Julia Brennan
Activity
-
Thanks for drawing my attention to McLuhan...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
I think it can have a positive impact on learning in terms of developing critical thinking, as discussed in earlier steps - and perhaps more than this, again as per previous steps, getting to the nub of the problem you are actually trying to solve. It kind of strips things down to its bare bones - to the theory of knowledge and understanding rather than the...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
On the subject of limitations, does anyone else keep thinking of The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster?
“Beware of first-hand ideas!” exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. “First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be...
-
Julia Brennan replied to Nora Sheikh
Yes me too.
-
@MartinCompton thank you for this - I know it isn't a search engine, but I guess sometimes I kind of forget that because I'm so used to interacting with search engines.
-
@SergeyTrashchenkov Thank you, it's so interesting to hear this. But I guess this makes sense if the model is trained on predicting the most likely response, rather than on logic and understanding.
-
@GerhardKristandl Do please share!
-
Oh that is such an interesting idea!
-
@PaulWebb Yes. I sometimes stop doing it as I know it isn't necessary, but it makes me feel really ungrateful and impolite.
-
This is interesting - so interesting that in order to use it, you have to understand the nature of problems and solutions, which kind of takes us to design thinking approaches.
I don't have a prompt library but I have used all three types of prompt without really realising it.
I do tend to interact with ChatGPT in a back and forth manner. Because it...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
My top uses (just ChatGPT) have been:
- As a student, asking whether my assessment meets the rubric
In work...
- Asking the difference between different, closely related concepts
- Rephrasing emails
- Suggesting rewordings of titles or names
- Critiquing my writing/asking whether my writing performs certain functions
- asking whether certain things are... -
Julia Brennan replied to Mary Jacob
@MattiaNatale Thanks for this - really insightful approach.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Mary Jacob
Yes, great idea - if you do this, then it not only supports the use of AI effectively, but also means that the intended learning strategy of each of the activities you create becomes more explicit.
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
I asked Chat GPT and Google Bard to tell me how to care for a guinea pig, which is something I know a lot about! The results were almost identical - same content, same formulaic but useful and correct list (intro sentence, list, outro sentence). The main difference was that Bard provided a picture and also highlighted parts I might like to check. It was much...
-
Same here - I love the process of learning.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Lea B
All ideas and no craft is a good way of putting it!
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Having read some of the comments below, I think the output of AI could possibly be deemed valuable, but not 'creative' - as to be creative, it perhaps needs to be the result of a creative process. For AI, the process of creation is just pattern matching, is not felt, and doesn't as Heike D says 'leave a mark' on the author ... For humans, the creative process...
-
Yes, if creativity isn't 'felt' is it diminished? I asked the same question about learning - if learning has no meaning to the creator, is it meaningful at all? To me the learning process is exciting and 'felt' in the same way as the creative process is 'felt'. It would be interesting to ask this question of music, or performance art, where the process is part...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
It does seem basically 50/50 at the moment as to whether people think computers will outperform people in 'smartness'. Smartness is a difficult word to use... computers will probably eventually be capable of amazing feats, but it won't mean anything to them. For me, learning has to mean something. I'm not really sure where I am going with this, but learning...
-
Yes, I guess having the machine look for patterns and then the humans judge the patterns in context might make for a good partnership (i.e. each party do what it is best at)?
-
As far as I understand it, machine learning is good at looking for patterns in data and can do that extremely well. However, without understanding the context, content and purpose of why it is looking for patterns, its output may be meaningless.
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
I am amazed by the large language models and what they can do, but even if they are better than they were originally, they still don't understand what they are saying, they're only making predictions about the most likely sequence of words based on what they have been trained on, so this is not really 'reasoning' - or is it?
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Hello - I'm a lecturer in academic practice and interested very generally in how AI can be used in HE, but more particularly in assessment and feedback. From this course, I hope to gain a broad understanding of the topic. I've experimented a bit with Chat GPT.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Carys Watkins
Hi Carys - thanks for sharing this so eloquently, I'm interested in this area too.
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Hello everyone, I'm a lecturer in academic practice at St Mary's University, Twickenham.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Susan M
Your point about achieving more as a team than as individuals really resonates with me.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Jose Marcal
Hello Jose, I'm Julia, living in the UK near London. Nice to meet you. Me too.
