Posted: February 14th, 2013 | Author: Laura Perovich | Filed under: Assignment 1 | No Comments »
Kamvar
–The measured thing becomes the important thing. But some things are very difficult to measure–the ones that are easy may not be truly important to our purpose, but yet as the metric they gain value and risk becoming the purpose. How to we tie people to the purpose behind the metric instead of the metric itself? Can we? Lots of metrics (or then we have no time for anything but measuring?) There can be fame/glory in “winning” the metrics, which makes them very tempting and short-term profitable to game. (e.g. standardized tests w/NCLB) Metrics as a way to create legitimacy (becomes self-reinforcing?).
–The idea of tool-centric activism resonated with my experience in international development and environmental health. Using education as a means for change was part of the goal in both cases. In international development, tools could be a huge help (e.g. functional blackboard to teach with) yet you also often saw an excess of tools that lacked people, or tools that were poorly delivered or designed for the circumstances. For example, un-staffed medical posts and schools left totally empty or drug shipments with dosing instructions in Italian. Also, even good tools need to gain some currency in society to be fully adopted and effective; this is non-trivial.
Engelbart
“Clinical psychology seems to provide clear evidence that a large proportion of a human’s everyday activity is significantly mediated or basically prompted by unconscious mental processes that, although “natura” in a functional sense, are not rational. The observable mechanisms of these processes (observable by another, trained person) includes masking of the irrationality of the human’s actions which are so affected, so that few of us will admit that our actions might be irrational, and most of us can construct satisfying rationales for any action that may be challenged.”
–It’s interesting to consider the ways that this fundamental irrationality can be leveraged in learning (or already is? classroom management techniques, motivation, emotional side to learning)
“After all, we spend great sums for disciplines aimed at understanding and harnessing nuclear power. Why not consider developing a discipline aimed at understanding and harnessing “neural power?” In the long run, the power of the human intellect is really much the more important of the two. “
Posted: February 14th, 2013 | Author: ttseng | Filed under: Assignment 1 | No Comments »
Augment Human Intellect
One aspect of Engelbart’s framework that surprised me was that the computers he describes require a great deal of artificial intelligence, and he does not suggest ways in which the computers can use human intelligence to supplement digital computation. For example, how can computers take advantage of what people are good at to offload some of its computation? How can computers serve as a vehicle for connecting people to each other (rather than to more computers)?
Also, I always find it strange when I read a paper from the HCI community that doesn’t build upon the hundreds of years of research in human psychology devoted to how people think; modern computers have only really been around for the past half-century, but people have been thinking about human intellect for centuries. It doesn’t make sense to develop a framework without acknowledging what people from other fields know about our own capabilities.
Mastery and Mimicry
Self-limiting tools and self-reinforcing tools
An ultimate goal in learning is that the student is able to solve problems on her own; this doesn’t necessarily mean that the learner can solve problems without any external aid but that the learner knows which resources to use and what questions to ask in order to solve a problem. Education should be designed to help learners develop to a point in which they are no longer dependent on the educators themselves.
Metrics
Assessment is a tricky question in education because most people are skeptical of the relevance and accuracy of numerical assessments for measuring “what matters.” But I think this concern often masks a critical component to assessment, which is to provide feedback to the learner. Rather than utilizing assessment as a means to segment and classify, how can assessment be used to provide valuable feedback to the learner that helps them develop strategies to improve themselves and their skills?
User-Centered Design
This is not learning specific, but I was surprised by the ending of Master and Mimicry, which is more critical of user-centered design than I would expect (I studied design at Stanford before coming to the Media Lab). While I agree that many people don’t know what they want, an essential role of the designer is discovering implicit needs through observation and ethnography. Merely asking users what they want is quite a superficial way to go about designing a solution and is not what I believe user-centered design is about. Even as designers discover their own vision, their vision is often derived from their own observations of the world and what they perceive to be a necessary shift in how we think about this world; fundamentally, the designer is his own user.
Posted: February 14th, 2013 | Author: Brandon Pousley | Filed under: Assignment 1 | No Comments »
Mastery and Mimicry
Mastery
It is always amazing to witness the inability of individuals to project accurately into the future. Although we have prior experience that enables us to see trends and patterns, we often underestimate future change. We also become accustomed to change quite quickly. We often fantasize about the promise of future technology, but often fail to realize the parts of that fantasy that become reality. Many point to the failed realization of previously lauded artificial intelligences. However, these same individuals fail to recognize the intelligent power of the devices we currently wield. And this power in the tools we wield increase the pace and complexity of the next generation of technologies, feeding into an ever increasing trend of innovation.
