Learning to Look: Lessons from Iris Murdoch

Roll 174a. Fr. Finn's Rel. Teach. Conven. (Religious Teaching Convention)/McGill's/John White's. Image 5 of 32. (21 December, 1954; 25 December, 1954; 26 December, 1954) [PHO 1.174a.5]The Boleslaus Lukaszewski (Father Luke) Photographs contain more than 28,000 images of Saint Louis University people, activities, and events between 1951 and 1970. The photographs were taken by Boleslaus Lukaszewski (Father Luke), a Jesuit priest and member of the University's Philosophy Department faculty

Learning to Look Around: Intelligently Exploring Unseen Environments for Unknown Tasks

It is common to implicitly assume access to intelligently captured inputs (e.g., photos from a human photographer), yet autonomously capturing good observations is itself a major challenge. We address the problem of learning to look around: if a visual agent has the ability to voluntarily acquire new views to observe its environment, how can it learn efficient exploratory behaviors to acquire informative observations? We propose a reinforcement learning solution, where the agent is rewarded for actions that reduce its uncertainty about the unobserved portions of its environment. Based on this principle, we develop a recurrent neural network-based approach to perform active completion of panoramic natural scenes and 3D object shapes. Crucially, the learned policies are not tied to any recognition task nor to the particular semantic content seen during training. As a result, 1) the learned "look around" behavior is relevant even for new tasks in unseen environments, and 2) training data acquisition involves no manual labeling. Through tests in diverse settings, we demonstrate that our approach learns useful generic policies that transfer to new unseen tasks and environments. Completion episodes are shown at https://goo.gl/BgWX3W

Learning to Look, Looking to Learn

In order to plan and implement lessons that will be effective for a wide variety of learners, teachers must assess what students know and how they know it. They must also know students’ academic strengths, challenges, and preferences. Careful observation of what students do and say as they work provides a rich source of data about both their knowledge and ways of learning. We highlight three strategies we use to help teachers refine their understanding of individual students: (a) building teachers’ skills in observing without making judgements; (b) teaching teachers to use a shared, neurodevelopmental framework through which to view student learning and behavior; and (c) facilitating collaboration among general education and special education teachers in using these tools to assess student learning and plan lessons. The combination of careful observations, a neurodevelopmental lens through which to see and interpret the observations, and the different perspectives of general and special education teachers, builds a foundation for planning appropriately leveled and rigorous lessons that leverage students’ strengths while supporting them in their weaker areas.https://educate.bankstreet.edu/faculty-staff/1057/thumbnail.jp

Fostering Resilient Characteristics in Individuals with Learning Disabilities

Educational resilience is an important term for teacher candidates in Christian institutions to understand. Resilience can be nurtured and instilled in the lives of individuals with learning disabilities, and teacher candidates can play a vital role in that process. To assist in this course of action, a look at the definition and common characteristics of resilience are discussed. In addition, a closer look at four resilient individuals with learning disabilities is provided. Concrete suggestions on ways to incorporate resilient characteristics into students with learning disabilities are shared

The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning

IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning is a peer-reviewed, biannual online journal that publishes scholarly and creative non-fiction essays about the theory, practice and assessment of interdisciplinary education. Impact is produced by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning at the College of General Studies, Boston University (www.bu.edu/cgs/citl).In this issue, podcasts are looked at as a pedagogical game changer. Using the award-wining podcast Serial as their catalyst, this issue's essayists look at podcast's emerging role in higher education, how multimodal learning can help students find their voices, the podcast's place in the curriculum at a criminal justice college, and how podcasts can inspire students to reflectively assess their own writing. Our reviewers take a critical look at the podcasts Welcome to Night Vale and Revisionist History