-
Hi Edwina :-)
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Squares: making education more applicable to our everyday life
Jars: why does the UK educational system require a collective act of worship and not look at things like mental health and relationships?
Circling: how to provide a system which is standard enough to help students achieve equal opportunities but personal enough not to stifle creativity and... -
Julia Brennan made a comment
I liked the video - there are definitely aspects of life such as finances, relationships and self-knowledge which I left school without any real understanding of. This has hindered and is hindering me now.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Nora Odendahl
Integration and application always seems more sensible to me
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Organised schooling opens up educational opportunities for many if not all in the UK. It provides a basic level of education ensuring that (most) children leave learning to read and write and interact with their peers and able to find some form of employment. By definition it is an institution, and has a standardised curriculum. The challenge is how to...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Really interesting. I found the part linking education to factories fascinating. But change is hard when it involves children and their welfare. People worry so much about them (naturally, and out of good intentions) and what is best for them. Parents want to do what's right and mainstream so they are not criticised and their children remain unharmed....
-
Oh I see ...
-
That's interesting! You made the connection... unfortunately I just saw the cubes as coloured cubes ... I think they were also quite satisfying to gnaw!!
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Education - not linked to a specific place, people or curriculum
Schooling - is all of the above
Both - promote ideas, knowledge, skills, behaviours and aim to help the individual flourish -
A school is a place. Education can happen anywhere.
-
How eloquent
-
Julia Brennan replied to Cally ZS
@RogerBartholomew same here. Life experience led me to choose Yeats but the others are arguably more applicable to the majority of the Earth's population.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Cally ZS
@CallyZS I understand where you are coming from here. I loved the quotes from Mandela and Malala ... I felt kind of ashamed not to pick those but for me the Yeats resonated as I have not really needed education to promote change. Education for me has been about delight. I am so lucky to have been able to follow the subjects I love and still gain employment.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Sarah Large
Love your last sentence
-
Yes, agreed, but I feel sorry for the poor fella without any books looking confused!
-
That's so interesting ... the memory of the emotions being more important than what was learned. With the unifix cubes etc I seem to remember the teaching method but not what it was actually supposed to link to conceptually. It was more about me trying to understand how to do the task than what the task actually was intended to teach. I think I was quite...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
All of these are great, but the Yeats one resonates for me most as learning for me is about wonder and inspiration and leads to the desire to learn more.
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Not very attractive pictures! E is the best. The tree gives the idea of gradual, natural growth which is why I like it.
-
Plimsoles! A big memory for me of primary school in the 80s. Do they even make them now?
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
The first thing I remember learning is my Dad teaching me to write my name at the kitchen table. I think he wrote it and I copied it underneath. It felt special.
I remember a lot about my first school year. My teacher was scary. Circling 'sets' of similar objects on a photocopied sheet. 'We are doing sets'. Why? Sentence makers. There was a big board in the...
-
I loved the Faraway tree and remember that from my primary school days
-
Julia Brennan replied to Mike Fall
This was hilarious :)
-
Julia Brennan replied to Sarah Large
@SarahLarge That's really interesting Sarah. Sounds like you have found your own path and calling. I have considered home education but I'm not sure I'm cut out for it with my own child ... not sure I could manage full time. Having some kind of support network like the one you mention could make things easier though.
-
Agree with the interconnectedness of the problems.
-
Very interesting perspective
-
Julia Brennan replied to Cally ZS
Great points
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
So many great ideas below. I don't have much inspiration at the moment ... just what if children had core compulsory hours and could choose supplementary 'other' modes of learning?
What if children could learn from The teacher in the morning and play/explore on their own in the afternoon, or vice versa?
What if children learned a second language at the outset... -
Julia Brennan made a comment
I like the ideas in the manifesto but agree with many of you who question how this would work in practice to ensure children are getting equal opportunities. Maybe part time school could be an option so some basic standards are being covered. I do like the idea of communities supporting learning. Perhaps learning could actually help strengthen our communities.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Em Be
@EmBe I like these ideas which aim to allow students to critique their existence in various ways and empower them to bring about change.
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
A major trend below seems to be give power back to the teachers and listen to them. Sounds sensible. Only by talking to the practitioners can you know what's working and not working. I like EM B's comment on history and religion... perhaps designing a curriculum around the world's big challenges would be an idea to keep things fresh. To empower children to...
