Portable Learner

A Markdown phrase file for PhraseExpress

2011-11-30T00:00:00-05:00

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Markdown phrase file for PhraseExpress v1.0 (1.75 KB) — November 30, 2011

Plain text bliss

There is a notion among those in pursuit of techno-bliss that almost anything you need to do, you can do in a plain text file. That is, in a file that contains only text without formating, and will open in Notepad on your PC and TextEdit on your Mac. The argument is that storing resources as plain text makes them easier to maintain, increases their longevity, and is so flexible that you can share the information with anyone on any device.

I love plain text for ex nihilo composing, especially since discovering John Gruber’s Markdown, which lets you add structure to plain text with headings, lists and images. Markdown syntax is (mostly) so simple that it feels like you already know it (especially if you write emails). Extend this with Fletcher Penny’s MultiMarkdown that offers a syntax for creating footnotes, and you are approaching true plain text bliss. Open and save these documents into Word or LibreOffice Writer to make them feel familiar to your colleagues, or parse them with Rails/Sinatra/other web platforms to create something entirely new. The mind just tingles with the possibilities.

Another indispensable composition tool is PhraseExpress, a text expansion tool for Windows that lets me store phrases and paragraphs of frequently-used text that can be evoked with just a few keyboard strokes. I won’t spend time describing how to use PhraseExpress, and simply point you to the excellent series of tutorials by the PhraseExpress team.

My current routine, at least for digital projects, involves first committing free-flowing streams of plain text to a text document, and then, revisiting, to analyze, shape and add structure with Markdown syntax. My routine works best when I don’t have to stop the creative outpouring to think about the footnote syntax. To help, I created a collection of Markdown syntax snippets for PhraseExpress that makes markup even less obtrusive.

Markdown phrase file

The Markdown phrase file is a snippet library for PhraseExpress that makes creating Markdown-formatted text that much easier. While PhraseExpress is running, you can access the snippets in any application (I use Notepad) through the PhraseExpress icon in the taskbar, autotext shortcuts or a hotkey. PhraseExpress will automatically expand the shortcut into the full snippet.

The phrase file has the following snippets:

Autotext	Hotkey	Snippet
mdb	Alt-Win-b	Bold
mdi	Alt-Win-i	Italics
mdo	Alt-Win-o	Ordered list
mdu	Alt-Win-u	Unordered list
mdl	Alt-Win-l	Inline link
mdw	Alt-Win-w	Wikipedia link
mdr	Alt-Win-r	Reference link
mdg	Alt-Win-g	Reference image
mdf	no hotkey	Footnote
md1	Alt-Win-1	H1 (also H2, H3, H4, H5, H6)
mdp	Alt-Win-p	Wrap parenthesis
mds	Alt-Win-s	Wrap square brackets

Most of these snippets work best when text is selected; use the hotkeys to format the text. If you have already copied text to the clipboard, or you are inserting a list or footnotes (in other words, when no text is selected but a text field is focused), use the autotext to invoke the snippet.

The Snippets

Bold/Italics: These snippets wrap selected text in Markdown emphasis syntax (_ for italics and __ for bold).

Ordered/Unordered list: These insert an ordered or bulleted list of four items with the correct indentation and place the cursor at the first point in the list.

Inline link: This wraps selected text with inline syntax, creating a shell (([link text](URL title="link text")) with the cursor placed in the parenthesis pair into which you past a URL. Title attributes are automatically created from the selected text.

Wikipedia link: This takes the selected text and runs a search for it using Wikipedia. You can insert the link with inline link syntax. This works well when you have unique words or phrases and want to link to wikipedia, of course. This snippet is still a little buggy.

Reference link/Reference image: This wraps selected text in reference-style syntax ([link text][ID]), placing the reference link ([ID]: URL "title") just below the text. Title attributes are automatically generated from the selected text. You will be asked to input a reference ID:

Footnote: This inserts a footnote wherever you have placed the cursor [^ID], and places the footnote link ([ID]: ) just below. As with other reference-style syntax, you will be asked to input a reference ID. You will also be asked to add the footnote text:

Headings: These snippets wrap the selected text in the Markdown heading syntax (##Text for H2 level headers for example).

Wrap Parentesis/square brackets: These simply wrap the selected text in square brackets or parentesis, which comes in handy more often than you think.

Installation, requirements and customization

The Markdown phrase file requires PhraseExpress v8. To add the phrase file to the PhraseExpress library, open the PhraseExpress settings and drag the file in the Phrases and Folders window. For more information, see the PhraseExpress online manual. To change any autotext and hotkeys, select a snippet and edit the autotext and hotkey fields. PhraseExpress will warn you if the combination is unavailable (that is, being used by another application or existing system shortcut). Click the image for a larger version.

Vannevar Bush's Associative Trails

2011-11-24T00:00:00-05:00

Attention conservation notice: Some 1700 words revisiting an essay originally published in 1945, consisting mostly of quotations lifted from the essay, which itself is available on-line.

In 1945, near the end of the Second World War, the Director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, Vannevar Bush, urged post-war scientists to make use of the vast amount of research that had gone into the war effort. His visionary essay, ‘As We May Think,’ appeared both in Atlantic Monthly and with illustrations in Life magazine, has inspired countless digital-age luminaries, and even “contained a germ for what would be the Internet” (Zachary 1997). Certainly one of the more intriguing images in the essay is the ‘memex’ machine, which Bush describes this way:

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, ‘memex’ will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.

