pedagogy   12428

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Data Feminism · MIT Press Open
data_science  epistemology  methodology  data_visualization  pedagogy  mapping  cartography  teaching 
16 hours ago by shannon_mattern
The Educational Tyranny of the Neurotypicals | WIRED
"Ben Draper, who runs the Macomber Center for Self Directed Learning, says that while the center is designed for all types of children, kids whose parents identify them as on the autism spectrum often thrive at the center when they’ve had difficulty in conventional schools. Ben is part of the so-called unschooling movement, which believes that not only should learning be self-directed, in fact we shouldn't even focus on guiding learning. Children will learn in the process of pursuing their passions, the reasoning goes, and so we just need to get out of their way, providing support as needed.

Many, of course, argue that such an approach is much too unstructured and verges on irresponsibility. In retrospect, though, I feel I certainly would have thrived on “unschooling.” In a recent paper, Ben and my colleague Andre Uhl, who first introduced me to unschooling, argue that it not only works for everyone, but that the current educational system, in addition to providing poor learning outcomes, impinges on the rights of children as individuals.

MIT is among a small number of institutions that, in the pre-internet era, provided a place for non-neurotypical types with extraordinary skills to gather and form community and culture. Even MIT, however, is still trying to improve to give these kids the diversity and flexibility they need, especially in our undergraduate program.

I'm not sure how I'd be diagnosed, but I was completely incapable of being traditionally educated. I love to learn, but I go about it almost exclusively through conversations and while working on projects. I somehow kludged together a world view and life with plenty of struggle, but also with many rewards. I recently wrote a PhD dissertation about my theory of the world and how I developed it. Not that anyone should generalize from my experience—one reader of my dissertation said that I’m so unusual, I should be considered a "human sub-species." While I take that as a compliment, I think there are others like me who weren’t as lucky and ended up going through the traditional system and mostly suffering rather than flourishing. In fact, most kids probably aren’t as lucky as me and while some types are more suited for success in the current configuration of society, a huge percentage of kids who fail in the current system have a tremendous amount to contribute that we aren’t tapping into.

In addition to equipping kids for basic literacy and civic engagement, industrial age schools were primarily focused on preparing kids to work in factories or perform repetitive white-collar jobs. It may have made sense to try to convert kids into (smart) robotlike individuals who could solve problems on standardized tests alone with no smartphone or the internet and just a No. 2 pencil. Sifting out non-neurotypical types or trying to remediate them with drugs or institutionalization may have seemed important for our industrial competitiveness. Also, the tools for instruction were also limited by the technology of the times. In a world where real robots are taking over many of those tasks, perhaps we need to embrace neurodiversity and encourage collaborative learning through passion, play, and projects, in other words, to start teaching kids to learn in ways that machines can’t. We can also use modern technology for connected learning that supports diverse interests and abilities and is integrated into our lives and communities of interest.

At the Media Lab, we have a research group called Lifelong Kindergarten, and the head of the group, Mitchel Resnick, recently wrote a book by the same name. The book is about the group’s research on creative learning and the four Ps—Passion, Peers, Projects, and Play. The group believes, as I do, that we learn best when we are pursuing our passion and working with others in a project-based environment with a playful approach. My memory of school was "no cheating,” “do your own work,” "focus on the textbook, not on your hobbies or your projects," and "there’s time to play at recess, be serious and study or you'll be shamed"—exactly the opposite of the four Ps.

Many mental health issues, I believe, are caused by trying to “fix” some type of neurodiversity or by simply being insensitive or inappropriate for the person. Many mental “illnesses” can be “cured” by providing the appropriate interface to learning, living, or interacting for that person focusing on the four Ps. My experience with the educational system, both as its subject and, now, as part of it, is not so unique. I believe, in fact, that at least the one-quarter of people who are diagnosed as somehow non-neurotypical struggle with the structure and the method of modern education. People who are wired differently should be able to think of themselves as the rule, not as an exception."
neurotypicals  neurodiversity  education  schools  schooling  learning  inequality  elitism  meritocracy  power  bias  diversity  autism  psychology  stevesilberman  schooliness  unschooling  deschooling  ronsuskind  mentalhealth  mitchresnick  mit  mitemedialab  medialab  lifelongkindergarten  teaching  howweteach  howwelearn  pedagogy  tyranny  2018  economics  labor  bendraper  flexibility  admissions  colleges  universities  joiito 
23 hours ago by robertogreco
Resource: Teaching and Learning with WWO
The WWO collection is valuable simply for the access it offers to early women’s texts: many faculty tell us that they could not teach their courses without it. But we also offer other tools and materials to help teachers use the uniquely digital dimensions of WWO more effectively in their teaching. Below you’ll find a searchable database of syllabi on early women’s writing, suggested assignments to help students use some of the advanced features of WWO, and a set of quick how-tos to help get you started.
dh  literature  pedagogy 
2 days ago by asandersgarcia
Before You Make a Thing | ts200v2
Approach technologies as congealed labour; doing so expands what “technology” means and underscores the embodied work and material histories at play from ideation and patenting to manufacturing and maintenance. Technologies are not only things; they are processes, too. (See Mayer; reading optophone; Crawford and Joler.)
Ask who benefits most from automation and novelty; doing so attends to how planned obsolescence and deskilling affect various groups of people. Automation may increase efficiency or productivity in some areas, but it most certainly shapes craft and changes demands for occupations and forms of expertise. (See Luddites; Crawford and Joler; Pedercini.)
Recognize when projects aestheticize the politics of their technologies; doing so addresses how values are expressed through design as well as through terms such as “user-friendly,” “fast,” “sleek,” “convenient,” and even “minimalist.” Design may be politics by seemingly apolitical means. (See Parker; McPherson; Crawford and Joler.)
Engage directly the power of technology; doing so foregrounds how and why a given technology could oppress groups of people, or be used to resist oppression. Technology is not only an object but also a force, and it is entangled with issues of race, gender, sexuality, extraction, and ability. (See Nakamura; Nelson; Case; Pedercini.)
pedagogy  teaching  media_theory 
3 days ago by shannon_mattern
Philosophy — Feminist.AI
Design with and for unheard voices in AI creation.

