MACH: My Automated Conversation coacH

MACH is a new software developed by M.I.T, that is supposed to helf social anxious people to "perform" better in social interactions, like, for example, job interviews. It recordes the amount of smiles, the tone and levels of the voice, the words said, eye contact and so on, and also responds to your expressions. Therefore, it can provide feedback that you are rather unlikely to get in a face to face conversation with a real person. Certainly it can need a bit more developing, like making the voice sound more natural, but it's a good idea! Certainly "normally developed" people don't really need such a program, aside from evaluating their way of talking, but for those with low social interaction or for example Aspergers, it could be an engaging way to practice their skills without having to be afraid on the effects on another person.

"But MACH takes a more instructive approach. The idea sprung from a workshop held by the Asperger’s Association of New England, where Hoque and fellow researchers were approached by people seeking a technological solution to their social hardships. “Once I start talking I don’t know when to stop, and people lose interest, and I don’t know why,” one person told Hoque. People asked for a tool with which they could practice human interaction privately—insulated from the insecurities created in social situations.
The software was built over two years, using more than half a million lines of code. As a matter of convenience, Hoque’s team used their immediate surroundings to develop a proof of concept: they tested out the interaction-training system by conducting trial job interviews with ninety M.I.T. undergraduates seeking to improve their self-presentation in front of prospective employers. “In a technical university—where people are really, really technical—it’s possible that many people would have social difficulty,” Hoque explained. For on-campus career prep, “The best thing to do is interact with a human, but that’s limited.”
[...]
While the prototype runs locally on computers, Hoque, who recently completed his Ph.D. and is now at the University of Rochester, would like to make it widely available online, which he says would take between six months and a year for two or three engineers to develop. He’s now seeking funding, and he said there has been interest from organizations that support autism research, as well as from private companies.
Hoque, who has spent more time than anyone interacting with MACH, told me, “I have a love-hate relationship with it. There have been so many conversations at three A.M. when I’m writing code.” He doesn’t consider this to be genuine communication, though. “Human communication is so rich and the technology is not there yet,” he said. “I don’t even look at it as a person. It’s just software asking me questions. I know it’s a bunch of lines of code. I might as well just do this with a blank screen.”"

Betsy Morais: Machine that teaches people how to talk 

Soft drinks linked to behavioral problems in young children

Just like the title says, I came upon a news today about a study that connected the amount of soft drinks being drunk, with the behavior problems of the children. To make things short, here is a quote about the study:








"Shakira Suglia, ScD, and colleagues from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, University of Vermont, and Harvard School of Public Health assessed approximately 3,000 5-year-old children enrolled in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a prospective birth cohort that follows mother-child pairs from 20 large U.S. cities. Mothers reported their child’s soft drink consumption and completed the Child Behavior Checklist based on their child’s behavior during the previous two months. The researchers found that 43% of the children consumed at least 1 serving of soft drinks per day, and 4% consumed 4 or more.
Aggression, withdrawal, and attention problems were associated with soda consumption. Even after adjusting for sociodemographic factors, maternal depression, intimate partner violence, and paternal incarceration, any soft drink consumption was associated with increased aggressive behavior. Children who drank 4 or more soft drinks per day were more than twice as likely to destroy things belonging to others, get into fights, and physically attack people. They also had increased attention problems and withdrawal behavior compared with those who did not consume soft drinks.
According to Dr. Suglia, “We found that the child’s aggressive behavior score increased with every increase in soft drinks servings per day.” Although this study cannot identify the exact nature of the association between soft drink consumption and problem behaviors, limiting or eliminating a child’s soft drink consumption may reduce behavioral problems."

“Soft Drinks Consumption Is Associated with Behavior Problems in 5-Year-Olds,” by Shakira F. Suglia, ScD, Sara Solnick, PhD, and David Hemenway, PhD, appears in The Journal of Pediatrics (www.jpeds.com), DOI 10.1016/j.jpeds.2013.06.023, published by Elsevier.

I found that news there: Soft Drinks and Behavioral Problems in Young Children 

Well, if you imagine the large amount of sugar, and in some cases coffein, giving it to a five year old just doesn't seem to be a well idea. Their brains are still developing, and when getting so much sugar at that time already, they quickly adapt and get used to it. So naturally, it can lead to withdrawal symptoms, which again, can cause them to be more aggressive. Also, with soft drinks there can be quite some chemistry involved, and who knows what those do, maybe in the end it's not the sugar, but the other chemical additives in those beverages.

