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Howard Gardner of Harvard has identified seven distinct intelligences. This theory has emerged from recent cognitive research and "documents the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways," according to Gardner (1991). According to this theory, "we are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences - the so-called profile of intelligences -and in the ways in which such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in various domains." Gardner says that these differences "challenge an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn the same materials in the same way and that a uniform, universal measure suffices to test student learning. Indeed, as currently constituted, our educational system is heavily biased toward linguistic modes of instruction and assessment and, to a somewhat lesser degree, toward logical-quantitative modes as well." Gardner argues that "a contrasting set of assumptions is more likely to be educationally effective. Students learn in ways that are identifiably distinctive. The broad spectrum of students - and perhaps the society as a whole - would be better served if disciplines could be presented in a numbers of ways and learning could be assessed through a variety of means."

There is a big danger in judging things we don't really understand by how they appear. Unless you are really "in the loop," be wary of things that you see or things others tell you. Remember the old adage "Believe half of what you say, a third of what you see, and none of what you hear."

hough they're not specifically branded as such, services such as Apple's Siri , the Wolfram Alpha answer engine, and Google's new Knowledge Graph all use semantics under the hood. The Semantic Web is a movement that aims to add value and utility to online information by structuring data in a way that both computers and humans can understand. The goal: computer systems that can understand and infer meaning - for instance, a computer system that knows the difference between an "organ" that is a musical instrument, and an "organ" that lives inside your body.

"Virtually everywhere one looks we are in the midst of a transition for how we organize and manage information, indeed even relationships. Social networks and online communities are changing how we live and interact. NoSQL and graph databases - married to their near cousin Big Data - are changing how we organize and store information and data. Semantic technologies, backed by their ontologies and RDF data model, are showing the way for how we can connect and interoperate disparate information in ways only dreamed about a decade ago. And all of this, of course, is being built upon the infrastructure of the Internet and the Web, a global, distributed network of devices and information that is undoubtedly one of the most important technological developments in human history. There is a shared structure across all of these developments - the graph. Graphs are proving to be the new universal paradigm for how we organize and manage information. Graphs have an inherently expandable nature, and one which can also capture any existing structure. So, as we see all of the networks, connections, relationships and links - both physical and informational - grow around us, it is useful to step back a bit and contemplate the universal graph structure at the core of these developments. Understanding that we now live in the Age of the Graph means we can begin studying and using the concept of the graph itself to better analyze and manage our interconnected world. Whether we are trying to understand the physical networks of supply chains and infrastructure or the information relationships within ontologies or knowledge graphs, the various concepts underlying graphs and graph theory, themselves expressed through a rich vocabulary of terms, provide the keys for unlocking still further treasures hidden in the structure of graphs."

"Every teacher I've worked with over the last five years recalls two kinds of digital experiences with students. The first I think of as digital native moments, when a student uses a piece of technology with almost eerie intuitiveness. As digital natives, today's teens have grown up with these tools and have assimilated their logic. Young people just seem to understand when to click and drag or copy and paste, and how to move, merge and mix digital elements. The second I call digital naiveté moments, when a student trusts a source of information that is obviously unreliable. Even though they know how easy it is to create and distribute information online, many young people believe -- sometimes passionately -- the most dubious rumors, tempting hoaxes (including convincingly staged encounters designed to look raw and unplanned) and implausible theories. How can these coexist? How can students be so technologically savvy while also displaying their lack of basic skills for navigating the digital world?"

"Search has changed dramatically over the past year and semantic technology has been at the center of it all. Consumers increasingly expect search engines to understand natural language and perceive the intent behind the words they type in, and search engine algorithms are rising to this challenge. This evolution in search has dramatic implications for marketers, consumers, technology developers and content creators - and it's still the early days for this rapidly changing environment. Here is an overview of how search technology is changing, how these changes may affect you and what you can do to market your business more effectively in the new era of search."

"NEXT UP: MACHINES THAT UNDERSTAND YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU CARE ABOUT, ANTICIPATE YOUR BEHAVIOR AND EMOTIONS, ABSORB YOUR SOCIAL GRAPH, INTERPRET YOUR INTENTIONS, AND MAKE LIFE, UM, "EASIER.""

