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June 18 - August 7, 2021
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Robert Caro.
Robert Caro
“When thought overwhelms the mind, the mind uses the world,” psychologist Barbara Tversky has observed.
concept mapping. A concept map is a visual representation of facts and ideas, and of the relationships among them. It can take the form of a detailed outline, as in Robert Caro’s case, but it is often more graphic and schematic in form.
Mindmapping
The improvements generated by the use of the super-sized display are striking.
Using very large, high resolution screens!
Large high-resolution displays allow users to deploy their “physical embodied resources,” says Ball,
peripheral vision,
“embodied resources”
spatial memory:
proprioception,
optical flow,
Indeed, the use of a compact display actively drains our mental capacity. The screen’s small size means that the map we construct of our conceptual terrain has to be held inside our head rather than fully laid out on the screen itself. We must devote some portion of our limited cognitive bandwidth to maintaining that map in mind; what’s more, the mental version of our map may not stay true to the data, becoming inaccurate or distorted over time. Finally, a small screen requires us to engage in virtual navigation through information—scrolling, zooming, clicking—rather than the more intuitive
...more
Compact displays drain while large displays...
interactivity:
In other words, thinking with your brain alone—like a computer does—is not equivalent to thinking with your brain, your eyes, and your hands.”
Writes Clark, “It is because we are so prone to think that the mental action is all, or nearly all, on the inside, that we have developed sciences and images of the mind that are, in a fundamental sense, inadequate.” We will “begin to see ourselves aright,” he suggests, only when we recognize the role of material things in our thinking—when we correct the errors and omissions of the brainbound perspective, and “put brain, body, and world together again.”
Andy Clark and Richard Feynman
cognitive apprenticeship, a term coined by Allan Collins, now a professor
modeling, or demonstrating the task while explaining it aloud; scaffolding, or structuring an opportunity for the learner to try the task herself; fading, or gradually withdrawing guidance as the learner becomes more proficient; and coaching, or helping the learner through difficulties along the way.
Apprenticeships
machines could stamp out identical copies; only humans could come up with one-of-a-kind ideas. A
described imitation as the habit of children, women, and “savages,” and held up original expression as the preserve of European men. Innovation climbed to the top of the cultural value system,
imitating well demands a considerable degree of creativity.
“structured, confidential, and non-punitive review” of the host institution’s
Step one, according to Shenkar: specify one’s own problem and identify an analogous problem that has been solved successfully.
ImitationStep 1
Step two: rigorously analyze why the solution is successful.
Imitation Step 2
identify how one’s own circumstances differ, then figure out how to adapt the original solution to the new setting.
Imitation Step 3
Research shows that while toddlers will choose to copy their mothers rather than a person they’ve just met, as children grow older they become increasingly willing to copy a stranger if the stranger appears to have special expertise. By the time a child reaches age seven, Mom no longer knows best.
A phenomenon of child development
The contents of Berger’s rolling suitcase are now available in an online archive—but he has found that many teachers and parents object to the use of models, afraid that it will suppress
Berger's rolling suitcase
EL Education.
How can we expect students to produce first-rate work, he asks, when they have no idea what first-rate work looks like?
“disciplinary writing.”
“re-enactive empathy”:
“the caricature advantage”:
categorize
gaze patterns
Gaze patterns
“haptic”
habits of thought
“multiple brief small-group discussions”
“interactive brain hypothesis”: the premise that when people interact socially, their brains engage different neural and cognitive processes than when those same people are thinking or acting on their own.
"Interactive Brain Hypothesis"
fNIRS, compared the brain scans of people playing poker with a human partner to those of people playing the same game with a computer. The areas of the brain involved in generating a “theory of mind”—inferring the mental state of another individual—were active in competing with a human but dormant in matching wits with a machine.
we think best when we think socially.
Humans are not especially good at thinking about concepts; our ability to think about people, however, is superlative.
The social brain with its “superpowers,” as Lieberman calls them, starts developing in early childhood; in adolescence, it kicks into high gear.
The social brain
“parentese,”
“Eye contact opens the gate between the perceptual systems of two individuals, and information flows,”
Eye contact
contingent communication: social exchanges in which the utterances of one partner are directly responsive to what the other has said. When contingent communication is absent, learning may simply fail to occur. A particularly striking example: toddlers under the age of two and a half readily learn new words and actions from a responsive adult but pick up almost nothing from prerecorded instruction delivered on a screen—a phenomenon that researchers call the “video deficit.”
Hoogerheide has found, the act of teaching on video enhances the teacher’s own learning, improves her test performance, and enhances her ability to “transfer” the learned information to new situations.
Face-to-face
This would have helped with online learning during the pandemic.
“productive agency”:
“cascading mentorship”
But technology could be used in another fashion: to promote the kind of in-person social exchanges that do so much to extend our mental capacities.
arguing.
Arguing!
