Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Thursday, December 8, 2011
The educational value of creative disobedience
“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done – men who are creative, inventive and discoverers” –Jean Piaget
Very interesting article and discussion: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/07/07/the-educational-value-of-creative-disobedience/
It seems to me that if you are going to do work (of any kind including art), you need at least four things - information (data,knowledge,insight,foresight,etc), tools and the skills to use them, a value system, and thinking styles (abstract, analogical, analytic, concrete, digital, holistic, intuitive, linear, logical, non-rational, non-temporal, nonverbal, rational, spatial, symbolic,synthetic, temporal, verbal, etc) - together with a body capable of implementing the work. Digital storage is really good for data.
Education has a role to play in all of these areas including the body.
Implanted chips can provide humans a great service when they can restore or augment a loss of or weakened function - cochlear implants, pacemakers, defibrillators, insulin pumps, artificial limbs, etc.
Turning humans into cyborgs is not a future I would wish on humanity, especially since there are other viable alternatives.
I remember the work of Simon on creativity a number of years ago. he concluded that creativity required the crossing of a threshold of storage of information in the brain for the person to be creative. He called that threshold 50,000 chunks of information (or some such similar expression). With the present day Internet and the availability of mobile devices to access the Internet with its ever growing data base of information, and perhaps 1 billion other humans, all of the information required to be creative does not have to reside in one person's brain. However, we have an enormous amount of work to do the learn how to use this capability. One of the roles of education has got to be to figure out how to enable and facilitate the use of this tool to advance human progress.
Very interesting article and discussion: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/07/07/the-educational-value-of-creative-disobedience/
It seems to me that if you are going to do work (of any kind including art), you need at least four things - information (data,knowledge,insight,foresight,etc), tools and the skills to use them, a value system, and thinking styles (abstract, analogical, analytic, concrete, digital, holistic, intuitive, linear, logical, non-rational, non-temporal, nonverbal, rational, spatial, symbolic,synthetic, temporal, verbal, etc) - together with a body capable of implementing the work. Digital storage is really good for data.
Education has a role to play in all of these areas including the body.
Implanted chips can provide humans a great service when they can restore or augment a loss of or weakened function - cochlear implants, pacemakers, defibrillators, insulin pumps, artificial limbs, etc.
Turning humans into cyborgs is not a future I would wish on humanity, especially since there are other viable alternatives.
I remember the work of Simon on creativity a number of years ago. he concluded that creativity required the crossing of a threshold of storage of information in the brain for the person to be creative. He called that threshold 50,000 chunks of information (or some such similar expression). With the present day Internet and the availability of mobile devices to access the Internet with its ever growing data base of information, and perhaps 1 billion other humans, all of the information required to be creative does not have to reside in one person's brain. However, we have an enormous amount of work to do the learn how to use this capability. One of the roles of education has got to be to figure out how to enable and facilitate the use of this tool to advance human progress.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Reality Check
From Weblogg-ed by Will Richardson
"It is the thesis of this book that change—constant, accelerating, ubiquitous—is the most striking characteristic of the world we live in and that our educational system has not yet recognized this fact. We maintain, further, that the abilities and attitudes required to deal adequately with change are those of the highest priority and that it is not beyond our ingenuity to design school environments which can help young people to master concepts necessary to survival in a rapidly changing world. The institution we call “school” is what it is because we made it that way. If it is irrelevant…if it shields children from reality…if it educates for obsolescence…if it does not develop intelligence…if it is based on fear…if it avoids the promotion of significant learnings…if it induces alienation…if it punishes creativity and independence…if, in short, it is not doing what needs to be done, it can be changed; it must be changed."
Neil Postman
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
1968
Forty two years ago. It really, really begs the question…can it?
"It is the thesis of this book that change—constant, accelerating, ubiquitous—is the most striking characteristic of the world we live in and that our educational system has not yet recognized this fact. We maintain, further, that the abilities and attitudes required to deal adequately with change are those of the highest priority and that it is not beyond our ingenuity to design school environments which can help young people to master concepts necessary to survival in a rapidly changing world. The institution we call “school” is what it is because we made it that way. If it is irrelevant…if it shields children from reality…if it educates for obsolescence…if it does not develop intelligence…if it is based on fear…if it avoids the promotion of significant learnings…if it induces alienation…if it punishes creativity and independence…if, in short, it is not doing what needs to be done, it can be changed; it must be changed."
Neil Postman
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
1968
Forty two years ago. It really, really begs the question…can it?
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Education is a self organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.
Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity.
This is a very interesting and insightful body of work. He starts with the following premise: There are places on Earth, in every country, where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go.
Then with technology and the Internet, he lets students find there own way to learn, sometimes without any problem to work and sometimes with a problem. He uses very little instructions and no actual "teaching". In some cases he uses what he calls "grandmothers" to encourage the kids.
The results are striking and counter intuitive.
His explanation is that he has created a complex system with emergent properties.
He defines two characteristics of the system:
Self organizing system: A self organizing system is one where the system structure appears without explicit intervention from outside the system.
Emergence: The appearance of a property not previously observed as a functional characteristic of the system.
He then concludes with what I think is a very powerful observation:
Education is a self organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.
Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity.
This is a very interesting and insightful body of work. He starts with the following premise: There are places on Earth, in every country, where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go.
Then with technology and the Internet, he lets students find there own way to learn, sometimes without any problem to work and sometimes with a problem. He uses very little instructions and no actual "teaching". In some cases he uses what he calls "grandmothers" to encourage the kids.
The results are striking and counter intuitive.
His explanation is that he has created a complex system with emergent properties.
He defines two characteristics of the system:
Self organizing system: A self organizing system is one where the system structure appears without explicit intervention from outside the system.
Emergence: The appearance of a property not previously observed as a functional characteristic of the system.
He then concludes with what I think is a very powerful observation:
Education is a self organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Complexity and the Future of Education
The increasing pace of what French philosopher-paleoanthropologist Teilhard de Chardin characterized as the “complexification of human circumstances” has made the nexus between complexity and education a timely and purposeful subject for examination.
On The Horizon announces a Special Issue on “Complexity and the Future of Education,” and invites authors to submit papers addressing the implications of an increasingly complex, problematic and uncertain future for today’s didactic and determinist educational processes.
