tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70391642663878236822024-03-13T16:22:47.221-05:00Ideationizingverb: Actively thinking of new things.<br><br>
Grant Sheridan Robertson's personal blog.<br>
Ideas, thoughts, and various things I would like to share with the world.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-11232305222039461162013-11-28T13:03:00.000-06:002014-03-10T11:42:56.163-05:00Wabi-Sabi - This way lies madness!This post is yet another rant about the quality of the technical writing I have been seeing lately. In a LinkedIn discussion-forum about technical writing, I came across a link to a <a href="http://suyogketkar.wordpress.com/technical-writing/wabi-sabi-in-technical-writing/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blog post</a> wherein the author seems to both embrace and exemplify the aesthetic called "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">wabi-sabi</a>" (a Japanese term that generally means embracing imperfections for their artistic value) for technical writing. Personally, I see that as nothing but an excuse for bad writing. As LinkedIn does not have room in their comment field for a rant of this length, I have posted it here.<br />
<br />
<hr />
Perfection in anything is impossible. However, I believe the Wabi-Sabi aesthetic has no place in technical writing. Wabi-sabi embraces imperfections almost to the point of idolizing them. Wabi-sabi began as a mindset of appreciating the imperfections that come with age and wear but has become an aesthetic of intentionally introducing flaws for artistic effect. While technical writing is "an art" it is not Art (with a capital 'A'). For far too many technical writers - or at least people who like to call themselves technical writers - this wabi-sabi aesthetic seems to have become nothing but an excuse for bad writing. <br />
<br />
This article (and the author's entire blog) is a perfect example. There are so many errors it is almost unreadable. It strikes me as nothing more than "content" generated by the vast internet-content grist mills. I understand that this author is very likely not a native English speaker. However, he has chosen to write in English and to write - of all things - about writing. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect said author to actually learn to use the words, idioms, and grammar of said chosen language. He hasn't even come close. <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
I know it has become the social norm to never say anything negative about anyone. I know it is politically correct to never criticize the English skills of non-native English speakers and writers. While these touchy-feely notions may help everyone to "just get along," (or at least feel as if they are) those norms are destroying the craft of technical writing. We owe it to our craft and to our fellow craftspeople to call out this abysmal "content generation" for what it is. To not do so is a disservice both to the author and to all the readers of all the "content" they will ever produce. I am not saying we must pin on our "Grammar Police" badges and march into every internet forum, derailing the conversation and starting flame wars. However, just because some trolls used grammar critique as the lamest form of ad-hominem attack, way back in the early days of the internet, it does not mean all grammar critique is an attack nor is the critiquer necessarily a troll. When the topic of discussion is writing or when the author claims to be a professional writer, then it is perfectly reasonable to hold said writing to a higher standard. <br />
<br />
With all that said, I will refrain from offering specific criticisms of the linked-to article. There are simply far too many errors to even begin to list them all. Almost every sentence is constructed poorly. Almost every idiom is used improperly. The numerous examples of incorrect word usage makes me wonder if the author has ever picked up a dictionary in his life. The introduction has almost nothing to do with the topic at hand and is also vaguely misogynistic, with only a clumsy transition from the introduction to the actual topic. What boggles my mind is that this person claims to actually work as a technical writer. What boggles said mind still further is that so many companies seem content to employ such abysmal writers and publish their "content" for the rest of the world to see. <br />
<br />
As a former network manager, budding software developer, student of informatics, and all-around technology nerd, I have read a lot of technical documentation. I have watched for forty years as the craft has steadily gone down hill. From how-to books and articles in Popular Electronics which fully explained every detail in a way that even a thirteen-year-old could understand, to Byte Magazine articles which seemed intent on introducing a new acronym in each paragraph, to the infamous "help" files in software, to 1000-page books that merely repeated the "help" files with a lot of pictures to fill in the space, to software and equipment with manuals so terse they tell one nothing, to entire books devoted to telling the reader how great it will be when the author finally gets to the point (which they never do), and now to blog posts embracing and exemplifying wabi-sabi as a desired "aesthetic" in technical writing. Seriously? What's next? Embracing the randomness of writing words on 3x5 cards and spraying them about the room as an existential exercise in experiencing the essence of the possible meaning of a piece of software for each individual user? <br />
<br />
No. NO! Do not embrace wabi-sabi. That way lies madness. (Or, at least, it will make me really mad.) Sure, perfection is not possible. However, the impossibility of perfection does not negate its importance as a worthy goal. The apparent precision embodied in the word can fool one into believing there is only one way to be perfect and only one definition of the word itself. <br />
<br />
Do not think of perfection as a state.<br />
<br />
Think of perfection as a process. Perfection is like a journey, with many possible paths and many possible goals, none of which are fully realizable. One chooses one's goal, then one chooses an appropriate path based on the direction from which one would like to approach said goal. Then one embarks upon the journey, always keeping the destination in mind, eventually bringing the destination within sight, however - like Zeno - always knowing one will never quite arrive at said destination. <br />
<br />
So, how do you know when you are close enough. That, my friend, is subjective. Did you choose your path well? Or did you hop into the first empty space in the weeds, following a path that barely gets you close enough to the goal to see it with a telescope? Do you even know what your goal is? Have you double-checked with your fellow travelers (your readers) to make sure they even want to go where you plan to take them? To continue to abuse this metaphor, sometimes you have to hack your own path through the jungle. I contend that you can only know when you are "close enough" to your goal when actual readers agree they have arrived with you. Do they now know how to use the equipment or software. Can they perform the procedures without asking others to show them yet again? Without calling tech support over and over? And, most importantly, without giving up half-way down the road? Or do you force them to guess their way around. Do you leave them so far from the goal that they still can't even recognize said goal once they are standing at the end of the path you have made for them? <br />
<br />
Far, far too much technical writing these days seems satisfied with the latter. The "technical writers" fill page after page with "content" that barely accomplishes the goal of having words on a page to fill up space. Sure, someone who isn't familiar with the goal may be fooled into believing that the path is clearly laid out, merely because the map has a fancy border and a very stylish X emblazoned on the end of the path. Far too many department managers see that fancy X and sign off on the document without making sure the X is in the right place or that the path is properly constructed. It is almost as if they don't care that the "travelers" - their customers - will be left stranded, with no way of finding the real goal other than going to online forums and begging other users to tell them what should have been in the documentation. It is just as bad as sending your customers out into the deep, dark woods and stranding them there. Leaving them to call out into the darkness, hoping beyond hope that someone will hear them and help them find the goal to which you had promised to deliver them. <br />
<br />
Good technical writing creates a smooth and straight path for the readers. A path without bumps and hair-pin turns. A path where you have built bridges over the streams and difficult parts, rather than simply forgetting to mention them on the map. You accomplish this by knowing the product you are documenting better than the engineers themselves. By digging and grilling and conscripting said engineers to help you build the necessary bridges. You accomplish this by using the language clearly, properly, and effectively. You cannot accomplish this by cobbling together a semi-random collection of poorly constructed sentences, filled with incorrect idioms and words that sound kinda-sorta like the word you should have used. You cannot do it by using wabi-sabi as an excuse for your laziness, regardless of how many popular or astute-sounding buzzwords you manage to toss into the mix.<br />
<br />
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2013 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-29285738586227350472013-08-01T20:34:00.000-05:002013-08-01T20:34:34.234-05:00A flizba by any other name<h4>
Warning: This post is mostly a rant.</h4>
<hr />
I read a lot of technical documentation. Software manuals, mostly. Some programming books. 99% of all these books, posts, and guides are utterly worthless. And half of each document or book in the remaining 1% is fluff that I could do without. Because most of these books "cover" very technical topics, it is hard to describe just how nonsensical most of the writing is, in terms a layperson can understand. So, I decided to write an example based on something everyone is familiar with. What follows is a description of a common household object as it would be described by most software manuals today, with the name changed to confuse the innocent. Grammatical errors are intentional. Let me know if you can figure out what the hell I am talking about.<br />
<hr />
<h2>
The Flizba Model Paradigm</h2>
<ul>
<li>A flizba is a very important device around the building. A flizba has a handle and can be used to swat flies. A flizba can also be used to remove dirt.</li>
<li>A flizba is longer than a typical breadbox but the total volume is less than that of the space inside a breadbox.</li>
<li>Flizbas can be made by hand or can be made in factory. Preferably one that does not have a witch flying around in it. </li>
<ul>
<li><b>Important Note:</b> You should not use a flizba to swat at a witch which may be flying around in a factory.</li>
<li>When making a flizba by hand, be sure to wrap the wire very tightly.</li>
</ul>
<li>To get to the flizba, turn the doorknob to the left (unless the door is not a door, in which case use the appropriate method, as desired).</li>
</ul>
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2013 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-70166839461218184602013-06-12T23:53:00.000-05:002015-05-21T19:43:11.938-05:00FrameMaker Tables & Anchored Frames<h1>Introduction</h1><p>For my second post about FrameMaker, I thought I would focus on objects with<br />
what I have termed "text-centric outsides." As I explained in my last post<br />
(about FrameMaker), these are objects whose outsides interact with the object<br />
that contains them in a "text-centric" manner. In other words, you can insert<br />
them at a particular point in a text flow and they move along with the text.<br />
There are only two objects that do this: tables and anchored frames. Now, many<br />
books will talk about inserting other types of objects (what I call "graphic<br />
objects") into text but fail to mention that what really happens is FrameMaker<br />
automatically inserts an appropriately sized anchored frame and then sticks<br />
that graphic object inside the anchored frame. In my opinion, it is better to<br />
understand what is really going on. Once you have a solid understanding of the<br />
fundamentals, it is much easier to build up various combinations of these<br />
objects to achieve the desired effect.</p><p>As I mentioned in my last post, I will not be repeating all the basic steps<br />
for inserting tables and anchored frames. I assume you already know those<br />
things from reading the "help file" that comes with FrameMaker or one of the<br />
many books that are available. Instead, I tend to dig a little deeper than most<br />
books bother to explain. I like to experiment around the edges and find the<br />
limits of the software I use. This post is based on that experimentation.</p><a name='more'></a><br />
<p>Because I am skipping ahead a bit, I thought I should remind you of the<br />
bigger picture: A page is graphic-centric on the inside (what I sometimes call<br />
a "graphic container"). The most important thing that anyone puts on a page (so<br />
important that FrameMaker does it for you, by default) is a text frame. A text<br />
frame is graphic-centric on the outside (what I call a "graphic object") and<br />
text-centric on the inside (what I will call a "text container"). It is within<br />
this text that text-centric objects, tables and anchored frames, can be<br />
inserted.</p><p>Before I really get started, I want to reiterate that, in this post, I am<br />
only concerned with the outside behavior of these objects. Obviously, both of<br />
these objects are containers. Tables contain blocks of text and anchored frames<br />
contain graphics. However, through various tricks, making use of our knowledge<br />
of the inside and outside behavior of all of FrameMaker's objects, it is<br />
possible to nest anything you want in these frames. You can end up with<br />
graphics in a table or text in an anchored frame. It is even possible to wind<br />
up with a table inside an anchored frame, if that is what you need to do to get<br />
the job done. In the end, you will decide which frames you will nest inside<br />
which other frames in what combinations, to get the final effect you want.<br />
However, I will discuss all those tricks in later posts. I apologize up front<br />
for all the references this post makes to later posts. There are so many<br />
workarounds and tricks one can use within FrameMaker that one could easily get<br />
lost down a dozen rabbit holes. For this post, I want to focus on choosing<br />
between tables and anchored frames based on their text centric behavior on the<br />
outside.</p><h1>Similarities</h1><p>The first, and most basic, characteristic of text-centric objects is that<br />
they are inserted into, or "anchored" to a particular location in a flow of<br />
text. When { View / Text Symbols } is turned on. The point at which the object<br />
is inserted into the text shows up as an upside-down T, called the anchor. The<br />
anchor moves with the text, so if text is inserted above the anchor, then your<br />
object will be moved down. Copying and pasting the text with the anchor will<br />
copy and paste the anchored object as well. If you have read any books about<br />
FrameMaker, you already know this.</p><p>There are many different settings that FrameMaker uses to control the<br />
positioning of these objects. I put them into three main groups. The first is<br />
what FrameMaker calls the "Start " setting for tables and the "Anchoring<br />
Position" for anchored frames. Most of these settings provide a kind of<br />
override to the default of always locating the object just under the text line<br />
with the anchor. They do things like force the table to always appear at the<br />
top of the next page, or setting the anchored frame to "run into" the<br />
paragraph. Both have some similar settings and some that are unique to that<br />
object. I will go into detail about these later in this post. The next two<br />
groups of settings control the horizontal and vertical positioning, the last<br />
one providing finer control than the Start and Anchoring Position settings<br />
generally provide.</p><p>The standard location for both tables and anchored frames is just below the<br />
line of text which contains the anchor. When in this standard location, both<br />
can be set to one of five basic horizontal positions: Left, Center, Right, Side<br />
Closer to Binding, and Side Farther from Binding. In all of those positions,<br />
regardless of the size or position of the object, the text can only appear<br />
above or below the object. So, if you make your table or anchored frame<br />
relatively narrow, then you will end up with a lot of white space on the sides.<br />
(Now, you could fill this white space with other objects, but I will discuss<br />
that in a separate post.)</p><p>This is where the similarities end, however. Some of the Start or Anchoring<br />
Position settings turn on or allow additional horizontal or vertical position<br />
settings for one or the other of the types of objects.</p><h1>Differences (Oh, the Differences!)</h1><p>Rather than make your eyes bleed with a detailed text description of all the<br />
different combinations that are possible, I have put together this handy little<br />
diagram.</p><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/QVVX7ZLv67U_2RroMuW6p9VBSPRwj6dJ4pKrIcrrabI?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Gj3zkeW-A5JvT5C3E2w_ueL9gFc-eM4nGVyX8LmDgJcIoSEVQaIM4Sy8lvPKD0k45cCFDgchFDRxwRNbVNZf_uwo6TUu6x9hn1m46lTEhTQrwBd7se2NCUVnhvF77jR1braUTU_ZFuA/s640/Text-Centric%2520Feature%2520Tables.png" height="240" width="500" /></a><br />
<p>In looking at this diagram, you can see that there is considerable overlap<br />
in that almost all Start or Anchoring Position settings allow you to choose a<br />
generic horizontal position such as left, center, or right. However, it is the<br />
differences between tables and anchored frames which are of most interest,<br />
because they help us figure out which object to use in order to get the<br />
positioning features we need for our documents. I will now discuss some of<br />
these major differences and how they affect our choices.</p><h2>Give me the Runaround</h2><p>In my view, the most significant and useful difference between tables and<br />
anchored frames is that only anchored frames have a setting which allows<br />
paragraph text to run around the side of the object. This is the "Run into<br />
Paragraph" Anchoring Position setting. However, this setting comes with its own<br />
set of limitations. For one, the top of the anchored frame will always be<br />
located even with the top of the first line of the paragraph, regardless of<br />
where in the paragraph you place the anchor. There are some workarounds for<br />
this which I will discuss in another post.</p><p>Secondly, if any of the paragraphs which will wrap around the anchored frame<br />
have any tab settings, numbers, bullets, or differently indented first lines,<br />
then you will really only want to place the anchored frame on the right side of<br />
the page. This is because, if you put it on the left side, then all those<br />
indents and tab stops get messed up. Essentially, they get "left behind" on the<br />
left side of the page. In other words, the indents and tab stops stay at the<br />
same physical location on the page and the text just gets kind of crammed over<br />
to the right by the anchored frame. If the first line was supposed to be<br />
indented, it will no longer appear indented. If there was supposed to be a tab<br />
between a bullet and the text, it will no longer show as a space between that<br />
bullet and text. This is in contrast to how runaround works when a graphic<br />
object is placed on a page, overlapping a text frame. In that case the indents<br />
and tab stops are moved over, to the right of the graphic object. Again, there<br />
are some possible workarounds but those workarounds sacrifice the ability to be<br />
anchored to a particular point in the text. I will discuss those tricks in<br />
another post.</p><p>Technically, the text also "runs around" an anchored frame if it is set to<br />
the "At Insertion Point" anchoring position. However, that only works for the<br />
one line where the anchor is located. So it looks pretty awful if the anchored<br />
frame is not pretty close to the height of a line of text.</p><h2>Floating Away</h2><p>While both tables and anchored frames can be set to "float" and the end<br />
result is similar, they are configured differently. With tables, "Float" is one<br />
of the choices for the "Start" setting. If you want a table to "float" you only<br />
have one option for its location. It will always appear either below the<br />
current line or at the top of the next page if it doesn't fit below the current<br />
line. The most important feature of "Float" is that text after the anchor will<br />
fill in the space between the anchor and wherever the table winds up, making a<br />
tidier looking document. So "Float" essentially acts just like the "Anywhere"<br />
Start setting but allows the text to fill in instead of creating huge swaths of<br />
empty space.</p><p>With anchored frames, "Floating" is an optional check box that you can<br />
enable when either the "Below Current Line," "Top of Column," or "Bottom of<br />
Column" Anchoring Positions are chosen. This gives the same effect as with<br />
tables, wherein the text is allowed to fill in the space between the anchor and<br />
the anchored frame, however, you have a little more control as to where the<br />
anchored frame winds up. For instance, tables can never be forced to always<br />
appear at the bottom of a page.</p><h2>Fine for Fine Positioning</h2><p>Two anchored frame anchoring position settings which look tempting are the<br />
"Outside Column" and the "Outside Text Frame" settings. They are tempting<br />
because they allow very fine horizontal and vertical positioning. You can<br />
essentially place the anchored frame anywhere you want in relation to the<br />
anchor and the edge of the text frame. However, unless you really do want the<br />
frame to be outside the column or frame, you had better be prepared to do some<br />
fancy workarounds with paragraph tags. This is because: Although it is possible<br />
to move the anchored frame to a position inside the frame or column, it will<br />
simply overlap any text within the frame. I have even tried placing, within the<br />
anchored frame, graphic objects which normally allow text runaround. It is as<br />
if that runaround information does not carry through to the outside of the<br />
anchored frame. Thus, even text frames inside an anchored frame will just<br />
overlap any text under that anchored frame. So, to get things to look right,<br />
you would have to use paragraph tags with large "Space Above" or "Space Below"<br />
settings to make room for the anchored frame. However, there are easier<br />
workarounds, which I mention below.</p><p>Usually, these two settings are only used to actually place something<br />
outside the column or frame, such as a warning symbol associated with a<br />
paragraph or if your book format includes small diagrams in wide margins.<br />
Another use is to place a decorative bar above or below a header paragraph. A<br />
third possible use is when you really do want something to overlap text in a<br />
frame, perhaps an oval around a paragraph heading or something like that.</p><h2>Stick to the Point</h2><p>While the ability to set an anchored frame to appear right "At Insertion<br />
Point" is a significant difference, it only has limited usefulness. It is only<br />
handy when you want to insert a graphic symbol or mathematical equation in line<br />
with one line of text and that symbol is about the same height as that line of<br />
text. If the graphic or equation is too much taller than the font, then it just<br />
looks awful.</p><h2>I Need My Space</h2><p>Another difference is that only tables allow a "Space Above" setting.<br />
However, this same effect can be achieved simply by leaving empty space at the<br />
top of an anchored frame. So, I do not consider this to be a significant<br />
difference at all.</p><h1>Strategies</h1><p>From the differences listed above, it almost looks as if it is just best to<br />
always go with anchored frames. But that would be an oversimplification. Tables<br />
do have their uses too. Here are some strategies you can use to help decide<br />
which object to use.</p><h2>Sometimes a Table is Just a Table.</h2><p>If your table is wide, won't leave too much white-space on either side, and<br />
you are happy with it just sitting there in the middle of the column, then just<br />
use a simple table. I really don't recommend putting a table on the right or<br />
left side because that will just make the empty space look bigger and more<br />
"looming." However, it is possible to design your table with an extra-large,<br />
straddled cell on one or both sides with room for a graphic to fill in that<br />
unused space.</p><h2>Sometimes a Table is not Just a Table.</h2><p>FrameMaker does not allow multiple tables or anchored frames to sit next to<br />
each other within a single text frame. So, I sometimes use a table as an<br />
organizer for other things. If I want three diagrams to sit next to each other<br />
on the page, but I want them to all have their own figure number, title, and<br />
