Scienceblog reports on how thinking too much stifles creativity:
“The more you think about it, the more you mess it up.”
Fairness and Economic Inequality
For economic stability, there needs to be fairness in income (see Scienceblog).
Why is the University Still Here?
Danny Crichton at Techcrunch makes some good points on the difficulty of getting people to engage in online education due to lack of time, motivation, and work-related payoffs:
What the world is discovering is that humans are going to be humans (a discovery we seem to make a lot in startup-landia). We failed to ensure that motivation and primacy were built-in to these new products, and in the process, failed to get adults to engage with education in the way that universities traditionally can.
A Primer on Fountain Pens
Brett and Kate McKay write A Primer on Fountain Pens. They write about the history and anatomy of fountain pens, as well as giving tips on how to use them in writing and taking care of them. They also list reasons to use a fountain pen for writing:
- It feels better.
- It’s better for the environment.
- More economical in the long run.
- It makes cursive handwriting look better.
- It makes you look like a sir.
These reasons aren’t particularly persuasive. However, Melanie Pinola writes on Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing than Typing. She cites different people and research. Not all of hers are that persuasive, either. I’m still influenced by Haas’s (1989) research showing that writers who use only word processing, in comparison with those who use only pen and paper, plan less conceptually, during prewriting, and overall, but they do more local and sequential planning—whether expert writer or novice. Whether or not these findings are true today with people brought up on electronic media, it’s clear that the physical nature of the writing tool shapes writing processes. And it makes sense that using a pen slows down one’s writing more than a word processor, thus providing more time for thinking.
Thus, I can see writing by hand as more conducive to the beginning stages of writing, of forming ideas, and perhaps also of structuring one’s ideas—then moving to a word processor for editing purposes. However, I doubt that I’ll change my own writing habits. I don’t want to write things down once and then transfer them to the computer.
U.S. Students Awful at Evaluating Reliability of Online Science Readings
Benjamin Herold (Digital Education) reports on research by Elena Forzani from the University of Connecticut.
In a study of 1,429 7th grade students from 40 districts across two northeastern states, Forzani found that fewer than 4 percent of students could correctly identify the author of an online information source, evaluate that author’s expertise and point of view, and make informed judgments about the overall reliability of the site they were reading.
The ability to evaluate online sources and their reliability is an essential skill nowadays, so this type of research should inform classroom instruction.
Half of Motivation is Genetic
Scienceblog reports on a study showing that a significant percentage of motivation is genetic: Don’t blame kids if they do not enjoy school, study suggests
A study of more than 13,000 twins from six countries found that 40 to 50 percent of the differences in children’s motivation to learn could be explained by their genetic inheritance from their parents.
…
Instead, genetics and nonshared environment factors had the largest effect on learning motivation, whereas the shared environment had negligible impact.
And the shared environment had only about a 3% effect. I’m not sure what this means for motivating students in the classroom, but it does make us rethink our approaches to motivation.
Arguing Intelligently
Daniel Dennett (via Maria Popova) in his book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking writes that
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
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You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
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You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
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You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
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Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Thinking, Math, and Beauty
Alec Wilkinson writes on how Yiting Zhang solved a 150-year-old problem in math, the “bound gaps.” What’s fascinating is (1) Zhang’s ability to concentrate for hours on end and (2) his lack of interest in the things that drive most people.
The Better Way Out to Learning
Mark Bernstein, commenting on Marcus Zarra’s article the Dangers of Misinformation, has the following to say about avoiding misinformation in writing code:
Make mistakes. Accept that code will be thrown away. Wrong turns aren’t a waste: they tell you where you didn’t want to go, and give you an idea of where you might head another time.
Find a way to be more at home with your work, and to work when you’re at home because it’s natural to do what you do. You can live with alienation, but you don’t want to.
Don’t trust the common wisdom of your technical enclave too far. Stand up, speak out, judge for yourself, and be ready to change your mind.
In other words, failure can be productive. Along these lines, Shane Parrish writes about Carol Dweck’s work on motivation, which divides people into those with the mindset that intelligence and ability is fixed and those who believe that they can be improved. Parrish cites Dweck as saying,
In the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.
So, what’s important is one’s attitude—or mindset—towards failure and learning.
Idries Shah makes a similar comment:
You yourself are your own barrier – rise from within it. —Hafiz
Part of being “your own barrier” is, as Bernstein comments, trusting in “common wisdom” without critiquing it, neither being opposed to it nor blindly accepting it. Rather, having a mindset in which, as he states, you “judge for yourself, and be ready to change your mind.” Basically, treat both failure and success as explorations in learning that lead to developing one’s ability.
Robots Have Great Handwriting
Clive Thompson has written an interesting post, “How to tell when a robot has written you a letter.” Apparently, there are three ways to tell:
- The Clear Center
- The Dots on the “i”‘s
- The Rounded Right Margin
As he notes, however, robots will likely soon imitate these three human characteristics.