Many developed countries have national curricula and specific teacher-training standards, but the United States does not. Instead decisions on curricular and standards are created and enforced at the state and local levels, often by politically elected figures including governors, mayors, superintendents, and school boards.

This leaves early education in the United States open to a much greater sway of political influence. This can be seen in examples of Texas attempting to legislate the display the ten commandments in school classrooms in 2023, reading science being neglected in the adoption of Culkins' Units of Study curriculum, and other footballs like the supposed suppression of critical race theory in right leaning states.

https://www.loom.com/share/a05f636661cb41628b9cb7061bd749ae

Synopsis: Maggie Delano looks at some of the affordances supplied by Tana (compared to Roam Research) in terms of providing better block-based user interface for note type creation, search, and filtering.

These sorts of tools and programmable note implementations remind me of Beatrice Webb's idea of scientific note taking or using her note cards like a database to sort and search for data to analyze it and create new results and insight.

It would seem that many of these note taking tools like Roam and Tana are using blocks and sub blocks as a means of defining atomic notes or database-like data in a way in which sub-blocks are linked to or "filed underneath" their parent blocks. In reality it would seem that they're still using a broadly defined index card type system as used in the late 1800s/early 1900s to implement a set up that otherwise would be a traditional database in the Microsoft Excel or MySQL sort of fashion, the major difference being that the user interface is cognitively easier to understand for most people.

These allow people to take a form of structured textual notes to which might be attached other smaller data or meta data chunks that can be easily searched, sorted, and filtered to allow for quicker or easier use.

Ostensibly from a mathematical (or set theoretic and even topological) point of view there should be a variety of one-to-one and onto relationships (some might even extend these to "links") between these sorts of notes and database representations such that one should be able to implement their note taking system in Excel or MySQL and do all of these sorts of things.

Cascading Idea Sheets or Cascading Idea Relationships

One might analogize these sorts of note taking interfaces to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). While there is the perennial question about whether or not CSS is a programming language, if we presume that it is (and it is), then we can apply the same sorts of class, id, and inheritance structures to our notes and their meta data. Thus one could have an incredibly atomic word, phrase, or even number(s) which inherits a set of semantic relationships to those ideas which it sits below. These links and relationships then more clearly define and contextualize them with respect to other similar ideas that may be situated outside of or adjacent to them. Once one has done this then there is a variety of Boolean operations which might be applied to various similar sets and classes of ideas.

If one wanted to go an additional level of abstraction further, then one could apply the ideas of category theory to one's notes to generate new ideas and structures. This may allow using abstractions in one field of academic research to others much further afield.

The user interface then becomes the key differentiator when bringing these ideas to the masses. Developers and designers should be endeavoring to allow the power of complex searches, sorts, and filtering while minimizing the sorts of advanced search queries that an average person would be expected to execute for themselves while also allowing some reasonable flexibility in the sorts of ways that users might (most easily for them) add data and meta data to their ideas.

Jupyter programmable notebooks are of this sort, but do they have the same sort of hierarchical "card" type (or atomic note type) implementation?

Persoon, P. G. J. (2021). Cumulative structure and path length in networks of knowledge. ArXiv:2106.10480 [Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2106.10480

DeYoung, C. G., & Krueger, R. (2020, October 27). To wish impossible things: On the ontological status of latent variables and the prospects for theory in psychology. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/4anhr

This article details how to build an innovative online learning environment using methods based on influential adult learning theories. These theories include Social Development Theory, Behaviorism, Critical Reflection and Nurturing the Soul. 10/10, many theories throughly discussed.