CONTACT: Tom P. Abeles, editor
CRITICAL DATES: 15 October 2010 – 1 page proposals due
1 November 2010 – Notice of Acceptance
1 January 2011 – Draft of Papers due
1 February 2011 – Final Paper due
PAPER PARAMETERS: Papers should be in essay style, conforming to basic guidelines under the author section of the publisher, Emerald. Length may be up to 5,000 words, with structured abstracts, key words, and footnotes as appropriate; and it may include links to Websites. Submissions must be sent in MSWord as an e-mail attachment.
THEME: The media today routinely describes BOTH the major problems confronting humankind AND their potential solutions as being “complex.” Some educational boosters have even begun to cite “increasing complexity” as yet another reason why we must produce more graduates in science, math and technology. Critics counter that the modern sciences fail to acknowledge the complexity of the real world, and foster a misleading certainty of expectations that leads people to pursue simple solutions for complex problems, and to discount contrarian ideas and “inconvenient truths.”
Practitioners in many disciplines are sharply divided over the potential role of the current model of formal education in preparing society to live and work in a complex world. Some, in leadership development, for example, believe that only a small fraction of the population possess the natural “cognitive competence” to coherently address complex issues. These people, they argue, should be identified by testing in early childhood and given special schooling that nurtures their rare innate abilities for the good of us all.
On the other hand, some educators believe that “ordinary” people can be taught practical skills for addressing complex issues, and that young people today are already learning to deal with complexity through their experience with computer games and simulations. But scholars of complexity science counter that simply adding analytical skills to traditional curricula would be wholly insufficient to convey a general understanding of complex phenomena. They foresee the need for a complete restructuring of established epistemology.
Meanwhile, technophiles are embracing the “singularity” scenario, in which the complexity of a growing share of important decisions exceeds human reasoning capacity, and where significant problems are delegated to artificial intelligences and “humachine” hybrids. If all our intellectual “heavy lifting” were assigned to smart machines, would education focus on the humanities and creative arts as a means of enriching lives made routine and predictable by intelligent decision-making systems?
Alternatively others argue that spontaneous cyber-collaboration will enable us to mobilize humanity’s collective competencies and sensibilities to master our increasingly complex circumstances without ceding control of our destiny to smart machines. This vision of the future suggests an entirely different mission for educators.
While education is clearly a major influence on how we deal with complexity today, how we eventually arrange to cope with increasing complexity will just as clearly influence the content and delivery of education in the not-too-distant future.
*Papers submitted in response to this Call for Papers will also be considered for inclusion in a 2-day Forum on the Future of Education co-sponsored by On the Horizon and the World Future Society in Vancouver, B.C. in July 2011.
On The Horizon announces a Special Issue on “Complexity and the Future of Education,” and invites authors to submit papers addressing the implications of an increasingly complex, problematic and uncertain future for today’s didactic and determinist educational processes.
CONTACT: Tom P. Abeles, editor
CRITICAL DATES: 15 October 2010 – 1 page proposals due
1 November 2010 – Notice of Acceptance
1 January 2011 – Draft of Papers due
1 February 2011 – Final Paper due
PAPER PARAMETERS: Papers should be in essay style, conforming to basic guidelines under the author section of the publisher, Emerald. Length may be up to 5,000 words, with structured abstracts, key words, and footnotes as appropriate; and it may include links to Websites. Submissions must be sent in MSWord as an e-mail attachment.
THEME: The media today routinely describes BOTH the major problems confronting humankind AND their potential solutions as being “complex.” Some educational boosters have even begun to cite “increasing complexity” as yet another reason why we must produce more graduates in science, math and technology. Critics counter that the modern sciences fail to acknowledge the complexity of the real world, and foster a misleading certainty of expectations that leads people to pursue simple solutions for complex problems, and to discount contrarian ideas and “inconvenient truths.”
Practitioners in many disciplines are sharply divided over the potential role of the current model of formal education in preparing society to live and work in a complex world. Some, in leadership development, for example, believe that only a small fraction of the population possess the natural “cognitive competence” to coherently address complex issues. These people, they argue, should be identified by testing in early childhood and given special schooling that nurtures their rare innate abilities for the good of us all.
On the other hand, some educators believe that “ordinary” people can be taught practical skills for addressing complex issues, and that young people today are already learning to deal with complexity through their experience with computer games and simulations. But scholars of complexity science counter that simply adding analytical skills to traditional curricula would be wholly insufficient to convey a general understanding of complex phenomena. They foresee the need for a complete restructuring of established epistemology.
Meanwhile, technophiles are embracing the “singularity” scenario, in which the complexity of a growing share of important decisions exceeds human reasoning capacity, and where significant problems are delegated to artificial intelligences and “humachine” hybrids. If all our intellectual “heavy lifting” were assigned to smart machines, would education focus on the humanities and creative arts as a means of enriching lives made routine and predictable by intelligent decision-making systems?
Alternatively others argue that spontaneous cyber-collaboration will enable us to mobilize humanity’s collective competencies and sensibilities to master our increasingly complex circumstances without ceding control of our destiny to smart machines. This vision of the future suggests an entirely different mission for educators.
While education is clearly a major influence on how we deal with complexity today, how we eventually arrange to cope with increasing complexity will just as clearly influence the content and delivery of education in the not-too-distant future.
*Papers submitted in response to this Call for Papers will also be considered for inclusion in a 2-day Forum on the Future of Education co-sponsored by On the Horizon and the World Future Society in Vancouver, B.C. in July 2011.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Some Thoughts on Complexity
Preface
Complexity includes at least three states of being where many of the rules we take for granted no longer apply. Concepts like causation, predictability, repeatability, control, analysis, determinism, linearity, and even centralization don’t work in complex systems. When dealing with a complex system it’s as though you’ve gone through a looking glass and everything you thought you knew is no longer valid. Furthermore, many complex systems exist at a human scale. We interact with many of these complex systems in daily life, natural and man made, and as a result become part of some of these complex systems.
It requires a paradigm shift to begin to comprehend complex systems. I shudder to use the word because it’s been so over used and trivialized. But I can think of no other concept to describe the shift. Complexity requires new perceptions, new beliefs, new ways of thinking and new rules for problem solving
The first barrier to be overcome is perception. Our belief systems are so strong, our scotomas so large, and our fears so great that resistance to accept the new reality is enormous. That’s understandable. After all, our world is built on the concepts listed above that aren’t valid in complex systems.
