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David McGavock

Connectivism: A learning theory for - 0 views

www.itdl.org/...article01.htm

Connectivism learning theory siemens Personal learning network learning culture

shared by David McGavock on 03 Jul 14 - Cached
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 03 Jul 14
       
      Learning is more active? It appears that communities networks and the like require engagement - meaning active
  • learning
  • Driscoll (2000) defines learning as “a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world” (p.11).
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • How people work and function is altered when new tools are utilized.
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 03 Jul 14
       
      Central to mindamplier idea
  • 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.
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 03 Jul 14
       
      Our ability to learn - Process more than product.
  • An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy survival. Speed of “idea to implementation” is also improved in a systems view of learning.
  • Design of learning environments
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 03 Jul 14
       
      This is of special interest to me. Where the rubber meets the road.
  • The need to evaluate the worthiness of learning something is a meta-skill that is applied before learning itself begins.
  • These theories do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e. learning that is stored and manipulated by technology).
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 03 Jul 14
       
      While I accept that knowledge is organized and stored outside the "person". Learning is a distinctly internal process methinks. IOW - I don't get his point
  • Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual.
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 03 Jul 14
       
      In the way that consciousness is an emergent property of the flow of energy within system of cells, neurons - Siemens idea of "learning" is the process through which individuals, ideas, and networks emerge (manifest). I don't know if this is what he's getting at but perhaps?
  • Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 03 Jul 14
       
      Seems to me that what currently is known is equally important in that it guides us, grounds us, and forms the basis for our capacity. Wisdom or knowledge. Dichotomous.
  • Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology.
  • Learning needs and theories that describe learning principles and processes, should be reflective of underlying social environments
  • The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete.
  • To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”
David McGavock

Astonishing - Sagarika Bhatta - 0 views

sagarika-bhatta.blogspot.com

CBA ITK Sagarika Bhatta peeragogy adaption to climate change Cooperation commons learning culture

shared by David McGavock on 01 Dec 14 - No Cached
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
       
      As Sagarika Bhatta said in the hangout, this is a response to the effects of climate change rather than a response to decrease CO2 emissions. The traditional practices have an important role to play in the protection of agriculture in Nepal. The traditional practices are a protective factor for sustainability.
  • share urgency
  • expose and publicize
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • critical mass who understands the urgency
  • exploration, discussion, documentation and promotion of the knowledge
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
       
      Find out what practices have sustained agriculture in the 3 climates within Nepal. Document it and disseminate it to the people and outside public.
  • Global movement
  • esearch and promotion of Knowledge that helps to combat climate change
  • helps in adaptation to climate change
  • indigenous Knowledge
  • plight of citizen
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
       
      This is another story: how do impacts and inappropriate technologies impact the local people.
  • documentation through research
  • community-based adaptation (CBA) to climate change
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
       
      CBA - community based adaptation to climate chage
  • possibilities of rain water harvesting and other means of water storage
  • watershed degradation, urbanization, growing population are the major factor for water crisis here
  • making it part of national development policy
  • Nepal is vulnerable to rising global temperatures and has already been dealing with the impact of erratic rainfall, frequent droughts and floods, which have been affecting food security
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
       
      Problem Statement for Nepal.
  • experiment with a bottom-up approach using Local Adaptation Plans of Action, or LAPAs, in 10 districts across the country in 2010
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
       
      what has been tried.
  • ultimately question the status of food security
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
       
      The bottom line problem is that these impacts - problems above will threaten the security of the people of Nepal - food/shelter/quality of life..
  • promote the Indigenous Traditional knowledge (ITK) as Community Based Adaptation techniques that has been practiced by different indigenous community in Nepal in agriculture
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
       
      This is the goal. Promote traditional knowledge in support of the people of Nepal - their agriculture, livelihood and social welfare.
  • David McGavock on 01 Dec 14
     
    This is a good summary of the goals of the work of Sagarika Bhatta in support of Nepali agriculture. It describe the idea of community based adaptation (CBA) to climate change and the Indigenous traditional knowledge (ITK).
  • kajalagrwal1 on 19 Dec 16
     