There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him (Bush 1945).

Of particular interest is Bush’s description of how the memex might be used by a learner. First, he introduces the notion of linking documents or ideas together:

This associative indexing is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.

When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined….

Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails (Bush 1945).

This is a stunning foreshadow of hyperlinked documents today. Bush then gives an example of how associative indexing would work in a real learning project:

The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him (Bush 1945).

Bush even suggests how a learner might collaborate with others by sharing his or her resources along with the linkages between them:

And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail (Bush 1945).

Yes, both learners seem to be male, and perhaps they are consumed by too idiosyncratic a learning project to be of interest to those who do not share a passion for the Turkish bow. Still, Bush’s 1945 arresting image of a learning project involving various resources, linked through permanent associative trails, and subsequently shared with others, exquisitely captures many features of on-line learning today.

Bush even recognizes potential contributions a learner may make to those who follow, viewing technology as a democratizing force.¹ He proposes a scenario in which the associative trails blazed by some become a starting point for new explorations for others:

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client’s interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient’s reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected (Bush 1945).

Acknowledgement: Picture: Drawing of Bush’s theoretical Memex machine, Life November 19, 1945. KerryR.net. Reproduced on the understanding that it is in the public domain.

I happen to be reading Orwell’s ‘1984’ originally published in 1949. Bush’s democratizing view stands in sharp contrast to the Orwellian view of technology as a means control to enslave humans.
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Women and the telephone

2010-03-23T00:00:00-04:00

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. For this year’s blogging festivities, I want to highlight the contributions of the late-Victorian women who changed how we use the telephone today. In her book, Hello Central? Gender, Technology, and Culture in the Formation of Telephone Systems, Michèle Martin examines the development of the telephone system in central Canada from its invention to the system’s automation (1876 to 1920) with a feminist perspective that new technologies tend to be closely linked to prevailing power structures, and that this influences their diffusion and utilization. Martin claims that women profoundly influenced the telephone’s ultimate uses, both in their roles as telephone operators and as telephone users. It’s a fascinating look into the unintended consequences of women’s use of a specific technology. She points out that if women had restricted their use of the telephone usage to the business-oriented imperatives of Bell Telephone, this technology that we take for granted today would not be as ubiquitous as it has become.

In 1880, Bell Telephone was a newly incorporated company that, in the next few decades, leveraged its strong corporate position with dubious business strategies in pursuit of swift domination of the urban and long-distance phone business in central Canada. Delving into Bell Canada’s archives, Martin argues that Bell’s marketing and financial strategies, its notion of telephone etiquette and usage, supported the male business elites exclusively. The phone was marketed as an expensive business tool, the connection between the businessman’s home and his office; it’s purpose, the accumulation of profit. The communication needs of the late-Victorian urban working-class and most rural residents were met with indifference and even veiled hostility. However, through women’s extensive, everyday use of the telephone to socialize with family and friends, Bell Telephone was eventually forced the to revise some of its plans:

Telephony for daily activities appeared in cities and towns towards the end of the 1890s. Very specific telephone practices were prescribed by the companies: the use of the telephone for shopping and making appointments during daytime, for personal conversations during the evening and for protection during the night (BCHC, Quebec Daily Telegram 1911). By the early 1900s, however, bourgeois and petty bourgeois women were already using the telephone extensively for social purposes, at all times of the day (BCHC, Saturday Evening Post 1907). Telephone activities became part of some women’s social practices in urban areas, not only changing the notion of “acceptable” uses developed by Bell Company, but also affecting the development of the system. Women’s extensive use of the telephone obliged Bell to take domestic development into account. Urban residential sectors began to look attractive to the company, and houses were later equipped with extensions or supplementary lines in order to allow both the husband’s business calls and the wife’s social calls. Most of these changes were due to practices unforseen by Bell’s management. The “social” aspect of telephone technology had not been anticipated by the early capitalist developers of the telephone system.

In rural areas, women saw the telephone as an antidote to their isolation. “Meeting on the line” was an important activity on party lines for women who wanted to stay connected to the community. It enhanced the perceived value of their residential phone.

Together such practices constituted a telephone culture. In the 1920s, Bell came to accept that social calls were a legitimate use of the phone. Still, the story serves as a reminder that as with the telephone, today’s technologies also have a range of alternative uses. The twitters and Facebooks are neither neutral instruments that can be used any which way, nor simply deterministic technologies. As Martin points out in Hello Central?, “technologies have a valence: a limited range of uses are possible, and conflicts between developers and consumers determine which use or uses will predominate” (p. 4). Ada Lovelace Day offers an opportunity to remember that some of those developers and consumers are women.

This post is part of Ada Lovelace Day 2010 international day of blogging. For more stories honouring woman in technology, visit the story collection.

Acknowledgement: Postcard, c. 1912, included in exhibition called Mechanical Brides: Women and Manchines from Home to Office, Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design. Via Annmarie Adams.

