martes, 12 de abril de 2011

Kenneth Gergen - Realidades y Relaciones: aproximaciones a la construcción social.

Kenneth Gergen - Realidades y Relaciones: aproximaciones a la construcción social.
Para leer: más abajo.

Resumen: Tradicionalmente, la cultura occidental ha ensalzado la mente y el espíritu individual como lugares de la razón y, por consiguiente, del conocimiento. Si debemos hacer caso a este libro, sin embargo, el célebre adagio de Descartes Pienso, luego existo tendría que expresarse de un modo más apropiado como Comunico, luego existo , pues, en él, el método de la duda se equipara no a la razón sino al lenguaje, siempre producto de relaciones interdependientes. Centrándose, de este modo, en los procesos del discurso, así como en sus explicaciones sociales y literarias, Gergen examina los desafíos que se lanzan contra el empirismo bajo el estandarte de la construcción social y subraya los principales elementos de una perspectiva de este tipo, ilustrando su potencial y abriendo -en fin- lo que puede ser un fructífero debate sobre el futuro de las actividades construccionistas, tanto en las ciencias humanas como en la psicología. Cuando estas últimas se guían por una perspectiva, cuando la relación -y no el individuo- es el lugar del conocimiento, las formas de teoría, de investigación y de práctica resultantes retornan a los ámbitos habituales de la investigación especializada en psicología -el yo, las emociones, el entendimiento humano, la patología y la psicoterapia- y abren un refrescante estudio sobre la narración, el fraude y la moralidad. Pues bien, eso es lo que sucede en este libro revolucionario: una obra maestra que no sólo integra la multiplicidad de voces de la crítica antiempirista, sino que nos muestra abiertamente los más nuevos panoramas de las ciencias humanas y de la práctica cultural.

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Open publication - Free publishing - More psicologia

El impulso de la Web 2.0 es imparable

Fuente: Learning Review. Nancy Piriz y Susana Trabaldo, las socias gerentes de la empresa líder en formación online, Net-Learning ( www.net-learning.com.ar ), ofrecen una mirada sobre el e-learning actual y futuro, a partir de una entrevista realizada por Learning Review.

¿Qué implicancias tienen las herramientas de la Web 2.0- como Twitter o Facebook- en el diseño de los cursos de e-Learning?

En Net-Learning damos mucha importancia al diseño instruccional de nuestros cursos. Lo consideramos un trabajo de “ingeniería” que debe contemplar principalmente: la actualidad y vigencia de los contenidos, la calidad de la tutoría, el desafío cognitivo de las propuestas de trabajo y la riqueza de las actividades colaborativas. Para este último objetivo, el trabajo con redes sociales nos ha dado excelentes resultados. Ya sea en redes cerradas o públicas hemos organizado comunidades de estudiantes con temas de debate, intercambio de experiencias y resolución de problemas, que han servido para ampliar lo aprendido en el curso.

Hoy en día, con publicaciones en Facebook o Linkedin entre otras, hemos accedido a nuevos contactos con otros investigadores y desarrolladores. También Twitter es muy interesante para la comunicación casi sincrónica, por ejemplo, en eventos en vivo. Nuestro blog es nuestro canal de difusión de artículos e investigaciones y allí se transmite a nuestras redes. Otros recursos que los alumnos usan mucho son Slideshare, YouTube, Delicious o CMaps para organizar o presentar sus trabajos a la comunidad.

¿Cuáles consideran que serían las próximas tendencias en lo que respecta a e-Learning?

El impulso 2.0-3.0 es imparable. Cada vez hay más y mejor contenido en la Web. El desafío es encontrarlo y clasificarlo. Las nuevas tendencias como el conectivismo, el ubiquitous learning, e-learning on-demand, el mobile learning, nos hablan de un futuro donde estaremos permanentemente conectados y podremos armar nuestros propios trayectos formativos “sirviéndonos” libremente de la Web.

Ustedes también forman profesionales a través de la modalidad e-Learning. ¿Cuál es el curso que tiene más demanda actualmente y por qué?

