What a very nice long weekend present….

Carl

“It took a long time, but as computers became more powerful and we learned more about how people used them, eventually, we started catching on to the idea that, instead of designing software to work in the fashion that works best for the machine, we could design software to work in the fashion that works best for the people who use it…” (Jesse James Garett). We are still learning how to do this. We have many bad habits to unlearn.

I see the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad as the first significant steps in this direction. We are finally moving beyond the desktop/file cabinet metaphors and developing new ones. Naturally, there will be resistance from those with vested interests in the old paradigms and those who have trouble managing change. Physical tools have an important characteristic that computer applications don’t have: you can see them. That is, the tool and its interface can be seen as separate entities. A computer application has only its interface to present to its user. There is no material object a person can look at to gain clues as to the application’s purpose or operation. This means an application’s interface carries a heavy burden. It needs to convey its purpose and operation in a language its users understand without the benefit of a physical presence.

The purpose of any tool, whether it is a car, can opener or computer application, is to facilitate the goals of the tool’s users. As much as possible the tool should “stay out of the way” while it mediates the task at hand. Phrased another way, the tool users should be looking at and thinking about what it is they are trying to accomplish; they should not be looking at or thinking about the tool being used for the job. A well designed tool directs cognitive effort through itself, not into itself. That is, the effort goes into an object (the thing on which the person is acting) via the tool. The tool then, is the vector that propagates the operator’s effort to produce the result in the object desired by the tool operator. The tool operator’s focus is on the goal to be accomplished, not the tool used to accomplish it. A poorly designed tool in contrast, attracts attention to itself and so distracts the person from their goal. By enabling people to focus their attention on what they are doing, the device seems to disappear. This raises the question, what causes this illusion to break?

Focussing specifically on learning, I want the ability to annotate whatever object I see on the screen. That is, just like a book, magazine, newspaper, journal article or any other physical object, I want to be able to write on it, have those writings saved automatically and re-presented automatically to me when I return to that object. The “getting ready” step should be very small, just like on paper, where one need only pick up a pencil or pen and start writing. And just like on paper these writings should be private until I decide to share them. They should also be searchable and backed up as part of any syncing process.

Where my interest comes from: http://zpd.stormlantern.ca/papers/VirtualMargin_Thesis.pdf

Teaching, and eLearning in particular, suffers from a transmission/presentation model. So far, the vast majority of digital interfaces perpetuate this flaw. As I see it, we need to move towards more of an interaction model. Where students can work more directly with their study materials. Even though it’s possible for PDFs to have annotations in them, I’d wager most people who use them don’t know that. The annotation interface does not readily lend itself to use. People who want to make annotations on such documents print them first. What I want is a device where people don’t feel the need to print PDFs in order to make annotations. What I want is an interface that is so good that writing annotations on the device is the obvious and natural thing to do.

I’m not so interested in specifications or hardware accoutrements, what I’m interested in is functionality that supports learner’s interactions with ideas, that enables them to ‘talk it out’ and develop their own thinking. We aren’t there yet. On the bright side, students are starting to make the case for it:

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/09/28/23918/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/173013/kindle_dx_not_ready_for_college.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10363642-1.html

Will they use it appropriately?

‘Appropriately’ meaning ‘in an acceptable fashion all the time’? The short answer is ‘no.’ Does everyone use their pen appropriately all the time? Should we take them away from everyone because someone might be using it inappropriately?

How are we going to make sure they use it?

If we need to make sure they use it, we are probably expecting them to use a wrong tool. How do we make sure teachers and students are using their pen? Shouldn’t the question be, how do we make sure they are using their mind?

What if they screw around and get off task?

Let’s hope so. We want them to be creative and think for themselves. Don’t we? Well?

What happens if it breaks?

Of course it will break, every electro-mechanical device will at some point. It simply gets replaced.

How are we going to measure its effect on learning?

Students will be doing new things we couldn’t have planned for.