The Amateur Gourmet teaching remix

2009-01-18T00:00:00-05:00

If you are familiar with Adam Roberts’ website, then you know what to expect from his book of the same name, The Amateur Gourmet. It is a frothy concoction of food tips, mishaps, and recipes, mixed together with nerdy good humour. In the book, he follows the every day culinary pursuits of his food-challenged friends who, potential gourmets all, require inspiration, cajoling and outright manipulation to expand their food horizons.

Food is, it seems, a useful metaphor for learning.

For example, Adam doesn’t herd them all into a beige training room, seat them in front of a slide show to outline the five steps for acquiring the requisite culinary expertise, nor urge them to participate them to role play in a (simulated) five-course meal. Instead, he relies on real-life challenges posed by an encounters with plates of marinated olives, bushels of apricots at a farmers’ market, or sets of dull knives, or commitments to host a special dinner party, thereby offering opportunities that cultivate habits of fearless inquiry, of capacious mind and spirit. So, while you might expect a cook book, you will also see insights into alternative approaches to teaching and learning.

Making tomato sauce

Here is how I make it: Every six months or so I clear everyone out of the kitchen and start dicing: red onion, green peppers, celery, carrots, mushrooms. It is quite a production. Everything is added to a large dutch oven, along with a few cans of plum tomatoes, broth, tomato paste, and equal parts of dried thyme, dried oregano and dried parsley. I cook it on high, add a little wine, bring the concoction to a boil, and then reduce the heat to simmer and cook, partially covered and stirring occasionally for 3 to 4 hours until the sauce is thick and robust. Sound delicious? It is. I’ve prepared tomato sauce this way for years for appreciative appetites. I can do it mindlessly. I start with the same ingredients every time, irrespective of seasonal tomatoes or fresh herbs, without special regard to the preferences, age or minor health problems of those who may consume it (just eat around the green peppers), or how many there may be for dinner (in fact, my goal is volume), and clearly uninfluenced by the fact that I spent months traveling through Italy sampling the world’s finest sauces. Context does not matter; this is, after all, how I’ve made tomato sauce for years.

Here is how Adam Roberts makes tomato sauce:

Tomato sauce represents everything I like about cooking …. I like the infinite variation on a theme — if you simmer tomatoes in a pot for thirty minutes you’ll have a sauce. You can make that sauce with butter or olive oil or pork fat; you can make it with onions or garlic or shallots; you can make it with fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes; you can use fresh basil and thyme or dried basil and thyme or any combination thereof. In my cookbook collection alone there are at least thirty recipes for tomato sauce.

One of the most cherished myths in education is that in order to learn a skill, we must practice it to the point of doing it without thinking. We call this learning the basics, and it involves repetition until that skill becomes second nature. Context does not matter. Psychologist Ellen Langer in her work on mindful learning points out that a consequence is that true learning stops. We become so conditioned to seeing things a certain way, the right way, that we no longer challenge or question the process. Adam Roberts’ approach is based on the view that experts at anything become expert in part by varying those same basics. In his kitchen there is no end-point at which you’ve mastered the basics, there is only perpetual variation through mindful attention:

… making tomato sauce rewards attention to detail. The more you make it, the better you’ll get. The first time you might, say, add the garlic too soon and it may turn too brown; next time you’ll know to add it a little while after the onion. You’ll discover that squeezing the tomatoes submerged in their own liquid will prevent you from squirting yourself in the eye. You’ll know precisely when the sauce is done and how much salt to add.

If we learn the basics, but do not over learn them, Adam implies, we can vary them as we change or the situation changes. Yet, most of what we learn in school, at home, at work, and from books and other media, is given to us in an unconditional form. Teaching one set of basics for everyone seems to be the easier route, but the result is a little more disconcerting than mediocre tomato sauce. Much of what we know about the world, about other people, and about ourselves is usually processed in the same way. If this seems too dire, then let’s return to the Amateur Gourmet and a more palatable scale. How would you buy an apricot? Wait. Would you even buy an apricot without a recipe?

Part of what makes an accomplished cook more likely to choose the best apricots is that an accomplished cook doesn’t go with a preconceived idea of buying apricots. The accomplished cook goes to see what looks good and builds from there. If the apricots look good, then apricot tart or apricot should be on the menu…. When I go food shopping, I know what I need before I go, and I arrive at the store with a list that tells me what I need. I proceed to track it down and I usually do so in a hurry. This makes me a hunter. Great chefs, on the other hand, are most often gatherers. They don’t home in on a target — they let the target home in on them.

Doing the dishes

I may have given the impression that The Amateur Gourmet is a book about teaching and learning. It isn’t. It is a fun book written by an author who is both amateur gourmet and amateur teacher. Here is Adam’s take on the value of reflection and synthesis as an essential part of the learning cycle. No, wait, it is really about doing the dishes:

… cooking makes them dirty, cleaning restores them …. The sooner you embrace the cleaning up, the more likely you are to make more messes … the moment you find doing dishes rewarding is the moment you become a cook for life.

So here’s my advice. When you’re done with … dinner … send everyone home with a pat on the back and an assurance that, “No, I can do the dishes, it’ll be fine.”

Once the door closes, stand in the kitchen and survey the scene. It’ll scare you.