caption, then I will create a one-row, three-column table and plop my figures<br />
in those table cells. (Again, I will discuss my tricks for using tables and for<br />
getting figures to behave properly in separate posts.)</p><h2>Fine Positioning</h2><p>There are ways to get fine horizontal and vertical positioning with both<br />
tables and anchored frames.</p><p>At first glance it appears that one cannot obtain any kind of fine<br />
positioning with a table. However, with creative use of empty rows and columns,<br />
it is possible to place the visible contents of a table anywhere within the<br />
space where tables are normally allowed (below the anchor point and within the<br />
column or frame). If you really need a table to appear outside of a column or<br />
frame boundary, there is a trick for that too. (Yes, in a later post )</p><p>If you want to locate the contents of an anchored frame in an exact<br />
location, rather than accept the standard left, center, right horizontal<br />
settings, but want it to be located at least partially within the column or<br />
frame, then it is actually easiest to simply make the anchored frame larger<br />
than what it contains and then position its contents as you see fit. You can<br />
even make the contents of an anchored frame appear partially outside of its<br />
containing frame or column without using the "Outside Column" or "Outside Text<br />
Frame" Anchoring Positions. (See a later post.)</p><h2>Start Positions Only Available for Tables</h2><p>Many of the start positions for tables do not have counterparts for anchored<br />
frames. So, if you need your object to start at the top of the next page, the<br />
top of the next right page, or the top of the next left page, then you will<br />
need to use a table.</p><h2>When Only an Anchored Frame Will Do</h2><p>Though, they have been mentioned above, here is a quick review of the things<br />
that can only be done with anchored frames: If you need text to run around the<br />
object, then you need to use an anchored frame. (Again, it is possible to nest<br />
a table inside a text frame which is inside an anchored frame but I will<br />
discuss this trick in a later post.) If you want a small graphic or equation to<br />
appear right in the line of text, then you have to use an anchored frame set to<br />
the "At Insertion Point" Anchoring Position. These are usually so small that it<br />
wouldn't make any sense to try to put a table or other object in that anchored<br />
frame. If you want to put something outside the text frame or column which sits<br />
beside existing text then you need an anchored frame set to the "Outside<br />
Column" or "Outside Text Frame" anchoring Position. This method also works if<br />
you want something to overlap the text in the column or text frame. Finally,<br />
there is no way to force a table to always wind up at the bottom of the page.<br />
For that you will need an anchored frame.</p><h1>Conclusion</h1><p>Well, I hope this post has helped you understand the similarities and<br />
differences between how tables and anchored frames can be configured to behave.<br />
I chose to start with these because they are the most beneficial when creating<br />
"living" documents that may change over time or need to be revised often. Being<br />
able to anchor an object to a point in the text, then "set it and forget it" is<br />
an incredible time saver. Remember, though, this is just the start. Once you<br />
have decided which to use in order to get your "whatever" to show up where you<br />
want it, there are then many many options for how to get that "whatever" inside<br />
the container you have chosen. As I have repeated many times in this post:<br />
Those are topics which I will cover in later posts.</p><br />
<hr />The contents of this post is Copyright © 2013 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-23705771640897877992013-05-07T20:56:00.000-05:002015-05-21T19:43:11.904-05:00Understanding FrameMaker FramesMost books and manuals about software merely state what each menu item does or which menu items you need use in order to accomplish some specific goal. Interestingly, that goal always seems to be something that can be easily done by pulling down a couple of menus. I almost always find myself wanting more. I want to know why the software behaves as it does. Is there some underlying philosophy or grand design? This post is an attempt to provide a little help in this regard, for people who use Adobe FrameMaker.<br />
<hr />
<h3>
Introduction</h3>
Due to the rich complexity of how frames and objects can be used within FrameMaker, it is easy to get overwhelmed by all the different combinations. However, after working with FrameMaker, I have discovered a very simple conceptual model for classifying this behavior which, I believe, will make it a lot easier to understand and keep track of how these things work and work together.<br />
<br />
I will not pretend to teach you everything you need to know about FrameMaker in one post. Nor will I bore you with yet another detailed repetition of menu items. I will assume you have already read through the user manual and are familiar with the basic operations necessary to create and manipulate frames and other objects on a page. What I attempt to teach in this post is a way of looking at how these things work in the background so that it will be much easier for you to remember what fits within what and why, as well as help you figure out solutions to difficult design problems using a rational plan rather than a lot of trial and error.<br />
<a name='more'></a>For the bulk of this discussion I will cover frames in general, whether they appear on a body, master, or reference page. All the aspects of frames discussed in this part apply directly to frames on body and reference pages. At the end, I will discuss the special considerations for frames placed on master pages. <br />
<h3>
Basic Classification and Contexts</h3>
In FrameMaker, there are four different types of frames: text frames, graphic frames, tables, and anchored frames. For each of these frames we must consider two different contexts for their behavior: how they act on the inside and how they act on the outside. In other words, how a frame interacts with frames and objects within it, its child objects, and how a frame or object interacts with the frame that contains it, its parent frame. Finally, there are only two different basic orientations for this behavior: graphics-centric and text-centric. So we end up with a two-by-two matrix with each frame type fitting into one of two behavior classifications for each context:<br />
<table border="1" style="height: 128px; width: 415px;"><tbody>
<tr> <td></td> <th>Inside</th> <th>Outside</th> </tr>
<tr> <th>Graphics-Centric</th> <td>Anchored Frame<br />
Graphics Frame</td> <td>Text Frame<br />
Graphics Frame</td> </tr>
<tr> <th>Text-Centric</th> <td>Text Frame<br />
Table</td> <td>Anchored Frame<br />
Table</td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
What I have found is that all frame-types that are graphics-centric on the inside behave the exact same way on the inside. In addition, pages behave exactly the same on their "insides" as does a graphic frame, even though pages have their own special behavior on the "outside." Similarly, all frame-types that are graphics-centric on the outside behave the exact same way on the outside. Drawing or graphic objects exhibit this exact same behavior with respect to the frames that contain them. So, we can add a few items to our matrix:<br />
<table border="1" style="height: 143px; width: 422px;"><tbody>
<tr> <td></td> <th>Inside</th> <th>Outside</th> </tr>
<tr> <th>Graphics-Centric</th> <td>Anchored Frame<br />
Graphics Frame<br />
Pages </td> <td>Text Frame<br />
Graphics Frame<br />
Drawings & Graphics </td> </tr>
<tr> <th>Text-Centric</th> <td>Text Frame<br />
Table</td> <td>Anchored Frame<br />
Table</td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In addition, certain other objects such as equations and text lines can be fit into one of the two behavior classifications as far as their outsides are concerned, even though they have their own special behaviors on the inside. So our final matrix looks like this:<br />
<table border="1" style="height: 188px; width: 427px;"><tbody>
<tr> <td></td> <th>Inside</th> <th>Outside</th> </tr>
<tr> <th>Graphics-Centric</th> <td>Anchored Frame<br />
Graphics Frame<br />
Pages </td> <td>Text Frame<br />
Graphics Frame<br />
Drawings & Graphics <br />
Equation<br />
Text Line</td> </tr>
<tr> <th>Text-Centric</th> <td>Text Frame<br />
Table</td> <td>Anchored Frame<br />
Table</td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
What all this means is: If we understand only two different behavior orientations in two different contexts, we can easily understand how FrameMaker handles frames and most of its objects.<br />
<h2>
Matching Outsides to Insides</h2>
Fortunately, remembering what objects can be placed inside what other objects is as simple as "like matches like." Any frame that is graphic-centric on the inside can only contain objects that are graphic-centric on the outside. Similarly, any frame that is text-centric on the inside can only contain objects that are text centric on the outside. So, using the matrix above, for any object in the "Inside" column, all you have to do is look in the table-cell to the right to see what it can contain.<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>(Note: For brevity, from now on I may refer to objects with graphic-centric outsides simply as "graphics" and frames which are graphic-centric on the insides as "graphic-containing frames." It may be a little confusing to think of a text frame as a "graphic" but otherwise reading the rest of this would get really tedious.)</i><br />
<h3>
Insides</h3>
<h2>
Graphic-Centric Insides</h2>
I will start with how pages, graphic frames, and anchored frames all behave on the inside because every FrameMaker document essentially starts with a blank page, onto which we must place objects. (Now, Adobe has done us a favor and already placed some text frames on the blank pages of the default master pages of the standard templates. However, for this discussion we are going to pretend they weren't so nice. The page itself is what you really start with. It is what you are left with if you delete everything you can possibly delete.) So, knowing what we can put on these pages and how those things will behave is essential.<br />
<br />
What many will find hard to believe is that a blank page truly does behave exactly the same on the inside as an anchored or graphic frame. But it is true. Anything you can do inside an anchored or graphic frame can be done directly on a page and vice versa. If you try to draw a line over a text frame that is on a page, that line actually belongs to the page itself. It just happens to show up on top of the text, but its coordinates and behavior are entirely associated with the page, instead of the text frame. If you place a drawing directly on a page, the edges of the page will crop that graphic just as a graphic or anchored frame would. The only things you can't do to a page are move them around and place them inside of other frames. But then that is "outside" behavior.<br />
<h4>
Can Contain</h4>
<ul>
<li>All frames with graphic-centric insides can contain any object which has a graphic-centric behavior on the outside, including all of the following:</li>
<ul>
<li>Text Frames</li>
<li>Graphic Frames</li>
<li>Equations</li>
<li>Drawn Graphics</li>
<li>Graphics Images</li>
<li>Text Lines</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Frames with graphic-centric insides cannot contain any frames or other objects with text-centric outsides. For instance, you cannot type text or place a table directly on a page, these must be in a text frame. This may not be readily apparent because Adobe sticks a text frame on every page by default. But, if you try to stick a table in a margin or on a page with no text frame, you will see what I mean.</li>
</ul>
<h4>
Getting Things in There</h4>
Keeping in mind that the only things you are going to "get in there" are in the list above: <br />
<ul>
<li>Drag & Drop</li>
<ul>
<li>The top-most anchored frame, graphic frame, or page under the mouse pointer when you drop receives the object. If you drop a graphic object onto a text frame, the object will "fall through" to the top-most anchored frame, graphic frame, or page.</li>
</ul>
<li>Importing or Pasting</li>
<ul>
<li>Make sure there is no cursor in any text by clicking on a page margin or by using the "Select Object" tool to select an anchored or graphic frame, then import or paste the graphic object. The selected page or frame receives the object.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
There are several additional notes that are important to remember:<br />
<ul>
<li>An object can be "contained" by a page, graphic or anchored frame yet still appear in front of a text frame. This is because of the phenomenon described in the next note…</li>
<li>If you attempt to take a "graphic" and drag & drop that into a text frame, "ownership" of that "graphic" will pass through to whichever graphic frame, anchored frame, or page most directly contains that text frame though FrameMaker will then display the object as if it is on top of the text. This can be very confusing, so be careful and make sure you specifically want this behavior.</li>
<li>If you place the cursor into a text frame and then either "copy and paste" or insert a graphic object into said text frame, FrameMaker will automatically create an anchored frame to contain that graphic object. This can also be confusing, especially since so many authors who write about FrameMaker seem to confuse this with actually pasting graphics directly into a text frame. If you don't realize that you have created another frame, it can be very hard to keep control of your document's appearance.</li>
<li>Equations are actually graphic-centric objects on the outside. So inserting an equation into a text frame will also automatically create an anchored frame.</li>
</ul>
<h4>
Positioning of Contained Objects</h4>
All of the objects contained by one of these frames are positioned within said frame by X and Y coordinates. These coordinates are based on the upper left hand corner of said containing frame. <br />
<h2>
Text-Centric Insides</h2>
There are two types of frames that are text-centric on the inside: tables and the ubiquitous text frame. On any page, there is likely to be at least one text frame.<br />
<h4>
Can Contain</h4>
<ul>
<li>These can only contain objects which have text-centric outsides, namely: anchored frames and tables. However, a table cannot directly contain another, nested table.<br />
</li>
<li>Text frames cannot directly contain any "graphics."</li>
<ul>
<li>The only way to get a "graphic" inside of a text frame is to place an anchored frame in that text frame and then put the "graphic" into that anchored frame.</li>
<li>Importing a graphic file (or inserting any "graphic" using copy & paste) while the text cursor is active, automatically creates an anchored frame inside the selected text frame which then contains said inserted graphic.</li>
<li>Attempting to draw graphics on a text frame effectively places that graphic in whichever graphics frame, anchored frame, or page which was directly under the mouse pointer when you started drawing. This happens for each different thing you draw. So if you have a lot of different graphic containing frames scattered under your text frame, all these drawings may end up in different containing frames.</li>
<li>Attempting to import or paste a "graphic" while the text frame itself is selected (but no cursor in text) effectively places that "graphic" in whichever graphics frame, anchored frame, or page most directly contains this text frame.</li>
<li>Attempting to drag & drop a "graphic" onto the frame (whether the text frame itself is selected or the text cursor is active) effectively places that "graphic" in whichever graphics frame, anchored frame, or page is directly under the mouse pointer when dropped.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<h4>
Getting Things in There</h4>
<ul>
<li>Inserting a new table or anchored frame:<br />Make sure the blinking text cursor is in the text in the location where you want the anchor to be located and do one of the following:</li>
<ul>
<li>Choose { Table / Insert Table… }</li>
<li>Choose { Special / Anchored Frame… }</li>
</ul>
<li>Cut & Paste:</li>
<ul>
<li>The best way to select an entire table or anchored frame is to select the anchor within the text. Once the anchor is selected, you will see the entire table or anchored frame is highlighted. Cut or copy the object then past it into the new position in the text.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
(See the manual for more information on how to use each of these objects.)<br />
<h4>
Positioning of Contained Objects</h4>
The positioning of these objects is always relative to the marker that was automatically placed in the text when the object was created. (Use { View / Text Symbols } to show or hide these markers.) Even though this positioning is controlled through a separate dialog for each of those objects, the options that are available are very similar for all of them. (See the user manual for the options that are available for each object and what effects those options will have.)<br />
<h3>
Outsides</h3>
<h2>
Graphic-Centric Outsides</h2>
As explained above, these objects can only be placed directly into frames with graphic-centric insides, specifically: pages and graphic or anchored frames.<br />
<br />
An important point to remember about these types of objects is that they are unanchored. They are not attached to any specific text or marker. Even if the cursor is in text when one of these is created, imported, or pasted the object ends up being unanchored. All of this is explained more fully under "Text-Centric Insides: Can Contain," above.<br />
<br />
When creating one of these objects by drawing (such as drawing a line or drawing a text or graphic frame) the position at which you begin drawing determines which graphics-containing frame will contain the drawn object.<br />
<h2>
Text-Centric Outsides:</h2>
As explained above, these objects can only be placed directly into text frames or tables.<br />
Objects with text-centric outsides have the following characteristics:<br />
<ul>
<li>Inserted at a point in the text, so you have to set the cursor location first.</li>
<li>Stays with text.</li>
<li>Position controlled via dialog choices indicating position relative to text. You cannot just move them with the mouse pointer.</li>
<li>You can copy or cut & paste the object to a new location in the text by selecting the anchor.</li>
<ul>
<li>Make sure { View \ Text Symbols } is selected.</li>
<li>It is best to select with the shift and arrow keys instead of the mouse cursor. The mouse cursor will always select at least one character next to the anchor.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<h3>
General Characteristics:</h3>
In general, all of these frames have the following characteristics:<br />
<ul>
<li>Text runaround can be set to control how text near the object will behave.</li>
<li>Crops anything inside of it.</li>
<ul>
<li>This is a great way to determine if an object is really contained in a frame. Just reduce the size of the frame and see if that object gets cut off at the edge of that frame.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<h3>
Master Pages</h3>
Text frames on master pages are divided into two additional types: Template Text Frames and Background Text Frames, each with the following additional characteristics. <br />
<h2>
Template Text Frame</h2>
<ul>
<li>Text here does not show up on the associated body page.</li>
<li>May be part of a flow. </li>
<ul>
<li>Assigned at least some flow tag by default but this can be modified.</li>
</ul>
<li>When a body page is created, based on this master page, all Template Text Frames are copied onto the new body page. This is an important point to remember. Once the body page has been created, this text frame behaves exactly the same as a regular text frame on that page.</li>
</ul>
<h2>
Background Text Frame</h2>
<ul>
<li>Text here shows up on body page but can't be edited there.</li>
<li>Can contain variables and the value of each variable is based on the body page being displayed or printed at the time.</li>
<li>Not part of any flow.</li>
</ul>
All other objects and/or frames placed on the master page also show up in the background of the body pages created from this master and cannot be selected or edited from that body page. <br />
<h3>
Conclusion</h3>
I'm not really big on conclusions that simply repeat the introduction. So, I will just say that I hope this helps you use FrameMaker with less frustration. In future posts I plan to expound on this inside-outside--graphic-text conceptual model and show how it can be used to better plan what frames to use where in order to get the effect you want in various situations.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-71106878666532936732012-09-24T17:30:00.000-05:002015-05-21T19:43:11.944-05:00As-Built Document FlowHere is a Microsoft Visio diagram I created to illustrate the convoluted processes by which documents move around within my department and finally end up in what is called an "As-Built Packet." This is a more visually appealing - and more visually accessible - version of a classic 'swimlane' diagram. Each horizontal bar is a 'lane' which represents either a department within the organization or a specific role within a department. Most of the shapes were found in the selection provided with the software. However, some of them I had to create myself, either from scratch or by modifying shapes provided. Specifically, I created the filing cabinets, the blueprint, the clock, the notebook, the brown accordian file, and I added the hard-hat to the contractor. I also created the custom conveyor-belt line type. I strongly believe that visual metaphors such as these make it much easier for people to understand and internalize the message of a diagram as opposed to just a bunch of text in boxes.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-fC5k0h6B_sTnFjY1JCSDdENnM" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="253" kea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirRLkq0xc0nKsD33fufhm4hq9h8VuQoVaNhI6qvrEiCzWYfVFE_58php7MtbZ46S-gp4Dt-sE4t7jvo5dJyEmRIBR7yuPkUApGlVbrlhWsT94Bqeqid_xAs6ieti0QVzdeZjfPP5xDjCs/s400/As-Built+-+Document+Flow+-+LoRes.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Click on the image to go to a full-size .PDF file of the diagram.)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div align="left" style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<hr />
<br />
The content of this post is Copyright © 2012 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.<br />
This diagram is posted with the permission of my boss. grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-37227812078150935552012-06-27T01:11:00.000-05:002015-05-21T19:43:11.911-05:00Wood Carving & OneNoteWay back in 2003-2004 I fell in love with Microsoft OneNote. The first version, OneNote 2003, was a little tricky to use when using handwriting. There were lots of questions about it in the newsgroups. After many hours of trial and error, spread out over several weeks, I finally figured out how use the handwriting feature in a manner that would produce consistent results. Being the helpful newsgroup maven that I was, I sat down to write up an explanation for all of this. When I was finished, I realized that I had enough for a magazine article. I hunted around for a magazine that would publish my article and found one which would take it for no pay, but at least I would then be a "published author." All they asked is that I add some photographs to illustrate my techniques. So, I sat down and took a bunch of screen shots, took a picture of my hand holding a stylus, and used PhotoShop to put them together to make it look as if I had taken a perfect picture of my hand over the screen. The publisher loved it.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqgKAVv_yYaZGiDkvr5kGnMtoo2ruUjqQkjwx8hsoCb8TVAmBZ3aWMjTLoyLLGZdUADG8Ydnbyv9hMelEeNWIOzlldbUdt7jt4ssUmSAeGm3Tom5lX-W467VJ7VOdAsMNt6jN2DaaDzaM/s1600/Woodcarving_021.GIF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqgKAVv_yYaZGiDkvr5kGnMtoo2ruUjqQkjwx8hsoCb8TVAmBZ3aWMjTLoyLLGZdUADG8Ydnbyv9hMelEeNWIOzlldbUdt7jt4ssUmSAeGm3Tom5lX-W467VJ7VOdAsMNt6jN2DaaDzaM/s320/Woodcarving_021.GIF" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An example illustration from the article.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the magazine went out of business before they had a chance to publish my article. And soon after, Microsoft came out with an update that completely changed the way the handwriting features worked, so my article was moot. But it is still a really great article, and a wonderful example of my skills as a technical writer, photographer, and illustrator. Rather than post the article here, and letting all my beautiful formatting get all munged up by Blogger's HTML handling, I have posted the article up on Scribd.com <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/98383766/Wood-Carving-and-OneNote" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2012 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-16339242746126172542012-02-07T23:54:00.000-06:002012-12-24T21:10:46.471-06:00dSRCI - Citations<h3>
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/dsrci-distributed-scientific-research.html">Part 1 - Introduction</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/dsrci-sci-top-level-domain.html">Part 2 - .sci Top Level Domain</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/in-my-past-two-posts-i-have-introduced.html">Part 3 - Citations</a></h3>
<hr />
<br />
