Leren kan je niet meten How to measure learning? #etmooc

Mijn kleinkind Evelien ( 2 maandenoud) heeft een nieuwe baby gym,  Ik haalde hem uit de verpakking zette het ding in de box en na drie seconden was ze er helemaal gek mee. Ze gaat er druk mee aan de gang. Slaan en vastpakken, het rinkelt en piept.
Heeft ze iets geleerd in die eerste paar minuten van de kennisnmaking?
Ja, ze heeft geleerd, maar wat? en Hoeveel?
Leren is geen deterministische activiteit, [Cormier]  het is geen oorzaak en gevolg proces. Wat Evelien geleerd heeft kan heel iets anders zijn dan wat die andere baby leert van haar baby gym.
Je kunt van Evelien niet zeggen hoeveel ze heeft geleerd. Je kunt achteraf (na jaren misschien) wel met haar praten over haar leren.
Maar de vraag is, weet je altijd precies wat en hoeveel je geleerd hebt? Kun je dat weten?

My (2 months old) grandchild Evelien has a new baby gym, I gave her the thing, and after three seconds she was totally crazy with it. Hitting and grabbing the rings and beeps. Has she learned anything in those first few minutes? Yes, she has learned things, but what? and How? Learning is not a deterministic activity [Cormier] it is not a cause and effect process. What Evelien has learned, can be very different from what the other baby learns with the same baby gym. You can not tell how much they have learned. You could talk to her about her learning when is has learned to talk. But the question is, can you know exactly what and how much you have learned? Can you tell?

Knowledge / kennis #introphil Truth / waarheid

The introphil course is a bit in favor of analytical philosophy, combining truth and knowledge very closely.
Some other philosophers (Critical rationalism and others) do not want to put knowledge and truth too closely together. Because your knowledge could be true now and in some weeks we could discover our knowledge is not true.

De introphil cursus trekt de analytische filosofie  een beetje voor, door waarheid en kennis nauw met elkaar te verbinden. Sommige andere  filosofen (bijv. Critical rationalism )willen kennis en waarheid niet zo nauw met elkaar verbinden. Want jouw kennis kan nu waar zijn, en over een paar weken kunnen we ontdekken dat onze kennis niet waar is.

 

 

Philosophy and theology #introphil

A very remarkable difference between USA and (North-West) Europe is the use of God and Jesus in common language.
Een merkwaardig verschil tussen de USA en Noordwest Europa is het gebruiken van de namen van God En Jezus in de taal van alledag.

No european told me he wanted to pray for something. I guess some europeans do pray, but they would not tell me. US-citizens do tell me they will pray for something. What does that mean for the place and status of theology and preachers and ministers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean?

Er zijn geen europeanen die me vertellen dat ze ergens voor zullen bidden. Ik veronderstel dat sommigen dat wel doen, maar ze zeggen het niet. Wat betekent dit voor de status van de theologie en van priesters en predikanten aan beide zijden van de Atlantiche Oceaan?

In most N-W European universities theology is not regarded high as a real serious science. How is this in Canada and USA?

In veel Noordwest europese universiteiten wordt theologie niet helemaal voor vol aangezien als wetenschap, Hoe zou dat in Canada en de vS zijn?

 

Why open? (this blogpost is a work in progress)

Why should I throw my intellectual products out in the open?

Why do people think open is better than closed?

I know most open software is better than closed, but is there a better reason than that for choosing the Open?
Find an ethical or philosophical reason for choosing Open.

(This is my homework for this weekend, next week will show an answer)

Is it because sharing is human?

Is it because solidarity is an ethical rule? <GNU manifesto
Is it based on the Golden Rule? <Golden Rule
It is an approach that responds to the concerns of others not out of a sense of duty, but from a feeling of responsive mutuality?
Is “Property” a difficult thing? Is it the nature of property that forbids to add knowledge to the list of properties? (<Property, Bodies and Wittgenstien)

Is copyright used as <censorship?. Keeping people from knowledge?

(image from http://marylandlearninglinks.org/)

Sources:
Berry (2004) Internet Ethics: Privacy, Ethics and Alienation – An Open Source Approach. (PDF file)

Sensemaking and connections #change11

Connecting information to knowledge is one way to make sense. The Aha-Erlebnis is the moment when a new bit of information finds its place in the network of knowledge, and the moment you know that.
When learning new information good students try to find connections to existing knowledge. Good teaching is connecting new lessons to existing knowledge.

