[Its.an.education.project] SOMs and Constructionism

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Teemu,

Thanks for pointing out your paper. I ran the text through the SOM  
code – though it's perhaps a little on the short side for my current  
analysis method – here's the link to the map generated:

	http://garycmartin.com/som/teemu_leinonen_som_learning_som.jpg

--Gary

On 19 May 2008, at 02:39, Teemu Leinonen wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Related to Gary's SOM analyzes / visualizations: With colleagues we  
> have published the following article:
>
> Honkela T., Leinonen T., Lonka K., Raike A. (2000): Self-Organizing  
> Maps and Constructive Learning. Proceedings of ICEUT'2000,  
> International Conference on Educational Uses of Communication and  
> Information Technologies, Beijing, China. August 21-25, 2000, pp.  
> 339-343.
> PDF: http://www2.uiah.fi/~tleinone/teemu_leinonen_som_learning.pdf
>
> If not more, in the end of the short paper there are some good  
> references to learning theories, computer supported collaborative  
> learning (CSCL) and Self-Organizing Maps.
>
> Best regards,
>
> 	- Teemu
>
> its.an.education.project-request at tema.lo-res.org kirjoitti 18.5.2008  
> kello 14:36:
>
>> Subject: Re: [Its.an.education.project] Fwd: Its.an.education.project
>> 	curiosity
>> To: Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com>
>> Cc: its.an.education.project at tema.lo-res.org
>> Message-ID: <4830231B.3020507 at student.tuwien.ac.at>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>>
>> Gary,
>>
>> excellent work, I love the map!
>>
>> Maybe this is something that we could add to Walter's SugarLabs  
>> digest
>> on a monthly/weekly basis?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Christoph
>>
>> Gary C Martin schrieb:
>>> Hi List,
>>>
>>> I sent this to Marco, off-list, as a curiosity (I'm not currently
>>> subscribed to its.an.education.project so please cc me if needed).
>>> It's basically a self organising map (SOM) visualisation of the new
>>> list activity up to a day or two ago (more description of the
>>> visualisation technique in my email below). Here's a link to the  
>>> image:
>>>
>>>    http://garycmartin.com/som/2008-May-its-an-education-project-list-som.jpg
>>>
>>>
>>> I was trying to get an idea for the topics being covered here  
>>> without
>>> burning my time by reading all of the archive, but if folks find  
>>> it of
>>> some use I could automate the process. Perhaps monthly/weekly list
>>> views, wiki content, etc?
>>>
>>> --Gary
>>>
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>>> This is very nice! I'd actually post it on the list, you don't  
>>>> need to
>>>> be subscribed to do so...
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Marco
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com 
>>>> >
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Hi Marco,
>>>>>
>>>>> Just a random aside, didn't want to post formally as this is  
>>>>> just a
>>>>> rough,
>>>>> but though you might find it vaguely interesting/curious.
>>>>>
>>>>> I recently noticed the its.an.education.project, but I'm  
>>>>> reticent to
>>>>> join
>>>>> yet another list that potentially another set of distracting  
>>>>> rants or a
>>>>> talking shop ? be they good or bad, my opinion reading bandwidth  
>>>>> is
>>>>> pretty
>>>>> saturated now with the existing lists... Anyway, I've been working
>>>>> on a Self
>>>>> Organising Map (SOM) that uses a geographic like landscape  
>>>>> metaphor for
>>>>> visualisation***, and recently hooked up a text front end for
>>>>> extracting
>>>>> word distance metrics from bodies of text ? I've been testing it  
>>>>> on
>>>>> works of
>>>>> literature from Project Gutenberg up to now, but have wanted to  
>>>>> try
>>>>> it on
>>>>> bulk mail feeds for a while.
>>>>>
>>>>> *** Code is all Python/PIL but too CPU intensive for an XO, though
>>>>> it might
>>>>> make nice visual index/content pages for wiki content and such,  
>>>>> with
>>>>> URL
>>>>> links...
>>>>>
>>>>> The SOM acts as a kind of spacial summariser visualisation of the
>>>>> content,
>>>>> where height indicates strong connections between terms, proximity
>>>>> represents term association, and label size is a rough guide to  
>>>>> basic
>>>>> frequency of the term. Now there are many "correct" maps for the
>>>>> same set of
>>>>> data, each generation will usually settle into a slightly  
>>>>> different
>>>>> set of
>>>>> local minima, but the associations are no less valid for each.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's currently picking the top ~200 terms by frequency, after  
>>>>> removing
>>>>> linguistic junk words. Here's the map that generated for the
>>>>> Its.an.education.project May archives, as of yesterday. Note that
>>>>> the map is
>>>>> continuous (wraps around North/South and East/West, surface of a  
>>>>> torus
>>>>> actually).
>>>>>
>>>>> Probably just a curiosity, but might be more useful on your disk
>>>>> than mine.
>>>>>
>>>>> --Gary