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David McGavock

HOW CULTURE DROVE HUMAN EVOLUTION | Edge.org - 0 views

edge.org/...-culture-drove-human-evolution

anthropology evolution culture tools cooperation religion neuroscience

shared by David McGavock on 07 May 14 - No Cached
  • how culture drove human evolution
  • cultural brain hypothesis—this is the idea that the real driver in the expansion of human brains was this growing cumulative body of cultural information, so that what our brains increasingly got good at was the ability to acquire information, store, process and retransmit this non genetic body of information.
  • but tools and artifacts (the kinds of things that one finds useful to throw or finds useful to manipulate) are themselves products of cultural evolution.
  • ...116 more annotations...
  • or a long time was that status in humans was just a kind of human version of this dominant status
  • Chimps, other primates, have dominant status.
  • social status
  • second kind of status. We call this status prestige.
  • from being particularly knowledgeable or skilled in an area,
  • From this we've argued that humans have two separate kinds of status, dominance and prestige
  • give them deference in exchange for knowledge that you get back
  • you want to isolate the members of your group who are most likely to have a lot of this resources, meaning a lot of the knowledge or information that could be useful to you in the future
  • some of the big questions are, exactly when did this body of cumulative cultural evolution get started?
  • may have started early
  • another possibility is that it emerged about 800,000 years ago.
  • here's theoretical models that show that culture, our ability to learn from others, is an adaptation to fluctuating environments.
  • Another signature of cultural learning is regional differentiation and material culture, and you see that by about 400,000 years ago
  • 400,000 years ago
  • there's another possibility that it was a different kind of ape that we don't have in the modern world: a communal breeding ape that lives in family units rather than the kind of fission fusion you might see in chimpanzees
  • In the Pliocene, we see lots of different kinds of apes in terms of different species of Australopithecus.
  • we now have evidence to suggest that humans were communal breeders, so that we lived in family groups maybe somewhat similar to the way gorillas live in family groups, and that this is a much better environment for the evolution of capacities for culture than typical in the chimpanzee model
  • for cultural learning to really take off, you need more than one model.
  • trying out different technique
  • take advantage of the variation
  • the question is, how did we become such long distance runners?
  • only humans have it
  • humans who don't know how to track animals, can't run them down
  • idea being that the religions of modern societies are quite different than the religions we see in hunter gatherers and small scale societies
  • Most recently I've been also thinking about the evolution of societal complexity.
  • when societies begin to get big and complex
  • large-scale cooperation
  • What are the causal processes that bring these things about?
  • There's an interaction between genes and culture. First you have to get the culturally transmitted knowledge about animal behavior and tracking and spore knowledge and the ability to identify individuals, which is something you need to practice, and only after that can you begin to take advantage of long distance running techniques
  • I've worked in a couple of different areas on this, and one is religion.
  • there was an intense period that continues today of intergroup competition, which favors groups who have social norms and institutions that can more effectively expand the group while maintaining internal harmony
  • they've been shaped in ways that galvanize cooperation in larger groups
  • In small-scale hunter-gatherer religions, the gods are typically whimsical. They're amoral.
  • but as we begin to move to the religions in more complex societies, we find that the gods are increasingly moralizing.
  • if you remind believers of their god, believers cheat less, and they're more pro social or fair in exchange tasks,
  • more pro social in are the ones with anonymous others, or strangers. These are the kinds of things you need to make a market run to have a successful division of labor
  • ritual plays a role in this
  • rituals seem to be sets of practices engineered by cultural evolution to be effective at transmitting belief and transmitting faith
  • elevate the degree of belief in the high-moralizing gods
  • high-moralizing gods will often require rituals of this kind
  • Speaking in unison, large congregations saying the same thing, this all taps our capacity for conformist transmission;
  • People also engage in what we call credibility-enhancing displays [during rituals]. These are costly things. It might be an animal sacrifice or the giving of a large sum of money or some kind of painful initiation rite
  • We think religions are just one element, one way in which culture has figured out ways to expand the sphere of cooperation and allow markets to form and people to exchange and to maintain the substantial division of labor.
  • There's a lot of risk in developing specialization because you have to be confident that there's a market there that you can engage with. Whereas if you're a generalist and you do a little bit of farming, a little bit of manufacturing, then you're much less reliant on the market. Markets require a great deal of trust
  • In the intellectual tradition that I'm building on, culture is information stored in people's heads that gets there by some kind of social learning
  • We tend to think of cultural transmission, or at least many people think of cultural transmission as relying on language
  • , it's quite clear that there is a ton of cultural transmission that is just strictly by observational learning.
  • what we don't see amongst other animals is cumulative cultural evolution.
  • you can learn one thing from one generation, and that begins to accumulate in subsequent generations.
  • One possible exception to that is bird song.
  • One of the interesting lines of research that's come out of this recognition is the importance of population size and the interconnectedness for technology.
  • looking at a case study in Tasmania.
  • You start out with two genetically well-intermixed peoples. Tasmania's actually connected to mainland Australia so it's just a peninsula. Then about 10,000 years ago, the environment changes, it gets warmer and the Bass Strait floods, so this cuts off Tasmania from the rest of Australia, and it's at that point that they begin to have this technological downturn
  • You can show that this is the kind of thing you'd expect if societies are like brains in the sense that they store information as a group and that when someone learns, they're learning from the most successful member
  • study by Rob Boyd and Michelle Kline
  • larger islands had much bigger and more complex fishing technologies, and you can even show an effective contact. Some of the islands were in more or less contact with each other,
  • more in contact, you have fancier tools, and that seems to hold up.
  • rates of innovation should continue to increase, especially with the emergence of communication technologies
