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Homework 2 by Jun Chen and Sarah Kim-Warren 1.1. This article talks about a very interesting topic, "lifelong learning". The idea of "lifelong learning" is very attractive and fascinating. However, as mentioned in the article, there are lots of challenging issues towards achieving this. Moreover, these challenges are very difficult to solve. For example, how to motivate people to learn and to contribute? How to make the system open so end users can make significant modifications, extensions, and evolutions. In the article, the author mentions many ongoing research works, but it is not clear how those research works were going and what were the results. Overall, this article is a very encouraging one. After reading the article, we felt excited about the future and felt somewhat responsible for inventing and designing the future. 1.2. Not really. The whole article is nicely structured and fun to read. If there are some comments, Figure 5 is a little confusing. 2. The main message of this article is that the future is not out there to be discovered, but has to be invented and designed. Lifelong learning is necessary for us to design the future. Learning will happen at both school and the workplace. Education should be fundamentally rethought and reinvented, under new information technologies, to support lifelong learning. 3.1. The word in blue links to another webpage, where the meaning of this word is given. This is a very useful feature especially for people who are new to this field. They will definitely appreciate this kind of help. 3.2. This feature is also used in many web pages to link to another web page. It is also used in WORD documents where it could link to a web site or email software like Outlook. 4.1. No. 4.2. B.F. Skinner (ref.> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhskin.html) 4.2.1. N/A 4.2.2. B.F. Skinner (ref.> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhskin.html) Skinner believed everything we do is shaped by our experience of punishment and reward. With pigeons, Skinner developed the ideas of "operant conditioning" and "shaping behavior." Skinner compared pigeon's learning behaviors with the way children learn to talk. They are rewarded for making a sound that is sort of like a word until in fact they can say the word. Skinner believed other complicated tasks could be broken down in this way and taught. He developed teaching machines so students could learn bit by bit, uncovering answers for an immediate "reward". Computer-based self-instruction uses many of the principles of Skinner's technique. 5. The following website offers a few different sections: Developer Centers, Library, Code Center, etc. This site is very useful for all levels of user who wants to search and to learn about functions, function definitions, return values, prototypes, and many more topics in c, c++, and java programming language. This site does not offer all the programming languages that are currently in use in the world, but it is helpful for someone who knows a little about the listed languages, and is trying to write a small or large program. Some of the downloadable codes and libraries are available for all users, also. A new, unskilled user can download and experiment with the code on their own computer learning something totally new. Conversely, a somewhat experienced user can learn more sophisticated programming methods. We can say this website provides learning that depends on the basic knowledge of programming and supports users with varying levels of knowledge. Even though this site contains an enormous knowledge database, usability and collaboration among the users are questionable. URL> http://msdn.microsoft.com/ |