There is a fable about Columbus arriving in the new world and the natives unable to “see” the three ships. They had no mental construct, or paradigm, that would allow them to perceive the ships. A medicine man sat for days looking out at the water. By studying the pattern of the ripples caused by the ships, he was able to finally see them.
In essence that’s about the extent of our perception of complex systems. We can see the effects, and in some cases measure the effects, but we don’t understand how they work, based on our previous paradigm.
The three types of complex systems are critical state, chaotic and emergent. Earthquakes result from a critical state, and markets appear to be in a critical state. Weather is chaotic. And, massively parallel systems of intelligent agents exhibit emergence, like termites.
Lewis Carroll described a complex system with intelligent agents in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet ¬ground in her life: it was all ridges and furrows: the croquet balls were live hedgehogs, and the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, com¬fortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puz¬zled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing; and, when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or a furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.
The players all played at once, without waiting for turns, quarreling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting "Off with his head!" or "Off with her head!" about once in a minute. Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, "and then," thought she, "what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here: the great wonder is, that there's any one left alive!"
Complexity is transdisciplinary, i.e. a discipline that crosses many older disciplines. There are examples of complexity in math, chemistry, physics, geology, weather and the environment, economics, markets, biology, medicine, etc.
One last closing thought. I’m not writing about complicated systems. Complicated systems in general do not exhibit the properties of complex systems.
Skills Required to Deal with Complexity
The skill set required to deal with complexity hasn’t been developed yet as you can appreciate as it is a new paradigm that crosses almost all older disciplines. However, there are some things I can say about the concepts that have to be learned.
The common concepts across all complex systems that must be taught are:
The concept of intellective skills was developed by Shoshana Zuboff in In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power:
…The thinking this operator refers to is of a different quality form the thinking that attended the display of action-centered skills. It combines abstraction, explicit inference, and procedural reasoning. Taken together, these elements make possible a new set of competencies that I call Intellective skills. As long as the new technology signals only deskilling – the diminished importance of action-centered skills – there will be little probability of developing critical judgment at the data interface. To rekindle such judgment, though on a new more abstract footing, a re-skilling process is required. Mastery in a computer-mediated environment depends upon developing intellective skills.
Interpersonal skills will have to include collaboration, decentralization, leadership, creativity, innovativeness, flexibility, openness, self development, tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty and others I’m sure.
Management of Complexity
First, if it’s true complexity and not just an extremely complicated system, there is no known way to manage it. The best we can do now is to manage the effects of a complex system. For example, I mentioned earthquakes as being the result of a complex system in a critical state. We can’t manage the earthquake or even predict when an earthquake will occur or its magnitude. But, we do know from the history of an earthquake prone fault system that there is a probability of a certain magnitude of earthquake occurring. We then design buildings to survive that magnitude of earthquake.
No analysis of the BP and Toyota examples has been done to determine if the systems are complex or just extremely complicated. Or, what type of complex system they might be.
Tad Patzek, chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas, testified in Congress last month about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. His comments included observations on broad, long-term trends in industry, government and academia. He reported, "Horrible things happen when complex technologies and procedures overtake humans, who service the technologies falsely assuming complete control.” Patzek asserts that it is a complex system with emergent properties. I doubt that this is true. I think it most likely a complex system in a critical state. I suspect its behavior is more like an earthquake (criticality) than a termite mound (emergence). It probably has some characteristics of both as the human and software subsystems (intelligent agents) in the system could exhibit some characteristics of emergence. However, his conclusions are valid: large events like this will occur, and we can't predict when they will occur or prevent them. Understandably, he never states this as directly as I did. How can you tell that to politicians or business people? (Remember the Queen in the croquet game?)
The software developers have tamed the complicatedness of large software programs such as operating systems by turning a hoard of software developers, who are not in the same organization, loose on the project and then by facilitating the development of a complex system of intelligent agents (individual programmers) with positive emergent properties. This requires a degree of openness, decentralization, flexibility, cooperation and loss of control not presently possible in most modern corporations. Nor, do we know how to apply these principles in systems other than software.
For a copy of this article, click here.
Complexity includes at least three states of being where many of the rules we take for granted no longer apply. Concepts like causation, predictability, repeatability, control, analysis, determinism, linearity, and even centralization don’t work in complex systems. When dealing with a complex system it’s as though you’ve gone through a looking glass and everything you thought you knew is no longer valid. Furthermore, many complex systems exist at a human scale. We interact with many of these complex systems in daily life, natural and man made, and as a result become part of some of these complex systems.
It requires a paradigm shift to begin to comprehend complex systems. I shudder to use the word because it’s been so over used and trivialized. But I can think of no other concept to describe the shift. Complexity requires new perceptions, new beliefs, new ways of thinking and new rules for problem solving
The first barrier to be overcome is perception. Our belief systems are so strong, our scotomas so large, and our fears so great that resistance to accept the new reality is enormous. That’s understandable. After all, our world is built on the concepts listed above that aren’t valid in complex systems.
There is a fable about Columbus arriving in the new world and the natives unable to “see” the three ships. They had no mental construct, or paradigm, that would allow them to perceive the ships. A medicine man sat for days looking out at the water. By studying the pattern of the ripples caused by the ships, he was able to finally see them.
In essence that’s about the extent of our perception of complex systems. We can see the effects, and in some cases measure the effects, but we don’t understand how they work, based on our previous paradigm.
The three types of complex systems are critical state, chaotic and emergent. Earthquakes result from a critical state, and markets appear to be in a critical state. Weather is chaotic. And, massively parallel systems of intelligent agents exhibit emergence, like termites.
Lewis Carroll described a complex system with intelligent agents in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet ¬ground in her life: it was all ridges and furrows: the croquet balls were live hedgehogs, and the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, com¬fortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puz¬zled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing; and, when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or a furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.
The players all played at once, without waiting for turns, quarreling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting "Off with his head!" or "Off with her head!" about once in a minute. Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, "and then," thought she, "what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here: the great wonder is, that there's any one left alive!"
Complexity is transdisciplinary, i.e. a discipline that crosses many older disciplines. There are examples of complexity in math, chemistry, physics, geology, weather and the environment, economics, markets, biology, medicine, etc.
