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 ... 1 
notes
notesA time when they can find their identity.
16 APR 2018 by ideonexus
Pianos Make Music Accessible Like Computers Make Math Acc...
Though it has become a naturalized part of music-making since the first one was built in 1710, the pianoforte (its name means "soft-loud") was a technical marvel for its time, a machine that changed music in ways that are hard to imagine. Computer pioneer Alan Kay once observed that any technological advance is "technology only for people who are born before it was invented,' and in the case of the piano, this applies to no one alive today. Seymour Papert, the MIT researcher, concluded, "That...
1 16 APR 2018 by ideonexus
Games Allow for Low-Cost Failure
What Prensky and Gee had realized early on was that game designers had lowered the cost of failure so players would take risks. They'd figured out that well-designed problem solving that gives players a second chance and a way to share their successes is almost irresistibly attractive. In just a few years, game designers had discovered the principles of deep and pleasurable learning that it had taken educators more than a century to apply in schools. Game studios had hit upon "profoundly good... 1 notes
notes01 JAN 2017 by ideonexus
The secret to succeeding with computers is to lutz with t...
The secret to succeeding with computers is to lutz with them. BART EISENBERG: Push buttons, move text, insert lines, hit control characters, add dot commands, bring up menus, invoke commands and invoke more of them. Try it backwards, try it sideways, try it upside down. The method, lf you can call it that, is vaguely scientific-in that you perform some action and observe the results. A playful attitude will get you further with these machines than weeks of serious endeavor. Folksonomies: learning experimentation
Folksonomies: learning experimentation
1 notes
notes24 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Computer Simulations Allow for Mistakes
. . in real life mistakes are likely to be irrevocable. Computer simulation, however, makes it economically practical to make mistakes on purpose. If you are astute, therefore, you can leam much more than they cost. Further¬ more, if you are at all discreet, no one but you need ever know you made a mistake. 1 notes
notesWhere mistakes in the real world don't allow do-overs.
02 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Knowledge Requires Interaction with the Material World
Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment.
Where Do Correct Ideas Come from? (May 1963), 1st pocket ed., p. 1.
It is man's social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas... 1 notes
notesWe have no other way of knowing things.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
We All Experiment
Experimentation is something done by everyone all the time. Babies experiment with what might be good to put in their mouths. Toddlers experiment with various behaviors to see what they can get away with. Teenagers experiment with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But because people don’t really see these things as experiments or as ways of collecting evidence in support or refutation of hypotheses, they don’t learn to think about experimentation as something they do constantly and thus need...
1 Roger Schank describes a world where we are all collecting evidence to test various hypotheses.
08 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
The Experiment that Disproved Astrology
A story told by this friend, Firminus, shook the young Augustine from his pagan faith. Firminus’ father, an earnest experimenter in astrology, always noted the positions of the stars and even “took care with the most exact diligence to know the birth of his very puppies.” Firminus’ father learned that one of his women-servants was to be delivered of a child at about the same time that Firminus’ mother was expecting. “Both were delivered at the same instant; so that both were const... 1 notes
notesTwo children born at the same time, one a master, the other a slave.
31 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
How Intuition Messed Up the Laws of Motion
A most fundamental problem, for thousands of years
wholly obscured by its complications, is that of motion.
All those motions we observe in nature that of a
stone thrown into the air, a ship sailing the sea, a cart
pushed along the street are in reality very intricate.
To understand these phenomena it is wise to begin
with the simplest possible cases, and proceed gradually
to the more complicated ones. Consider a body at rest,
where there is no motion at all. To change the position
o... 1 notes
notesAnd it took a Newton to determine what was really going on.
08 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Rules of Magic Don't Make Any Sense
Some children would have waited until after their first trip to Diagon Alley.
"Bag of element 79," Harry said, and withdrew his hand, empty, from the mokeskin pouch.
Most children would have at least waited to get their wands first.
"Bag of okane," said Harry. The heavy bag of gold popped up into his hand.
Harry withdrew the bag, then plunged it again into the mokeskin pouch. He took out his hand, put it back in, and said, "Bag of tokens of economic exchange." That time his hand came ou... 1 notes
notesRational Potter experiments with a magical bag that will give him whatever he asks for and doesn't understand why it can understand some requests but not others.
