Call me lazy, but I’m going to point you to a post I made last year about the idea of distributed representation. I violated one of my own self-imposed rules and created a little flash presentation to try to visualize how this all worked.
One of the things I was trying to wrap my melon around was how this all related to Zone of Proximal Development and there doesn’t seem to be any conflict. If we stipulate that an knowledge domain has a set of potential connects then ZPD is represented by the relative proportion of those connects that have been realized. If an individual has realized all potential connections, that would define the condition of “known.” If an individual has realized none of the potential connections, that would represent “unknown.” Someplace in between would represent the zone of proximal development, that is, a place where new knowledge could be linked in. For the purposes of the network representation, that would be “the edge.”
Now one of the things that really appeals to me about this is that it gives me a handle on the notion of “known” that I have been troubled by in the past.
Remember that we stipulated that you can’t learn something you already know. It’s as if there’s no potential there for the “learning” to happen once it’s already taken place. I know the alphabet so I can’t learn it again. But does knowing the letters of the alphabet — the shapes, the sounds, the patterns — represent the full “knowledge” of the cognate we’re calling “the alphabet” and can anybody ever consider that they know all there is to know about anything? Are there always potential connections? If so, does that mean that my diagram of ZPD really has no solid center? No region of the knowledge base that is absolutely completely learned?
October 9th, 2007 at 8:57 am
[...] One of the theoretical constructs that’s been going around for the last couple of years, but remains under the radar of most educators is the idea of distributed representation. I wrote about it last year (and the year before). Distributed Representation One of the things I was trying to wrap my melon around was how this all related to Zone of Proximal Development and there doesn’t seem to be any conflict. If we stipulate that an knowledge domain has a set of potential connects then ZPD is represented by the relative proportion of those connects that have been realized. If an individual has realized all potential connections, that would define the condition of “known.” If an individual has realized none of the potential connections, that would represent “unknown.” Someplace in between would represent the zone of proximal development, that is, a place where new knowledge could be linked in. For the purposes of the network representation, that would be “the edge.” [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
[...] Response to Distributed Representation Blog After reading phaedrus’s blog, there is no way the middle ground between known knowledge and unknown knowledge can disappear completely. There is a foundation of knowledge that can be manipulated to an endless number of shapes. For example, since the beginning of time, scientists have been making new discoveries about the world around us. Newton discovered gravity, Galileo founded kinematics with physics, and many more scientists have made several discoveries. If we knew all there was to know about science, then a lot of scientists would be bored and possibly out of a job, looking for a new career. There are always going to be new changes in the field of science for scientists to look at and study. As long as there are new discoveries made, the shape of knowledge in science will continue to change. [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
[...] October 10th, 2007 Phaedrus got me thinking thinking here about our ZPD idea and the way that we determine learning has occurred. When learning has occurred we have established connections between what we know and what we are learning about. When learning has occurred we have made a certain number of connections between concepts in the field that we are studying. The key is that connections are made between all of the ideas by exploring “what if” situations. (Rehash mode off) [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 7:14 am
[...] Following up on the connectivist idea from yesterday comes this snipped: If an individual has realized all potential connections, that would define the condition of “known.” If an individual has realized none of the potential connections, that would represent “unknown.” Someplace in between would represent the zone of proximal development, that is, a place where new knowledge could be linked in. For the purposes of the network representation, that would be “the edge.” phaedrus » Blog Archive » Distributed Representation. [...]