Tenemos cursos cortos y otros más extensos para todas las necesidades: El Experto Universitario en Implementación de Proyectos de e-Learning; el Diplomado en Diseño Instruccional; nuestro Diplomado en Diseño, Gestión y evaluación de proyectos de e-learning y formación virtual (con UNSAM) que dura ocho meses.

Los cursos estrella son: Gestión de redes, comunidades e identidad digital. Calidad y certificación de la formación virtual. Experto Universitario en e-learning 2.0 para enseñanza de idiomas. Todos con UTN-FRBA.

Con respecto a los contenidos de los cursos, vemos que la población que se interesa por ellos es muy heterogénea, desde los que recién dan sus primero pasos en el tema, a los que ya tienen bastante experiencia y exploran nuevos caminos, por ello nuestra oferta es variada y accesible. En 2010 llegamos a 7.000 alumnos formados, que ya trabajan en sus propias propuestas de e-learning.

¿Cuáles son las ventajas y desventajas de usar software libre?

El éxito y demanda del software libre es hoy creciente y notable. No sólo se trata de plataformas, sino también de recursos para armar materiales navegables, evaluaciones, encuestas, publicaciones, etc. Esto nos ha llevado a desarrollar un Diplomado en e-learning con Moodle y recursos open source que consta de cuatro cursos de cinco semanas cada uno, donde se practican todos esos temas. Pensamos que el éxito del software libre deriva de que al obtener el código fuente, se puede personalizar mejor la propuesta. Se hace más económico y además hay por detrás una comunidad de investigación. Su desventaja principal es que se necesita personal capacitado para administrarlo y gestionarlo.

Creative, Online Learning Tool Helps Students Tackle Real-World Problems

Creative, Online Learning Tool Helps Students Tackle Real-World Problems

ScienceDaily (Apr. 11, 2011) — Solving problems for clients in any field usually requires gathering information and creative thinking that leads to practical and inventive solutions.

A new project called ThinkSpace is led by a group of ISU faculty including Ann Marie VanDerZanden, professor of horticulture and associate director of ISU's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. ThinkSpace has many different features that make it an effective way to teach using ill-structured problems. This type of problem allows students to choose from multiple paths to arrive at a solution. (Credit: ISU photo by Bob Elbert)

A new computer interface developed at Iowa State University is helping students use what they've learned in the horticulture classroom and apply it to problems they'll face when they are on the job site.

The project, called ThinkSpace, is led by a group of ISU faculty including Ann Marie VanDerZanden, professor of horticulture and associate director of ISU's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.

ThinkSpace has many different features that make it an effective way to teach using ill-structured problems. This type of problem allows students to choose from multiple paths to arrive at a solution. By contrast, well-structured problems have a straight path to the one, clear solution.

In horticulture, the ThinkSpace platform is being used for upper-level classes and requires students to access what they've learned throughout their time studying horticulture and apply it to real-world problems.

In these classes, VanDerZanden gives students computer-delivered information about residential landscape.

That information includes illustrations of the work site, descriptions of the trees on the property, explanations of the problems the homeowner is experiencing, mock audio interview files with the property owner, and about anything else a horticulture professional would discover when approaching a homeowner with a landscape problem.

Also, just like in real life, some of the information is relevant to the problem, and some information is not.

"It forces students to take this piece of information, and that piece of information, and another piece of information, and then figure out what is wrong -- in this case with a plant," said VanDerZanden.

When the students think they have determined the problem, they enter their responses into the online program.

VanDerZanden can then check the responses.

For those students on the right track, she allows them to continue toward a solution.

For those who may have misdiagnosed the situation, VanDerZanden steers the students toward the right track before allowing them to move forward.

So far, the response from students has been very positive. "The students like the variety," said VanDerZanden. "They like struggling with real-world problems, rather that something that is just made up. On the other hand, they can get frustrated because there is not a clear-cut answer."

The entire process leverages the classroom experience into something the students can use at work.