And, when you press on, through the fear:

… a clean kitchen is just begging to be dirtied again. May your kitchen, then, always be somewhere between clean and dirty — in transit between the two, always in motion, never still. I wish you ovens full of sizzling succulence and sinkfuls of soaking saucers. I hope your fridge is bursting with butter, your cabinets are spilling with flour and sugar, and that your trashbags are ripe from yesterday’s fist. Mostly, though, I pray that your kitchen becomes a lively place. May you never sacrifice liveliness for fear of doing dishes.

Nor for fear of learning. Approaching a new skill is by definition a time when we know the least about it. It does not make sense to petrify our understanding before we test it in different situations, based on our own strengths and experiences. I have a small tin of anchovies in the pantry from a long forgotten recipe; I may just add a few to my next tomato sauce.

Acknowledgements: Tomato Sauce by Annalisa Antonini, Flickr. “Dishes” by Aaron Harmon, Flickr. Both reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence (Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic).

Designing SOPs for learners

2007-10-31T00:00:00-04:00

Click to enlarge image.

My colleague Keltie Cameron-Choi and I wanted to design a Standard Operating Procedure that fosters learning, specifically retention (remembering the steps) and transfer (applying the steps in new situations). The premise is that learners who understand SOPs are better equipped to apply the instructions appropriately and find new opportunities for improvement. We dove into the cognitive science literature, looked for practical, evidence-based solutions and re-emerged with an SOP redesign that looks completely different from the ones most of us use. Our redesign is stripped of familiar conventions like a table of contents, or a list of reagents, or notes and subnotes throughout the document, which often interfere with learning the procedure. But it does have pictures. Pictures combined with words do support learning. And, in case you are wondering, the SOP redesign still complies with good documentation practices.

This poster, which depicts a before and after SOP, and the list of evidence-based cognitive principles that informed the redesign, was presented this month at the AABB Annual Meeting and sums up our findings so far. But we ran out of handouts! So, we are making them available here in the hopes that they will help you design better SOPs.

This work is synthesized from studies by Richard E. Mayer, Jeroen J. G. von Merrienboer, John Sweller, Ruth Colvin Clark and many other cognitive researchers and practitioners exploring how people learn from words and pictures. Any errors in interpretation are ours alone. Kristina Vanderwoude drew the cartoons. (One of the benefits of projects like this is discovering the latent talents of your co-workers.) Finally, do note that the SOPs depicted in the poster are purely fictitious and are not implemented in any workplace, including our own.

Staff are trained to follow SOPs. Why not help them do so as efficiently and effectively as possible? Do let us know how your SOPs turn out.

Download

Designing SOPs for Learners poster (pdf, letter-size, 2.06 MB)
Cognitive Principles Checklst (pdf, postcard-size, front and back, 3.15 MB)

Design Patterns for Complex Learning

2006-12-31T00:00:00-05:00

From the abstract:

A complex view of learning recognises that learning cannot be pre-determined by teaching, but is as much defined by circumstances and context as pre-defined learning objectives. Learning designs that accept uncertainty help us to envision classrooms and curricula that are open, dynamic and innovative. Architect Christopher Alexander’s patterns and pattern language offer a means for researchers, practitioners, learners, and technologists to capture and share the emergent processes of complex learning. This paper examines the unique properties of patterns that support complex design tasks and suggests a design-based research framework for operationalising its practice. Through the thoughtful explication, mining and construction of patterns, all participants can contribute to a richer learning system.

Full Paper (pdf) in the Journal of Learning Design

Christopher Alexander

2006-01-07T00:00:00-05:00

English architect and professor at University of California, Berkley. A controversial but influential theorist, especially of urban design. Yet he has designed little and built even less, most seemingly unremarkable. Christopher Alexander coined the term “Pattern Language” to emphasize his belief that people had an innate ability for design that paralleled their ability to speak.

Reading:

Alexander, C.
- (1964). Notes on the sythesis of form. Review.
- (1965). A city is not a tree. Full text.
- with Jacobson, M., Fiksdahl-King, I., & Angel, S. (1977). A pattern language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Here he presents 253 individual patterns that go into the making of successful towns and building (in the context of a North American environment). It is about buildings in the larger context of an all-encompassing theory of life based on organic wholeness, scalablity, self-sustaining systems. Very readable. website.
- (1979). Timeless way of building. The most instructive in describing his notion of pattern language and its application to designing an building buildings and towns.
- (2002). The nature of order. website
Kohn, W. (2002). The lost prophet of architecture. The Wilson Quarterly, summer 2002. She askes why is that Alexander’s colleagues in the American architectural establishment would have nothing to do with him: ”…the simultaneously intimate and all-knowing tone of his writing (that) sounds unbearably condescending to practitioners who take pride in having invented some of their own solutions to the problems of architecture.” Kohn also asserted that Alexander’s commitment to absolute certainty had led critics to dismiss him as “a utopian, a messianic crank, and contrarian who produces words instead of buildings.” online, via.

Acknowledgement: Photo of Christopher Alexander, 2004, by Maggie Moore. Building Living Neighbourhoods.

Reflective practice

2005-10-31T00:00:00-04:00

The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation (Schön 1983, p. 68).

Theoretically should result in the most thoughtful and useful solutions to practice problems. But: this outcome depends on how experience is filtered through one’s belief and value systems.