  • As an individual inventor or company, you're best off if everybody else shares their ideas but you don't share your ideas because then you get to keep your good ideas, and nobody else gets exposed to them, and you get to use their good ideas, so you get to do more recombination.
  • An important thing to remember is that there's always an incentive to hide your information.
  • Embedded in this whole information-sharing thing is a constant cooperative dilemma in which individuals have to be willing to share for the good of the group.
  • a norm of information sharing is a really good norm to have
  • I've done a lot of work on marriage systems with the evolution of monogamy.
  • Eighty-five percent of human societies have allowed men to have more than one wife
  • pushes us towards polygyny
  • But in the modern world, of course, monogamy is normative, and people who have too many wives are thought poorly of by the larger society. The question is, how did this ever get in place?
  • European Marriage Pattern,
  • Athens legislates the first rules about monogamous marriage
  • people are ready to moralize it,
  • it does seem to have societal level benefits. It reduces male-male competition. We think there's evidence to say it reduces crime, reduces substance abuse, and it also engages males in ways that cause them to discount the future less and engage in productive activities rather than taking a lot of risks
  • If I talk about normative monogamy as being successful, I mean that it spread,
  • especially if you have a society with widely varying amounts of wealth, especially among males. Then you're going to have a situation that would normally promote high levels of polygyny
  • to get into the mating and marriage market you would have to have a high level of wealth if we were to let nature take it's course
  • Part of my program of research is to convince people that they should stop distinguishing cultural and biological evolution as separate in that way. We want to think of it all as biological evolution. 
  • Culture is part of our biology.
  • We now have the neuroscience to say that culture's in our brain, so if you compare people from different societies, they have different brains.
  • Cognition and our ability to think are all interwoven,
  • A good example of this is the placebos. Placebos are something that depend on your cultural beliefs. If you believe that something will work, then when you take it, like you take an aspirin or you take a placebo for an aspirin, it initiates the same pathways as the chemically active substance. Placebos are chemically inert but biologically active, and it's completely dependent on your cultural beliefs.
  • One of the large research projects that I run in an effort to understand human sociality is called The Root of Human Sociality Project.
  • at the time to something called the Ultimatum Game, and the Ultimatum Game seemed to provide evidence that humans were innately inclined to punish unfairness.
  • behavioral economists find that students give about half, sometimes a little bit less than half, and people are inclined to reject offers below about 30 percent
  • The older you get, even if you have more wealth and more income, you're especially inclined to only offer half, and you'll reject offers below 40 percent.
  • I was thinking that the Machiguenga would be a good test of this
  • I did it in 1995 and 1996 there, and what I found amongst the Machiguenga was that they were completely unwilling to reject, and they thought it was silly. Why would anyone ever reject?
  • they made low offers, the modal offer was 15 percent instead of 50, and the mean comes out to be about 25 percent.
  • over the next two summers these field anthropologists went to the field and conducted the ultimatum game as well as a few other games
  • we found is that societies vary dramatically, from societies that would never reject, to societies that would even reject offers above 50 percent, and we found that mean offers ranged across societies from about 25 percent to even over 50 percent. We had some of what we called hyper fair societies. The highest was 57 percent in Lamalera, Indonesia.
  • able to explain a lot of the variation in these offers with two variables. One was the degree of market integration.
  • there seemed to be other institutions, institutions of cooperative hunting seemed to influence offers.
  • measured market integration much more carefully
  • subsequent project
  • large number of other variables, including wealth, income, education, community size, and also religion.
  • did the Ultimatum Game along with two other experiments. The two other experiments were the Dictator Game (the Dictator Game is like the Ultimatum Game except the second player doesn't have the option to reject) and the Third Party Punishment Game.
  • Third Party Punishment Game, there are three players and the first two players play a Dictator Game.
  • This gives us two different measures of willingness to punish strangers
  • one is rejection in the Ultimatum Game
  • three measures of fairness
  • size of the community predicts willingness to punish
  • suggesting that if you have small communities, you don't need punishment.
  • It could be some kind of reputational mechanism
  • There's a number of different ways to create norm systems that operate like that.
  • In a big society punishment can be most effective because reputational mechanisms can be weak. If you're in a big society and you encounter somebody, you probably don't have friends in common through which you could pass reputational information for which punishment could be generated. You might want to punish them right on the spot or someone who observes the interaction might want to punish them right on the spot or call the authorities or whatever, which is also costly.
  • This creates a puzzle because typically people think of small-scale kinds of societies, where you study hunter-gatherers and horticultural scattered across the globe (ranging from New Guinea to Siberia to Africa) as being very pro social and cooperative.
  • but the thing is those are based on local norms for cooperation with kin and local interactions in certain kinds of circumstances
  • these norms don't extend beyond food sharing. They certainly don't extend to ephemeral or strangers
  • large-scale society run you have to shift from investing in your local kin groups and your enduring relationships to being willing to pay to be fair to a stranger.
  • if you're going to be fair to a stranger, then you're taking money away from your family.
  • A commitment to something like anti-nepotism norms is something that runs against our evolutionary inclinations and our inclinations to help kin
  • In this sense, the norms of modern societies that make modern societies run now are at odds with at least some of our evolved instincts.
  • Lately we've been focused on the effects of religion
  • adherence to a world religion matters
  • People from world religions were willing to give more to the other person in the experiment, the anonymous stranger
  • Part of this is your willingness to acquire a norm of impartial roles; that we have a set of rules that governs this system.
  • political scientists call it the rule of law
  • those rules apply independently of the identities
  • If you want the rule of law to spread or to be maintained, you need conditions in which you're managing risk.
  • David McGavock on 07 May 14
     
