Consciousness Software

发表于十二月 21, 2014由admin

What we are building here at OSL is a kind of consciousness software, which helps people manage their consciousness.

One way to look at it, consciousness software is a deeper level of digitization of human world. As internet is transforming and affecting deeper of human society, we definitely see that the learning/education world will be fundamentally restructured.

Or you can look at it in another way, the previous waves of digitization have left people with a mess with their data. They have to go to various sites to enter their data, and the data they entered mostly don’t belong to them anymore, or at the least they don’t have any control on it. So we want to restructure internet in a way that we go back to where data come from, let people manage their own data and really “own” their data on their private storage. People choose to share that data with other people(team) or public. Once in public, companies can use that data to build their services. If that service is profitable, the data owners gain a percentage of that profit. The data owners also always own their data, which means they can take back their data if they want (depending on how they have chosen to share their data with public supposing there should be several mechanisms for choosing from).

This is the idea that Opera Unite has proposed on restructuring Internet, although they didn’t touch on the semantic part. The semantic part resembles the efforts in semantic web a little, but still quite different and simpler.

发表在 科学研究 | 一条评论

What we learned from Sudbury Valley School?

发表于三月 12, 2014由admin

We can learn many things about learning/education from sudbury experiences. In fact, we can learn everything about learning/education from their practices. Here I want to list four of them for you to consider.

First, sudbury protects children’s feeling of space, either space of themselves or space of the surrounding. For example, children have the time to be with themselves without being interrupted by others. They are not timed with class clocks or any external schedules. They listen to their own hearts and they feel of themselves. They can also feel of the surrounding, and try to change it for the better. They equally participate in the process of making their schools better. In contrast, students in traditional schools have their feelings of the space constantly interrupted, destroyed and denied.

Such feeling of space is very vital of one’s learning. Without feeling of one’s internal and surrounding space, one is unable to learn. Self-reflection is the center of learning. However, many people coming out of school haven’t learned how to reflect.

Secondly, children are also a group of people. At any place that you have a group of people, you will have what a group of people will have. For example, how to clean up the place. People are different, and they have different likes and dislikes. Since they live in the same space, they need to resolve the conflicts. People want to form various interest groups. So as we can see in sudbury practice, they have the honor system, the personal account, Judicial Committee, school meeting, clubs, and so on. In traditional schools, since adults have the absolute power over children, they simply take everything under their control and simplify everything by making children simply being governed, thus denying children their feeling of the space. So this is why more and more people start to realize this is more about “how to be democratic”.

This alone probably makes sudbury very difficult to reproduce massively. Actually sudbury model is not too costly or complex to reproduce massively. The obstacle is mainly mental, e.g. people’s understanding of equality and how they trust children. This is a profound issue and it will take people many many years to truly understand it. But it doesn’t mean it cannot spread out to become mainstream. Especially with the help of internet and software, we will make that spreading happening faster.

Thirdly, learning is never separated from real life. As the principle of sudbury said, children learn little by little in their daily lives, and when they combine all those experiences together, they try to build up that knowledge. Since learning is never separated from your real life and what you do, learning can surely be driven by curiosity.

Fourthly, whether children should have the freedom of learning? Whether they can be trusted? I think this is a very deep worry in many people’s minds. From my own life experience, I strongly believe children should have that freedom and they can be trusted to guide themselves. I think sudbury experiences also proved so. If we want to talk about this philosophically, I can also talk convincingly why so. The practical question here is how to ensure children’s right in making decisions on their own learning be protected? Should we declare something like “Freedom of Learning”?

So if you are only working with adult learning, do sudbury experiences give inspiration to your work? We think they surely do. Although adults are not confined by schools and classes as how children are, adults are still confined by the conceptual model of learning they got used to after more than 10 or 20 years in school. So when they build online learning software, they still think in term of class based learning in school. Only after all these years, they start to realize little by little that they are not bound by anything on the internet and thus start to make learning a little more flexible (Khan Academy, MOOC, for example). Still the great potential of internet for learning is untapped. Few people are really building learning software that we need in the internet age.

