Hi Tobias, Thank you very much for your thoughts.
> > I believe Khan Academy provides an excellent example of this type of > integrated learning environment with much of the features as discussed by > Danny > Hillis in this talk. Of course, he seems to go a few steps further, talking > of something like an open protocol to which an institution like Khan > Academy would be but one node a student can hook up with, like a travel > agent for packaged vacations. ^_^ ....personally, I'm more of a guy going > places and discovering what's there, not much of a need or desire for all > the packaging, be that learning or traveling. > The khan academy is very good, in it's own way but yes, as you say, I feel they should be only one small piece of a vast ecosystem of 'vendors' who produce content against some sort of standard "api". I'm sure you are perfectly capable of 'travelling' solo across the wilds of the internet unattended but I need to build a tool for children and there is still a need to curate and package that content for them, even though it should be unique for each child. > I believe the greatest challenge in this networked knowledge approach is > the question of whether and how to unify and consolidate all the different > knowledge bits and their representation. Just as there are a bazillion > things to learn, there are a bazillion different ways to go about learning > supposedly the same thing, let alone representing that, not to mention the > mountains of people and institutions working on achieving exacly that, each > their own way. > I agree. The different ways of learning are often called 'modalities'. It seems pretty clear that we are not going to have too much trouble generating enough content but rather, as you say, the big problem will be how to find the most suitable content. The key to this, I think, is having sufficient metadata on the content. For example - not only how is it been tagged, but who tagged it that way? How much do I trust them? How closely does their 'learning style' match my own? > > This rather visual map through which to navigte with colored places for > all the things you've already managed to visit (and those you are about to) > very well shows what's kinda missing in this traditional school > environment... an approach where students have a way to look back and get a > feel for how individual progress bars they can fill depending on their > talents and interests rather than being forced up and down a supposedly > unified class curriculum. > I suspect you are of a 'learning type' similar to myself. My preferred approach, given the quality of most of my teachers, would have been for them to give me the books and a curriculum and tell me to come back at the end of the year for the exam. I would have learned much more at school without the distraction of all the 'lessons'. > > Not sure if things like Common Core are all that helping. Maybe as a > guide, an entry point, but not so much as the holy grail of what's out > there to learn and how, especially seeing how some methods of teaching math > in it seem to be mindblowingly ridiculous. > The common core alone wouldn't be such a problem without the tyranny of standardised testing. The basic idea behind it, as far as I know, is to teach mathematical thinking ahead of rote facts but it's often being implemented by teachers who only know the old methods and the results are spectacularly ham-fisted. We will end up with some (more) very confused kids. I think it will be possible to do away with group testing altogether when we have a trusted network against which people can validate their own progress. For example, if I have been taught French by my personal 'Digital Aristotle', it will already know, and will report honestly, how fluent I am, without the need to take a test. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