"I think this really enhances student learning," said VanDerZanden. "Students apply material from previous classes to a plausible, real-world situation. For instance students see what happens when a tree was pruned really hard to allow a piece of equipment to get into the customer's yard. As a result, the tree sends out a lot of new succulent shoots, and then there is an aphid infestation in the tree. It helps students start making all of those connections."

The ThinkSpace interface was developed from existing technologies already being used in ISU's College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Engineering and department of English.

VanDerZanden and her group recently received a $446,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture Higher Education Challenge Grant program to further develop ThinkSpace so it could more useful to other academic areas and universities.

As part of this research, VanDerZanden is also working with faculty members at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Kansas State University, Manhattan.

sábado, 9 de abril de 2011

Theo Jansen creates new creatures

Theo Jansen creates new creatures
Theo Jansen's Strandbeest
Artist Theo Jansen demonstrates the amazingly lifelike kinetic sculptures he builds from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. His creatures are designed to move -- and even survive -- on their own.
By TED: Ideas worth spreading.

About Theo Jansen

Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who builds walking kinetic sculptures that he calls a new form of life. His "Strandbeests" walk the coastline of Holland, feeding on wind and fleeing from water.

Transcript

I would like to tell you about a project which I started about 16 years ago, and it's about making new forms of life. And these are made of this kind of tube -- electricity tube, we call it in Holland -- and we can start a film about that and we can see a little bit backwards in time.

Narrator: Eventually these beasts are going to live in herds on the beaches. Theo Jansen is working hard on this evolution.

Theo Jansen: I want to put these forms of life on the beaches. And they should survive over there,on their own, in the future. Learning to live on their own, and it'll take couple of more years to let them walk on their own.

Narrator: The mechanical beasts will not get their energy from food, but from the wind. The wind will move feathers on their back, which will drive their feet. The beast walks sideways on the wet sand of the beach, with its nose pointed into the wind. As soon as it walks into either the rolling surf or the dry sand, it stops, and walks in the opposite direction.

Evolution has generated many species. This is the Animaris Currens Ventosa. (Applause)

Jansen: This is a herd, and it is built according genetical codes, and it is a sort of race, and each and every animal is different, and the winning codes will multiply.

This is the wave, going from left to right, you can see this one. And now it goes from -- yes, now it goes from left to

right. This is a new generation, a new family, which is able to store the winds. So the wings pump up air in lemonade bottles which are on top of that -- and they can use that energy in case the wind falls away, and the tide is coming up, and there is still a little bit of energy to reach the dunes and save their lives, because they are drowned very easily. (Laughter)

I could show you this animal. (Applause) Thank you. So the proportion of the tubes in this animal is very important for the walking. There are 11 numbers, which I call the 11 holy numbers. These are the distances of the tubes which makes it walk that way. In fact it's a new invention of the wheel. It works the same as a wheel. The axis of a wheel is staying on the same level, and this hip is staying on the same level as well. In fact, this is better than a wheel, because when you try to drive with your bicycle on the beach, you will notice it's very hard to do. And the feet just step over the sand, and the wheel has to touch every piece of the ground in between. So 5,000 years after the invention of the wheel, we have a new wheel. And I will show you in the next video -- can you start it, please? -- that very heavy loads can be moved. There's a guy pushing there behind, but can also walk on the wind very well. It's 3.2 tons.

And this is working on the stored winds in the bottles. It has a feeler where it can feel obstacles and turn around. And that stuff, you see, is going to it the other way.

Can I have the feeler here? OK. Good. So, they have to survive all the dangers of the beach, and one of the big dangers is the sea. This is the sea.And it must feel the water of the sea. And this is the water feeler. And what's very important is this tube. It sucks in air normally, but when it swallows water it feels the resistance of it. So imagine that the animal is walking towards the sea. As soon as it touches the water you should hear a sort of sound of running air. Yes! So if it doesn't feel, it will be drowned, OK?

Here we have the brain of the animal. In fact, it is a step-counter, and it counts the steps. It's a binary step-counter. So as

soon it has been to the sea, it changes the pattern of zeroes and ones here, and it knows always where it is on the beach. So it's very simple brain. It says, well there's the sea, there are dunes, and I'm here. So it's a sort of imagination of the simple world of the beach animal. Thank you.