So what kind of learning software we need in the internet age? I have been thinking and exploring this for many years. What have been really helpful in my exploration are: my own schooling experiences, especially my primary school experiences, which mimic sudbury experiences quite well; my broad learning experiences in various fields; my reading of works from John Taylor Gatto, Sudbury, Summerhill and all those unschooling practices. They are very rich nutrition; my broad teaching experiences of various groups of people (children, migrating manual labor workers, college students, young professionals, seniors…); the unique research methodology:exploration with software. If you are interested in seeing what kind of software we are building here, you can check out summarization of our work, and the projects page. Particularly I want to mention briefly knowledge engine here (a notebook to turn experiences into knowledge). It helps train people’s reflection skills and helps people feel of the space. By doing so, it also aids people learn in real life. Surely sudbury children are already doing so. Sudbury children are already very strong self-learners. But this tool still can help the self-learners with their learning, just as it has helped me with my daily learning. Also the result of learning and the knowledge constructed can be some kind of demonstration of what they have learned, and they can also use it to teach others. This tool is to make learning not separated from your everyday activities. It is to lower the barrier of self-learning and thus make learning truly pervasive, instead of being isolated and withering.

Sudbury experiences have shown us what learning really is. With that understanding, we need to build learning software that really helps self-learners and makes self-learning pervasive. Learning activities are definitely scattered and everywhere. Learning is never separated from real life. We are all self-learners. Together let’s bring out the true face of learning.

发表在 科学研究, selflearning | 留下评论

超级反向课堂

发表于二月 26, 2014由admin

英文版

现在很多人做互联网教育，想的还是学校课堂的模式。所以我们看各种学习网站，不外乎都是课堂式的课件，或者视频，或者讲座活动。其实这样的一堂课，于学习者不过也就是对该领域的知识多了点认识和理解。而这种认识和理解不一定要通过这样的课堂来获取。比如说可以通过阅读，可以通过和他人的交流，可以通过做项目等等，甚至是生活中其他相关事情的触发。知识是到处流动的，彼此关联的，很可能你在接触或者学习其他东西的时候就会增进你这个领域知识的理解。很多时候，为了获得这些理解，与其去上这样那样的网络课程，不如通过这些其他的方式可以更快的获取。

所以对于互联网教育，与其去构建这样的课堂，不如去走进学习者的内心，去构建学习者内心的课堂。对于学习者来说，他要去构建的这个知识，比如产品设计或者人力资源管理，他可以通过各种方式去获得那些重要的认识或理解，然后把这些认识或理解全部综合起来，构建出他对这个领域的知识，这就是他内心的课堂。这首先是个反向的课堂，和传统课堂不一样，传统课堂是由教学的老师或者教育者去为学生们建设的课堂，而这个内心的课堂是学习者自己在自己大脑里构建的课堂，反映了他自己对知识的理解。其次这是个超级的课堂。因为这个课堂包括了他从各种资源各种活动获得的关于这个领域知识的所有重要的资源和认识/理解。而传统课堂是非常有限的，你可能只能获得关于这个领域知识的某一个方面的体会，仅仅是内心课堂的很小一部分。

如果我们要真正的实现以学习者为中心的学习，我们就要给他们合适的工具帮助他们构建他们自己内心的超级课堂。这种超级课堂可以是动态的，非实时的，一直持续进行的。比如说我在构建产品经理这个内心课堂的时候，我对产品化思维可能会从某个方面有些理解。我记录并分享出来后，其他人可以做评论并形成讨论。经过一段时间的积累，大家就可以看到这个产品经理内心课堂里重要的知识点以及每个点后面的那些讨论。

我们需要有好的工具去帮助学习者去构建他内心的课堂，并且能够展现分享出来。其他的学习者可以通过peer learning的方式来参与共同学习，而老师或者已经有丰富经验的学习者（老师也是学习者啊）可以通过这个内心课堂去引导这个学习者的学习，实现“教”的意义。

