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Daniel Tammet’s Reflections on Being an Autistic Savant

Scientific American has a wonderfully intriguing interview with autistic savant, Daniel Tammet available on their site. I’m so fascinated by his descriptions of his own mental processes that I can’t wait to read his books - starting with Born on a Blue Day.

In the interview he describes briefly how he was able to recite the first 22,514 numbers of Pi:

“… numbers to me have their own shapes, colors and textures. Various studies have long demonstrated that being able to visualize information makes it easier to remember. In addition, my number shapes are semantically meaningful, which is to say that I am able to visualize their relationship to other numbers. A simple example would be the number 37, which is lumpy like oatmeal, and 111 which is similarly lumpy but also round like the number three (being 37 x 3). Where you might see an endless string of random digits when looking at the decimals of Pi, my mind is able to “chunk” groups of these numbers spontaneously into meaningful visual images that constitute their own hierarchy of associations.”

Amazing, considering I’ve been struggling with my new work and home phone numbers all of this past year. [via BoingBoing]

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OpenSocial and VLE Possibilities

With Google’s announcements of OpenSocial and Android there is little doubt they have positioned themselves in a key role in online communities for the near future. There is a lot to contemplate in that sentence alone, but I’d like to focus on the potential for students and the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment).

In my mind, a successful VLE places the student at the center of the model - not the institution, and certainly not the technology. Sounds great, but what would that look like in practice? The short answer is - I don’t know, but I have some thoughts.

Let’s assume first, that putting the student at the center of a VLE model requires it to be a solution that is very customizable so that it can be personalized to an individual. This would enable the student to plug into online communities, either for a class or a personal interest, as well as unplug when necessary - in a similar way we talk about the “small pieces loosely joined” idea. It would also be useful if the environment were able to capture a student’s work throughout the course of their education (and possibly beyond).

Well, it seems like OpenSocial may be one solution that enables interoperability between social networks so that participants in Community A can share their “assets” with an account they have in Community B with minimal effort, because both communities are running on top of a similar platform (OpenSocial). Conceivably, this means participating and sharing just got easier, and all one would have to do is author a webapp/VLE on top of OpenSocial to take advantage of other communities using the platform.

Beyond the potential for a webapp solution are the possibilities for extendable browsers like Firefox and Flock to serve as community/asset management tools. Out of the box Flock is ready to integrate with your Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter accounts - just to name a few. In fact, right now I think its greatest shortcoming is that it can’t integrate with all online communities just as easily. My feeling is that the advent of OpenSocial may make this very possible, and a browser like that would be a very powerful tool for connecting students and learning.

Cross-posted from Rhetorica

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Word of the Moment: Autodidacticism

Self-education or self-directed learning. An autodidact, also known as an automath, is a mostly self-taught person — typically someone who has an enthusiasm for self-education and a high degree of self-motivation.

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