with peers in social situations over guidance from faculty mentors.

      Cross reference: David F. Feldon et al., “Postdocs’ Lab Engagement Predicts Trajectories of PhD Students’ Skill Development,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (October 2019): 20910–16


      Are there areas where this is not the case? Are there areas where this is more the case than not?

      Is it our evolution as social animals that has heightened this effect? How could this be shown? (Link this to prior note about social evolution.)

      Is it the ability to scaffold out questions and answers and find their way by slowly building up experience with each other that facilitates this effect?

      Could this effect be seen in annotating texts as well? If one's annotations become a conversation with the author, is there a learning benefit even when the author can't respond? By trying out writing about one's understanding of a text and seeing where the gaps are and then revisiting the text to fill them in, do we gain this same sort of peer engagement? How can we encourage students to ask questions to the author and/or themselves in the margins? How can we encourage them to further think about and explore these questions? Answer these questions over time?

      A key part of the solution is not just writing the annotations down in the first place, but keeping them, reviewing over them, linking them together, revisiting them and slowly providing answers and building solutions for both themselves and, by writing them down, hopefully for others as well.

    5. instructors and experts must also become more legible models. This can beaccomplished through what philosopher Karsten Stueber calls “re-enactiveempathy”: an appreciation of the challenges confronting the novice that isproduced by reenacting what it was like to have once been a beginner oneself.
    6. As Smith notes, the emulation of model texts was once a standard feature ofinstruction in legal writing; it fell out of favor because of concern that thepractice would fail to foster a capacity for independent thinking. The carefulobservation of how students actually learn, informed by research on the role ofcognitive load, may be bringing models back into fashion.
    7. This act of imitation relieves students of some of theirmental burden, Robinson notes, allowing them to devote the bulk of theircognitive bandwidth to the content of the assignment

      By providing students solid examples of work that is expected of them they can more easily imitate the examples which frees up cognitive bandwidth so that they can focus their time and attention on creating their own content related to particular assignments.

    8. In studies comparing European American children withMayan children from Guatemala, psychologists Maricela Correa-Chávez andBarbara Rogoff asked children from each culture to wait while an adultperformed a demonstration—folding an origami shape—for another childnearby. The Mayan youth paid far more sustained attention to the demonstration—and therefore learned more—than the American kids, who were oftendistracted or inattentive. Correa-Chávez and Rogoff note that in Mayan homes,children are encouraged to carefully observe older family members so that theycan learn how to carry out the tasks of the household, even at very young ages.

      American children aren't encouraged to as attentive imitators as their foreign counterparts and this can effect their learning processes.

    1. ReconfigBehSci. (2020, November 5). @ToddHorowitz3 2/2 so I would prefer to treat this as an opportunity for empirical observation and learning. Evaluation should focus on trying to assess actual contribution, not a priori judgments. [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1324367278352355330

    1. When literature, language, and writing are connected to students’ experiences

      This is an utterly passive statement. They are connected to it? NO. They are shown a context. The learners must be the ones connecting. Otherwise we get inert learning.

    1. 3. Who are you annotating with? Learning usually needs a certain degree of protection, a safe space. Groups can provide that, but public space often less so. In Hypothes.is who are you annotating with? Everybody? Specific groups of learners? Just yourself and one or two others? All of that, depending on the text you’re annotating? How granular is your control over the sharing with groups, so that you can choose your level of learning safety?

      This is a great question and I ask it frequently with many different answers.

      I've not seen specific numbers, but I suspect that the majority of Hypothes.is users are annotating in small private groups/classes using their learning management system (LMS) integrations through their university. As a result, using it and hoping for a big social experience is going to be discouraging for most.

      Of course this doesn't mean that no one is out there. After all, here you are following my RSS feed of annotations and asking these questions!

      I'd say that 95+% or more of my annotations are ultimately for my own learning and ends. If others stumble upon them and find them interesting, then great! But I'm not really here for them.

