17 AUG 2016 by ideonexus
Stanford d.school Design Thinking Process
Step 1: Empathy = Really get to know your user
Use human-centered design process, which puts the user squarely at the center of the process. When designing, you start with identifying who you want to design for (your user) and really get to know them.
3 ways to get to know our user:
Observation (what we observe them doing, in the environment we want to design for as well as in other similar and different environments, so we really get to know how they live and work, what they value, etc., ...Folksonomies: education technology
Folksonomies: education technology
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notes29 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Propagating Genes VS Memes
I have been a bit negative about memes, but they have their cheerful side
as well. When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes
and memes. We were built as gene machines, created to pass on our
genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your
child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you, perhaps in
facial features, in a talent for music, in the colour of her hair. But as
each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved. ... 1 notes
notesOur genes will only last in recognizable form for three generations or so, being halved with each generation; our memes, however, have the potential to live far beyond our lifetimes and have greater influence.
24 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Make Mistakes
For evolution, which knows nothing, the steps into novelty are blindly taken by mutations, which are random copying “errors” in DNA. Most of these typographical errors are of no consequence, since nothing reads them! They are as inconsequential as the rough drafts you didn’t, or don’t, hand in to the teacher for grading. The DNA of a species is rather like a recipe for building a new body, and most of the DNA is never actually consulted in the building process. (It is often called “... 1 notes
notesEvolution makes them all the time, and look what it has produced. Appreciate your mistakes, view them as works of art.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Criticism is Doing You a Favor
[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.Folksonomies: peer review criticism
Folksonomies: peer review criticism
1 notes
notesValid criticism frees you of the chains of a bad idea.
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Plesiosaurs Sucked
There were no real sea serpents in the Mesozoic Era, but the plesiosaurs were the next thing to it. The plesiosaurs were reptiles who had gone back to the water because it seemed like a good idea at the time. As they knew little or nothing about swimming, they rowed themselves around in the water with their four paddles, instead of using their tails for propulsion like the brighter marine animals. (Such as the ichthyosaurs, who used their paddles for balancing and steering. The plesiosaurs di...Folksonomies: adaptation
Folksonomies: adaptation
1 notes
notesWill Cuppy convincingly argues that this reptile was incredibly poorly adapted to life in the ocean.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Immune System Reaction and Overreaction
The body has a very ingenious and usually effective system of natural defence against parasites, called the immune system. The immune system is so complicated that it would take a whole book to explain it. Briefly, when it senses a dangerous parasite the body is mobilized to produce special cells, which are carried by the blood into battle like a kind of army, tailor-made to attack the particular parasites concerned. Usually the immune system wins, and the person recovers. After that, the imm...Folksonomies: immune system allergies
Folksonomies: immune system allergies
1 notes
notesIt is a delicate balance, as when a mother is carrying a baby and her immune system must not be allowed to attack it, or when people get hay fever or allergies.
12 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
What is a "Law of Nature"?
Our modern understanding of the term "law of nature" is an issue philosophers argue at length, and it is a more subde question than one may at first think. For example, the philosopher John W. Carroll compared the statement "All gold spheres are less than a mile in diameter" to a statement like "All uranium-23 spheres are less than a mile in diameter." Our observations of the world tell us that there are no gold spheres larger than a mile wide, and we can be pretty confident there never will ... 1 notes
notesMany laws of nature are conclusions drawn from the larger "interconnected system of laws."
07 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Advice for Communicating with Trolls Properly
Some Advice for Communicating with Trolls Properly
Relax: don't worry if you don't get everything exactly right.
Communicate clearly: write in the best spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalisation, idiomatic speech, etc. that you can, no matter how bad the troll's messages were in this respect.
It may be a good idea to avoid too high or complicated words, because many foreign speakers of English often have poor English vocabulary.
Don't criticise what he says directly or the way he...
1 Things to keep in mind and practice when arguing with Trolls.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Unverified Things We Believe
But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to cheek on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you'll see the reading scores keep going down--or hardly going up in spite of the fact that we c...Folksonomies: science pseudo-science
Folksonomies: science pseudo-science
1 notes
notesThere are things we believe, such as pedagogical theories, that are far more damaging than new age ideas.