软件就是关于人类世界各个领域的数字化的工作。互联网教育这么多年，还一直难以发挥出真正的威力，就是因为我们一直在数字化那些由老师们构建的课堂，而实际上那种外在的课堂是无处不在的，可以说人生何处不课堂。在这个方面进行数字化工作，可以说是徒劳的。这个可能很多教育领域的人都有感受。你费心费力的去做些教学视频出来，你到底是做视频的还是做教育的？你辛辛苦苦的组织学习活动，你到底是组织活动的还是做教育的？难道不是教育者做的视频就没有教育作用？我大学里很多的人文学习就是通过看西方电影和小说完成的。很多思辨能力就是通过看南方周末这样的报纸杂志培养的或者通过在街头的很多商业和销售方面的兼职工作锻炼出来的。。难道教育者们应该拍更好的电影，写更好的小说，办更好的报纸？

所以真正应该互联网发力的，真正应该去数字化的，是这个内心的超级课堂。帮助每个人去构建去分享自己内心的超级课堂才是未来互联网教育之路。这才是学习/教育数字化的方向。 这些会作为意识软件的一部分一起兴起。

其实，这个内心的超级课堂，就是知识啊！知识的本质，就是个体的过去的经验可以在新的场合实时的被唤起帮助识别问题解决问题。而要做到及时的准确的唤起，就是依靠对各种经验的一定的抽象和结构。而这个内心的超级课堂，就是去不断的去构建更好的带结构的经验和认识。 只有当我们把数字化学习的重心放到内心的课堂上时，我们才可能真正的让“学习”内容丰富起来，让知识丰富起来。

发表在 selflearning, 演讲 | 2条评论

改变学习内容的生产方式

发表于二月 9, 2014由admin

英文版

互联网学习/教育要有大的发展，我们必须改变当前学习内容的生产方式。

传统的学习内容的生产方式，是内容生产者和知识的所有者或专家进行沟通，把专家所拥有的知识转化成教学内容。这样的生产方式，成本是非常巨大并且非常消耗时间的，内容生产的周期很长。这样的生产方式所形成的后果是学习内容的极度匮乏，涵盖面太少，不能满足人们在生活工作实际中的学习需求。内容经常是非常过时的，缺乏更新的，没有人打理的，和充满了各种错误的。在知识高速发展的知识经济时代，这样的学习内容生产方式显然是不能满足需求的。对于处于这个知识经济时代中的企业，这样的内容生产方式也是无法满足员工每日的大量的学习需求。所以我们可以看到，很多人喜欢到博客微博等等地方去学习，大家想了解什么知识，多去那些地方去寻找，因为这些地方的知识，即使知识性不是那么强，至少是及时的，丰富的，更能满足人们的学习需求。

我们可以看到传统的学习内容生产方式有两大隔离。 第一个隔离是内容生产者和知识所有者之间的隔离。这个上面已经提到。另一个隔离是教与学之间的隔离。学习的人并不能够主动的参与到学习内容的建设中去，知识专家们也不能够从学习者这里获得知识的反馈。

这两大隔离，造成了静态的知识而非动态的知识。这恐怕是因为大家对知识的一种潜意识上的假设，即知识是静态的，而非动态的。知识一旦获取就不再改变，所以专家们不用再去更新这些知识。而学习者，他们还没有学会知识，没有拥有该知识，所以他们对这个领域就没有任何知识，他们也不能对知识建设做出任何贡献。

