INFO 105 — Spring 2009 — Gerry Stahl & Nan Zhou You Tube: “Information R/evolution”

INFO 105 — Spring 2009 — Gerry Stahl & Nan Zhou

First, some info about the users of this course’s info  Take 2 minutes to interview your neighbor in the classroom  Then stand up with your neighbor and introduce her/him to the class very briefly  Name; something about their interest in information; something they hope to get out or this course

Outline of this week’s class  YouTube: “A vision of students today”  Introductions of students & instructors  Course overview (and Blackboard demo)  Form small groups  Theories of information & human thinking  Re-thinking i-Education at the i-School: the power of collaborative learning  YouTube: “Information R/evolution”  Human-computer interaction and learning  Information and users  YouTube: “The machine is us/ing us”

What is knowledge, info, learning???  The most important documents in history:  Plato, What is knowledge & learning?  Shannon, What is information?  Chomsky, How do we learn language?

Use, share, understand info Core issues of information science:  How do people use information  Make sense of it, Evaluate it, Organize it Theories of information, knowledge & thought — related to design of computer systems  Idealism, rationalism, empiricism, behaviorism, cognitivism, post-cognitivism

Weekly readings  Before midnight Sunday, post a review of each reading in Blackboard discussion  Before class, read other people’s reviews  Bring questions to class: mysterious words, incomprehensible sentences, confusing arguments

Individual assignments  1. Describe an information system  4. Midterm reflection paper  6. Contribute to an information system  9. Final reflection paper

Group assignments  2. Describe a functionality of your group’s information system  3. Conduct a group literature search  5. Compile a group annotated bibliography of research  7. Define a system limitation  8. Design an innovative new function for your group’s information system

Group assignments  Wikipedia  Google scholar  Cite-U-Like  Del.icio.us  Political blogs  Internet Public Drexel  Drexel’s Hagerty Library  FaceBook  YouTube  Other ???

Group assignments  Any other info systems?  35 students in groups of 3-5 = 7 to 11 groups, with possible duplicate systems  Show of hands for systems  Write your last name next to the system of your choice

The Blackboard information system s/portal/frameset.jsp s/portal/frameset.jsp 

A brief history of thought: info, knowledge, truth & human cognition 

Plato’s philosophy  Starting point for Western thought, science & technology  Truth, knowledge, learning, wisdom  Education takes the student out of the common-sense world through stages and the student must struggle to make sense  A world of ideas, concepts, theory that sheds light on empirical sense perception

A brief history of Western philosophy (500 bc–2009 ad)  Greek: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle  Latinized Aristotelian Christian theology  Descartes (cogito ergo sum)  Empiricism vs rationalism  Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx  Behaviorism, cognitivism, post-cognitivism

 Plato distinguished the common-sense world of shadows from the realm of true knowledge, consisting of the general forms or concepts of things  The medieval Christian realms of heaven/earth  Descartes separation of mind and body  Empiricism (sense perception & induction) vs rationalism (logic, predictive science & deduction)  Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx (people constitute the world socially)

 Introspective psychology:  What do we experience about how we think? Bias, rationalization, no implicit processes  Behaviorism in the 1930’s-1950’s:  Pavlov dogs, Skinner rats & pidgeons learn by conditioned reflexes; drill & practice in education  Cognitivism in the 1960’s-1980’s:  The human mind interprets and constructs understanding of the world  Post-cognitivism in the 1990’s-2010’s:  Not a purely rational, individual process of mental representations & models; tacit knowledge, interpersonal interaction, cultural practices

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The readings & reviews Where do they fit in the history of ideas?  Plato?  Shannon & Weaver?  Skinner & Chomsky?

Implications Philosophies and scientific paradigms led to:  Multi-disciplinary approaches, like cognitive sciences, learning sciences, information sciences  Different theories of learning, education, scientific method, software designs There were also larger social changes: war, prosperity, ideologies, technologies, etc.

Questions?  You should have lots of questions now.  Many of them will be addressed in the readings  … Then you will have even deeper questions … (I hope)