Dr. Brown's Blog

Here are the slides I presented with my presentation on EduPunk at the 2009 Mid-Southeastern ACM Conference in Gatlinburg on 11/13/2009.

Jim Groom coined the term “EduPunk” in a blog entry in May 2008. The concept was covered in the Chronicle of Higher education the next month. I came across the term last summer through Twitter and have come to identify with the ethos.
The Punk movement manifested itself in a variety of ways, but the essential elements seem to me to be:

• Creativity
• Individuality
• Authenticity
• Non-conformity

These properties converged to create a “Do it Yourself” attitude which didn’t look to authority for how to do things, but instead found what worked for the individual as a vehicle of their own creative expression.

Although the “official” definition of EduPunk says that followers of the movement don’t use conventional tools of information transmission, I consider this a superficial element. The deeper issues are those that the EduPunks share with Punks.

Students and teachers need outlets for their creativity. In my CSIT1110 Introduction to Computer Science class I’ve tried to find interesting and fun ways for students to express themselves. This approach follows in the footsteps of Seymour Papert who wrote the book “Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas,” who advocated games and other hands-on activities to foster interest and to make learning fun.

The CSIT1110 class creates web pages, programs robots, creates visual language programs in a 3D environment (Alice), and look at virtual worlds and games as part of their class work. Many of the assignments are open-ended so that students are “given permission” to be creative.

Too often, the educational system seems to be an attempt to crush the individuality out of students in favor of producing miniature copies of their instructors. Instructors also often ridicule and demean their students because of how they are different.

We should be trying to utilize these differences to channel energy into “productive” experience. This might be analogous to “Akido Education”. Akido is a martial art that attempts to use an attacker’s energy to the defender’s advantage. Instead of attacking students for playing video games, using cell phones and being addicted to various forms of media, we should be looking for ways to either incorporate these things or at least understand them well enough to see how they might facilitate learning.

Isn’t WikiPedia horrible? No, it isn’t. Sure, there are “bad” sources of information, but shouldn’t this just be another starting point of discussion? Another point should be the flexibility afforded by electronic media over printed material. The ability to change rapidly is a very important characteristic of electronic media.

Instead of criticizing “kids these days” or how things are so much worse than “in the old days,” instructors would seem to be better served by keeping up with what is going on in the world around them in order to be able to truly act an authority instead of just trying to pose as one

An authentic individual stands out as different. Most often they are ridiculed and misunderstood in their day, only to have their position vindicated with the test of time. In CSIT1110 we talk about great minds who have held onto their individuality in the face of adversity.

From the teaching side, there is power in being yourself (or some sincere version of yourself) with students. Many of them will respond in kind and this is an opening to learning.

Education is changing rapidly. The availability of open source software and the Web 2.0 environments that emerged as a result are just the beginning. Social media and collaborative environments are emerging that will allow distance learning to be better than face-to-face class offerings.

The day in which education is provided free to all is on the horizon. Traditional educational institutions need to be looking for different delivery and financial models if they are to survive and remain viable.

The EduPunks are at the forefront of the educational revolution. So… are you an EduPunk?

I attended the 2009 Mid-Southeastern ACM Conference on Nov 13, 2009 in Gatlinburg, TN. I’ve attended (and presented at) this conference for the last four years. I think it gets better every year. ETSU and UT-Chattanooga were well represented by students and faculty. I’ve included a summary below of the best presentations I saw (including the one I gave):

Are You an EduPunk?
David Brown, Pellissippi State Community College

Abstract
Taking inspiration from the Punk movement, EduPunks are educators rebelling against the corporate, cookie-cutter educational system in favor of new and progressive learning strategies. EduPunks seek to overturn the established order by discovering for themselves what works in the classroom. Eschewing traditional techniques, they seek inspiration from games and popular media in order to create radically new kinds of educational environments.

Summary
I showed an 8-page comic book that illustrated many of the “alternative learning strategies” that I have tried in CSIT1110. The presentation appeared to be well received.

