the universe of knowledge

saw this piece of drawing within Christopher D. Sessums’ post on 150+ Resources for Teaching and Learning:

particularly attracted by the “MONSTROUSLY LARGE BLIND SPOTS”. dun ask me why, the brain’s quite dead after running 8.5 hrs of afterburners for 2 consecutive days. it’s simply a feeling of 渺小, especially if you are doing some research or lit review lately, you’ll likely feel likewise 😛

of cos if u would like to find out abt the exact context of the drawing, go back to the source (:

On changes

was reading will richardson’s end-of-the-year reflection posting on “changes” in the year, and co-incidentally, i saw this post by Dr Ashley Tan featuring an experiment conducted by harvard on some pple’s oblivious to drastic changes. (thanks tuck soon for showing me dr tan’s blog after i asked if he knows of anyone else in singapore who blogs abt education technologies. if you belong to this ‘rare species’ and u’re reading this post, pls leave a comment to get in touch!)

my initial response for the change blindness expt is a chinese proverb 成语 that comes to mind: 视而不见 (literally ‘see, and yet not seeing’; metaphorically meaning is somewhat different). but it does not help to explain the phenomena. my gut feel tells me that i will also ‘fail’ the expt, cos i’m an audio person (ref VAK), and i often find myself in situations where i’m supposed to see yet i fail to see, literally. perhaps i’ll notice the change of ‘voice’ of the person in the harvard expt? i’m not sure (:

my response to both posts in terms of change is another proverb 谚语: 一动不如一静. perhaps this would explain why to change is so difficult. another way to look at it is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. and that’s why one choose to 视而不见 and be blind to changes though it may be so obvious? cos wat 黄再源老师 said had always hold true : “现实生活中的现象,只要成语里找得到的,那就是正常的。 ” imho, 此乃真知灼见也 (:

Children as digital natives

Was looking at the “Digital Youth Portrait: Dana” which forms part of the Digital Generation Project. Some good reminders from the video:

“the children that are digital natives a day … are still children. They are children who like stories, they are children who want to be respected, they are children that want to love learning …”

“they are probably more digital native at home than they are at school.”

“video and the internet are the next big wave of how we were trying to reach out to youth … teaching via the internet, conferencing through the internet … and that’s how she got sucked into it”

“literacy is not just not abt text, and it’s even just not about what’s visual, it’s about a combination of the visual, the oral, the interactivity, and being able to support children in all different ways”

“the techonology is the way to do, so you do not need to teach them all the time, you can get a kid with passion at home doing things …”