Tag: learning

Uta Frith on Dyslexia and Autism

Radio 4′s The Life Scientific interviews Uta Frith on her career exploring the meanings and causes of autism and dyslexia. She describes her early battles with the ‘refrigerator mother’ hypothesis (which argued that autism was the result of a lack of maternal warmth) through to her more recent work with neuroscientists in trying to understand how the brains of autistic and dyslexic people are different. She’s become a great advocate of the use of neuroscience to inform education and lifelong learning calling it the equivalent of the way anatomy is used to inform medicine.

Throughout her career she has tirelessly worked to dismantle the prejudices and stigmas associated with both autism and dyslexia and highlighted the compensatory strategies of those who effectively work with their autism or dyslexia.

Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens – Dec 12 09

I am finding less and less value in the term “learning“.

Learning is constant, ongoing. We cannot stop it if we wanted to (short of watching reality TV or reading a Blackboard lawsuit filing).

Often when the term “learning” is used, I think we really mean “sense making“. We want to make sense of our environment.

We want to know what we should do, what types of evidence supports viewpoints others hold, or how we should think about politics / global warming / economics / etc. Sure, at the most basic level, learning is involved. But when applied to work or even decisions we need to make in our lives, our focus is not on some esoteric concept of learning. Instead, the intent is to orient ourselves to a complex set of phenomenon and to plan potential courses of action.

via masternewmedia.org