Learning to Flourish: A Philosophical Exploration of Liberal Education

Learning to Flourish: A Philosophical Exploration of Liberal Education Review

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What is a liberal arts education? How does it differ from other forms of learning? What are we to make of the debates that surround it? What are its place, its value, and its prospects in the contemporary world? These are questions that trouble students and their parents, educators, critics, and policy-makers, and philosophers of education--among others.Learning to Flourish offers a lucid, penetrating, philosophical exploration of liberal learning: a still-evolving tradition of theory and practice that has dominated and sustained intellectual life and learning in much of the globe for two millennia. This study will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand liberal arts education, as well as to educators and philosophers of education. Daniel R. DeNicola weighs the views of both advocates and critics of the liberal arts, and interprets liberal education as a vital tradition aimed supremely at understanding and living a flourishing life. He elaborates the tradition as expressed in five competing but complementary paradigms that transcend theories of curriculum and pedagogy and are manifested in particular social contexts. He examines the transformative power of liberal education and its relation to such values as freedom, autonomy, and democracy, reflecting on the importance of intrinsic value and moral understanding. Finally, DeNicola considers age-old obstacles and current threats to liberal education, ultimately asserting its value for and urgent need in a global, pluralistic, technologically advanced society. The result is a bold, yet nuanced theory, alert to both historical and contemporary discussions, and a significant contribution to the discourse on liberal education.

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Machine Learning for Hackers

Machine Learning for Hackers Review

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If you’re an experienced programmer interested in crunching data, this book will get you started with machine learning—a toolkit of algorithms that enables computers to train themselves to automate useful tasks. Authors Drew Conway and John Myles White help you understand machine learning and statistics tools through a series of hands-on case studies, instead of a traditional math-heavy presentation.

Each chapter focuses on a specific problem in machine learning, such as classification, prediction, optimization, and recommendation. Using the R programming language, you’ll learn how to analyze sample datasets and write simple machine learning algorithms. Machine Learning for Hackers is ideal for programmers from any background, including business, government, and academic research.

• Develop a naïve Bayesian classifier to determine if an email is spam, based only on its text
• Use linear regression to predict the number of page views for the top 1,000 websites
• Learn optimization techniques by attempting to break a simple letter cipher
• Compare and contrast U.S. Senators statistically, based on their voting records
• Build a “whom to follow” recommendation system from Twitter data

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Trail Guide to Learning: Paths of Exploration Set

Trail Guide to Learning: Paths of Exploration Set Review

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Paths of Exploration takes students on a journey. Follow the steps of famous explorers and pioneers across America and let geography be your guide to science, history, language skills, and the arts. This journey will teach students HOW to think by asking, answering, and investigating questions about our great country's beginning and growth. The paths of the explorers are seen through multidisciplinary eyes, but always with the same goals: to make learning enjoyable, memorable, and motivating. This full one-year course for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders (adaptable for 2nd and 6th) covers six units in two volumes.

So, pack your bags and prepare to travel across time and territory with great explorers as your guide!

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New Guide for Occupational Exploration: Linking Interests, Learning and Careers

New Guide for Occupational Exploration: Linking Interests, Learning and Careers Review

The New Guide for Occupational Exploration is the most useful resource for matching interests to both job and learning options. As a major revision of the career resource previously titled the Guide for Occupational Exploration, this easy-to-use book is now based on the 16 U.S. Department of Education clusters that connect learning to careers. Readers can drill down to their most appealing job groups through questions that provide a feel for the work and whether it will interest them. The unique format of the New Guide for Occupational Exploration takes readers from broad interest areas to specific careers. More than 900 job descriptions from the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET (Occupational Information Network) database emphasize skills needed, related courses, education required, earnings, growth, and much more, all for helpful career-path planning. The New Guide for Occupational Exploration builds on solid research that supports exploring careers based on interests. For more than 25 years, the GOE has served as a key reference for helping people discover career and learning options.

