Comment on What is Contemporary Pedagogy and why am I taking this class? by ktsoukalas

Hi Christina, I was wondering if in the classes that you experienced having a “focus on facts and equations without much room for discussion” you discussed applications for any theory you discussed as “fact” and modeled with equations. I very much agree with your statement: “If you’re not taking the time to think through why and how you’re doing things, you’re closing yourself off to opportunities for improvement and progress.” Thank you for sharing your perspective about our class.

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Comment on Free Hugs: Today Only by Kyriakos Tsoukalas

Dear Monica,

In your post you wonder: “I’m not sure how one goes beyond critical thinking.” If the creation of a concept and an analysis about an observation is critical thinking, then I suggest that affective computing goes beyond critical thinking, because it takes such concepts and implements analyses to recognize human affect. Thus, for example, technology could notify a teacher about how many students are considered to be bored based on certain criteria, instead of the teacher having to routinely check if people are bored by keeping a critical mind during their teaching. Thus, they could resolve (switch) to unconventional teaching when a lot of their student are bored, experiment and get instant feedback about the outcome of a change in teaching style.

Comment on Reflection on higher education by ktsoukalas

Dear Xin,
Thank you for your posting your view on this topic. While reading the article I was wondering if knowledge is something that we can search outside ourselves. Information is something stored in many different forms and media. I would argue that knowledge is constructed and reconstructed as we make sense of our experiences, because we create and renew our understanding of information. And such a situation calls for lifelong learning, as you discuss in your article, because tools need to change and expertise is a tool that needs to remain relevant in our never-ending problem solving efforts.

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Comment on Retrofuturist Twitter: A Ghost of the Present by tapputu

Hmm…I think my first thought is both yes and no to contextual consideration. On one hand, I think that there are situations when it is likely that a person may not have something “meaningful” to add concerning the problem, situation, or question at hand. But the lack of “meaningfulness” is only relative, and restricted, to the framing of the problem. Albeit I would then want to question why there isn’t an openness and receptivity to alternative possibilities, and who exactly get to define “meaningful,” but that’s a different problem!

On the other hand, I’m worried that too often things may *seem* meaningless and then be disregarded when in fact the contribution, in coming from a different perspective, could add something important to the conversation that, arguably, could constitute a challenge the customary mode of doing x,y, or z and that could cause other types of problems.

tl;dr: I’m skeptical that appearing to have no meaning implies there actually being no meaning, so perhaps the middle ground would be to say that we can acknowledge that there are context specific instances when certain contributions would not be meaningful restricted to the context (albeit begrudgingly) and that seemingly meaningless contributions may in fact be more meaningful than we know or recognize (and I think that this is often the case).

I’ll have to think about this some more.

Comment on With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility by Ruoding Shi

I have the same concern about people accepting the online materials as facts. Currently, everyone can post their ideas and opinions on the web, and distinguishing fact from fiction becomes much harder for our generation. I wonder how we can overcome this problem given our limited time and energy? Should we refer to some sources treated as authority? Or try to develop thinking ability? Or get more information to compare?

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Comment on Too much connectivity? by Ruoding Shi

Yes, I agree that we expose to too much information from the web, and really need good judgement to select their ideas. So my question is how to train ourselves to be able to filter out the “noise”. Because in most classes, the instructor selects the learning materials for us and we don’t have a choice. Therefore, training students’ skills of filtering out “noise” will be an very important task for educators.

Comment on Too much connectivity? by Craig A.

I had a bowl of Fruit Loops for breakfast….ah wait I’m guessing you might not find that important. When I look at it, I personally feel that the line is drawn where you feel something is common knowledge/where there not much room for debate. If I’m doing something and I feel it is common knowledge then I would not be as likely to blog about it. But if I’m working on something that I’m struggling to understand or working through something in a way that I feel has not be covered before I would be likely to blog about it. One other thing to take into consideration is your audience. I think looking at who your audience is will help guide you.

Comment on Learning to adapt and… to embrace social media. by Craig

I know the feeling until last semester I had never blogged before, heck until last semester I only a Facebook page that I occasionally post things on. Oh I guess there was that MySpace thing back when too. But, anyhow yes I use to think the exact same way as you about blogging. I think there are still those kinds of blogs out there, but now people in academia are finding new ways of using these methods for good.

You made an excellent point about who your audience is. When communicating with others it is important to take into consideration what method they are most comfortable with and use that method. I think this is especially important for teaching a course in order to make sure the students receive the best education possible.

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