Tech-related Coommunity Outreach – Experiences and Opportunities
Semmy Purewal, University of Tennessee – Chattanooga

Semmy presented some of the community service work that he has begun to incorporate into the CS program at UT Chattanooga. He started “Free IT Athens” as a non-profit computer recycling program utilizing CS students as volunteers to refurbish donated computers. They sold the refurbished computers to the community for $25. Outside volunteers could earn a new computer with a few hours of work. They have processed over 1000 computers. So far, this program is voluntary and not for credit. He also mentioned some similar efforts  www.freelinuxpc.org, www.hfoss.org, www.laptop.org).

I would like to invite Semmy to come to PSCC and tell us about the program he set up in Chattanooga. This is a potential interdisciplinary “Green-IT” community service project.

Visual Logic with Java
Kathy Winters, University of Tennessee – Chattanooga

Kathy is using “Visual Logic” (Course Technology software) in her introductory Java class. Visual Logic allows you to easily draw flowcharts and then “execute” them to see the output that the algorithm will produce. She uses a book that has 4 chapters of Visual Logic followed by 7 chapters of Java that utilize the same algorithms as have been flowcharted, but coded in Java.

I was highly impressed with the flowcharting tool. The only drawback I found was that Kathy said that she didn’t think that you could do functions in Visual Logic. This is a tool that we might ought to look at either for CSIT1110 or CSIT1510 or both.

Computational Science from the Undergraduate Classroom to Internships
Angela Shiflet, Wofford College
Angela described the Computational Science program at Wofford which is basically like a minor in CS, but is geared toward science students. Classes include programming, data structures, data modeling and simulation and web/database. Students learn about using computers in their discipline as in genome sequencing, climate modeling, genetic computation, oceanic modeling, heat diffusion, plant growth, spread of disease, predator/prey models, etc. The program has been very successful in helping place students after graduation. It has also brought a greater number of women into their CS classes. She reported that one-half of the Computational Science students are female.

This program made me think of the possibility of creating a Computational Science certificate at PSCC that might be attractive to science students.

Assembly on the PlayStation 3
William H. Hooper, Belmont University

William described his assembly language course that utilized a Sony Playstation 3 (PowerPC 970 processor) running Linux. I was very excited by the idea of using a PS/3 until he said that you couldn’t access the GPU from Linux (no graphics). He did show some cool examples including calling assembly routines from C and his session was packed with students.

Computers can obviously be aware of what they do. This is part of the role of the operating system. Operating systems monitor, control and protect the operation of the computer so as to keep the system healthy and able to respond to requests by users of the system.

The question of whether computers can be “self-conscious” really rests on how one defines “self.” If we only mean that which constitutes the thing in question, then yes, computers are already self-conscious. If however, by “self” we mean an entity which possesses “free will” and can therefore take independent action, then the answer to the question hinges on what constitutes “free will.”

Do we have “free will?” Where do our choices come from? Do we really make those choices? Where do our ideas come from? Where does our mind and mechanisms of thought come from? Thoughts appear in our minds and we follow chains of association, but how much of a part does the conscious self play in this process?

The point I’m trying to make here is that much of thought takes place outside of conscious observation. Given this, how much of our “will” is truly “free?” Genetic, familial, cultural, religious and societal expectations actually help form our brains by conditioning neural connections. When making a choice, how many boundaries to truly free choice are hidden from our view, being “invisible walls” so to speak?

The more we can raise our level of awareness of the process of thought itself, the more likely we are to be able to make truly free choices. As long as the underlying process of thought (especially the unconscious part) is unobserved by the conscious mind, the more likely we are to make conditioned choices, in effect being controlled by unconscious forces of which we have little understanding.

Computers can be programmed to appear to exhibit free will by programming intentionality into their software. Many would argue that this isn’t really free will, just the appearance of it since the choices of the computer are framed by its programming, but is computer programmed free will of a totally different nature than human free will? How exactly can we know that since our experience of free will is completely subjective?

The bottom line is that if we restrict the definition of free will to that which we believe to be exhibited in human beings, then we have defined computers out of ever being self-conscious. If however, we allow forms of programmed intentionality into this definition, then we open the door to the concept of self-conscious machines.

Even this line of distinction is blurred by neural network architectures, genetic or evolutionary environments and systems that have begun to incorporate biological materials for computation. These systems are not programmed in the classical sense, but instead are trained and learn to adapt to their environments.

