Last week we spent time looking at our unit concepts through different AOI.
Reflect: How does the AOI change how you look at concepts? Specifically, think of the concepts your group chose because they ‘fit’ the AOI.
Post a comment to this blog posting reflecting on the question above. Make your comment concise, and provide evidence for your claim(s). This is a formative assessment which will address Criterion A, Content.
The Learner's Toolbox 
The AOI does not change the idea about the concept, but rather change how we view about the concept. The guiding questions change our perspectives about the concept. Each AOI will view each concept differently. The guiding questions are the things that will make us think differently about the concepts. For example if the concept is about racism and the AOI is health and social education, we would be thinking about how do I think and act, or how do I look after myself if other people are using racial slurs to me. However, if the AOI is human ingenuity then we would be thinking how and why do we have racism. Therefore, each AOI act as something that changes how we view the concept, or our perspective.
The AOI doesn’t actually change the concepts, they change the way people think of them. It changes people’s POV, which is point of view, towards the concepts by expanding the concepts into bigger ideas. The AOI filters out the other concepts and keeps the “best fit” or the most “suitable” concepts, and then expand it into bigger ideas. So basically, the AOI is like a filter which filters concepts into ideas about it using a question or questions in the AOI.
For example, my group’s AOI was Environment, and the question we chose was “Where do we live?” So we looked through each concept and see how each concept can be linked to Environment and the question, then we turn them into actual “ideas” from our POV of Environment.
The AOI changes how we look at a concept because it eliminates other aspects of the concept when we view it. This is comparable to a speech. The message is the same but the speaker’s way of saying it is what changes our view on the message. For example, if the concept is Ideologies, and the AOI is Human Ingeniuety, then we’d be asking what are the various consequences of this concept? How was it created?
However, if the AOI is Health and Social Education, we would view things differently.
That is how the AOI changes our view on the concept- by influencing our power point of view.
A concept is like a big complex file with all the information that includes junk data. But AOI has 5 elements that organizes the concepts. Therefore, AOI is able to filter the important ideas in the concepts that fits with the chosen AOI. Then it’s possible to view the concepts in a different point of view for each AOI. For instance, if the concept was ‘Smart phones’, and the AOI was approaches to learning, we would probably discussed about the ways to use smart phone properly but if the AOI was environment, it would be about how the environment is being polluted by the factories that create smart phones. So we can say that AOI changes how we look at the concept in a different perspective.
Every concept is its own idea, and every AOI has its own different filter. For example, when you look at blank piece of paper, it is white, and when you put it behind yellow lens, you shall see the paper yellow and that is the same way concepts change by the AOI. Each and every Areas of Interaction have questions for example the Environment AOI has the question “Where do we live?” and that is the filter. For the Environment AOI, the concepts we expanded and focused on were all related to the question “Where do we live?” These concepts that we had chosen was the best fit for the AOI because of the filters. On the other hand if the AOI had been Community and Service the “color of the filter” would be different and so the best suitable concept could be completely different from Environment’s concept.
Aoi change how we look at the concept in many ways such as, Aoi make us look at the concept in a specific term such as, environment. Aoi evaluates the concept and makes the concept in specific idea. Every concept has its own idea which has its specific Aoi filter. The concept that best fits the aoi can only pass the filter. Aoi change the point of view of the concept and puts it in a suitable situation it could fit in. The Aoi doesn’t change the concept it changes the way we view the concepts and makes us think in a specific way which only depends on a specific thing or idea.
AOI itself has a pervasive range of ideas. In 5 AOIS they all have a specific topic, but while exploring the topic, you can know that each topics has a broad concepts and ideas in it.
A concept is an idea itself. We cannot change an idea just by reading and understanding AOI. AOI just changes the way we look at the concepts. For an example, it is just like how you think cat is the best animal, then while growing up, having a dog as a pet, you can also know that a dog is a very loyal animal. Your thought will be changed like “Cats aren’t the only animals who are the best. Dogs can also be as good as cats.” It won’t suddenly change like “Cats aren’t the best animal from now on! Dogs are the best.” Like that, AOI does not change a concept but it changes the way, we consider about the concept. Also for another example, our team’s AOI was health and social education. Health and social education questions about how do we think and act and how do we care for the others. While we thought of how does AOI change a concept, we figured out that at first, we all think that we aren’t racists or sexists, but as we filtered our concept, we found out that racism or sexism affects the way we act or think of other people. So, at the end, we figured out that after filtering out the thoughts, AOI do change how we think of a concept.
