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The Semantic Web,
Knowledge and
Implications for
Education
Alan McLean
Postgraduate student, Universiti Tun
Abdul Razak, Malaysia (UNITAR)
Presented at
The International Conference on Knowledge
Management (ICKM) 2005 on 7 - 9th July
2005 at Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia
(http://www.ickm.upm.edu.my/)
Full text available from:
http://www.angelfire.com/linux/alan1/sem
antic.html
My contact details & aims:
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http://www.angelfire.com/linux/alan1
016 636 0754
My aims:
Outline some main ideas
Get some constructive criticism
Possibly find collaborators
Identify expertise useful to my research
… I don’t know so much …
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My experience is in Higher Education and the
last two years of secondary education. What I
say today may not be applicable to primary
education – or the middle years.
I am looking for guidance and correction from
you on: Semantic Web
… I don’t know so much …
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My experience is in Higher Education and the
last two years of secondary education. What I
say today may not be applicable to primary
education – or the middle years.
I am looking for guidance and correction from
you on: Semantic Web, Theories of Learning,
… I don’t know so much …


My experience is in Higher Education and the
last two years of secondary education. What I
say today may not be applicable to primary
education – or the middle years.
I am looking for guidance and correction from
you on: Semantic Web, Theories of Learning,
Cognitive Architectures
… I don’t know so much …


My experience is in Higher Education and the
last two years of secondary education. What I
say today may not be applicable to primary
education – or the middle years.
I am looking for guidance and correction from
you on: Semantic Web, Theories of Learning,
Cognitive Architectures, Educational Design.
Education needs to change
The Semantic Web (Tim Berners-Lee
www.w3.org/).
 Ubiquitous Computing
(Mark Weiser www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser/)
 Second generation Knowledge Management
 The Explicit Recruitment Needs of
Employers
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www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CER/publications.htm
The Semantic Web &
Ubiquitous Computing
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Descriptive technologies such as RDF and datacentric markup languages such as XML,
ontologies such as Owl.
The Semantic Web &
Ubiquitous Computing
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Descriptive technologies such as RDF and datacentric markup languages such as XML,
ontologies such as Owl.
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Ubiquitous computing, computers everywhere in
the real environment which can interconnect,
exchange data and work together
The Future of these
Technologies
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It will neither be appropriate to carry a significant
quantity of information in human memory nor to
know how or where to find information.
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The Semantic Web will allow individuals to access the
information they need in almost any place, effortlessly
and without delay.
… so, you simply don’t get paid any more for knowing things!
(What are we going to do with all this useless knowledge?)
Second Generation KM
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People construct and use new and valuable knowledge.
Storing information, disseminating information and
imitating past performance seem less important.
Information is not seen as an important
organizational asset.
Learning capability, problem solving and innovation
capability are seen as capital.
Effective Knowledge Management is about social
factors such as team building, personal professional
development, and appropriate working environments
Learning, problem solving and innovation are seen as
social, not administrative activities.
…. So is that what major international companies are saying?
The Explicit Recruitment Needs of
Employers
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West, Noden and Gosling, based on interviews and surveys
conducted in Australia, Malaysia, the UK and the USA
identified the attributes sought in graduates. These
attributes included the key skills team work,
analytical/thinking skills, communication/presentation
skills, interpersonal skills and the personal attributes
motivation/drive, business awareness, independence,
creativity/innovation and leadership/management
West, A., Noden, P. & Gosling, R. (2000) Quality in Higher Education: An international perspective.
The views of transnational corporations, Clare Market Papers 17, Centre for Educational Research,
LSE: London
Conclusion so far …
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Secondary education focuses on the acquisition
of declarative knowledge. (and HE too!)
Education is not delivering what employees and
employers need. On a national and international
basis, individuals, organizations and
governments are spending vast sums of money
without coming close to maximizing the human
capital created.
How should education respond?
Two changes, the inception of the Semantic
Web and changing perceptions of Knowledge
Management, seem to demand educational
reform of a broadly similar type, a move away
from the acquisition of declarative knowledge and
towards capabilities of analysis, critical thought,
communication and creativity.
… and at this point, it would be really nice to
have a theory of learning that would guide our
decisions on how to change educational design.
How should education respond?
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Theories of Learning
operant conditioning
developmental
psychology
cognitive psychology
constructivism
situated learning theory
Approaches to
Educational Design
My Central Claim:
There is no
overarching theory of
learning and there is no
coherent prescription
for educational design
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… so is the situation hopeless?
notes on educational theory
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Is the theoretical basis of education too weak … or are
there too many theories of education?
Theories of education are much more ideological and
much narrower than we tell our students.
