Adapting education using linked data

多年来，我一直热衷于教学，在我决定申请博士学位之前，我曾考虑成为一名计算机科学教师。然而，我的最后一年毕业论文和乔治·赫里奥特学校的入学安排让这个计划被搁置了。我看到了教师在为个人提供量身定做的教育时所面临的困难。我觉得有责任利用我从计算机科学学位中获得的技能，以及我的高水平思维，来扩展我作为本科学位的一部分进行的创新和合作研究。在大学的最后一年，我发现了建构主义的概念及其相关的教学方法，包括适应性教学。这些概念与我的信念一致，即我们在认知能力、背景和兴趣方面都是独一无二的，因此，为每个人提供不符合他们需求的教育是没有意义的。我相信，当我们学习一个新概念时，我们会利用我们目前对世界的知识和理解来帮助我们理解新的信息。每个人都应该有平等的学习机会，但这并不意味着每个人都需要相同的学习工具。我们应该将差异视为机遇，我们需要理解，对一个人的解释可能不适合另一个人。我提倡使用技术作为学习的助手，并相信可以而且应该利用技术来实现灵活的学习方法。我攻读博士学位的总体目标是通过为每个人提供平等的学习机会来改善个人的教育。我的目标是为学习者提供访问资源的机会，这些资源是根据他们的具体需求和学习能力量身定做的。我希望通过构建一个直观、有用的系统来促进教师的利他主义本质。实现这些目标不是一项简单的任务，需要与苏格兰中学教师进行持续对话，以便在制定协助他们的系统之前确定和解决他们的具体需求。我将抓住机会与知识渊博的学者和教育工作者合作，加深我对教育面临的挑战以及如何最好地克服这些挑战的理解。我将以开放的心态通力合作，充分研究、理解和解决根据个人需求量身定做教育的问题。在这项必要的研究之后，我希望开发一个系统，供学生和教师使用和培训，向个人推荐学习材料。课堂将最终能够摆脱为所有人提供一种资源的局面，开始完全专注于学生的个人学术需求。

I have been passionate about teaching for many years and prior to my decision to apply for a PhD, I was considering becoming a Computer Science teacher. However, my final year dissertation along with a placement at George Heriot's school put this plan on hold. My eyes were opened to the difficulties teachers face in providing tailored education to individuals. I feel a responsibility to utilise the skills I have attained from my Computer Science degree, as well as my high-level thinking, to extend the innovative and collaborative research I have carried out as part of my undergraduate degree. In time, I hope to enable students to have an education adapted to their specific needs.In my final year of university, I discovered the concept of constructivism and its associated pedagogies, including adaptive teaching. These concepts aligned with my beliefs that we are all unique in terms of our cognitive ability, background and interests, thus, it makes little sense to provide everyone with an education not tailored to their needs. I believe that when we learn a new concept, we draw on our current knowledge and understanding of the world to help us comprehend new information. Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to learn, yet this does not mean each individual requires the same tools to learn. We should embrace differences as opportunities and we need to understand that an explanation for one individual may not be suitable for another. I am an advocate for using technology as an assistant in learning and believe that it can and should be harnessed to enable a flexible approach to learning.My overall goal for a PhD is to improve education for individuals by providing everyone with an equal opportunity to learn. I aim to provide learners with access to resources which are tailored to each of their specific needs and learning abilities. I hope to facilitate teachers' altruistic nature by building a system which is intuitive and useful. To achieve these goals is not a simple task and will require a continuous dialogue with Scottish secondary school teachers, in order to identify and address their specific needs before developing a system to assist them. I would seize the opportunity to work with knowledgeable academics and educators, to develop my understanding of the challenges facing education and how best to overcome them. I would work collaboratively with an open mind to fully research, understand and solve the problems of tailoring education to individuals needs. Following this necessary research, I hope to develop a system which pupils and teachers could use and train to recommend learning materials to individuals. The classroom would finally be able to move away from providing one resource for all to begin to focus completely on the pupil's individual academic needs.