Rostami-Tabar, B., Ali, M. M., Hong, T., Hyndman, R. J., Porter, M. D., & Syntetos, A. (2020). Forecasting for Social Good. ArXiv:2009.11669 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2009.11669

van Rooij, I., & Baggio, G. (2020). Theory development requires an epistemological sea change [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/rnw9q

Kiefer, P. (2020, May 4). Why Scientists Think The Novel Coronavirus Developed Naturally—Not In A Chinese Lab. FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-scientists-think-the-novel-coronavirus-developed-naturally-not-in-a-chinese-lab/

Fitzgerald, R. M. (2020). WAKING TO NORMAL: Examining Archival Appraisal in Data-driven Society [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/2befk

This webpage, under the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) .gov site, provides an extensive list of technology resources that can be and have been implemented into a variety of employee deveolpment programs. These tools allow for more personalized learning, active participation, collaboration, and communication.In the first section of the site, examples of Web 2.0 tools are listed that can promote collaboration and constructive learning. You can also find technologies that are used in specific sectors, such as the Federal Government and the Private Sector. Clicking on the links redirects you to additional resources on the tech tools, including how to use them effectively and professionally for employee training. Rating 10/10

Instruction Librarians from the Twin Cities Campus Library created this instructional gudie as a workshop for implementing technology for adult learning. First, the authors describe key characteristics of adult learners as identified in the theory of andragogy. Examples of these characteristics include the need to know, learner responsibility, past experiences, and motivation to learn. The authors then suggest instructional practices and activities to meet the needs of adult learners, Finally, they provide examples of technology tools for effectively engaging adult learners. Rating 10/10

This article, developed by faculty members at NAU, provides research behind and practices for technology-infused professional development (PD) programs. The authors first emphasize the importance of designing professional development for teachers around how they and their students learn best. Many approaches to PD have taken a one-size-fits-all approach in which learners take a more passive role in absorbing standardized information. The authors in this article suggest the need for a more effective model, one in which teachers play an active role in learning in ways that they find most effective for them and their students. Technology can support this PD through interactive and learner-centered instruction. Rating: 9/10

This chapter, "Advantages of Online Professional Development" describes the benefits of online teacher professional development (OTPD), which implements technology to deliver training and learning in an online environment. OTPD allows teachers to participate in a flexible, self-directed, and collaborative learning community. They can interact with other teachers synchronously and asynchronously, or take professional development courses at their own schedule.

This website is part of Angelo State University's online teaching training course for faculty members. This section outlines three prominent theories of education-Behaviorism, Social Cognitive Theory, and Constructivism-and applies them to online learning. Instructional Designers and course instructors can use this guide for the construction of meaningful and active learning environment for students. Rating: 10/10

The text documents a year-long research project into experiential learning in teacher professional development. Teachers participated in experiential learning themselves to then begin to implement it into their own classrooms to serve their students. By and large, teachers were receptive, had misconceptions addressed, changed their practices with their colleagues and students to develop more engaging and active classrooms. Essentially, a shift from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning was achieved in small increments by using experiential learning and reflection to facilitate teacher growth thereby creating new pathways for student learning. Given the nature of the traditional methods predominantly used, this study seems to reflect some elements of transformative learning in which teacher conventions and ideas were challenged and adjusted through heterogenous groups and personal reflection. Rating: 9/10

The Northwest Center of Public Health Practice's toolkit title "Effective Adult Learning: A toolkit for teaching adults," is . a highly comprehensive resource for instructional design for adult learning instructors. Sections include course or training design, objectives of adult learning, various tools to help in the process of course design, and brief overviews of adult learning methods and theory. The embedded section review charts make it easier for quick references. Rating: 10/10

This article provides an in-depth view from the teachers perspective about how to prepare for technology in their learning environments. Through professional development training, teachers and instructors can gain new knowledge about how to incorporate new technologies into their practice. This article focuses on one study and concludes that new technology needs to be introduced slowly for best practices.

The nut of Geertz' argument: Ethnographic theory building is about developing conceptual structures applicable to other settings in order to understand and analyze culture (human life, symbolic action, and beliefs). Thick description and its interpretation provides the framework for making theoretical distinctions.

Cultural theory is not predictive but interpretative. Thick description helps to determine whether a theory can be further elaborated or is no longer useful for describing/interpreting behavior.

Challenges of theory development about cultural understandings. The tension between semiotic/symbolic approaches that require interpretation (grasp) versus methods that are grounded in analysis.

"...the essential task of theory building here is not to codify abstract regularities but to make thick description possible, not to generalize across cases but to generalize within them."

Elm architecture in plain JavaScript

The self exists in the dynamism between systems, not between individuals