Neat handwriting = Poor Literacy?

Cognitive Overload and Automation

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/education/not+so+neat+solution+to+literacy/956247


Something to ponder. In an interesting report based on research at Warwick University they suggested that too much focus on neatness and correct formation of letter forms got in the way of developing literacy skills since mental effort was directed toward the forming of the letters rather than writing itself and its creative process. By abandoning worry about forming the letters automation of writing could come about more quickly freeing up the mind for higher level creative processes. This reminds me too of advice on speed writing where the ‘internal editor’ with its attention to grammar, spelling and structure is temporarily turned off to allow creative thoughts and ideas to flow. The argument is that this reduces congnitive load. The area of automation through practice and examples is also an important part of my PhD work.

Ontology, Ontology and Ontogeny

These words continually present me with a muddle. Lets start with Ontogeny which has been described as ‘the origin and development of an individual organism’ OED. Now Engestrom and Cole talk about the ontogeny of the individual when describing the various timelines surrounding an event. By this they mean their personal life story and history. They also talk of other timelines in which events are embedded namely social-cultural, historical, and phylogenetic. The moment to moment happenings within an event are referred to as microgenesis. The problem I have with Ontogeny is not its meaning but using the right word. I continually refer to it as Oncology and sometimes Ontology. Life is tough! Ontogeny and Ontology are very similar so easy to muddle.

Ontology and ontological present me with some problems and even now I am some time away from being able to use these terms automatically…incidently really interesting to hear report today on automaticity in learning to read. The woman from Warwick said that children were slowed down in their skills in fluency of writing because of the concentration on neatness… I can very much believe this. It was a typical example of cognitive overload – which they alluded to but this term was not used on the channel 4 report.

I think that part of the problem of using these terms lies in the fact that there are two distinct meanings:

i. ‘the science and study of being’ – a metaphysical perspective – I will look up definition from Theory of Knowledge

ii. and in logic and symbolisation based on the work of Lesniewski (1886 to 1939) ‘which attempls to interpret quantities without assuming that anything exists beyond written expressions’. It is in this sense that I think Sfard is probably using this word in her chapter…..

Methods and Methodologies - What's the Difference?

I have recently read "The Erosion of a method: examples from grounded theory", a paper by Thomas Greckhamer and Mirka Koro-Ljungberg. It is a useful critique of Grounded Theory but is equally relevant to any research methodology.

All research methods it seems to me have at least one significant Achilles heel. The authors perhaps suggest that Grounded Theory was under-theorised in terms of its epistemological foundations although the its methods are quite clearly defined.

The authors state that they 'agree with Crotty (1998) who defines methodology as the 'strategy, palan of action, process or design lying behind the choice and use of particular methods and linking the choice of methods to the desired outcomes'.

They state that the main outcome of Grounded Theory is theory generation (as opposed to testing a theory for example) and the chosen methods, coding, sampling, memoing etc, are the link from the data to the theory.

They also state another view of methodology as having a guiding theory or theoretical perspective on the research project.

Later the authors state, in terms of the original form of grounded theory, that it was essentially positivist in nature. Later on other versions of Grounded theory came into existence such as one that used constructivist notions. In this sense the theory is not grounded in the data but grounded in the researchers analysis and interpretation of the data. Hence instead of only one theory describing and predicting the data there may exist many. Since I do not believe in objective reality as existing independent of our interpretation of the world I am taking the constructivist's view as the underlying theoretical approach to adopt in my PhD.

Thus, have I now secured the methodology. Maybe? I think Maxwell 'Qualitative Research Design' will be worth turning back to: chapter 1 - A Model for Qualitative Research Design and Chapter 3 - Conceptual Framework? What do you think is going on?

Fun and Frolics with Mobile Devices - by Gill Clough

A tag cloud is pretty easy to put into a blogger blog. This post explains very clearly how to go about it

http://phy3blog.googlepages.com/Beta-Blogger-Label-Cloud.html

My overall PhD title is "The uses of mobile devices in informal science learning", however I think Fun and Frolics with mobile devices is rather more descriptive of what I do. I am looking at how Geocachers engage with their physical and social contexts using their devices, and with each other through the active online community network.

Geocaching involves taking mobile devices with GPS (global positioning systems) out and using the technology to locate caches. Caches are like hidden treasure, hidden by other geocachers. Not all caches are physical objects; some are virtual caches, some are multi-caches where one cache leads to the next by enabling you to solve a piece of a riddle, some are "earthcaches" which have a strong learning focus. To bag an earthcache, you need to demonstrate that you have learned something about the geological processes that formed that part of the landscape, as specified by the person who set the cache. Geocaching attracts thousands of participants world wide, and their enthusiasm makes them ideal and very willing participants in my research.

To read more about Geocaching, check out this wiki
http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Main_Page

Visit the main geocaching website at http://www.geocaching.com to see examples of how you locate caches near you, load the coordinates into your GPS device and head off out. You can also read about other people's experiences of caching.

Welcome to Gill

It's great to have Gill as my guest blogger...love the picture - you must be geocaching!....and already I am shamed by the lack of facilities on my site....I want one of those cloud thingymajiggs Gill!

