Today I'd like you to go on a hunt for thinky awesomeness. Please follow the links below--one is an old friend and two are shiny new toys--and see what you can find, create, assemble, or compute. Ultimately, please choose a direction on one site, link to or describe how you got there, and extract a knowledge question from that virtual moment. Please write this post by Tuesday morning at 8.
Here are the links:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
I went onto taggalaxy, typed in chocolate and was presented with a picture of a dachshund labeled: "Teddy, the dachshund lawnmower."
ReplyDeletehttp://farm1.staticflickr.com/42/152001003_7351f443a8_z.jpg
That of course, prompted me to think: what kind of cruel torture would it be to force a dog to mow a lawn? Is it even possible to train them to mow a lawn? That then got me thinking about manual labor and child labour in various countries around the world. Some children don't even know that they are being deprived of fundamental human rights, which prompted the knowledge question:
To what extent can education be considered indoctrination?
Karen's knowledge question is a medium-strong level knowledge issue because it has good elements such as it is a "to what extent" question which allows it to be open ended. However her question is specific to one term; indoctrination, which is specific not allowing the answerer to compare it to something else. It is certainly not an easy question to tackle, but has a high level of intrigue that ignites curiosity. This question is very interesting and it would be fun to discuss.
Delete***I may have no idea what I'm talking about***
I would consider my knowledge question to be a medium-strong knowledge issue. First of all, my question is somewhat closely tied to the real life situation I had considered which was child labour and the deprivation of fundamental human rights. However, it can still be applied to many different situations because education is unending. A person is being educated and learns from his/her surroundings every moment of their existence. Therefore, education can be construed as school related education, normal day to day conversation, sense perception, language and any of the other ways of knowing. Therefore, it is also a strong knowledge issue because it explores how knowledge works and is not a yes or no question.
DeleteI went onto taggalaxy.com. First, I typed in Shanghai, and then clicked on Pudong which is my hometown. The picture presented right in front of me was a place in Pudong called the Century Avenue. When I was home, I often passed by this place, approximately three times a week since my first grade. However, when I saw this picture on this website, I did not recognize it until I read the description. The structure looked very different from what I usually see due to the perspective, the light, and the background. From that, I extracted a knowledge question:
ReplyDeleteTo what extent is what we see actually what it is?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cnmark/4878060571/
I would rate Tina’s KQ as medium-strong. It is a question that can be lifted out of one situation to another and does not rely on the situation for support. This is a debatable question, that can be supported with any kind of evidence. The situation that this derived from is completely independent from the question, each have the ability to stand alone. The question has “taken a huge leap away from the original topic”, allowing it to be useful in other knowledge topics. What makes this KQ medium strength is the “to what extent” which is a term that limits the response by assuming that there is no absolute answer.
DeleteGreat job Tina!
I would rate my own knowledge question as medium-strong. It steps away from the meaning of the original picture, and I can apply this question to many situations in my life. There may be very different answers to this question depending on people's points of view and their own experiences. It can also relate to different kinds of topics in our life such as the existence of only one truth or truths.
DeleteI think Tina's question is a very strong knowledge question, and an interesting one at that. Her question deals with sensory perception (specifically sight), which is one of our ways of knowing. This question can apply to many different situations but clearly connects to her real-world situation. This is an entirely open-ended question and cannot be answered with a yes or a no unless you just misunderstood what Tina was asking. Answers are debatable and rely heavily on the answerer's own ways of knowing. Good one, Tina.
DeleteI went to all the sites and played around on them but taggalaxy.com was my favorite. I looked up a lot of tag words such as, equestrian, popsicle, food, friends, lily, and Stoneleigh Burnham. there were plenty of pictures of each that we great but nothing that sparked any knowledge questions. When i typed in Ironstone Farm pictures of horses and the Special Olympics came up. This reminded me of when I worked/volunteered before I came to SBS. The boy in the photo is petting the barn's donkey, Toby, he is the oldest one and love attention. The boy started going to hippo-therapy when he was 4 years old, and today he can speak better than before and he is excited about learning new things. This memory of what can be done with the help of horses sparked this knowledge question:
ReplyDeleteTo what extent should somebody be denied because of a disability? If at all, and how should that we determined?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/comstock/811071925/in/photostream/
I would rate my knowledge question as weak- medium. I believe this because it could be a yes or no question in a debatable styled response. The question is also circumstantial to the situation it cannot be used in different situations. This question is also to specific about the knowledge that it requires the reader to know. To what extent makes the reader believe that there is no definite answer, therefore they could argue either view point and still be correct which makes it more than a weak questions but not quite an entirely medium strength question.
DeleteK.Q.: In what ways has the concept of traveling to a foreign place to acquire change or insight complicated being who one aims to be?
ReplyDeleteI.e. Someone wants to travel to India to experience the harsh life of living in poverty to be thankful for what one has when he or she could achieve this by simply being so.
Process:
1. Tag Galaxy
2. "Meaning"
3. "Meaning + Life"
4. "Meaning + Life + Portraits" 51 photos
5. Clicked on "Livet" by smultrontott
I didn't know what Livet was, so I googled it. Livet is a commune in Mayenne department in the northwestern part of France. Shout-out to my main source: Wikipedia.
Dorjee’s question does not directly address what we would think of as simple knowledge. Her question addresses a question that will require us to use our ways of knowing to better understand our meaning in life. Even though the question raises a lot of important question, I’m not sure it can be considered a knowledge question.
DeleteFirst I went to wolframalpha but I wasn’t really sure how to get around, so then I went to taggallxy – it was really cool! I didn’t know what to type in but I first went to horse then pony, equestrian, show, jump, and then more horsey related words. However after about 7 connections, it began to go to words that had no noticeable connection. I then typed in Jillian, this came up with thousands of photos of women and girls who I guess were named Jillian, and the tags were cute and beautiful, many of the pictures were of random girls most of which had blonde hair. My question is –
ReplyDeleteIf we don’t know who someone is, how can there be an assumption?