The fragmentation and incompleteness of learning theory
is consistent with the experience of student teachers and
teacher educators. Beginning teachers report that they do
not really know how to apply theory to their classroom
experience.
This fragmentation is consistent with the experience of
teachers who are successful in encouraging critical thinking
– that successful teaching is time-intensive and not scalable.
Provocative thoughts on educational reform
Although we don’t have a theoretical overview, some imperatives
seem clear.
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Primary education seems valuable. Reading, writing,
measure , empirical investigation, number and very
basic background in the disciplines seem useful.
We need to unlearn the habit of syllabus reform. The
content of what we learn and teach does not matter.
(Gardner)
The great traditions of detailed teaching of disciplines
(Biology, Geography and so on) must be abandoned.
In many countries, the school leaving age should be
lowered.
That is it
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That is as far as I got when I made the
presentation at the conference but the remainder
of the slides give an idea of where those ideas
were leading …..
Is there hope?
The apparent replacement of one educational paradigm
with another can be seen as a shift in focus. There was
sometimes little genuine incompatibility between
different theories of learning. We may be moving from
one type of explanation to another, focusing on
different aspects of human behavior and trying to
explain and understand learning at different levels of
granularity (for example, social versus neural). A
situation like this need not lead to the formation of
opposing theoretical camps, but could invite attempts
to integrate various theories of learning or, perhaps
more realistically, to use them eclectically.
… which make us think about cognitive architectures
Cognitive Architectures: what do
they aim to do?
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Explain experiments in human psychology.
Explain at least some aspects of learning.
Provide a structure which allows some aspects
of human behavior to be reproduced artificially
(i.e. support development in AIED)
Support quantitative modeling, for example
modeling of human reaction-time and
forgetting.
Inform educational practice.
the ACT
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– R cognitive architecture
Cognitive architectures are not committed to any
particular theory or group of theories but instead
bring together theoretical perspectives, including
mathematical models, in an attempt to explain and
reproduce human behavior.
Anderson (1990) distinguishes three layers of
explanation: the physiological layer which relates to
brain function (the subsymbolic layer) ; the cognitive
layer which examines thinking on a symbolic level and
the 'rational' layer which focuses on the functional
adaptation of the person to the environment (I call it
interactive).
ACT-R 5.0 is incomplete
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Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D.,
Douglass, S., Lebiere, C., & Qin, Y . (2004). An
integrated theory of the mind. Psychological Review
111, (4). 1036-1060.
(Latest version is ACT-R 6 version 1.0b2)
Looking, for example at standard discourse
theory, ACT-R is too weak at the interactive
layer to account for the comprehension of text.
Learning theory at the interactive
layer
As far as I know, there are two serious
contenders, the situated learning theory
advocated by Lave and Wenger and the
theory of dialogue advocated by the
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.
So … lets look at Freire’s theory. We begin with the theory of
banking education …
Banking Education
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The teacher is full of knowledge
The student is a receptacle empty of knowledge
The teacher makes deposits of knowledge in the
student.
The relationship between teacher and student is
therefore not a horizontal one but a vertical one.
The teacher-student relationship
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The teacher teaches and the students are taught.
The teacher knows everything and the student knows
nothing.
The teacher thinks and the students are thought about.
The teacher talks and the students listen – meekly.
The teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined.
The teacher chooses and enforces their choice, and the
student complies
The teacher chooses the program content, and the
students … adapt to it.
Schooling as the abuse of power.
It is this relationship which strips learning of its
value. The dominating relationship between
teacher and student that leaves the student
domesticated, powerless and passive. As
students become the passive recipients of
knowledge, they learn to experience the world
and adapt to it. They learn and solve welldefined ‘real life’ problems selected for them by
the teacher. They learn not to ‘read the world’
for themselves. They are not critical thinkers.
Schooling as the abuse of power.
It is this relationship which strips learning of its value. The dominating
relationship between teacher and student that leaves the student
domesticated, powerless and passive. As students become the passive
recipients of knowledge, they learn to experience the world and adapt to it.
They learn and solve well-defined ‘real life’ problems selected for them by the
teacher. They learn not to ‘read the world’ for themselves. They are not
critical thinkers.
Students are required to demonstrate
that they have stored knowledge in
their memories and they are not asked
to discover knowledge or engage in
innovative problem solving. They
become disengagement from the world
and from each other.
About Dialogue
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Dialogue is a horizontal relationship in which one
individual is with the other. In Freire's words
(Freire, 1974), it is positive, hopeful, trusting and
critical. It involves two-way communication.
Banking education is a vertical relationship in
which one person is higher than the other. To
borrow Freire's words again, it is loveless, arrogant,
hopeless, mistrustful, acritical. Broadcast does not
communicate but issues communiques; information
passes in one direction.