One last closing thought. I’m not writing about complicated systems. Complicated systems in general do not exhibit the properties of complex systems.
Skills Required to Deal with Complexity
The skill set required to deal with complexity hasn’t been developed yet as you can appreciate as it is a new paradigm that crosses almost all older disciplines. However, there are some things I can say about the concepts that have to be learned.
The common concepts across all complex systems that must be taught are:
- Systems : We need to teach - What a system is, The types of systems, How one determines the type of a system, When you have included enough of the system, How a system responds to its environment and History of systems
- Reductionism and holism: Both concepts need to be taught, along with an understanding of when each one should be applied.
- Statistics: Statistics is a branch of mathematics concerned with collecting and interpreting data. Depending on the system, different types of statistics need to be used. People need to know how to collect and interpret data taken from the history of all types of complex systems. And, we need to teach the difference between probability and risk.
- Pattern recognition: In Emergence, Steven Johnson comments, “As the futurist Ray Kurzweil writes, 'Humans are far more skilled at recognizing patterns than in thinking through logical combinations, so we rely on this aptitude for almost all of our mental processes. Indeed, pattern recognition comprises the bulk of our neural circuitry. These faculties make up for the extremely slow speed of human neurons.' ...the brain is a massively parallel system, with 100 billion neurons all working away at the same time.” We need to educate people in how to use this capability, at a conscious level, to see patterns in systems or to use tools to assist in that recognition process.
- New ways of looking at the future and the development of a long term perspective.
- Techniology: The study of how technology is developed and how society influences what technologies get developed and how technology influences society (think sociology or ecology)
- There are several important concepts that must be taught: Chaos, Criticality and Emergence
- Decentralization: “As we enter the Era of Decentralization, there is an important educational challenge: How can we help people become intellectually engaged with the new types of systems and new ways of thinking that characterize this new era? To date, schools and other educational institutions have done little, if anything, to engage students with the idea of decentralization. Instead, they often perpetuate centralized explanations and approaches” comments Mitchel Resnick, Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams. “There is an apparent paradox in people's reactions to decentralized systems.” Resnick explains. “On one hand is the allure of decentralization. They are fascinated by systems that are organized without an organizer, coordinated without a coordinator.” On the other hand, “When people see patterns in the world, they intuitively assume that the patterns are created by lead or by seed.” That's the educational challenge. Sanders and McCabe write, “Complex adaptive systems, and models thereof, are characterized by distributed organizations or networks, whose parts all influence each other, either directly or through feedback loops, which continually evolve and adapt to accomplish overarching goals. This is in fundamental contrast to the top-down, hierarchical management structures found in most government organizations and in much of corporate America, where local experimentation, innovation and adaption are discouraged in favor of rigid bureaucratic rules and planning procedures. Simple cause and effect relationships do not characterize complex adaptive systems, and hence most of the conventional policy-planning tools currently used by decision-makers, both government and corporate, are inappropriate and ineffective. Complexity science offers new ways of understanding, thinking about and designing organizational systems that are capable of responding to and influencing complex nonlinear relationships. Understanding the local dynamics in a complex system can provide great insight into the behavior of the overall system and help identify key leverage points of change and transformation.”
- Trans-disciplinary approaches: “Complexity science is truly an interdisciplinary science” write Irene Sanders and Judith McCabe. “Adopting a systems view of the world meant that the questions were too big for any one discipline alone to answer. As scientists began looking for connections among the different types of complex systems, the boundaries between disciplines began to open. As a result, we are witnessing the integration of knowledge across the disciplines – the physical sciences, social sciences and the humanities. Insights about complex systems are emerging across a broad spectrum of fields - from physics, mathematics and computer science, to biology, oceanology, neuroscience, art and architecture. From health care to city planning, complexity science is creating a fundamental shift in the way we view the dynamics and interactions of complex systems.” This the real message of complexity science (in the sense of Marshall McLuhan's “The medium is the message.”) Complexity science is the “medium” through which multiple disciplines can together transcend their parochial views, and facilitate the emergence of a new world view.
The concept of intellective skills was developed by Shoshana Zuboff in In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power:
…The thinking this operator refers to is of a different quality form the thinking that attended the display of action-centered skills. It combines abstraction, explicit inference, and procedural reasoning. Taken together, these elements make possible a new set of competencies that I call Intellective skills. As long as the new technology signals only deskilling – the diminished importance of action-centered skills – there will be little probability of developing critical judgment at the data interface. To rekindle such judgment, though on a new more abstract footing, a re-skilling process is required. Mastery in a computer-mediated environment depends upon developing intellective skills.
Interpersonal skills will have to include collaboration, decentralization, leadership, creativity, innovativeness, flexibility, openness, self development, tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty and others I’m sure.
Management of Complexity
First, if it’s true complexity and not just an extremely complicated system, there is no known way to manage it. The best we can do now is to manage the effects of a complex system. For example, I mentioned earthquakes as being the result of a complex system in a critical state. We can’t manage the earthquake or even predict when an earthquake will occur or its magnitude. But, we do know from the history of an earthquake prone fault system that there is a probability of a certain magnitude of earthquake occurring. We then design buildings to survive that magnitude of earthquake.
No analysis of the BP and Toyota examples has been done to determine if the systems are complex or just extremely complicated. Or, what type of complex system they might be.
Tad Patzek, chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas, testified in Congress last month about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. His comments included observations on broad, long-term trends in industry, government and academia. He reported, "Horrible things happen when complex technologies and procedures overtake humans, who service the technologies falsely assuming complete control.” Patzek asserts that it is a complex system with emergent properties. I doubt that this is true. I think it most likely a complex system in a critical state. I suspect its behavior is more like an earthquake (criticality) than a termite mound (emergence). It probably has some characteristics of both as the human and software subsystems (intelligent agents) in the system could exhibit some characteristics of emergence. However, his conclusions are valid: large events like this will occur, and we can't predict when they will occur or prevent them. Understandably, he never states this as directly as I did. How can you tell that to politicians or business people? (Remember the Queen in the croquet game?)
The software developers have tamed the complicatedness of large software programs such as operating systems by turning a hoard of software developers, who are not in the same organization, loose on the project and then by facilitating the development of a complex system of intelligent agents (individual programmers) with positive emergent properties. This requires a degree of openness, decentralization, flexibility, cooperation and loss of control not presently possible in most modern corporations. Nor, do we know how to apply these principles in systems other than software.
