All The Things

English, Essays

The desire to define “everything” can be traced back thousands of years in our known history. Aristotle, in “Categories”, provides us with one of the first recorded attempts of uniquely categorising all “things” – both animate and inanimate, even directly contradicting the views of his teacher, Plato, while doing so. In parallel to this, more than three thousand miles to the east, in the Vaisheshika and Nyaya schools of the Hindu philosophy, the “Padārthas” were created – first verbally and then in writing – in order to serve a similar purpose. These geographically – and temporally – separate efforts, aiming to achieve the same general goal, show us that there is an innate need to conceptually organise everything that constitutes our perception of reality, in a categorically distinct manner.

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The Role of Universities in the Age of AI

English, Essays

One important issue in academic education at the moment is the lack of personalisation of our teaching methods. All students who are members of the same cohort are given the same information in the exact, same, way. This may seem as treating everyone equally, but it is actually not fair to consider that each, unique, individual, should learn in the single, very specific, manner that we believe is best. Even though having a singular approach to teaching is easier for academics who also have an ever-increasing research workload to consider, the benefit of the students should always come first — and technology can help us achieve this. With the aid of Artificial Intelligence, we can personalise our teaching to the learning style and pace of each individual, while also receiving instant feedback and metrics on the process of learning, which can allow us to identify any necessary changes and additions to each specific learning object that we offer. All our students can thus be equal without having to be exactly the same, and we can also reach a wider audience than before, by offering a more effective digital curriculum, adjusted to their specific wants and needs.

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Crossing the Threshold of Creative Singularity

English, Essays

Fifteen years ago, Meyer and Land (2003) defined the term “Threshold Concept” (TC) as “a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something”. In reality, TCs aim to map the “turning point” when a student comes closer to understanding the overall topic, just by realising that specific crucial concept (similar to an “Aha!” moment).

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wisdom

Data to Wisdom

English, Essays

We live in the Information Era, where knowledge is everywhere and everything. The proper management of knowledge, however, presupposes the existence of mechanisms for organising information, in order to match the appropriate pieces together.

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Raphael - The School of Athens

.AC(ademic) .EDU(cation)

English, Essays

In the book “The Rhythm of Life” (Kelly 2004, p. 80), the author mentions a quote, allegedly by Albert Einstein, saying: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”. Regardless of who made this statement, it remains a humorous remark relevant to a large number of modern day teachers and assessments which consider fairness as a synonym of uniformity.

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A Semantic Web Based Search Engine with X3D Visualisation of Queries and Results

Articles, English

We propose the creation of a new generation Semantic Web search engine that will offer a visual interface for queries and results. To create such an engine, information input must be viewed not merely as keywords, but as specific concepts and objects which are all part of the same universal system. To make the manipulation of the interconnected visual objects simpler and more natural, 3D graphics are utilised, based on the X3D Web standard, allowing users to semantically synthesise their queries faster and in a more logical way, both for them and the computer.

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Moving from Folksonomies to Taxonomies: Using the Social Web and 3D to Build an Unlimited Semantic Ontology

Articles, English

In this paper, we suggest a system which will take advantage of the Social Web and put it to work so that it will operate under the common cause of categorising old and new data into an unlimited Semantic Ontology. This ontology will be created gradually and ever-changing, like a versatile encyclopaedia of information compiled from interconnected data. With the addition of a 3D Web interface on top of the ontology management mechanisms, the entire experience will become more user friendly, providing graphical presentation of all opinions and interpretations in a clear and comparable manner.

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