Brains working towards machine consciousness

John Davis wrote a piece for the ALT newsletter in which he advocates a broad system boundary for eLearning pointing toward the field being a means to improve the learning process for everyone.  As so many people in the education sector, he seems keen to emphasise the technology playing second fiddle to the existing culture and processes; a view I was also trained to accept working as a developer.

The general model adopted can be viewed, as Davis describes, in terms of the 'fried egg' diagram:

Mike Bogle (@mbogle on Twitter) has a great post on the change needed to support education in the future, which he drew my attention to after I Twittered "knowledge and learning are incarcerated in a monopolistic mould/mold which inhibits innovation and accentuates elitism. Discuss". I might argue it is change that was needed in the past, but I am guessing we can't achieve that now. I recommend Mike's post over this one. Mine is truly a rant, but sometimes a rant is needed...

First, my model of mind and (therefore) of learning - we are pattern matching creatures by dint of the way out brains work, and look for the similarities and differences between things. We also create models in our minds of what we perceive, which are, by definition, abstractions and simplifications of the 'objective reality'. Our perceptions are, I believe, affected by the internal models.