[Yr7-10it] VELS and IT

Mon Jun 12 08:14:33 EST 2006

I think the higher order thinking and the mastery of the medium, nitty
gritty detail cannot really be separated

Maybe they can be separated to an extent in some subjects (eg. maths) but
not in computing and not in the real world, life

Perhaps this is more than just a common sense argument but that it goes
deeply in terms of our epistemology

Rodney Brooks had to fight v. hard to put situatedness and embodiment onto
the AI agenda. In the end he won because it was found to be impossible /
impractical to model the world internally in an AI machine. That to factor
in the interaction with sensors was the way to go.
Brooks, Intelligence without Reason
http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/AIM-1293.pdf

What it means to be human cannot be separated from our ways of interacting
with the world, eg. the hand, our senses, and our modern day extensions of
that (internet, mobile phone).

Our  brains do fall out when the internet is down and that will become more
true in the future. (and so it follows that EDs are dumbing everyone down
when they introduce censor-ware)

So, I agree with Paul that teaching the "basics" of computing in the best
way possible is v. important. But it's not basics really, its lifeblood.
That is where VELS has it wrong, regarding English as lifeblood and
computing as "interdisciplinary".

In practical terms I think computing teachers would agree that we have to do
a lot of skilling in order for our students to be able to do higher order
stuff. It's hard to do a creative design if you don't have the skills to
make the bits and pieces that go into that design.

The bit I was torn about (or one of the bits) was how computers / AI appear
to do human higher order thinking (play chess well, solve hard calculus
problems) - but I'm thinking now that the way computers do that is v.
different from the way humans do those things. eg. in chess its really about
a number crunching approach not some sort of superior positional judgement
algorithm.

I remember writing last year that some of my year 12s reported that they
were thinking  much harder in my subject (game programming) which was *not*
classified as uni entrance standard because it was more "hands on" than in
other subjects (physics, english) which were classified as uni entrance
standard. They felt that the latter subjects were basically read the book
and regurgitate whereas to program a game they would have to immerse
themselves in hard problems and they were doing this for long hours on the
weekends.
Full account here:
http://billkerr.blogspot.com/2005/10/engagement-hands-on-higher-order.html

-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr.blogspot.com/
http://beam.to/billkerr
skype: billkerr2006

On 6/11/06, Dr Paul Chandler <paul.chandler at yvg.vic.edu.au> wrote:
>
> Like Bill, I am torn.  Because I well know that the messy idiosyncratic
> detail of the user interface and its operations are essential.  But I
> believe that 'somewhere along the way' learners are 'putting it all
> together' and building some conceptual understandings of what they are
> working with.  What I am arguing for is that we need to have our eye on what
> conceptual understandings they really need to develop.  Now, at what point
> do you stop with the idiosyncratic detail and start teaching the concept
> explicitly - that's where I'm torn.
>
> The business of higher order thinking in teaching computing is an
> interesting one (and it seems to be the source of Bill's quandry).  My
> thinking here is basically this: if you've got a concept (be it conservation
> of matter, how to score a goal in AFL, or what constitutes a paragraph in
> word, or the similarity between layers in PSP and the side master in
> PowerPoint) then it has the possibility of lending itself to some higher
> order thinking.  Conversely, one way to sharpen our thinking about whether
> we are dealing with a concept or just a whole bunch of skills is to ask
> 'what higher order thinking could apply to xxxxxx'.  If we can answer the
> question, it's possible that we are thinking conceptually about the
> topic.  So the _possibility_ of higher order thinking might be one tool to
> help us identify the important concepts.
>
> That is not to deny the merit of introducing higher-order thinking into
> teaching about computers.  There may well be benefit in asking students to
> 'write a song to illustrate, to a beginning user, when to double-click and
> when to single-click'.  But, in a sense, that this secondary to identifying
> the concept in the first place.  Having said that, if we were to believe
> that the concept of the computer's filing system is so vital so as to be
> worth spending 10 lessons on it rather than 2 (I'm picking numbers out of
> the air), then it is pretty likely the time in those 10 lessons would need
> to dedicated to higher order thinking; otherwise our learners become bored
> and we actually need the higher-order thinking to reinforce and embed the
> central concept in the learner's thinking.
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Bill Kerr
> Sent: Sun 6/11/2006 1:25 AM
> To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Yr7-10it] VELS and IT
>
> I am v. torn by this discussion
>
> on the one hand I also would like to take the "high ground" of advocating
> for higher order thinking, the importance of abstraction - I can see an
> argument for that
>
> on the other hand I can see that learning the messy idiosyncratic detail
> of
> the user interface of its day and becoming fluent in its operation is
> simply
> essential
>
> Alan Kay once wrote, "user interface is worth 100 IQ points". It sounds
> like
> a crude reductionism but Alan Kaye is not that sort of guy.
>
> Could it be that computers and AI research (Minsky, Brookes) will lead us
> to
> rethinking Blooms taxonomy? Computers can beat Kasparov at chess but they
> can't yet do "simple" things like make a mud pie.
>
> --
> Bill Kerr
> http://billkerr.blogspot.com/
> http://beam.to/billkerr
> skype: billkerr2006
>
>
> On 6/10/06, Tony Forster <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > > I'm teaching "about IT", I find it _really_ hard to move beyond
> > knowledge.
> > > To do things such as summarize, describe, interpret, apply,
> demonstrate,
> > > calculate, analyze, separate, order, explain, connect, classify,
> > combine,
> > > integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, assess, decide, rank, grade,
> > > test,
> > > measure, or recommend ... All the "higher order" skills is just so
> hard.
> > > I'd suggest that this is because we are too bothered with ensuring
> that
> > > the
> > > students have "the skills" rather than "the concepts".  If we were
> > > orientated towards "concepts", then then higher order stuff would come
> > > easier.
> >
> > Imagine that its 1986, you are learning Wordstar on DOS or CPM. With the
> > wisdom of hindsight, what are the generalised, higher order skills which
> > will  still be useful in 2006? More importantly, how would you have
> > recognised them back in 1986? If you can answer that, then you are on
> the
> > way to knowing what is important to teach now.
> >
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