GYANOPROBHA

AWAY FOR A WEEK

I shall not be posting in this blog, since I'll be travelling.

AMAR PROTHOM BANGLAE BLOG LEKHA

Aj ami ei prothom banglae blog likhte shuru korlam. Kotodin chalate parbo janina, karon bangla lekha pora'r shonge bohudin kono jogajog nei. Jai hok, amar prothom bangla bloger onyo ekti upolokkhyo holo amar chhoto chhele Buro'r kritityo: o University of Chicago'te tar PhD patthyokromer prothom porikkhae khub bhalo bhabei uttirno hote perechhe. Porikkhata kintu banglae!

Eibhabe ingriji okkhore bangla lekhatao kichhuta ojouktik, kintu ami jotobar bangla horof download korte cheshta korechhi, amar procheshta biphol hoechhe. Keno tao bujhina. Ta chhara bangla keyboard ki kore byabohar korbo, tao janina. Tar cheye ingriji horofe bangla lekhata aro banchhoniyo mone hoe. Kintu bangla bananer niyom gulo jolanjoli dite hoe. Boe shunyo ro to r diye likhlam, kinto doe shunyo ro ki bhabe likhbo?

Ek kale bhabtam, shotyikarer shuddho bangla lekhar modhye ekta bishesh gun acche. Shuddho bangla bolte ingriji kotha borjito bangla. Kintu sheta kotodur ajkal shombhob amar shondeho achhe. Ei tinte chhoto paragrapher modhhyei dekhte parchho kotogulo ingriji kotha! Paragrapher banglai ba ki? Bemalum bhule gecchi! Ingriji bangla shobdokosh na thakate boroi oshubidha hoe.

Jai hok, dekha gelo amar bangla lekhar dour koto khani. Eituku likhei hanpiye jachhi! Abar kichhudin bangla likhe pore hoito arektu shorogoro hote parbo.

Eikhane pabe bangla blog lekha'r poddhoti.

GEEK COEFFICIENT RISING

Thanks to Tom, I've been having some fun with a mind-mapping software called TheBrain. It seems to be a more dynamic version of Visual Mind.

The basic idea is to help one organize one's ideas on a topic in a somewhat more systematic fashion than one does normally. It is usually advertized for businesses, but I've been trying both for curriculum and lesson planning, and it has worked wonderfully well so far. I have also used it to structure the website for a proposed Turkish social studies curriculum in my school which is meant to have both a thematic as well as an interdisciplinary structure. These programs are good at showing links between different ideas. I am also using them both to design a Theory of Knowledge syllabus for the school IB dploma program.

I would have uploaded an executable file that would have allowed readers of the blog to explore the map without the VM program, but it's just developed a glitch that's preventing me from creating the file. So there's nothing to upload.

The main difference between VM and TheBrain - so far as I have been able to discover in just the first day of using both - seems to be that in TheBrain, clicking in a part of the map immediately shows up the related ideas in other parts of the map. The map simply moves around an area called the Plex to display these connections. The other connections are not visible. In VM, depending on how big the map is, and how many nodes and branches and sub-trees it has, you are either looking at the whole map or just a part of it, but the entire map is never hidden from view, unless one has left some of the nodes unopened.  Secondly, one can make different types of links within TheBrain maps, whereas in VM, the links are automatically created whenever one is creating a 'child' (derived or secondary idea) from a 'parent' (root or main or primary idea). But there seems to be no way to link 'cousins' or even 'siblings', still less allow secondary links between a child and the parent of another child. Consequently, it seems impossible to create loops of links in VM. Otherwise, both allow for material related to the idea in question to be displayed in some format. I haven't discovered a way for TheBrain to be exported in various formats (Word, Powerpoint), whereas this is possible in VM. Both allow for display in HTML formats.

Here and here are examples of TheBrain in action.

These kinds of technologies - software of various kinds - are very good vehicles for 'learning by doing'. I have referred to it in the TOK map as 'tacit knowledge', using Michael Polanyi's term to refer to knowledge that can only be acquired by doing, but which no amount of talking about can convey enough to teach.

COMMENT ON MY BLOG FROM MY SON

The reason I'm writing about him is because your blog is finally getting some comments.  Ford Harding spent a lot of time explaining how humans are built to think linearly (and make linear approximations between two points).  However, in reality, the power of one's "network" (since it was the topic of the day) grows exponentially (as in n!/(x!(n-x!))), which means that for a while, it may appear to lag behind the growth rate in linear terms.  That's why, in his experience, building a relationship business from scratch requires a long dry spell, when relationsihps are being fought for one at a time, and painfully so, before any real business can take off.  I get the sense that this may also be happening with your blog.  There are only a few comments on there now, but the comments are positive and thoughtful ones.  Which means, that somewhere two to three years out, there will be a critical mass of people who will start reading your blog, and then you're going to have the problem of buying more bandwidth from typepad!!

 

Also, read through "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, which I found very, very interesting.  It's like a sort of "Linked" or "Emergence" for the lay-person with wider applicability.  As a result, have now bought his more recent book, called "Blink" which I just started.

LOOKING FOR LIGHT...

Here are some inspiring words from the US historian Howard Zinn - the kind of thing to recall when one feels utterly cynical about the future of humanity:

An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Chheleder bhobishyot

Amader ei chhotto Nedibudi ta....

...UCLA'te PhD program-e bhorti hoye gelo! Oitihashik hote chae.

And here you may be looking at a future business theoretician and consultant...

And here they are with the proud mother, somewhere on the way...

First Steps

This is my first attempt at writing a weblog. I haven't decided for whom it is intended, nor whether or when I wish to go public with it. I sometimes think I shall allow some of my students some kind of restricted access to it, and unrestricted access for friends and family members.

The title Gyanoprobha may seem rather pretentious, as if I am the source of the "light of knowledge" in "the encircling gloom" of my bye-line. I see myself as a "pessoptimist" (whose coinage was that??) - someone looking for a light - a reason to be hopeful about the future - when so many things point in the opposite direction. I find this reason in some people who are very close to me, in some ideas and events. The Gyanoprobha is what makes the gloom bearable and gives me reasons for hope.

My first few posts will be some of my past writings, beginning with a journal entry on truth.