People can have many ideas about the same concept, so one concept can mean many thing , but with AOI people would have more specific idea of the concept. Also, AOI could change a concept meaning completely, because as people relate the AOI to the concept their perspective about the concept changes, and that can change the concept meaning or idea. For example when you thing about the concept of competition, you could thing of many ideas; like sports, video games, schools work and even fight between two kids for toys. As you can there are many ideas that might come to you mind, but when you relate it to the AOI it narrow you idea and change you perspective. If you choose human ingenuity maybe the concept of competition from sport, video games and two kids fight together will simply be about a specific idea like how human create so many sports and games and why. This idea is pretty specific compare to the other one, and it is also has totally different idea and meaning.
AOI have an impact on how a person viewed the concepts. AOI’s questions make the concepts more specific and organized in a way. Also, the AOI’s questions are like the funnel. It seperates and narrows down the concepts into a specific idea. For example, if we are thinking about religion. Poeple will probably view it as something that is practiced for many years and it is taught over generations that we should worship and believe in. But if we were to view the concept through the AOI Human Ingenuity, people will have different point of view. They would think that religion has an influence on how human intends to create and why they create.
The concept changes because of the AOI because AOI is going to make the wide concept to be smaller idea. AOI will help telling specifically how does the concept should be look like, or another word to guild to make the concept chosen to be in the form it wants so some concepts might be rejected if it’s related to AOI. When the concept changes, the perspective also changes. For example: the AOI is Environment, the question will be ” where do we live”, if I choose jealousy to be my concept then it wouldn’t fit really well so it’s better for me to change to another topic that is more fit to the AOI. If I choose respect (to the environment)as my concept it will be more fit with the AOI. This is how the AOI changes the concept and the way we look at it to find the most related concept to the AOI.
AOI change how we look at a concept because the AOI will help us to narrow down the concept from a broader idea into a smaller idea in its own way of thinking. Since every AOI all have their own unique way of thinking and different guiding questions that goes along with it, the concept will be showed differently when we use different AOI’s way of thinking to look at it. For example if the concept is “friendship” the AOI community and service which have the guiding questions of “How do we live in a relation to each other?” will view the concept as what is the benefit of having friend and how can we live with them and how to treat them while the AOI human ingenuity will look at the concept as how does friendship start and how to maintain it. Therefore, the AOI will change how we look at a concept.
A concept is a very broad topic. A singe concept can spawn infinite amounts of discussions, arguments, hypothesis, point of views, etc. The AOI acts like a funnel that break down the concept into more simple ideas. For example, racism. Without anything to filter down the topic, we could be discussing about anything and everything about it, from how different colors treat each other to how their genes are different. With an AOI to guide us, for example, Community and Service, we would be discussing about things related to the AOI, such as how people are more likely to believe ideas from their race than the other, or how a community forbids a race to stay in the same area with another race. The AOI helps us know what to look for in the concept.
AOI can change concept by making the concept smaller after filtering it with the questions from a specific AOI. The filter process will reduce the general ideas of the concept, leaving the more specific ones. For example, the concept of habitat could be filtered with the questions from the AOI Environment. The question “where do we live?” will separate human shelters from animal shelters, and from the animal shelters, it will be divided again into a more specific place, depending on what type of animal was referred to.
What AOI does to an concept is not change it’s idea, but changes our points of view. AOI filters different information we get from the concept for example, the keywords like: Power, Respect, Vengance. The general idea will affect the filter so if the concept is “Government” we would filter the main idea to the keywords of Power and Respect. People have different perspective so the AOI helps people not to change their ideas but filters the best idea which is related most to the general idea. Each AOI will differently affect the main idea. Because there are five AOIs: Approches to learing, Enviroment, Human ingenuity and Health and Social Education. If the topic is a term in this case I choose: Global Warming, AOI such as Enviroment will filter off the best ideas because we relate the envirnoment around the topic not the subject itself. Which if we apply approaches to learning to the topic, it will change the main focus.