    [JOSEPH HENRICH:] The main questions I've been asking myself over the last couple years are broadly about how culture drove human evolution. Think back to when humans first got the capacity for cumulative cultural evolution-and by this I mean the ability for ideas to accumulate over generations, to get an increasingly complex tool starting from something simple. One generation adds a few things to it, the next generation adds a few more things, and the next generation, until it's so complex that no one in the first generation could have invented it.
David McGavock

The dreams of readers | ROUGH TYPE - 1 views

www.roughtype.com/?p=4120

reading neuroscience mirror regions meditation

shared by David McGavock on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Psychologists and neurobiologists have begun studying what goes on in our minds as we read literature, and what they’re discovering lends scientific weight to Emerson’s observation.
  • “aesthetic emotions” that we feel when we view art from a distance, as a spectator:
  • We create our own version of the piece of fiction, our own dream, our own enactment.” Making sense of what transpires in a book’s imagined reality appears to depend on “making a version of the action ourselves, inwardly.”
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • The scholars used brain scans to examine the cellular activity that occurs inside people’s heads as they read stories. They found that “readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative.”
  • When, for example, a character in a story puts a pencil down on a desk, the neurons that control muscle movements fire in a reader’s brain. When a character goes through a door to enter a room, electrical charges begin to flow through the areas in a reader’s brain that are involved in spatial representation and navigation.
  • More than mere replication is going on.
  • we really do enter, so far as our brains are concerned, a new world — one conjured not just out of the author’s words but out of our own memories and desires — and it is our cognitive immersion in that world that gives reading its emotional force.
  • ” A work of literature, particularly narrative literature, takes hold of the brain in curious and powerful ways.
  • there are the “narrative emotions” we experience when, through the sympathetic actions of our nervous system, we become part of a story, when the distance between the attendee and the attended evaporates
  • A 2009 experiment conducted by Oatley and three colleagues suggests that the emotions stirred by literature can even alter, in subtle but real ways, people’s personalities.
  • Norman Holland, a scholar at the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida, has been studying literature’s psychological effects for many years, and he offers a provocative answer to that question.
  • when we open a book, our expectations and attitudes change. Because we understand that “we cannot or will not change the work of art by our actions,” we are relieved of our desire to exert an influence over objects and people and hence can “disengage our [cognitive] systems for initiating actions.”
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 21 Jan 14
       
      Theory of mind 
  • The central subject of literature is society, and when we lose ourselves in a book we often receive an education in the subtleties and vagaries of human relations.
  • reading tends to make us at least a little more empathetic, a little more alert to the inner lives of others.
  • can strengthen a person’s “theory of mind,” which is what psychologists call the ability to understand what other people are thinking and feeling.
  • That frees us to become absorbed in the imaginary world of the literary work.
  • Jeff Jarvis, a media consultant who teaches journalism at the City University of New York, gave voice to this way of thinking in a post on his blog. Claiming that printed pages “create, at best, a one-way relationship with a reader,” he concluded that, in the internet era, “the book is an outdated means of communicating information.” He declared that “print is where words go to die.”
  • Society is growing ever more skeptical of the value of solitude. The status quo treats with suspicion  even the briefest of withdrawals into inactivity and apparent purposelessness. We see it in the redefinition of receptive states of mind as passive states of mind.
  • the arts of production and consumption, of getting stuff done, to which most of us devote most of our waking hours.
  • In a 2003 lecture, Andrew Louth, a theology professor at the University of Durham in England, drew a distinction between “the free arts” and “the servile arts.” The servile arts, he said, are those “to which a man is bound if he has in mind a limited task.”
  • free arts, among which Louth included reading as well as meditation, contemplation, and prayer, are those characterized, in one way or another, by “the search for knowledge for its own sake.”
  • We open ourselves to aesthetic and spiritual possibilities.
  • It may be that readers have to enter a state of languid pleasure, a dream, before they can experience the full spermatic vitality of a book. Far from being a sign of passivity, the reader’s outward repose signals the most profound kind of inner activity, the kind that goes unregistered by society’s sensors.
  • David McGavock on 21 Jan 14
     
    "The free arts, among which Louth included reading as well as meditation, contemplation, and prayer, are those characterized, in one way or another, by "the search for knowledge for its own sake." "
B.L. Ochman

About Wolfram|Alpha - 0 views

www.wolframalpha.com/about.html

searchengine semantic knowledge visualization thinking tools augmentation

shared by B.L. Ochman on 23 May 11 - Cached
  • B.L. Ochman on 23 May 11
     
    Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute what
Charles van der Haegen

OnTheSpiral - 0 views

onthespiral.com/about

economy technology markets conventionsuniverse of value exchange fundamental values disruption emergent forward looking future

shared by Charles van der Haegen on 27 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Charles van der Haegen on 27 Jul 11
     
    "What we commonly refer to as "the economy" can be understood on three levels: Psychology - What do humans value, and therefore seek? Why? Economics - How do humans behave in the domain of activities related to seeking value? Technology - What mechanisms and systems are used to mediate economic behavior? Mainstream coverage of "the economy" is myopically focused on the day to day details of one specific set of technologies - the markets and conventions that pervaded the industrial economy. But, these specific technologies and conventions represent only only a subset of the total universe of value exchange. The mainstream coverage has completely lost touch with the reasons why these technologies exist at all. What are the fundamental values that real people seek to satisfy? Now a new set of technologies is emerging that threatens to disrupt the current paradigm, but that does not mean existing knowledge can be safely ignored. Those economic insights that describe fundamental human motivations will continue to be relevant in any technological environment. This blog addresses psychology, economics, and technology in an effort to better understand what will persist, what will be threatened by disruption, and what emerging technologies offer the most promise of producing real human value. My hope is that these musings help forward-looking individuals to better understand their current place in the world and to more easily plot the course of their future endeavors. If you find yourself wrestling with these same issues then I would encourage you to connect with me via any of the services on the right and to subscribe for regular updates…" Recent posts (from end of May to end of July (2 moths) Utilizing Scarcity in the Four Quadrant Value Universe The Varieties of Copllapseoconmics Navigating the Four Economics Unifying the value Universe The Intention economy and the Evolution of Relationship Management How much monetization is enou
  • Charles van der Haegen on 27 Jul 11
     
