dsmith

dsmith, 10 days ago

@NicoleCRust

During my own book revision process, an issue came to light.

Early in my teaching career, I found it paid off to treat all Ss as gifted regardless of the class make-up. I’d gather and tickle and motivate all Ss by enriching content, pursuing teachable moments, noting factoids and connections during instruction, etc.

Those are not always good practices when writing a book!

Do you have communication foibles/strengths that deserve attention as you shape and polish your manuscript?

dsmith, 23 days ago

@WorldImagining @cognition @cogsci

This won't likely prove to be much help, but I'm sure I've read that Ulric Neisser's textbook title "Cognitive Psychology" circa 1967 was the first usage of that term.

dsmith, 1 month ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology @academicchatter

A couple suggestions that aren’t perfect workarounds but can reduce the issue you identify:

…When assessing support needs in terms of cog abilities or academic aptitudes, the use of age vs. grade norms will more likely support an appropriate decision.

…Younger vs. older Ss show greater variability on most measures, and so besides using multiple measures for Gifted ID, impose a higher cog ability cut-off score for primary-aged Ss.

dsmith, 1 month ago

@NicoleCRust

Nicely said.
I think you're a darn good writer, Ms. Rust.

dsmith, 1 month ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology @academicchatter

"...all educators would do well to create mastery-focused classroom goal structures, to push all students in a more positive direction. Perhaps the only person a student should focus upon out-performing is who the student was yesterday."

👍

dsmith, 1 month ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @academicchatter @psychology

Well done. Slick!

dsmith, 2 months ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology @academicchatter

Superb! The framework is a true step forward, and you asked some excellent questions, Jeff.

I'm interested in how context constraints transform all else to generate meaning and a new kind of operating knowledge as soon as we begin to read.

Also see attached re accuracy, specificity, and the progressive ed question, “Must reading comp tie only to the author’s intended meaning or may the reader legitimately bring his/her own meaning?”

dsmith, 1 month ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology @academicchatter

Looking forward to this, many thanks!
/D

dsmith, 1 month ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology @academicchatter

Super interesting... Thank you for sharing.

dsmith, 2 months ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology @academicchatter

Gosh, I would love to read this work but it's behind a paywall.

dsmith, 2 months ago

@CubeRootOfTrue @stevenray

Opinion: The well-observed regularities you mention are subject to individual diffs.

Generally, “homologous” areas across hemispheres tend to disaggregate concurrent processing so that tracked features can offer a contrasted perspective and predictively support one another... for obvious functional advantages. I am a hard-core finger-&-toe tapper and I’ve noticed it is very rare that any one of my tapping hands, fingers, or feet will mirror another…

dsmith, 2 months ago

@CubeRootOfTrue @stevenray

One hand might tap 2x the other and 4x my right foot, each serving to nest & mutually support the others. Detail: right-foot tracks bass drum, left-hand tracks top hat, right-hand overlays in free-style to track melody.

Built-in constraints limit what one limb can do when certain others are working, eg., my left-hand struggles to irregularly tap when my right-hand is in any way busy. But a trained piano player would probably not experience that issue the way I do…

dsmith, 3 months ago

@WorldImagining @cogsci @cognition @neuroscience

Nicely explained.

I wonder if the activated set widens/generalizes with age -- again due to the failure of inhibition which, even at this micro level, requires an energy expenditure.

But we also know these confusion errors implicate phonological as well as semantic memory processing, and we note that both "Mitterand" and "Macron" begin with the same phoneme and end with a similar syllable.

dsmith, 3 months ago

@WorldImagining @cogsci @cognition @neuroscience

Interesting!

One more connection re Biden's confusion...

Besides semantic and acoustic factors, prosody can also play a role. Like most classroom Ts, I sometimes confused the names of students when I had a lot on my mind (not a memory issue -- it's excellent). I noticed I was much more likely to confuse names with the same # of syllables. While Mitterand is one more syllable than Macron, it rolls out in fluent speech like a 2-syllable word.

dsmith, 3 months ago

@ninokadic @philosophy @philosophyofmind

On bigger questions like "What is consciousness?" I think it’s a safe bet that advancing neuroscience will radically re-define the knowns, the theories, the outstanding Qs.

