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Katherine Chipman

Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854), excerpts - 0 views

    • Rhett Ferrin
       
      I think the supreme irony Dickens illustrates is that people in the idustrial revolution had to work under attrocious conditions in mines and factories in order to get money to live, yet it was that same work that eventually killed them. Either through years of compounded coal dust in their lungs or accidents in the mines or facotries.
  • It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.
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    Powerful imagery. I can picture the town!
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    Wonderful imagery. My favorite is The Old Curiosity Shop. I love Dickens. =]
Erin Hamson

The Business Cycle: Krugman vs. Austrian Economic Theory - 0 views

  • Stimulus payments to consumers is analogous to dumping frosting onto a cake mix, before the ingredients have been mixed and baked. All elements of the economy, from raw materials, to intermediate goods, to consumer goods, must return to a supply-demand balance before the economy can gain Krugman’s “traction.” That necessarily takes time, because mining companies and other producers of basic raw materials have time scales for increased output and employment that are very different from the time scales of intermediate goods producers and consumer goods manufacturers.
  • Keynesian economics, as expounded by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, is essentially a black box theory. Stand on the outside of the economic box and dump into it endless baskets of inflationary fiat money, and things supposedly just happen automatically inside the black box to produce permanent prosperity and near zero unemployment.
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    Blog on economic theories
anonymous

The Thoughts of ndh777: Ku Klux Klan Vs. Black Panthers - 0 views

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    I found this website while studying up on Social Darwinism, thought it was intersting
Greg Williams

Connectivism - 1 views

  • Do we acquire it throu
  • These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology.
  • In many fields the life of knowledge is now measured in months and years.
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD). To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.
  • Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking
  • learning as a lasting changed state (emotional, mental, physiological (i.e. skills)) brought about as a result of experiences and interactions with content or other people.
  • Objectivism (similar to behaviorism) states that reality is external and is objective, and knowledge is gained through experiences. Pragmatism (similar to cognitivism) states that reality is interpreted, and knowledge is negotiated through experience and thinking. Interpretivism (similar to constructivism) states that reality is internal, and knowledge is constructed.
  • Behaviorism states that learning is largely unknowable, that is, we can’t possibly understand what goes on inside a person (the “black box theory”)
  • Cognitivism often takes a computer information processing model. Learning is viewed as a process of inputs, managed in short term memory, and coded for long-term recall.
  • Constructivism suggests that learners create knowledge as they attempt to understand their experiences
  • Constructivism assumes that learners are not empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. Instead, learners are actively attempting to create meaning. Learners often select and pursue their own learning. Constructivist principles acknowledge that real-life learning is messy and complex.
  • learning that occurs outside of people
  • The ability to synthesize and recognize connections and patterns is a valuable skill.
  • In today’s environment, action is often needed without personal learning – that is, we need to act by drawing information outside of our primary knowledge.
  • An entirely new approach is needed.
  • How can we continue to stay current in a rapidly evolving information ecology?
  • We can no longer personally experience and acquire learning that we need to act. We derive our competence from forming connections.
  • Unlike constructivism, which states that learners attempt to foster understanding by meaning making tasks, chaos states that the meaning exists – the learner's challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden
  • The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge economy.
  • A network can simply be defined as connections between entities.
  • Nodes that successfully acquire greater profile will be more successful at acquiring additional connections
  • Finding a new job, as an example, often occurs through weak ties. This principle has great merit in the notion of serendipity, innovation, and creativity. Connections between disparate ideas and fields can create new innovations.
  • Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories.
  • Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
  • Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
  • The starting point of connectivism is the individual.
  • This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.
  • the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few.
  • example of a Maricopa County Community College system project that links senior citizens with elementary school students in a mentor program. The children “listen to these “grandparents” better than they do their own parents, the mentoring really helps the teachers…the small efforts of the many- the seniors – complement the large efforts of the few – the teachers.” (2002). This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.
  • Implications
  • The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application.
  • acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity
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    "Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking." . . . or so this fellow argues in a pretty detailed paper
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