How are we going to measure its effect on teaching?

Teachers will rebel if they are told they have to give them up.

Really, these concerns seem like a solved problem to me. Businesses went through a similar process thirty-plus years ago(!) when they started putting desktop machines on everyone’s desks. Can you imagine the uproar if you even suggested taking them away today? Workers are doing things that they couldn’t otherwise do, it will be the same with students. The work metrics of 20 years ago don’t even begin to account for the types of work that are being done today. Our current assessment methods are similarly inadequate for the work students will be doing once teaching assumes students have a laptop and not just a pen.

Physical property laws have been around for centuries and on the whole work pretty well. The concept of an idea as being valuable is comparatively new. Lots of people have made lots of money by using physical property laws to their advantage. It’s not really surprising that they would try to apply those laws to a potentially lucrative new area. But the economic models are entirely different. Physical property laws came into being to manage scarcity, rival goods in the parlance. The issue being that I can have a piece of land or you can, we can’t both at the same time (partnerships excepted of course). In order for you to have the land, it must be taken from me, and then I don’t have it. Ideas are non-rival goods. I can have an idea, and tell it to you, and I haven’t lost the idea. I still have it intact. What I lost is the exclusive knowing of the idea. The reason this matters is ownership confers privileges–who may traverse your land for instance. In general the owner of a thing gets to decide the terms under which others may use the thing. That use might have a price tag associated with it.

In business knowing something before someone else does can be a big competitive advantage. However, that kind of knowledge comes with a short window of opportunity to use it. Knowledge that can be packaged up is of a different kind. It has a longer shelf-life, so to speak. So here’s the paradox: the fewer people who know something the more money potentially can be made from it, but the less useful it is. The more people who know something the less money can be made from it it, but the more useful it is. Physical property law applied to knowledge is an attempt to solve this dilemma by forcing knowledge into the physical property box where we have established norms for dealing with it. But as I’ve shown, it doesn’t fit. We need new laws to cover the realm of non-rival goods with zero-marginal cost of replication. So far, intellectual property laws, aren’t making it.

We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.
– Ben Sweetland

What if the product of education were not a potential employee? How would that work? Our economic system wouldn’t function. Ok, but the result shouldn’t be just employees. They should be what? Trained for work, but educated too? Which gets to the heart of the matter: What does it mean to be educated? I think we understand what it means to be trained: You’re employable. Are potential employees sufficiently trained after grade 12? are they sufficiently educated? How do we know? A sufficient number of students become employed shows that they are sufficiently trained. A sufficient number of students become, or are …? What? What shows that they are sufficiently educated? Or conversely, what shows that they are insufficiently educated?

Outline for Patterns of Virtual Margin usage in semester-long mixed mode courses research proposal

Rationale:

In the transition from paper based to web based communications we have lost the ability to write on, or annotate, the messages we exchange. Paper margins have long been used for this purpose as an aid in people’s remembering. Therefore it might be useful to add annotations to web-based discussions which are now heavily used in many distance and mixed-mode courses.
A “scratch” writing space removes the ‘publish it or lose it’ ultimatum. Thoughts can be returned to which allows a collection of work to be built up over a period of time prior to making them public.
Previous studies have looked at the Virtual Margin interface and its usage for one Knowledge Building exercise. This study will cover a whole semester and a whole class to see if students find additional uses for it, and if those uses change over time.
The core purpose of the virtual margin is to aid people’s remembering. The thinking is that it would be a useful learning tool.

