maandag 28 maart 2011

VKB Vision

VKB Vision

Visual Knowledge Building is a very old way of communicating effectively with visualization. Old civilizations used visualization such as symbols to express (the things they want to express).
A visualization says a lot more than spoken words. Visualizations are the most efficient and best way to tell something in a short amount of time. In a culture, the visual knowledge is passed on and used by all the other members within the civilization. But the biggest disadvantage is not understanding each other because each individual has a different interpretation of understanding symbols and meanings of (visual) expressions, due to personality and cultural difference. That’s why the written word has always been used trough out the years as the main form of communication and leaving (important) information behind.

The written word is a very complex way to communicate and with the help of visualizations other people from other cultures can understand more easily than without visualizations. Visualizations are very helpful to make the daily life more understandable and comprehensive. Like for example with road signs, by looking at a image (by someone who doesn’t understand  the language spoken in the country where he or she’s at) someone can understand easily what the meaning of the sign is and take action for it. If the sign only contained written words this person wouldn’t understand the meaning of it and accidents could happen more easily.

With the new digital era, new ways of communication came into the picture. The new way of communication has started. Digital natives are being thought from the beginning in the visual surroundings around us while the older people, the digital immigrants, have problems to fully comprehend the new way of communicating and adapt to it.

With the written word people automatically think of visuals that come with it in to mind. Visuals and text can be misunderstood by the receiver.
A serie of photographs can be the best way to communicate different types of symbols, feelings and meanings to be understood correctly by the receiver (as meant by the sender).
Where the written word stimulates the imagination of the receiver of the message the visualizations force the sender to create a own view.

The learning theory of the digital era developed by George Siemens is based on three theories:
behavorism, cognitivism and contructivism.
These theories were developed in a era where learning was not being combined with modern (E-learning) technology. Over the last 2 decades technology has showed how people communicate (and live). Effective learning styles should incorporate self reflection and learning of own mistakes by getting well structured feedback by peers.
According to George Siemens learning is not about knowing things an learning random facts but more about discovering and making the right choices/connections with your mind between the overload of data we receive every day, by doing so we create new information and a new understanding (and creating a own unique vision).

VKB is a growing form of our modern age learning. We have found and incorporated new techniques (like internet) to learn about chosen subjects. Wikipedia and Google have given us the opportunity to learn and find knowledge and other things faster and more comprehensible.
Also blended learning and E-learning saves us a lot of time and effort then people in the old fashioned way would have take to get the same amount of information. We now can use the extra time we have to use new things and new theories or just simply save time. Modern technologies give us more opportunity to communicate with each other (trough mobile communication and internet) faster than ever.

I think the minor Visual Knowledge Building was a very interesting minor and learned me to approach visualizations differently than before. The power of good clear visuals is very strong can let people from other cultures and languages communicate (more) easily then with just the written word.


VKB Course (Lynda Deutz assigments) Self Portraits Facebook







         I have chosen these pictures because they are profile pictures from my friends on Facebook.

The
friends that use these pictures have a litlle bit different view on art and on making pictures than the average person (if a average person excist, but that’s a different type of discussion).
Their view is coming forward on all kinds of different ways.
One hides behind a giant burger, the other one just made a droid (type of robot) reflecting on himself, one used a busstop advertisement with a picture of himself on the advertisement.
The picture
with the girl with the pink dress near the pool is also very nice when it comes to use of colours and composition. The combination has a fascinating effect.
Each photo is unique and nice in my opinion.

I
think the best profile picture is the one with the busstop because it’s really original and also the use of colours is very nice.

VKB Course (Lynda Deutz assigments) Photo Essay













      The subject in my photo essay was buildings in Rotterdam.
I think there a lot of very nice buildings in this city.
There a lot of new ones, like shown in the first few pictures, taken in Rotterdam Alexander near the shoppingcentre.
These buildings are very modern like the whole surrounding there.