One of the biggest enemies are the storms. This is a part of the nose of the Animaris Percipiere,and when the nose is fixed of the animal, the whole animal is fixed. So when the storm is coming up, it drives a pin into the ground. (Laughter) And the nose is fixed, the whole animal is fixed. The wind may turn, but the animal will turn always its nose into the wind. Now another couple of years, and these animals will survive on their own. I still have to help them a lot.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.(Applause).

viernes, 8 de abril de 2011

How does the IPad changes or challenges society in a political, social and an economical way?

By Apple.MacOs Review Center. April 8, 2011.

How does the ipad changes or challenges society in a political, social, economical way? In addition, how does the ipad relate to the 3 disciplines of Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology? Thanks.

Well, politically, the iPad won't have much of an impact, other than potentially (although however unlikely) getting people to read the news more on it.

1302264033 63 How does the IPad changes or challenges society in a political, social and an economical way?

Socially, the iPad, again, won't change anything. Tablet computers have been around for a long time, and it is pretty expensive for what it is. Challenges, on the other hand are different. the iPad was introduced as an expensive, new, and unneeded toy in an economically unstable time. People personally have to decide whether they can afford it, or whether they actually want it. In fact, for the most part, the only reason people buy Apple products is because it is an Apple product, regardless of quality.

Economically, it is going through it's boom stage right now. Money will go from consumers to Apple, which will pay off the debt of making the device, and then turn up some profit. Stores will often gain little-to-no profit from these devices, so it won't make a huge splash, especially in the long-term. as stated before, people need to decide whether they can afford it or not, and I suppose that's the only real challenge that can come about in an economic sense.

Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology are essentially the same thing, with three different groups of people. Psychology refers to the individual, Sociology meaning a group of individuals in a society, and Anthropology being culture at large. Thusly, all three of them can be answered with one line of reasoning. It relates to them in saying that people love to chase brand names, which means they have a connection with the company. Forming a connection with a company means that they are needy, and enjoy connections. what that boils down to is that people have a growing need for relationships, be it with actual people, or even with a faceless entity like Apple. also, the brand-name thing really embodies capitalism as a whole, but that's a whole different story. More importantly, the iPad really introduces the concept of instant gratification to us, yet again. People don't want to have a collection of books that they have to look through, or actually even turn the pages anymore. They want a one-paged book that can give you the definition of a word at the touch. on that matter, also, people want to remain ignorant, using nothing but their hands to control things, without even a simple understanding of how a touch screen works.

Sorry if that sounded rant-like, and hope that helps, with your homework I assume!

You may have a better luck in getting answers if you post it under the "Social Sciences" forums.

There is a lot of hoopla, but tablet-based PCs have been around for a while and life still goes on as usual.

Ignore the punters. Most of the changes will social, but meaningful social impact will change politics.

The problem with computers and software design right now is that it is still controlled by people who oddly value complexity and opacity, simply because many of the tools used to create devices are themselves complex and opaque. Yet the overwhelming majority of people who use computers do not care, not do they have to care, about CPU speeds, RAM, backside bus speeds, serial ports or CMOS batteries. It's simply irrelevant what the specs of the hardware are to people who simply want to create and/or consume digital media, be it art, entertainment, or ideas.

The iPad is the first true multimedia device designed expressly to be used by people with little or no technical knowledge. And the technology obsessed can jump up and down all they want about tech specs and tinkering and other esoterica, but the fact of the matter is that no one has to know anything about an automatic transmissions to get the kids to school, drive daily to work or assist in the construction of a building. There will always be a requirement for specialised knowledge, and those people will always be around to design, repair and maintain technology. But millions of people go about important work everyday and they have absolutely no requirement whatsoever to understand or be able to repair and/or modify the automatic transmission, and they should not be required to do so.

Yet for 20 years many of the purveyors of technological progress have been incapable of producing powerful technology that is also simple to use because they have spent little or no time to approach development from a usability standpoint.

