This page gather important theoretical work and tools related to education.

Key works - Pedagogy - Education websites - e-Learning tools
Early Age - Research tools - Personal view - Reward Mechanisms - See also

See also Studying - Dedicate time and energy, be enthusiastic, read the chapter objectives and learn the answers to them, and explain what you read or The Bittersweet Art of Cutting Up Books, Dark Roasted Blend 2008

Key works

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Pedagogy

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Education websites

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e-Learning tools

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Early Age

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Research tools

Regarding data gathering or "hands-on experiment" (rather than document research) see Experiments Tools section organized around Elegant Solutions

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If you get tired, just print your degree ;)

Personal view

  • efficiency
    • autonomous praxis > guided praxis > reading > viewing
  • cost
    • viewing < reading < guided praxis < autonomous praxis
  • consequently
    • the involvment, or investment of cognitive resources (including attention), in the learning process might be directly correlated with its efficiency

Precisions on the different learning processes discussed

  • autonomous praxis
    • trial and error with the autonomous decision to learn this
  • guided praxis
    • trial and error initiated and managed by another individual
  • reading
    • assimilating what is to be learnt by actively moving accross the key notions
  • viewing
    • assimilating what is to be learnt by passively moving accross the key notions

Praxis directly confronts the knowledge gained by the individual to it's application and thus forces corrections, as opposed to other theoretical forms that provide no "direct resistance".

Also, education or passing on what has been learnt is a very efficient way to learn yet it can probably be integrated to a sub-part of autonomous praxis.

Aging and learning

It was a great pleasure to attend Gabriele Veneziano : Particules élémentaires, gravitation et cosmologie at the College de France in early March 2010, not for the content which was beyond my reach at that time, but to see a room filled with enthusiasts who were 2 or even 3 times my age.

"Those who stop learning find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists". - Eric Hoffer

Structured videos in context as a "faked super-power"

Simulate ExtendedLayeredModel#UserCenteredCurve in the way that vision is often depicted in science-fiction movies (e.g. Superman or Rachel Pirzad in Wikipedia:Alphas) allowing heroes to zoom through multiple scales.

Note that zooming is extremely interesting and natural but zooming out and for example represent the social and economical situation an individual is would also be extremely interesting. Several dimensions can here be studied in particular not just space but time, e.g. the historical context and what lead to it.

Example

  1. take a situation like cooking potatoes in a pan
  2. consider the physical processes involved
  3. propose a playlist
    1. video of chemistry of of water/oil interaction
    2. video of thermodynamics
    3. ...
    4. video of the history of the food cooked
    5. video of the agriculture specialty of the area
  4. allow the user to record that video with remarks on
    1. the context
    2. what has been learned
    3. what remains unclear
    4. what is left to learn

Proposed solution

  • curate repository of situations
  • curate repository of annotated videos
  • generate a structured set of associations between the two
  • facilitate the exploration of this set
    • in particular through contextual information

Leveraging advancements in AI, especially ML/NLP

For example how efficient would it be to mix a system of question answering a la DeepQA in which the student would start by posing as clearly as possible his own goal coupled with a progress set of exercises based on adaptive learning to progress through a network of concepts?

Intrinsic difficulty of reharsing

Known information is painful to focus on as one might feel that this is a negative opportunity cost, i.e. if this information is already known and has so far not been valuable, investing more resource in it instead of acquiring other information appears like a waste of resource.

One can also suppose that the learning process itself is adaptive, like most generalist physiological processes. Consequently it adjust itself to the pace that is often repeated. The way in which learning is done should consequently shape the way that future learning will be possible. See also AmusingOurselvesToDeath.

Sizable learning steps

What is at the same time interesting and yet slightly too hard makes things exciting yet pushing at the edges of your knowledge has an inherent risk if too far, becoming too stressful to facilitate learning. Consequently what a good tutor is for is precisely to be able to best judge the size of the steps one can take.

A good tutor would also define the best space (or microworlds according to TurtlesTermitesAndTrafficJams) one can learn into, defining helpful constraints and thus avoiding either being scared by the immensity of the solution space or just wasting time.

See also OwnConcepts#Epistemotaxis.

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Reward mechanisms

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See also