In my past two posts I have introduced the distributed Scientific Research Collaboration Infrastructure (dSRCI) and then discussed my proposal for a new, perpetual Top Level Domain (TLD), called .sci, for scientists to use to uniquely identify their contributions on the internet. The second piece of this puzzle (arguably more important than the .sci TLD) is a consistent data standard so posts, papers, and articles – what I am calling “Artifacts of Collaboration” (AoCs) – written by scientists can be crawled, indexed, traced, analyzed, and rated, regardless of where they may be created, stored, moved, or distributed. This data standard will consist of the following parts:<br />
<ul>
<li>A consistent, universal citation system </li>
<li>A standardized vocabulary for</li>
<ul>
<li>Relationships between people</li>
<li>Relationships between artifacts</li>
<li>Relationships between the people and the artifacts.</li>
<li>Topics discussed.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<br />
In the rest of this post, I will discuss citation systems, how they apply to what we are trying to accomplish here, and a simplified citation system which I think will make it much easier for scientists to use regardless of where they may be posting.<br />
<br />
<strong>Citation Encoding:</strong><br />
Ahh, a consistent, universal, <em>useable</em> citation system. I have been stalking this mythical beast for years now. Everyone I ask inevitably says, “Just use Dublin Core” (DC) as if DC actually <strong>was</strong> a consistent citation standard. To my mind – and for the purposes of this project – DC is meaningless because it can mean anything. DC is so “flexible” that anyone can use any of its tags and attributes for just about anything they want. I mean, what the heck does “creator” mean anyway. The author? The publisher? The producer of a film? What? For some people, every citation could reasonably have the same three-letter value for this attribute. I have hunted and searched for any explicit definition of how to use DC in a consistent manner that has been widely accepted, but to no avail. It seems everyone who is designing a system to use DC just makes up their own interpretation of what goes where and what it means. So, in the end, DC is about as useful as simply saying <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<putcitationhere><i>Random garbledy gook that we let every individual program parse in its own way</i></putcitationhere></blockquote>
If someone out there can prove me wrong, then please do so. I would be so ecstatic that I would ride my scooter all the way out to where you are and hug your neck. <br />
<br />
With all the Library Scientists out there who know so much about what is necessary for a good citation, I would think someone would have done all this by now. And, with how darned cooperative librarians tend to be, I would have thought that any good system would have become widely accepted by now as well. However, again, I haven’t found anything. If I have to, I can make up something myself. If people don’t like it they can suggest something different. But I am not in much of a mood for bickering back and forth on esoterics or theories. Some may suggest that I should at least base my new system upon Dublin Core. However, I now believe that DC has gone the way of Unix. There are so many deviations that it has now simply become a deviant.<br />
<br />
I am also aware of the Zotero project and how they use special RDF formatted citation information (often using DC) to download citations from websites that provide it. However, I would prefer that the citations for this system not require an entire paragraph of RDF to cite a ten-word sentence. And, I would prefer that they also be relatively human readable when cut and pasted into a text file or other document. <br />
<br />
Both of these existing types of citation systems are certainly in wide use but I still feel they fall short of what will be necessary to facilitate the kind of collaboration we desire. DC is too flexible - thus too ethereal - and current RDF standards are too verbose. So, I propose a new citation system be created. A system that does an end run around the problems of inconsistent citation standards and verbosity. In order for this new citation system to be successful, I believe it must meet the following requirements:<br />
<ul>
<li>There must be a unique identification for each contributor and each of their individual contributions, </li>
<li>These citations should be embedded within the documents, contributions, and other AoCs (Artifacts of Collaboration),</li>
</ul>
I have covered the issue of creating a unique, permanent identifier for each scientist. Now I will address the issue of creating a unique identifier for each contribution from each scientist. Remember, all we are looking for is a clean and simple way to differentiate between all the different contributions made by a particular scientist. It seems to me that the simplest, easiest means to do this is to simply apply a date and time stamp with one-second resolution. (If you know of any scientists who can make more than one significant contribution in a single second let me know. I would really like to meet them.) So, the URI for a contribution would be something like “scientistnameYYYY.sci/YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS” or perhaps “dSRCI.net/scientistnameYYYY.sci/YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS” Now, the first impulse of many is to try to imagine using either of these URIs as URLs which then leads one to imagine all those thousands of subdirectories, one for each contribution. But remember, a URI is merely an identifier. It does not have to resolve to a URL. In other words, there does not need to be an actual web page for each of these URI. It is just a label. Also remember, I expect there to be copies of these documents/contributions/AoCs spread throughout the internet. The identifier is merely a means for search engines to … well … identify each copy of each contribution, index it, and make it available to researchers.<br />
<br />
Sometimes people would like to refer to a specific section within a document. This can be accomplished using this simplified citation system simply by appending an XML “fragment” to the citation URI. A “fragment” is really not much more than an additional string that starts with a pound/hash/number symbol (#). So a citation indicating a specific paragraph of a contribution might look like this: “scientistnameYYYY.sci/YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS#paraXXX.” I will have to do some research to see if there is already a standard system for designating these types of within-document-locations. I know Adobe uses something similar for indicating the locations of annotations within the text of .PDF files. I will have to see how that works and if it is available to use.<br />
<br />
<strong>Embedded Citations:</strong><br />
Another problem with current citation systems is that most of them do not embed the citation directly into the item being cited. The citation is applied as an external label. RDF points to a document and says, “That document has this citation.” Of course anyone can create another RDF tag that claims the document has yet a different citation. And if the document is moved or its server goes down, then <strong>all</strong> those RDF tags become worthless. When the citation is embedded within the artifact itself (whether it be a .PDF document, word processing document, web page, or just a comment on a blog) then that artifact can be moved or copied almost anywhere and it can still be found and indexed by search engines. (Naturally, if the only copy lies behind a paywall then we have a problem.) Before search engines began digging into the actual document contents, this would not have been a viable solution. But now that Google and Bing index every word in nearly every document posted on the internet, there is no excuse to still rely on labels that are metaphorically merely laid down near to documents rather than being permanently attached. Pictures have EXIF data, PDF files have embedded metadata, and so do most word processing file formats. Currently, there is no means to easily embed the appropriate unique citation within these documents other than manually going to the metadata dialog within the software for each and every individual file. And, sure, people can manually type out one of these citations in their blog or forum posts, but who wants to go to that trouble? That is what computers are for. Later, in my post on software, I will address a means to make this process easier to do without even really thinking about it.<br />
<br />
<strong>What about all that other citation information?</strong><br />
That is a good question. Do we really need it in the internet age? Regular citation information is primarily designed to make it possible – though not necessarily easy – for people to find that document in a regular library. Have you been in a library lately? Even at the library, everyone uses computers to look things up. But they have to type in the various bits and pieces of the “legacy” citation, sort through all the false hits, try FirstName, LastName, then LastName, FirstName, then see if there was a middle initial, then hope the index they are using indexed that document, but never be sure if the document was there but they just didn’t use the right search terms. And this is when they already know exactly which document they are looking for. What a relief it would be to just type in “scientistnameYYYY.sci/YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS” – or better yet, scan a QR code – and go right to the desired document!<br />
<br />
I am not claiming that we should do without “legacy” citations altogether. Merely that they should be supplementary. I also feel strongly that these “legacy” citations should be consistent, easy to read, and embedded within the document just like the abbreviated citations I proposed above. There is still the problem of a consistent standard. I will work on that some other time, perhaps. <br />
<br />
I believe this new citation system, as simple as it is, can really go a long way toward creating the web of interconnected collaboration we are looking for. But it can only do that if it is consistently inserted in every Artifact of Collaboration as it is created. I will discuss how to ensure this happens in my post on the software necessary to make all this happen. First, however, I need to discuss the terms – or vocabulary – that can be used to describe the relationships between all the collaborators and these “artifacts.” This is what I will cover in my next post.<br />
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2012 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-39133023281958083852012-02-07T23:47:00.000-06:002012-12-24T21:05:45.283-06:00dSRCI - .sci Top Level Domain<h3>
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/dsrci-distributed-scientific-research.html">Part 1 - Introduction</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/dsrci-sci-top-level-domain.html">Part 2 - .sci Top Level Domain</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/in-my-past-two-posts-i-have-introduced.html">Part 3 - Citations</a></h3>
<hr />
In my last post, I outlined a new infrastructure (distributed Scientific Research Collaboration Infrastructure) which I believe will help facilitate a rich and wonderful new way for scientists to collaborate over the internet. In addition this infrastructure will enable future employers, granting agencies and connectome researchers to analyze the patterns of collaboration by bringing the metadata about these collaborations to the surface for easy indexing and searching. One of the requirements for that infrastructure is that each scientist have a unique identifier that they can use to tag all of their work and “Artifacts of Collaboration” (AoCs). This unique identifier will be based on one simple idea: a new .sci Top-Level-domain, under which unique domain names will be issued to scientists. These domain names will exist through perpetuity, even after the death of the scientist.<br />
<br />
<strong>A New Domain:</strong><br />
<br />
Each scientist will be given their own perpetual domain name under a new .sci top-level-domain. This domain name would be provided either at no cost or for a single, one-time fee and would last forever, even after the death of the scientist. This will provide that single, unique, perpetual identifier for each and every scientist in existence. While most, if not all, current scientists now have a “home page” on the web site of their current institution, the URL associated with that home page is subject to the whims of every web-master who will ever work on that site now or in the future. In addition, most scientists do not work at one institution all of their lives, and many are now forced to work at more than one just to earn a decent income. <br />
<br />
Many may say that the Semantic Web allows for multiple different ways to refer to the same resource – even if one has to go through many RDF linkages to arrive at the original or primary URI for that resource – and therefore a special, assigned URI is not necessary. However, the ethereal nature of RDF provides no means to prevent inappropriate duplication. Two different scientists may choose to call themselves JoeSmith and then RDF mining software would need to incorporate extraordinary measures to differentiate the two – or the hundreds of – duplicate URIs. I believe it is this very ethereal nature of RDF that causes scientists, and most others to shy away from using it. What good does it do to assign “my URI” to something if that URI may change in just a couple of years or may be accidentally mistaken for someone else’s URI. Yes, software is becoming more and more powerful, but do we really want to give it ten-thousand times more work to do just to avoid the “restrictiveness” of an assigned domain for use with URIs? Actors live with this “restriction” all the time, many even have to legally change their names in order to avoid duplication with any other actor who has ever been a member of The Actors Guild. If actors can change their names, then scientists can register for a unique domain name. In the future, I expect it to become a badge of honor. Something bestowed upon a scientist when they receive their PhD or other credentials. <br />
<br />
Of course there would have to be some rules to ensure that the domain names were actually meaningful and easily discoverable. I don’t think “joethedinosaurhunter.sci” would be appropriate. Though many female scientists may not like this idea, I think the best system would be to simply use someone’s full, given name along with the year they were born. This should provide enough uniqueness (within the narrow scope of scientists) that there would only need to be a few alternates to avoid duplication. These alternatives could consist of using the scientist’s middle name, appending the month or even day of their birth. I would like to avoid things like simply tacking on an A or B to the end of their names as this leads to ambiguity. This naming scheme would also provide valuable information indicating the era in which a scientist has lived. 300 years from now, it will be important to be able to easily spot the difference between alberteinstein1879.sci and alberteinstein2275.sci. Hey, it could happen.<br />
<br />
Mentioning Albert Einstein brings me to another point: All past scientists will be assigned their own domain names as well, following the same naming convention as for living scientists. Then, every time someone mentions a scientist, living or dead, they can insert the URI for that scientist within a metadata tag. Then search engines can index that reference so anyone looking for any references to that particular scientist anywhere on the internet can have one single, unique search term to look for. (I will address possible abuses of the system in yet another post.) <br />
<br />
URIs, of course, can also be used as URLs. URLs under the .sci TLD will be the perfect place for scientists to place web pages about themselves and their work. Here, too, it would be helpful to have some consistent structure. So I propose a basic hierarchy of directory names to contain some basic info about a scientist. For instance ScientistNameYear.sci/cv or ScientistNameYear.sci/bio, ScientistNameYear.sci/currentwwork, etcetera. I / we can work out a full structure later. Sure, scientists could follow any structure they want, but consistency makes them easily discoverable. Plus why reinvent the wheel? Everyone can just download and copy the standard template and away they go. And, there is no need for anyone to design their web page to look just like anyone else’s. All that is necessary is to embed the proper RDF tags on the proper pages for people and search engines to find. Everything else is gravy.<br />
<br />
Just as any other domain name can be hosted on any server, these .sci domain names can be hosted anywhere the scientist chooses. They can be on the scientist’s university’s or company’s server or on a personally maintained server. The “site” can then be moved to any server in the world, as necessary, and the infrastructure will remain undisturbed. The question now arises as to who would host the domains for scientists who are no longer “with us,” either dead or retired. I expect that certain famous scientists will have many institutions clamoring to host those domains, if only for the recognition. Therefore I propose a bidding process. Institutions would bid against each other for the privilege of hosting the sites of these famous scientists. However, rather than bidding money, they will offer to host the sites of less popular scientists. So, an institution that wants to host AlbertEinstein1879.sci may need to host the sites of tens of thousands of other dead scientists in exchange. Remember, it is not as if these “charity” sites will take up a lot of space or bandwidth, so it shouldn’t really be much of a problem. <br />
<br />
I understand that other, non-scientist, people may want to collaborate with scientists as well. However, I do not think it would be appropriate for just anyone to be allowed to register for a .sci domain name. Only individuals with a certain level of bona fides should be allowed to register. Whether that should include only those with PhDs or also allow others established in their fields, I cannot say. I will leave it up to the scientists to hash out the particulars of what qualifies as a real scientist within their particular fields. There is one thing I am adamant about here: Corporations are not people and, therefore, they cannot be scientists. Even though a corporation may own the intellectual property of the scientists who work for them, it is the individual scientists who have made the contributions, that is what we want to track, and so only the scientists should be able to get a .sci domain name.<br />
<br />
I understand that this new top-level-domain, with its special considerations, would require both an act of congress as well as international treaties. However, the potential value gained from it would make it worth the trouble. Some may argue that the cost of maintaining such a long list of domain names would be too expensive. Seriously?! Just keeping a domain name in a list on a few servers would cost too much? The importance of the advancement of science is enshrined in our constitution. The USPTO and Library of Congress cost billions per year. A little bit of bandwidth on a few servers spread out throughout the world would amount to less than a Higgs Boson within an atom in a molecule in a drop in that bucket. Besides, the revenues from the exponentially growing ranks of new scientists registering for their domains will easily pay for the exponentially shrinking costs of maintaining the lists of all the previous scientists. <br />
<br />
Now, the entire dSRCI system is not utterly dependent upon the approval of this new top-level-domain. Though it would certainly make things much easier. Scientists could register domains under the .name TLD. Or simply choose any domain name they, personally, control. The problem with this is the impermanent nature of these registrations. If the registrants or their heirs do not keep up the yearly payments, then the domain name is up for grabs by anyone who wants to capitalize on the scientists’ good names. Perhaps some registrars could be persuaded to offer perpetual registrations for a large enough up-front fee. Unfortunately, without an adequate legal contract, I would still be suspicious as to the actual longevity of said domain name registration. This is an issue for another blog post, but perhaps we could get some lawyers to figure out the proper language to ensure that a registrar – and any entity that ever receives their assets – will be required to maintain said contracted registrations for perpetuity. Perhaps something similar to liens on property. Heck, if corporations can be people, and simple, obvious ideas can be inviolable property, then domain names can be property to be protected in perpetuity too by gum it!<br />
<br />
Another alternative to the new .sci TLD would be for scientists to simply start using these scientistname.sci URIs in their citations and in the metadata on their web sites. The DNS system would not resolve these URIs to actual URLs until the .sci TLD was approved, but search engines would still be able to index the citations. If it turns out there are legal issues with using the .sci suffix in these temporarily imaginary URIs, then it would also be possible to use dSRCI.net/scientistname.sci instead. If “dSRCI” were trademarked then the dSRCI organization would be able to deal with abusers within the regular legal system. I would recommend against the dSRCI organization hosting any web pages pointed to by these URIs, however. I would not want any one organization to have that much control or to become a potential choke-hold for oppressive governments to use for censorship. In this context, I believe a search engine based “replacement” for DNS may be more robust and more resilient to change than the current DNS system. But that is yet another topic for yet another separate post. <br />
<br />
Yet another alternative, though my least favorite, would be for scientists to take the string which <strong>would</strong> be used as their domain name under this system and start using it as the parent folder for their professional web site. For instance: If the university where they work provides them with a folder such as www.university.edu/people/~userName/ then the scientist could create a folder called www.university.edu/people/~userName/scientistNameYear.sci/ and place all their content under there. The file www.university.edu/people/~userName/index.html would simply redirect to www.university.edu/people/~userName/scientistNameYear.sci/index.html . This way, the scientist could move that folder anywhere he or she wanted and search engines would still be able to find it when people search on the “scientistNameYear.sci” string.<br />
<br />
So, I guess all I need to do now is form a non-profit to lobby for a new law creating the perpetual .sci TLD as well as the treaties necessary to make it international. Anyone want to help with that? <br />
<br />
In my next post I will discuss the data standards and citation format necessary to bring all this data to the surface for ease of analysis.<br />
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2012 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-12504868447021472222012-02-07T23:38:00.003-06:002012-12-24T21:04:07.090-06:00dSRCI - distributed Scientific Research Collaboration Infrastructure - Introduction<h3>
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/dsrci-distributed-scientific-research.html">Part 1 - Introduction</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/dsrci-sci-top-level-domain.html">Part 2 - .sci Top Level Domain</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2012/02/in-my-past-two-posts-i-have-introduced.html">Part 3 - Citations</a></h3>
<hr />
<br />
I recently had the privilege to watch a <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_nielsen_open_science_now.html">TED talk</a> by <a href="http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/">Michael Nielsen</a> about what people are now calling “open science.” I have been acutely aware of the problem of scientists hoarding data and ideas for some time now. Nielsen’s talk, however, drove home the point that the primary reason for this hoarding and secrecy was basic academic survival. Nielsen made clear that scientists do not share their work and – more importantly – their ideas freely because they are afraid they will not get credit for any of these shared ideas. That some other scientist will scoop them by rushing to complete research on the same topic and publishing first.<br />
<br />
This, well known, “publish or perish” culture is based on the unfortunate fact that publishing in established journals is the one and only means scientists now have for establishing their reputation. As explained by Nielsen, a count of published papers [along with the number of citations to those papers] is currently all future employers have to go on when determining a scientists skill. For the last few hundred years, all of a scientist’s skills, innovation, and yes, ability to successfully collaborate have been boiled down to two numbers: published papers and citations. The result of this overly simplistic ranking system, in my opinion, is that the pace of science is limited to what each scientist can do one major – and, preferably, well-funded – project at a time. So, scientific progress is held up by the very scientists who are supposed to be advancing it because they are hoarding their data and ideas.<br />
<br />