Empowerment Through Experiential Learning: Explorations of Good Practice

Empowerment Through Experiential Learning: Explorations of Good Practice Review

This volume brings together papers from the 1991 Conference on Experiential Learning, and provides a broad illustration of best practice in this fast-developing field. The editors have highlighted the emerging ideas of empowerment, for example as a development of autonomy and control, public recognition of personal learning, a shift of emphasis from teaching to learning, the decoupling of learning and formal education, and the relocation of learning in the workplace, community and personal life. The contributions are provided by expert practitioners in the field from the UK, Australia, Italy, Hong Kong, Canada, South Africa and the USA. They have been grouped into five sections which examine theories in practice; assessment and accreditation; integrating experiential learning; learning to learn; and putting principles into practice. Themes covered in detail include learner experience - a rich resource; balancing facilitator authority and learner autonomy; adventure-based experiential learning; learning contracts - how they can be used; and developing a model to aid learners and facilitators.

Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century: The Six-Step Plan to Unlock Your Master-Mind

Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century: The Six-Step Plan to Unlock Your Master-Mind Review

We live in an era when the unprecedented speed of change means: The only certainty is uncertainty; you can't predict what skills will be useful in ten years time; in most professions knowledge is doubling every two or three years; and no job is forever--so being employable means being flexible and retraining regularly.

Accelerated Learning into the 21st Century contains a simple but proven plan that delivers the one key skill that every working person, every parent and student must master, and every teacher should teach: it's learning how to learn. The theory of eight multiple intelligences (linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist) developed by Howard Gardner at Harvard University provides a foundation for the six-step MASTER-Mind system to facilitate learning (an acronym for Mind, Acquire, Search, Trigger, Exhibit, and Review), and is enhanced by the latest findings on the value of emotion and memory on the process of learning.

Combined with motivational stories of success applying these principles, and putting forth a clear vision of how the United States can dramatically improve the education system to remain competitive in the next century, Accelerated Learning into the 21st Century is a dynamic tool for self-improvement by individuals as diverse as schoolchildren and corporate executives.

Distance education, on-campus learning, and e-learning convergences: an Australian exploration.: An article from: International Journal on E-Learning

Distance education, on-campus learning, and e-learning convergences: an Australian exploration.: An article from: International Journal on E-Learning Review

This digital document is an article from International Journal on E-Learning, published by Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) on July 1, 2002. The length of the article is 7676 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Distance education, on-campus learning, and e-learning convergences: an Australian exploration.
Author: Cameron Richards
Publication:International Journal on E-Learning (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 2002
Publisher: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)
Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Page: 30(10)

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Designing for Learning in an Open World (Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies)

Designing for Learning in an Open World (Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies) Review

The Internet and associated technologies have been around for almost twenty years. Networked access and computer ownership are now the norm. There is a plethora of technologies that can be used to support learning, offering different ways in which learners can communicate with each other and their tutors, and providing them with access to interactive, multimedia content. However, these generic skills don’t necessarily translate seamlessly to an academic learning context. Appropriation of these technologies for academic purposes requires specific skills, which means that the way in which we design and support learning opportunities needs to provide appropriate support to harness the potential of technologies. More than ever before learners need supportive ‘learning pathways’ to enable them to blend formal educational offerings, with free resources and services. This requires a rethinking of the design process, to enable teachers to take account of a blended learning context.

Learning performance and computer software: an exploration of knowledge transfer [An article from: Computers in Human Behavior]

Learning performance and computer software: an exploration of knowledge transfer [An article from: Computers in Human Behavior] Review

This digital document is a journal article from Computers in Human Behavior, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Computer studies educators have a challenging task in keeping pace with the rapidly changing content of computer software. One way to meet this challenge is to examine the nature of knowledge transfer. Instead of focusing on unique software packages, teachers could concentrate on knowledge that is likely to transfer from one software application to another. The purpose of the current study was to describe what kind of knowledge is used in learning new software, assess the relative effectiveness of this knowledge in aiding the learning process, and examine how the results could advance educational learning theory and practice. Thirty-six adults (18 male, 18 female), representing three computer ability levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced), volunteered to think out loud while they learned the rudimentary steps (moving the cursor, using a menu, entering data) required to use a spreadsheet software package (Lotus 1-2-3). Previous understanding of terminology, software concepts and actions, and other software packages had the largest impact, both positive and negative, on learning. A basic understanding of the keyboard and common movement keys was also important, although higher level knowledge (e.g., terms, concepts, actions) is probably necessary for significant gains in learning performance. Computer ability had little impact on the type of transfer knowledge used, except with respect to the use of software concepts and, to a lesser extent, terminology. The interaction between problem type and effectiveness of a specific transfer area suggests that identifying specific common tasks among software packages is important in detecting useful transfer knowledge. It is equally important that computer users understand labeling idiosyncrasies of these common tasks.

