Introducing "Misty" the CATbot

Computer Aided Teaching Robots are autonomous internet agents that work together so that teachers can simply focus on their students.

The pursuit of understanding

The Pursuit of Understanding

 Part One - Colourful Understanding of Dyslexia

Hello fellow Dyslexics! I checked the antonym of Dyslexic and found "unimpaired". So hello to all you unimpaired as well.

Even if you breeze through spelling and reading and count yourself as one of the "unimpaired', you might still feel there are areas to improve. Maybe? You, like many perfect people, may have no cause to worry.  I've found dyslexia humbling grounding and I have to say humanizing. Dyslexic people often have to put effort into understanding. They often have to roll up their sleeves and develop understanding strategies from a number of angles. I should imagine a dyslexic person would not be a sedentary thinker. Such a thinker sees themselves as a knowledge consumer able with leverage the supply of information. Being ignorant is someone else fault. The getting of wisdom is like going to a shopping mall.

Let us now set out the laws of shopping malls

1. Shopping Malls are not places to pursue knowledge, experience nature etc.
2. Shopping Mall vendors will frame a sale and aim for dependency
3. Shopping Malls are a cancer that builds an internal world while sterilizing the external world

We need a collective noun to describe a group of dyslexic people. I have never met a group where this was their defining characteristic. More over  This is a good point to begin with, it is often true that while you may be consciousness of your dyslexia or the turbulence it causes, others are airbrushing your mistakes from the picture. Airbrush is so 1950's - now we would photoshop! However, I have noticed that not only do people airbrush any mistakes, but they also take it one step further and airbrush not only the non-conforming English, the non-conforming thinking and finally non-conforming people. You can't have a collective noun for a group of people who are physically present, but you know aren't there.

This is a picture from the 1930's of Lenin (in the hat) playing chess.  The person removed could have been dyslexic, but in truth his name was Peshkov, and he edited out and in and out and so on... No one has the transcript of what was going on and the compelling logic. I would venture the conjecture, that if you came across a group of people in midair brush you would do everything to make small talk.

This smacks of good old paranoia.  Is too out there to suggest that Peshkov was paranoid?  

Let me point out that the Airbushers, or what we would fondly call "People people" are the bad guys in the pursuit of knowledge. To apply the airbrush you have to frame the picture, know who is important and who is in for the invisibility treatment. The art is making yourself absolutely essential. You have to speak up, sell the airbrushed artwork, and manage those annoying figures you have airbrushed out.

Author's preamble 

As a Quantum Physicist1 and Robotics Scientist2, I have published a number of papers. As I work in Education the scholarly article3 simply has no traction with other teachers. This year I have only published one paper on cross-fertilizing indigenous experience with efforts to link Sino and Australian communities.  I have drafts of six other papers each becoming less formal and having a greater emphasis on teaching both the concepts and also the process of scholarship to an education audience. This blog format as basically a laboratory to develop the next level of understanding is simply the next stage in evolution   I will take on board comments to improve the script.

The key insight is that I am pursuing understanding, innovation and venturing beyond what is thought possible. The majority of people are preprogrammed to sever contact with me once I cross this Rubicon5. This blog will hopefully provide a document pathway to the bridge head I am building

This article/blog will be published live, some techniques developed from building virtual learning environments will be employed. These include authors notes like these and caches of links like the reference immediately below

Supporting Links

1. Quantum Physics - real atoms
2. Robotics - Classroom Robot
3. Education Paper - Paper
4. Next Generaion Lessons + Authors history - Website
5. Rubicon - Explanation

On understanding:

When you understand something you become aware of connections - a coincidence now has meaning. We are wired to build understanding and meaning from what at first seems random patterns. The sounds we hear as a baby form words for objects. Then in a nurturing environment these words are used to form deeper relationships that include ourselves and our vision of the future.

The thesis is the nurturing environment has lost its way at a social level. The drive and pursuit of understanding in Australian society has stalled. We have a situation similar to the school yard, where various groups claim knowledge, but indeed are caricatures of reason. The nurturing of understanding has to be rebooted.

To recap, we have understanding as the feedstock of consciousness. Data, becomes patterns, becomes meaning in a nurturing environment. The next idea is that the nurturing environment has gone in a rut operating on local horizons. This is found when tracking down misconceptions, the explanation and motivation give a real picture of a strong relation to the local environment, while the broader outlook, the more strategic outlook seem out of reach.

This is a backdrop of an environment in which the majority of individuals calibrate themselves to. The is a strong preference to mix up quality thinking with conforming thinking. Run away self consistency, as the route cause.




This cluster of blogs "TPU"  are a framework of manuscripts that tackle to how one scientist, his  immediate environment, and finally the Australian country moving