Reading:

Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker, D. (eds.) (1985). Reflections: Turning experience into learning. Extend Kolb and Dewey by stressing we must attend to the feelings created by our experiences in order for reflective process to be truly effective.
Boud. D. and Miller, N. (eds.) (1997). Working with Experience: animating learning. Blurb. For example, Smyth on uncovering social constraints in which teachers practice.
Brookfield, S. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. Blurb.
Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Full text.
Osterman, K. F., & Kottkamp, R. B. (1993) Reflective practice for educators: Improving schooling through professional development.
Schön, D.
- (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. How professionals think in action. Reflections in and on action.
- (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Blurb. Reflection-in-action is triggered by surprise. “We think critically about the thinking that got us into this fix or this opportunity; and we may, in the process, restructure strategies of action, understanding of phenomena, or ways of framing problem…” (p. 28).
Nuernberger, P. (1994). The structure of mind and its resources. In M. E. Miller & S. R. Cook-Greuter (eds.) Transcendence and mature adult thought in adulthood: The further reaches of adult development. “Typically, our mind is scattered. When we pay attention, we focus the mind’s energy. The more focused we become, the greater our concentration, the more powerful our mind and therefore our reflective processes become” (p. 112-3).
Tremmel, R. (1993). Zen and the art of reflective practice in teacher education. Harvard Educational Review, 63(4), 434-458. Being mindful is to pay attention to the here and now, not in an analytical way, but rather to invest oneself in “the present moment with full awareness and concentration” (p. 443).
Usher, R., Bryant, I., and Johnston, R. (1997). Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge: Learning Beyond the Limits. Blurb. A critique of Schön that points out his own work lacks reflexivity (p. 143).
Wellington, B., & Austin, P. (1996). Orientations of reflective practice. Educational Researcher, 38(3), 307-316. Does the practitioner believe that education ought to be domesticating or liberating? “When practitioners become aware of their own preferences and prejudices across models, they can begin to reflect upon a wider range of questions and develop a wider range of responses” (p. 314).

Acknowledgement: Picture: Misplaced childhood, side 2 by hisham_hm. Flickr. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence (Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic).

Learning from experience

2005-10-25T00:00:00-04:00

…all genuine education comes through experience (Dewey 1938, p.13).

But Dewey is careful to not that “not all experience educates.” In fact, some experiences “mis-educate,” in that they actually “distort growth…, narrow the field of further experiences…, and land people in a groove or rut” (Dewey 1938, p. 13).

Questions: What leads to learning from life’s experiences? Is the context in which the experience happens important? Are there ways we can design learning episodes to capture this experiential component best?

See also: David Kolb, Reflective practice, Situated cognition

Reading

Bateson, M. C. (1994). Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way. Uses the metaphor of the double helix to explain that “lessons too complex to grasp in a single occurrence spiral past again and again, small examples gradually revealing greater and greater implications” (p. 30).
Boud, D. Keogh, R. & Walker, D. (eds.) (1985). Reflection. Turning experience into learning. Captures elements proposed by Dewey, Kolb, and Jarvis.
Boud. D. and Miller, N. (eds.) (1997). Working with Experience: animating learning. Blurb. Animating refers to the relationships we build with learners. Brookfield on breaking dependence on experts; Smyth on socially critical educators; Heron on helping whole people learn; Tisdell on life experience and feminist theory; Harris on animating learning in teams; and Mace on writing and power. Via Infed.
Campbell, J. (1995). Understanding John Dewey. Blurb. Excellent overview and discussion of Dewey’s thought. Chapter 3 provides a clear statement of his position re experience.
Dewey, J.
- (1929). Experience and Nature. Full text. The mind as a manifestation of social interactions, the mind-body problem, aesthetics, and values in general.
- (1934). Art as Experience. Based on lectures given in 1932, this book contains useful chapters on having an experience; the act of expression, as well as material around the nature of form etc.
- (1938). Experience and Education. Concise statement of Dewey’s educational philosophy. Includes chapters on the need of a theory of experience; on criteria of experience; and experience as the means and goal education.
Jarvis, P.
- (1987). Adult Learning in the Social Context. From an experience, there are nine different routes a person might choose to take, not all of which result in learning. Includes both experiential learning and reflective practice. This probably deserves its own note.
- (1995). Adult and Continuing Education: Theory and Practice. Blurb. Summary of Jarvis’s learning process first described in 1987.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning. Kolb’s learning cycle. “Thus, in the process of learning, one moves in varying degrees from actor to observer, and from specific involvement to general analytic detachment” (p. 31).
Usher, R., Bryant, I., and Johnston, R. (1997). Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge: Learning Beyond the Limits. Blurb. ”…learning does not simplistically derive from experience; rather, experience and learning are mutually positioned in an interactive dynamic” (p. 107).

Acknowledgement: Picture: Untitled by H. Mal. Flickr. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence (Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic).

John Dewey

2005-10-01T00:00:00-04:00

America’s most significant philosopher, but so strikingly prolific that it’s difficult to get to the heart of his philosophy. He asked questions still central today, which probably explains his surge in popularity. What is learning? How are knowledge and skills acquired? What knowledge and skills are worthwhile acquiring? What is knowledge? How does it differ from belief? What is a human being? How does it differ from other species? What are the limits of human potential? What are the goals of education? Who should teach, by what methods, and with what curriculum? What is society and what institutions are involved in the educational process? Who should be educated? Why do people disagree? How is consensus achieved? Whose opinion takes precedence? Dewey’s answers developed a systematic pragmatism, an approach that viewed knowledge as arising when humans adapt to their environment. So, inquiry is not the mind passively observing the world and drawing truths that reflect reality. Rather it is a process that starts with an obstacle, and truths change as obstacles change. With this view as his starting point, Dewey developed a huge body of work day.

