Subject: Linear Learning
From: Bill Ellis (tranet@rangeley.org)
Date: Mon 17 Jan 2000 - 00:51:16 MET
From: "Bill Ellis" <tranet@rangeley.org> Subject: Linear Learning Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 12:51:16 +1300
List address to send message to everyone: ifets-discuss@LISTSERV.READADP.COM
Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Betz Pre-discussion paper for IFETS-Discussion group brings up the whole
issue of Chaos, Complexity and Gaian theories that started the CCL-LLCs
list, and were the topics of Alexander and Kathia Laszlo's chapters 40 & 41
and my chapter 16 of our book "Creating Learning Communities." They are
particularly relevant to Edelman's brain model, and Nobel Laureat Ilya
Prigogine's idea of how feed back loops bring order out of chaos.
They suggest that learning is a series of feedback loops that first
introduce and then reinforce and enlarge concepts stored in the brain.
This is, the differentce between linear and nonlinear (or network) learning.
Linear learning is based on the idea that by reading a book or by following
a planned curricula one can learn. Nonlinear learning is based on feed back
loops. Other authors have suggested that the invention of books lead to the
introduction of linear learning. No longer was the human mind exepcted to,
or allowed to, follow the laws of nature in which feedback loops and network
learning was the norm.
Our schools have been built on the old belief in the mechanistic linear
world. The brain model of that time was that memory was a linear series of
neurons connected by synapses. And the learning took place by creating a
series of linearly connected neurons. Current brain research is finding
that memories are not located in one place in the brain, or one series of
connected neurons. They are nonlinear networks distributed thoughout the
brain continually developing as feedback loops interconnect with all other
feedback loops in a holonistice total.
This research suggests that learning is a unique function of one brain at a
time. What one person learns depends on the holonistic function of that one
brain and all the inerconnected neural networks existing in that one brain.
Efficient learning cannot, then, take place in a school with a fixed
curricula. There is no way that a linear connection of neurons can be
implanted in each of a room full of different individuals. Learning can
only efficiently take place within an individual free to mentally roam the
world of knowledge and develop the particular feedback loop that that
individual is prepared to accept.
The exciting phenomena of our age is that the Internet can make nonlinear
learning so much easier than it was in the days of only books and curricula.
It is now possible for an individual to follow in nonoseconds to places in
the ideosphere that the world of linear learning would never take her or
him.
This is, of course, the fascinatination of many computer games that let the
player choose the path s/he want to take. The problem facing the pedagogs
as well as the computer experts is: Can this natural motivation and our
social need for life-long learning somehow be combined to create a more
efficient learning system for all of society than is possible in the current
school system?
I hope that we have scratched the surface of this potential in "Creating
Learning Communities," but the full realization of the potential is in but
its most embryonic stage.
Bill Ellis
---------------------------------------------------------
Forum website: http://ifets.ieee.org/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@massey.ac.nz
Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.ieee.org/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Mon 17 Jan 2000 - 01:15:35 MET