There are many, well-known, problems with the publish or perish system. One is that scientists tend to focus their research on projects that are likely to get published. If there is a trend then many scientists will chase that trend, consciously or unconsciously. If it appears that the publishing organizations are shying away from publishing papers on certain controversial topics, then many scientists will simply avoid those topics altogether. Another problem , brought to light by recent research, is that journals have a strong bias for “positive” results. Only articles that prove a hypotheses tend to get published. If a scientist has a hypothesis but his research proves him wrong, no one is likely to ever to see that research. This means other scientists are doomed to repeat the same research over and over again. <br />
<br />
As Nielsen pointed out in his talk, there have been many attempts to solve this hoarding problem. The National Institute of Health (NIH) has implemented policies wherein all research they fund must be registered before the research begins (so no failed research can be hidden in a desk drawer) and – once completed – all research must be made available to the public along with all the data. Unfortunately, I cannot see even this dramatic measure producing the true, free-flowing collaboration desired by many, including Nielsen and myself. Under the NIH policies, scientists will still keep all their ideas and research data secret until they publish. Yes, more data will become available, but only after either publication or the end of the grant period, which can take years, or even decades. No, the NIH policies are only the first jostle in a major transition that needs to take place. <br />
<br />
Michael Nielsen also pointed out that many web sites have sprung up in an attempt to solve this problem, but, as he observed, all of them have failed miserably. All these sites are virtual ghost towns now (pun intended). Where Nielsen and I diverge is in the reasons for these failures. Nielsen speculates that the problem is merely one of the culture of secrecy among scientists. He claims that policy changes, such as those instituted by the NIH, and … well … talking to your friends about the issue will solve the problem. But I believe the reasons these sites failed are deeper and more multi-faceted than that. <br />
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Yes, a big reason scientists have chosen to stay away from these sites is the “credit problem.” But we must look deeper if we are to find a solution that will work in the world where these scientists are forced to live. Even though posts on these web-sites are usually public, each site remains an island unto itself. Depending on user name and post formatting differences, it is very difficult to hunt down all the contributions made by a particular scientist on every blog or forum to which they contribute, should a future employer even choose to do so. I have specifically chosen to use the exact same user name on all the forums I contribute to just so all my contributions can be easily found. However, that goal has been stymied by the various user name requirements on each different site. So, someone would have to know to search for “GrantRobertson” on some sites, “Grant S Robertson” on others, “Grant Sheridan Robertson” on others, and “GrantSR” on still others. In some cases, for more important “contributions” I will repost that contribution to my personal blog. Other people may not go to that trouble. <br />
<br />
There are other reasons for the failure of these “science collaboration” or “scientific social networking” web sites that Nielsen never even touched on. One problem is that all of these sites are trying to be the “one site to rule them all,” (with apologies to the Tolkien estate). Everyone wants to be the next Mark Zuckerburg or Jimmy Wales and own or control the one site where ALL scientists and/or academics go to collaborate. Yeah, that’s never gonna happen. For one thing scientists are likely hesitant to commit to a single site that may go away in just a few years. Scientists may also be hesitant to hand over all their data to one single corporation which likely holds the interests of its stockholders above those of scientific endeavor. <br />
<br />
On the other hand there are also many problems with a proliferation of many different forums and blog sites, each covering a small niche of the scientific environment. First, there is the inconsistency of having hundreds of different user interfaces and data standards. Most blogs and forums are only concerned with enhancing minute by minute traffic, in order to enhance advertising revenue, so they often could care less about anyone’s ability to extract data from the site after the fact. This means data standards are essentially nonexistent in this realm. Yes, blogs are often packaged for an RSS feed. But, within that package, there are no standards for the information or topics that may be discussed within that blog post. Another problem is redundancy. The same topic may be discussed on several different blogs/forums. There is no easy, machine-based means to check for this redundancy because the topics may be referred to by different terms on the different sites. So, two or more different groups of people may be discussing the exact same thing and never know the other groups exist. This can stymie good collaboration. <br />
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Ask any business manager and they will tell you: If you want people to do something you have to reward that behavior. But you can only reward what you can measure. The ability to measure either a behavior or an output is key. As discussed earlier, for the past few hundred years our only metrics for scientific skill (which only peripherally includes collaboration) have been total number of papers and total number of citations. And, as we have seen, all our current attempts at promoting collaboration have failed miserably at measuring what they were trying to promote, if they even attempted to measure it at all. In addition, almost all recent attempts have failed to enable true collaboration for one reason or another. Therefore, if we want to promote scientific collaboration we must do two things: We must make it possible. We must make it simple and easy to do, (preferably so easy that it is almost more difficult to not do it). And we must make it measurable, thus making it more desirable. <br />
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What can help us get from where we are to where we want to be? To use an analogy, we currently have a situation where no one wants to pile all their innovative Easter eggs into one proprietary basket which they don’t trust. Scientists could spread their Easter eggs around by placing them under various bushes. But hiding them under lots of different bushes makes them harder to keep track of and harder to lay claim to if someone else should “find” them. What we need is a system that allows us to put our precious eggs anywhere we want, but to quickly and easily identify each and every one of them as our own, when necessary. To stretch the analogy further: What we need is a bunch of strings to tie to all of our eggs together in one big “web” so all we have to do is pull on one string and all our carefully crafted eggs come out for everyone to see how beautiful they are. <br />
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Tim Berners-Lee has a name for this bundle of strings: He calls it the “Semantic Web.” The idea of the Semantic Web has been around for a long time. There are several protocols that have been devised to implement it. So, why haven’t scientists made use of this wonderful technology to enable them to collaborate and share their ideas in a manner that still allows them to get the credit they deserve? I have four words for you: “Pain In The Ass.” Yes, I’ll say it: The Semantic Web is a total pain in the ass for individuals to use. First people have to learn about the concept itself. Then they have to learn about the protocols, find and select taxonomies and ontologies (after they learn what the heck those words mean), and finally – most of the time – they would have to type these arcane tags into their blog and forum posts by hand. After all that work these collaboration-hopefuls must still hold their breath and hope those blogs and forums don’t filter out the tags they have so carefully inserted. Holy Insane Unnecessary Minefield Batman!<br />
<br />
I know Tim Berners-Lee is a legend. And, from what I have seen, he is the sweetest guy, who only wants the best for the internet and the world that uses it. But I have to say, he kind of dropped the ball when it comes to implementation here. (Perhaps his plan was to allow others to pick up that ball and run with it.) Currently, creating content for the Semantic Web is like learning VI just so you can develop an AJAX web site that uses JSON to create dynamic application-like web sites, just so you can say “Hi” to your friends. Whether you know what I just said or not, you can see this is why current Semantic Web use is limited to the few people who can handle all the technical details. What we need is a way to make using the Semantic Web as easy as posting on Facebook or just clicking a “Like” button.<br />
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In the rest of this post I will outline – not just an new standard – but an entire new infrastructure that I am developing which I think will help facilitate the kind of deep, culturally-ingrained, natural collaboration that needs to take place among scientists (and interested amateurs) to help scientific progress keep pace with the needs of this century – and the next. I am currently calling this system the “distributed Scientific Research Collaboration Infrastructure” (dSRCI, pronounced dee-sear-see. I figured making it pronounceable would help people remember and easily talk about it).<br />
<br />
dSRCI has the following goals:<br />
<ul>
<li>To provide credit for all contributions no matter how minor or where they may be made, thus promoting collaboration and public sharing by measuring and rewarding said collaboration.</li>
<li>To be able to be applied anywhere and everywhere rather than on just one – or even a few – web sites. </li>
<li>To be consistent, even across various web sites and types of sites. </li>
<li>To be almost impossible to censor or shut down.</li>
<li>To be so easy to use it is almost more difficult to NOT use it. </li>
</ul>
Of course, as I discussed earlier, lofty goals do not a functional system make. To be successful, dSRCI must include the following specific features (which will all be discussed more thoroughly in subsequent posts):<br />
<ul>
<li>A means to easily check and track contributions regardless of where they are made. This will require…</li>
<ul>
<li>A single, unique identifier for each contributor which …</li>
<ul>
<li>Can be indexed and searched for to find all contributions by that person.</li>
<li>Preferably, actually points to a reference about that contributor.</li>
</ul>
<li>A unique identifier for each contribution which …</li>
<ul>
<li>Can be easily searched for to find all copies of that contribution that may have been placed on other sites (either for archival or redundancy purposes or for further discussion).</li>
<li>Points to the original specific post within a blog or forum so it can be viewed in context if possible.</li>
<li>Does not rely on the original location to still be available.</li>
<li>… And, thus, allows for redundant copies to exist anywhere, preventing censorship of ideas or scientists.</li>
</ul>
<li>A consistent and easy to use citation system which includes:</li>
<ul>
<li>A consistent citation encoding scheme.</li>
<li>A consistent means for quoting and citation across all web sites (similar to the “Like” and “Share” buttons that festoon many blogs today). </li>
<li>Automatic citations where possible (such as when a user replies to or quotes another post within a forum).</li>
</ul>
<li>A means to indicate the topic of the conversation in a universally searchable manner, regardless of language.</li>
<li>A consistent and intuitive vocabulary to describe the multifarious relationships between all the people participating in the collaboration as well as each individual “Artifact of Collaboration” (AoC).</li>
<ul>
<li>I am still in the initial stages of working out this vocabulary. Though I refuse to be limited by the current restrictions of existing vocabularies, I also see no need to reinvent the wheel or to make the semantic web even more cluttered with sameas declarations. So, I will need time to study existing vocabularies and hash out ideas with others who have more experience designing RDF vocabularies. This part of the dSRCI infrastructure is guaranteed to be an ongoing project. </li>
<li>If you have ideas or suggestions: Please go to the blog post about the vocabularies and comment there. Thank you.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>An easy to use and consistent means to create or format this content which could consist of:</li>
<ul>
<li>Additional software on blog or forum servers.</li>
<li>Browser extensions for use on sites that do not have the requisite features.</li>
</ul>
<li>Naturally, all of this should use existing technologies, when possible.</li>
</ul>
<br />
In order to meet these goals and provide these features, dSRCI consists of the following parts:<br />
<ul>
<li>A new .sci top-level-domain under which all bona fide scientists will be assigned their own perpetual domain name for use as a unique identifier that will never (ever) expire.</li>
<li>A simplified AoC (Artifact of Collaboration) identifier format so each and every individual contribution made by a scientist can be indexed and searched for regardless of where it is posted, transferred, quoted, or archived.</li>
<li>A citation standard that encompasses both the scientist and the AoC identifiers as well as all the standard citation information but in a format that is more concise than current Resource Description Format (RDF) and far more precise than Dublin Core (DC). </li>
<li>A new vocabulary to supplement existing RDF standards and vocabularies.</li>
<li>Software to make all this so easy to use that people, including busy / distracted scientists will actually use it.</li>
</ul>
In subsequent posts, I will elaborate on each of these subsystems within the infrastructure. Please keep in mind that this system is not meant to be the be-all-end-all of scientific collaboration. It does not address the data access issues created by the lack of flexible yet extensible standards for data storage. I plan to tackle that problem at a later date. Nor does dSRCI provide the actual collaboration tools, such as forums or wikis. What dSRCI does is bring all the collaboration metadata to the surface so it can be examined and analyzed. dSRCI provides a means for employers and “connectome” researchers to easily pull on that bundle of strings and get a good look at all of a scientist’s beautiful Easter eggs. These “connectome” researchers will be able to analyze all the connections between scientists and their ideas. It will be possible to trace the evolution of an idea no matter where it sprouts up and follow that idea throughout its life, watching how it takes a little “DNA” from other ideas and finally grows into yet another solution for our world, all in real time. In addition - and perhaps more importantly - it will be possible to highlight ideas that may be at risk of “extinction” and show them to people who may have just the right expertise to bring them back to life. We won’t have to just hope that the right person happens to read the right blog post at just the right time. Software will be able to automatically spot potential matches between people and ideas and bring them together regardless of how scattered they may be. Now that is when scientific progress will really take off. <br />
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2012 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-90482790046390172142011-10-26T00:39:00.001-05:002017-07-04T15:35:46.009-05:00Platitudes Bug Me<p>I have been thinking a lot about why it bothers me so much when intelligent people - people whom I otherwise respect - start repeating every nice-sounding platitude they see or hear. The problem with platitudes is that - like the bible, astrology, or Nostradamus' predictions - there is such a huge volume of mutually-contradicting, yet truthy-sounding material that one can cherry-pick just what one wants in order to prove or justify almost any belief, desire, or attitude. However, platitudes are even worse because of their brevity, vagueness, and tendency to appear entirely out of context, thus allowing any one platitude to serve diametrically opposed views. </p>
<p>For example: "Never forget" could mean</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li>"Always remember to honor the dead and the contributions they have made."</li>
</ul>
<p>Or</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li>"Don't forget what we did to make so many people hate us and try to treat people better in the future."</li>
</ul>
<p>Or</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li>"Never forget that those people are evil and we must always hate them and try to eliminate or abuse them at every opportunity."</li>
</ul>
<p>Or it could just mean to stop misplacing your car keys.</p>
<p>So, Person A could spout off with some platitude or repeat some quote out of context believing it means Thing One. But when Person B reads it they feel it justifies Thought Two. And because the platitude was repeated by someone they like or respect, Person B feels even more justified in in their belief, regardless of how irrational that belief may actually be. Because people rarely delve into what they actually mean by this quote or that platitude, they can hold diametrically, even fatally divergent opinions as to its meaning and never even know it.</p>
<p>Perhaps this lack of actual communication is why platitudes have seen such a resurgence as of late. People are afraid of conflict these days. It is rude to disagree with your friend. It is rude to disagree with almost anyone to their face. So we stage protests and hold signs covered with platitudes that mean nothing because they could mean anything. Yet almost no one actually goes to their neighbor and explains what they think said platitude means and what we should do about it in a manner that creates more understanding rather than less. Everyone appears to "just get along" while, seething just beneath the surface, is a level of distrust for "all those people who disagree with us - whoever they are" that likely hasn't existed since the Sixties - yet another era filled with slogans and signs.</p>
<p>This trend disturbs me even more when participated in by my friends who are atheists. We atheists claim to be rational beings, skilled at critical thinking. But all of that seems to go out the window when a truthy or pithy platitude is waved before some people's eyes. I firmly believe this is a dangerous habit to get into. Those who eschew formal religion but turn to platitudes are merely exchanging one amorphous, irrational, believe anything you want, religious-esque system for another and exchanging an imaginary friend for the ever-ethereal "truthyness."</p>
<hr />
<p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-57229002464699485942011-10-23T23:52:00.000-05:002017-07-04T15:40:40.084-05:00DisingenuocityShow me a government statistic and I will show you disingenuocity.<br />
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-89567155531114112802011-08-20T02:22:00.002-05:002013-01-10T22:36:27.443-06:00Knowledge is all in your head.RE: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowledge-at-wikipedia.html?_r=2&hpw">When Knowledge Isn’t Written, Does It Still Count? by: Noam Cohen</a><br />
<br />
Knowledge exists only in one's head. Everything else is merely a means or attempt to communicate that knowledge. No, knowledge is not "stored" on websites or in books or databases or videos. These merely attempt to communicate knowledge to other people in the future. I know, this is quite a paradox. How can something be transferred if that something is not contained within the transfer medium. Think of it like a blueprint. The drawing is not the thing. It is a means of communicating how to make the thing. And remember, knowledge is not information or data. These can be recorded but the knowledge gained from looking at that information or data will only exist within one's head. In the case of actual artifacts, one could say the artifact is a means by which one can gain knowledge even though it is not being "communicated" from someone else.<br />
<br />
This claim that Wikipedia is now "redefining knowledge" is farcical at best. Knowledge has always been what it has always and will forever be. The means of communicating knowledge have been changing and expanding ever since the first hollow log was thumped with a stick. Multimedia had become widely available and popular long before Jimmy Wales decided to take advantage of someone else's software to direct links to his private web sites. Unfortunately, the software Wales decided to use was incredibly limited. The popularity of Wikipedia and the arrogance of Jimmy Wales has somehow allowed him to "define" "knowledge" as only what would fit within the limited confines of the wiki software. Now, when he is finally ready to remove some of those limitations and allow additional mediums of communication to be stored on his site, people mistakenly credit Wales with "redefining knowledge" when all he is really doing is finally accepting what the rest of the world has known for thousands of years.<br />
<br />
Once we break free of this myth that actual knowledge can be stored (and I don't think I am merely being pedantic here) we can then look at our various means of communicating that knowledge in the proper perspective.<br />
<br />
<b>A) </b>We are forced to take a different approach to our writing. Does it merely record data or does it communicate knowledge. I submit that many textbooks barely perform the former task despite their marketing claims to achieve the latter.<br />
<b>B)</b> We realize that all mediums for communicating knowledge have their strengths and their weaknesses. The written word with footnotes and citations has dominated through thousands of years merely because it was the only inexpensive and reliable means to communicate to as many people as possible. The only other option was verbal communication which is inefficient, unreliable, and only available for a relatively short term (the life of the speaker).<br />
<b>C)</b> We understand that the best way to communicate knowledge is most likely through a combination of many different mediums. People are different and different people may attain knowledge best via different mediums. Therefore as many different mediums as possible should be available, even the thumping of hollow logs, if that is what it takes.<br />
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-67936575422152136462011-07-24T14:04:00.006-05:002017-07-04T15:40:40.101-05:00Mis-Labeling Terrorists<p>I have something to say and I'm not quite sure how to say it, so bear with me. I - and I'm sure many others - have noticed that the way "terrorists" are labeled by the media suffers from a pretty strong bias. These days the choices for the labels seem to come from a very limited list. A terrorist is either a "Muslim terrorist" or just a plain "terrorist" Very rarely does one see the terms "Christian terrorist" or "right-wing terrorist" or "anti-abortion terrorist." When people from these groups commit acts of terrorism it seems the "liberal media" shies away from calling them terrorist or associating them with any particular group at all. Often, these people are simply labeled as "extremists" in an attempt to distance them from any group that may have fostered their extremism. </p>
<p>In reality, there appear to be four main categories of terrorists:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Religious Terrorists</strong> - Muslim extremists, Christian extremists, Jewish extremists (though most of these seem to have moved to Israel) some of the members of the old IRA, anti-abortion extremists, and, yes, even Hindu and Buddhist extremists.</li>
<li><strong>Racist/Bigoted/Chauvinistic Terrorists</strong> - the KKK, Neo-Nazis, Anyone who has ever lynched anyone, James Earl Ray (even though he only shot one man, it was an act intended to scare others into conformance with his wishes, thus terrorism), gay bashers (Every punch, every tripping, especially every dragging incident is an act of terrorism attempting to scare other gays into hiding.), Tea Party members who bring weapons to rallies (Who are they kidding? They wish they could shoot that uppity black man.), rapists (In a way, I suspect rape is a subconscious attempt to punish all women for taking something, some level of status, from the rapist.). {I know, lots of parentheses. Sorry.}</li>
<li><strong>Misguided freedom fighters</strong> - Not all terrorist act out of hate. Some act out of desperation. I believe many Palestinian terrorists feel they have been pushed so deeply into a corner that they have no other option but to lash out. However, they do have another option and it has been proven to be far more effective. As I have said to my friends many times, "The Palestinians need to go Gandhi on Israel's ass!" They need to reject all violence. They need to lay down in front of the bulldozers used to demolish their homes for what are euphemistically called "settlements." (How can it be called a settlement when it is only meant to stir up trouble?) The Palestinians need to show, by contrast, just how disgusting Israel's treatment of them has been all these decades. Resorting to terrorism only serves to provide excuses for the Israeli government to continue and even escalate their mistreatment of the Palestinians </li>