Anyhow, Gill is the first of hopefully many guest bloggers in the future. Gill is working toward a PhD in our department, Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. She is also an active member of our OpenLearn reading group which is currently involved in discussing readings relating to methodological approaches that we can use in examining eLearning. I know In her own researchGill is very interested in Mobile Learning and Blogging.

Gill perhaps you would like to answer a few questions.

Would you like to talk a little bit about your research work?

Have you any favourite links you would like post?

Can you tell us a bit about tagging?

Guest Blogger

Steve has invited me to be his guest blogger for the week. It feels like quite a responsibility; I'm now wondering if I have anything worthwhile to contribute.

I logged in for the first time today and discovered that Steve's blog uses exactly the same template as I use for my own blogspot blog which makes it rather like a home-from-home.

Except, of course, that this blog does not have a tag cloud or snapshot (to display a mini version of links). I just looked into creating a tag cloud for this blog, and discovered that is doesn't use any tags.

Still, Steve can always add snapshots to this blog by visiting here http://www.snap.com/

Automation - ein hundert vier and zwanzig

As part of my work in OpenLearn I am exploring a potential project to help pre-university students to develop their Mathematics skills. I am looking at a possible project with the Physics department at the University of Bristol. The people there are exploring ways to help equip people for the course in advance and have identified the need for some to be able to develop ability in the application of their Maths skills.

Another problem that they identified with students was the ability to quickly follow a mathematical line of argument, whether this be in rearranging equations, solving a problem etc. It was not that the students did not understand the mathematics but they could not keep speed with the process...a kind of taking time to read and understand, so by the time they had mentally grasped one bit the lecturer had moved on by several steps.

I liken this to my knowledge of translating and understanding spoken German, especially when it comes to numbers. I pretty much can construct any German number, and given time, if it is slowly spoken, understand a number. The problem comes when I hear a number in general conversation, by the time I have worked out what the number means the person talking has moved on with the conversation and I have totally lost the thread. For me understanding the number is not automatic. The word automatic was also used by Prof K and Dr P when relating to some of students' experience.

I recently read something about this automation in a book about activity theory and we discussed it briefly in our reading group. At the time I said that I considered it to refer to those processes that involved a lot of physical skills, such as the high degree of muscular tuning and control necessary for playing an instrument. I related the example from the BBC documentary were Waugh (forgotton his first name) learns a one-handed Chopin piece and reads a book aloud whilst playing the piece with his other hand.

To be continued.....

Generating Analytical Memos by Free Writing

Following on from a wonderful exercise in Engaging Minds and having read and heard about speed writing as a way of getting ideas I have engaged with the exercise below. I have re-adapted part of the writing task in Engaging Minds to begin to help me think about ways of drawing together the various ideas from an examination of the chapter that I am writing in my PhD.

Now that I am nearing the completion of this draft chapter I will need to bring the various threads and themes together.

Activity: Write freely for 5 minutes about the threads and themes that you think are emerging. There is no need to look back, correct, pause and worry about sentence structure.

Relax.

Don’t rush…but do not stop and edit.

There appear to be several emerging themes that I can connect with ideas of embodied mind and the development of mathematical understanding through metaphor and examples. Students, I believe are more likely to reach understanding by examples although Vinner stresses the need for a mix of example and definition. Which comes first the chicken or the egg…. the examples or the definition…how does the concept get formed…is there every such a thing as a concept being fully formed or does it simply evolve and change in our minds as we evolve and change as individuals. Certainly when I taught basic mathematics to students I saw things that I had never seen before, and learned a lot more about mathematics. When I went on to do research into mathematics education and interact with the mathematics community I learned anew and saw afresh and began to ask questions about the nature of mathematical knowledge, know how and ability.

The path schema emerges fairly strongly from the data…but several others also do so. I think of the nature of physical movement, and how this is represented within the graphs…the personal nature of it all.

(191 words in five minutes)

I will need to continue this tomorrow and hope that ideas will come from it. If you wish to interact please leave your comments. These could help stimulate my thoughts further.

Reading and Writing 1

The other day I was thinking about the relative merits of reading badly written and boring texts, that however may be important and hold key ideas. It is a bit like reading a boring, badly written novel and pursuing it to the bitter end - the amount you read drops considerably. I used to have the idea that if I couldn't get into a novel within 50 pages that I should give up on it. The problem with this is that sometimes great novels are difficult to engage with...I could never engage with Jane Austin but still feel I should read her.

When it comes to academic literature it can sometimes be rather dense and boring. The question is whether you drop what you are reading and search around for something that is an easy read...very often these will talk about the same ideas anyway and you would consume much more.

I also recently came across 'Researchers, Reflexivity, and Good Data: Writing to Unlearn' by Audrey Kleinsasser 2000. She referred to a quote from Richardson in the Handbook of Qualitative Research - ed. Denzin ( which I just the other week got out of the library) who also talks about this problem.

For the time it takes to force myself through one drudge I could perhaps read four times more of other more exciting material. The difficulty is that the drudge can hold important gems. I guess when it comes to papers you do have to wade through some of tough ones...although books are much lengthier matters and perhaps the choice should rather be made on readability.

Sometimes academics make things seem more complicated than they actually are and please give me down to earth examples of what you are talking about.