How and why to study the future?
This event took place on Tuesday 05 December 2006 at 13:00
Prof. Fredric M. Litto
Although all formal education is predicated on the idea that its objective is to prepare people for the future, it in fact does very little of the sort, spending most of its efforts teaching about the past. To many, especially educators, the future seems to be something unfathomable, immeasurable and, hence, a waste of time. But there already exists a field of investigation called "studies of the future," with considerable scholarly literature and distinct methods. The paradigm of this field, still in development, the general tendencies and approaches which prevail in it, distinguishing "pop futurology" from serious work, the tools used, the dominant themes, especially the "socially relevant ones," and H.G. Wells’s proposal for "colleges to study the future," will all be touched on in this presentation. In addition, given the familiarity of the speaker with the field of distance education in Brazil, an overview of some open educational resources initiatives in the country will be discussed.
Fredric M. Litto
Born: New York City, 1939. Higher Education: B.A. (Radio & Television), University of California, Los Angeles, 1960; Ph.D. (Theatre History), Indiana University, Bloomington, 1969; Livre-Docente (Communication in Science), University of São Paulo, Brazil, 1977.
Recently retired after thirty-six years as professor of communications at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil's largest public institution for research and tertiary learning. Founded and directed at USP from 1989 to 2006 the "School of the Future" [ www.futuro.usp.br ], a self-sustaining laboratory consisting of some 70 researchers/producers of digital learning materials, clustering principally in the areas of (1) school-based virtual learning communities; (2) digital open-content multimedia repositories of humanistic material for learners in Portuguese, and learning objects in science education; (3) telecenters [training, content provision and research on their operations and public]; (4) IT surveys [Campus Computing Report Brasil 2004 and 2005]. Over two million young and adult learners regularly use the laboratory's materials. Also in a third term as president of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education (ABED), a learned society of 2,600 DE professionals which in September 2006 hosted the 22nd ICDE World Conference of Distance Education in Rio de Janeiro [www.abed.org.br]. In the second semester of 2006 he is the "Rio Branco Scholar" in Education & Technology in the Institute for Education of the University of London, a post-doctoral award established by the Governments of Brazil and the United Kingdom, and during which he will be researching the issues involved in OER-Open Educational Resources in developing countries. In the first semester of 2007 he will be giving a post-graduate course on "Memes and Communications and Arts" at the University of São Paulo.
This seminar is been hosted by KMi for the OpenLearn project.
This event took place on Tuesday 05 December 2006 at 13:00
Although all formal education is predicated on the idea that its objective is to prepare people for the future, it in fact does very little of the sort, spending most of its efforts teaching about the past. To many, especially educators, the future seems to be something unfathomable, immeasurable and, hence, a waste of time. But there already exists a field of investigation called "studies of the future," with considerable scholarly literature and distinct methods. The paradigm of this field, still in development, the general tendencies and approaches which prevail in it, distinguishing "pop futurology" from serious work, the tools used, the dominant themes, especially the "socially relevant ones," and H.G. Wells’s proposal for "colleges to study the future," will all be touched on in this presentation. In addition, given the familiarity of the speaker with the field of distance education in Brazil, an overview of some open educational resources initiatives in the country will be discussed.
Fredric M. Litto
Born: New York City, 1939. Higher Education: B.A. (Radio & Television), University of California, Los Angeles, 1960; Ph.D. (Theatre History), Indiana University, Bloomington, 1969; Livre-Docente (Communication in Science), University of São Paulo, Brazil, 1977.
Recently retired after thirty-six years as professor of communications at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil's largest public institution for research and tertiary learning. Founded and directed at USP from 1989 to 2006 the "School of the Future" [ www.futuro.usp.br ], a self-sustaining laboratory consisting of some 70 researchers/producers of digital learning materials, clustering principally in the areas of (1) school-based virtual learning communities; (2) digital open-content multimedia repositories of humanistic material for learners in Portuguese, and learning objects in science education; (3) telecenters [training, content provision and research on their operations and public]; (4) IT surveys [Campus Computing Report Brasil 2004 and 2005]. Over two million young and adult learners regularly use the laboratory's materials. Also in a third term as president of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education (ABED), a learned society of 2,600 DE professionals which in September 2006 hosted the 22nd ICDE World Conference of Distance Education in Rio de Janeiro [www.abed.org.br]. In the second semester of 2006 he is the "Rio Branco Scholar" in Education & Technology in the Institute for Education of the University of London, a post-doctoral award established by the Governments of Brazil and the United Kingdom, and during which he will be researching the issues involved in OER-Open Educational Resources in developing countries. In the first semester of 2007 he will be giving a post-graduate course on "Memes and Communications and Arts" at the University of São Paulo.
This seminar is been hosted by KMi for the OpenLearn project.
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Semantic Web and Knowledge Services is...
Our research in the Semantic Web area looks at the potentials of fusing together advances in a range of disciplines, and applying them in a systemic way to simplify the development of intelligent, knowledge-based web services and to facilitate human access and use of knowledge available on the web. For instance, we are exploring ways in which tnatural language interfaces can be used to facilitate access to data distributed over different repositories. We are also developing infrastructures to support rapid development and deployment of semantic web services, which can be used to create web applications on-the-fly. We are also investigating ways in which semantic technology can support learning on the web, through a combination of knowledge representation support, pedagogical theories and intelligent content aggregation mechanisms. Finally, we are also investigating the Semantic Web itself as a domain of analysis and performing large scale empirical studies to uncover data about the concrete epistemologies which can be found on the Semantic Web. This exciting new area of research gives us concrete insights on the different conceptualizations that are present on the Semantic Web by giving us the possibility to discover which are the most common viewpoints, which viewpoints are mutually inconsistent, to what extent different models agree or disagree, etc...
Our aim is to be at the forefront of both theoretical and practical developments on the Semantic Web not only by developing theories and models, but also by building concrete applications, for a variety of domains and user communities, including KMi and the Open University itself.
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