<li><strong>Profit-Motivated Bullies</strong> - Some terrorists act out of neither hate or desperation. Some just want to push people around in order to increase profits or their power base. Union busters, Bill O'Reilly when he sends his "producers" to go harass people at their homes or work-places simply because they have challenged him on yet another stream of bullshit that has poured from his mouth. (OK, low level, but he is still trying to scare people into not challenging him.), drug cartels (When they kill judges or bomb police stations, it is terrorism.), Slobodan Milošević. And finally, the Republican politicians, who are trying to scare all of America into a willingness to work for third-world wages, breath poisoned air, drink poisoned water, and hand over all our money, possessions, and rights to the über-wealthy so they can get back to the level of power and luxury that they had in feudal Europe. (If you think intentionally making millions of people afraid they may starve to death in the gutter is not terrorism then you have no humanity in you.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Naturally, there is a lot of overlap. I just wish that the media would start labeling terrorism for what it is and labeling terrorists for what they are, rather than pushing the current bias which assumes that all religions nut-jobs who claim to be Muslims are "Muslim terrorists" while whitewashing all other terrorists with more euphemistic terms. Quite frankly, this is all getting pretty nauseating to me. While the terrorism itself is, well, terrible, I think it is the whitewashing that is getting to me the most. It is the bias inherent in the whitewashing which will continue to foster the conditions that create more terrorists. Sadly, sometimes it seems that has been the intent all along.</p>
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<p>The contents of this post are Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-64996486615408586972011-06-30T20:25:00.001-05:002011-06-30T20:31:52.963-05:00Strawberries<p>My grandmother was a stereotypical grandmother for the early sixties. She had raised her ten children in the big house on the hill and now she was raising one grand-daughter who's mother had died during childbirth. She raised all her own vegetables as well as some chickens and a turkey or two. (Ask my mother to tell you the story about the turkey that chased her up the woodpile.) Of course, she cooked everything from scratch. When we came to visit, she would wake us up every morning to eat the huge breakfast of biscuits and gravy, bacon and eggs, juice and toast she had made while we were all still asleep. I always marveled at how much she got done before the day even began.</p>
<p>When I finally did watch her make biscuits, I saw that she did it as quickly and easily as we open a can today. She didn't measure anything. Just took some handfuls of flour, some 'other stuff' and mixed it all up right on the counter. Grabbed off some wads and put them on the baking sheet. When she was done there was just a light dusting of flour left on the counter which she would scrape off onto one hand and put back away. </p>
<p>Not all food was this easy, though. Some even took a team effort. Many an hour have I spent snapping beans and shelling peas. Especially black-eyed peas (which are really beans, but who cares). I helped my aunt Toni (the grand-daughter they adopted by the kind of common law that was common back then) pick bushels of apples, peaches, raspberries, and blackberries from their trees and thickets. From which, Grandma would make the tallest pies you have ever seen. How she could make the crust the same way she made biscuits and not have it come out tasting like biscuits was something I couldn't understand. </p>
<p>But all of these picking skills didn't come naturally. I had to serve an apprenticeship first:</p>
<p>I couldn't have been but three or four years old. I remember there being some conversation over how I had never tasted a strawberry before. Why my mother had been negligent in this duty I'll never know. But I don't hold it against her. Well, my Grandma was resolved that I should not be denied this, one of life's finer pleasures, a moment longer. As is common among many of us of German decent, she was also resolved that, if I was going to do something, I was going to learn to do it right. So I guess it was a few moments longer.</p>
<p>My grandmother took me out to the strawberry patch. The rows seemed to stretch for a mile. It was probably closer to twenty yards. She showed me how to find the berries that were at the peak of ripeness. Large and firm. "The ones with the green 'n' white on 'em ain't ready yet." She reminded me to check for the soft spots that meant they were starting to turn rotten. "But don't mash too hard or you'll bruise 'em." Once we had a basket full we went in to the kitchen and she showed me how to rinse the dirt off them. She didn't even think to use pesticides back then. She cut off the leaves with one of those paring knives that Grandpa kept razor sharp. Plucked out those spongy white cores that are only attached at the top. And then, while they were still wet, she sprinkled just a little bit of sugar on them.</p>
<p>Finally, she picked the biggest, reddest one in the whole basket and held it out for me to take a bite out of. The thing was bigger than my little fist. I could only get a bite of the pointy end but that was all it took. How could something be so lightly sweet, a tiny bit tart, and taste cool without coming out of the refrigerator? I remember looking at my grandmother, my eyes getting wider and wider as the taste took over and awakened more and more of my mouth. I looked at my mom and back to Grandma. She had this look on her face that comes from the pleasure of giving pleasure to others and said, "Good! Ain't it?"</p>
<p>"Yeah" was all I could muster as I took the rest from her hand and began to take even larger bites. Well. needless to say, we finished the whole basket right there. From then on I had to have some strawberries every time we went to visit. I guess I thought Grandma's was the only place I could get them. Imagine my surprise when I learned you could buy them in a store. Not as good as the 'original' but a suitable imitation nonetheless. </p>
<p>As I said earlier, I don't resent that my mother had never given me a strawberry before then. In fact, I'm glad it slipped her mind all those years. If I had had them all along, perhaps I would not have appreciated that one nearly as much. Just imagine if I had never tasted one until today. As a fan once said to Samuel Clemens of his book <em>Huckleberry Finn</em>, "I wish I had never read it . . . So that I might have the pleasure of reading it for the first time all over again."</p>
<hr />
<p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-40618400300333987002011-06-30T19:33:00.002-05:002012-01-14T08:07:49.712-06:00Deception Pass<p>Everlasting beauty in a fleeting gesture. A fall of the hair. A conviction. There's a grasshopper sitting on a brass fire hydrant. I can see its reflection. Can it see mine? The mist clears just enough to see the Olympic Mountains minutes before the sun sets. That burning feeling in your lungs after a hard day's ride on Pacific Coast Highway that lets you know you have really maxed it out. The nurses letting you hold your new baby minutes after he is born and letting him suck on your finger for the first few hours of his life while his new mother sleeps. Singing great old blues tunes at the top of your lungs with the car windows down and having a beautiful woman tell you it's great. A shy smile. Take a long walk barefoot and just feel where you are. Four, five, six, or even a million dimensions is still limited thinking. Some truths <u>are</u> self-evident but you still have to write them down down to make them real. I will never figure people out and they will never figure me out. But who cares? Flaming red hair and cute little red Ked's. Long philosophical discussions where no one is right and no one is wrong. </p><p>On Whidbey Island I know of only one beach with regular sand. I didn't go there much. There is a "beach" with nothing but small boulders and washed up deadwood. When you run on it you have to watch where you place every step. With each of those steps your legs get stronger even as they grow more weary. Heightened awareness till your feet almost place themselves. You now know where every stone and branch is without looking - almost. But each step could still break your leg.</p><p>Deception Pass is right around the corner. You should see it in the evening. The sun casts a shadow of the bridge against the cliffs. If you jumped off that bridge it might take a full minute before you hit the surging tide. Not that I've timed it, but it is a long drop. The cliffs go up a couple, three-hundred feet and then the redwoods go up another fifty or so. When you round that corner with exhausted body and hyper-aware mind, those cliffs, the shadow, the ocean, the redwoods, the mountains, and that delicious air consume your whole being. Some would call it a spiritual experience. I just call it wonderful and know that I miss it. What's curious is that I am only just now learning to leap through life the way I leapt across that beach.</p><p>Written Jan. 7, 1996.</p><hr /><p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-54652233898857006332011-06-30T19:04:00.001-05:002017-07-04T15:40:40.079-05:00Thora<p><strong>WARNING: </strong>The last paragraph of this piece is definitely Not Safe For Work. If you are prudish at all, then simply do not read the last paragraph. While the last paragraph may seem completely disjointed from the rest, the two are a cohesive whole and make a singular point. I thought about simply leaving that paragraph out of this posting so no one would be offended. However, that wouldn't be true to the "Art," the piece, or myself. You have been warned.</p>
<p>Written Jan 13, 1996.</p>
<hr />
<h2 align="center">Thora</h2>
<p>It came to me in a dream. A revelation if you will . . .</p>
<p>What is it with cardboard shelves? Those folded, corrugated, racks you see at the ends of the aisles and in front of the counters at liquor stores and such. What magical, mythical qualities do they have to impart upon their contents, their wares? Is it the intricate folding patterns, derived by topological wizards? The smooth, shiny surface catching the fluorescent light as you walk by? The bright colors? Or perhaps that white circle, conveniently provided by the graphics and marketing minions, for the shopkeeper to fill in the price? But they never do. Left blank, in haste or neglect, they stare back at you like a giant, unblinking, pupil-less, cyclops eye.</p>
<p>But there is no magical vision. No mythical siren call. They are, after all, mere cardboard. Pressed brown fibers the same as the unassuming cartons those wine bottles were delivered in.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>365 bottles of wine on the shelves.<br />
365 bottles of wine.<br />
Take some down and . . .</p>
</blockquote>
<p>. . . put them on cardboard racks and they achieve instant notoriety. People want to buy them. Take them home, savour that mythical taste. Yet, the only thing that really sets these bottles apart is that the are, well, set apart. Separated from the rest, on their flimsy cardboard stands, they are, therefore, unique. Separation, simply not being where the rest are, is the only thing able to impart those mystical qualities.</p>
<p>"Ah-hah!", thinks the shopkeeper. "I will put <u>all</u> of my wine on cardboard racks. Then they will <u>all</u> be special. People will want to buy them <u>all</u>. Take <u>all</u> of them home. Enjoy lots and lots of mythical flavor. And I will be very wealthy indeed!"</p>
<p>"A mistake.", I say. "A foolish and naive mistake." With <u>all</u> of the wine displayed in cardboard grandeur there are none, now, set apart. No unique quality. No myth, no mysticism, no magic. (Not to mention making a bull in a china shop seem a mere nuisance.) I believe it is good to leave 360 bottles on the shelves, thus to have five with magic. And, when you chance upon the magic, standing alone and apart at the end of the aisle, do not hesitate to taste of it. Revel in it with passion. Savour the heady drunkenness, knowing the next bottle will not even compare. If you let this one slip over your tongue without appreciation, then it will be gone. Not even a memory, fading or otherwise.</p>
<p>Her sinewy, cream, legs clamped around my hips. Her pert breasts bounce as I walk from room to room. Nipples brushing against mine. Occasional walls, the refrigerator, and doorframes giving additional power to our thrusts. A doorframe, Doorframe, DOORframe! My hands entangle her infinite blond hair against her back while her nails bite into mine. Orgasms, but minor distractions from the giving and receiving of raw, unmitigated, pleasure.</p>
<hr />
<p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-41937770418138400282011-06-30T13:45:00.004-05:002017-07-04T15:40:40.071-05:00Eyes<p>This piece was also written some time in 1996. It is about an actual personal experience I had while sitting in Otto's Malt Shop on 39th Street in Kansas, City, MO, sometime around 3:00 in the morning.</p><hr /><p>"You just look in their eyes."</p><p>And I knew what she meant but I didn't seem to want to admit it. Not even to myself. Now noticing that she has the faintest little crow's feet (I always did like crow's feet, even when I was young, and I'm not sure why) and tiny crinkles under her eyes, I mention something vague about how some women get lines around their eyes at a very young age.</p><p>"No. In. In their eyes!" she says, penetrating my skull with her gaze. Emphasizing each "In" by poking her finger almost "In" her own eye. As if she were trying to pull me in there with her. Just for my own good. So I could learn from the experience.</p><p>Little does she know, I have looked "In" enough eyes for a lifetime. I have looked "In" the eyes of sixteen year-old women wizened by abuse. I have looked "In" the eyes of forty-one year old girls who have been abused so badly and for so long that they have retreated back to innocence (or is it ignorance) and child-like vulnerability. I have looked "In" eyes filled with dollar signs. Eyes that scan men up and down as if they were scanning the mag-stripe on a credit card. I have looked "In" eyes full of love and caring and watched as they filled (almost like in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon) with seething hate as those eyes projected the crimes of fathers onto me. I have looked "In" eyes full of love and caring but, looking deeper, found only a desperate need for love and caring. I have looked "In" eyes and seen the wisdom of the ages. Unfortunately, sometimes those eyes don't see their own wisdom and so the minds and bodies do foolish and self-destructive things. I have looked "In" the eyes of a gay friend and known they were the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen on a man. Seen that his "orientation" was exactly right for him. I have looked "In" eyes that revealed knowledge and maturity and worldliness but, nevertheless, were much too young to be looked into by eyes as old as mine.</p><p>Of course there have been many eyes with no interest in being looked "In" at all. Some kept out my eyes specifically. Others just kept out all prying eyes period. Most often, far too often, I have looked "In" eyes and found . . .</p><p>. . . nothing at all.</p><p>Eyes <u>can</u> reveal a lot about a person. The least of which is the number of years since their birth. Or what old TV shows they will have seen - not in re-runs. But, just now, at this point in my life, at this time of the morning, I am overwhelmed in, exhausted by, or perhaps just plain sick to death of what I have seen in so many eyes that I focus, instead, on the tip of her fingernail. So close to, but not quite "In" the eye she now wants to reveal to me.</p><hr /><p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-44564408586735890632011-06-30T13:13:00.001-05:002017-07-04T15:40:40.075-05:00Thought Shadows<p>Yet something else I wrote back in '95 or '96. I had seen the first line written out in those poetry magnets on somebody's refrigerator and finished out the rest myself.</p>
<hr />
<p>Delicately fingering moon shadows,<br />
we leave the sun behind.</p>
<p>Recalling a thousand tiny thoughts,<br />
we trace the shadows in our minds.</p>
<hr />
<p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-64896045152838322762011-06-30T12:47:00.000-05:002011-06-30T12:49:52.415-05:00The Sidewalk<p>I wrote this piece some time around 1995 or '96. It had been several years since I had seen my son, Benjamin, because his mother had a tendency to move around a lot. This made it pretty impossible for someone with little means, such as myself, to "track them down" as was so often suggested by people who have watched too many soap operas. I was sitting and thinking about all this one day when this came out:</p>
<hr />
<p>Benjamin used to love to walk on the sidewalk. I would come home from work and give him his first taste of independence. At first I would only let him go a foot or two by himself. But I did let him go. Other parents didn't seem to let their kids go anywhere, ever. I let him go. But only so far. "Hey Beee Jaaay!" I would sing-song after him. He would stop and turn around. Another sing-song of "Come baaack!" would bring him waddling back to me for a big hug. </p>
<p>I often wondered why he never just took off like those other kids I always saw parents chasing after. I guess, because we started giving him some freedom early, he didn't feel the need to "break free" any time he got the chance. One year olds are just like teenagers and the down-trodden masses. If you restrict them too much they are bound to rebel. We decided early-on not to be the kind of parents who said, "No!" to everything.</p>
<p>After a few days I would let him get a step or two further before I called him back. Then a step or two more. After a while he would stop on his own and look back. Sometimes I would call him back. Sometimes I would let him go another few steps. Before long I could trust him to go all the way to the end of the block and still come back when called. I'm sure it was because I let him go at all. He was about a year and a half then. I like to tell myself that today I would trust him with my life.</p>
<p>I sit here and think, "Perhaps I've discovered the secret. And it's so simple." But then I realize (or remember) it's been five years since I've seen him and he could be completely changed. He's fourteen now. I know lots of kids just a little older than he is. They have seen a hell of a lot of life already. Not all of it good. I'd like to think he has seen it too but risen just a little above it all. I want him to be a good person, but not because he isolated himself like I did.</p>
<p>What is he doing? What is he like? Does he think I've abandoned him and hate me for it? Does he understand? He seemed to when he was nine, but that was a long time ago. I can't get the years back. I can't do it again. A scalpel and some sutures have seen to that. Besides, I could never make another one like him. I think that's one of the reasons I totally discount the notion of a vasectomy reversal. I feel as if I made one casting and broke the mold. He may not be perfect but in my mind he's as close as it gets. When I finally see him again will he fall off the pedestal? Probably. Will I be proud of him? I'm sure. Should I try to contact him now? I don't know. Will he eventually contact me? I guess so. Will it be worse or better if I act or wait? I have absolutely no idea. I used to kiss him on the top of his head. I wonder if I will ever be able to do that again.</p>
<hr />
<p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-4317274650773239892011-06-09T11:50:00.002-05:002011-10-09T12:19:01.895-05:00"you" May Not Have Free Will but "YOU" Do<p>This post is in response to Sam Harris' article on Huffington Post: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/you-do-not-choose-what-yo_b_873654.html">You Do Not Choose What You Choose</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p>With apologies to Strother Martin: What we have here is a failure to equivocate.</p>
<p>In other words, this entire argument is based upon a fallacy of equivocation, defining a word in different ways within the same argument. Sam Harris narrowly defines the word "you" to mean "one's conscious self" at some points of this argument, but uses it to mean "all of one's body and brain" in other parts of his argument. In fact, he does so within the headline itself. </p>
<p>By stating that one's conscious self is not aware of or able to directly control the mechanisms by which one's unconscious self makes decisions, Mr. Harris seems to believe he has made the point that we have no free will. Instead, he has merely made the point that a small subset of what we commonly call "me" does not have free will. I will accept, as much research has shown, that my conscious self is usually - if not always - not directly aware of what is going on on the back burners of my brain. My conscious mind is not able to direct which synapses form where or how strong or redundant the connections will be.</p>
<p>However, I do not accept that my conscious mind is all there is to "me." Perhaps the distinction is between "me" (with a little 'm') and "Me" (with a capital 'M'). Both are nevertheless part of the collective "ME." I assert that - even though my conscious self may not be aware of what is going on - it is still "ME" who is ultimately making the decisions. My conscious self may not choose to choose "rabbit" instead of "elephant" but my unconscious self did. My conscious self may not know why my unconscious self chose one over the other but my unconscious self may. Or it may not. It is still "ME" that is making the decision. Even if that decision is entirely random and based on the quantum state of a couple of molecules of neurotransmitter. Those molecules are still part of "ME" and I claim them as my own.</p>
<p>In the end this "free will" debate is moot. Like creationism, free-will arguments will always be "gap-based" arguments. Anything that can't currently be explained will be treated as proof for one side of the argument or the other. We are unlikely to ever be able to definitively settle the dispute. What ultimately counts is our perceptions (as well as the reactions within our unconscious minds which those perceptions trigger). As long as our collective perception is that we can actually do something to make ourselves and our world better then I will be satisfied.</p>
<hr />
<p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-75920572648856530452011-04-20T11:33:00.003-05:002017-07-04T15:40:40.105-05:00False Patriotism<h2>A country consists of its land and its people. Whomever fails to care for both cannot consider themselves a patriot.</h2>
<hr />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/80x15.png" /></a><br /><span xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" property="dct:title" rel="dct:type">False Patriotism</span> by <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2011/04/false-patriotism.html" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL">Grant Sheridan Robertson</a> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License</a>.<br />Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340" rel="cc:morePermissions">http://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340</a>.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-47824333179079771412011-03-28T22:25:00.003-05:002015-05-21T19:43:11.924-05:00How to remove Renderable Text from .PDF files to allow OCR<p>For all those people out there - students, academics, archivists, and eBooks readers - who have been stymied by Adobe® Acrobat's® stubborn refusal to perform optical character recognition (OCR) on a document, claiming: "Acrobat could not perform recognition (OCR) on this page because: This page contains renderable text." - I believe I have found a workable solution. Notice, I am not saying it is "The" solution. That would be for Adobe® to fix their software. I just think this is a workable solution which is much better than the "save to TIFF and rebuild from there" solution offered by Adobe®. Using this technique, it is possible to obtain a searchable and text-select-able document while preserving the original image of the scanned document, if desired.</p>
<h2>Basics:</h2>
<ol>
<li>Print the "malfunctioning" .PDF file to the "Microsoft XPS Document Writer" printer driver (which you will need to install).</li>
<li>Convert the resulting .XPS file to an Acrobat® .PDF file.</li>
<li>Perform OCR in Acrobat® using one of the three available output styles depending on the type of document you have and the results you want.</li>
</ol>
<a name='more'></a>
<h2>Preliminary Notes:</h2>
<ul>
<li>You need the full (or "Pro") version of Adobe® Acrobat® to complete this procedure. However, as this same program is required to perform OCR from within Acrobat®, and anyone reading this is doing so because they normally would have been able to do the OCR but can't for some some specific document(s), I assume the reader has access to this "Pro" version of Adobe® Acrobat®; henceforth to be referred to simply as "Acrobat®." I use Acrobat 9 Pro®, but these procedures will likely work on any relatively recent version of the product.</li>
<li>This trick can only be done on Windows® computers, but the resulting file can then be used anywhere.</li>
<li>Although this trick does not require a lot of tedious manual labor, it does take up a lot of computer time and processing power.</li>
<li>I recommend testing these procedures out on individual - extracted - pages of your document, both to ensure you understand the process and to allow you to quickly try different variations so you can decide which result you like best.
