Bringing Back Integrity

NYT: How Superstars' Pay Stifles Everyone Else

Old Story: looks like we need game designers to rethink our reward systems to make everyone play nice. Is game design the new HR?

The Foolishness of Grades

This reminds me of the concept of "passing" and "passing with distinction" - why do administrators not appreciate grades as potentially measuring one's actual ability to perform a task or answer a question???

NYT: A Quest to Explain What Grades Really Mean

Here the problem is easy to define: grades are used in a relative sense, not to describe a skill, but to differentiate students from their peers - but if you play at this game you should be curving your grades to a normal distribution - if not, they come to lack meaning completely.

It seems that the brilliant new business model for universities is grades as "you did it!" badges a la facebook games. Universities do not sell education, but they don't sell entertainment either. Their marketing groups sell the prestige of education with the cultural expectation that drunken parties and hookups will happen on the weekend.

By my reckoning, they don't deliver on any account. Instead, they rely on group memories of what is good that are quickly fading.

Balance between Compromise and Zombie Ideas

NYT: When Zombies Win

This piece details the repeated failure of Democrats' compromise strategy, but raises a more general point about when comprise hurts more than it helps; specifically, its implications for holding back learning from experience - otherwise known as the empiricism of science - when old ideas are clearly wrong. I'd say this concept is relevant to any intellectual venture where social systems i.e. bureaucracies are involved.

In Pisa Test, Shanghai scores stun experts

Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators

""...for me the real significance of these results is that they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote learning.”
“Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel situations,” "
- Andreas Schleicher, who directs the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s international educational testing program

Urgent Evoke Review

What went right? What went wrong?

And interesting resource for social good games. As far as settings go, I wonder what one of these would look like using Shadowrun?

Standards Education & Citizenship: Apparently not the same!

NYT: A's for Good Behavior

At first I felt pissed off about this, but then I began to think that the split between standards and citizenship in grades is a split that needs to happen for the good of everyone. If we don't seriously try to properly teach our current standards, how will we come to the proper conclusion that they are not enough? (Or even possibly that they are useless? See: Science for Everybody?!)

Smile or Die

RSA: Smile or Die

What does it mean for social groups to encourage individuals to always have a positive attitude or to be a "team player"? Barbara Ehrenreich describes the phenomenon as a example of social control that was prevalent in totalitarian governments like the U.S.S.R. as well as the United States. So, remember kids, don't be different - bureaucrazy knows best!

Reverse Trick or Treating

http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/news/2010/10/06/this-halloween-give-chocolate-back/

Americans off to save children. Or Africa. Or something.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24volunteerism-t.html?hpw

Singapore Math in the US

Singapore Math is being adopted in US schools as an alternative to other programmes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/education/01math.html?hpw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Math_Method

Back from the WAVE: What is Art?

An old inquiry from the WAVE - still open.

(From A.R.)

What does it mean to be an artist?

Is it an artifact of lifestyle? Perception? Is it an artifact of the artifacts of your lifestyle borne by your perception? Is it a self-claimed identity (who decides who an artist is)?

If you are not an artist, why not? Who is? Why?

Is dance art? Are dancers artists? How do engineers and scientists fit into this? Are we making artists - why or why not? (@WPI? @SDC?)

How is art different from life? How is being an artist different from breathing?

And where does money fit into all of this?

Life Project: Dealing with Parents

BBC: Divorcing Parents Can Damage Children

When it comes to general education for life, I would say this is one of the most common experiences - notable others being the value of work and school and the nature of friendships and dating. Educators seem to have a hard time escaping their own perspective when it comes to work and school. Without time to socialize, friendships and dating are a hard topic - especially if students are underage. Relationships with parents are often discussed as an asset missing from the lives of some children - but this is more a complaint on grants that you see mentioned near reduced or free lunch. It's rarely discussed as something that could be fixed. I sometimes see parent reporting, but is there research out there on how best to engage parents? And how best to help children cope with their parents' immaturity? This seems only to worsen as kids grow into adults. For undergraduates, I would say it is their biggest project.

Universities Miss the Point

NYT: Why are colleges so selective?

The situation with Universities seems to require someone to just call the entire situation how it is from a higher perspective - this contrasted with simply being really concrete about details regarding some specific subset of the phenomenon - even if, and perhaps especially if, the subset is large. Attention to big chunks seems to be how we miss the big picture while confidently thinking we're making good observations.