What Lies Upstream
What makes a tool powerful is very dependent upon its fit within a culture. In the age of participatory networks, enabled by internet technologies, the author points out that it is not so much the individual power of a single technology, but rather the potential power that tool can have when accessed by many users. In a strong community, a very simple tool can prove to have significantly more power than the most advanced tool that is only utilized by a select few. I think that this most resembles social networks we have today; where the tool itself is of relatively no value. However, the content and connections that people build upon the technology enable the tool to become truly useful.
Augmenting Human Intellect
My first initial thought to this reading is the stark difference between the computer as an individual’s tool to compute and a connective tool to collaborate and network with others. Written in 1962, I certainly understand the lack of discussion of networks, however it is interesting that when I read the title of the article, “Augmenting Human Intellect,” my notion was of the collective intellect of a community of users, which is clearly only attributed to the most recently discovered uses of modern technology.
I find the H-LAM/T system (despite being one of the clumsier acronyms in existence) to be a truly remarkable guide for developing technology concepts. I especially admire the emphasis on processes and sub-processes that pervade humanness. This hierarchy approach highlights the dependance of certain actions upon others and how design choices must be well informed by the end user and task in order to be most effective.
Similar to the other readings on biomimicry, Engelbart is careful to note that what we know as intelligence is very much rooted in natural processes and structures. In his framework, Engelbart seeks to build a superstructure that extends that structure upon which it is built. This allows the author to argue that artificial intelligence is real and occurring at the time of his writing.
Reading Recommendations
Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky
The Children’s Machine and Mindstorms by Seymour Papert
Confronting Challenges of Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins
Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
Chris Dede’s work on Immersive Environments and Augmented Reality
Posted: February 14th, 2013 | Author: jifei | Filed under: Project | No Comments »
Engelbart
1. H-LAM/T
The H-LAM/T described a system with which human could tackle with problems that emerged in everyday life. It acknowledged that problem-solving process is an interaction among human cognition, artifact, language and methodology. Human augmenting can be, therefore achieved by improving artifact, language and methodology that we use.
2. Our current problem is that the artifact, language and methodology we use to interacting with digital world are so highly abstracted, that getting trained becomes problematic.
Kamvar:
1. Self-reinforcing versus self-limiting:
There is actually no self-limiting technology, only applications that limits the technology. The dating website is an application not a technology. Technology is always self-reinforced. The way to find a balance is to build meaningful applications that regulate the technology.
2. The gap between physical and digital tools:
Upstream tool is good, and we know that it’s better if we all have access to it. But how can we make them easy to learn? Any tool requires a process of learning. When we learn about using pencil, we don’t have to use our brain to calculate the angle and the force to write down a word. When it comes to digital tools, the all the learning load goes to our brain. Digital tools are by nature abstract. We could use metaphor to represent them. However, if we want to use digital tool to build other digital one, we have to find a way to understand how it really works.
Posted: February 14th, 2013 | Author: champika | Filed under: Assignment 1 | No Comments »
Mastery and Mimicry
Some of the key ideas that stood out to me in this reading and that I think are the most important to keep in mind when designing technologies for learning are:
- The fact that technology has the power to shape how we live our lives and so we should be very thoughtful about the broader impact of our designs. In ‘Self-Limitation: Mastery’, he talks about how the invention of the mechanical clock has had a pervasive impact on society and how our perceptions of it have changed as a result.
- Look for upstream tools that are powerful and work to make them more accessible. I think this should be a core goal of technologies for learning – making learning more accessible, tactile, and relevant for the individual and giving the learner more agency.
- Cyclicality – Open Loops. “The bike strengthens the rider to do other things than just peddle a bike”. I think a truly powerful tool for learning supports learners in a similar way.
- Our job as builders is to create the world as it could be.
Augmenting Human Intellect
A concept that resonated with me in the Engelbart reading is this idea that a ‘direct new innovation in one particular capability can have far reaching effects throughout the rest of your capability hierarchy’. An example he uses is the impact on human thought and creativity that the ability to easily, quickly and flexibly edit a piece of writing has. As we think about designing tools that ‘augment’ our intellect I think the most elegant designs will consider and design for these ‘far reaching effects’.
Posted: February 11th, 2013 | Author: Anirudh | Filed under: Project | No Comments »
this is a test
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