"Welcome to the 21st century-where views on technology, work ethic and cultural diversity are strikingly different from generation to generation.  The complex dynamics of social interaction, standards for performance and long-understood patterns of behavior are under direct assault-if not washed away by the cross-generational tide. Each generation is leaving its own mark on its own terms, and disconnects between intention, action, and understanding can cause negative consequences"

"My biggest learning from working with senior executives, consultants and entrepreneurs around the globe was that we waste a lot of time with talking without necessarily understanding each other. This happens because we just use words, without using visual concepts and tools that could facilitate the conversation. "

"Visualization is often used interchangeably with sensemaking-making sense of the world we live in and then acting within that framework of understanding to achieve desired goals. Thus visualization or sensemaking is not just a shared (social) image with intent, it also implies ACTION. This sensemaking framework is composed of seven basic steps as shown below (Leedom, McElroy, Shadrick, Lickteig, Pokorny, Haynes, Bell, 2007):"

"Janice Lawrence of Semantic Arts recently shared a list of five business benefits - and truly, public benefits - of semantic technology solutions. Here are the benefits that she came up with along with links to some of our own articles underscoring each point. "

People who have already sifted through online information to make sense of a subject can help strangers facing similar tasks without ever directly communicating with them, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research have demonstrated. This process of distributed sensemaking, they say, could save time and result in a better understanding of the information needed for whatever goal users might have, whether it is planning a vacation, gathering information about a serious disease or trying to decide what product to buy.

In business, everyone keeps confusing information with knowledge. They're different. Even the dictionary says so: Information: Facts provided or learned about something or someone. Knowledge: Information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. Information is ones and zeros. It's raw data, or a list of facts. It's instructions on filling out a business license, or the instructions Google provides when you sign up for Adwords. The obvious stuff. You can often acquire information for free: Go to the Associated Press for raw, un-analyzed news. Or read a 'how to' on building your own car. Knowledge is something else entirely. It's what you get when you combine information with _analysis_ and _experience_. Knowledge is information distilled down to actions. It can and should cost you money, or time, or something else. If you want real analysis of the news you just grabbed from the Associated Press, for example, you might go to the New York Times and pay (at least after 10 views). To learn AdWords tricks that can actually help you profit, you'll buy a book, pay for a seminar or hire a consultant.

Innovation is the name of the game these days - in business, in science and technology, even in art. We all want to get those big ideas, but most of us really have no idea what sets off those sparks of insight. Science can help! In the past few years, neuroscientists and psychologists have started to gain a better understanding of the creative process. Some triggers of innovation may be surprisingly simple. Here are five things that may well increase the odds of having an "Aha!" moment.

With the unprecedented levels of published information, it is very difficult for Internet users to stay up to date on what matters to them. This situation is especially dramatic for information professionals that must remain aware of new happenings in order to stay ahead of the curve. Content curation is the process of picking the most relevant and valuable content for a specific audience. There is an important human component to content discovery and curation because only users can fully understand the context of the information they are working with. Technology can support content curation by computing large volumes of information on behalf of the user by helping to discover new pieces of Web information.

One of our most important living philosophers, Dan Dennett is best known for his provocative and controversial arguments that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes in the brain. He argues that the brain's computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness - isn't. This mind-shifting perspective on the mind itself has distinguished Dennett's career as a philosopher and cognitive scientist. And while the philosophy community has never quite known what to make of Dennett (he defies easy categorization, and refuses to affiliate himself with accepted schools of thought), his computational approach to understanding the brain has made him, as Edge's John Brockman writes, "the philosopher of choice of the AI community."

Amazon and Apple are massively successful retailers, the envy of digital and brick-and-mortar businesses alike. Currently, the two tech retailers enjoy a place among the biggest, most successful companies in the world. But they have a blind spot. The premises on which they've built their market advantage are now no longer the most important things in digital. They're missing a data asset that would allow them to understand their customers better: the interest graph.

Social media are talk technologies. They are the means of production in an age of communication. They aid in the production and exchange of knowledge and information and culture, based on human interests. They are media in which people see themselves represented. Their impact is as much psychological and social as it is technical. In recent years, social media have come off the page. Social tools have become more talkative, mobile, and real-time. They have taken a conversational turn. And as these social tools increasingly facilitate relationships and communication, their role in these deeply personal and social dynamics has become a matter for design. The need for a deeper understanding of the fit between tools and social interactions calls for a new design practice. This is social interaction design

You may know Wordnik from subscribing to its Word of the Day service... Now comes something new on the API front: Word Graph is the latest result of some three years of algorithm development around analyzing the digital text that Wordnik has collected from partners, to understand the relationship between words in order to derive meaning. 

"Thinking. The capacity to reflect, reason, and draw conclusions based on our experiences, knowledge, and insights. It's what makes us human and has enabled us to communicate, create, build, advance, and become civilized. Thinking encompasses so many aspects of who our children are and what they do, from observing, learning, remembering, questioning, and judging to innovating, arguing, deciding, and acting."