With Higher Education the point seems to be that we have two discussions going on almost completely apart from each other. You have community colleges that take anyone and selective universities that seem to have some scam going on where they charge you more because they are selective. (???) "We are more expensive than the usual guy! Therefore, you should compete to come here!" Maybe they would say that smarter students in one place makes it worth the money, or that the money goes to education, but I think anyone who actually observes reality knows this is bullshit. What does "smart" mean? And when is the last time a place like WPI did something with the motivation to improve education? Look at this new athletic facility at WPI. You could argue that it will improve quality of life for well-rounded students, but we barely pay lip service to that fantasy (which was once the reality of our school) and instead openly embrace the idea that its value is in increasing our national rankings, thereby making us more competitive, thus allowing us to charge more.

Normally if you bring this up to admins or trustees they treat you as if you're being naive. I wonder who is naive, though. Am I foolish for wondering when universities became profit machines instead of just institutions that needed to somehow break even? Is it silly to be puzzled at why we never talk about how to improve education in the form of actual classes, or actual projects, or actual learning materials, instead of just "better facilities"???

If the university side of the higher-ed continuum has lost its purpose, the community college end doesn't seem to be doing much better. Whenever a community college does well, they move their way to the other end of the spectrum. This often goes so far as actually re-classifying as a state university. I have no thoughts against why this shouldn't be called the gentrification of education.

So is anyone looking at the big picture here? It doesn't seem like it, but I wish someone would.

Games: A Waste of Time

NYT: Video Games in the Classroom

Tells the story of a transient fad (epidemic?) spread by "feel-the-learning" hippies who are ruining serious education.

Emerging Adulthood?

NYT: Emerging Adulthood

The phenomena is so obvious as to have become part of our popular culture. Observational studies have shown it to apply generally to current youth, and neuroscience gives perspective to the developmental approach of viewing the phenomena in terms of the individual - but where is the role of culture and the previous generations who are parents and grandparents to those in question?

How far can basic scientific methods serve this inquiry? This example seems to suggest common ground between the social sciences and philosophy that could be explored through notions of modeling.

In particular, what can we say about the effects of Consumerism on this generation? Or even about the state of Consumerism, itself? Or of Modernity and the looming insights of post-modern thinking?

Has the existentialist project progressed? Or have the failings of the 20th Century merely begun to manifest themselves in different 21st Century forms?

Is there a moment for us to seize? A potential inflection point to steer our species in a better direction?

Weigh in!

Manifestations of the Creative Web

I've previously mentioned Cisneros. In the terminology of the Wave, he represents "robots" - or as we might say, "pedagogical agents", "learning companions", or even "virtual assistants". This is the most direct incarnation of my experiences with the ITS community. Specifically, his complex encapsulates not only the set of tricks for anthropomorphizing already existing methods of tutoring that we see in most papers on the topic, but the potential for these robots as independent entities - in my mind, through more advanced algorithms for scheduling content based on priors.

The name was originally suggested by Davean after recalling the joke that ITS stands for "Intelligent Torturing Systems". I have, however, come to appreciate the affordances that such labels provide. During my initial return to the greater problem space of the "creative web", I have come to feel the presence of two other manifestations that I have also named so that I may express their particulars more easily. They are not mutually exclusive with Cisneros, or even each other. Instead these three seem to characterize different developments of the creative web that are often present together in a kind of intermingling, yet in a way such that one usually dominates a particular topic and comes characterize it best.

"Mellifera" is how I refer to various social networking issues. These probably gained traction in my mind during the various Facebook scandals that had me shouting, "Divine Retribution!!" - Mainly, I see Facebook as making sensible business decisions, especially considering their currently model, though I have somehow come to associate said model with some form of consumerism. It seems mindless in a way I have yet to articulate (that I can remember during this writing, anyway). The waste, as I see it, is in not engaging privacy and data permissions as a new area of technological development that aides the creative process. In previous discussions, A.R. has mentioned the mechanics on LJ, for instance. It seems that there is a great deal the internet can do for people looking to communicate, by helping them to think about their intended audience. The same is true for data. How can you talk about semantic web ideas without going here? Without claiming to transition, I also toss the notion of "crowd sourcing" in here, along with the notion of barn-raising and wiki communities.