For a copy of this article, click here.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
"Tim Berners-Lee had a grand vision for the Internet when he began development of the World Wide Web in 1989. "The original thing I wanted to do,' Berners- Lee said, 'was make it a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write'." This the opening two sentences for this really valuable book. The book is dated somewhat by the constant development and diffusion of new social technologies. However, for a teacher, or anyone for that matter, that's interested in learning about the fundamental tools, that sometimes are called collectively, Web 2.0, this is a great book. He not only describes the tools and their applications, he specifically tells the reader how to get the tool and use in simple step by step language.
So why get all excited about these new tools? Aren't they just incremental changes to the existing ways of doing thinks? Not at all. These tools collectively are disruptive to our ways of teaching, learning, working and living.
"No matter how you look at it, we are creating what author Douglas Rushkoff calls a "Society of Authorship' where every teacher, every student, every person will have the ability to contribute ideas and experiences to the larger body of knowledge that is the Internet. And, in doing so, Rushkoff says, we will be writing the human story, in real time, together, a vision that asks each of us to participate."
McLuhan warned us 40 years ago, that the new information technologies were going to alter our perception and ways of thinking. " ... William D. Winn, Director of the learning Center at the University of Washington, believes that years of computer use creates children that 'think differently from us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It's as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential.' In other words, today's students may not be well-suited to the more linear progression of learning that most educational systems employ."
Unlike their students, most teachers have not been brought up with these altered ways of thinking. Many try, but are like foreigners who speak with an accent. And, the educational institutions are even slower to change.
The toolbox that this book is based on is:
1. Weblogs (or blogs)
2. Wikis
3. Rich Site Summary (RSS)
4. Agregators
5. Social Bookmarking
6. Online Photo Galleries
7. Audio/video-casting
"In large measure, it is blogs that have opened up the Read/Write frontier for content creation to the web, and millions of people have been quick to take advantage of the opportunity. Remember, a new blog is being created every second, and that shows no sign of slowing down." Blogging in its truest from engages people in a "process of thinking in words, not simply accounting of the days events or feelings. '
" ... Fernette and Brock Eide's research shows that blogging in its true form has a great deal of potential positive impact on students. They found that blogs can
• Promote critical and analytical thinking
• Be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking
• Promote analogical thinking
• Be a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information
• Combine the best of solitary reflection and social interaction."
Richardson takes time to teach how teachers can help students identify the quality of the information that get from the Internet. He correctly points out that this skill is part of the new literacy,
Wikis provide easy collaboration for all. Perhaps the most successful wiki to date is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia based on the wiki platform. "the first wiki was created by Ward Cunningham in 1995, who was looking to create an easy authoring tool that might spur people to publish. And the key word here is easy, because plainly put, a wiki is a website where anyone can edit anything at any time they want."
RSS, rich text summary or really simple syndication, is a technology that allows you to syndicate your work just like newspaper columnists do, so that is published around the world. It also allows you to draw information from the web around the world to you on topics that interest you, automatically, and almost instantaneously.
Aggregators are tools used with RSS and other forms of syndication to aggregate information for you.
Social bookmarking is a way the web “learns” from us. When we bookmark a web site or web page, and categorize it, we are telling others that this is valuable information. It’s the Dewey Decimal System of the Internet.
Online photo-galleries are a way to share photographs with others.
Audio/video-casting are not broad casting, but narrow casting, providing the equivalent of radio and TV over the Internet. Although services like You Tube have millions of viewers for a video.
This is a great book for a beginner to learn about and how to use web 2.0 tools in the classroom, and in your professional life.
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
Will Richardson
Corwin Press, 2006, 149 pages
The authors blog is a rich source of material for understanding web 2.0 tools for education
So why get all excited about these new tools? Aren't they just incremental changes to the existing ways of doing thinks? Not at all. These tools collectively are disruptive to our ways of teaching, learning, working and living.
"No matter how you look at it, we are creating what author Douglas Rushkoff calls a "Society of Authorship' where every teacher, every student, every person will have the ability to contribute ideas and experiences to the larger body of knowledge that is the Internet. And, in doing so, Rushkoff says, we will be writing the human story, in real time, together, a vision that asks each of us to participate."
McLuhan warned us 40 years ago, that the new information technologies were going to alter our perception and ways of thinking. " ... William D. Winn, Director of the learning Center at the University of Washington, believes that years of computer use creates children that 'think differently from us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It's as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential.' In other words, today's students may not be well-suited to the more linear progression of learning that most educational systems employ."
Unlike their students, most teachers have not been brought up with these altered ways of thinking. Many try, but are like foreigners who speak with an accent. And, the educational institutions are even slower to change.
The toolbox that this book is based on is:
1. Weblogs (or blogs)
2. Wikis
3. Rich Site Summary (RSS)
4. Agregators
5. Social Bookmarking
6. Online Photo Galleries
7. Audio/video-casting
"In large measure, it is blogs that have opened up the Read/Write frontier for content creation to the web, and millions of people have been quick to take advantage of the opportunity. Remember, a new blog is being created every second, and that shows no sign of slowing down." Blogging in its truest from engages people in a "process of thinking in words, not simply accounting of the days events or feelings. '
" ... Fernette and Brock Eide's research shows that blogging in its true form has a great deal of potential positive impact on students. They found that blogs can
• Promote critical and analytical thinking
• Be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking
• Promote analogical thinking
• Be a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information
• Combine the best of solitary reflection and social interaction."
Richardson takes time to teach how teachers can help students identify the quality of the information that get from the Internet. He correctly points out that this skill is part of the new literacy,
Wikis provide easy collaboration for all. Perhaps the most successful wiki to date is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia based on the wiki platform. "the first wiki was created by Ward Cunningham in 1995, who was looking to create an easy authoring tool that might spur people to publish. And the key word here is easy, because plainly put, a wiki is a website where anyone can edit anything at any time they want."
RSS, rich text summary or really simple syndication, is a technology that allows you to syndicate your work just like newspaper columnists do, so that is published around the world. It also allows you to draw information from the web around the world to you on topics that interest you, automatically, and almost instantaneously.