For example, certain artificial colors have been connected to stronger ADHD symptoms.
You can read about this here: http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/food-dye-adhd
and here: http://www.rd.com/health/conditions/artificial-food-coloring-and-adhd-2/

 But to give a bit "food for thought" (don't worry, no soft drink included), I will end here with a quote that I once came across when I had to write my first paper ever:

"For example, the desire for sweets can be instinctively a way out of emotional lonliness, lack of love, or intellectual overload. With the help of the sugar, the organism can create a temporarily strengthening of the self-confidence, but in the end, this only means a weakening, because it has been made without using the powers of ones own self. This weakening can show a strong desire for isolated sugars, even going into addiction, and the actual cause stays untouched. We can easily see, that in these cases we can only raise the misery with the "logical" explanations or even prohibitions." 

A. Strauß; R. von Kries; B. Koletzko: Adipositasprävention im Kindes- und Jugendalter. In: Praxis der Naturwissenschaften vereinigt mit Biologie in der Schule. 11 (2005) 8 p. 23

The infamous triangle

While I have plenty of topics that I still want to write about, one simple one is actually already displayed in the background image! Notice the triangle? Well, actually there is also a triangle as a symbolic representation of a teaching process.

I think it's not so well known around the world, but at the university that I studied at it was used....almost everywhere for a basic of didactic methods. The reason for this is simple indeed: the main person who developed that "triangle", had been a professor there: Wolfgang Sünkel, who showed in his book (Phänomenologie des Unterrichts) in 1996 the thought process to create this triangle as well as giving several different variations.



If there are other ones who also made such kind of theory or similar concepts, let me know, since I don't know!

Anyway, while I wouldn't say that kind of theoretical construction is the best, and neither good for real practical usage, it can give a general idea about the complexities and relationships during learning processes.

What this triangle wants to show, is that for every learning process, there are three "edges" that are always there, no matter what the learning is about. The edges of the triangle are the following:

The teacher: Like the name says this is a person, or several, that teaches someone about something. (And unlike the term, this doesn't mean just school teachers, but a role that is applied in a learning process. I just don't know a better English term for that) He, the teacher, is the one who asks "what can I do for the student to successfully learn about the object?" "How can i make my kid remember the way to school?" "'How can i teach my kitten about the value of life?" Those questions already leads to the second edge.

The object: Unlike the name implies, this doesn't need to be a physical object. It can as well be a method of doing something in a specific order, the understanding of a theory, how to make ice cream, or whatever. The object however, usually doesn't ask any questions (would be odd if it did, I guess). It is simply what the student wants to learn. And this already shows the most important point, the top of the triangle.

The student: No matter if one or more students, this is the entity that needs to be interested into the object, to actually trigger the learning process. So the student is the one who says: "wow, soccer is cool, teach me the rules!" "Show me how you've built that house, I want to be able to built one too!" It should be clear now, that the students wants to "assimilate" the object, making it a part of himself that he can later use by himself without the need of help.

So now that you know the basic parts of the triangle, let's show some more how they are related:
Basically, an object can be just anything. But on the other hand, there are still limits. Can you learn a cat, for example? Sure you can watch the cute kitten hiding in a box, but that doesn't mean that now the kitten is a part of you. That's something that's impossible, because, well, how do you want a living kitten to be a part of yourself? Unless maybe if you eat the poor kitten (....oh my, please please, no!). A cat is another living being, in this case with fur and claws and fluffiness. So what you can learn or assimilate is not the cat (unless you are a borg or know fusion like Son Goku, maybe), but the knowledge ABOUT the cat, or about the cats behavior, so you can use that knowledge when going along with other cats. Shortly said, in this case, the cat is the medium for the knowledge about the cat, which is the object.

But how can the student learn about the object he wants to assimilate? While some objects, like study books can be object and teacher at the same time, usually the teacher steps in, completing that triangle.

- At this point I already had a long and tiresome discussion with a teacher, because, the necessity of a teacher in some way or other somehow disagrees with the idea of autodidacts, at least in my opinion. After all, there are learning processes that happen with trial and error, with no one telling you on what to do. But I guess the trial and error would be the teacher then. Or, you are teacher and student combined, which also would make the triangle somehow crumble. -

So let's just assume that there actually is another person that is your teacher on, let's say, how to cook. How can the teacher present the object "cooking", so that you easily put it into your own pool of "yeah I can do that, now and forever"? For this, the teacher has to connect with the initial trigger, the interest of the student for the object. Because of that, there are new lines inside the triangle, which in the end, can create the lesson.


Now, the student is mainly interested in the object, and secondary the teachings that the teacher can give, to be able to assimilate the object. The teacher is interested mainly in the lesson, which means the teaching about the object for the student to learn it, and preferably, also in the object. The object however is lazy again, and shouldn't have any interests, unless it's a precious companion cube. If it is the case and the object is in fact a companion cube, I would urge you to disregard its advice.