    I believe this to be a blogsite of disruptive, novel uncomfortable ideas and knowledge well fitting in our Rheingold U course materials
David McGavock

Pop-Up University | DMLcentral - 0 views

dmlcentral.net/...pop-university

rheingold university pop up Cooperation learning culture

shared by David McGavock on 01 May 11 - No Cached
  • Networked social learning is most effective and truly magical when students who don't know one another one day start scouring the world for knowledge to bestow on each other the next day and spend their time contributing to each other's learning. It’s the unpredictable synergy that can happen when a group of strangers assembles online to learn together.
  • But the knowledge-sharing gift economy is a human creation – one that can't be predicted, commanded, or summoned but has to be nurtured, cultivated, and facilitated.
  • Michael Wesch's "A Portal to Media Literacy" made clear to me something I had been feeling my way toward -- a pedagogy that is more about collaboration than technology, in which the technology is central, but is a vehicle for co-discovery.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Cathy Davidson's bold experiments in peer-to-peer learning, including "crowd-sourcing grading," gave me a working model to emulate and appropriate.
  • I learned from Mizuko Ito that young people use digital skills and knowledge exchange as social currency in fan cultures – using social media to learn about things that really matter to them, such as multiplayer games, Pokemon, mashups and fan videos.
  • Henry Jenkins taught me about participatory culture and the importance of teaching skills of credibility (what I call "crap detection") transmedia storytelling, collective intelligence, and network smarts.
  • it only made sense to begin by mobilizing social media skills in parallel with introducing the subject matter. Teaching about social media doesn't make a lot of sense unless students can use social media in their learning
  • The choice to participate in creating and not just consuming the culture in which we live is crucial, and presenting that choice in terms that can engage students is critical.
  • The first acts on the first day of class are crucial – what chaos theorists call "sensitive dependence on initial conditions."
  • As one of my mentors, Lisa Kimball, taught me, a good online facilitator pays heed to the containers, but also thinks in terms of tempo. I knew the importance of engaging as many of the co-learners as possible in the first live session and the first weekend of forum and blog discussion.
  • David McGavock on 01 May 11
     
    If Rheingold U, my current experiment in cultivating wholly online, multimedia, unaccredited, for-not-much-pay learning communities, originally germinated out of fun and impulse, the next stage was more scary-serious. As soon as I took people's money and started telling the world about my intentions, I was obligated as well as motivated to make it work - not just to deliver a rich set of learning materials, but to conjure actual social learning magic
David McGavock

As Above, So Below: The Worldview of Lynn Margulis | Reality Sandwich - 2 views

realitysandwich.com/..._below_worldview_lynn_margulis

Gaia Margulis evolution process

shared by David McGavock on 30 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • This journey led her to emphasize in all her scientific work two phenomena -- the fusing of distinct beings into a single being: symbiosis; and the interaction of organisms and their environments to create relational "loops" that led to regulation of many Earth systems: Gaia Theory.
  • Bacteria were here first and are with us still, comprising a major part of the biosphere.  They are unseen with the naked eye, they lack nuclei (for this reason, they are called prokaryotes -- "pro" = before,  "karyon" = nucleus). Their forms were legion and their metabolisms were (and continue to be) strange.
  • What is known is that the spirochete didn't digest the thermoplasmid and the thermoplasmid did not digest the spirochete.  As Margulis was fond of saying, "1 + 1 = 1."  There was a union of the two, resulting in an entirely new being.  They were inseparable, literally.  The thermoplasmid had a rotor now, and the spirochete had a "head".
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • Margulis, inspired by the work of little-known biologists, revealed and proved these mergers for us.  At first, her worked was rejected and scoffed at.  It did not fit the still-dominant neo-Darwinian paradigm that tells us all evolutionary novelty comes from natural selection acting on genes and the gradual accumulation of random genetic mutation.  But eventually these symbioses were accepted because they could not be ignored
  • our physical selves are universes composed of the movemenst, biological agreements, and interactions of these beings.
  • "Identity is not an object; it is a process with addresses for all the different directions and dimensions in which it moves..." Margulis once stated, with her colleague Ricardo Guerrero.
  • Indeed, symbiogenesis has been observed in the lab.  An amoeba population, accidentally infected with bacteria was observed over long periods of time, and soon enough, the infecting bacteria could not be removed from the infected amoeba without killing the organism. 
  • Gaia is the work of the relational loops of push and pull between bacteria, other organisms, and the environment
  • But Lovelock came up with an understandable and accesible metaphor in the form of a computer program called Daisyworld.  Daisyworld is not the "proof" of Gaia: Lovelock and his colleague Andrew Watson devised the program to see if living and environmental factors could theoretically interact without intention. 
  • After she found James Lovelock, they worked on making those processes known.  Their collaboration resulted in Gaia Theory, which was a disciplinary symbiosis -- the theoretical expression of Margulis's interdisciplinary life.
  • Gaia processes are real and observable (and sometimes referred to as "biogeochemistry", a term more acceptable to mainstream science).  Furthermore, the five kingdoms (bacteria, protoctists, fungi, plants, animals) of life are all touched by symbiosis
  • "Gaia," Margulis's former student Greg Hinkle said, "is just symbiosis as seen from space."
  • All animals have symbiotic partners in their guts.  Remove these symbionts and the animals die.
  • Many neo-Darwinist concerns circled nervously around words like "Gaia" and "cooperation" (which Margulis did not like to use).  They were, perhaps rightly, concerned that these terms were ripe for religious appropriation.  But Margulis herself was outspoken against such mishandling of her research. 
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 30 Mar 14
       
