Lab Activity:Moral Machine
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This lab activity has been assigned to us by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir as an important part of our learning process. It is designed to enhance our practical understanding of the subject and to help us apply the concepts that we have studied in the classroom to real situations.Teacher Blog
Moral Machine
Moral Machine is an online platform, developed by Iyad Rahwan's Scalable Cooperation group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that generates moral dilemmas and collects information on the decisions that people make between two destructive outcomes.[1][2] The platform is the idea of Iyad Rahwan and social psychologists Azim Shariff and Jean-François Bonnefon,[3] who conceived of the idea ahead of the publication of their article about the ethics of self-driving cars.[4] The key contributors to building the platform were MIT Media Lab graduate students Edmond Awad and Sohan Dsouza. Click here
Moral Machine Test Click here
My experience and learning outcome of Moral Machine Activity.
During the Moral Machine activity, I had to make decisions in different situations where a self-driving car had to choose between two harmful outcomes. It was not easy, because each choice involved saving some lives while risking others.
This activity made me think deeply about right and wrong. I learned that moral decisions can be very complicated, and people may have different opinions based on their values, culture, or personal beliefs. It also showed me how hard it is to program machines to make ethical decisions like humans.
Overall, this activity helped me understand that technology and ethics must work together, especially when creating things like self-driving cars.
I. Understanding Hypertext: The Foundation of the Shift
The presentation begins by defining the core technology that drives the pedagogical change:
Hypertext Definition: A system for storing images, text, and other computer files that allows direct links to related text, images, sound, and other data.
Key Components:
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): The standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser.
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): The request-response protocol that gives users a way to interact with web resources by transmitting hypertext messages between clients and servers.
II. The Theoretical Shift: From Text to Decentered Subject
This section outlines the philosophical and theoretical implications of moving from linear text to non-linear hypertext, drawing heavily on Postmodern theory:
Silvio Gaggi's Argument: The presentation explicitly references Silvio Gaggi's work, From Text to Hypertext: Decentering the Subject in Fiction, Film, the Visual Arts, and Electronic Media.
The Decentered Subject: It reiterates the postmodern tenet that "the subject—the self—is unstable, fragmented, and decentered."
Impact on Readers and Authorship: In electronic media, the computer enables the creation of works where readers themselves become decentered. Furthermore, in network literature, the notion of individual authorship may for all practical purposes be lost due to the fluid, collaborative nature of digital content.
III. Pedagogy in the Digital Era: The Decentering of Education
This applies the theoretical concept of decentering directly to the educational context:
Core Tenet of Digital Pedagogy: "The very tenet of Digital Pedagogy makes the subject unstable, fragmented, and decentered."
Defining "Subject": The "Subject" is defined comprehensively as the Core Content, the teacher, and the taught (learner).
The Decentering Effect: The presentation warns that this decentering of learners and the resulting instability may cause the notion of teachership to be "lost" (i.e., fundamentally transformed).
Objective/Challenge: The overall objective of the Faculty Development Programme (FDP) is a "Tough Challenge":
To teach language and literature to students unaltered from its essence through an online mode.
To explore some innovative ways of teaching in an online platform.
To make the students involve better in classroom activities.
IV. New Models and Tools for Digital Pedagogy
In response to the decentering challenge, the presentation calls for the search for new pedagogical models:
1. Pedagogical Models (The "Salad Bowl"):
Digital Pedagogy is envisioned as a "Salad Bowl"—a mixing of different modes:
Face-to-face (F2F): The Traditional Mode (board work and in-class activities).
Flipped Classroom: A model focused on "In Search of Questions" (activity/discussion in class, lecture/content consumption outside).
Blended Learning: Where "Every unit is blended with digital input or output."
Mixed Mode Teaching: Simply defined as F2F + Online.
2. Tools and Techniques (The Pyramid Model):
The presentation proposes a model for implementing Digital Pedagogy, possibly arranged in a hierarchy of tools and techniques:
Digital Portfolio (Goal): The ultimate deliverable or comprehensive assessment method.
Online Assessment (Top of the pyramid).
Asynchronous Learning
Synchronous Teaching
DCLs (Likely an acronym for Digital Content/Curriculum/Collaboration Labs or similar digital learning spaces).
CMS + LMS (Content Management System + Learning Management System - The foundational platforms).
In summary, the slides establish that Hypertext is the technology driving a Postmodern shift in education, making content, teachers, and learners decentralized. The solution is to move beyond traditional teaching and adopt new Blended, Flipped, and Mixed Mode models supported by a range of digital tools (LMS, DCLs, Synchronous/Asynchronous methods) to achieve the challenging goal of teaching the "essence" of literature in the digital age.
2. Hypertext Pedagogical Shift -
The information provides a detailed look at the challenges of teaching Language and Literature in the digital age and demonstrates how various digital tools (hypertext) and techniques can be used to address them, thus illustrating the "Pedagogical Shift."
I. Challenges in Digital Pedagogy for Language & Literature
The presentation first outlines the difficulties inherent in teaching literature and language, especially in an online or remote setting:
Teaching a Language (Pronunciation & Comprehension):
Challenge: Key linguistic elements like pronunciation, stress, and modulation are difficult to convey and for students to grasp remotely. Students struggle to understand the teacher's precise pronunciation and the "essence of linguistic units."
Teaching English Literature (Context & Appreciation):
Challenge (General): The core question is posed: Can a teacher provide the "very quintessence of a poetry, prose, novel, drama and short story" online? Are students truly able to "understand the language and adore the literature as it is written by the writer/human" in an online mode?
Challenge (Foreign Literature): Teaching foreign literature is complicated by several layers of distance and unfamiliarity:
The cultural anonymity.
The social code of conduct.