这样的认识，首先在知识高速发展的知识经济时代，肯定是不合适的了。现在大家更多的是在一个共同探索知识的进程中。在知识经济时代，我们需要的不是大多数人仅仅根据少数知识专家发现的规律去做简单的操作，我们需要的是更多的人可以加入到知识探索的过程中来，他们需要知道知识是怎么来的，有哪些不足的地方，如何去改进这些知识。如今的时代，不是大多数人都工作在流水线上做着机械单调重复的工作。现在只需要占人口比例很少的人去从事这样的工作，而更多的人从事的是复杂性的知识性工作。美国目前的高失业率，一方面大量的人从传统的制造业失业出来一直找不到工作，而另一方面受软件影响的新兴产业需要大量的有独立思维能力有探索能力的人，却找不到合适的人。这是个教育问题。在互联网改变的经济里，越来越多的是社会产品的生产。所谓社会产品即解决社会需求的产品，如教育，养老等等。通过互联网的探索，我们对这些社会领域的知识会大大丰富，这是一个真正爆炸性呈上亿倍规模成长的领域。而我们人类以前在这些领域的社会科学，远远不能满足这些探索的需求。所以这些新的生产一定是需要大量的有独立思考能力有知识探索能力的人在其中就业的。而现有的教育模式不能提供这样的人造成了最大的矛盾。

如果这些人参与到知识的探索中来，他们就会发现知识的探索过程，一定是和生活的方方面面相关的。知识并不是束之高阁的东西，知识是和生活的方方面面相关想通的，这样知识才有活水之源，才可能更新变化有所突破。这点，常常为传统的教育模式所忽略，是我们做互联网教育的，最需要有所认识的地方。

我们如何能够消除这些隔离？让知识专家们在自己探索知识的时候就可以一边探索一边积累建设自己的知识，并和外界分享。其他人通过学习这些专家们分享出来的知识，也可以以某种方式参与到知识的构建中去。知识专家并不是专门为学习者去生产“学习内容”，其只是分享自己的知识，而这个知识是一直在构建中的，所以专家们对自己构建的知识一定是在每日打理的并不断更新的。

当我们看看各种博客，微博或者社交网站，里面有很丰富的内容。如果我想了解某方面的知识，我经常会去那里找，然后去构建。那么这些博客，微博或者社交网站，算不算学习解决方案？这些地方，算不算学习场所？这个问题这里问出来，先留给大家思考。

2008年美国的TeachStreet出来的时候，其实我早有那样的网站的想法。一直没有去做的一个很重要的原因是必须解决内容的问题。虽然TeachStreet专注的是生活中的学习，但是如果没有好的学习内容的生产方式，不会对用户产生粘性的，也无法由生活中的学习去把知识丰富起来，去真正挑战传统的教育模式，只能沦为兴趣爱好的“非正式学习”场所。所以TeachStreet的失败并不出我所料。国内的第九课堂，模式跟TeachStreet一样。曾经问其创始人，与TeachStreet有什么不同。他说不出来，只说团队执行能力肯定不一样。

Evernote作为个人笔记，其实也和那些博客，微博一样，成为人们分享知识的一个地方。但是跟博客微博等一样，Evernote仍然是非常缺乏结构性的，知识性仍然不强。Evernote的创始人说他们计划逐步推出更多的结构性的东西，让Everntoe的知识性更强一些。

互联网发展到今天，在经历了对衣食住行，购物，游戏等领域的数字化以后，逐步开始进入人类世界更深层次的数字化，比如学习教育领域。我们也可以以一种比较简单化的方式这么看，在google引领了沟通和信息领域的第一波数字化和facebook引领了人与人之间的关系的第二波数字化后，第三波数字化应该是人类意识领域的数字化，即意识软件（consciousness software）的兴起。在互联网时代，我们需要更好的管理我们的意识。我有什么心得体会要与人分享，为什么我需要去这个微博，那个微信或者社交网去一个个的发。我写什么文章，这篇文章的构建来自于一长段时间里在某个领域的经验积累，我如何能够更快的定位这些经验，我是不是在重复很多以前说过的东西？要做好这些事情，我们就需要深入人类的意识领域，去观察学习和知识形成到底是怎么回事。在这个层面上，我们才可能更好的理解到底什么是学习，什么是知识。我们的学习，知识构建，分享交流，这些都是连续性的意识管理的过程，应该有更好的工具去帮助我们去做这些事情。有了这些软件工具，我们才可能真正的参与到知识的探索中去，让知识回到其真正的生活之源去，成为活的流动着的结构，而不是死的布满蛛网的“知识”。