      Cooperation - not God - meets Gaia
  • Along with the many detailed examples of bacterial mergers at varying levels of cellular complexity, the world revealed by Acquiring Genomes is also a world of mating between distinct phyla
  • What is definite is that the merging of beings is key, and symbiogenesis offers a clearly observable alternative to the consistent but woefully incomplete neo-Darwinian paradigm.
  • David Bohm, who said
  • "Science is the search for truth...whether we like it or not."
  • Microcosmos show us a bacterial view of the world.  Bacteria exchange their genes laterally.  This means they don't pass their genomic information only when they reproduce (though this can happen), but also  through their simple existence.
  • it's much more complex than that -- there is something "in it" for every symbiont,
  • "Gaia is not merely an organism."  The Earth is beyond stale conception.  It is more magnificent and active than we can imagine.  Gaia is object and process.
  • this complexity is impossible to incorporate in a linear and reductive understanding.
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 30 Mar 14
       
      This is a question that I often wonder - how different thinkers (using different modes of understanding) come to different conclusions.  What is it that separates the linear (reductive) thinker from the holistic (systemic) thinker?
  • If Gaia is conscious, it possesses a consciousness of a different magnitude, probably of a different order all together.
  • To encompass complex systems with our thinking, we must imagine a model that is less like "cause-effect" more like "being-manifestation."  That is, multiple layers and numerous agents of forces unconsciously conspire together, and their conspiring is so intermingled, that it is simultaneously cause and effect, and thus beyond both. 
  • Dawkins, who claims to be an atheist, relies on a host of selfish angels within us and the possibility for meme-salvation to justify his theory.  He substantiates his magical worldview on a meager past of scientific work.
  • Perhaps as we -- in the newly and deeply connected world of the internet, social profiles, and globalization -- witness the dissolution of the cult of isolated individuality and embark on understanding a clearer and more nuanced view of individuality, so to will we ready ourselves for a clearer view of evolution and life.
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 30 Mar 14
       
      This is a good question; how does this connected world reframe our conception of ourselves as individuals? Can we, at once, become humbled while we contribute? Can we imagine ourselves as less important while we excel in our pursuits?
  • Now that Margulis has died, it remains our choice to catch up with what she and her life's work have set in motion.  To do so, we must bring together the many fields of knowledge she embodied.  Biologists must talk to physicists, virologists must talk to geologists, cosmologists must talk to microbiologists, and scientists musty talk to non-scientists.  This motion of meeting and exchanging ideas, if we act with it, will evolve our thinking.
  • David McGavock on 30 Mar 14
     
    " Now that Margulis has died, it remains our choice to catch up with what she and her life's work have set in motion.  To do so, we must bring together the many fields of knowledge she embodied.  Biologists must talk to physicists, virologists must talk to geologists, cosmologists must talk to microbiologists, and scientists musty talk to non-scientists.  This motion of meeting and exchanging ideas, if we act with it, will evolve our thinking. "
David McGavock

Values, Vision, Mission & Strategy - Mind & Life Institute - 0 views

www.mindandlife.org/mission

neuroscience thinking tools Cooperation Infotention Personal learning network Mind and Life

shared by David McGavock on 19 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • To guide us in our Mission, Vision and Strategy, the Mind & Life Institute has adopted a set of core values: Love, Mindfulness and Compassion Trust and Integrity Teamwork and Collaboration Impeccability and Continuous Improvement Open Communication and Transparency
  • Vision The Mind & Life Institute sees the potential of a world that fully understands the critical importance of training the mind in ways that reduce individual and societal suffering and promote individual and planetary peace, health, well-being and cooperation. Moreover, we envision a world where everyone has access to age-appropriate and culturally appropriate mental and emotional fitness practices.
  • we implement a practical, results-oriented Mission and Strategy based on scientific research to understand how we, as humans, can train our minds
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • promote and support rigorous, multi-disciplinary scientific investigation of the mind
  • dissemination of practices that cultivate the mental qualities of attention, emotional balance, kindness, compassion, confidence and happiness
  • rooted in an integrated way of knowing that combines the first and second person direct experience of contemplative practice with a modern scientific third person inquiry.
  • David McGavock on 19 Feb 12
     
    "The Mind & Life Institute is a non-profit organization that seeks to understand the human mind and the benefits of contemplative practices through an integrated mode of knowing that combines first person knowledge from the world's contemplative traditions with methods and findings from contemporary scientific inquiry. Ultimately, our goal is to relieve human suffering and advance well-being."
David McGavock

From Brain to Mind: Using Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education « Learnin... - 0 views

learningwithscience.wordpress.com/...e-to-guide-change-in-education

augmentation Personal learning network thinking tools neuroscience brain education

shared by David McGavock on 20 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Zull begins his journey with sensory-motor learning, and how that leads to discovery, and discovery to emotion. He then describes how deeper learning develops, how symbolic systems such as language and numbers emerge as tools for thought, how memory builds a knowledge base, and how memory is then used to create ideas and solve problems. Along the way he prompts us to think of new ways to shape educational experiences from early in life through adulthood, informed by the insight that metacognition lies at the root of all learning.
  • he argues that self-knowledge, awareness of how and why we think as we do, and the ability to adapt and learn, are critical to our survival as individuals; and that the transformation of education,
  • David McGavock on 20 Dec 11
     
