Fortnightly Mailing

What is vision for, and how does it work? Aaron Sloman

What is vision for, and how does it work? Some considerations for philosophy of perception [600 kB PDF] is a 12/2/2012 talk by Aaron Sloman from the School of Computer Science, at the University of Birmingham. Unusually for a "slide-based" presentation, you get much more than the gist of the talk from the slides, which read more or less as the script for the talk itself. I'd have really liked to have been at the talk, which tackles amongst many other things "the representational problems arising from complexities in the perception of processes". [Sloman has a terrific, uncompromising web-site.]

Electronics and the Dim Future of the University

John Naughton's Welcome to the desktop degree... today pointed to Electronics and the Dim Future of the University by Eli Noam, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science (Vol. 270, pp 247-249, October 13, 1995), in which Noam (who has been ploughing a deep furrow at Columbia University for over 30 years as a professor of economics and finance) provides a brief, forceful, and exceptionally far-sighted analysis of why the Internet, computing, and the exponential growth in the production of scientific and other knowledge, will change universities.

The article deserves to be read in full.

To whet your appetite here are its concluding three paragraphs.

The trouble with university: exclusivity, grades, and lectures

Prompted by the launch of Udacity [see also Sebastian Thrun's explanation], Matt Welsh, who used to teach at Harvard and now works for Google, writes what he describes as a "little rant" - 1500 words - that ponders "the failings of the conventional higher education model".  He focuses three main failures of HE - Exclusivity; Grades; and Lectures. But he also includes some caveats, concluding "I'm not sure there can ever be an online replacement for The College Experience writ large". Welsh's piece is the stronger for the large number of often thoughtful comments that follow it.

Interviews about "remote learning" with Dan Cardinali, Paul Mitiguy, and Peter Norvig

Here are links to three November 2011 "canteen" interviews (audio and, in two cases helpful text transcripts) with Peter Norvig (Director of Research at Google), Dan Cardinali (President of Communities in Schools) and Paul Mitiguy (Senior Consulting Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University). The interviews form part of the resources of an undergraduate project by Deniz Kahramaner, Jon Rodriguez and Ben Kallman about "the challenges and ethical implications of implementing large-scale distance education platforms". 

The interview with Peter Norvig draws on his contemporaneous experience with the Stanford/KnowLabs Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course [November 2011 article in ALT News Online; my weekly reports from the course] and contains several perceptive and diverse insights, ranging over:

• course design (and the advantages of combining the deadline driven "discipline" of face-to-face learning with the "anytime anyplace" nature of asynchronous learning);
• the advantages (from a learner's point of view) of video, and challenges (from a course design point of view) of using it;
• the need for design/production environments for teachers and for experimentation/exploration environments for learners;
• the value, from a learning point of view, of ambiguity in presentations and open-endedness in questions;
• recruitment (and a possible business model for providers of free remote education);
• the possible motivations for teachers to contribute to the production of free courses;
• the need for collegiality and collaboration between the start-ups that are getting involved in online education.

Lessons learned from using Khan Academy content in a blended learning pilot

Final sentence added 3/1/2012.

In this December 2011 report [23 page PDF] Brian Greenberg, Leonard Medlock and Darri Stephens report on the "performance and engagement of low‐performing high school algebra students receiving a mix of traditional teacher-­led instruction and self‐guided instruction through the Khan Academy website".

The authors seek to compare the performance of two groups of "summer school" learners, one group taught traditionally and one group teacher-supported in largely individual use of Khan Academy content (thus "blended learning"). Both groups made substantial progress (as judged by the increase in percentage questions answered correctly on the MDTP Algebra II Readiness Exam).

The Khan Academy group is reported - with plenty of caveats, and with the rather disconcerting bar chart above - to have made very slightly more progress.

Along the way, the authors make interesting and useful observations about:

• classroom management under a "blended learning" model;
• the use of Google Chromebooks (cheapish quick-to-boot laptops that require a Wi-Fi connection to function fully) in a classroom context;
• how teachers in a blended learning environment can use data about learner performance to inform how, when, and with which learners to intervene;
• how having a plethora of systems in use at the same time or in the same school would prove problematic from a data-management point of view:

"One obvious challenge is that currently each online course or software uses its own data reporting system. For isolated pilots such as ours, these kinds of “walled gardens” can work fine. The teacher simply needs to learn how Khan Academy reports data. However, as teachers start using multiple products in a class or as schools blend technology into multiple courses, it becomes increasingly hard to make sense of all the data."