In the centre there are a lot more old(er) buildings, like shown on the photo’s.
These photo’s are taken near and on the Witte de Withstraat. Some buildings in the centre (on on the Witte de Withstraat) are from the 1920’s and even earlier, so in my opinion these buildings are very historical and have ‘seen’ a lot of things in the years that went by.

Finally I took some picture of buildings involving football.
The first picture is taken in front of the pitch of a soccermatch at Varkenoord. The 2nd one is the Feyenoord Stadium from the side and the last one is next to the Maasgebouw near the Stadium.
These buildings are huge and have a lot of football history.

VKB Course (Lynda Deutz assigments) 15 photo's My Music collection













I made this photo serie about my personal music collection.
Music has a important
role in my life that’s why I choose this subject.
I have all kinds of
music on different types, like cd’s, lp’s, and digitally on my computer. I listen to a lot of music, a day without music is a not completed day for me.
I
used to be a DJ that’s why I photographed the LP player and the LP’s.
Mostly I listen to music with my computer (the pc speaker photo), or with my mp3 player with my earphones.
One of the types of music I love to listen is hip-hop.
I
love listening to all types of artist including the late great mc Guru (from Gangstarr, that’s why I made a photo from one of his most known albums).

VKB Course (Lynda Deutz assigments) Mind Map & Instruction Video

I made a mindmap about Facebook self. I think Facebook is a very fascinating and interesting social media website. I like it a lot more compared with other social media websites like Hyves, MySpace and LinkedIn.
The adventages are that you can share all kinds of things/information like photo’s, video’s, sharing and letting others know about activities and events (like party’s, birthdays, barbecues, big shopping sells and other events.
Also you can post a fact or something that has occurred and all of your friends can check that out on the main page (without having to look at someone’s profile) and react to it or ‘like it’.
This is in my opinion very nice because you can see in one page and one view all the latest information and other updates of and from your friends.

A lot of people use faceboook nowadays so you can see and read about your friends and other people about their interests and activities.
Facebook is also an excellent medium for advertisements.
Companies can provide ads to people on Facebook finetuned to their interests.
So if someone like clothing, he will see advertisements from clothing companies.
If you use the ad by clicking on it, it will be remembered and more ads from this category will be shown to you.
For the new learning project using social media I would make a Inholland/VKB topic inviting all the VKB students and making it available for them to see information from other (ex)students.
So every student can post a comment about the course, the project, the training etc. etc.

When a exercise is not being clear enough people can post it in the shoutbox and other can view it and react to it. I think it would be the best to post pictures or other kinds of additional information about it. So everyone can easily see what people are talking about.
Making this available as a application on your phone would make it extra attractive, so that students can view the information even during class. This project would make the course easier and more fun to do, because people can see what others made of it.
They can also read about problems and other comments about the exercises and assigments. Also others can view the end products from the projects, including ideas, concepts, topics and other types of additional information about it. I think this would work better than Blackboard because students view facebook more often than the Blackboard application.

I think in overall, things like blackboard would be better off if it would be incorporated with Facebook. If there´s an update people can read directly about it because people use Facebook so often nowadays.
Much more than the traditional types like Blackboard and webmail and Insite (these applications are slow, and not very appealing to most of the students, also most of the information shown on the sites/applications is hard to find and not clear at all).
So I think using this types of solutions would make it easier to take part in the minors (like for example Visual Knowledge Building).


Instruction Video (betting streets in No Limit Texas Hold'em Poker)


Constructivism

Constructivism is a theory of knowledge that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas.
During infancy, it is an interaction between their experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns. Piaget called these systems of knowledge schemata.
Constructivism is not a specific pedagogy, although it is often confused with constructionism, an educational theory developed by Seymour Papert, inspired by constructivist and experiential learning ideas of Jean Piaget. Piaget's theory of constructivist learning has had wide ranging impact on learning theories and teaching methods in education and is an underlying theme of many education reform movements.
Research support for constructivist teaching techniques has been mixed, with some research supporting these techniques and other research contradicting those results.