Reading:

Dewey, J.
- (1916). Democracy and Education. An introduction to the philosophy of education. Full text. Tough going. Rambling and repetitive, but contains key ideas.
- (1929). Experience and Nature. Full text. Explores the relationship of the external world, the mind and knowledge.
- (1933). How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Full text.
- (1938). Experience and Education.
Campbell, J. (1995). Understanding John Dewey: Nature and Cooperative Intelligence. Blurb. Intelligence belongs to the group, not the individual.
Hickman, Larry A. (1998). Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation. Blurb.

Acknowledgement: Picture: John Dewey at the University of Chicago, 1902. Wikimedia Commons. Reproduced with the understanding that it is in the public domain.

Lifelong learning pattern map

2005-04-26T00:00:00-04:00

IHMC CmapTools - Concept Map: lifelong-learning-patterns_full.png

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The Concept Map you are trying to access has information related to: Assimilating information and insights has patterns Tag it!*, Locating information sources or assistance has patterns Go berrypicking**, Locating information sources or assistance has patterns Trust a secondary source*, Locating information sources or assistance has patterns Mark your own trail*, Locating information sources or assistance has patterns Extract it!, Locating information sources or assistance has patterns Choose the well-marked trail*, Networking and contributing to the community of learners has patterns Extend your reach*, Evaluating sources and resources has patterns Check for quality*, Evaluating sources and resources has patterns Triangulate**, Engaging with learning in the digital environment has patterns Be a designer

Tag it!

Extract it!

Check for quality

Choose the well-marked trail

Trust a secondary source

Mark your own trail

Triangulate

Candy (2004)

Extend your reach

Be a designer

Go berrypicking

Trust a secondary source**

2005-04-25T00:00:00-04:00

You want an overview of a particular knowledge domain.

***

An overwhelming amount of information of variable quality is available on the internet. It is difficult to discern the relevant from the non-relevant.

An even greater proportion of the web is invisible to conventional search engines. Bergman (2001) estimates that the deep web is as much as 400 to 550 times larger than the World Wide Web as it is commonly defined.

You may miss key themes, or a significant author in a particular domain.

***

Therefore, make use of secondary sources.

Secondary sources act as knowledgeable intermediaries between you the overwhelming profusion of available information. Search for overviews that 1) are related to the topic you are interested in, 2) synthesize the results of what is and is not known, 3) identify areas of controversy, and 4) formulate questions for further research.

To some extent you are placing your trust in someone else’s judgment, which raises the question of their reliability.

Interpretations from other sources is not always the best way to learn. Only you know what you are looking for, and sometimes important information may otherwise be lost or distorted by the intermediary. In these cases, there is no substitute for reading the full original document or data set.

***

Literature reviews critically analyze a segment of published works relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and provide a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work.

The first section of most research articles is usually devoted to a review of the previously published literature on the topic addressed in the article. A specific type of serial known as an annual review is devoted solely to the publication of literature reviews.

An annotated bibliography includes brief notes with each reference or citation, and cam help you evaluate whether a source is relevant to a specific line of inquiry.

Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.

The “trust a sceondary source” pattern was originally published April 25th, 2005 on The Common Loon.

Mark your own trail

2005-04-25T00:00:00-04:00

You want to revisit a source that you discovered previously.

***

Learning projects unfold unpredictably. Often you don’t recognize the value of a source until much later in the project. As the project unfolds, the source may be buried several levels into a website, or is otherwise invisible and intangible.

You can’t re-locate the source.

***

Therefore, leave signposts along your research trail.

Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.

The “mark your own trail” pattern was originally published April 25th, 2005 on The Common Loon.

Extract it!

2005-04-25T00:00:00-04:00

You want to identify only the relevant parts of a complete document.

***

The vast resources of the internet are such that it is not feasible to manually search for and retrieve, leave alone read, all relevant resources on a given topic.

Web pages written in HTML contain unstructured data, with no computer understandable “meaning.”

XML (extensible Markup Language) and ontology provide an opportunity to allow structure and (indirectly) “meaning” to be into the content of the resource itself (Bostock, 2002, p.3).

You miss relevant resources because of information overload.

***

Therefore, extract only relevant parts of a document using XML.

You locate relevant information even though you sort through less information.

Extracted information is often decontextualized, leaving the task of situating the information entirely up to you. This strategy is limited by the degree of integrations among various data standards, ontology definitions, and knowledge management and agent technologies.

Authors rarely represent knowledge and present information in a structured and meaningful way.

Each community of learners must work to develop acceptable and workable standards on representing document content and the corresponding knowledge much more effectively (Bostock, 2002).

***

PubSub.com is a matching service that extracts information based on the search query you submit. I am trying out a PubSub extraction for ‘(“lifelong learning” OR “self directed” OR “networked learning”) AND technology’; the results are in the left column of this blog under resources.

Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.