Explorations in Learning and the Brain: On the Potential of Cognitive Neuroscience for Educational Science

Explorations in Learning and the Brain: On the Potential of Cognitive Neuroscience for Educational Science Review

The past decade has witnessed efforts on the part of research, education and policy communities to create a dialogue about the potential relationship between cognitive neuroscience and the science and practice of education. The upsurge of interest in neuroscience in general has given rise to increased attention to the role of the brain in learning. However, much of the debate has been dominated by extremes. Explorations in Learning and the Brain takes a different stance in the sense that developments within neuroscience are not the starting point but rather uses major questions dominant in educational research, notably instructional systems design and related fields within the educational sciences, as its basis. The book identifies interfaces between neuro-scientific and educational research, and informs on potentially interesting additions to educational research and viable interdisciplinary ventures.

Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments

Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments Review

Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments provides students, faculty, and instructional designers with a clear, concise introduction to the major pedagogical and psychological theories and their implications for the design of new learning environments for schools, universities, or corporations. Leading experts describe the most important contemporary theories that form the foundation of the conception and design of student-centered learning environments and new applications of educational technologies. This book is well suited as a textbook for courses in instructional design, educational psychology, learning theory, curriculum theory and design, and related areas.

The rise of constructivism and its associated theories represented a paradigm shift for educators and instructional designers to a view of learning as necessarily more social, conversational, and constructive than traditional transmissive views of learning. This bestselling book was the first to provide a manageable overview of the altered field, and the second edition has been fully updated to include expert introductions to metacognition, Argumentation, and other key contemporary theories.

LOST SHIPS: THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION OF THE OCEAN'S SUNKEN TREASURES (The Learning Channel Series)

LOST SHIPS: THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION OF THE OCEAN'S SUNKEN TREASURES (The Learning Channel Series) Review

From the day the first humans put to sea 50,000 years ago, the ocean has never lost its power to fascinate mankind. This fascination endures despite -- or, perhaps, because of -- the ever-present danger that has been, for a thousand generations, the cost of seafaring: shipwrecks. From prehistoric dugouts to the "Titanic" herself, new discoveries, and thousands of old ones, retain a firm grip on the imagination of the world; they remain a source of dread and fascination, an example of human frailty in the face of nature's power.
"Lost Ships" is a chronicle of three of the most fascinating adventure stories in maritime history -- or, rather, three stories of adventure and three of exploration, for each part of "Lost Ships" intertwines the tale of a shipwreck with that of its subsequent discovery by Mensun Bound, marine archaeologist and adventurer. Using a combination of high-tech gadgetry -- sonar sensing, satellite mapping, carbon dating -- and old-fashioned detective work, Bound documents the distinct character of each discovery, tells the story of the crew and/or passengers, places each wreck in its historical context, and shows the Challenges overcome in the exploration of the wreck. And what a selection of shipwrecks these are: the Mahdia ship that carried the spoils of Sulla's sack of Athens in the first century B.C.E., sank off the coast of North Africa, and was rediscovered only in 1993; the "Agamemnon, " Horatio Nelson's first ship of the line and victor at the Battle of Trafalgar; and the "Graf Spee, " one of Nazi Germany's most powerful warships, scuttled in the
River Plate in Uruguay after the most thrilling naval chase of the century. Here are:

thedestruction of Athens and Piraeus as chronicled by Plutarch and Appian...the journey of the treasure ship back to Rome, only to sink off the coast of North Africa...its unwitting discovery by Jacques Cousteau in 1948, and its rediscovery by Mensun Bound in 1993.
the history of one of the great ships of the Napoleonic Wars, one of the great line of British ships whose guns destroyed French sea power for good at Trafalgar...her own destruction in the teeth of a South Atlantic storm...the salvage of one of those great guns -- one of the guns of Trafalgar -- from the bottom of Maldonado Bay.
the near-legendary story of the outgunned British cruisers "Exeter, Ajax, " and "Achilles, " and the epic battle they had fought with the pride of the German navy, the pocket battleship "Graf Spee."..the commerce raider scuttled in the harbor of Montevideo by her extraordinary commander, Zee Kapitan Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff...Langsdorff's suicide, fallen on the battle ensign of the ship he had commanded.