To what extent can we as humans make assumptions?
Most of the girls had blonde hair, but my name is Jillian and I have dark brown hair.
When we think something is not connected how do we know it isn’t?
Many of the tags that came up with words didn’t not seem like they were connected to the original word.
My knowledge question would be considered a medium level knowledge issue because it uses the word "know". "Know" is a very unending term that as we "know" can be explored in so many ways. The famous TOK question of "How do we know what we know" is in use making my knowledge question "explicitly on knowledge." It is not weak because it is not a yes or no kind of question but is not a strong knowledge question either because it is specific not very open ended relating to many different subjects. The other question is the "to what extent question" which allows the person answering to decide how they want to leaving it up for interpretation. This knowledge question is between mediumly good and strong because is is not specific on one certain topic but a more general topic. I had two different knowledge questions both of which are not weak but have room for improvement.
DeleteJillian has extracted three knowledge questions from the pictures she saw.
DeleteIf we don’t know who someone is, how can there be an assumption?
I would rate the first one as a medium level knowledge question because it is not simply a yes/no question, and it leaves room for the reader to pursue their own answers. However, the question is still talking about this particular situation, which weakens the question.
To what extent can we as humans make assumptions?
I would rate the second knowledge question as medium-strong level because it does not only apply to this specific situation, but also apply to our daily life. It is an open-ended question, and different people can interpret it in various ways. It makes me think about myself when I make assumption, and how my assumption affects other people/objects.
When we think something is not connected how do we know it isn’t?
I would rate the third knowledge issue as medium level because I feel that this question can be phrased in another way to make it stronger and more broad. At the same time, it steps away from a yes/no question.
I too checked out the popular "Tag Galaxy" and was impressed by the different directions it took my prompts and keywords in. Places I didn't expect and with connections I hadn't made when I typed the word in. I was also, however, surprised by the limits of some of searches. The searches produced a finite number of avenues in which to take your photo-finding quest, and it frustrated me. Quite a bit. Was there no knowledge question to be found? Then, in English class, with some free time left over after writing a reflection, I tried writing a so-called "stream of consciousness" in which the writer (in this case, me) writes down the continuous flow of ideas, thoughts, and feelings which form the content of that individual's consciousness. I found that again, like when I had tried to follow specific paths on Tag Galaxy, I was limited. Limited by how fast I could write and how increasingly illegible my handwriting became, but also by my vocabulary. I found myself pushing my thoughts into phrases which did not exactly contain them, for the sake of time and of clarity. Now, this is not to say that my vocabulary is extremely lacking (although I'm sure it is), or that the English language restricts the flow of thought, but rather to point out the fact that putting emotions into words as fast as you can think of them is a rather daunting task and one which requires more thought than the time allotted provides. I think this was my problem with Tag Galaxy. While it is an electronic site on the webernet, the connections between pictures and ideas it presents you with are forged by humans who see the two things as related. I think, though, that sometimes connections don't make sense on paper and cannot be sausage cased into the regularity of some English words. My question, therefore, is as follows: How is our ability to think freely molded by the extensiveness of our vocabulary?
ReplyDeleteI would consider Caroline's knowledge question to be a strong one. Her question deals directly with language, which is one of the ways of knowing we explored in class. It also cannot be answered with a yes or no and instead requires the audience to consider the ways vocabulary obstructs (or facilitates) our thought process. However, I have trouble separating the real life situation from the knowledge issue. The real life situation itself is already one which is not specifically focused on a particular topic, but one that is focused on knowledge and the ways we think. The close tie to the real life situation which inspired it makes it difficult to apply to other situations. Nevertheless, I still consider it a strong knowledge issue because it asks the audience to consider the limitations of one of our ways of knowing .
DeleteI would consider mine to be a medium knowledge question. It does deal with one of our ways of knowing, language, but is also specific to the circumstances in which I encountered it. Sure, It can't be answered by a simple yes or no, but it isn't really something that applies to many different situations. It's more of just a stand-alone quandary.
DeleteThe first site I visited was tag galaxy and that was fun. I then looked around on Wolfram Alpha and that sparked my interest. I found out it is a site that not only presents information, but knowledge. I know from conversations in class with Mr. Bogel and Greg that we have passed the information era and are now in the knowledge era. With people starting to value knowledge over information this site seems to be more developed than others. This idea got me thinking about what it actually means to be a developed country. When thinking about a developed country I think of educated people and the most developed countries usually hold the most power. So this brought up the saying “with knowledge comes power” and I tried to think of ways in which to disprove this statement, and then I thought does being educated give one’s life meaning?
ReplyDeleteKnowledge Question- To what extent does a person’s meaning in life affect the way they learn/ become educated?
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DeleteI think my knowledge question is somewhere from weak to medium level. The question lacks a Real-World situation. A strong part of my question was that the answers to the question are unrestricted because of the langue I used (to what extent).
DeleteJane’s KQ is a medium KI. Though its opening, “to what extent,” allows many responses, it assumes every person has a meaning in life. It’s good because it doesn’t specify any form of education, so there’s more room for interpretation. Jane’s original topic is still relatively closely related to her KQ and so it doesn’t allow for as many AOKs or comparisons of AOKs as it could. A stronger KQ could be: “How does one decide what to know?” Or not. Just putting that out there.
DeleteMy KQ is a weak to medium KI. Though it allows exploration by not narrowing down the question to require a yes or no answer, it is too specific and linked with the original topic, which limits the amount of branching out to other KQs. Basically, my KQ is too narrow.