      As more people have begun using Hypothes.is over the past few years I have slowly but surely run into people hiding in the margins of texts and quietly interacted with them and begun to know some of them. Often they're also on Twitter or have their own websites too which only adds to the social glue. It has been one of the slowest social media experiences I've ever had (even in comparison to old school blogging where discovery is much higher in general use). There has been a small uptick (anecdotally) in Hypothes.is use by some in the note taking application space (Obsidian, Roam Research, Logseq, etc.), so I've seen some of them from time to time.

      I can only think of one time in the last five or so years in which I happened to be "in a text" and a total stranger was coincidentally reading and annotating at the same time. There have been a few times I've specifically been in a shared text with a small group annotating simultaneously. Other than this it's all been asynchronous experiences.

      There are a few people working at some of the social side of Hypothes.is if you're searching for it, though even their Hypothes.is presences may seem as sparse as your own at present @tonz.

      Some examples:

      @peterhagen Has built an alternate interface for the main Hypothes.is feed that adds some additional discovery dimensions you might find interesting. It highlights some frequent annotators and provide a more visual feed of what's happening on the public Hypothes.is timeline as well as data from HackerNews.

      @flancian maintains anagora.org, which is like a planet of wikis and related applications, where he keeps a list of annotations on Hypothes.is by members of the collective at https://anagora.org/latest

      @tomcritchlow has experimented with using Hypothes.is as a "traditional" comments section on his personal website.

      @remikalir has a nice little tool https://crowdlaaers.org/ for looking at documents with lots of annotations.

      Right now, I'm also in an Obsidian-based book club run by Dan Allosso in which some of us are actively annotating the two books using Hypothes.is and dovetailing some of this with activity in a shared Obsidian vault. see: https://boffosocko.com/2022/03/24/55803196/. While there is a small private group for our annotations a few of us are still annotating the books in public. Perhaps if I had a group of people who were heavily interested in keeping a group going on a regular basis, I might find the value in it, but until then public is better and I'm more likely to come across and see more of what's happening out there.

      I've got a collection of odd Hypothes.is related quirks, off label use cases, and experiments: https://boffosocko.com/tag/hypothes.is/ including a list of those I frequently follow: https://boffosocko.com/about/following/#Hypothesis%20Feeds

      Like good annotations and notes, you've got to put some work into finding the social portion what's happening in this fun little space. My best recommendation to find your "tribe" is to do some targeted tag searches in their search box to see who's annotating things in which you're interested.

    1. Lists promise value quickly A normal essay promises a payoff only when you finish it. But lists promise at least some value almost immediately.

    1. This strategy has been shown to substantially increase student achievement across all grade levels (elementary through college) and with students who present with various disabilities (Haydon, Mancil, Kroeger, McLeskey, & Lin, 2011).

      Guided notes (or skeletal notes with broad topic headings) are a useful pedagogical scaffolding technique to encourage students to take notes. Methods like this have been show to improve student outcomes at all levels as well as for those with disabilities.

    1. Is it possible to design a new medium which much more actively supports memorization? That is, the medium would build in (and, ideally, make almost effortless) the key steps involved in memory

      This would be vital in making learning as easy as thinking

    1. A recommendation engine for reading that could reliably supply enjoyable inceptive experiences would be a marvel.

      .c2 Likely the best way to achieve this is on a platform with shortform introductory content that can then funnel you to high quality longform content. This already exists in a unofficial way on Youtube and Tiktok, but no platform would commit to it (as it is taking people away from their site). Readwise could do this through their supplemental highlights feature.

    1. Personalized examples are very resistant to interference and can greatly reduce your learning time

      Creating links to one's own personal context can help one to both learn and retain new material.

    2. One of the most effective ways of enhancing memories is to provide them with a link to your personal life.

      Personalizing ideas using existing memories is a method of brining new knowledge into one's own personal context and making them easier to remember.

      link this to: - the pedagogical idea of context shifting as a means of learning - cards about reframing ideas into one's own words when taking notes

      There is a solid group of cards around these areas of learning.


      Random thought: Personal learning networks put one into a regular milieu of people who are talking and thinking about topics of interest to the learner. Regular discussions with these people helps one's associative memory by tying the ideas into this context of people with relation to the same topic. Humans are exceedingly good at knowing and responding to social relationships and within a personal learning network, these ties help to create context on an interpersonal level, but also provide scaffolding for the ideas and learning that one hopes to do. These features will tend to reinforce each other over time.