<ul>
<li>To extract a single page in Acrobat®:
<ol>
<li>Open the thumbnail pane.</li>
<li>Select a sample page.</li>
<li>Right-click and choose "Extract Pages" and follow the prompts.
<ul>
<li>(Name the files appropriately so you can better judge the results of your experiments.)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li> (You may want to choose three different pages - text only, line drawing or graphics heavy, and photographic image heavy - to experiment around with.)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>This process generates some really large transitional files. Your final files are likely to be somewhat larger than the original file, depending on the original document and which OCR output style you choose. However, they will also be a lot more useful.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Full Procedure:</h2>
<h3>Install the XPS printer driver if you don't already have it on your computer:</h3>
<p>XPS is Microsoft's® answer to the Adobe® Acrobat® file format. It stands for "XML Paper Specification," following Microsoft's® habit of using generic naming for their products, as if they were the only product of their type in existence. From what I have read, it is supposedly similar to Acrobat® except that everything is in XML and can therefore be read by humans. It also makes for some extraneously large files. Fortunately we don't have to leave our files in this format. It is merely used as a transitional format, the conversion to which, strips out the bothersome "renderable text."</p>
<ol>
<li>Download the XPS printer driver here: <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b8dcffdd-e3a5-44cc-8021-7649fd37ffee&displaylang=en">http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b8dcffdd-e3a5-44cc-8021-7649fd37ffee&displaylang=en</a>.</li>
<li>Save the file where you can find it then double-click it to start the install. Follow the prompts to complete the install.
<ul>
<li>This will create a new printer in your "Printers and Faxes" folder. To print to it, you simply choose that printer instead of your regular printer when you print a document.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>Print the .PDF file to the .XPS "printer.":</h3>
<ol>
<li>Open the file in question using the latest version of Acrobat Reader and follow these <a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2009/06/grants-concise-gui-notation-system.html">GCGUINS</a> instructions: { File / Print ; Printer, Name = Mocrpsoft XPS Document Writer[v] ; [Properties] ; <Layout> ; [Advanced] ; Microsoft XPS .../Document Options/ Interleaving: = Off...[v] ; Images: = PNG-Lossless compression[v] ; [OK] ; [OK] ; Page Handling, Page Scaling: = None[v] ; [ ] Auto-Rotate... ; [OK] } to "print" it to the "Microsoft XPS Document Writer" printer driver just as you would when "printing" to an Acrobat® .PDF file. The printer driver will open up a "File Save" dialog asking where to save the .XPS file. </li>
</ol>
<p>This could take quite some time depending on how much "rendered text" (i.e. selectable text) is in the document. Text that is actually only an image should convert rather quickly because this process seems to simply move the image portions of the documents straight over without any conversion or alteration whatsoever. Though I am not positive, the little bit of poking around in the document I did, causes me to speculate that the .XPS printer driver converts each and every character in the document into a vector graphic, similar to an Adobe postscript file. As you can imagine, this makes for an incredibly large file (see the table below) and it takes a really long time. I would suggest you start this process and then go off to a long lunch or meeting. If you have a separate computer on which you can run these processes, more's the better.</p>
<h3>Convert the .XPS file back into a .PDF file.</h3>
<p>Now this step is really going to take a long time, perhaps hours. If you have a large document with lots of "rendered text," I recommend that you start the process before going to bed or before leaving the office for the night. In addition, once you have started this process, it will look as if your computer isn't doing anything at all for almost the entire time. This is because Acrobat® does not display any user interface until it has completed the conversion and has a .PDF document to show.</p>
<ol>
<li>Right click on the file and choose the appropriate context menu option:
<ul>
<li>Some installations of Acrobat® place an item in the Windows® file explorer context menu (pops up when you right-click on a file) that says "Combine supported files in Acrobat..." when you right-click on any file that Acrobat® knows how to convert to .PDF format. If you see this option in your context menu when you right-click on a .XPS file then choose it because this gives you the most control. (Yes, it works even though you only selected one file.)
<ul>
<li>In the 'Combine Files' dialog, in the lower right corner: Choose the largest document icon to choose the largest file size, and click [Combine Files].</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>If the above option is not available look for 'Convert to Adobe PDF.' This function will not open any dialog or the Acrobat Pro window until the file has been completely converted. It will look as if your computer is either not doing anything or is locked up. Don't reboot like I did the first few times interrupting the process. Just be patient.</li>
<li>If you don't see either of the above options then - from the context menu - choose: { Open With / Adobe Acrobat x } or choose { Open With / Choose Program... } and select Adobe Acrobat® from the list. Be sure <strong>not</strong> to select Acrobat Reader®.
<ul>
<li>(I wouldn't recommend selecting the "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" option because you only want to open .XPS files in Acrobat when you <strong>really</strong> want to convert them to .PDF format. If you just want to view the file quickly, you really should just use the XPS viewer. It is a lot faster.)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>(Optional) If you had to use either of the last two options above then you may want to double check that things have actually started processing. As I stated earlier, Acrobat® may not display anything for hours. The best way to check on this is to use the Windows® Task Manager.
<ol type="a">
<li>Right-click in the task bar and choose "Task Manager" (XP) or "Start Task Manager" (Windows 7).</li>
<li>Select the "Processes" tab and look for "acrobat.exe." (If you click the "CPU" column header twice (not double-click) then acrobat.exe should be at about the top of the list.) The acrobat.exe process should be using about 50% of your CPU time. </li>
<li>Now look in the "Memory ..." column (normally the fourth one). acrobat.exe should be using up ever increasing amounts of memory.
<ul>
<li>Believe it or not, that is how you know Acrobat® is processing your file. Essentially, Acrobat® is building up a complete .PDF file in memory before displaying it to you. Considering that the .XPS file has a separate vector graphic for each separate character in the file, that is a lot of data. And, until you do the OCR, all that data is in the .PDF file too.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Go to bed and get some sleep. Research shows this is very important to your overall productivity and health.</li>
<li>Save the file.
<ul>
<li>Acrobat® does not generate a file on disk. It was only generated in memory. You must save the file to disk yourself. Choose an appropriate file name and <strong>DO NOT overwrite</strong> your original file.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<p>I do have to admit that this conversion does seem to produce slightly blurier images for scanned documents. It appears that either Acrobat or the XPS driver does a little bit of antialiasing of the jagged edges. </p>
<h3>Perform the OCR:</h3>
<p>Most people who have used Acrobat® to do OCR know there are three different output styles to choose from: Searchable Image, Searchable Image (exact), and ClearScan. Which you choose depends on the original document and the intended use for the final document. </p>
<ol>
<li>To select the desired output style and start the OCR process: in Acrobat®: { Document / OCR Text Recognition / Recognize Text using OCR ; Settings, [Edit] ; PDF Output Style = <em>your chosen method as elaborated below</em> [v] ; Downsample Images = Lowest (600 dpi) [v] ; [OK] ; [OK] }
<ul>
<li>(These instructions are in <a href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2009/06/grants-concise-gui-notation-system.html">GCGUINS</a> format for concision.)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Save the file using yet another file name.
<ul>
<li>Until you are completely satisfied with the results, you should not delete or overwrite any of these files. </li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h4>Mostly-Image (scanned) Documents:</h4>
<p>Most academics will be dealing with scanned documents, where the "document" is actually just a series of images of pages stored in the .PDF file. These become a problem for OCR when the scanning software did not already do the OCR but did insert some computer printed ("rendered") text, thus causing Acrobat® to choke and show the dreaded "... could not perform recognition (OCR) ..." error dialog.</p>
<p>Now, said academic may want to preserve the original image of the document for possible scrutinizing or grabbing snapshots from in the future. In which case, said academic should choose the "Searchable Image (exact)" OCR output style. Acrobat® recognizes the text but hides the recognized text behind the image, which it does not disturb at all. This produces a pretty large file. However, if the file was really just a series of images to begin with, then the resulting file may not be much larger than the original.</p>
<p>On the other hand, our imaginary academic may want to produce the smallest possible file size, or may have hopes of producing a file that is easier to read than the scanned original. In this case he or she should choose the ClearScan OCR output style. This causes Acrobat® to replace the image file with a set of custom-generated fonts, designed to look as close as possible to the original fonts, but with clean edges instead of blurry, scanned edges. It is easier to read, but, if Acrobat® guessed wrong for some words while doing its OCR magic, then all you are left with is the bad guess. It also sometimes completely gives up and just places a small image of the word - or just a couple of letters - in the spot where those letters should have gone. It is acceptably readable but it looks weird and those words or letters aren't selectable.</p>
<p>The plain "Searchable Image" output style is a decent middle of the road option, but it does modify the look of the page images because they are compressed. You should experiment to make sure you can tolerate the results.</p>
<h4>Mostly-Text Documents:</h4>
<p>Some of the documents that cause the "renderable text" error look as if they were generated by a computer ("born digital," as some are saying these days) but either some of the text is not selectable or it is selectable but the copied text is gibberish. Many people suspect this is meant to prevent people from copying any of the document for use elsewhere. It also makes the document practically useless for any academic or business purpose. For these kinds of documents, the .XPS file can be ginormous; ten to twenty times the size of the original .PDF file. </p>
<p>The "Searchable Image (exact)" output style does produce the best looking result - the final document looks exactly like the original - but the final .PDF file size is only slightly less ginormous than the .XPS file. This is because all the vector images of all the individual characters in the document are retained when using this OCR output style. While that isn't a problem for a mostly-image (scanned) document because there is a relatively small amount of "rendered text," it is a nightmare for mostly-text documents because of the vast quantity of individual vectors they contain. So, only use the "Searchable Image (exact)" output style if the document also contains images which you absolutely must retain in their original quality. If the most important images are on separate pages from the text then one could selectively OCR only the pages with text using the ClearScan output style.</p>
<p>I do not recommend the plain "Searchable Image" output style because it produces really poor quality character renderings. It is readable and selectable but it is much more difficult to read than documents produced using either the "Searchable Image (exact)" or the "ClearScan"output style.</p>
<p>The ClearScan output style results in very nice looking text as well as files that are usually less than twice the size of the original, sometimes even smaller than the original. However, the images within the document may not look as good as the originals. Again, some selective OCRing may produce a more optimum result, but that requires more manual labor, which we are trying to avoid. </p>
<h4>Comparison Chart:</h4>
<p>I have performed this conversion on three different types of pages taken from a mostly-text document: a page with all text, one with some text and a single B&W photograph, and one with some text but also some line drawings. The chart below shows the resulting file sizes. If there is nothing in a cell, that means I didn't think it was worth trying that conversion.</p>
<table width="393" border="1" align="center">
<caption>
Mostly Text - File Size Comparison
</caption>
<tr>
<th width="185" scope="col"> </th>
<th width="59" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="col">Text</th>
<th width="47" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="col">Photo</th>
<th width="74" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="col">Drawings</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="row">Original File:</th>
<td align="center">44k</td>
<td align="center">273k</td>
<td align="center">109k</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="row">.XPS File:</th>
<td align="center">767k</td>
<td align="center">336k</td>
<td align="center">381k</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="row">Converted, Pre-OCR:</th>
<td align="center">611k</td>
<td align="center">290k</td>
<td align="center">323k</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="row">Searchable Image:</th>
<td align="center">397k</td>
<td align="center"> </td>
<td align="center"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="row">Searchable Image (exact):</th>
<td align="center">597k</td>
<td align="center">287k</td>
<td align="center">334k</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" scope="row">ClearScan:</th>
<td align="center">44k</td>
<td align="center">89k</td>
<td align="center">127k</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p> </p>
<p>As you can see, the results vary dramatically. Note, however, that pages with the most text produced the greatest increase in size when printing to the .XPS file. When I processed a 350-page, mostly-text, 10MB document: the XPS file was 175MB, and the resulting document came out to 15MB using the ClearScan OCR method. </p>
<p>I haven't performed similar tests on mostly-image documents at this time. Perhaps I will do so later. Such is the luxury of doing all this only for my own edification and sharing the information completely free (without any ads even).</p>
<p>Hopefully, this article will be a big help for: A) all those students out there trying to OCR all those papers they have collected in their research so they can pull quotes out of them without retyping everything, as well as B) those archivists out there who are trying to make the documents in their collections searchable. Though I have not done so, it should also be possible to write some kind of script that would completely automate this process for batch-processing lots of files at the same time. If this helps you, please let me know. If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to contact me.</p>
<hr />
<p><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />
<span xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" property="dct:title" rel="dct:type">How to remove Renderable Text from .PDF files to allow OCR</span> by <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://www.ideationizing.com/2011/03/ocr-acrobat-pdf-with-renderable-text.html" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL">Grant Sheridan Robertson</a> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.<br />
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340" rel="cc:morePermissions">here</a>.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com60tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-60188605269097619082011-01-15T23:03:00.003-06:002017-07-04T15:40:40.093-05:00Atheist Activist Vows To Fight Illinois Moment Of Silence LawToday, Huffington Post had an article about an atheist activist trying to force his views on others. As an atheist myself, I take exception to his tactics so I posted the following comment:
<br />
<hr />
I am an atheist and I also believe that religion has likely caused or facilitated more horror than any other social ill. However, I have long advocated FOR allowing students to take a moment of silence precisely because it is more in line with the constitution. Note that the words "Separation of church and state" are not in the constitution. It simply says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." To disallow students from taking a moment of silence - to pray if they want to - is definitely "prohibiting the free exercise" of their religion.<br />
I don't know if REQUIRING that moment of silence is the proper solution. But if you don't give students at least some time to pray before events for which their religion would normally dictate that they pray, then you are "prohibiting the free exercise" of their religion. As long as the students don't abuse the right to the point that it is truly disruptive, and there is no discrimination against those who do something other than pray during this time, then I see no problem with it. Students who tease others who don't pray should be sued for violation of their civil rights.<br />
Atheists going to the Supreme Court to stop children from exercising their religion is just as bad as the Christian right trying to pass laws based only upon their own beliefs. <br />
<hr />
The contents of this post is Copyright © 2011 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-46253800753899206022010-11-30T16:06:00.004-06:002015-05-21T19:43:11.916-05:00Spaced Repetition for Learning Concepts<span class="SR4Concepts20101130"> <style type="text/css">
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<div class="Section1"><div class="MsoTitle" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Spaced Repetition for Learning Concepts: </span></div><div class="MsoTitle" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">A new neurobiological foundation for research and a computer-aided means of performing said research.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">“Practice makes perfect.” “Use it or lose it.” These are expressions students hear often from parents and teachers attempting to persuade those students to do their homework or practice the piano regularly. It is common knowledge that reading or studying some topic once and then putting it away till test time is a recipe for failure. This is why teachers assign homework. Many even claim the test itself is a learning tool. But are these notions myths, based on centuries old traditions, or do they really work. If so, under what conditions? And how can study time be optimized so that students learn as much as possible in as little time as possible?</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Ever since the late 1800s researchers have been trying to determine the answer to that question. Since that time. literally hundreds of studies have been performed verifying and reverifying a principle that has come to be known alternatively as “spaced repetition,” “distributed practice,” the “spacing effect,” and other similar terms. In this paper the term “spaced repetition” (SR) shall be used to name the phenomenon wherein study “items with repetitions that are separated by time or other events are remembered better than items with repetitions that are massed, occurring in immediate succession” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221071\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/FEIF8AMK\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Toppino & Schneider, 1999, p. 1071)</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a phenomenon “many researchers would consider […] to be among the best established phenomena in the area of learning and memory <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022prefix\0022\:\0022e\.g\.\,\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/N7EB8GS7\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(e.g.,Dempster, 1988)</span>” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221071\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/FEIF8AMK\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Toppino & Schneider, 1999, p. 1071)</span>, it is interesting that “neither American classrooms nor American textbooks appear to implement spaced reviews in any systematic way” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022627\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/N7EB8GS7\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Dempster, 1988, p. 627)</span>.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">By ignoring this research, I believe American educators are missing out on an important learning tool. Further, I claim that SR (spaced repetition) can be applied to the learning of complicated concepts – what Sarah D. Mackay Austin <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/M4DU9PP2\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1921)</span> called “logical memory” and Danielle Mazur <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003)</span> called “abstract learning” – in addition to the simple rote memorization of what I call “factoids,” simple word-pair or question-answer associations. Though extensive research – over the past 130 years – has confirmed over and over again that SR works, researchers have had difficulty in developing a reliable theory as to why or how it works <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022633\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/N7EB8GS7\0022\]\}\,\{\0022locator\0022\:\00223\, 5\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Dempster, 1988, p. 633; Mazur, 2003, pp. 3, 5)</span>. In addition there are several legitimate criticisms as to the past and current methods of research as well as the practical application of spaced repetition in the classroom <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022627\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/N7EB8GS7\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Dempster, 1988, p. 627)</span>. One such criticism is – despite the vast volumes of research – very little of it has involved much more than the memorization of text. Only a very few studies have been conducted examining the potential of SR for learning concepts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As memory is very likely an evolved trait <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022271\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/HENQVU48\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007, p. 271)</span>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it just doesn’t make sense that there would have been evolutionary pressure to evolve memory for word-pairs but not for general concepts. In fact, it is reasonable to assume just the opposite. Therefore, I believe – as does Mazur <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\002222\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003, p. 22)</span> – that more research needs to be done in the application of SR for learning concepts. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">By examining recent – and not so recent – research revealing how neurons in the brain actually form memories, I hope to provide a new foundation for SR research. Finally, by introducing a new computer-based system which can facilitate the learning of complex concepts while, at the same time, collecting the research data necessary to fine tune the theory and its application, I hope to finally bring 130 years of research to fruition and usher in a new era of education.</span></div><a name='more'></a><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Spaced repetition (SR) has – unfortunately, as we shall see – been given many different definitions by many different researchers. Generally, it means that the study time is spread out amongst two or more discrete periods as opposed to doing all studying all at one time, often called “massed” study (Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, & Rohrer, 2006, pp. 354-355; Dempster, 1988, p. 627; Mazur, 2003, p. iii; Toppino & Schneider, 1999, p. 1071). However, the intervals between study time which are considered massed or spaced vary greatly from one experiment to another and often overlap. Cepeda, et al. chose to define massed study as any time less than one second elapsed between instances of studying the same factoid and defined spaced repetition as any time more than one second elapsed <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/SKJ2PVVV\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2006)</span>. On the other hand, Mazur gives as an example: “If a student solves five long division problems on one day and five others one week later, the strategy is distributed. If the student solved all 10 problems on the same day, it would be considered massed practice” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003, p. 1)</span>, regardless of how much time passed between working each problem during the “massed” study. Many researchers have considered the reading of long lists of word pairs over and over again to be massed repetition even though quite some time passed between going back over any specific word pair. Nellie Perkins considered one day between study sessions to be massed repetition and a two to four days <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>interval to be spaced <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suffix\0022\:\0022cited in\: Mazur\, 2003\, p\. 6\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/AXIV2RZA\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1914 cited in: Mazur, 2003, p. 6)</span>. So, you can see the time frames have been all over the map. On top of that, some researchers have used the term “spaced repetition” in experiments where the test consisted of providing multiple instances of the stimulus separated by a time interval and then looking for the response <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/79I2ZCMM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Roberts, 1974)</span>. In effect, the experimenters were asking the question twice rather than teaching the behavior twice. It is actually quite amazing that – despite the wide range of time frames used – the results of all these experiments have been so consistently positive <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022358\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/SKJ2PVVV\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Cepeda et al., 2006, p. 358)</span>. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">The first experiments were carried out by Herman Ebbinghaus starting in 1879 using nonsense syllables <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/X5NTGT2M\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1885)</span>. Ebbinghaus demonstrated what many of us already know, that memory falls off faster at first then at an ever decreasing rate. Though he may not have ever drawn it himself, Ebbinghaus is famous for the “Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve” – sometimes called a “retension curve” – which looks like this:</span></div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 480;"><tbody>
