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I can only have learnt th<strong>is</strong> from Simon Stanford who I acknowledge in the narrative accounts ofthat period of <strong>time</strong>. In addition <strong>to</strong> th<strong>is</strong>, <strong>and</strong> other, fundamental bits of information, I gat<strong>here</strong>dfrom him <strong>some</strong> important building blocks of knowledge which have stayed with me <strong>and</strong> whichhave evolved <strong>and</strong> been enriched over <strong>time</strong>. Among these are the differences between Read OnlyMemory (ROM) <strong>and</strong> R<strong>and</strong>om Access Memory (RAM). Reflecting now on IM1, these termsseem almost archaic <strong>and</strong> irrelevant, as if they were the property of another epoch. The onlypeople who care about such nuanced differences are those who w<strong>is</strong>h <strong>to</strong> ensure that their machinehas sufficient capability <strong>to</strong> deliver the core computing functions they need in the execution oftheir work or other applications.A further piece of prior knowledge on which I drew regularly at the <strong>time</strong> <strong>is</strong> harder <strong>to</strong> describe. Ibelieve that the d<strong>is</strong>cipline of logical argument associated with the study of philosophy wasconvenient <strong>to</strong> the new learning context. Frequently I would apply problem-solving logic <strong>to</strong> thelearning of new technologies. For example, I had found the mental arithmetic approaches <strong>to</strong> thecreation of percentages challenging as a child <strong>and</strong> on in<strong>to</strong> ‘O’ Level study at school (That whichPapert describes as 'Mathophobia' (1993) <strong>and</strong> about which I wrote in IM1), but I unders<strong>to</strong>od thesteps through which it was necessary <strong>to</strong> <strong>take</strong> a set of numbers <strong>and</strong> operate them <strong>to</strong> produceresults. Such logic I applied <strong>to</strong> the acqu<strong>is</strong>ition of skills <strong>and</strong> learned <strong>to</strong> solve my own problems<strong>by</strong> thinking through the steps that seemed <strong>to</strong> be necessary <strong>to</strong> execute a function. Once I knew<strong>some</strong> basic comm<strong>and</strong>s like , , , etc., in one program, I was able <strong>to</strong> apply thatnew knowledge in other contexts. My knowledge base increased daily.By the <strong>time</strong> I was setting up <strong>and</strong> developing RE-Net, I had accumulated considerable technicalknowledge pertinent <strong>to</strong> the domain of computer usage. I was adept at setting up computers,240Simon Hughes Ph.D. Thes<strong>is</strong> (Oc<strong>to</strong>ber 2012)

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