      On the flip side of the coin there is anecdotal evidence of friends taking courses together because of their personal relationships rather than their interest in the particular topics.

  8. Mar 2022
    1. . While LMS vendors seek to create an environment that provides an all-encompassing PLE, the fact that they are closed networks and that they are platforms built to meet the needs of entire institutions means that they usually are not personalised enough to meet the needs of a connected learner, who is (most often) already used to the flexibility and ownership web 2.0 tools provide.

      This is important. I have been saying for awhile now that without properly planning an LMS space, it is merely a repository (much like an old dusty library but without the interesting discoveries).

    2. PLE = Personal Learning Environment PLN = Personal / Professional Learning Network LMS = Learning Management System OLN= Open Learning Network

      Important acronyms to take note of - mentioned often in online learning and can be overwhelming to students and 'newbie' academics

    1. Dr Ellie Murray, ScD. (2022, January 6). School & university administrators, as you grapple with this week’s decisions, spare some time to think about how to delay next January’s start date to Jan 16 2022. Do you need to extend into summer? Change course lengths? Figure it out because this is going to happen again! [Tweet]. @epiellie. https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1478921243961274370

    1. These ways of knowinghave inherent value and are leading Western scientists to betterunderstand celestial phenomena and the history and heritage thisconstitutes for all people.

      The phrase "ways of knowing" is fascinating and seems to have a particular meaning across multiple contexts.

      I'd like to collect examples of its use and come up with a more concrete definition for Western audiences.

      How close is it to the idea of ways (or methods) of learning and understanding? How is it bound up in the idea of pedagogy? How does it relate to orality and memory contrasted with literacy? Though it may not subsume the idea of scientific method, the use, evolution, and refinement of these methods over time may generally equate it with the scientific method.

      Could such an oral package be considered a learning management system? How might we compare and contrast these for drawing potential equivalencies of these systems to put them on more equal footing from a variety of cultural perspectives? One is not necessarily better than another, but we should be able to better appreciate what each brings to the table of world knowledge.

    1. A major advance in user interfaces that supports creative exploration would the capacity to go back in time, to review and manipulate the history of actions taken during an entire session. Users will be able to see all the steps in designing an engine and change an early design decision. They will be able to extract sections of the history to replay them or to convert into permanent macros that can be applied in similar situations. Extracting and replaying sections of history is a form of direct man ipulation programming. It enables users to explore every alternative in a decision-making situation, and then chose the one with the most favorable outcomes.

      While being able to view the history of a problem space from the perspective of a creation process is interesting, in reverse, it is also an interesting way to view a potential learning experience.

      I can't help but think about the branching tree networks of knowledge in some math texts providing potential alternate paths through the text to allow learners to go from novice to expert in areas in which they're interested. We need more user interfaces like this.

    2. Learning how to learn is often listed as a goal of education, but acquiring the goal-directed discipline, critical thinking skills, and cognitive self-awareness that support collection of knowledge is difficult. Advanced user interfaces may be able to help users better formulate their information needs, identify what information gaps impede them, and fabricate plans to satisfy their needs. Often as information is acquired, the users's knowledge shifts enough to require a reformulation of their plans. Information visualization interfaces and hypertext environments are a first step in supporting incidental learning, exploratory browsing, and then rapid reformulation of plans. As a refined theory of knowledge acquisition emerges, improved tools will f ollow.
    1. And a network which is sparsely knit there are a lot of people in my network and in your 00:46:06 network who don't know each other. And it's loosely bound. There are people from outside the network, in fact that's how a small world network happens.

      Harold Jarche - strong and weak social ties - https://jarche.com/2014/11/working-and-learning-out-loud/

    1. The use of gesture supplies a temporary scaffold that supports theseundergraduates’ still wobbly understanding of the subject as they fix theirknowledge more firmly in place.

      Gesturing supplies a visual scaffolding which allows one to affix their budding understanding of new concepts into a more permanent structure.

    2. “It is from the attempt of expressing themselves thatunderstanding evolves, rather than the other way around,” he maintains.