A striking paragraph in the report - which I can personally relate to having recently finished a course based on very short (40 second to 300 second) videos - concerns the value of Khan Academy videos:

"A final interesting perspective on Khan involves the value of the site’s videos. Most people are drawn to Khan based on its massive video library and Sal’s own charming and engaging teaching style. Like many, we assumed the videos would be the predominant learning mechanism for students tackling new material. In fact, the students rarely watched the videos. This result is consistent with some of the observations in the Los Altos pilot. The students greatly preferred working through the problem sets to watching the videos. Students turned to their peers, the hint, and the classroom teacher much more often than they did the linked Khan video. One possible reason is that the videos are aligned to the broader concept, but do not link directly to the problem students are struggling with. A second hypothesis is that the videos may be too long at eight to ten minutes. If students have 60‐90 minutes to work through multiple concepts in a class period, an investment of ten minutes for a single video feels like a lot. The badges and stars within Khan may also be a disincentive, as there is no immediate reward for watching videos as there is when completing streaks. Lastly, we wonder how many of us really enjoy watching instructional videos for extended periods of time. We are left curious about whether Khan’s videos need to be even more modular and shorter in duration and also about the value of video based instruction."

But overall, as Al Essa and Stephen Downes have indicated a somewhat frustrating and inconclusive study.

Food for thought. Video recording of Q&A session between Sal Khan, Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun

There is plenty of food for thought and a great deal to identify with - from a very diverse set of angles - in yesterday's 45 minute "Google+ Hangout" discussion between Sal Khan, Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun. Examples include:

• the authenticity and hence superiority of unscripted, tentative explanations, with "low" production values;
• how lectures empower lecturers not students;
• data analysis as an "underpinning process" for real personalisation;
• why their is such a mismatch between the value that a university thinks its courses provide what students think they provide;
• the challenge of combining individual study with group interaction.

 

ALT-C 2011 keynote and invited speaker videos

Here are the playlists for videos of keynote and invited speaker sessions from the 2011, 2010, and 2009 Association for Learning Technology conferences. Below is a selection from the 2011 conference. Hat tip to Darren Moon and Danny Blandy for the snazzy ALT-branded opening and closing "indents". At the time of writing, less than five days after publication, John Naughton's talk had been viewed over 7,000 times . [Disclosure: I work half time for ALT.]

1 2
1 - "The educational and social impacts of Plan Ceibal -- a new approach to the use of technology in education" by Miguel Brechner
2 - "The elusive technological future" by John Naughton

3 4
3 - "I Have a Blind Student in My Maths/Science Class, Should I panic? How to promote inclusion for blind students" by Dónal Fitzpatrick
4 - "On being public...how social media reshapes professional identity" by Anne-Marie Cunningham

ALT News Online article about the Stanford online AI course

(Other posts tagged ai-course.)

Here is a link to an article I wrote about the Stanford course - What Can We Learn From Stanford University’s Free Online Computer Science Courses? - that was included in the November issue of ALT News Online. [Disclosure - I work half time for ALT.]

Report from the Norvig/Thrun/Stanford/Know Labs Artificial Intelligence course

(Other posts tagged ai-course.)

I've written previously about the free "Stanford" Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course, on which I am enrolled along with over 100,000 others from nearly 200 countries.

Yesterday evening I worked through the introduction to the course.

Here is a key point report.

1. There have been the usual start-up hiccups [snapshot at 08.00 UK time 10/10/2011) about which I am not complaining.

2. The content consists of 1-6 minute "Khan-style" videos of diagrams being written and talked about by Peter Norvig or Sebastian Thrun. And there has been some clever/wise truncation in the videos so that they run at the speed of the presenter's voice rather than taking the time it took to write the diagrams.

Many lessons to be learned from Finland's National Plan for Educational use of ICT

Finland's school system is held up in the UK as a system to emulate, and it is often portrayed - wrongly - as one that works without much central intervention.

This well thought out, costed, comprehensive, thoroughly referenced, and just plain sensible five year National Plan [1.15 MB PDF] was over 2 years in the making, and looks like it has drawn upon a wide enough range of interests and expertises to be taken seriously.

The plan summarises, in simple language (correction - the English is simple enough to make one believe the Finnish will have been extremely clear accessible) eight areas for action, with cost estimates for each between 2011 and 2015.

1. National objectives and systemic change
2. Learners’ future skills
3. Pedagogical models and practices
4. E-learning materials and applications
5. School infrastructure, learning facilities, purchases and support services
6. Teacher identity, teacher training and pedagogical expertise
7. Operational culture and leadership at school
8. Business and network co-operation

I hope it is not too late in the English Department for Education's rethinking of the National Curriculum, for the wisdom in the parts of the this Finnish document that relate to the schools curriculum to be drawn upon.