"Theraphosa" represents large data sets and making noms out of them. We have streams of data, even large streams, but we rarely think of these streams as large sets that have interesting properties as a whole. Most of our data is immediately tossed out. I've seen bloggers begin to deal with this in the form of "curation", but this is not automated and can be dealt with through better design of the content life cycle. Google has various labs related to spreadsheets and data sets, although nothing insane. There is even our close relative, PSLC Datashop, although they don't conceptualize themselves in this way. As is probably obvious, I do not currently understand this manifestation as well as Cisneros or Mellifera, but I can clearly sense its presence and, if only intuitively, its importance.

The Wave is DEAD! Long Live the Wave!

There was a time in each of our careers when our minds were more free, more in touch with the creative, with the possibilities. Now I'm bringing it back. 

Enjoy the best of Learning Science Lab riding the Wave! 

Lots of Links for the Soul

A.R.:
Links for the lab (I need a better way of organizing and managing organization...)

• Scratch -- A programming language used to teach kids how to program. Designed to be intuitive and powerful, and use "blocks" of code to avoid getting bogged down with syntax. Matt: You outta see how the WPI computer science education researchers got around the syntax problem. They used scheme. Real language, but with very little syntax.
• C4FCM + Scratch + NSF = Computer science skills
• Digital Frog -- Article about company that does edugames, including one that looks mysteriously like our SimCell
• Matt: That. . . that is freaking perfect: http://www.sciencematrix.com/web/modules/CS_module.html A.R.: You ought to just buy it and turn it in.
• "How Young Is Too Young?" -- Popsci article on CNN about ethnography of elementary and pre-school age SNS use.
• Confessions of an Impatient Cheater -- Motivations behind cheating in games (not exceptionally well written, but interesting to follow up on.)
• Digital Media and Learning Research Hub --The fact that almost everything on this site is irrelevant to our research speaks more to our irrelevancy, I think.
• Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives -- Cambridge Press book series. Most of it useless, but maybe a gem in there?
• Writing with the Mouse in Hand -- Blog article / link collection on communication literacy.
• 360Blog -- More child focused than learning focused, but you never know; there could be something good here.
• ZOMGGRIT -- This is useless. But, hey, I feel obligated to put it up anyways, given that I have strong feeling that may not be shared.
• Democratizing Dictatorship: Tropico 3 -- A review of a dicatorship sim game, which teases out important thoughts on the relationship between aesthetic and mechanic, and how the two need to cooperate to create a greater whole experience. Also, how mechanics can seem benign (or useless), but with unexpected systemic consequences can provide deep learning.
• The Hacker Culture -- Brief syllabus for a course on Hacker culture, including book list. Provides food for thought on other sorts of engagement we could accomodate.
• Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age -- That conference I talked about--so many links!
• International Journal of Learning and Media -- Duh. On the front page RIGHT NOW there is an article about assessment.
• MIT Press List for Digital Media and Learning -- Lots of interesting books. Some of them might even be directly relevant.
• On that note, MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning -- More condensed list of stuff from MIT Press
• Digital Youth Research: Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media -- Another research hub
• Designing Story Based Games -- It looks irrelevant, but a lot on this list of tips transfers directly into our designs!
• MCAS Question Database (8th grade soon to be in .xls format)
• Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic -- A paper about self-organizing team-building dynamics. Something to consider should we get into designing group activities. Nate: One of the authors on this paper is Nick Yee - I can only assume the same guy who did Daedalus Project!!! A.R.: If you're looking for an interesting paper on social behaviors in games, chances are Nick Yee has his name on it. Conversely, he has a habit of doing all sorts of interesting things in the space. e.g. -- Not directly relevant to our lab, but since you were asking... :) 
• Inside the Computer Clubhouse (Part One of Three) -- The Computer Clubhouse: Constructionism and Creativity in Youth Communities, pays tribute to the fifteen year plus history of the movement, sharing some of its key successes, and offering key insights into what has made the Clubhouses so successful. The highly readable book, addressed to educators of all kinds who want to make a difference in addressing the digital divide and the participation gap, was produced for the Teacher's College Press by some key veterans of the movement -- Yasmin B. Kafai [She's the lady who wrote the paper on Constructionism in our text!], Kylie A. Peppler, and Robbin N. Chapman...
• Spy vs. spy on Facebook -- MIT wins the DARPA mystery hunt. Significant, not just because of the problem setup, but also the solution and what it implies for group dynamics within technological and informational systems.
• Febrile nitwits and the hacked climate change emails -- PZ Myers links to a video refuting the recent media dustup about hacked climate change emails. Talk about NoS and public debate.
• Children who use technology are 'better writers' -- Spot the untruths in this popsci article!
• Six Wonderful Things About Games -- Another round of "Spot the lie!" Not *just* to prove that I'm not an unthinking games enthusiast.
• How designers can influence behavior—and why they should. -- I note that I got linked to this article by game devs on twitter, who were flipping out. Considering why is a worthwhile exercise.
• Virtual World Observatory: Redefining Social and Network Science research in Virtual Worlds -- Not directly related, but interesting and worth consuming.
• 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year – 2009 -- I'm still not sure why we keep reinventing the wheel, but whatevs.
• Microsoft Makes Work Fun: Office Launches “Ribbon Hero”, A Social Game -- These games exist explicitly to teach useful skills (including aesthetic ones!) when using Microsoft products.
• Now Ribbon Hero is getting popular -- And has been responded to with a design manifesto.
• Games for Learning Institute Research Page -- Also has a bunch of free flash games up there.
• 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to get you addictd -- A nice palette cleanser for the Schell DICE talk. Surprisingly apt by comparison, given its host.
• Behavioral Game Design -- Would you like a nice dose of fear? This guy is one of the head researchers at the Microsoft game research lab.