1. … Ideas occur within a context that enables them to make sense.
2. Second, context is accepted for different sorts of reasons than are the hypotheses that emerge within it.
3. Third, the idea of a new scientific context occurs roughly the way his own illumination of Aristotle’s ideas did: all at once, an entire whole snapping into view the way a duck-rabbit illustration switches instantly from one view to another.  [David Weinberger, Shift happens ]

Do we translate <context> as <a network>  ??

More on sensemaking jupidu, she translates Karl E. Weicks  organizational sensemaking to learning sensemaking.

I did write earlier on sensemaking. In that blog I do translate sense with value. We could also use the word ‘meaning’ for sense.

T, lucidTranslucent  connects sensemaking and  anti-intellectualism .  Is sensemaking  sensoric (feeling) or is it about giving meaning (intellectual), or is it both  or more?

Cos’è la creazione di senso e perché è così importante?  SerenaTurri
È uno sforzo “per creare ordine e dare un senso a posteriori di ciò che avviene” (Weick1993); è
“un motivato, continuo sforzo di capire le connessioni. . . al fine di anticipare le loro traiettorie ed agire con efficacia ” (Klein et al. 2006).
[What is the creation of meaning and why is it so important?
It is an effort "To create order and make sense of what happens later" (Weick1993) is
"A motivated, continuous effort to understand the connections. . . in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively "(Klein et al. 2006).
It is important because it is in the presence of a fragmentation of the content and because the interaction presents problems for educators and students must be able to make sense of what is happening, to develop a coherent view of the many topics that make such a MOOC, complex system, consisting of
"A different set of actors, which dynamically interact with each other in a sea awash with feedback." (Miller and Page, 2007).]

(image: Calin MAN – Locomotion Pictures 3.0, Hypermedia application, 2001, screenshot, copyright Calin Man)

#Change11 change and resistance to change

Change is everywhere. No thing is unchanged. Mountains disappear, Glacials come and go.  Change in the human world  will be resisted by:

• Law and rules, institutions (sometimes the rules have to be changed to make change possible).
• Physical things (change sometimes needs change of environment, or of conditions).
• Economy (change must be rewarding).

Resistance to change is influenced by:

• Preferences, ethical, esthetical and emotional preferences.
• Avoiding or being attracted by uncertainty and unpredictability and newness.

Speed of change depends on these aspects.

Learning is change, change of habits of thinking or acting. Change is breaking habits.

Is curiosity a feature of people who are attracted to uncertainty?
Is learning together a safer way to change and learn? Does socially connected learning avoid the emotionally evoked resistance to change?
What do people prefer change or continuity?
What is the appeal of conservatism and the Romantic longing for the past?
(Image: waterfal on Raasay, Scotland)

Occupy the MOOC #change11

Playing a piece of music of Arvo Pärt and trying to make it a piece of my own. “Please play the notes as the composer did write them down”, teachers of (classical) music often say. Classical music often is music of Big Names, Great Composers, Best Conductors. In the “Classical Music Game” some rules about who is boss and who has to follow are important.
Maybe (I do not know, but have a feeling it might be) in Literature these rules are comparable. Great books, Important names.
What could be the function of these rules? Do these rules make us happy?
Wonder if we could find this kind of game also in Educational Theory, some Great Names, Important Stories about Education.
One of the features/rules is “High up there is a master (-musicoan, -author, headmaster) and we are only allowed to stand down here in awe”

Do we ‘from habit” apply these Classic Art Game rules being students to the MOOC? Do students apply these rules (with a lot of anger and resistance in some classes) to Education?

Is now the time to occupy the MOOC?
Is now the time to forget about being adapted respectable and well behaved students?
Who owns a MOOC?
Has a real MOOC facilitators?

Sun flowers, a story #change11

 ’Esse est percipi’ (Berkeley, Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1790, : § 3) ’to be is to be perceived’. We do make sense of the world that we perceive (connect to).

Van Gogh painted sun flowers. He changed our connections ¹ with sun flowers. After van Gogh sun flowers are not the same.
Sumire Nukina wrote a composition ‘Zonnebloem 1′ (Sun flower 1) for bass clarinet.  And I cannot but connect this to Van Gogh because my teacher did ask “Would a connection exist between van Gogh and this music?”
When I play this piece of music these connections and a load of other connections ² do influence the sound. Playing this music changes my perception of sun flowers because of the story ³  which is in the connections.

Sumire Nukina did make her music on a (not named) painting of Mondrian of sun flowers. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbell1975/5394496202/
or http://paintingdb.com/view/9211/
or this one http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/piet-mondrian#supersized-still-life-186000
Mondrian painted the sun flowers in 1907 1908. He knew van Gogh.