Aggregators are tools used with RSS and other forms of syndication to aggregate information for you.
Social bookmarking is a way the web “learns” from us. When we bookmark a web site or web page, and categorize it, we are telling others that this is valuable information. It’s the Dewey Decimal System of the Internet.
Online photo-galleries are a way to share photographs with others.
Audio/video-casting are not broad casting, but narrow casting, providing the equivalent of radio and TV over the Internet. Although services like You Tube have millions of viewers for a video.
This is a great book for a beginner to learn about and how to use web 2.0 tools in the classroom, and in your professional life.
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
Will Richardson
Corwin Press, 2006, 149 pages
The authors blog is a rich source of material for understanding web 2.0 tools for education
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Bring on the Learning Revolution
In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish.
Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."
A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.
"Ken's vision and expertise is sought by public and commercial organizations throughout the world."
BBC Radio 4Wednesday, February 24, 2010
1, 2. a Few, Many
The purpose of this article is to give a brief history of the development of complexity science for people unfamiliar with the details of complexity science, describe the different types of complexity, discuss examples of the types of complexity, and introduce some ideas about how complexity could be introduced into education. This essay summarizes other work in the field of complexity science, and organizes the results in a new way with the intent of making a difficult subject easier for the reader to understand. Two different types of complexity are described – organized and unorganized. The focus of the essay is on organized complexity of which three categories are described – complicated, chaotic and critical. Examples, descriptions and characteristics of each category are given. Finally, suggestions are given as to how this transformational science could be integrated into education.
“1, 2, a few, many” are the only words some Australian Aborigines had for number. I used to think that quaint and couldn’t imagine how they could live without words for all the numbers. I now look at that set of words differently for they fit the science of complexity even better than words for all the numbers.
Complexipacity, On the Horizon, V18, Issue 1, 2/5/10
“1, 2, a few, many” are the only words some Australian Aborigines had for number. I used to think that quaint and couldn’t imagine how they could live without words for all the numbers. I now look at that set of words differently for they fit the science of complexity even better than words for all the numbers.
Complexipacity, On the Horizon, V18, Issue 1, 2/5/10
Monday, May 11, 2009
The Future of the Classroom
From CenTexWFS.
This is a follow-up to our monthly meeting on April 21, 2009. After the slides there are embedded videos mentioned in the presentation and an audio recording of the seminar and discussion. The speakers were:
Archana Ramachandran
Archana Ramachandran spoke on a SXSW Interactive panel regarding the use of technology in the classroom and is part of an the 8-member student team called Longhorn Confidential. She blogs about student lives at UT to give potential students, classmates, and alumni an inside perspective.
She also co-launched @UTweet, a Twitter account designed to educate UT Austin students about Twitter. It has since developed into a blog about social media as a whole and the UT Austin life. In September 2008, UTweet joined forces with Yoono.com to create Social Media Camp.Us, a nationwide university blog about social media.
Follow Archana on Twitter.
Kert Kee
Kerk Kee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at UT Austin, specializing in organizational communication and communication technology. His research interests include technology (dis)adoption, distributed collaborations, and virtual organizations in educational institutions and scientific communities. For his research projects, he studies Blackboard, Facebook, Second Life, and the National Science Foundation’s cyberinfrastructure (next generation Internet) development.
As an assistant instructor at UT Austin, he teaches team-based communication, organizational communication, and professional communication skills. He is the recipient of the 2008 DIIA (Division of Instructional Innovations and Assessment) Graduate Student Instructor Award and the 2007-2008 Outstanding PhD Student Award in his home department. In Spring 2008, he ran the biggest Second Life class at UT with 57 students. In Fall 2008, The Austin American Statesman interviewed him about his use of Facebook with his students. Currently, he serves as one of the judges for the Innovative Instructional Technology Awards Program, an instructional technology competition sponsored by the UT Office of Provost and DIIA.
Join Kerk on LinkedIn
Listen to an audio recording of the seminar and discussion. (mp3, 205 MB, 90 min)
This is a follow-up to our monthly meeting on April 21, 2009. After the slides there are embedded videos mentioned in the presentation and an audio recording of the seminar and discussion. The speakers were:
Archana Ramachandran
Archana Ramachandran spoke on a SXSW Interactive panel regarding the use of technology in the classroom and is part of an the 8-member student team called Longhorn Confidential. She blogs about student lives at UT to give potential students, classmates, and alumni an inside perspective.
She also co-launched @UTweet, a Twitter account designed to educate UT Austin students about Twitter. It has since developed into a blog about social media as a whole and the UT Austin life. In September 2008, UTweet joined forces with Yoono.com to create Social Media Camp.Us, a nationwide university blog about social media.
Follow Archana on Twitter.
Kert Kee
Kerk Kee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at UT Austin, specializing in organizational communication and communication technology. His research interests include technology (dis)adoption, distributed collaborations, and virtual organizations in educational institutions and scientific communities. For his research projects, he studies Blackboard, Facebook, Second Life, and the National Science Foundation’s cyberinfrastructure (next generation Internet) development.
As an assistant instructor at UT Austin, he teaches team-based communication, organizational communication, and professional communication skills. He is the recipient of the 2008 DIIA (Division of Instructional Innovations and Assessment) Graduate Student Instructor Award and the 2007-2008 Outstanding PhD Student Award in his home department. In Spring 2008, he ran the biggest Second Life class at UT with 57 students. In Fall 2008, The Austin American Statesman interviewed him about his use of Facebook with his students. Currently, he serves as one of the judges for the Innovative Instructional Technology Awards Program, an instructional technology competition sponsored by the UT Office of Provost and DIIA.
Join Kerk on LinkedIn
Classroom of Tomorrow
View more presentations from Paul Schumann.
Listen to an audio recording of the seminar and discussion. (mp3, 205 MB, 90 min)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Science and Religion
In an article in March 8, 2009 edition of the Austin American Statesman, “Primed to Challenge Evolution in Schools: Official Believes Theory Has Holes, Wants that Taught”, Bryan dentist Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, is quoted as saying, “Everything that had a beginning we can say had a cause. And now science definitely says that the universes had a beginning. Therefore the universe had had a cause. And that cause is God.” The paper reports that he is a young earth creationist that believes that God created the earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. McLeroy points to the sudden, in geologic terms, appearance of complexity as a reason to not accept evolution as the best explanation we have for the way life changes in the world.
