What is Hanny's Voorwerp?
We have been discussing on the forums the question of what drives changes. When human beings look at really complex systems, we seem prone to attribute some sort of intentionality or “driving principle” that we assume to take primacy. Where we locate that driver depends on our own interests and whether we have any scope for action:
The Horizon report seems to capture its data by discussing publications and new projects in a wiki. I get the impression that they are really keen on novelty, even if the tools hardly work: I tried Sophie for reading and writing media rich documents and shock me for visualising a forum as a 3-D space. Simplifying brutally, I’d like to summarize their concept of change in this way:
The highlight of the National Science Foundation report is the story of Hanny – who discovered the green Voorwerp (Dutch for “object”, distant ionized gas shown in the picture) in the citizen science project – Galaxy Zoo. NSF distributes US$6.87 billion in grants annually…so it naturally wants to put research questions at the start of the story:
BECTA the British ex “quango” shows some signs of New Labour style joined up thinking in its report, (probably the sort of thing the new government doesn’t approve of) with a wide range of concerns including home access for the poor, workforce skills and health. The corresponding model of how change in schools might function looks more realistic. My mind map:
…would be quite compatible with a sort of activity theory picture where the school overlaps with other systems such as the technological one and the society in which participants are located.
The experience of reading this kind of thing is that rather like reading a newspaper – the more you know about the subject the less satisfactory the coverage seems. For example the 2010 Horizon includes Open Resources as a trend but does not mention Open Learn. They chose instead the Leicester site Otter.
It’s worth noting that the two American reports provide an “executive summary” which supposedly allows a decision maker to respond to the information with quick action. This again seems apt – the less you know about a complex system the more likely you are to think that your actions upon it are going to have a predictable effect… Thus information for decision-makers should always be kept to a minimum.
three reports and Hanny’s green thing
What is Hanny's Voorwerp?
We have been discussing on the forums the question of what drives changes. When human beings look at really complex systems, we seem prone to attribute some sort of intentionality or “driving principle” that we assume to take primacy. Where we locate that driver depends on our own interests and whether we have any scope for action:
The Horizon report seems to capture its data by discussing publications and new projects in a wiki. I get the impression that they are really keen on novelty, even if the tools hardly work: I tried Sophie for reading and writing media rich documents and shock me for visualising a forum as a 3-D space. Simplifying brutally, I’d like to summarize their concept of change in this way:
The highlight of the National Science Foundation report is the story of Hanny – who discovered the green Voorwerp (Dutch for “object”, distant ionized gas shown in the picture) in the citizen science project – Galaxy Zoo. NSF distributes US$6.87 billion in grants annually…so it naturally wants to put research questions at the start of the story:
…would be quite compatible with a sort of activity theory picture where the school overlaps with other systems such as the technological one and the society in which participants are located.
The experience of reading this kind of thing is that rather like reading a newspaper – the more you know about the subject the less satisfactory the coverage seems. For example the 2010 Horizon includes Open Resources as a trend but does not mention Open Learn. They chose instead the Leicester site Otter.
It’s worth noting that the two American reports provide an “executive summary” which supposedly allows a decision maker to respond to the information with quick action. This again seems apt – the less you know about a complex system the more likely you are to think that your actions upon it are going to have a predictable effect… Thus information for decision-makers should always be kept to a minimum.
Follow Me!
see also:
my wiki notes from blocks 1 & 2
Archives