      —Woff-Michael Roth

      Actively attempting to express oneself is one of the best methods of evolving one's understanding.

      Link this to the ideas related to being forced to actively manufacture the answer to a question is one of the best ways to learn.

    3. Gesture encourages experimentation.”

      —Susan Goldin-Meadow

      Can teachers encourage gesture as a means of helping their students learn? How might this be done?

  9. Feb 2022
    1. Among the many purported benefits of diversity initiatives is the promise that when minority members contribute novel perspectives, they create a learning opportunity for their peers. However, for minority contributions to affect the performance of others, majority members must attend to them.
    1. Hiatt wrote in her book: "My next career steps have always been inspired by asking myself the key question of 'What do I want to learn in the next phase of my career?'" Without having a sense of the next leap, it's easy to limit yourself to comfortable roles that avoid stress, instead of chasing opportunities for growth, she says.Hiatt says her managers were often the key indicators of her personal growth trajectory and opportunities. In exchange, she says, it was up to her to be proactive with those opportunities and deliver results. She says she always prioritized the type of people she wanted to work for over everything else, because it would shape the kind of person and leader she wanted to be.

      What is the gap between me and this person, and do I want to close the gap?

    1. Contemporary digital learning technologies generate, store, and share terabytes of learner data—which must flow seamlessly and securely across systems. To enable interoperability and ensure systems can perform at-scale, the ADL Initiative is developing the Data and Training Analytics Simulated Input Modeler (DATASIM), a tool for producing simulated learner data that can mimic millions of diverse user interactions. view image full screen DATASIM application screen capture. DATASIM is an open-source platform for generating realistic Experience Application Programming Interface (xAPI) data at very large scale. The xAPI statements model realistic behaviors for a cohort of simulated learner/users, producing tailorable streams of data that can be used to benchmark and stress-test systems. DATASIM requires no specialized hardware, and it includes a user-friendly graphical interface that allows precise control over the simulation parameters and learner attributes.
    1. Amy Rae Fox@thoughtafoxYES I underline and highlight when I read and YES I know xyz studies demonstrate highlighting is not an 'effective learning technique' ... but not all learning is about remembering #toolsforthought9:41 PM · Feb 1, 2022·Twitter Web App

      YES I underline and highlight when I read and YES I know xyz studies demonstrate highlighting is not an 'effective learning technique' ... but not all learning is about remembering #toolsforthought

      — Amy Rae Fox (@thoughtafox) February 2, 2022
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

      An interesting perspective. Worth comparing the ideas of learning and remembering and what relationship they have to each other.

    1. Trying to find research on sketchnoting during presentations. Research directly comparing sketchnoting and more traditional notetaking does not seem to exist. References to dual coding theory do not count. Why is this popular?
    1. Overarching Learning Goals that are achievable for your students

      Multiple tiers of interconnected and aligned goals link classroom activity with published standards and curricula.

    1. Read for Understanding

      Ahrens goes through a variety of research on teaching and learning as they relate to active reading, escaping cognitive biases, creating understanding, progressive summarization, elaboration, revision, etc. as a means of showing and summarizing how these all dovetail nicely into a fruitful long term practice of using a slip box as a note taking method. This makes the zettelkasten not only a great conversation partner but an active teaching and learning partner as well. (Though he doesn't mention the first part in this chapter or make this last part explicit.)

    2. he best-researched and mostsuccessful learning method is elaboration. It is very similar to whatwe do when we take smart notes and combine them with others,which is the opposite of mere re-viewing (Stein et al. 1984)Elaboration means nothing other than really thinking about themeaning of what we read, how it could inform different questions andtopics and how it could be combined with other knowledge

      Elaboration is thinking deeply about the meaning of what we've read, how it could inform or answer different questions, and how it can be linked or combined with other knowledge. It is one of the best-researched and most successful learning methods. While it seems to have some subtle differences, it sounds broadly similar to the Feynman technique and is related to the idea of writing questions based on one's notes in the Cornell note taking method.

    3. As Terry Doyleand Todd Zakrajsek put it: “If learning is your goal, cramming is anirrational act” (Doyle and Zakrajsek 2013).