Getting Academic Dialogues Moving

A.R.:
Adversarial Collaboration, from a Nobel laureate

"One line of work that I hope may become influential is the development of a procedure of adversarial collaboration, which I have championed as a substitute for the format of critique-reply-rejoinder in which debates are currently conducted in the social sciences.1 Both as a participant and as a reader I have been appalled by the absurdly adversarial nature of these exchanges, in which hardly anyone ever admits an error or acknowledges learning anything from the other. Adversarial collaboration involves a good-faith effort to conduct debates by carrying out joint research - in some cases there may be a need for an agreed arbiter to lead the project and collect the data. Because there is no expectation of the contestants reaching complete agreement at the end of the exercise, adversarial collaborations will usually lead to an unusual type of joint publication, in which disagreements are laid out as part of a jointly authored paper. I have had three adversarial collaborations, with Tom Gilovich and Victoria Medvec (Gilovich, Medvec and Kahneman, 1998), with Ralph Hertwig (where Barbara Mellers was the agreed arbiter, see Mellers, Hertwig and Kahneman, 2001), and with a group of experimental economists in the UK (Bateman et al., 2003). An appendix in the Mellers et al. article proposes a detailed protocol for the conduct of adversarial collaboration. In another case I did not succeed in convincing two colleagues that we should engage in an adversarial collaboration, but we jointly developed another procedure that is also more constructive than the reply-rejoinder format. They wrote a critique of one of my lines of work, but instead of following up with the usual exchange of unpleasant comments we decided to write a joint piece, which started by a statement of what we did agree on, then went on to a series of short debates about issues on which we disagreed (Ariely, Kahneman, & Loewenstein, 2000). I hope that more efficient procedures for the conduct of controversies will be part of my legacy."

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2002/kahneman-autobio.html


One Spy per Child

Matt:
Please show some rage
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html

A.R.:
**is showing rage**

Matt:
You know your procrastinating when you respond to a 10 day old wave :-D

A.R.:
I'M NOT PROCRASTINATING I'M THINKING

Matt:
You know your thinking when you are raging! 


Textbooks & Texas

Nate:
This is my battle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html

There's even mention of Adam's home town!!! ;)


This is a Call to Arms, TO FIGHT!

Matt:
I thought you might enjoy this call to arms in visual design

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgUBvsW9ZQU

Matt:
I actually love this series: if you liked that one let me show you the vid that made me respect scrabble in new ways

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aq6sJEuVU

Nate:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18386_7-mind-blowing-easter-eggs-hidden-in-famous-works-art.html

Check that shit out. Unicorns fucking has never been so real! AND MORE!!
Your game should obviously have easter eggs in it! ;)


On Beyond Zebra

Nate:
So the book is: "On Beyond Zebra!" by Doctor Seuss

The quote goes something like this:

"In the places I go there are things that I see
That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.
I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!