    "This book offers the reader an engrossing and coherent introduction to what neuroscience can tell us about cognitive development through experience, and its implications for education."
David McGavock

Portland State Graduate School of Education: Continuing Education | Interpersonal Neuro... - 1 views

www.pdx.edu/...interpersonal-neurobiology

internet psychology neuroscience interpersonal neurobiology thinking tools Personal learning network meditation learning culture

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  • David McGavock on 13 Nov 11
     
    "Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) is an exciting interdisciplinary perspective, drawing from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, complexity theory, and relationship studies. Other related fields of study include, affective neuroscience, social neuroscience and social cognitive neuroscience. The interpersonal neurobiology perspective extends from the intricacies of neurobiology to the level of the interpersonal world. Because interpersonal neurobiology involves so many disciplines and areas of practice, this program is designed with flexible components to promote a central core of knowledge while facilitating each participant's professional and personal application of the information."
David McGavock

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Archives: A New Culture of Learning: An Interview with John ... - 1 views

henryjenkins.org/..._culture_of_learning_an_i.html

education learning culture interview learning culture Personal learning network

shared by David McGavock on 14 May 11 - No Cached
  • Today, I want to call attention to a significant new book, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, written by two of my new colleagues at the University of Southern California -- Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown.
  • John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas lay out a step by step argument for why learning is changing in the 21st century and what schools need to do to accommodate these new practices.
  • My hope is that our schools will soon embrace the book's emphasis on knowing, making, and playing.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The fear is easy to understand. What we are essentially doing when we move to student-directed learning is undermining our own relatively stable (though I would argue obsolete) notions of expertise and replacing them something new and different.
  • One of the key arguments we are making is that the role of educators needs to shift away from being expert in a particular area of knowledge, to becoming expert in the ability to create and shape new learning environments.
  • how do we identify the narrowing range of content which probably does fall into this category and which provides a common baseline for other kinds of learning?
  • users are not so much creating content as they are constantly reshaping context.
  • The very idea of remix is about the productions of new meanings by reframing or shifting the context in which something means.
  • You challenge here what James Paul Gee has called the "content fetish," stressing that how we learn is more important than what we learn. How far are you willing to push this? Doesn't it matter whether children are learning the periodic table or the forms of alchemy practiced in the Harry Potter books? Or that they know Obama is Christian rather than Muslim?
  • throughout the book, we stress that knowledge, now more than ever, is becoming a where rather than a what or how.
  • The explicit is only one kind of content, which tells you what something means.
  • The tacit has its own layer of meaning. It tells why something is important to you, how it relates to your life and social practices.
David McGavock

Steve Rosenbaum | Future of Content - 0 views

itc.conversationsnetwork.org/...detail4847.html

Cooperation Infotention augmentation thinking tools learning culture curation

shared by David McGavock on 14 May 11 - No Cached
  • David McGavock on 14 May 11
     
    "Dr. Moira Gunn talks with Steve Rosenbaum about how the data aggregator's new role on the Internet from the pages of his new book, Curation Nation: Why the Future of Content is Context. " Rosenbaum predicts a new stage in web interactions where the overwhelming data that is being created is balanced through the efforts of curators: people organizing knowledge.
Alex Grech

Visions of Students Today - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

PhD Personal learning network Infotention

shared by Alex Grech on 19 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Alex Grech on 19 Jun 11
     
    Another in Michael Wesch's series of videos.  There's a lot of catching up for academia to do now that we have ubiquitous access to self-publishing tools, online repositories of knowledge, clusters of niche networks and are putting our cognitive surplus to better use than watching TV.  And we are all perennial, life-long students and teachers.  
Charles van der Haegen

‪George Siemens on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)‬‏ - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

online distributed learning global community network self-managed self-determined PLN Tools

shared by Charles van der Haegen on 27 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Charles van der Haegen on 27 Jul 11
     
    Thanks Howard for having conducted this interview and having allowed George Siemens to expose the philisophy behind his MOOKC idea. Great educational content. Also a path is shown for the future of self-determined and self-managed, life-long autonomous, learning in teams and around personal and wider, global, community networks "George Siemens, at the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca Universityhas been running "Massive Open Online Courses" (MOOCs). I talk to him about what a MOOC is, how it works, and the educational philosophy behind it." Excellent Interview by Howard Rheingold
  • Charles van der Haegen on 27 Jul 11
     
    This video is really great. Howard is a master interviewer. George Siemens is provoked in answering the kind of questions that allow the viewer to reallt comprehend his thinking and the power of his MOOC. By the same token, it gives a nice indication of the similarity in design that Howard is following for his course... When will the two combine to a greater whole
Charles van der Haegen

The International Society for Ecological Economics - 0 views

www.ecoeco.org/content

ecology economics eco-economics ISEE fragmentation social science dialogue

shared by Charles van der Haegen on 23 Jul 11 - Cached
  • Charles van der Haegen on 23 Jul 11
     