The process is completed, when the student successfully learned all there is to learn, and, at least theoretically, could turn into a teacher for that topic too. So if a young person shows an old one how to use a smartphone, that old person can later show and teach it to his friends.

There are many varieties of the triangle depending of the student, teacher, object, as well as their quantities and qualities and relationships, but I hope I gave you a good insight on the basic idea. Which sadly, still is rather useless if you actually have to teach something to someone. Even if it's just teaching someone how to get up in the morning in order to get to work on time. The problem that this concept leaves out, is what to do  to actually give the lesson successfully, and what to do


if you have to teach someone who's not interested, because without that interest, the triangle won't even be created, at least that's the way how i see it.

But hey, with that triangle, you can at least try and make plans for the learning processes! I think the most important thing this triangle can teach is the following: You don't teach someone for the sake of teaching, but because you want the student to reach his or her goal of learning, and to be able to successfully take use of the gained knowledge. It should be all about the student, not the teacher. But in a sense, the teacher is a student too, learning with the experience about teaching. But this would already be another triangle, with the "teaching the student" as an object.

So, maybe, in the end, it's more like a circle in which the object is passed around, giving everyone the chance to learn what they wish to learn?

Imagine all the teachers....

Imaging a group of teachers...

sitting in a boat,
the parent just wants to stay afloat,
while they try to cut each other throats:

"I'm the best, I'm easiest to test!"
the math teachers calls.
"No it's me! You need me to protest!"
the english teachers scrawls.
"No, me me! I send the students on a quest!"
the history teacher recalls.
"So what? I can give them rest!"
the art teacher stalls.
"Don't make me laugh, with me, they're blessed!"
the music teachers drawls.
"Ha! I let them have a contest!"
the sports teacher crawls,
"But without me, the world is distressed!"
the chemistry teacher brawls,
"And you need me for your life vest!"
the physics teacher bawls.
"Well well, without me, you are recessed!"
the economics teacher just falls.
"But without me, you can't be at your best!!"
the biology teacher's banal.
"Whatever, I can tell you all about the west!"
the geology teacher enthralls.

"Oh well, I don't give a damn. I'll give my child an attest!"
the parent ends it all without a jest.

The settings - or: why are the rooms the same everywhere?

Because this is the first entry for this new blog, that goes into the magical and mystical sides of education, alas giving news, and discuss topics about education, first, let's define this "room"!

"The educational space is not a space of "suchness", but a room full of equipment and materials, and they are linked with actions and their expectations, in short, it's a staged room." (1)


It is always said that a setting for teaching has to be able to make a harmonious atmosphere for easy learning. This means for example the choosing of the color of the walls, fitting posters or images on the windows and walls, a good, non "clinical" light, and an arrangement of chairs and tables that invite into the room. Also the tools and materials available have to be able to be used with ease. The image on the left, for example, isn't a very good example on that at all. For a good learning environment, it is too sterile, it is not easy for anyone to identify oneself with such a room.

It clearly depends on the institution as well as the rules for educational institutions how the rooms can look like. For example at a university, where class rooms are accessed by a various of different groups, with different intentions and lessons, it is very hard to create a good learning atmosphere. Therefore, those often show the typical sterile empty walls, with the tables and tools arranged in an easy accessible way, and also the light is one that simply produces the best light. Most schools seem to be that way as well, it seems to be an unwritten standard for classroom environments. The older the students get, the less there seems to be an emotional setting in the staged rooms.

But most of the staged rooms are far away from normal life, therefore, life and learning have been divided from each other. Is this helpful or not? Well, it surely depends on the topic that is being taught. The questions is more: "How can you learn about - and for - daily life in a room that is away from daily life?"

Rousseau probably asked this questions as well. His plan for education for his fictional child "Emile" was not to put him into a classroom, but to educate him with staged happenings in the real world. Therefore he changed the setting inside the real world into one in which the materials to educate have been highlighted. "The room for learning is in his sense a fully educationally constructed world, that is fixed by the pedagogue."(2) However, there is the possibility that learning can be limited, if the part taking of daily life demands results more than the learning of the progresses.

In the end, however the setting is constructed, and in a way it has to be constructed for intended (formal) learning processes, but there are always good and bad points. The learner, as well as the teacher, has to identify their own role into the setting they take part in, being affected by the arrangement of the room, for the better or worse. However, it goes both ways: When the setting changes, it can affect the people, but the people can also change the arrangements into something that is more to their liking. This is good for a good learning atmosphere, but, for example, too much decorations, specially those that go away from the intended topics, can affect the concentration and therefore affect the learning.

(1)&(2): Göhlich, M.; Zirfas, J. (2007): Lernen. Ein pädagogischer Grundbegriff. Stuttgart, p. 99, p. 102


As for this blog, let's hope it will change into a colorful and wonderful learning experience!