This is a complex issue, no pun intended, and I do not expect my brief criticism of his actions to change his beliefs, nor do I want to. And, that’s the point. We have a right in America to have whatever religious beliefs we want. But our practice of those beliefs can’t impinge on the rights of others.
What no one has the right to do is, as an official or instrument of governance, to teach all children in public schools a specific religious belief or system of religious beliefs. The struggle between religion and government is an old one going back in history thousands of years.
History informs us that any attempt by any nation to either define a state religion or prohibit any form of religion is eventually doomed to failure. As a result, almost all formal religious groups support the principle of the separation of church and state.
The phrase “separation of church and state” is derived from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which relies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
The founders of the United States valued this principle so strongly that it became the first amendment to the constitution.
In his book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (2002), Michael Novak, a theologian, deeply steeped in the Catholic tradition, a historian, philosopher and an economist, identifies three principles of the American democratic system – free market capitalism, an involved polity in a representative democracy and a pluralistic cultural/moral system. These three principles have to be strong, vital and separate from each other. (See Our Cultural Moral Institutions Have Failed Us )
Alexis de Tocqueville, after studying the American form of democracy for the French government, wrote Democracy in America (1835). One of his findings was Americans’ love of organizing into groups. “Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations...In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.” A pluralistic moral/cultural system is a great strength. Out of our differences of values and knowledge can come wisdom if we learn how to have conversations. Conversation, which from the roots of the word means turning around together, is not dialog, compromise or debate. Conversation is not a zero sum process. It can result in thoughts that transcend the thoughts of the individuals engaged in it. No one loses and everyone gains.
Modern science, an essential part of democratic capitalism, is not about absolutes, although some science is taught that way. The scientific method is a great contribution to the development of knowledge of our physical world. Some of the first written thoughts about this method go back to Ibn al-Haytham or Alhazen, (965–1039) in Basra, Persia. The scientific method refers to techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, prediction, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
Thomas Kuhn in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) teaches us how scientific knowledge advances. When the scientific community is reasonably satisfied with a body of knowledge (i.e. it explains the world sufficiently well for the times), it is collected together into a paradigm. This paradigm is then used over and over to puzzle out solutions to problems. As time goes by, problems are indentified that seem resistant to the accepted paradigm. These are set aside for the time being awaiting better knowledge or equipment. When enough of these anomalies have accumulated, unrest drives deeper thought and experimentation. Eventually a breakthrough occurs and the new paradigm is created that now solves the old and new problems. And, the process begins again. This process occurs in all knowledge, not just scientific knowledge. Kurt Godel (1906 – 1978) proved mathematically that all closed systems have inherent residual errors. Every time the search for knowledge is enclosed within a system and paradigm created, we know that we will find errors.
Evolution is the best paradigm we have for explaining how life on earth developed in the past, is developing now, and will develop in the future. Are there anomalies? Yes. But it is not science to ascribe those anomalies to a supernatural being. Should we teach about those anomalies? Yes. But they should be taught at the stage of development of a child’s mind where the anomalies become a challenge to solve, not the end of knowledge. Besides, why would a child want to learn something difficult if you start with all the things that what your teaching doesn’t do. We start children with simple Newtonian mechanics not quantum mechanics. Why? Because the concepts are easier to grasp and they work for almost all problems they will have to solve.
There are mysteries at the edge of our knowledge and we want children to be excited by those mysteries, to own the thought that they can resolve some of those mysteries. There should be no fear of this process. There will always be mysteries at the edge of our knowledge.
"As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious."
Albert Einstein
Aristotle (384 – 322 bc) posited that there were four causes of reality – a material cause, a formal cause, a productive cause and a final cause. In his view all of reality was driven by this linear process. In 1992, Marshal McLuhan posited the tetrad, or four laws. He saw these as four simultaneous processes governing change – enhancing, reversing, retrieving and obsolescencing. In complexity theory, we now understand that for a wide range of physical phenomena, the cause – effect relationship is broken. For these complex systems one time a small cause will have little or no effect and the next time that same small cause will result in a large effect. The amazing part of this story is that this phenomena is ubiquitous and it lay hidden in our full view until the 1960s. We also now know that complex organization can emerge from what appears to be randomness very quickly. And, even more amazing is the fact that these complex systems exist exists where life exists, at the boundary between order and chaos.
So Mr. McLeroy teach science in science classes and textbooks, and teach your religion within your religion. That is your right, and it is my right not to have your religious views taught to my grandchildren in an educational system I pay for and is an instrument of government.
This is a complex issue, no pun intended, and I do not expect my brief criticism of his actions to change his beliefs, nor do I want to. And, that’s the point. We have a right in America to have whatever religious beliefs we want. But our practice of those beliefs can’t impinge on the rights of others.
What no one has the right to do is, as an official or instrument of governance, to teach all children in public schools a specific religious belief or system of religious beliefs. The struggle between religion and government is an old one going back in history thousands of years.
History informs us that any attempt by any nation to either define a state religion or prohibit any form of religion is eventually doomed to failure. As a result, almost all formal religious groups support the principle of the separation of church and state.
The phrase “separation of church and state” is derived from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which relies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
The founders of the United States valued this principle so strongly that it became the first amendment to the constitution.
In his book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (2002), Michael Novak, a theologian, deeply steeped in the Catholic tradition, a historian, philosopher and an economist, identifies three principles of the American democratic system – free market capitalism, an involved polity in a representative democracy and a pluralistic cultural/moral system. These three principles have to be strong, vital and separate from each other. (See Our Cultural Moral Institutions Have Failed Us )
Alexis de Tocqueville, after studying the American form of democracy for the French government, wrote Democracy in America (1835). One of his findings was Americans’ love of organizing into groups. “Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations...In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.” A pluralistic moral/cultural system is a great strength. Out of our differences of values and knowledge can come wisdom if we learn how to have conversations. Conversation, which from the roots of the word means turning around together, is not dialog, compromise or debate. Conversation is not a zero sum process. It can result in thoughts that transcend the thoughts of the individuals engaged in it. No one loses and everyone gains.
