back in India

I am back home after a month long international visits. I am really very happy about my visits.

Collection of Photos of my international visits

Apart from visiting the UNCW, IHMC, I also visited some interesting places such as: Cape Fear River at Wilmington, USS North Carolina Battleship, The Centre for Marine Science of UNCW, Peir at Wrightsville Beach near the Atlantic Ocean, Public Schools in Pender County, The Gulf of Mexico, Carribean Island, etc. Vow it was real fun 🙂

Me @ Pender County School

Me with students

Wrightsville Beach at Wilmington

USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial

 

IHMC – Florida, USA

I was invited at the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) at Florida by the organizers of the CMC2006 conference. I am really excited about this visit.

Since our paper in the conference dealt with introducing the refinements in the traditional concept mapping method, the researchers at the IHMC invited me to Pensacola, Florida for 3 days to have an interaction on this research area. We at IHMC discussed about concept mapping, the concept mapping ontology editor (developed by IHMC), semantic standards, knowledge organization, novice-expert’s profile of knowledge, etc. I had discussions with Robert Hoffman, Pat Hayes, Alberto Canas, Tom Eskridge and others at IHMC.

I delivered a seminar on the topic of “A Proposal to Refine Concept Mapping for Effective Science Learning” which was scheduled during my visit to IHMC at Florida.

Florida

 

Pensacola Beach

Me @ IHMC

 

Photos:

Pensacola Beach

Dinner with Pat Hayes and Jackie

Me @ IHMC

Florida

Costa Rican music and dance

Other than the academic part, the conference had organized a very nice dance and music night for the participants. Here are some pics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Pics while leaving Costa Rica

 

CMC 2006, Costa Rica

I am in Costa Rica to attend the Second International Conference on Concept Mapping from Sept 4-7, 2006.

Conference Website: http://cmc.ihmc.us

I am also presenting a paper, co-authored by Nagarjuna, on “A Proposal to Refine Concept Mapping for Effective Science Learning“.

Our paper points out some criticisms of the traditional concept mapping technique. Though we agree with the claim that concept maps are useful in eliciting knowledge, meaningful learning, etc. we think that the effectiveness of the concept mapping method will increase if we introduce certain discipline/refinements for constructing the maps.

Concept maps are a two-dimensional representation of knowledge of a domain. Basically these are node-link diagrams and are being used for past three decades. However, as the new international standards for semantic web are being developed, the concept mapping community has seen the relevance of implementing the semantic standards into the existing concept mapping strategy. It was found that quite a number of participants in the conference touched upon the issue of formalizing the concept maps including our research paper which proposed some refinements in the existing concept maps.

As our paper proposed some refinements which is a serious issue in the concept mapping community, the organizers of the conference invited me to visit their institute in Florida, USA to further the discussion on the research work and for a possible collaboration at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (http://ihmc.us).

My paper was scheduled on the first day of the conference. The good thing about this is that as I have completed my presentation now I can relax and attend the other sessions. 🙂

Some of the people with whom I had intereting discussions were Joseph Novak, Alberto Canas, Robert Hoffman, Pat Hayes, John Coffey, Alfredo Tifi, Trish Stoddart, Tanja Kellerman, Jane Heinz-Fry, Richard Iuli, Sumitra Himangshu, Gaurav Goyal, Matthew Lange, Martin Cleaver, Andrea, Amy, Mauri Alhberg and others.

I was staying in a very economical and yet beautiful youth hostel called Gaudys Backpackers. A good coincidence was that some of the conference participants were already staying in this youth hostel and some joined us later. So we had good company and we enjoyed our stay. At the end of the conference which was free for touring, we explored some of the beatiful places in this carribean island. Costa Rica is really very beautiful.

Collection of Photos of the conference at Costa Rica

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visiting Scholar at UNCW, USA

I have been invited as a Visiting Scholar by Prof. Joel Mintzes a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (USA) for one month. I am really excited to visit and discuss my PhD proposal with Prof who is one of the pioneers of the research on concept maps in science education.

We have been discussing on various issues related to the effectiveness of the refined concept mapping technique over the traditional concept mapping technique.

Me @ UNCW

Cornerstone Hall

Joel Mintzes & Me

 

 

 

International visits

This is really very exciting. I am on international visits to three places for academic purpose (discussion on my PhD proposal, presenting a paper in conference, visiting some public schools, giving seminar, etc.). And I am getting sponsorship for my visits also. Lucky me 🙂

1: Visiting Scholar at University of North Carolina at Wilmington, USA (one month)

2: Presenting a Paper at CMC2006 in Costa Rica

3: Visiting Student at the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition, Florida, USA

A Proposal to Refine Concept Mapping for Effective Science Learning

Our research paper titled A Proposal to Refine Concept Mapping for Effective Science Learning has been accepted for paper presentation at the forthcoming CMC2006 to be held in September 2006 in Costa Rica.

Abstract. Concept maps are found to be useful in eliciting knowledge, meaningful learning, evaluation of understanding and in studying the nature of changes taking place during cognitive development, particularly in the classroom. Several experts have claimed the effectiveness of this tool for learning science. We agree with the claim, but the effectiveness will improve only if we gradually introduce a certain amount of discipline in constructing the maps. The discipline is warranted, we argue, because science thrives to be an unambiguous and rigorously structured body of knowledge. Since learning science may be seen as a process where a novice is expected to be transformed into an expert, we use the context of learning science for making the proposal. Further, we identify certain anomalies in the evaluation of concept maps, and suggest that the evaluation should be based on semantics of the linking words (relation types) and not on graphical criteria alone.

I shall be participating in the CMC2006 at Costa Rica. Please visit the Publications page/tab of this blog for the full paper.

READIT, Chennai

Episteme – 1, Goa

A poster presentation on “Understanding Science Through Knowledge Organizers: An Introduction”. The paper (authored by Meena Kharatmal and Nagarjuna G.) is part of our research work in the area of knowledge representation.

Abstract. The paper introduces an operationizable framework for understanding knowledge using knowledge representation (KR) methodology. We start with organizing concepts based on their cognitive function, followed by assigning valid and authentic semantic relations to the concepts. We propose that in science education, students can understand better if they organize their knowledge using the KR principles. The process, we claim, can help them to align their conceptual framework with that of experts’ conceptual framework which we assume is the goal of science education.

Some pics of the poster session