The “extract it!” pattern was originally published April 25th, 2005 on The Common Loon.

Choose the well-marked trail*

2005-04-25T00:00:00-04:00

You don’t know where to begin a search for a topic that is unfamiliar to you.

***

Searching without guide can leave you lost.

***

Therefore, follow the trail that more experienced learners have marked.

Look for markers in footnotes, references, and subject headings.

Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.

The “choose the well-marked trail” pattern was originally published April 25th, 2005 on The Common Loon.

Check for quality*

2005-04-25T00:00:00-04:00

You want to distinguish a good online resource from a bad one.

***

Incomplete, misleading or poorly conceptualized websites may be indistinguishable from high quality, well-researched authoritative sites. Sometimes this misdirection is intentional.

The ability to judge resources builds progressively. The more you know about the domain of your inquiry, the better informed you are of the criteria that constitute a quality resource in that domain.

You cannot judge the quality of a site when you have not progressed beyond the rudiments of the subject.

***

Therefore, use checklists designed by experiences searchers or subject matter experts until you acquire basic knowledge of the domain.

Checklists support your growing level of expertise. You are placing your trust in someone else’s judgment.

***

Nicole Auer (2004) maintains a bibliography of checklists for evaluating websites.

Note: See also trust a secondary source

Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.

The “check for quality” pattern was originally published April 25th, 2005 on The Common Loon.

Be a designer

2005-04-25T00:00:00-04:00

The technology that you are using doesn’t work the way you want it to.

***

Rapid changes in technology make it almost impossible to keep up to date with new techniques and applications.

Future uses and problems of technology cannot be completely anticipated at by designers at the time when it is developed (Nardi, 1993 cited in Fischer, 2005).

You are not interested in the technology per se, but in doing your work.

Your work plans break down if the technology is mismatched to the task.

***

Therefore, contribute your own visions and objectives to the technology design.

Breakdowns serve as potential sources of new insights, new knowledge, and new understanding…and better technology.

You can modify technologies as the need arises.

Control and ownership of the problem shifts from the designer to you - a significant and demanding shift that requires you to adopt “a new mindset” (Fischer, 1999) towards learning and teaching.

***

Informed participation (Brown & Duguid, 2000) is a form of collaborative design in which participants of all backgrounds (not just skilled computer professionals) go beyond the information given, slowly acquire ownership in problems and contribute to the design.

Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.

The “be a designer” pattern was originally published April 25th, 2005 on The Common Loon.

Tag it!

2005-04-18T00:00:00-04:00

You want to integrate multiple sources of information to better understand a topic.

***

Traditional means of organizing information rely on well-defined and pre-determined schemata such as simple controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, thesauri, and full-blown ontologies (Ernst, 2003).

Each of us sees and experiences the world in a unique way. Your personal frameworks, or schemata, are the means by which you classify, sort and store information. (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999).

“Ontology is a good way to organize objects…but it is a terrible way to organize ideas, and in the period between the invention of the printing press and the invention of the symlink, we were forced to optimize for the storage and retrieval of objects, not ideas” (Shirky, 2005).

Preset categories of information may not conform to your schemata.

***

Electronically tag new information on the fly with your own categories.

Assimilate new insights and pieces of information into your existing and developing schemata, and have the means to exchange your schemata with others.

Sometimes you perceive information in a general way, other times more specifically (e.g. animal or cat). Sometimes information belongs to a single domain, other times it spans across several domains or contexts (cat and Egyptian mythology and term paper). Use whatever label(s) seem most relevant in the moment you tag it.

Free style tagging is a recursive process. Adjust tags on old information over time as your experience in a particular domain grows.

Because schemata are context specific and depend on your experience in a particular domain, if you are unfamiliar with the topic, you may have an inadequate schema to interpret new information.

***

del.cio.us is a social bookmarks manager that lets you categorize websites with keywords and share your categories with others. I am trying out del.icio.us and furl tagging systems; the results are in the left column of this blog under resources

Flickr is a digital images manager that lets you categorize your photos for private use or for sharing with others.

Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.

The “tag it!” pattern was originally published April 18th, 2005 on The Common Loon.

Go berrypicking

2005-04-11T00:00:00-04:00

This pattern is based on Bates’ (1989) Berrypicking model of information retrieval.

You want to search online about a topic that is unfamiliar to you.

***

The sheer volume and variability of sources on the internet make search complex. If you are unfamiliar with the domain, you may not know what sources exist, how to frame the research question, or what search terms to use. Unfortunately, search engines typically require that you present an structured, precise query that can be matched to the database contents to produces a single set of results (note: there are exceptions).

An underdeveloped research question produces less meaningful search results.

***

Therefore, use the results to refine and redefine your research question until the results are meaningful.

Search is iterative: the search question and result co-evolve. Start with just one feature of the broader topic and move through a wide variety of sources. Retrieve information a bit at a time, not all at once. Look for potential ideas and new directions and repeat with a refined query. Bates (1989) calls this strategy berrypicking and the shifting nature of queries an evolving search.

You may be tempted to restrict your search among a small set of familiar sites. (Tauscher & Greenberg, 1997 in Candy, 2004). However, a broadly scoped search will offer more opportunities. “Berries are scattered on the bushes; they do not come in bunches” (Bates, 1998, p. 4).