Connectivism is not only about knowledge. Knowledge (information) is always connected to stories with feelings, value, sense making. Do you think knowledge exists without a ‘knower’? Berkeley meant this connectedness of knowledge and ‘knower’ when he said ‘Esse est percipi’. (van Peursen, Verhaal en werkelijkheid : een deiktische ontologie, 1992) ⁴

The story is a way of sense making, and of connecting knowledge and meaning and sense and emotions and value. An example: Critical Thinking (CT) is on almost all curricula as an unconnected, stand-alone subject. CT without a story is sophism and empty smartness. CT has to be connected to a story to make sense of it and to use it in a sensible way. ⁵
He, Clive Thompson, in a November 2011 Wired article, goes on to say that internet search engines present a “golden opportunity to train kids in critical thinking.” In order to sort through hundreds of search results, students must evaluate information, consider credibility, and ask crucial questions about context and meaning. According to Thompson, these kinds of critical thinking skills are being ignored in favor of preparation for standardized tests. Andrew Neuendorf

¹) meaning, sense, knowledge, attraction.
²) The network ‘Sun Flowers’ is much greater than the things I did mention here: Eating sun flower seeds in a Chinese tea garden, Fields with sun flowers in France, sun flower oil, sun flowers growing in the garden and dead sun flowers in autumn.
³) story = a metaphor to indicate a network of meaning, sense, opinion, facts, value, words, images, attraction, etc.
⁴) tr. Story and Reality. A Deictic Ontology
⁵) Facebook: Scott Johnson, Can’t resist posting this site: http://chronicle.com/article/Beyond-Critical-Thinking/63288 Full of insights into being so critical as to be blind to understanding the depth of human experience. Check out the discussion section at the end too.
Image van Gogh: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_128.jpg

write again on #change11

Pattern

What if you stop learning?
When you do not learn any more you are a dead person. Teaching is not a condition for learning. We learn to recognize things and persons and states because we are ‘born to learn’.
What is the difference between me knowing Douglas Adams wrote ” it is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes” and some scientific knowledge you know?
For rhetorical reasons people use the words “scientific knowledge” and do impress us with that. But is is not clear what “scientific knowledge” means. Is truth is the difference between scientific and unscientific? The citation of Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide (omnibus) , Wings books Nw York, 1996, p. 437) is a true sentence in the sense of Tarski’s theorem, but is it science?.
Do you know an example of scientific knowledge that is different from unscientific knowledge?
The difference might not be in the knowledge as such but in the community and organization of science.
Wilhelm Schmid wrote (my translation) “analytical knowledge is useful but hermeneutics is more fun and more like real life” do you agree?

Geetha Narayanan has a hermeneutical story on education.
Lesson plans and curriculum do exist, planning and learning are a common combination. But is unplanned learning of any value?
Good teachers do plan learning, and always change plans when teaching. Some are strangled in rigged curricula.
What did #change11 your learning?

Do you understand the connection between these questions and the writing monk?
The monk is part of a community, he is writing and learning. Stephen Downes theory of knowledge is applicable on this monk

Learning Design #change11 Questions from abroad.

(click for larger picture)
Some questions for this week of #change11:

Picture: I did enlarge the field “Global Elements”. This field is not connected to the other fields in the diagram. Why not? *)

How do “Learning Designers” manage to adapt to the diversity of learners (read comments!) and teachers?
How do Learning Designers design a rhizomatic learning course?
Do exist learning designers in a connectivist educational environment ?
When one is a learning designer and not a teacher how does one keep in touch with teachers and learners?
Is Learning Design still connected to behaviourism?
Do schools employ/use learning designers or do businesses?
Are teachers and students involved in Learning Design?
What are negative points in Learning Design? Does it really work? Do Learning Designers a better job than teachers who design their own course?
One could say I do Learning Design because I edit a teacher website with sources for teaching. http://softskills.kennisnet.nl, but I did not know this until now.
Is Learning Design Custom Made Education? Or is it one size fits all?
Does Learning Design need Testing and Assessments?
Is Learning complicated or complex or chaotic? Is Learning Design possible because of the complex or complicated nature of Learning?
According to Snowden, in the 21st century University we should be looking at more originality in undergraduate courses, as opposed to just teaching information. Is Learning Design able to originality in learning?
*) The question is how could distance/online learning address this context in the educational discourse, while designing curriculum to address the contexts of the global village?

Picture from Current Research in Learning Design, Rob Koper, Open University of the Netherlands, Educational Technology Expertise Centre changed by me.