Broadband and Me

Perfect Path: Podcastcon UK

Lloyd provides excellent coverage of the podcasting conference in London. Fascinating insight into a variety of different factors within the podcast scene.

Personally found the overview of Milverton Wallace’s talk very informative. I have been trying to encourage my wife to use this with her infant class. Must point her at this.

As an ex-teacher it always fascinates me how people learn and perhaps more importantly how people learn outside of conventional approaches. This type of approach would have been excellent for the type of Open and felxible learning that I wished to advocate, particularly if you could mix and match topics that interest you whilst still gaining a good coverage of curriculum areas.

feedback loop does seem to be an issue but I am sure it could be overcome.I know I always learn more explaining something to other people - firstly becuase it clarifies it for me and secondly because they always have a different perspective and ask the questions I’ve missed - fascinating to do this via podcasts or comments around a lecture. An informal seminar. Brilliant.

Think I should try this…

BBC NEWS | Education | Overhaul for religious teaching

The QCA (a UK government agency which supports the English National Curriculum) has developed a new national framework for Religious Education. A key component is of course Church of England (protestant) beliefs whilst other religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Sikhism are covered. Interestingly and a point of contention for a number of groups are that atheism (and agnosticism and Humanism) are not covered at all and worse than that not mentioned.

I’ll admit to some bias here in that I tend to lean towards atheism, however I also believe children should be given the opportunity to make up their own mind on certain things. I also belive education is about open minds and presenting options and alternatives.

I actually believe that moral or perhaps better put belief education is extremely important but why this should be done without recourse to wider views is beyond me.

This isn’t a compulsory part of the National Curriculum and local areas will undoubtably put otgehter their own gudiance however I think it is quite irresponsible to ignore these views.

The article has given me a bit of education too. I didn’t realise that there was such a group as the National Secular Society or what Humanism actually meant.

And to quote from a IPPR report (also on the BBC)

Senior research fellow Ben Rogers said: “Now that only seven per cent of Britons attend a weekly religious service, many are arguing for the abolition of RE as a compulsory subject - we disagree.

“RE has an important place in the curriculum - but only if it’s brought up to date.”

‘Bias’

It was important people learned to converse with those of different faiths and think critically about their own, they said.

The institute said: “Dropping religion from the syllabus, or banning the expression of religious beliefs from schools, as in France, won’t make religious strife go away - if anything it will exacerbate it.

“Religious education can play an important part in combating prejudices.”

But too often it had “a pro-religious and in some cases anti-science bias”.

BBC NEWS | Health | Brain scans ‘reveal baby thoughts’

Brain scans ‘reveal baby thoughts’

Babies were fitted with nets of sensors
A burst of brain activity recorded by scientists could offer clues to a baby’s level of understanding of the world around it.
The researchers involved, from Birkbeck College, and University College London, believe their finding could begin to settle a controversial argument on baby brain development.
When an object is shown to six-month-old babies, then hidden, they often behave as if it is no longer present.
It appears to be “out of sight, out of mind”, as far as their level of understanding is concerned.
But scientists still suspect the baby, to some extent, does understand the object is still around, just hidden, even if it shows no physical signs of awareness.

I remember doing a lot of this kind of stuff while studying for my PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education or a teacher training course). I think it was Piaget (et al) who went on about this. I was never quite sure as to the relevance for when I was teaching 18 year olds - A level Politics. Probably because his thinking is aimed more at how younger children develop and while I understand the need for children (and adults) to own a solution - reinventing a theory every time doesn’t ring true for me.

I was always more interested or convinced by Vygotsky -

Zone of proximal development is the difference between the child’s capacity to solve problems on his own, and his capacity to solve them with assistance. In other words, the actual developmental level refers to all the functions and activities that a child can perform on his own, independently without the help of anyone else. On the other hand, the zone of proximal development includes all the functions and activities that a child or a learner can perform only with the assistance of someone else. The person in this scaffolding process, providing non-intrusive intervention, could be an adult (parent, teacher, caretaker, language instructor) or another peer who has already mastered that particular function.

The important point is that:

… the idea that human learning presupposes a specific social nature and is part of a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them (Vygotsky, 1978).

We learn through a social context. We learn by going from what we already know to an area just beyond. We are supported by others, socially, to move into this space and develop our knowledge there.

If that is how Humans learn, and I believe it is, what implications does that have for machine learning. Should the kind of ideas that are espoused in Shelly’s post about RDF and the semantic web be viewed through this kind of thinking. Intuitively I think there is more here to explore.