The religious inconspicuousness.
The mythical aloofness.
The difference in shared collective unconsciousness.
The geographical remoteness.
The historical distance.
II. Digital Solutions: Using Hypertext and Collaborative Tools
The presentation then shifts to demonstrating practical, technology-driven "Teaching Ideas" to overcome these challenges, emphasizing the use of hypertext and collaborative platforms.
1. Addressing Language Challenges (Pronunciation & Comprehension)
To help students with auditory comprehension and linguistic units, the presentation suggests using accessibility features and extensions:
Live Caption in Chrome: Detailed steps are provided on how to turn on Chrome's Live Caption feature, which generates real-time captions for media, directly helping students follow spoken words and correct pronunciation/stress.
Google Meet Transcription Extensions: Two Chrome extensions are highlighted for hands-free note-taking:
Meet Transcript (by thanesh.dev)
Tactiq for Google Meet Transcription
These tools save transcripts to Google Drive, allowing students to review precise language, stress, and modulation after the session.
Google Docs Voice Typing: The presentation shows how to access the Voice Typing tool in Google Docs, which allows for hands-free transcription, useful for both students (to see their own speech transcribed) and teachers (for dictation/note-taking).
2. Teaching Literature Through Hypertext
The presentation suggests using the non-linear, rich media environment of hypertext to make literary context and appreciation more accessible:
Illustrating Poetic Imagery:
A stanza of a poem is presented (with lines about "Hawthorns smile like milk splashed down"), followed by a visual illustration of the imagery ("Hawthorn shrubs full of white flowers give the impression of splashed milk over meadows and hill..."). This moves the student from abstract text to concrete visual reality.
Engaging the Learner with Hypertext (Example: Icarus):
The presentation asks, "Let us see how this hypertext interacts with the learner." It then shows a search result for "fall of Icarus" which immediately presents the learner with diverse, linked resources:
An Online Exhibit of the painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" (Visual/Artistic Context).
A Spotlight Story of "7 Poems About Famous Artworks" (Literary Context).
A link to "Watch Icarus Falling!" (Video/Multimodal Context).
This demonstrates how hypertext allows the learner to instantly navigate the cultural, historical, and artistic context of a literary reference, overcoming the "anonymity" and "distance" mentioned earlier.
3. Using Collaborative Platforms
The presentation also features a slide for a webinar by Dilip Barad on "Using Google Drive for Engaging Learners in Online Remote Teaching - II," indicating that using Google's collaborative suite is a key part of the proposed pedagogical shift.
Part:3 Presentation
Digital Humanities and Generative Literature
I. The Rise of Generative Literature
This section explores the radical new form of literature created by algorithms, challenging the traditional role of the human author:
Definition: Generative literature is defined as the production of continuously changing literary texts by means of a specific dictionary, set of rules, and the use of algorithms.
Challenge to Classics: This form of digital literature is "completely changing most of the concepts of classical literature."
New Reading Process: Texts produced by a computer, rather than a human author, "require indeed a very special way of engrammation and, in consequence, also point to a specific way of reading."
Practical Examples:
Poem Generator Machines: The slides show an example website that can generate various forms of poetry (Sonnet, Haiku, Villanelle), lyrics, and even character/plot outlines.
"Bot or Not" Activity: A slide shows an interactive quiz challenging the reader to determine: "Was this poem written by a human or a computer?" This serves as a classroom activity to explore authorship and creativity in the digital age.
Core Question: The slides raise the central debate in Digital Humanities: "Can a computer write poetry?" and contrast it with traditional skepticism (e.g., a quote attributed to Quentin Tarantino: "You can't write poetry on the computer").
II. Digital Humanities: Quantitative Analysis of Literature
The presentation introduces the tools and techniques used in Digital Humanities to study literature through quantitative methods:
Leading Figures: It highlights key researchers:
Matthew Jockers: Known for Macroanalysis (Digital Methods & Literary History), which involves studying large corpuses of text, contrasting with traditional Microanalysis (close reading).
Aiden and Michel (Culturomics): Known for their work Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture, which involves the Quantitative Analysis of Culture using "Ngrams" (analysis of word frequency over time in vast digital libraries).
Corpus Linguistics in Context (CLiC):
The CLiC web app (developed as part of the CLiC Dickens project) is presented as a tool for using corpus stylistics to study literary texts.
Function: It uses computer-assisted methods to gain new insights into how readers perceive fictional characters.
KWIC: It features Key Word In Context (KWIC), the most common format for concordance lines, allowing users to see a word's usage surrounded by its context in a large body of work.
III. The Digital Portfolio as Assessment
The concluding assessment method proposed is a hyperlinked portfolio that embodies the "hypertext" model of learning:
Digital Portfolio: The recommended assessment method.
Hyperlinked Work: "All works produced by students in the classroom are hyperlinked on their personal website..."
Practical Example: A link to a Google Site is provided demonstrating a concrete example of a digital, hyperlinked student portfolio used for blended learning.
IV. Conclusion: New Opportunities
The final slide concludes with an optimistic outlook on the pedagogical shift:
New Possibilities: The digital era has brought "new possibilities" in pedagogy.
Positive Change: Moving from Text to Hypertext ushers in "unbelievable positive chance in teaching-learning process."
Final Call: The presentation encourages educators to "explore more pedagogical possibilities for the digital natives and happily sail from text to hypertext."
Overall Summary: This section shifts focus from the challenges and tools of remote teaching to the theoretical and methodological changes occurring in literary studies. It promotes the use of Digital Humanities (Corpus Linguistics, Culturomics) and encourages critical engagement with Generative Literature as essential components of the modern curriculum, culminating in the adoption of the hyperlinked Digital Portfolio as the ideal method of assessment for the "digital native."
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