- Oct 2022
-
joelchan.me joelchan.meTest JOB1
-
“The one inhibition I felt using AnswerGarden [was] knowing that the experts were typically busy and workingon projects more important than my little application programs....
So rather than distributing input over time, why not have a one-day deep dive with everyone (luncheon retreat)?
-
-
joelchan.me joelchan.me
-
Out of this friction of competing ideas can comethe sort of improvisational sparks necessary for igniting organizational innovation.Thus large organizations, reflectively structured, are perhaps particularly well posi-tioned to be highly innovative and to deal with discontinuitie
I agree! But do you expect MBAs to succeed in this area? Reorganizing companies to form such effective subunits and to incentivize the deeper though that innovation requires will be difficult on the shorter timelines upon which businesses operate.
-
Reliance on formal descriptions of work, explicit syllabuses for learning about it,and canonical groups to carry it out immediately set organizations at a disadvantage.This approach, as we have noted, can simply blind management to the practices andcommunities that actually make things happ
How can we learn and teach better in a grad school context with this in mind? Implications?
-
The inadequacies of this corporation's directive approach actually make a rep'swork more difficult to accomplish and thus perversely demands more, not fewer,improvisational skill
Anyone have stories about this in their employment history?
-
41
Page note: How does this relate to lab notebooks and their use in offering a window into lab practices and culture?
-
- Apr 2022
-
-
The way technologies like fMRI are applied is aproduct of our brainbound orientation; it has not seemed odd or unusual toexamine the individual brain on its own, unconnected to others.
In part because of modalities of studying the brain using methods like fMRI where the images are of an individual's head, we focus too much and too exclusively on single brains bound to individuals rather than on brains working in concert.
Greater flexibilities in tools and methods should help do studies of humans working in concert.
Link this to the anecdote:
I recall a radiology test within a medical school setting in which students were asked to diagnose an x-ray of a human patient's skull. Most either guessed small hairline fractures in the skull or that there was nothing wrong with the patient.
Can you diagnose the patient?
Almost all the students failed the question, and worse felt like idiots when the answer was revealed: the patient must be dead because the spinal column and the rest of the body are not attached. Compare:
-
the brain stores social information differently thanit stores information that is non-social. Social memories are encoded in a distinctregion of the brain. What’s more, we remember social information moreaccurately, a phenomenon that psychologists call the “social encodingadvantage.” If findings like this feel unexpected, that’s because our culturelargely excludes social interaction from the realm of the intellect. Socialexchanges with others might be enjoyable or entertaining, this attitude holds, butthey’re no more than a diversion, what we do around the edges of school orwork. Serious thinking, real thinking, is done on one’s own, sequestered fromothers.
"Social encoding advantage" is what psychologists refer to as the phenomenon of people remembering social information more accurately than other types.
Reference to read: “social encoding advantage”: Matthew D. Lieberman, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (New York: Crown, 2013), 284.
It's likely that the social acts of learning and information exchange in oral societies had an additional stickiness over and beyond the additional mnemonic methods they would have used as a base.
The Western cultural tradition doesn't value the social coding advantage because it "excludes social interaction from the realm of the intellect" (Paul, 2021). Instead it provides advantage and status to the individual thinking on their own. We greatly prefer the idea of the "lone genius" toiling on their own, when this is hardly ever the case. Our availability bias often leads us to believe it is the case because we can pull out so many famous examples, though in almost all cases these geniuses were riding on the shoulders of giants.
Reference to read: remember social information more accurately: Jason P. Mitchell, C. Neil Macrae, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, “Encoding-Specific Effects of Social Cognition on the Neural Correlates of Subsequent Memory,” Journal of Neuroscience 24 (May 2004): 4912–17
Reference to read: the brain stores social information: Jason P. Mitchell et al., “Thinking About Others: The Neural Substrates of Social Cognition,” in Social Neuroscience: People Thinking About Thinking People, ed. Karen T. Litfin (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 63–82.
-
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).
-
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?
Tags
- thinking with peers
- orality vs. literacy
- conversations with the text
- flipped classrooms
- individualism
- x-rays
- quotes
- definitions
- social encoding advantage
- orality and memory
- thinking tools
- lone genius myth
- thinking
- social annotation
- orality
- radiology
- annotation for learning
- annotations
- active reading
- social animals
- active learning
- discussion sections
- individuals vs. groups
- fMRI
- networked thinking
- cognitive bias
- evolution
- skulls
- anatomy
Annotators
-
- Sep 2021
-
blog.online.colostate.edu blog.online.colostate.edu
-
Students learn a great deal by explaining their ideas to others and by participating in activities in which they can learn from their peers. They develop skills in organizing and planning learning activities, working collaboratively with others, giving and receiving feedback and evaluating their own learning.
I completely agree with this. As I stated in my other annotation, being able to collaborate with peers is an excellent way to learn, since you can see/hear other people's thoughts and ideas that you may have not thought of yourself.
-
-
finiteeyes.net finiteeyes.net
-
Social learning does not mean learning without tension or argument. In “Thinking with Peers”, Paul shows that argument and conflict are useful ways to focus attention and strengthen ideas, so long as the arguing is done with a certain amount of openness to new ideas. She approvingly quotes Stanford Business School professor Robert Sutton’s formula for productive conflict: “People should fight as if they are right, and listen as if they are wrong.” The brain, it seems, likes conflict. Or, at least, conflict helps strengthen attention.
I wonder how this may be leveraged with those who are using Hypothes.is for conversations in the margins in classrooms?
cc: @remikalir, @jeremydean, @nateangell
Could teachers specifically sow contention into their conversations? Cross reference the idea of a devil's advocate.
I love the aphorism:
“People should fight as if they are right, and listen as if they are wrong.” — Robert Sutton, Stanford Buisness School professor's formula for productive conflict
-
- Mar 2018
-
-
one or more ‘affinity groups’ which have a name, a purpose, a consistent membership and a regular rhythm
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
- May 2016
-
www.ted.com www.ted.com
-
kids are led to believe all the marketing and advertising on TV,
Is it just the kids? What role do teachers, doctors, and parents play? And older siblings?
-
-
educatorinnovator.org educatorinnovator.org
-
When students see adults actually listening to them with respect, that is when they begin to realize they have a voice and can make a difference in their world.
I hope this is true. And I love the idea that adults are that important to students. Still I wonder how this fits with the connected-learning notion that youth want to be heard and recognized by their peers. I suppose it isn't an either/or: some youth seek peer approval, others want to be heard by adults. When you post on an open social network, you never know who will respond.
-