Don’t get lost. After pursuing a string of new directions, you may find yourself far afield from where you started, and unable to assimilate this new information into the original context. Fortunately, there are patterns for that too.

***

Bates (1989) suggests six ways to search for bits and pieces: footnote chasing, citation searching, journal run, area scanning, subject searches in bibliographies and abstracts, and author searching, These may be subpatterns.

The online bookshop, Amazon.com, lets you find books by linking to other books by the same author, on the same topic, with the same reviewer or even other purchasers.

CiteSeer, a database of computer and engineering documents that uses autonomous citation indexing, lets you query a chain of documents.

Note: See the family of patterns associated with assimilating information and insights.

Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.

The “go berrypicking” pattern was originally published April 11th, 2005 on The Common Loon.

Pattern form

2005-04-07T00:00:00-04:00

This note captures some of the resources I am finding particularly usefuly as I learn about writing patterns.

Choosing a format

The concept of design patterns originated with architect Christopher Alexander and colleagues, in two books, A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building. He defines a ‘pattern’ as a three-part construct. First comes the ‘context,’ that is, the conditions under which this pattern exists. Next are a ‘system of forces,’ which can be likened to the ‘problem’ or ‘goal.’ The third part is the ‘solution,’ a configuration that balances the system of forces or solves the problems presented.

Every pattern I’ve seen derives its elements from Alexander’s original pattern form, but adapts it to their domain. e.g. see E-LEN’s Design patterns for e-learning and the Pedagogical Pattern Project. The latter, used by Joseph Bergin and collegues is slightly a less demanding, more concise format, and comes with many examples. This is the format I’ve chosen to use, which Bergin et al. describe as follows:

All patterns are written in the you-form, thus directly talking to you, the teacher. In addition to the pattern name, each pattern is divided into four sections. The sections are separated by ***. The first section sets the context. The second describes the forces and the key problem. The third section outlines the solution, the consequences, limitations and disadvantages. The fourth section complements the discussion of the solution, by providing further information and examples. The key problem and the solution are in bold font and represent the thumbnail of the pattern (also called the pattlet). The examples are in italic font. References to patterns inside this pattern language are in CAPITAL LETTERS, references to patterns published elsewhere are in normal font, but followed with the [pointer] to the reference section. In addition, each pattern is marked with one or two asterisks (*), as in Alexander’s patterns. They show how fundamental we believe the pattern is. Two asterisks denote patterns that state a true invariant. We believe that it is not possible to solve the stated problem properly, without referring to the solution that we have given. One asterisk means that we think that we are on the right track, but we believe it will be possible to improve the solution.

Step by step

Constructing a pattern is challenging. The E-LEN project offers a tutorial on making e-learning design patterns. It is really more of an analyis of a pattern example (Virtual Assitant), rather than a tutorial. For a more procedural approach, I relied on Richard Griffiths’ and Lyn Pemberton’s Don’t Write Guidelines Write Patterns! because this whole pattern thing was beginning to strike me as too reductionist, and I was drawn to their advice to find patterns that ‘feel good.’ I am dropping in Gerard Meszaros’ and Jim Doble’s meta-collection, A Pattern Language for Pattern Writing as I discover specific situations where I need help. This is promising to be a very useful resource. These are Griffiths and Pemberton steps for pattern writing:

Identify the subject of the pattern. For Alexander, within the domain of architecture, this involves finding places which ‘feel good.’ For us, this could translate to finding examples of human-computer interaction that ‘work well’ for the users. The subjective experience of the users is crucial in identifying patterns that are, in Alexander’s phrase, ‘alive,’ and make the user positively engaged with the system.
Identify the problem that this pattern resolves. Patterns resolve conflicting forces, which may be technical, social or aesthetic. Their interaction, through either conflicting or supporting is the field of forces that the design solution must resolve.
Identify invariance. Empirical examples of attempted design solutions to these fields of forces are then examined to identify features or properties of successful designs that are missing in unsuccessful ones; i.e. the invariant that a pattern must encapsulate. It is possible that an invariant will be identified, not from existing examples, but from abstract analysis.

Writing tips

The skill to writing patterns, I think, is to shift between the parts and the whole with ease. For the specifics, I’ve found Ward Cunningham’s Tips for Writing Pattern Languages. I think he is part of the Pedagogical Patterns Project. John Vlissides is definitely a programmer, but his Seven Habits of Successful Pattern Writers and Patterns: The Top Ten Misconceptions are valuable to all pattern writers. One problem I am having is coming up with too many patterns that are not really distinct from one other. This is when I hit on the idea of mapping it to Candy’s (2004) online learning model to keep the whole and the parts coherent. Here’s Vlissides advice from Habit 4, Keeping patterns distinct and complementary:

…Therefore make sure your patterns are orthogonal and that they work synergistically. Continually ask yourself, “How is pattern X different from pattern Y?” If two patterns solve the same or similar problems, you can probably merge them. Don’t worry if two patterns use similar class hierarchies. There are only so many ways to use the relatively few mechanisms inherent in object-oriented programming. Often the same arrangement of classes will yield substantially different object structures that address widely varying problems. Let the intents of the patterns be your guide to their differences and not the class structures that implement them.

This post was originally published April 5th, 2005 on The Common Loon.