So, on beyond Z!
It's high time you were shown
That you really don't know
All there is to be known."

I think I shall acquire this work upon my successful employment. :D 


Discovery vs. Direct Instruction

A.R.:
Here is a wave for hashing out the varieties available in the garden between Discovery Learning and Direct Instruction
To be populated later (or when you guys start it).
Also, you can add in notes directly inline with the text! Double click on what you'd like to respond to.

Nate:
Mastery vs. Performance + GAMES
http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/awesome-by-proxy-addicted-to-fake.html

A.R.:
A potential quote from this future paper:

"Although studies have shown that pure discovery learning is terribly inefficient when it comes to content knowledge gains in the short term--although what is learned correctly will be retained for far longer and understood more deeply--there still exists a place for it in science curriculum. We are not just in the business of teaching science content, after all, but also teaching science inquiry skills and especially trying to provide students with knowledge of the Nature of Science as defined by XX.

"What are inquiry skills but a special set of process skills? And cognitive science has repeatedly shown that the only way to acquire process skills is through direct practice and application. But heavily guided labs have still proven insufficient for teaching science inquiry skills. There is a close mapping between science inquiry skills and important metacognitive skills, and it's for this reason that only pure discovery learning is sufficient for teaching them.

"The processes that science inquiry skills practice are not just the act of 'doing science,' but are also a way of thinking about science--further, they are a way of thinking about and approaching the environment. Because of this, the only real guidance an activity designed to teach science inquiry skills can provide is guidance aimed at encouraging certain ways of thinking. Guidance in terms of what the student is doing physically bypasses the thinking stage and allows him to simply execute an algorithm unthinkingly, even if it's one he's guessing about. An activity that only gives students a goal and no process-instructions, instead replacing them with encouragement to consider certain facts or think in certain ways--this may not be the purest of discovery learning, but it's close enough that to many students and teachers the difference is arbitrary.

"Certainly students, teachers, and researchers oriented towards performance motivations will find such an activity frustrating and perhaps incomprehensible, but evidence shows that learning science inquiry skills--and thus the Nature of Science--tolerates only guidance of thinking. This makes sense in light of how actual scientists approach their work. After all, on the edges of scientific work there is no authority other than the evidence to provide correct answers and a comprehensive model with which to understand it all. To that end, it makes sense to withhold activity guidance and instructor assessment for as long as possible in order to better simulate the conditions in which scientists work, and thus increase the probability that a student will come to a better understanding of the Nature of Science and thus the rational foundations and applications of science inquiry skills.

"The last argument is not a new one, to be sure, but it is the first time that evidence is lent more than cursory support by it. While most science curricula to date focus on accumulation of science facts accompanied with a prayer that science inquiry skills might get picked up on the way, and some reactionary curricula instead seem to forego an interest in proven facts in order to increase the chances that a student ends up better understanding the Nature of Science, there exists other ways to fill a student's brain with facts and provide them with the opportunity to learn science inquiry skills. One possible way is to devote a period of the curriculum to only science inquiry skills. Rather than attempting to double-dip by teaching students content and inquiry at the same time, do not rely on a period of discovery learning in a certain domain to teach domain knowledge--and don't see time spent not focused on obtaining domain knowledge as time wasted. It is well and good to speak about science inquiry skills as the highest goal for science education, of critical importance for our students to learn, and to bemoan the fact that it is not being taught, but if there are no serious attempts to incorporate its teaching into existing curricula, can it be said that anyone really takes their propaganda seriously?"

Now we just need to run an experiment and see if reality backs me up here. XD

A.R.:
I'm aware this is something of a divorce from previous thinking on this issue, but the argument I make above seems logical to me. I'd be happy to get picked apart.

To be sure, the real argument I'm making is not that "DL is great lol" (evidence says that pure DL is pretty retarded for almost everything, after all) but that because of the NoS, learning inquiry is resistant to anything but pure-like DL. I think this intuitive conjecture combined with the fact that we work with compys is why JG is trying to push her NoM stuff.

I think it's possible that there are scaffolded methods for teaching inquiry skills, else our lab is doomed to failure. I think there might be a series of such activities, much like *gasp* a real curriculum. But I also think that the final activity will have to look like pure-esque DL for the reasons above.

Rather than activities, we have to look at curricula? That seems hard to run an experiment on... At least, with the way we do things in the lab.