Principles

Hierarchies  Networks
Static.   Dynamic
Structured .   Flowing structure (in advance)
Stable.   Equality (in theory)
Managed.   Connected entities
Boundaries.   Participant & process defined structure
Centralized.   Decentralized
Certainty.   Adaptive
Managed and created.   Nurtured and fostered
Pre-filtered.   Emergent

Prensky’s Cognitive Styles

Prensky’s Cognitive Styles
Every parent, educator, and manager knows that "Nintendo children"--those born after 1970 and raised on video and computer games, Walkmans, the Internet, etc.--are different. Unfortunately, the Gen-X discussion has focused mainly on the youths' supposedly short attention spans and attention-deficit disorders, ignoring or underemphasizing what is perhaps the most crucial factor--that this under-30 generation thinks, and sees the world, in ways entirely different from their parents.


Below are 10 of the main cognitive style changes, which raise a number of important and difficult challenges. We have already begun to see the development of new business structures, ideas, and products that take into account under-30 employees' cognitive changes and preferences. It is likely that the full impact of these changes will not be felt until the younger generation fully comes to power, just as the movies were impacted by the coming-of-age of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. That time is not far off.

Twitch Speed vs. Conventional Speed
An important challenge for today's managers is how to reassess and speed up their assumptions around time, while still keeping sight of other key objectives, such as quality and customer relationships. They also need to create experiences that maintain the pace and exploit the facility of "twitch speed" while adding content that is important and useful. Several possible approaches include speeding things up via technology (such as by providing workers with the kinds of real-time data that financial traders use), installing faster infrastructures with fiber-optic cable and T-1 telephone lines, and creating new, MTV-style corporate videos. Re-engineering systems and activities so that things simply move faster is another.

Parallel Processing vs. Linear Processing
Much of the under-30 generation grew up doing homework while watching TV and doing almost everything while wearing a Walkman. Many of them feel much more comfortable than their predecessors doing more than one thing at once. While some argue that this limits attention to any one thing, this is not necessarily the case. The mind can actually process many tracks at once and often has quite a bit of "idle time" from its primary task that can be used to handle other things. Today you see young computer artists creating wonderful graphics while listening to music and chatting with co-workers, and young bankers having multiple conversations on the phone while reading their computer screens and e-mail.

Random Access vs. Linear Thinking

The under-30 generation is the first to experience hypertext and "clicking around," in children's computer applications, in CD-ROMs, and on the Web. This new information structure has increased their awareness and ability to make connections, has freed them from the constraint of a single path of thought, and is generally an extremely positive development. At the same time, it can be argued--with some justification--that unbridled hyperlinking may make it more difficult for these workers to follow a linear train of thought and to do some types of deep or logical thinking. "Why should I read something from beginning to end, or follow someone else's logic, when I can just 'explore the links' and create my own?" While following one's own path often leads to interesting results, understanding someone else's logic is also very important. A difficult challenge is how to create experiences that allow people to link anywhere and experience things in any order yet still communicate sequential ideas and logical thinking.


Graphics First vs. Text First
In previous generations, graphics were generally illustrations, accompanying the text and providing some kind of elucidation. For today's young people, the relationship is almost completely reversed: The role of text is to elucidate something that was first experienced as an image. Since childhood, the younger generation has been continuously exposed to television, videos, and computer games that put high-quality, highly expressive graphics in front of them with little or no accompanying text.


Connected vs. Stand-alone
While the previous generation was linked by the telephone, that system is synchronous (i.e., both people have to be there). The under-30 generation has been raised with, and become accustomed to, the asynchronous worldwide communication of e-mail, broadcast messages, bulletin boards, usegroups, chat, and Internet searches. As a result of this "connected" experience, young people tend to think differently about how to get information and solve problems. For example, if I need a question answered I'll typically call the three or four people I think might know. It might take me time to get to them, and take them a while to get back to me.


