14 OCT 2023 by ideonexus
Academia Progresses "One Funeral at a Time"
Pick up any business magazine or how-to management book, and you’ll run into words like “nimble” and “move fast” on virtually every page. The ability to change direction and shift priorities in reaction to consumer preferences or competitor actions often makes a decisive difference in marketplace success. One can’t think of an enterprise less “nimble” than the modern American university.
Or a practice better designed to limit flexibility than tenure, which Columbia University...23 SEP 2023 by ideonexus
Nothing is Harder to do Than Nothing
Nothing is harder to do than nothing. In a world where our value is determined by our productivity, many of us find our every last minute captured, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily. We submit our free time to numerical evaluation, interact with algorithmic versions of each other, and build and maintain personal brands. For some, there may be a kind of engineer’s satisfaction in the streamlining and networking of our entire lived experience....Folksonomies: cyberpunk attention economy
Folksonomies: cyberpunk attention economy
17 OCT 2021 by ideonexus
Learned VS Common Culture
In many private schools and academies, we find several things taught now which were never made the subjects of systematical instruction in former times; and in those of our universities in which it is the interest of the tutors to make their lectures of real use to their pupils, and where lectures are not mere matters of form, the professors find the necessity of delivering themselves in English. And the evident propriety of the thing must necessarily make this practice more general, notwiths...Folksonomies: education
Folksonomies: education
03 MAR 2021 by ideonexus
A 2030 Vision for Gaming Culture
Young gamers are having fun, learning from each other, and learning to
be good citizens of gaming and online communities. They are able to
transfer some of their skills and citizenship sensibility to other aspects
of their lives.
They are connecting and mentoring each other in online gaming spaces
that are safe, mixed age, and centered on creation, exploration, inquiry,
and friendly competition.
Youth and their parents have a deeper understanding of digital
citizenship, supported and taught...03 MAR 2021 by ideonexus
Roots of Toxic Online Game Culture
Streamers behave badly as a way to increase their views and likes, which in turn maximizes their profits and those of their company sponsors.
Game companies cannot fully control who plays their games, despite Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings.
Younger players play mature games and learn through their interactions with older and often toxic audiences.
Cultural stigmatization of gaming leads to a lack of educator involvement in supporting prosocial and educational gaming sp...02 MAR 2021 by ideonexus
Top-Down VS Bottom-Up Approaches to Design in Software
One of the hallmarks of the Athena project was that faculty were asked to build their own educational software. Most worked with a set of assumptions about learning: students begin by learning fundamental concepts; formal, mathematical representation is always the best approach; students would use simulations the way designers intended. As Athena unfolded, none of these assumptions proved true. To begin with, students approached simulation with a wide range of personal intellectual styles. ...Folksonomies: abstraction simulation
Folksonomies: abstraction simulation
27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Fluid Intelligence has Made the Most Gains
So which kinds of intellectual performance have been pushed upward by the better environments of recent decades? Surprisingly, the steepest gains have not been found in the concrete skills that are directly taught in school, such as general knowledge, arithmetic, and vocabulary. They have been found in the abstract, fluid kinds of intelligence, the ones tapped by similarity questions (What do an hour and a year have in common?), analogies (BIRD is to EGG as TREE is to what?), and visual m...Folksonomies: intelligence iq
Folksonomies: intelligence iq
27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
The Progressive Effects of Education
Homo sapiens, knowing man, is the species that uses information to resist the rot of entropy and the burdens of evolution. Humans everywhere acquire knowledge about their landscape, its flora and fauna, the tools and weapons that can subdue them, and the networks and norms that entangle them with kin, allies, and enemies. They accumulate and share that knowledge with the use of language, gesture, and face-to-face tutelage.
[...]
The mind-altering effects of education extend to every spher...16 APR 2018 by ideonexus
Teens Need a Psychological Moratorium
She remembered psychologist Erik Erickson's exhortation about teenagers: they need a "psychosocial moratorium," he wrote, an environment and a stretch of time in which they can explore different aspects of their personality and try on a series of identities without fear of consequence. In a way, that was what school was supposed to offer, but it didn't always do so with much success. She realized that this was exactly what virtual worlds offered all the time, to anyone with a computer and an ...A time when they can find their identity.
16 APR 2018 by ideonexus
A Student's Skill-Level Should be Private
A student's skill level should be a private matter, between him and the teacher, and students who are behind should be able to work comfortably, without embarrassment. "They know they should know more. They know they should not be working on tens and ones when their friends are doing division and fractions and all that, and there's no shame in working on it with the computer." Actually, the same principle applies to kids who are off-the-charts advanced: if they just want to relax and do high-...Folksonomies: education personalization
Folksonomies: education personalization