Modern science, an essential part of democratic capitalism, is not about absolutes, although some science is taught that way. The scientific method is a great contribution to the development of knowledge of our physical world. Some of the first written thoughts about this method go back to Ibn al-Haytham or Alhazen, (965–1039) in Basra, Persia. The scientific method refers to techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, prediction, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
Thomas Kuhn in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) teaches us how scientific knowledge advances. When the scientific community is reasonably satisfied with a body of knowledge (i.e. it explains the world sufficiently well for the times), it is collected together into a paradigm. This paradigm is then used over and over to puzzle out solutions to problems. As time goes by, problems are indentified that seem resistant to the accepted paradigm. These are set aside for the time being awaiting better knowledge or equipment. When enough of these anomalies have accumulated, unrest drives deeper thought and experimentation. Eventually a breakthrough occurs and the new paradigm is created that now solves the old and new problems. And, the process begins again. This process occurs in all knowledge, not just scientific knowledge. Kurt Godel (1906 – 1978) proved mathematically that all closed systems have inherent residual errors. Every time the search for knowledge is enclosed within a system and paradigm created, we know that we will find errors.
Evolution is the best paradigm we have for explaining how life on earth developed in the past, is developing now, and will develop in the future. Are there anomalies? Yes. But it is not science to ascribe those anomalies to a supernatural being. Should we teach about those anomalies? Yes. But they should be taught at the stage of development of a child’s mind where the anomalies become a challenge to solve, not the end of knowledge. Besides, why would a child want to learn something difficult if you start with all the things that what your teaching doesn’t do. We start children with simple Newtonian mechanics not quantum mechanics. Why? Because the concepts are easier to grasp and they work for almost all problems they will have to solve.
There are mysteries at the edge of our knowledge and we want children to be excited by those mysteries, to own the thought that they can resolve some of those mysteries. There should be no fear of this process. There will always be mysteries at the edge of our knowledge.
"As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious."
Albert Einstein
Aristotle (384 – 322 bc) posited that there were four causes of reality – a material cause, a formal cause, a productive cause and a final cause. In his view all of reality was driven by this linear process. In 1992, Marshal McLuhan posited the tetrad, or four laws. He saw these as four simultaneous processes governing change – enhancing, reversing, retrieving and obsolescencing. In complexity theory, we now understand that for a wide range of physical phenomena, the cause – effect relationship is broken. For these complex systems one time a small cause will have little or no effect and the next time that same small cause will result in a large effect. The amazing part of this story is that this phenomena is ubiquitous and it lay hidden in our full view until the 1960s. We also now know that complex organization can emerge from what appears to be randomness very quickly. And, even more amazing is the fact that these complex systems exist exists where life exists, at the boundary between order and chaos.
So Mr. McLeroy teach science in science classes and textbooks, and teach your religion within your religion. That is your right, and it is my right not to have your religious views taught to my grandchildren in an educational system I pay for and is an instrument of government.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Inspiring 21st Century Scientists and Citizens to Explore a Complex World
Santa Fe Institute
"The core problem is that our education and training systems were built for another era. We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself." —National Center on Education and the Economy 2007, Tough Choices for Tough Times
Learn@sfi is educating the next generation of scientists and citizens. Since 1984, SFI’s leadership role in multidisciplinary research has provided the foundation for educational and outreach programs that challenge the next generation’s brightest scholars and inspire the broader population to think critically about the complex problems facing science and society today.
The learn@sfi philosophy seeks to help students, educators and citizens understand the complex, interacting systems that make up the world around us. Programs for students of all ages and backgrounds prepare today’s scientists, inspire new communities, improve pedagogical methods, and build the foundation for systemic, long-term change in science education.
The study of complex systems through a multidisciplinary approach offers a powerful framework for improving science literacy in all citizens and educating the next generation of scientists, born into a networked world and comfortable with thinking across disciplinary boundaries.
More with video
"The core problem is that our education and training systems were built for another era. We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself." —National Center on Education and the Economy 2007, Tough Choices for Tough Times
Learn@sfi is educating the next generation of scientists and citizens. Since 1984, SFI’s leadership role in multidisciplinary research has provided the foundation for educational and outreach programs that challenge the next generation’s brightest scholars and inspire the broader population to think critically about the complex problems facing science and society today.
The learn@sfi philosophy seeks to help students, educators and citizens understand the complex, interacting systems that make up the world around us. Programs for students of all ages and backgrounds prepare today’s scientists, inspire new communities, improve pedagogical methods, and build the foundation for systemic, long-term change in science education.
The study of complex systems through a multidisciplinary approach offers a powerful framework for improving science literacy in all citizens and educating the next generation of scientists, born into a networked world and comfortable with thinking across disciplinary boundaries.
More with video
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Technological Substitution in Publishing
Information technologies (hardware and software) are playing a key role in innovations in industry after industry. They diffuse through an industry by improving procedures, processes and products. The diffusion usually begins with incremental changes aimed at improving costs, or more broadly, efficiency. This is like a virus infecting a living cell, the informed or informatized (we don’t have good language to describe the result) is transformed into something new.
Informed segments of the economy then multiply their effects on the industry radically changing it or destroying it. The publication industry is one of the industries being so affected. Information technologies have found their way into the processes of printing books, their distribution, the way they are sold, and even the way we communicate about the books. Now information technology is altering the very nature of publications, especially in the textbooks and supplemental materials used in K-12 education. And, now the information technologies developed to aid social change and societal development have begun to impact the industry, threatening to destroy it.
This article summarizes the meta research done on the industry searching for data that indicates the nature and rate of substitution of information technologies into print. There are two overall conclusions from this study. First, that there are indications of the substitution going on in a number of areas. And, second, that we lack a coherent set of data on the industry that would enable us to make firm predictions.
Informed segments of the economy then multiply their effects on the industry radically changing it or destroying it. The publication industry is one of the industries being so affected. Information technologies have found their way into the processes of printing books, their distribution, the way they are sold, and even the way we communicate about the books. Now information technology is altering the very nature of publications, especially in the textbooks and supplemental materials used in K-12 education. And, now the information technologies developed to aid social change and societal development have begun to impact the industry, threatening to destroy it.
This article summarizes the meta research done on the industry searching for data that indicates the nature and rate of substitution of information technologies into print. There are two overall conclusions from this study. First, that there are indications of the substitution going on in a number of areas. And, second, that we lack a coherent set of data on the industry that would enable us to make firm predictions.
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