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<tr> <td></td> <td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXlOZs6W7QOx8KtJDA391fyq0PNWnQQC-8y9UD_m1cuZaldX_7L0mSEYWwozOqwMZJUdjCnvkVUXl62dDFsYnsdZF90BgHI5pGPXLS0si8UIURBOYWONXvwIhAoOv3QXDB8NHNyNozan0/s1600-h/EbbinghausCurve-1.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="Ebbinghaus Curve 1" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354389217750274146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXlOZs6W7QOx8KtJDA391fyq0PNWnQQC-8y9UD_m1cuZaldX_7L0mSEYWwozOqwMZJUdjCnvkVUXl62dDFsYnsdZF90BgHI5pGPXLS0si8UIURBOYWONXvwIhAoOv3QXDB8NHNyNozan0/s400/EbbinghausCurve-1.gif" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 207px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a> </td> </tr>
</tbody></table></span> <span class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent" style="text-align: right;"> <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/TIXF7NP6\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Robertson, 2008)</span></span><br clear="ALL" style="mso-ignore: vglayout;" /> </div></td> </tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Ebbinghaus was originally only interested in how long it took to forget something but, with some additional experimentation, he found that he could remember things better if he distributed his practice over several days rather than study it all at once. This work was relatively quickly replicated by Jost <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/7ETKB9MD\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1897)</span> who “found that the number of syllables rightly named increased progressively with the extent of the distribution, being greatest where the 24 repetitions were spread over 12 days” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022683\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/VSPSBWPD\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(W. G. Smith, 1897, p. 683)</span> and Thorndike <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suffix\0022\:\0022cited in Cepeda et al\.\, 2006\, p\. 354\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/MT9TR84T\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1912 cited in Cepeda et al., 2006, p. 354)</span>. Followed quickly by Darwin Lyon <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/I5WB285W\0022\]\}\,\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UJ6IHH4J\0022\]\}\,\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/TSUTVDNQ\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Lyon, 1914a, 1914b, 1914c)</span>. Skipping ahead to more recent work, “Hellyer <span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/TUESIEX2\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1962)</span></span> found that repetition of consonant trigrams raised the level of the short-term retention curve and decreased the rate at which the curve fell” <span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\002274\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/ZT66GDGM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Roberts, 1972, p. 74)</span></span>. This means the memory was stronger after the repetitions than it was originally and that it then took longer to forget. Joel Zimmerman tested "spaced repetition" by having subjects memorize a list with 87 total occurrences of 42 words arranged such that some of the words were repeated 2 or 3 times in a row (massed repetition) and other words were repeated 2 or 3 times but with either 3 or 14 other words between them for an average total list study time of about 10 minutes. Though this only produced a "spacing" of 28 or 98 seconds it still resulted in a significant difference in recall over the massed repetitions <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/7NPPCNTT\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1975)</span>. Toppino and DeMesquita <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/8IHC8634\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1984)</span> found that “spacing repetitions facilitated recall, and the function relating recall of repeated items to the spacing between repetitions was the same throughout the age range.” Experiments performed by Kitao and Inoue <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PQBJD52R\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1998)</span> “showed significant spacing effects on implicit memory as well as on explicit memory.” In fact there has been so much research on spaced repetition that even a cursory review of the literature is well beyond the scope of this paper. For an extensive list of citations please refer to the reference lists of Mazur <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003)</span> as well as Cepeda et al. <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/SKJ2PVVV\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2006)</span> who reviewed 427 articles, choosing “a total of 317 experiments in 184 articles” on which to perform meta-analysis and found “the average observed benefit from distributed practice (over massed practice) in these studies was 15%.” (note: The articles were not chosen to influence the results. Rather, they were chosen because they all followed similar protocols and were, therefore, easy to compare to each other.)</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">With all this support, you can imagine there are few criticism as to the veracity of the claims made about spaced repetition. Winz <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/D67FM8X4\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1931)</span> performed experiments wherein massed learning performed better than spaced repetition. However, I believe Winz's assumptions to be incorrect. He couldn't know it at the time but the interval he allowed between spaced repetitions was far too long. Long enough for the memories to have faded almost completely. In addition, the amount of material memorized was so small and the time between study and evaluation was so short that the "massed" learning results could be completely accounted for simply by the information still being in the subject's short-term memory. It almost seems as if Winz specifically devised this test to contradict the work of Jost and Lyon.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Another criticism leveled against SR is that it has not been shown to work consistently in the classroom. Almost all of the positive results listed above were laboratory studies, where subjects memorized lists of either nonsense syllables, words, or word pairs. These are not the kinds of things teachers spend most of their time teaching in class. As Mazur wrote, “While studies such as these show the merits of spaced practice, these findings do not provide information useful to teachers who have entire lesson plans to prepare, often with too much material as it is” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003, p. 1)</span>. Dempster writes, “Obviously, issues regarding the utilization of findings from basic research are complicated, and there are many potential impediments to the implementation of research findings in the classroom” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022627\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/N7EB8GS7\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1988, p. 627)</span>. That said, there are at least some studies which have given positive results in the classroom <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/K2P67IH3\0022\]\}\,\{\0022suffix\0022\:\0022cited in\: Dempster\, 1988\, p\. 630\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/JDSM9NTQ\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Bloom & Shuell, 1981; S. M. Smith & Rothkopf, 1984 cited in: Dempster, 1988, p. 630)</span>. In fact, most teachers do implement a rudimentary form of spaced repetition. They assign readings, go over the material in class, assign homework, sometimes give quizzes or go over homework, then administer a test. While I do not believe this is ideal, it is still better than nothing as shown by dozens of successful experiments with very long spacing intervals <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/SKJ2PVVV\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Cepeda et al., 2006)</span>. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Yet another reason spaced repetition may not have been fully implemented in the classroom is that there is still yet not any sound theoretical basis for why and how SR works. Not that psychology theorists haven’t tried. Several different theories have been proposed. Deficient-processing theory (Challis, 1993; Jacoby, 1978; Rose & Rowe, 1976; Shaughnessy, Zimmerman, & Underwood, 1972 cited in: Toppino & Schneider, 1999, p. 1071), sometimes called the voluntary attention hypothesis <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suffix\0022\:\0022cited in\: Dempster\, 1988\;">(Dempster, 1986 cited in: Dempster, 1988; Mazur, 2003, pp. 3-4)</span>, claims that students do not give 100% of their energies to studying anything but the first presentation in a massed study session. They pay attention to the material the first time they see it but do not attend to it as carefully when they are forced to go over it immediately thereafter. On the other hand, students are assumed to pay more attention to the repeated material if some time has passed since they studied it, thus the actual processing time is presumed to be longer for the spaced material. There are many different forms of this theory but they all boil down to the same basic hypothesis. However, as Mazur writes:</span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoBlockText"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Although the voluntary attention hypothesis sounds promising, there are some findings that are inconsistent with this theory. First, the spacing effect has been found with pre-school children who have limited voluntary control over their thought processes <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suffix\0022\:\0022cited in\: Dempster\, 1989\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/ATS22T37\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Rea & Modigliani, 1985 cited in: Dempster, 1989)</span>. Second, researchers have manipulated conditions to make participants pay more attention to massed presentations, but these studies failed to eliminate the spacing effect <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suffix\0022\:\0022cited in\: Dempster\, 1989\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/6RTHTNKT\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Hintzman, 1976 cited in: Dempster, 1989)</span>. Third, the effects of spacing have been observed in incidental learning tasks, where little attention was paid to the task at hand (Rowe & Rose, 1974, cited in: Dempster, 1989). Hence, these findings are not consistent with the voluntary attention hypothesis <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003)</span>.</span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">In other words, the deficient processing theory is not supported by the evidence.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Toppino and Schneider give us an excellent description of another theory, called “encoding-variability theory”:</span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoBlockText"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">According to encoding-variability theories (e.g. Bower, 1972; Glenberg, 1976, 1979; Madigan, 1969), massed repetitions are likely to be encoded similarly, whereas spaced repetitions are likely to be encoded differently, enabling a greater number of effective retrieval cues. Thus, proponents of these theories attribute the superiority of spaced repetitions to the greater accessibility of differentially encoded information. <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221071\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/FEIF8AMK\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1999, p. 1071)</span></span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">However, as Mazur explains”</span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoBlockText"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">This theory is also unable to explain all previous findings. Many studies have purposely manipulated changes in context and have resulted in declined recall rather than the predicted increase <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/MHDFJMD3\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Dempster, 1989)</span>. Therefore, the encoding variability theory cannot fully explain the presence of the spacing effect. <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00224-5\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003, pp. 4-5)</span></span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Yet another theory is called the “study-phase retrieval theory.” “In this theory, the second (restudy) presentation serves as a cue to recall the memory trace of the first presentation” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022369-370\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/SKJ2PVVV\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Cepeda et al., 2006, pp. 369-370)</span>. This theory is backed up by empirical evidence <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/QS7H5TT9\0022\]\}\,\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/ABSEMUV9\0022\]\}\,\{\0022suffix\0022\:\0022cited in\: Cepeda et al\.\, 2006\, pp\. 369-370\0022\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/I6FZU654\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Braun & Rubin, 1998; Murray, 1983; Thios & D’Agostino, 1976 cited in: Cepeda et al., 2006, pp. 369-370)</span><span style="display: none; mso-hide: all;"> [cited in: <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022369-370\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/SKJ2PVVV\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Cepeda et al., 2006, pp. 369-370)</span>]</span>. As we shall see later on – though it doesn’t appear that the theorists quite realized it at the time – there may be a sound, biological basis for this particular theory.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent" id="neurobiology"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">What is a little disturbing to me is that, through all of this research and theorizing, it doesn’t seem as if any of the psychology researchers ever thought to find out what might actually be going on inside the brain, at the cellular level. They continuously use terms such as “memory trace,” “consolidation,” “retrieval,” “short-term memory,” and “long-term memory” as if they are quasi-magical phenomena taking place in a black box, the insides of which can never be examined. But the insides of that box have been thoroughly examined since the late 1950s by neurobiologists such as Eric Kandel <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221030\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001, p. 1030)</span> and followed up by many others since then (e.g. Beardsley, 1999; Fields, 2005; Harvey & Svoboda, 2007; Swaminathan, 2007) who have revealed much about how memories are actually formed. Information which memory and learning researchers in the field of psychology have had almost 50 years in which to refer and yet have failed to do so. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">In order to fully appreciate how neurobiology should play a major role in spaced-repetition research it is important to understand how memories are formed. What follows is a somewhat brief explanation of what these researchers have discovered. In 1949, Donald Hebb speculated, “that an association could not be localized to a single synapse. Instead, neurons were grouped in ‘cell assemblies,’ and an association was distributed over their synaptic connections” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/C9VXNHRD\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Seung, 2000)</span>, researchers have since determined this is actually the case.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">As many readers may know, a nerve-cell – called a neuron – consists of a cell body, containing the nucleus which holds the DNA. Extending out from the cell body are two different types of fibers: many dendrites – the input fibers – with thousands of branches, plus one long axon – the output fiber – with a comparatively small number of branches on the end. The axon of one neuron will connect to one or more dendrite on one or more other neuron at a point called a synapse, which is just a small gap between the cell membranes. Nerve signals travel down an axon, across a synapse, and into the dendrite of the next neuron. We were all taught this in basic biology. What most of us don't know is how those synapses are formed and how the neurons decide where to form them, which ones to connect to which other nerve fibers, and how this causes memories to be formed. For this explanation we will focus primarily on the dendrites.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">We have been taught that dendrites are "fibers" but, according to research done by Mirjana Maletic-Savatic and her colleagues at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they actually have </span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoBlockText"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Countless tiny fingerlike projections extending from [them] like tentacles. These projections, called filopodia, continually appear[…], change[…] shape and disappear[…] on a timescale of minutes” [When a small electrical stimulus, ] similar to what a nearby neuron might do when excited by a thought or a sight or a touch, [was<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>applied near to a dendrite it] caused more filopodia to emerge close to the site of the stimulus and made existing ones grow longer. Some eventually generated bulbous heads, suggesting they were turning into dendritic "spines" – permanent structures that can link a dendrite to another neuron via a synapse. “It is very likely these are real synapses being formed,” Maletic-Savatic says. <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/TXSQ2QMI\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Beardsley, 1999)</span> </span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Once the synapses are formed at the end of the "spines" on the dendrites they can then receive a signal from the other neuron's axon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Research done from the late 1950s to the present by Eric R. Kandel <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001)</span> of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and his colleagues, as reported in the November 2, 2001 issue of the journal, <i>Science</i>, as well as the more recent work of R. Douglas Fields <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2005)</span> and his colleagues at the Neurosciences and Cognitive Science Program at the University of Maryland, as reported by Fields in the February, 2005 issue of <i>Scientific American</i>, plus the work of many others, have filled in an incredible picture of what happens next. Kandel chose to use sea snails because they have very large neurons that are easy to study <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221030\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001, p. 1030)</span>. He later moved on to studying the neurons from the hippocampus of mice, both to show what he had learned in the sea snail translated to mammals and because the mouse hippocampus is very similar to that of humans <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221035\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:3\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001, p. 1035)</span>. Fields studied only the hippocampal neurons of mice and rats.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Contrary to popular belief, electricity does not flow down a nerve fiber and jump across the synapse. Scientists just use a small electrical signal because it often simulates and/or triggers the chemical reactions that do transmit the signals. Because these chemical reactions involve ions – charged molecules – the reactions can also often be sensed by using a very sensitive electrical probe. The chemicals that transmit the signal across the synapse are called neurotransmitters. There are many different kinds, but Kandel and his team determined that the neurotransmitter which is used here is one called serotonin <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221032-1033\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:3\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001, pp. 1032-1033)</span>. When a signal traveling down an axon hits a synapse the axon side of the synapse releases a tiny bit of serotonin. The amount released depends on the strength of the original signal. That serotonin is detected by the other side of the synapse on the next neuron's dendrite. This is how the dentritic synapse is actually "stimulated" in the brain.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">When a synapse is stimulated by serotonin above a certain threshold, a small voltage potential is created on the cell membrane of the spine and the spine grows slightly larger <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Fields, 2005)</span>. This is called early long term potentiation (LPT) and can last one to three hours <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221035\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Kandel, 2001, p. 1035)</span>. During this period the spine is more sensitive to additional stimulus <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\,\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221032-1033\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Fields, 2005; Kandel, 2001, pp. 1032-1033)</span> and a similar stimulus produces twice the additional voltage potential on the cell membrane of the spine as did the original signal <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Fields, 2005)</span>. Scientists believe this temporary sensitivity is the basis for short term memory. The presence of the serotonin also causes a reaction inside the spine which allows it to react to a specific protein which will cause the synapse to grow and become more permanently sensitized to stimulus <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221033\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Kandel, 2001, p. 1033)</span>. The exact protein is unknown but scientists do know that it is only created when it is needed and only lasts for a certain length of time. As with all proteins, it can only be created if a certain gene in the nucleus of the cell is activated. So, when a signal is received on a synapse, that synapse and its spine are now sensitized in two ways. The synapse is more reactive to a subsequent signal coming in and the spine is now looking for that special protein that will tell it to become more permanent <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\,\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221032-1033\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Fields, 2005; Kandel, 2001, pp. 1032-1033)</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">As Fields reports, not all signals strong enough to cause this sensitization (early LTP) are necessarily strong enough to cause the neuron as a whole to fire off a signal down its axon – the output fiber. However, if that same synapse receives a burst of additional signals within a very short timeframe (on the order of microseconds to half of a second) then it can build up enough voltage potential across the cell membrane to cause the neuron to fire. This is called an "action potential," presumably because it is enough potential to cause an action. An action potential can also be created when multiple synapses near each other receive a signal at the same time or even when one synapse receives a much stronger stimulus. Any combination of signal strength, rapid repetition, and number of synapses simultaneously stimulated which creates enough of a voltage potential - that action potential - to build up on a small area of the cell membrane, will then cause the neuron to fire <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2005)</span>. Interestingly, work done by Christopher D. Harvey and Karel Svoboda has also shown when the synapse on one spine has been stimulated enough to cause an action potential, other spines within approximately 10 µm are also then more sensitive to stimulus for a period of about ten minutes <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221199\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/TGBITHGK\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2007, p. 1199)</span>.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Creating an action potential, causing the neuron to fire, is important because without it no long-term memories can be formed. When an action potential is created on the cell membrane – in addition to causing the neuron to fire – it also causes a sequence of chemical reactions to occur throughout a web of molecules that stretch from the cell membrane to the nucleus <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\,\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221032-1033\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Fields, 2005; Kandel, 2001, pp. 1032-1033)</span>. Fields discovered that this web of molecules is set up in such a way that it reacts differently to action potentials that are created at different intervals. A rapid set of action potentials, occurring too closely together, will cause the same reaction as if it were one single action potential. In other words, the chemicals are set up to ignore multiple redundant action potentials occurring too closely together. Action potentials occurring at various other intervals cause different sequences, or chains, of chemicals to react. This web of molecules and their various chains of chemical reactions act as a kind of filter and routing system. Each different type of chemical-chain reacts to a different pattern in the timing of action potentials and causes the activation of a different gene in the neuron's nucleus <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2005)</span>.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Kandel's team used puffs of serotonin to stimulate the sea snail synapses in the same way they are stimulated normally. Using this method he determined that it required five spaced puffs of serotonin to start the chain reaction which produces the needed protein <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221033\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001, p. 1033)</span>. Fields, on the other hand, used electrical stimulus, applied directly to specific mouse synapses and determined that the correct pattern of stimulation to activate the gene needed for long-term memory formation is at least three action potentials, at least ten minutes apart <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2005)</span>. This pattern of action potentials will cause the correct chain of chemicals to react, which will activate the gene in the nucleus which produces the protein which causes the sensitized spine to become more permanent, a state called "late LTP" <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\,\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221035\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Fields, 2005; Kandel, 2001, p. 1035)</span>. Though each research team used different – but acceptably equivalent – stimulation methods and arrived at a different number of stimulations, it is clear that a pattern of multiple stimulations, spaced over time is necessary convert short-term memories into long-term ones.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">According to Fields, when the specified gene is activated, it will remain activated and continue to produce the needed protein for about 30 minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any spines on the neuron which happen to be in the sensitized (early LTP) state will react to that protein, be converted to the late LPT state, and become more permanent, as described earlier. This includes the synapses which caused the action potentials as well as any nearby synapses which had received only enough of a signal to become sensitized. Because the protein degrades over time, the window for this additional reinforcement of the memory is relatively short <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/UVBQKMHM\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2005)</span>. However, through further experimentation, Kandel's team was also able to determine that “further training, four brief trains a day for four days, gives rise to an even more enduring memory lasting weeks” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221031-1032\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001, pp. 1031-1032)</span>. As Kandel writes, “practice makes perfect, even in snails” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221031\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:3\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001, p. 1031)</span>. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Now that we know how our memories actually work, how can we apply this to spaced repetition research? For one thing, we can stop picking the time intervals for massed and spaced repetition willy-nilly, hoping for some kind of pattern to emerge. It is clear that two things must occur before a memory can be formed and reinforced. First, the student must actually learn the material. This is not to say they have it in long-term memory, but that they know what the material is and understand it well. In order to avoid confusion with the entire process of learning, I will call this phase “initialization.” This is when those filopodia have started to enlarge and form temporary synapses. It is easy to “understand” word pairs and simple question and answer associations. They do not require a complicated collection of neurons to interact. Therefore simply looking at the pair or reading them aloud is usually enough to initialize the memory. On the other hand, complex concepts may require more study for the student to even understand what they mean. If the student does not understand the material, then a set of neurons obviously cannot form connections representing that concept. When students attempt to “learn” material without first understanding it, they are merely memorizing the word patterns that represent the concept rather than the concept itself. In my own observations of college students, I have seen many who attempt to use this method to study, hoping beyond hope that when the test comes, their ability to repeat the sequence of words will help them decipher how to interpret their meaning for the problem at hand. This may work for what I call “word-based” classes where all students need to do for a test is to regurgitate or recognize sequences of words, without much understanding. However, this trick does not work for courses where understanding of the concepts and how to apply them in differing situations is most important. Although many studies have had positive results by having subjects simply read over material multiple times – either massed or spaced – without attempting to understand the material, I believe much better results would be obtained if students understood it first. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Lack of proper “initialization” of a memory could easily account for the less than consistent results when space repetition is attempted in the classroom. The one-size-fits-all nature and relatively short initialization periods available in the classroom – and of almost all the experiments – practically guarantees that some students will understand the material but that many others will not. Testing for concepts based on memorization of poorly understood words is sure to give poor results. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Once the students have “learned,” or initialized the material in their minds, – in other words, grown some philopodia into spines in response to repeated short term stimulus, then sensitized those spines into early LPT phase – then that material must be repeated multiple times (approx. 3-5) separated by approximately ten minutes in order to set off that chemical chain reaction which causes the memory forming protein to be created. This will convert all those early LPT spines into late LPT (long-term memory) spines. Remember, the material cannot be continually reviewed for that whole time. That would not set off the correct, time-sensitive chemical chain-reaction.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">After the protein is created, there will be approximately thirty minutes wherein the material can be studied continuously to further build up the strength of the memory. Additional study during this period causes more stimulus in the region of the original set of synapses, which causes even more philopodia to extend out and form spines, which are then stimulated enough to form synapses, which then get sensitized into early LTP phase, and are then automatically converted to late LTP phase because the memory forming protein is already present in the cytoplasm of the neuron. Please note that this additional study would increase the strength of the memory by increasing the number of synapses involved in storing the memory. However it would not necessarily make the memory last any longer than the first two steps of initialization and spaced repetition. This is because it is only increasing the number of synapses, not the final size or “life span” of any individual synapse-bearing spine. Remember it is the action of being converted from early LTP to late LTP that causes the individual spines to become more permanent and this can only happen once per iteration of this process.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">This process of initialization and then reinforcement needs to occur for each and every different concept or fact that needs to be learned because each different fact is stored as a different set of neural connections comprising a different set of synapses. It is entirely likely that it will take varying amounts of time for each student to initialize the memory and it is equally likely that each student will have a different optimum number and timing of repetitions necessary for the long-term memory to form or be reinforced. This is yet another reason why spaced repetition may fail in the classroom. Can you imagine being the teacher who has to remember and track the optimum times for all the different students for all those different topics studied throughout the day? Not to mention the difficulty of trying to schedule each topic to overlap just enough to fill in the empty time but without interfering with the required repetitions of the other material. I wouldn’t want to try it for even one student, even if that student were me. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Once the process described above is complete and a long term memory has formed, it likely takes some time period for everything to settle down and for the neuron to rejuvenate itself. I am not aware of any research which indicates how long this may take. However, after this period has passed, the neurons and their synapses are ready for another round. First we must make sure that the memory is still accurate and that no parts of the set of neural connections has degraded enough to cause an incorrect recollection – or no recollection at all. This can be accomplished by a simple quiz. If the responses are adequate then there is no need to “reinitialize” the memory by rereading the original material or having it re-explained. Once we have established that the memory is intact we have to induce early LTP and then convert that to late LTP by reviewing the material multiple times, about ten minutes apart. All followed by an optional, additional strengthening by continuous study for up to 30 additional minutes. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">In a way, there are two levels of spacing required for proper spaced repetition as informed by neurobiological research. First, initialization and the spacing between the subsequent multiple repetitions necessary to set up early LTP and convert it to late LTP, plus strengthening. The second level is the spacing between different iterations of that whole procedure. I believe this two level spacing is a key ingredient which all SR researchers have missed by ignoring the findings in neurobiology. All researchers to date have considered one repetition of material – whether understood or not – to be one reinforcement. And this has surprisingly produced adequate – if not fully understood – results. In addition, almost all the experiments involved only two presentations of the material. The few experiments wherein there were more than two spaced repetitions consistently yielded even better long term results (Cepeda et al., 2006; Ebbinghaus, 1885; Lyon, 1914a, 1914b, 1914c). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To reiterate, Kandel and his team found that repeating the cycle four times per day for four days increased the duration of the initial memories he had created in his snail neurons from days to weeks <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00221031-1032\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/STNVEMPS\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001, pp. 1031-1032)</span>.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">As almost all spaced repetition research has also involved mere memorization of nonsense syllables, words, and word-pairs, it is important to consider separately the implications of our “new” neurobiological understanding of learning for material of a logical, conceptual, or abstract nature. I could find very few reports of SR research on this type of material. Edwards <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suffix\0022\:\0022cited in\: Dempster\, 1988\, p\. 630\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/AKQ24N48\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1917 cited in: Dempster, 1988, p. 630)</span><span style="display: none; mso-hide: all;"> [cited in: <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022630\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/N7EB8GS7\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Dempster, 1988, p. 630)</span></span> did a rather haphazard study including the learning of history and geography, the results of which favored spaced study. However, as history and geography fall under what I would call “word-based” material I don’t know if we can really count this work as covering the learning of concepts. Sarah Austin <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/M4DU9PP2\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1921)</span> published “A Study in Logical Memory” in which she carefully counted and listed the number of separate ideas in various pieces of advanced reading material. Massed study consisted of reading the material five times in one day whereas spaced repetitions were from once per day for five days up to once every five days. For testing she asked some subjects to simply write down all that they could recall, others were asked to list the separate ideas they recalled, and still others were given tests over the ideas. She found that ideas were either recalled in their entirety or were forgotten altogether, though recall of details was more variable. This tends to support the notion that each idea is associated with either a single neuron or a single patch of synapses on a set of dendrites. Once that neuron is triggered, it's axon stimulates all the other neurons or synapse patches associated with parts of the idea or images related to the idea. Some possible flaws in Austin’s experiments are: We don’t know how much time elapsed between separate readings of the material for the “massed” study. The subjects were pretty much left to their own devices. So the “massed” study could actually have amounted to one iteration of the “initialize – extend durability – strengthen connections” procedure. Secondly, only three “retention intervals” – the time between the last study period and the final test – were used. This does not give a very clear picture of the forgetting curve in each situation. Finally, she only had subjects read over the material once per repetition. Many subjects could not understand what they had read and the results were so inconclusive that Austin had to throw them out. This reinforces my claim that it is imperative for the students to actually understand (initialize) the material before attempting to achieve any spacing effect. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">A very recent study performed by Danielle Mazur explored learning how to do simple matrix multiplication using SR techniques. Her thesis is an excellent review of the history of SR research. Unfortunately, her experiments were confounded by several factors. She only used spacing intervals of zero or seven days (completely skipping over the “sweet spot” of ten minutes), some of the subjects already had experience doing matrix multiplication, and others had great difficulty learning it at all. In the end, she did conclude that SR does work for learning concepts while inadvertently showing the importance of students actually learning the material first <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022iii\0022\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Mazur, 2003, p. iii)</span>. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Only a few other researchers explored this particular facet of SR research in the intervening period between 1921 and when Mazur presenter her Masters thesis in 2003. Dempster <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022629-630\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/N7EB8GS7\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1988, pp. 629-630)</span> and Mazur <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\00229-10\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003, pp. 9-10)</span> both provide excellent outlines of the work of Edwards <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/AKQ24N48\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1917)</span>, <span style="font-family: Cambria;">Reynolds and Glaser <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/P6BX2XNT\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1964)</span>, Ausubel <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/83D295I6\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1966)</span>, Gay <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/TQ2ZMXGC\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1973)</span>, Grote <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/TZ2RC8BC\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1995)</span>, and Saxon Publishers <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/JN8PDBS7\0022\]\}\,\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/GRQ99MJW\0022\]\}\,\{\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/W3ZC9GN3\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2001; 1997a, 1997b)</span>, all of which showed that the spacing effect works for learning concepts as well as it does for rote memory tasks, as long as the material is first well understood by the student. However, Dempster <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022633\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/N7EB8GS7\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1988, p. 633)</span> and Mazur <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022iii\, 5\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003, pp. iii, 5)</span> both comment as to relative dearth of research for learning concepts via SR as opposed to rote memorization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps the “emphasis on convenient single-session studies,” as Cepeda et al. <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022370\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/SKJ2PVVV\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2006, p. 370)</span> put it, in the psychology research field has something to do with the low number of more involved studies. Needless to say, Dempster, Mazur, and Cepeda et al. all call for far more research in this area. </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">So, it seems we have a dilemma. More research must be done on SR for learning concepts and yet that research will not be nearly as easy or convenient to perform as most of the research has been to date. As Lyon put it, “no single method can be set down as being the most economical for everyone. The problem is not, What is the most Economical Method?, but What is the most Economical Method for Mr. Brown and how can he find this method out?” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022159\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/TSUTVDNQ\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1914c, p. 159)</span>. In addition, Austin wrote back in 1921, “the rate of forgetting is variable, depending on (1) the degree to which the material had been learned in the first place, (2) the distribution of the repetitions, (3) the kind of material learned, (4) the method by which it is measured, and (5) individual difference in retentiveness” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\0022373\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/M4DU9PP2\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(1921, p. 373)</span>. Now we also have the questions as to the exact timing for the reviews in the reinforcement cycle as well as the longer intervals between each independent cycle. On top of all that complexity, Mazur points out that “it is difficult to find abstract tasks to utilize in this research because many of these tasks are taught in school” <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022locator\0022\:\002222\0022\,\0022suppressAuthor\0022\:true\,\0022position\0022\:1\,\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/PF4T43BF\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(2003, p. 22)</span>. Yes, the research necessary to truly show the efficacy of spaced repetition for learning concepts appears as if it will be long, tedious, incredibly convoluted and exhaustive, and therefore incredibly expensive, but appearances can be deceiving. </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">It is possible for computers to track all of the details necessary in all the possible different combinations to ferret out the information researchers need in order to fine tune all the variables related to using SR for real learning. However, writing a new program with new learning material for a separate study on a relatively small group of students will still be relatively expensive and time consuming. Plus, once we determine all those variables, it will still be nearly impossible for teachers to track and appropriately adjust them all for each individual student. Therefore, I propose an entirely new system of computer based learning which will also facilitate the necessary research. In this system we can break down all educational content into its most basic ideas, concepts, and facts. Those “items” can be organized and marked with various metadata as to the difficulty of the material, the learning method(s) and goals the material was designed to adhere to, any prerequisite topics which should be understood before attempting to learn this material, and any other pertinent metadata researchers may find useful. In addition, multiple different explanations or presentations can be created for each different topic so students can easily choose the material and media that best helps them learn. </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Software can then be designed to present this educational content to students, choosing just the right content to present when, based on the students’ learning abilities for each different type of material. The software can then implement spaced repetition in the manner described above, tracking the specific forgetting curve of each topic and calculating the best times for the students to review material based on various algorithms. The software can be designed with a plug-in architecture so that researchers can write different SR algorithms which can then be easily installed and chosen by users. </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Current “learning” programs – even programs based on spaced repetition – only work on a simple flashcard system. Each flashcard is a basic question-answer pair, encouraging simple memorization of the word patterns rather than the concepts involved. The various flashcards are not connected or related to each other in any way. Yes, they may be organized in a hierarchical tree but a card’s position in the tree has no influence on how or when it is presented. Each card and the question-answer pair on it are treated as entirely separate factoids as far as the timing for spaced repetition is concerned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this proposed system, lots of different questions and problems can be designed for any one topic in order to test and reinforce the concepts within the topic rather than merely associating one specific answer with one specific question. </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Finally, if students opt-in, the software can collect a history of everything they do within the system and feed that back to a massive database of the learning histories of millions of students. This data can then be easily mined by education researchers to unlock the secrets of how we learn and to improve the content itself. There will then be very little need for the lengthy, expensive studies often performed by researchers today. A researcher will be able to simply sit down at their desk and search through a database of information. The statistics gathered will be much more valuable because they will be based on the histories of millions of students from all over the world instead of just thirty or so who happen to go to a local school and have time to participate is a study. If a researcher wants to investigate a new approach to presenting content they can simply create that content, submit it to the system, and then sit back and wait for the data to come rolling in <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/832JHXRC\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Robertson, 2009b)</span>. Similarly, researchers can simply write a new algorithm, or a different set of parameters for an existing algorithm, promote the use of that new algorithm and again, sit back and wait for the data to come rolling in. Normally, it would not be prudent to allow subjects to self select which experimental group they wish to be in. However, with millions of subjects, rather than thirty or so, it will be easy for data mining software to select a sample within that self-selected group which then represents a random sample from among the desired demographic. The software could even be designed such that students can allow the software to use different algorithms for different, randomly-chosen, subsets of the content they are studying, thus facilitating within-subject experiments. </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Such a system is already under preliminary development. It is named for the data formatting standard in which the educational content will be distributed. This is called the Distributable Educational Material Markup Language™ (DEMML™). As explained on the DEMML™ website:</span></span></div><blockquote><div class="MsoBlockText"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">The Distributable Educational Material Markup Language™ (DEMML™) is both an XML format for marking up educational material in a highly structured yet incredibly flexible manner and a system for authenticating and distributing that content for independent or shared use throughout the world, even where there is no internet connection. This material is organized and classified to a degree never before attempted, using what turns out to be a rather simple system of encoding the hierarchical tree of all possible educational material right down to the paragraph - or even sentence - level. This allows anyone to easily contribute any amount of material to what will quickly grow to be a vast library of vetted content for all to use. In addition the format facilitates a new level of flexibility in computer based learning by allowing educators to specify what material the student should study while still allowing the student instant access to additional material as their needs require. Multiple different explanations or presentations can exist for any one fact within any very specific topic. This allows any student at any level to quickly find just the right explanation that helps them most efficiently understand the topic at hand.</span></div><div class="MsoBlockText"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">To be clear, DEMML™ is not yet another Computer Based Training (CBT) system. Instead, it is a way of creating a library of educational material in a standardized format which all compatible CBT systems can instantly draw from, with no manual editing whatsoever. Existing CBT software can be modified slightly to make use of this content or modified even further to employ the rich functionality that only DEMML™ provides - facts, multiple alternate explanations, questions and answers, problems and solutions, multiple alternate explanations for each of those, prerequisites, etc., with very rich metadata about everything. Just as hyperlinking existed long before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and HTML, CBT has been around a long time before DEMML™. Before HTML all hyperlinking systems were proprietary and only worked within limited confines. Similarly, current CBT systems are all either proprietary systems or are relatively unavailable to the public. DEMML™ will be to CBT what HTML and WWW have been to hyperlinking. It will open up a world of possibilities by making education easily available to everyone, everywhere. <span style="mso-field-code: " ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM \{\0022sort\0022\:true\,\0022citationItems\0022\:\[\{\0022uri\0022\:\[\0022http\:\/\/zotero\.org\/users\/12487\/items\/F6G7E6B4\0022\]\}\]\} ";">(Robertson, 2009a)</span></span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">It is my hope and belief that the DEMML™ system will become a de facto standard for education world-wide. Rather than replace teachers, I believe it will free them to become mentors and guides, a much more rewarding role than repeating lecture after lecture to disinterested students. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">We have seen the exhaustive research which shows that spaced repetition works for both rote memorization as well as the learning of concepts. We now have a new understanding of the neurobiological basis for memory formation. Though there are some criticisms as to the efficacy of using spaced repetition in the classroom, I have shown that it isn’t necessary for teachers to apply SR directly. Teachers can be guides to students who use DEMML™ and its related software for self-directed learning. At the same time all this learning is taking place in millions (or even billions) of minds – young and old – vast quantities of valuable research data can be collected which will help scientists better understand and fine tune the learning process. </span></div><hr /><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" /></span> <div align="center" class="MsoBodyTextFirstIndent" style="text-align: center;"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130"><u>References</u></span></div><div class="StyleLeft0Hanging05"><span class="SR4Concepts20101130">Austin, S. D. M. (1921). 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<hr />The contents of this post is Copyright © 2010 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7039164266387823682.post-38092481319399725532010-10-21T20:43:00.001-05:002011-12-22T23:33:45.408-06:00Searching for terms in a paper book.<p>Perhaps others have already thought of this idea but here goes anyway. If you have a paper version of a book and wish you could search for terms and phrases within that book, don't forget that you may be able to find the book in Google Books and search for the terms there. You may or may not be able to copy text out of what Google calls the "Preview" but you will at least be able to search for specific terms. Unfortunately, not all books have previews but it is at least worth a try.</p>
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<p>The contents of this post is Copyright © 2010 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.</p>grantsr@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15076081539709128340noreply@blogger.com0