Active vs. Passive
One of the most striking cross-generational differences can be observed when people are given new software to learn. Older folks almost invariably want to read the manual first, afraid they won't understand how the software works or that they'll break something. Nintendo-generation workers rarely even think of reading a manual. "RTFM" ("read the [expletive] manual") is a term of derision. They'll just play with the software, hitting every key if necessary, until they figure it out. If they can't, they assume the problem is with the software, not with them. This attitude is almost certainly a direct result of growing up with Sega, Nintendo, and other video games where each level and monster had to be figured out by trial and error, and each trial click might lead to a hidden surprise or "Easter egg."

Play vs. Work
While often derided in the press as intellectual slackers, in reality the under-30s are very much an intellectual problem-solving generation. Many types of logic, challenging puzzles, spatial relationships, and other complex thinking tasks are built into the computer and video games they enjoy. Their spending on such electronic games has surpassed spending on movies; PCs are now used more for running entertainment software than for any other application, including word processing. While some have argued that play and games are simply preparation for work, I think that, for today's younger generation, play is work, and work is increasingly seen in terms of games and game play. The fact that the real-life games are very serious does not make the player's approach any different than the way she approaches software. Achievement, winning, and beating competitors are all very much part of the ethic and process.

Payoff vs. Patience
One of the biggest lessons the under-30 generation learned from growing up with video games is that if you put in the hours and master the game, you will be rewarded: with the next level, with a win, with a place on the high scorers' list. What you do determines what you get, and what you get is worth the effort you put in. Computers excel at giving feedback, and the payoff for any action is typically extremely clear. A key outcome of this is a huge intolerance on the part of the younger generation for things that don't pay off at the level expected.


Fantasy vs. Reality
To me, one of the most striking aspects of the under-30 generation is the degree to which fantasy elements, both from the past (medieval, Dungeons & Dragons imagery), and the future (Star Wars, Star Trek, and other science-fiction imagery) pervade their lives. While young people have always indulged in fantasy play, the computer has by its nature made this easier and more realistic, in many ways bringing it to life. Sociologists might say that some or all of this is due to a desire to escape the realities of today's life: fewer good jobs, more alienation, and a degrading environment. Whatever its cause, the fantasy phenomenon has certainly been encouraged by technology. Network technology allows people not only to create their new fantasy identities but to express them to others and join in fantasy communities. The huge interest in chat rooms and in individual home pages is, at least in part, another manifestation of this.


Technology as Friend vs. Technology as Foe

Finally, growing up with computers has engendered an overall attitude toward technology in the minds of the younger generation that is very different from that of their predecessors. To the older generation, technology is generally something to be feared, tolerated, or at best harnessed to one's purposes. No matter how easy we make it, this generation doesn't want to program its VCRs or even, for the most part, surf the Net (though there are, of course exceptions, such as the Internet's becoming a useful way for the retired generation to stay connected and productively use their leisure time).


zondag 27 maart 2011

Visual pedagogy

Visual pedagogy is a powerful tool that can be used to unlock this potential and more effectively share the stories and underlying knowledge in the context of real-world physical settings.
Augmented Reality is pushing this kind of “location-based learning” to new heights, but video will always be a major player in the media types that emerge in the years to come.

Categorization

Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Ideally, a category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge.
Categorization is fundamental in language, prediction, inference, decision making and in all kinds of environmental interaction.
There are many categorization theories and techniques. In a broader historical view, however, three general approaches to categorization may be identified:
  • Classical categorization
  • Conceptual clustering
  • Prototype theory


    Societal Trends
    How people spend time as a society. On average illustrated by this example:












                                       Knowledge types

                                         Knowing about









      Knowing to transform











                                   
                                   


Knowing where to go






                                    

     Knowing to be













  Knowing to do