Someone should take a qualitative look at how groundbreaking labs in the last 25 years have collaborated amongst themselves. How do they bounce ideas? How do they speculate creatively/effectively? What do they sketch on their whiteboards?

dsmith, 4 months ago

@NicoleCRust

Is it a contraction to eliminate a gymnastic tongue movement?

dsmith, 6 months ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology

I recently wrote about this and only a few nights ago enjoyed a dinner-party conversation on the topic. Where active learning is concerned, I think we tend to get overly focussed on only choice/autonomy and relationships. We underestimate the foundational need for a baseline of structure to provide each student with the clarity, safety, and confidence boundaries necessary for learner autonomy to pay off within an active setting.

dsmith, 6 months ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology

Yes, that's right on, I agree.

To be clear on my own suggestion, I think the baseline of structure has to do as much with motivation-initiative, regulating challenge, and assignment navigation as with behaviour and discipline.

Also, Csikszentmihalyi's ideas on "flow" have much to say on all this. He really gets a lot of things right, e.g., his views on the need for a challenge-skills match fit well with mainstream ideas re learners as self-regulators.

dsmith, 6 months ago

@jeffgreene @edutooters @psychology

Autonomy support deserves increased attention from researchers and practitioners alike. Theory is ready to move now.

dsmith, 6 months ago

@NicoleCRust @analog_ashley

From Krishna Shenoy’s 2013 talk (1:03:51 mark):

“I don’t know scientifically what to do with one neuron anymore because of these challenges we're running in terms of relating it... It’s about looking at populations of neurons and how they relate. This isn’t representational bashing, at all. It’s simply that the data don’t largely get captured by that type of perspective. We see far more neurons doing idiosyncratic things than we see doing the canonical things.”

dsmith, 6 months ago

@FantasticalEconomics @dragfyre @edutooters

But it’s not the same mistake.

The concern with Wikipedia: Ss wouldn’t apply critical thinking regarding the info quality of user-generated content.

The concern with AI: access to a higher grade of better-disguised plagiarism. Ss can generate products without applying critical or creative thinking anywhere in their process.

There's nothing broken about how educators assess student thinking. The biggest challenge: ensuring Ss are actually thinking.

dsmith, 7 months ago

@NicoleCRust @knutson_brain @tdverstynen @MolemanPeter

It does make for a fun thought experiment.

A device that could translate measured brain recordings of verbal thinking would need to be trainable and person-specific, like speech-to-text software.

Technologically, a first step might be applying ourselves to deduce what someone is saying by translating brain activity. That might prove much easier.

dsmith, 7 months ago

@knutson_brain @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust @tdverstynen @kordinglab

I may have read about this one on Mastadon earlier this year… Stanford brain-computer interface “allow users to type by imagining themselves speaking.” The assistive device makes intracortical measurements in ventral premotor cortex and Broca's area via implanted sensors.

https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/02/stanford-brain-computer/

Both motor involvement and cross-referencing recordings in "distal" networks were no doubt an assist.

dsmith, 7 months ago

@knutson_brain @MolemanPeter @NicoleCRust @tdverstynen @kordinglab

But the tremendous individual differences that we see in even tightly defined functions means the device can only work on a per-individual basis... once trained.

And Peter makes a good point about context -- that is, context would introduce error. I once knew a 7 yo who printed his name perfectly several times a day in his own classroom, but his efforts in any other room of the school were shockingly illegible.

dsmith, 6 months ago

@NicoleCRust @debivort @MolemanPeter @knutson_brain @beneuroscience @kordinglab @tdverstynen

We grow up inferring contiguity and causality on the basis of our experience, vocab, meaning-making.

I think context implies there are no starts or stops. States and behaviours continually unfold. I may set a goal ahead of time to hit the next pitch out of the park, but my action plan is continuously evolving under review as the ball spins toward me. At what point did action selection occur?