The question of whether computers can be self-conscious can only be answered by looking deeply in our own mirror of awareness to determine what it means to be free.

As human beings, we know what self-consciousness is. We experience it all the time. We experience being aware of ourselves as separate from other things.

Self-consciousness is rooted in the experience of an inner and outer world. The inner world being that which I call “myself” and the outer world the “not me.” The inner world is what we commonly call the “self.” If we were unable to distinguish between inner and outer, between self and not-self, then we could have no concept of  self, and by extension, no self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness also implies a consciousness that is aware of the inner (self) and the outer worlds. Jung calls this consciousness the Self (capitalized first letter). This is the agent of self-consciousness. The Self is aware, or conscious of, the self.

As stated previously, we know about self-consciousness from our own subjective experience. We may assume that everyone’s experience of consciousness is pretty much the same as our own. The truth is though, that we really don’t  know whether this is the case or not. We make assumptions about other people’s consciousness from what we perceive of them through their actions.

Just as there are levels of consciousness or awareness, there are also levels of self-consciousness. The ancient maxim “Know Thyself” inscribed  in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, refers to the strengthening of this ability.

But can computers be “self-conscious?”

As a computer scientist, I have always been fascinated by the notion of consciousness as it relates to computers, specifically, whether computers are or can be conscious, self-aware, intelligent, etc.

In thinking about these ideas, I’ve come to believe that computers already are conscious, or at least they behave so once suitably programmed.

Consciousness is a slippery term. It is derived from the Latin conscius meaning “sharing common knowledge with.” Consciousness isn’t something that exists in isolation “out there.” Consciousness (as we ordinarily understand it) is a process in which we participate with an object of consciousness.

All consciousness is necessarily subjective in that we can’t directly measure consciousness, only the actions or behaviors that result from consciousness. Consciousness is observed to be intelligent behaviors in response to stimuli. “Intelligent behaviors” are those that result in some advantage to the agent of consciousness. This is in contrast to totally random behaviors which would not imply intelligence on the part of the acting agent.

By this definition, plants are conscious in that they respond intelligently to light, temperature and moisture in an attempt to maximize their health and vitality. Cells are conscious in that they also respond intelligently to environmental stimuli. Computers, once suitably programmed, are obviously conscious in this respect as well in that they behave intelligently to inputs.

One might try to argue that computers aren’t “really” conscious because they are only performing preprogrammed actions. This argument grows weaker as we learn more about our own programming (DNA). It also assumes that consciousness is a tangible thing and not a process.

Computers are already conscious, but are they self-conscious, intelligent or alive?

Video Games as Cybernetic Processes

I’ve just started reading “Gaming – Essays on Algorithmic Culture” by Alexander R. Galloway, which discusses video games in terms of the following diagram:

The diagram comes about by recognizing two intersecting two polarities that are intrinsic to video games: the operator/machine polarity, and the diegetic/nondiegetic polarity.

In this model, the operator is defined as the video game player. The machine is the hardware and the software that creates the gaming environment. The video game only exists through the interaction of the operator and the machine. Being part human and part machine, video Galloway labels them “cybernetic.”

The second polarity in Galloway’s diagram is the diegetic/nondiegetic polarity. Diegetic actions are actions that take place within the perceived reality of the video game world. Nondiegetic actions are actions that are part of the game software, but outside of the game world, such as actions to configure or control the game itself. Nondiegetic actions cannot be predicted or explained from within the reality of the game world.

Galloway’s diagram defines four quadrants useful for analyzing the gamic process: diegetic machine actions, diegetic operator actions, nondiegetic machine actions, and nondiegetic operator actions.

Diegetic machine actions take place when the game software is running, but the operator is absent. The game is in a sense “playing itself.” In the game world/reality the sun rises and sets, the tides ebb and flow, and NPCs (non-player characters) and critters come and go.The game world is in an ambient or “pure process” state. In this state, the game software can be viewed in a purely aesthetic sense, as in how we might view a movie.