Ranging from the Mediterranean to the South Atlantic, from satellites hundreds of miles above the surface of the earth to the ocean floor, "Lost Ships" is a vivid and exciting record of both nautical adventure and maritime exploration.

Mediated Learning: Teaching, Tasks, and Tools to Unlock Cognitive Potential

Mediated Learning: Teaching, Tasks, and Tools to Unlock Cognitive Potential Review

Features an expanded discussion of mediated learning and includes case studies, reflective activities for the reader, and in-depth coverage of metacognition, metalearning, metateaching, and metatasking.

Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession (Jossey-Bass/Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching)

Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession (Jossey-Bass/Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) Review

Business is the largest undergraduate major in the United States and still growing. This reality, along with the immense power of the business sector and its significance for national and global well-being, makes quality education critical not only for the students themselves but also for the public good.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's national study of undergraduate business education found that most undergraduate programs are too narrow, failing to challenge students to question assumptions, think creatively, or understand the place of business in larger institutional contexts. Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education examines these limitations and describes the efforts of a diverse set of institutions to address them by integrating the best elements of liberal arts learning with business curriculum to help students develop wise, ethically grounded professional judgment.

The Role of Criticism in Understanding Problem Solving: Honoring the Work of John C. Belland (Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies)

The Role of Criticism in Understanding Problem Solving: Honoring the Work of John C. Belland (Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies) Review

In 1991, Denis Hlynka and John Belland released Paradigms Regained, a well received reader for graduate students in the field of educational technology. The Role of Criticism in Understanding Problem Solving updates some of those ideas initially proposed in Paradigms Regained, and extends the conversation into the contemporary discourse regarding problem based learning (PBL). Paradigms proposed the idea of criticism as a third method for the conduction of educational research, the first two being qualitative and qualitative. The concept of criticism as a tool for research is not well established in educational technology, although it is well established in other educational research traditions such as Curriculum Studies. Unfortunately, it is not always clear how criticism can be applied. This book views criticism as a way to step back and look at an educational intervention within educational technology through a particular critical lens. Criticism is viewed as a valuable approach to guiding meta analyses and theoretical studies, serving to prevent the proverbial "spinning of the wheels" that often happens in educational research. By indicating new potential research questions and directions, criticism approaches can invigorate educational research. This book revisits the ideals of criticism in order to establish their usefulness for studying educational technology interventions to support problem based learning. First, a few foundational chapters set the stage for the conversations on criticism. Then, the role criticism can play in enhancing analysis and interpretation of the PBL literature is explored. Finally, case studies addressing the central concepts of the text are presented and dissected. This book represents a complete overhaul and rethinking of the use of criticism as a method for understanding and furthering the research area of PBL within the field of Educational technology.

The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory (Information Science and Statistics)

The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory (Information Science and Statistics) Review

The aim of this book is to discuss the fundamental ideas which lie behind the statistical theory of learning and generalization. It considers learning as a general problem of function estimation based on empirical data. Omitting proofs and technical details, the author concentrates on discussing the main results of learning theory and their connections to fundamental problems in statistics. This second edition contains three new chapters devoted to further development of the learning theory and SVM techniques. Written in a readable and concise style, the book is intended for statisticians, mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists.

The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning

The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning Review

Neuroscience tells us that the products of the mind--thought, emotions, artistic creation--are the result of the interactions of the biological brain with our senses and the physical world: in short, that thinking and learning are the products of a biological process.

This realization, that learning actually alters the brain by changing the number and strength of synapses, offers a powerful foundation for rethinking teaching practice and one's philosophy of teaching.

James Zull invites teachers in higher education or any other setting to accompany him in his exploration of what scientists can tell us about the brain and to discover how this knowledge can influence the practice of teaching. He describes the brain in clear non-technical language and an engaging conversational tone, highlighting its functions and parts and how they interact, and always relating them to the real world of the classroom and his own evolution as a teacher.

"The Art of Changing the Brain" is grounded in the practicalities and challenges of creating effective opportunities for deep and lasting learning, and of dealing with students as unique learners.