Month: January 2006

yesterday was the first lesson for mlt801 “foundations of learning and knowledge building” facilitated by a/p chee yam san. the lesson was most enlightening, and, mind-boggling. there are still a few ideas that still stuck to my head fresh until now (my seriously failing memory due to the lack of sleep has not had so much ideas stuck in it for a long long time). i cant catch the exact phrasing of each quote but here’s wat i have:
on “the mind”
– it’s hard to entertain the idea that a human living does not actually knows wat’s going on up in his mind
on “human understanding themselves”
– if it takes a (n+1)th level being to understand a nth level being, does it mean that a human cannot really fully understand themselves?
on “philosophy”
– Rene Descartes, founder/father of modern philosophy, greatest proposition: “Cogito ergo sum” (translation: I think, therefore I am”)
on “views”
– can there really be a ‘view from nowhere‘?
on “computation”
– rules … ‘if’ …. ‘then’ …..
on “rules and representation”
– in 3×4=12, does the computer really _understand_ wat’s 3? and wat’s 4? it but shows a representation of ’12’ (after computation, based on in-built rules)
on “meaning”
– does dictionary really give/tell meaning? every page is but carbon on paper
after all these many ideas, wat do they actually mean to me as a teacher? perhaps it’s important for us to keep on reminding ourselves about the assumptions (esp the way we (re)present our ideas to students) that we have while we go about our teaching, day after day, month after month, year after year. our students have each their own mind, and though we wont be able to understand each of them fully, if at all, we can help them find meaning and make them realise they are thinking beings. to learn to understand how the mind works (+neuroscience perspective) will enable us to better represent meaning to our students, in hope that they will be able to construct a (better) understanding for themselves. students are not computers, if we treat them with computers and feed them with only rules, ????????
looks like if every lesson is going to be like this, we’ll being having an exciting time ahead, especially when we are adopting a FCL (Fostering Communities of Learners) apporach for our lessons. not sure if the practical aspect can really work out for the many part-time students like us coz it’s almost impossible to find time to meet up, and to construct meaning together. even if we manage to get together, the mental states may not be ready. everyone is taking the module for different objectives/reasons, quite unlikely for everyone to be there for the (constrution of) knowledge/learning. in any case, be forward-looking and make the best within the constraints. and got to pray hard that i can manage to get at least a B- for all my 3 modules, else i wont be able to graduate 😐