Week 3 Summary

http://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.mhJ0k35VCCJW0NSLI7krgQEsDF&pid=Api

Last week we discussed AI: Artifical Intelligence.  This week we were asked to consider music a part of our journey through the theme of cybercultures.  As I have been wondering about the term “artificial intelligence” I have concluded, perhaps later than others, that AI simply refers to intelligence that is created outside the holder of the intellect itself.  That intelligence is then inserted somehow into the recipient, activated and implemented.  I know this is not profound but I have to go through my process here.  The real question I have been struggling with is how does the robot or cyborg, as an “intelligent” entity, grow?

I looked at clips from a variety of films and other posts submitted by classmates.  Most notably and what I spoke in our Google Hangout session, was the societal parameters robots/cyborgs will be expected to live by and, will artifical “beings” be able not only to mimic human emotions but understand the subtleties those emotions must take in given circumstances.  Music can be one of the areas that may be the most difficult to measure in terms of intelligent application.  Robots, like Data in Star Trek: The Nest Generation, can mimic thousands of musicians.  The question is however, can he “feel” the music he is playing?  Composers will tell us that music is felt and it is emotional.  Hence we come back to the question of whether robots/cyborgs can really assimilate or be able to produce, in and of themselves, emotions.

#mscedc

Comment on Watching https://t.co/wXl8P9SUOO the key = ‘correctly’ (2:01 mins in). But what does it mean/look like? Cf. https://t.co/BgN7Z5Nlka #mscedc by msleeman

Helen, well done on surviving a week on a stand at any trade show – a truly exhausting prospect. I’d love to probe the instrumentalist impulse some more, given that it is so widespread. I resist putting it down simply to limited reflection; I presume there are some political / cultural wirings running through it, but I can’t feel my way towards them. Any thoughts / literature on this – from Helen, of others?

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Comment on Watching https://t.co/wXl8P9SUOO the key = ‘correctly’ (2:01 mins in). But what does it mean/look like? Cf. https://t.co/BgN7Z5Nlka #mscedc by hwalker

I was on a stand demonstrating O365 at BETT…it was a long week.

The conversations I had with teachers and with other exhibitors about technology, teaching and learning reflected exactly the instrumentalist views which you and James highlight. I read the Bayne paper on the way to the show and this heightened my awareness of the over-riding rhetoric present during the show, that technology is ‘in service’ to learning; it is a ‘tool’ which will ‘improve outcomes’ and ‘engage learners’.

I didn’t get to listen to any of the talks (I missed Ken Robinson(!)), so I’m not sure if a more nuanced position was offered by the speakers in the BETT arena. I fear it probably wasn’t. Also, based on my visits to numerous schools over the years, I fear that the assumptions and beliefs expressed about technology are echoed, at scale, in the wider education community.

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Comment from Helen

Hi James,

Thanks for mentioning Matthew’s blog post to me: it was fascinating to hear his ‘prediction’ about the impact which Bayne’s paper might have on responses to BETT!

Your observation about results is a pertinent one. As well as the notion of technology being touted as a means of ‘improving outcomes’ (what does that even mean?!), there has been a rise in the use of technology to report on outcomes. Huge stands devoted to ‘data dashboards’ were present at the show. The rich, complex, creative bundle of emotions, ideas and responses that is the learner is channelled through a reductive algorithm and spewed out as a data set.

Thanks for your ideas as to how I might move forward with this space. I’ve spent a chunk of today revisiting my previous posts and adding more ‘metadata’ around them. This returning, reflecting and augmenting is an interesting experience and marks a shift away from the linearity of the blog experience in IDEL: we’re weaving complex fabrics using threads from a range of media, sources and thoughts.

Good to ‘meet’ you in the Hangout btw! And hope you’re having a great weekend.

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Comments from smilligan

Thanks for this interesting post Stuart – I really like the way it pinpoints the tension between whether technology is working for or against us. I love the line “while our bodies sit in chairs, waiting for our minds to come back”. Where are our minds when we let technology take over?

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Comment on Tweet! Vlogging versus virtual classroom by hwalker

Eli, this post reminded me of my mortifying experience many years ago when I applied to become a TEFL teacher. Part of the interview process required us to teach our fellow interviewees something. The other applicants were brilliant: we were taught the basics of using a chanter, how to ask for directions in Chinese and the Two Step.

I had arrived with only five tea-towels, ready to teach everyone how to transform them into chickens…

We focused a lot on the inherent value of the process of learning (anything!) in Digital Game-Based Learning. Gamers have to learn how to play games and that requires a multitude of skills and attitudes which have real value. How to recognise the value of that learning and how to harness those skills and attitudes within the structures and strictures of an often rigid formal educational framework is the challenge. These are two useful chapters about the transfer of learning from video games to ‘RL’ : http://ift.tt/2kDgqAm

http://ift.tt/2l81OWK

(If you’re interested, I’ll try and get an instructional ‘make a chicken’ video sorted over the weekend!)

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Comments from chills

[…] in my lifetime, being already someone who can remember early computers and first debates about hypertext. I am out of time, not knowing any of the digital cultural references, and, as a human in the old […]

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Comments from chills

[…] How audible and valued is the voice of the student? After the annual student surveys many universities run advertising campaigns to prove they are listening to their students, “You said, we listened …” This is the voice of capitalism and commerce as institutions have to compete for student numbers. Audrey Watters regards the voice of the student as muted and controlled. […]

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Comments from chills

[…] with our machines, and trying to make sense of the not-quite-in-control to see if it attests to, or incarnates, our learning. We are tech voyeurs being surveilled, surrendering our data and privacy. We are […]

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Comments from chills

[…] mean that this testing is important, to me at least. Education is a means of giving indivduals voice. The predominance of monosyllables makes the sentence sound a bit robotic and the choice of and and […]

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Comments from chills

[…] a bit robotic and the choice of and and not but after testing marks a pause, but less of one, like life on the internet. Of course, I was just really testing ifttt to see if it would work […]

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Comments from chills

[…] Time stretches when I see that Haraway (2007) enumerates the breached boundaries between, for example, science and religion, the human and the technological, the human and animal, and consider that these ontologies have been called into question for some good amount of it. Yet we seem not to be sufficiently prepared to “navigate” the “devastated absence” (Bayne, 2015) left by the departed humanist – it is a desert space with no gods peopled by human chimeras and curious cryogenic recoverings, where we might fall prey to creeds of greed and insularity. […]

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