Given the web’s hybrid nature, how to can we teach people to make best use of this distributed hypermedia system? That’s what I’ve been trying to do, in one way or another, for many years. It’s been a challenge to label and describe the principles I want people to learn and apply. I’ve used the terms computational thinking, Fourth R principles, and most recently Mark Surman’s evocative thinking like the web.
Archives: Bookmarks
All America Heard Last Night: ‘Salmon’ — Daily Intel
–Brings up more questions than the post writer seems to indicate. Make for an interesting conversation in a lot of ways.
This is a “word cloud” of President Obama’s State of the Union address. The size of the words correspond to the frequency with which they were uttered by Obama. By looking at the cloud (which doesn’t include common words like the, because that would be stupid), you can see some of the themes Obama focused on: “jobs,” “people,” “new.”
Last night, after it was over, NPR asked its listeners to describe Obama’s address in three words. They then tallied up all 4,000 or so responses and made that into a word cloud — a snapshot of what people took away from the speech. Here’s what it looks like:
The Twitter of Oz
the Twitter of Oz
…answers the question “What if the main characters in the Wizard of Oz were on Twitter?” Here, Dorothy, Scarecrow (coming online soon), Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, the Wicked Witch, the Wizard and Glinda the Good Witch tweet their experiences in real time, 140 characters at a tim
An Exploration in the Space of Mathematics Educations
–This article took some effort for me to grasp but it’s worth it.
The principle is called the power principle or “what comes first, using it or ‘getting it’?” The natural mode of acquiring most knowledge is through use leading to progressively deepening understanding. Only in school, and especially in SME is this order systematically inverted. The power principle re-inverts the inversion.
Inductive vs. Deductive Reasoning
Induction and deduction are pervasive elements in critical thinking. They are also somewhat misunderstood terms. Arguments based on experience or observation are best expressed inductively, while arguments based on laws or rules are best expressed deductively. Most arguments are mainly inductive. In fact, inductive reasoning usually comes much more naturally to us than deductive reasoning.
Inductive reasoning moves from specific details and observations to the more general underlying principles or process that explains them (e.g., Newton’s Law of Gravity). It is open-ended and exploratory, especially at the beginning. The premises of an inductive argument are believed to support the conclusion, but do not ensure it. Thus, the conclusion of an induction is regarded as a hypothesis. In the Inductive method, also called the scientific method, observation of nature is the authority.
In contrast, deductive reasoning typically moves from general truths to specific conclusions.
How to: get to grips with data journalism
—Nice article on data and journalism. This would be a good resource not only for techniques and data sets but a solid real world opportunity to have students interacting with and reporting using these skills.
This is a much undervalued skill – with many journalists simply outsourcing it to research departments and work experience students. You can’t imagine doing that with key interviews for a crucial piece, yet key facts are often treated appallingly. You can do worse than start with http://www.guardian.co.uk/data – we’ve already done the work of identifying and cleaning up hundreds of datasets from carbon emissions, via crime rates to Bafta winners. Alternatively, I have a Delicious feed where I link to datasets – you can find that at http://www.delicious.com/smfrogers
The MHS Media Lab
Albemarle student media blog- worth checking out.
learndst.com | About
Making Thinking Visible
–some good simple stuff here on “thinking routines” which is similar to the “habits of mind” referenced in some of our TIPC stuff
Another way to make thinking visible is to surface the many opportunities for thinking during subject matter learning. Thinking routines are helpful tools in this process. Thinking routines are simple patterns of thinking that can be used over and over again and folded easily into learning in the subject areas. They have a public nature, so that they make thinking visible, and students quickly get used to them (Ritchhart, 2002).