在如今这样一个充满探索性的互联网时代，一个组织的学习能力将越来越重要的成为这个组织的核心竞争力。在员工的工作性质已经是充满了探索式学习的情况下，我们做互联网学习人如何不拖后腿，不为旧的教育模式所束缚，真正的支持员工的这种探索式学习，帮助组织真正成为学习型组织，有很多需要思考的东西，有很多需要探索性去学习的东西。我们很荣幸，能够有机会去在这个转折点上去促成新的教育方式的形成，使得学习和教育得以归其本来面目。能够以和平的力量去促使这个世界变得更加美好，这是一件非常荣幸的事情。

发表在 selflearning, 演讲 | 留下评论

Summarization of our findings

发表于三月 22, 2013由admin

We want to summarize our finding here, so you know what we have achieved through our work. We want to be brief here in this essay so that you can quickly grasp it.

We tried in many domains of education and did various experimentation. Our goal is to find out on a deeper level what is knowledge and what is learning, and how that understanding can help us building software for education or learning in the internet age.

What is Knowledge?

So here is what we find out about knowledge. We summarize as below:

  • Knowledge is of big blocks. Knowledge is understanding of the whole, otherwise it is just information.
  • Knowledge is flowing. When different knowledge comes together and condense, it forms a concrete matter or thing that we can recognize as a human being. So anything in real life must contain multiple dimensions of knowledge.
  • Learning is to interact with these various things, to extract out one particular dimension of knowledge, and to accumulate drops of experience in that dimension of knowledge. Thus learning cannot and should not be separated from daily activities. We should learn in real life, and learn by doing it. So learning activities must be very scattered and everywhere, and one core ability of learning is to extract out that dimension of knowledge from various scattered activities. We need to know how to break down.
  • Then we put all our Significant Experiences together, try to achieve an understanding of the whole. Here we need another core learning ability, which is to summarize and to comprehend.
  • The key of learning is reflection. The above two activities of thinking (breaking down and comprehending) are the two basic forms of reflection.
  • Knowledge needs to be applied. After you gain the understanding of the knowledge on the whole, you will not be limited by the literal expression of the knowledge, and you will be able to “see” knowledge flowing everywhere in real life.
  • Since there is no need to separate learning and daily activities, surely learning is naturally driven by what you are interested to learn.

Above we briefly summarized our understanding of knowledge and learning. For more of our understanding of what is knowledge, you can view our frame (a frame is an outline that includes several notes or other frames) What is Knowledge. Below we want to list some daily phenomena to show how they are anti-learning and anti-knowledge.

Anti-learning and anti-knowledge phenomena

  • People often pride themselves on possessing a large amount of information, and others often get intimated by them.
  • People got confined by the literal expression of knowledge, lack of true understanding of it, and cannot recognize knowledge in other forms.
  • School teachers generally lack experiences in the subject they are teaching. They cannot tell which ones are more important in the textbook, and often waste students’ time by reading from page to page.
  • When in school, people are very diligent in keeping notes. However, once out of school, they seldom make any notes.
  • If schools cannot teach people courage, at the very least, they should be able to teach students on self-reflection. However, after so many years in school, many people still don’t know how to reflect.
  • Whenever people think of learning, they think of going to school, or paying money to take courses. They think of getting a degree of certificate.
  • People tend to think that learning is the duty of the kids (shouldn’t it be a right?).Only kids need to learn. Adults don’t need to learn anymore. We already learned painting and geography at school, we don’t need to learn them anymore.
  • Since knowledge is always taught instead of being explored out of one’s own needs and curiosity, people lack the ability to explore knowledge.