Diegetic operator actions are the actions taken by the operator within the game world. These are actions in which the operator deliberately controls the actions of their avatar by extending their consciousness into the game world. This can be thought of as a “ritual act of identification” with one’s avatar as one becomes immersed in a game. There are various levels of this immersion. Sometimes an operator becomes so immersed in a game that they lose their sense of personal identity and identify completely with their avatar. Becoming one with the game world, they dance to the rhythm of the machine

Nondiegetic machine actions are actions taken by the machine outside of the game world. These are the internal forces that impinge upon the game world such as network lag, software bugs, and other code-related issues, or also actions taken by the machine that lie outside of the game world such as the “death act” (declaring the operator dead). The granting or denying of privileges to the operator in the game world by the machine also falls in this category. For example, the machine could grant the operator extraordinary privileges such as the ability to fly or to teleport to another location, or could take away privileges like the ability to move.

Nondiegetic operator actions are actions that take place outside of the game world/reality, but still within the boundaries imposed by the game software. These are configuration and control actions such as setting or changing game software settings, starting, pausing or terminating game play, the use of cheats or hacks. These actions are liminal in that they border on two realities: the reality of the game world, and a larger reality that is defined by the gaming software.

Galloway’s diagram from the first chapter of “Gaming – Essays on Algorithmic Culture” was interesting on many levels. First and foremost, it provides a logical framework for analyzing video games as processes. Perhaps because “real life” is in many ways much like a video game, this diagram can be easily generalized to provide a way to look at our own perceived reality:

Reality is the game that we are always playing, whether we want to play or not. We can deny our role as operators, but the truth is that we are not spectators, but participants who cause change and are changed through our actions (or inaction).

As we attempt to make meaning out of ourselves and the world, we are forced to look at what we are inside and to try to make sense out of it. To do this, we are in effect trying to perceive some reality beyond what we can currently see, one that makes plain (external/objective) what is currently hidden (internal/subjective).

In this way, our perceived realities are like nested Russian dolls or onion skins, the outer layers of which provide context, meaning and purpose for the inner layers. The borders of the layers are where the inner layer nondiegetic actions begin to be perceived (by a larger Self) as diegetic actions of some outer layer.

How big is your world? Or better yet, how big is the game you are playing?

My abstract entitled “Are You an EduPunk?” was accepted for the November Association of Computing Manufacturers (ACM) conference in Gatlingburg, TN:

“Taking inspiration from the Punk movement, EduPunks are educators rebelling against the corporate, cookie-cutter educational system in favor of new and progressive learning strategies. EduPunks seek to overturn the established order by discovering for themselves what works in the classroom. Eschewing traditional techniques, they seek inspiration from games and popular media in order to create radically new kinds of educational environments.”

This will be my fourth consecutive presentation at this conference. My other presentations were:

• 2008 – “Using Comic Books to Teach Introductory Computer Science Concepts”
• 2007 – “Pellissippi State’s Virtual Campus”
• 2006 – “Teaching Introductory Programming Concepts using ALICE”

CSIT1110 Student Blogs:

Anderson, Fred
Anthony, Eric
Banks, Billy
Boyatt, Thomas
Brady, James
Brasher, Steven
Brummette, Benny
Caputo, Ryan
Carson, Billy
Caudle, Paul
Childress, Tiffany
Curl, Christopher
Currier, Joshua
Dotson, Johnathan
Douthat, Patrick
Dozier, Curtis
Endsley, Brandon
Ensor, Thomas
Felts, Nathina
Foley, Thomas
Garrett, Adam
Gerlach, Paul
Goodfellow, Jareth
Goodreau, Ryan
Greene, David
Greeson, Kristoffer
Harden, Ryan
Hicks, Benjamin
Koson, Allen
Lewis, Matthew
Loy, Randall
Malcolm, Neil
Mangham, Steve
Messer, Chris
Moore, Eric
Pabst, Corey
Picarello, Matthew
Ridley, Travis
Roach, Daniel
Sagraves, Joshua
Scott, Matthew
Shanks, Jeremy
Smith, Tyler
Sprenz, Andrew
Sweat, Richard
Thomas, Joshua
Trentham, Tyler
Verlinde, Sean
Whisnant, Gregory
Willocks, Justin
Windeknecht, Cody