Right now, we're doing inquiry-oriented stuff and trying to show how there's content knowledge gains, which is fine and dandy and may even have some results, but feels to me ultimately like a dog chasing a car. Sometimes we even measure inquiry gains. But why aren't we taking an inverse approach: trying different approaches and measuring inquiry gains? Our grants say that teaching inquiry is our business.

I'm getting off-track now. And my mother is walking in every five minutes to distract me, so my thinking isn't as coherent as it normally is. Sorry. :/

Hm. Hmelo's paper outlines two mediated approaches... the medical one requires a person to act much like a DM, which is resource intensive. What was the other approach?

Also, I'm getting away from our original goal: show how both "camps" were being retarded and not at all different from each other? Or, at least, both trying to get at the same thing. Instead, I'm coming across here as yet another tard. Somebody take some fresh eyes at this and align it with our original goals. I'm going to go crazy from trying to work around family now.

Nate:
I basically agree that we should be trying to operationalize inquiry more than anything else.

Nate:
Actually, I was dreaming (literally) about posting a white paper on this topic. There is a certain meta-skill I want to try to measure and I feel more inclined to doing it now since all the people who have been here pre summer 2009 will be screwed at AERA if someone doesn't fix our situation. Instead of posting it directly to our lab list, I will write it here!

Nate:
One-to-One Self Efficacy

Students are presented a Likert-scale questionnaire asking them to describe the degree to which they possess certain fine-grained skills. They are then given a questionnaire where they are asked to demonstrate these skills.

The measure in question is not whether they possess the skill or not, but whether they realize this or not / if they are being honest with the questionnaire / themselves.

The purpose of such a measure is to serve as a parameter of how much scaffolding they get and more specifically, what variety of scaffolding they receive. This is important because we claim to scaffold students based on their learner characteristics, but as of yet we don't even have multiple types of scaffolding - or rather even a single variety of scaffolding!

One pair of scaffolds that should mix well with this measure of meta-cognition is Assistment's scaffolding and normal worked examples where Assistment Scaffolding is really the interactive presentation of a worked example piece-by-piece.

As a closing note, where does this leave other varieties of self efficacy? One way of looking at this is asking how students model skills. If we say, are you good at math? What is their model of math skill? If we say are you good at calculus or differentiation, what are their models here?? The new question becomes, how specific do we have to be with words before our models of a skill are synched with student's models? The parameters of this relation are particularly important for anyone in the tutoring business because we cannot rework material for everyone who uses it (what we currently do cf. would a teacher in a classroom have this problem?).




Philosophy of Science & Theories of Knowledge 
(Science-Technology-Society)

Nate:
Here is another cool sub-discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_demarcation


Disruptive Technology

A.R.:
Disruptive Technology: Student Brings Typewriter to Class
http://www.openculture.com/2009/12/student_brings_typewriter_to_class.html

The real question, of course, is who is actually disrupting whom. The students with internet-attached computers? The one with the noisy typewriter? To what ends are the affordances of these lexical technologies driving the classroom?


The 12 Days of Learning Science Lab

Matt and A.R.:
I fully admit how silly this is but. . . I am procrastinating (spelling hero!)

Feel free to delete, change, etc

12 days of labiin'

1. One kid who knows how to think
2. Think Alouds
3. hours gaming
4. canceled classes
5. fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive THOUSAND LOOOOOOOOOOOOOGS
6. days in schools
7. files a-coded
8. bubbles a-herded
9.
10.
11.
12. 


Presuppositions

Matt:
Anyone have any idea what janice means when she says
"What presuppositions underlie the learning environment?"

What it says to me is "what assumptions does the learning environment make."

A.R.:
I agree.

Matt:
but . . . that does not mean very much . . .

A.R.:
It means everything! If you don't know your assumptions, how can you make any inferences about your model? Or what the student is learning?

As Sun Tzu says, "If you know yourself and your enemy, you can fight one hundred battles without a single loss. If you know yourself and not your enemy, you may win or lose. If you do not know yourself, then you put yourself in danger with every battle."

Matt:
OH FUCk
I GOT IT.

Thanks!

A.R.:
Do svidania.

An online group for people interested in online tutoring.

The Avatar of the "Intelligent Torturing Systems" movement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Jim%C3%A9nez_de_Cisneros