We must be invited to a location to participate.

All knowledge systems and skills are equally honored and valued.

Acknowledge and own privilege.  

We want multiple entry points for involvement, so we can pull from different knowledge systems for our design and development.

The AI project/research can be a social response or technical making.

We would like to revisit every step of our process with every new project.

The physical (hardware, interaction, experience) and the digital are key elements in our AI Design. The material and purpose are just as important as the data and model.

We attribute everything (people who have come before us, original parallel research).

We encourage our community to move beyond comparing AI to the human brain, and to think about alternative systems to design with AI.

We probe the knowledge assumptions in AI systems, and deliberately deconstruct existing approaches to the AI creation (from the data, to the rulesets, to the output).

We work to contribute to and community source our own data, to control our own intelligent futures.
artificial_intelligence  pedagogy 
6 days ago by shannon_mattern
About — Posthuman Feminist AI: Bits & Bytes
(Posthuman) Feminist AI Projects: Bits & Bytes Exploring embodiment in AI design, while re-imagining AI systems through collaborative making.

With the rise of consumer facing systems, AI, has the potential to combat or spread new forms of discrimination, through fundamental choices in representation, design and development. Bits and Bytes emerged from Feminist Posthuman AI Art Projects and engages with communities across Los Angeles to fight discrimination in AI through community workshops held across Los Angeles. 

Philosophy: Our approach is to collaboratively design with voices who have not been heard in Artificial Intelligence creation. Our focus is to include embodiment in AI design, incorporating sensory, cultural and emotional considerations. All are welcome to join at any point in the process - tech experience is not necessary. All knowledge is equally valued. 

What are we doing? We have multiple AI Art and Design Projects, but our primary project is looking at ways we can use intelligent interfaces for collaborative protest and civic engagement. We call this project XR Intelligent Protests. In the first part of the Intelligent Protest project, we used an an intelligent interface to protest with face movements instead of voices. In the second phase of the project, we implement the face protest into physical, virtual and augmented environments.

Challenges in this space.  Through our making, we consider questions like:

How can we positively inform AI design by recognizing cultural and social assumptions and biases that lead to discrimination?
How can we ensure that our approach to feminism is both transnational and posthuman?
As we have multiple selves across physical, web, virtual and augmented realities, how can we think about designing in a new way? Using one behavior across realities?
artificial_intelligence  pedagogy 
6 days ago by shannon_mattern
Problem Solving with Trig | Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere
I’m going to try to outline the messiness that was my thought process in this triangle problem, to show/archive the messiness that is problem solving.


The point of this post isn’t to teach someone the solution to the problem. I could have written something much easier. (See we can draw this auxiliary line to create similar triangles. We use proportions since we have similar triangles. Then exploit the new isosceles triangle by setting the leg lengths equal to each other.) But that’s whitewashing all that went into the problem. It’s like a math paper or a science paper. It is a distillation of so freaking much. It was to capture what it’s like to not know something, and how my brain worked in trying to get to figure something out. To show what’s behind a solution.
problem-solving  plane-geometry  learning-in-public  pedagogy  to-write-about 
6 days ago by Vaguery
AnjiPlay (@anjiplay) • Fotos y vídeos de Instagram
“We have discovered that some teachers, if they really want to hear what children have to say, that their whole state of being is at ease, and they listen closely and that in the process of listening they discover that children are speaking a wealth of information, and these teachers will be receptive to the information that they are hearing. And then some teachers want to hear children say what they the teachers, deep down, want the children to say, things that they want to hear, and will unconsciously overlook what children are actually saying. They can't hear clearly and are unable to truly understand the child's expression. And you can see that their physical state of being is one of anxiety.” —Wang Zhen, Vice Principal, Jiguan Kindergarten, Anji County interviewed by Dr. Chelsea Bailey on November 7, 2018.
wangzhen  children  childhood  preschool  anjiplay  listening  howweteach  teaching  pedagogy  hearing  attention  presence  receptivity 
8 days ago by robertogreco
Generic Syllabus Maker
Fill out the form to receive a list of all the dates when your course will meet during the specified semester.
syllabus  tools  pedagogy 
9 days ago by nicklally

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