Except for Apple. And once people begin to see the power of technology that anyone can use, they will migrate towards other technologies that put ease of use over meaningless tech specs and port overload. Think of how many people using standard PCs have almost magical beliefs about hardware because of the temperamental nature of the technology, and how this limits their thinking with regards to the application of technology. Is it any wonder that their are people still filling out pay stubs and sales sheets by hand when they don't trust the technology that's forced upon them, with a set of arcane and pointless rules only required because the technology is purposely designed to be arcane?

“Potential. Promise. Hope. that, if anything, is the real magic of it. In the meantime, it's off to a pretty good start.”

Do you remember the iMac? the first one? It was the first indication that Apple was back under Steve Jobs’ control. It heralded something new for Apple, and something new for personal computing. not the colours, eventually they went away. And it wasn’t what it had for specs, it’s what it was missing: a floppy, and serial ports. Think how long it took for the industry to get rid of that junk. up until last year we could still get Dell servers with PS2 ports. More than 10 years after Jobs showed the way, motherboards were cluttered with the detritus of dead technologies. all in the interest of not upsetting anyone.

The attacks on the iMac’s lack of a floppy (a technology outdated and all but useless even then) were shrill and ridiculous then. how do they look now with gigabit network connections and 16 gig USB sticks that fit on a keychain?

But where this ties in with the iPad is this: that first iMac was using a Powerbook motherboard. Was the iMac a Hail Mary? Even in retrospect it seems like it. And how much development, hardware design coding was saved by using essentially off the shelf parts? Probably quite a bit. But it didn’t matter, because the iMac was not a new piece of hardware so much as a new concept of the home computer. that of the computer as an appliance, as many writers on tech blogs and elsewhere have discussed, some with praise, some with disgust. the iMac got custom hardware and it began it’s evolution to the glass and aluminum beauty we can buy today. But it never changed from that original concept. Plug it in, turn it on. And with Bluetooth, and WiFi, you were down to one plug.

So now we have the iPad. And what is it, essentially? It’s a large iPod Touch. Is there anywhere in computing and software design where the principles of evolution are so eloquently expressed? take what works, expand on it, and ruthlessly cleave away that which no longer serves a purpose. Apple forced the rapid adoption of USB. It will probably force its demise, and force the wider adoption of wireless technologies. And as one online pundit already stated, much of the violent opposition (some anti-iPad articles practically seethe, and they hadn’t even so much as seen one!) to the iPad is nothing less than future shock. are we even capable of imagining what the PC landscape might look like without Apple? I certainly can’t, but I know we’d be even further behind without Jobs dragging us kicking and screaming

"IPAD" impact on political, social and economical ways is insubstantial outside a few rich cities of the US (elsewhere, even less). even in these cities, the effects would be pretty minimal considering theconomicic climate. the people really affected will be the macheads, some rich kids and young professionals (man-kids), about 10% of the population of the richer cities in the US.
In more specific terms, the effects may be like this –
Psychology: a new class of Ipad "haves" and have-nots", with con-comittant use of the Ipad as an object of social power and snobbery. the distance between people who can afford useless **** versus those who lack basic necessities (like a job) will widen.
Social: all the hoopla about the Ipad in the media sounds like it is a "real" harbinger of change. However, even the Ipod/ iphone really did not have any large lasting effect in the society. the Ipad is even more of a meaningless gizmo in broader social terms.
Anthropology: Seriously?

Closing the loop between neurons and neurotechnology

Closing the loop between neurons and neurotechnology

Steve M. Potter*

Laboratory for Neuroengineering, Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA

A commentary on

New perspectives on the dialogue between brains and machines

by Ferdinando A. Mussa-Ivaldi, Simon T. Alford, Michela Chiappalone, Luciano Fadiga, Amir Karniel, Michael Kositsky, Emma Maggiolini, Stefano Panzeri, Vittorio Sanguineti, Marianna Semprini and Alessandro Vato.