There are too many of these to be all listed here. But I think you get what I mean.

The learning in the internet age

Internet has already changed how people learn. When we talk about how internet changed our world, on a deep level, I think the overall change is to bring us closer to the core values of human being. Of course, that is a big topic. But when people talk about the agile programming methodologies and compare that to the traditional ones such as waterfall, I think it is of that kind of change. When it comes to learning, we can also say that learning in the internet age is becoming more agile, instead of waterfall.

The traditional education is waterfall style instead of iterative. Learning at the internet age, is to meet the needs at hand quickly, and keep getting feedback along the way. The traditional education, however, has a grand design at the very beginning, and you don’t get feedback for a very long time.

The traditional education is separated from experiences, while learning in the internet age is all about gaining experiences quickly.

Thus learning activities in the internet age must be scattered and everywhere. We cannot demand people to just come to our place to learn. That would be too wide a range to cover and too costly. This is the pitfalls of many online education efforts. However, reflection after those scattered activities is the place that we can focus on. Especially, because learning activities are scattered and everywhere, learners need some learning software to help “pull all the strings” and coordinate all the learning efforts. If we say software is to digitize human world, this is what learning software in the internet age should digitize.

Here let me give an example of such kind of learning at the internet age. I use Linux, for work and for life. And I am learning shell programming. So as I am using Linux every day, I will encounter issues, for which I can quickly find solutions on the internet. So I learn little by little about various aspects of shell programming. After some time, I may have accumulated quite many of them. Then I put them together, and try to figure out the rules of shell programming and understand the essence of it. You can also find a book to read it very quickly at this stage. So you can see this kind of learning is very fast, with little waste of time. You also get to train your reflection and abilities to explore knowledge.

So what does the above help us design learning software for the internet age?

First of all, it has to be based on Significant Experiences, since Significant Experiences are the center of all the things above.

Secondly, learning should not be separated from daily life and work. People accumulate Significant Experiences through their daily lives and work.

Third, through simple editing operations, people work on Significant Experiences and accomplish the task of reflection. The result is a dynamic streaming structure, e.g. knowledge.

So any knowledge related cooperation, such as peer learning or teaching, should be based on the Significant Experiences. For example, teaching can be done by giving feedback to Significant Experiences directly.

Hence our work on Knowledge Engine. For that, please read our Knowledge Engine essay and other essays to know what we have done.

If we say software is to digitize human world, then the profession of software programming is about how we digitize various domains of human world. We have domain driven design. Actually the methodologies of agile programming and practice of lean start-ups are also about how we do that work of digitizing various domains of human world.

When we come to online education, we see over and over again that people often treat online education as a place to take tests for a degree or certificate. There are many learning activities in people’s lives that were not captured by these online education software.

Only in the recent years, we get to see breakthrough apps such as khan academy, MOOC, and so on. These breakthrough apps didn’t come from learning theories of education school professors. They also have no real technology breakthrough. They could have happened 5, 6 years ago or even earlier. Their birth is just because someone suddenly realized with all what we have been doing, why not…

Yes, the innovations in the online education field mostly come from thinking outside the box of traditional education system. We are happy to see that now even the mainstream media in America realized this and called for re-think our education from ground up, and really dig into what is learning and what is knowledge, and design software around it.

I was turned off by the elearning research in the academic world about 10 years ago (my research paper only got published 4 years after I wrote it. Well, personally I don’t really care much about publication.) and decided to pursue the research outside of the academic world. Now I am glad to see that people start realizing what is really wrong with our education.

So here is what we share with you our work at Open Source Learning. We would like to get your feedback. If you are willing to join our efforts, you are more than welcome.