-
Julia Brennan replied to Sandy Kinninmonth
I admire your attention to detail :)
-
@MelBuendia Wow - the internet stifling curiosity I hadn't thought of it like that. I hope it's not true but I can see what you mean.
-
@JimHill Yes - I guess there's nothing new here it's just a different flavour of the same problem.
-
Yes, but I was wondering whether the 'P' would cover the emotional :-)
-
I can't think of a better answer.
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
You can't pick out one of these - they must all be interrelated. I'm fascinated to see that a lot of these are very basic, eg, hungry students. So does this list read as a reflection of a lot of societal problems (as Nora says below 'inequity'?) Once you have the basics right, I would agree with Kim below, I think the most important focus would be on the...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Just looking at the contents page of the National Curriculum in England: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/425601/PRIMARY_national_curriculum.pdf you see English, Maths and Science as core subjects, but others as 'foundation'.
I'm kind of amazed to see on p.5 (2.1) 'spiritual, moral, cultural,...
-
I didn't think it was nasty - I can see that there could be problems with trying to formalise understanding the processing of emotion by the individual but I can't see any problem with an education which opens up self-questioning about our emotions. I probably could have done with that growing up. Even if you have a positive upbringing such as I did, that...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Interesting that these seem to be very much more basic 'bottom of the hierarchy' needs than I thought they would be. If we don't have these, we can't really move on to more sophisticated questions about 'what is it to learn'?
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Yes - the internet destabilises the role of student and teacher - but new definitions have not yet been explicitly articulated and we stumble on working with mismatched assumptions.
-
Thank you - interesting summaries
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
The internet has changed education and destabilised the teacher's role b/c people can find out anything they want without them. However, education is not just information. How do students work with that information? Perhaps learning how to do that is the new role of the teacher.
In my experience, uni students are changing their attitudes as a result of this... -
@KateByrd same here. Grammar was not taught. I only understood grammar was important through second language learning.
-
Thanks Nora and Sarah, really interesting. One of the things I have noticed is students being dismayed that they have to learn on their own - as consumers they sometimes see 'value for money' as 'contact time' and feel that they are being fobbed off by being asked to do 'self study'.
-
This was really interesting, thank you - "the role of the teacher, therefore, is less about imparting knowledge and more about developing the skills that will allow people to gain the knowledge and perform the tasks required in the range of technical or professional contexts that they will find themselves in as adults."
-
How interesting. Especially: "All children are born with a desire for knowledge. Teachers should think about how they can enhance that desire."
Also - “When people talk about skills, it’s rhetoric for making the curriculum relevant to employment. ... employers don’t really want them."
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Hello everyone. I work in a university and am involved in the production and evaluation of online and blended courses - so I'm interested from this perspective. I'm also a mum to a 3 year old and really enjoying seeing him learn. I'm wondering what mainstream school will mean for his amazing curious mind.
-
Julia Brennan replied to Sarah Large
Very interesting Sarah, I've a young child who will go to school in 2020 and therefore been thinking about and questioning what mainstream school means from a new perspective. This is partly why I'm doing the course too.
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
As a parent of a young child, I think play is highly valued in early years education. However, I worry that it is less valued in primary and secondary education with the emphasis on a set curriculum and homework. In society, I see that play is organised by parents now rather than the children themselves, e.g. in playdates, in after-school clubs and in other...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
In the 80s the the UK in a relatively affluent area, small groups of us played outside with bikes & roller skates as well as simpler things such as skipping ropes, elastics. Indoors we played games like Cindys, 'Guess Who' and a game where marbles dropped into slots, connect 4, lego.
We also played imaginary games with each other which didn't need toys and...
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
Play is a way to rehearse, try things out and explore - whether it be working out what a person is like, what a place is like, what an idea is like, or how a thing behaves. It's experimentation in a safe space.
-
@MaryAdeyinka I remember drawing a giant hopscotch in clay all down our street. We got told off by one of the kids' dads and he hosed it all off!
-
Julia Brennan made a comment
I grew up in Sussex in the 80s. Like many of you I spent a lot of time outside playing with other children in 'the close'. We used to run in and out of each others' gardens and explore. In summer it was great because we all used to jump into paddling pools and run through sprinklers, asking for cups of squash from everyone's mums. Bikes and roller skates were...