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs, or brain-computer interfaces, BCIs) have caused a lot of excitement in the past few years; they promise to make the lame walk, the mute talk, the blind see, and perhaps even to enhance cognition (Serruya and Kahana, 2008). Already, cochlear implants have proven immensely successful at making the deaf hear: over 150,000 completely deaf people can now participate in two-way oral communication with the rest of the hearing world, thanks to multi-electrode stimulation of their cochlear nerves, controlled by compact, even stylish, miniature computers worn behind their ears (Chorost, 2006).

Deep-brain stimulators have also been quite successful at modulating aberrant neural activity to alleviate Parkinsonism, chronic pain and tremor, among other disorders (Gross, 2004). Artificial retinas for the blind (Yanai et al., 2007), voices for locked-in patients (Brumberg et al., 2010), and neurally-controlled robotic limbs for amputees (Ojakangas et al., 2006) have been substantially less successful, but progress seems to be accelerating. What is holding them back? Perhaps we are only beginning to appreciate the complexity and dynamics of the neural circuits involved.

Motor BMIs to date have been unidirectional, with, for example, neural recordings controlling a robotic limb using only visual feedback. Great advances in usability, dexterity, acceptance, or reduced cognitive load may occur when they include sensory feedback (tactile, temperature, proprioception) delivered directly to the nervous system via electrical stimulation. Even for sensory prostheses and deep-brain stimulators, it may prove useful to continuously monitor neural responses to stimulation, and adjust the stimulation to optimize function or therapeutic benefits. In the future, sensory, motor, and modulatory BMIs are likely to take advantage of a continuous dialog between the nervous system and artificial computational devices.

Bridging the large chasm between the present and that closed-loop future will certainly require much basic research using reduced preparations. Mussa-Ivaldi and co-workers have pioneered bidirectional BMIs between simple nervous systems maintained in vitro, and artificial robotic bodies (Reger et al., 2000; Kositsky et al., 2009; Mussa-Ivaldi et al., 2010). These hybrid living/artificial robots (or hybrots, Potter, 2004) are simpler than intact animals, having fewer and more well-defined signals, which are under control of the experimenter.

Mussa-Ivaldi and co-workers studied the dynamics of a vestibular circuit in the lamprey brainstem, giving it an artificial body – a small wheeled robot – that was controlled by the lamprey brain’s motor output signals. The robot’s light sensors were translated (in real-time) into frequency-coded electrical stimuli for the vestibular circuit. By observing the neurally-controlled robot’s responses to light input, the dynamical dimension of the neural system could be estimated; that is, the number of free parameters in a set of equations that can accurately predict the system’s input-output behavior. Initial attempts to model the system with linear, and then with nonlinear (e.g., 4th-order polynomial) equations proved inadequate. Models in which current output is a function of recent output, i.e., using a simple first-order dynamic component, fared much better at accurately describing the system’s behavior, even with fewer free parameters. This points to the dynamical dimension as an important property of neural circuits, which can be estimated in hybrid systems as the difference between the known dimensionality of the artificial component (the robot), and the dimensionality of the whole system, which can be measured.

Thanks to their controllability and relative simplicity, artificially embodied in vitro networks provide excellent test beds for studying plasticity mechanisms. Using cortical networks cultured on multi-electrode arrays, several groups have demonstrated that the input-output functions of the networks can be reliably altered by multi-electrode stimulation, to effect desired behavior or normalize aberrant activity patterns (Wagenaar et al., 2005; Novellino et al., 2007; Bakkum et al., 2008; Chiappalone et al., 2008; Marom et al., 2009). It is not hard to imagine that this electrical training and modulation of cortical tissue could form the basis of future adaptive, closed-loop BMIs. The continuous electrical dialog would take advantage of brain plasticity to enhance functionality or merely to allow the user to adjust to the neural interface more quickly and easily. The ideal system also would have “learning” on the artificial side, such as the optimization of a set of nonlinear “force fields” that most effectively map recorded neural activity onto (artificial) motor behavior, or map artificial sensory input (or desired neuromodulation) onto neural stimulation.

References

Bakkum, D. J., Chao, C. H., and Potter, S. M. (2008). Spatio-temporal electrical stimuli shape behavior of an embodied cortical network in a goal-directed learning task. J. Neural Eng. 5, 310–323.