发表在 文档, 科学研究, selflearning | 留下评论

Mentored

发表于三月 18, 2013由admin

English Version

我一直相信未来学习/教育的一个很重要的方面，就是每个人都可以成为老师。具体一点说，就是真正有丰富的学习经验有该领域的专业知识的人可以利用自己的业余时间就成为老师，成为优质的教师资源，从而真正改变教师这个职业，实现“教”的意义。我们可以看到现在有不少的网站都在这个方向上努力，比如国内的多贝（主要是视频的类教室教学），或者线下的学习（比如第九课堂，或者以前的Teach Street）。但目前的这些授课模式都有严重的缺陷，无法完全发挥互联网的威力，还不足以挑战传统的主流教学模式。

91笔记想要催生的，是更加互动更加连续性的教学。比如说学习者提出自己想学什么，比如编程，或人力资源，或管理，或摄影。然后其他认为自己可以是这方面老师的人给这个学习者评论，或者初步的学习计划，比如哪些书比较好，需要学习哪些方面的东西，或者自己有什么整理出来的学习资源（91笔记可以帮助老师整理相关的学习资源）。学习者可以从这些评论里挑选一个或几个自己认为好的老师，让这个老师指导自己学习。老师给出需要学习的方面或领域，学生去尝试，并且必须用91笔记记录自己的学习体验，老师给于随时的指导。老师的指导是收费的（可能免费一开始一段时间，然后如果需要继续的指导，则需付费。老师整理的学习资料保持免费。）。

这样的方式，老师可以准确的知道学生的学习状况，进行及时的指导。老师也可以用91笔记来整理自己的学习经验和学习资源，供学生学习。这些学习资源不象传统的教材，仅仅是知识点的板书，而是包含了背后的许多体验和逻辑推理。学生的学习也就不仅仅是知识点的记忆，而更多的是通过自己的体验和推理去复制老师的体验，从而建构自己的知识。老师的教学的重点也就自然的转到引导学生去获得应有的体验，去理性的推理和建构自己的知识体系上面。同时学生通过91笔记培养自己的反思能力和自我对空间的感受能力（学习的核心能力）。这些，当然相对于其他的网站，有更丰富完整的学习体验。而91笔记或者知识引擎的研发，为上述的整个过程提供了背后的技术支持。

当前的很多问答网站，有些象这样的指导的样子。也是这些问答网站可以考虑的如何去深耕或转型的方向。

现在在美国，很多的学习中心，大学和研究机构开始尝试着把反思带回到学习和教学中去，并开始产生很好的学习效果。我想，未来的学习，不会还是象以前一样只是知识点的灌输和应试。学习不会和生活脱节，将是生活中的学习。老师的任务更多的体现在引导学生去通过日常的各种活动去获得关于某领域知识的各个方面和层次的体验，通过对这些体验的反思和理性分析去建立他们自己的知识，也就是培养学生的学习能力和探索知识的能力。这本来就应该是教育的最终目的：放手，让学生能够自己学习。至少在美国，我们现在可以看到明显的学习和教学的方式都开始发生根本的变化，如何从旧有的知识点灌输摆脱出来，将学生的生活实践和体验放到中心的地位，通过体验和反思推理来建构学生自己的知识，如何能够很好的体系的做到这些，应该是我们探索的方向。91笔记或知识引擎，想要做的，就是这方面的尝试。

发表在 selflearning, 演讲 | 留下评论

回顾笔记本的设计

发表于三月 15, 2013由admin

对不起，此内容只适用于English。

发表在 文档 | 留下评论

新功能：@ 功能

发表于三月 14, 2013由admin

English version

现在能可以用@来提到某人。你可以在笔记或评论中使用这个。被提到的成员会收到邮件的通知。同时网页左上角也会有提醒。

前端的网页界面还没能提供自动输入的功能。因为@功能社交性比较强。我们不是很确定会不会因此学习环境变得太喧嚣。学习还是需要安静的进行的，不是吗？

总之，你可以开始使用这个@功能了。我们会根据用户的使用情况做进一步的改进。

发表在 新功能 | 留下评论

反思学习工具和未来的学习

发表于二月 21, 2013由admin

English Version

最近我了解了一下国外对在学习教学环境里使用反思的方法和实践的研究。我发现有不少的大学和研究机构已经开始进行了各方面的探索和研究，并开始形成一个很有影响的趋势。有的大学的一些课程是用反思的方法为中心来教学的，鼓励学生通过对自我的感觉和反思去主动性的学习，当然这对老师和其教学方式都有一定的要求。有的大学在教学中穿插反思的练习，以让学生的学习更加的主动和深入。