    "ISEE is a not-for-profit, member-governed, organization dedicated to advancing understanding of the relationships among ecological, social, and economic systems for the mutual well-being of nature and people. Ecological economics exists because a hundred years of disciplinary specialization in scientific inquiry has left us unable to understand or to manage the interactions between the human and environmental components of our world. While none would dispute the insights that disciplinary specialization has brought, many now recognize that it has also turned out to be our Achilles heel. In an interconnected evolving world, reductionist science has pushed out the envelope of knowledge in many different directions, but it has left us bereft of ideas as to how to formulate and solve problems that stem from the interactions between humans and the natural world. How is human behaviour connected to changes in hydrological, nutrient or carbon cycles? What are the feedbacks between the social and natural systems, and how do these influence the services we get from ecosystems? Ecological economics as a field attempts to answer questions such as these."
  • Charles van der Haegen on 23 Jul 11
     
    ISEE's Dedication: Advancing understanding of the relationships among ecological, social, and economic systems for the mutual well-being of nature and people: My question: Did this understanding ever exist. If yes, why was this understanding lost ??? If not: How come?
Charles van der Haegen

Skeptic » About Us » A Brief Introduction - 1 views

www.skeptic.com/about_us

science education critical thinking controversial ideas unconmfortable knowledge claims investigating fringe

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  • Charles van der Haegen on 27 Jul 11
     
    "A Brief Introduction All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have. -Albert Einstein The Skeptics Society is a scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, extraordinary claims, revolutionary ideas, and the promotion of science. Our mission is to serve as an educational tool for those seeking clarification and viewpoints on those controversial ideas and claims. Under the direction of Dr. Michael Shermer, the Society engages in discussions with leading experts and investigates fringe science and paranormal claims. It is our hope that our efforts go a long way in promoting critical thinking and lifelong inquisitiveness in all individuals. I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. -Baruch Spinoza Some people believe that skepticism is the rejection of new ideas, or worse, they confuse "skeptic" with "cynic" and think that skeptics are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that challenges the status quo. This is wrong. Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. It is the application of reason to any and all ideas - no sacred cows allowed. In other words, skepticism is a method, not a position. Ideally, skeptics do not go into an investigation closed to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true. When we say we are "skeptical," we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe. Skepticism has a long historical tradition dating back to ancient Greece, when Socrates observed: "All I know is that I know nothing." But this pure position is sterile and unproductive and held by virtually no one. If you were skeptical about everything, you would have to be skeptical of your own skepticism. Like the dec
  • Charles van der Haegen on 27 Jul 11
     
    a nice source of curated uncomfortable knowledge
David McGavock

Institute for Play council of Advisors - 0 views

www.nifplay.org/advisors_partners.html

play institute cooperation

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  • David McGavock on 30 Apr 11
     
    "Council of Advisors Play is a newly expanding knowledge domain and the National Institute for Play sees itself as a student in this emerging field. We are maximizing our opportunities to learn - and to spread what we learn - by networking with a extensive and growing cadre of scientific experts and professional practitioners of Play. Together, they constitute the NIFP Council of Advisors, chaired by Stanford Professor and neuroscientist, Dr. Stuart Thompson."
Charles van der Haegen

Global Voices · About - 0 views

globalvoicesonline.org/about

bloggers blogs reporting world international community citizen media uncomfortable knowledge

shared by Charles van der Haegen on 26 Jun 11 - Cached
  • Charles van der Haegen on 26 Jun 11
     
    "Global Voices is a community of more than 300 bloggers and translators around the world who work together to bring you reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media. Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard. Millions of people are blogging, podcasting, and uploading photos, videos, and information across the globe, but unless you know where to look, it can be difficult to find respected and credible voices. Our international team of volunteer authors and part-time editors are active participants in the blogospheres they write about on Global Voices. Global Voices is incorporated in the Netherlands as Stichting Global Voices, a nonprofit foundation. We do not have an office, but work as a virtual community across multiple time zones, meeting in person only when the opportunity arises (usually during our Summits). We rely on grants, sponsorships, editorial commissions, and donations to cover our costs. Our Projects Global Voices is translated into more than 30 languages by volunteer translators, who have formed the Lingua project. Additionally, Global Voices has an Advocacy website and network to help people speak out online in places where their voices are censored. We also have an outreach project called Rising Voices to help marginalized communities use citizen media to be heard, with an emphasis on the developing world. Read more about our projects. Our History Global Voices was founded in 2005 by former CNN Beijing and Tokyo Bureau Chief, Rebecca MacKinnon and technologist and Africa expert, Ethan Zuckerman while they were both fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The idea for the project grew out of an internat
  • Charles van der Haegen on 26 Jun 11
     
    Sourcing uncomfortable knowledge, buried under the avalange of info overload, or repressed from appearing??? To be verified
Charles van der Haegen

Easa Saarinen Raimo Hamalainen Systems Intelligence Research Group - 0 views

www.systemsintelligence.tkk.fi

system intelligence saarinen hamalainen competence orgaization management learning education relationships

shared by Charles van der Haegen on 25 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Charles van der Haegen on 25 Jun 11
     
    Systems Intelligence (SI) is a new concept introduced in 2002 by the principal investigators. The research group develops the conceptual basis of this competence and studies its different forms and manifestations in personal and organizational contexts. We seek to distribute knowledge and stimulate interest in Systems Intelligence in different fields including management practices, learning organizations, education, human relationships, etc. By Systems Intelligence we mean intelligent behaviour in the context of complex systems involving interaction and feedback. A subject acting with systems intelligence engages successfully and productively with the holistic feedback mechanisms of her environment. She perceives herself as part of the whole, the influence of the whole upon herself as well as her own influence upon the whole. Observing her own interdependency with the feedback-intensive environment, she is able to act intelligently.
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