但这些所有的研究，我都没有发现有利用软件和互联网的力量来系统的进行的。这就是开源学习的研究所特别专注的地方。另外的不同是，我们这里更注重问题的解决。虽然我们也努力形成对学习/教学的整体的理解和建立系统的理论，但这些也都是以解决问题为导向的，为的是帮助大众更好的认识什么是学习。还有就是，对我来说，反思并不仅仅是学习的辅助，其是学习的核心。这是学习的本来的面目！

下面我想讲讲这样的反思学习工具和相应的学习平台如何能够提供一种融合了实践，体验，和系统知识的学习。（现有的学校里的传统学习是知识与实践/体验完全脱节的。）

首先，这是一个自学的工具。个人可以用这个工具来帮助自己自学。它也可以用在学校的课堂教学的环境里。也可以被用在p2p的学习小组里。

比如，在老师教学的课堂上，老师可以描述一下这个学习领域里的知识。（这里详细的请见英文版）

通过将反思的原则，方法和实践融入到学习和教学中去，这将从根本上改变如今学校里的传统的教学方式。学校里的传统的教学方式知识是以灌输的方式为基本的特征，缺乏和实践和学生反思以及自我感觉的结合。而我们期望未来的学习和教学是比较好的把知识系统和学生的实践反思紧密结合起来，强调学生通过多方面的实践来理解形成系统的知识，并让知识体系更好的从人们的生活需求中来。这些曾经是很难系统的做到并做好的。我期望通过互联网和软件，我们可以形成新的教学和学习方式。而大学的课程，或者各种培训中心，可以开始考虑采用这样的方式了。

这是我看到的美国的教育在走的路。我想这条路是可以将目前的整个传统的体系扭转过来，真正实现未来的生活中的学习的！

 

发表在 科学研究, selflearning | 留下评论

WIKI+Twitter

发表于二月 18, 2013由admin

Here we propose a new representation of knowledge. Simply put, it is wiki+twitter, which we call WikiNote here at osl. You can take a look of the site: http://3exps.org/wiki/index.cgi/WikiNote

Wiki has been invented particularly for knowledge cooperation. It has the following features:

  • It is easy to edit and create a new page. You don’t need to upload to a website as you often need to do with non-wiki sites.
  • Anyone (normally)  can edit.
  • It is visioned. It keeps a history of all the edits.

So wiki means quick editing cooperation on the web. However, any knowledge comes from experiences, especially Significant Experiences. In the writing of the wiki, people are working with their experiences internally in their minds. However, that process is not captured by the software. And once the wiki page is written, no one can see those Significant Experiences, and thus the Significant Experiences are lost in the process. For the learners, it becomes difficult for them to try repeating those experiences to achieve the same understanding of the knowledge represented via wiki. Furthermore, since no Significant Experiences are captured, no one can cooperate based on those experiences. And we know people share experiences. Many of them are similar. These are the building blocks of knowledge.

So to better represent knowledge, we propose adding twitter to the picture. So we have the twitter-like snippets here at Knowledge Engine, and we are going to attach that to the wiki. So when people view the wiki page, they also see the Significant Experiences that are shaping and driving the knowledge. They can further cooperate by working on those Significant Experiences directly, producing knowledge together. Teachers can also join the efforts, by providing feedback on those Significant Experiences directly. Actually they are not teachers, they are just more experienced learners. They learn together with other learners, and their role of teaching emerge naturally. Thus we bridge the gap btw learners and teachers.

 

 

 

发表在 科学研究, selflearning | 留下评论