Method:

My MA thesis research suggests that the Virtual Margin would be very useful in Knowledge Building, and in some surprising ways. This study will investigate how this potential plays out in two courses through a full semester.
Students will access the Knowledge Forum, KF, application via a proxy that mediates the student’s web browser and the KF server message exchanges. The proxy will add the Virtual Margin to the KF notes and views. The Virtual Margin will be part of the interface, it but can easily be ignored. It will be the students’ choice whether to use the virtual margin. What we want to see is what uses students make of it, and how do those uses change over the course of the semester. Our expectation is that if the Virtual Margin is not useful, students will tend to not use it. If it is useful, they will use it.
Whether it is useful to a particular person is likely dependent on their studying style, learning style and comfort with technology. Every book and journal has margins. Most people most of the time ignore them. But some people choose to use them for various purposes. I anticipate the same will be true for the Virtual Margin.

Subjects:

Masters students and PhD students in Fall 2009.

Data:

The students’ online discussion contributions, and their Virtual Margin annotations. Interviews with masters students concerning their annotations and use of the Virtual Margin.
Because I am one of the students in the PhD course, I will not view the annotations of the other class members prior to the end of the semester. One of the attributes of the Virtual Margin is the privacy of one’s annotations. By refraining from viewing my fellow classmates annotations until the semester is over, this privacy is preserved.
The data will be stored my supervisor’s office on a password protected server computer that will remain in this office at all times. The office will be kept locked unless my supervisor is present.
The data will be kept for two years, or six months after the defence of my dissertation, whichever is longer.

Analysis:

We don’t really know what to expect. We’re still at the point of finding out what happens when people try it. We’re not at the point where we think we can demonstrate that it aids learning. We’re trying to demonstrate usefulness, and what those uses are, what potential uses might be, and how it might be made more useful (if indeed it is).
Exegesis.

btw, the vimeo link quit at about the 24 minute mark for me. I found Mark’s presentation on YouTube.

thanks Stephen

L.’s teaching practice is informed firstly by her own desire to help her “…students to grow into the fullness of their humanity.” To aid her understanding in this endeavour she has called upon the works of various scholars such as Giroux, hooks, Freire and Noddings. But there is still much that goes on in her classroom that remains unexplained. She seems to feel that there is more she could be doing, if only she knew what it was. This sense of professional unease reached a crisis point when she introduced a web based civic simulation into her class. It’s introduction into her course was deliberate attempt on her part to be ‘relevant’ to her students. They had grown up with computers and the internet, so incorporating a web-based component to her program would be in some ways familiar to them. All of which sounds fairly innocuous. Where she found new challenges was in the degree and depth of her students’ engagement with the simulation. Their involvement exceeded her expectations and comfort level. After reading her paper a couple of times, I’m not sure there’s anything I can say that would help to restore her sense of balance and provide her with the firm footing she desires.

It seems to me that we’ve been here before. In the place where the rules are changing. In the uncertain transition zone. Where what we used to do feels out of alignment. The old touch points have been hidden on us. Our accustomed role is ill-suited to the stage we’re on. The other players are performing their parts fluidly, while we stand around awkwardly, wondering if we’ve missed another cue.

Let’s go back a few hundred years to a time when there were no books, and no papers. All the teaching was oral. Teachers professed and students listened. They monologued and dialogued. A large part of the curriculum was the Bible. But very few people had one. Books were laboriously made and extremely valuable. Then Gutenberg came along and invented the printing press. Suddenly, many people had their own Bible and learned to read it for themselves. And the teachers were called to account for their teachings. “Where does it say that in the Bible?” Students could read ahead or discuss or even read other text without their teacher. The boundaries of the classroom had expanded and the balance of power had shifted.

In more recent times, teachers wrote on chalk boards while students used slate tablets because writing materials were so expensive. As production costs came down more students had paper and ink. Now their works had permanence. They could make drafts. They could collect their writings. The boundary of the classroom expanded and the balance of power shifted again.

Another example, in the 70s calculators started to replace slide-rules. More people could use them, do more complex calculations and do them faster and more accurately. Teachers initially opposed them because their curriculum was no match for the speed and processing power of the calculator. The realm of what was possible expanded and the balance of power shifted.

Here’s a concise list of some educational technologies: speech, drawing, writing, tablets, paper, books, computers, the web, laptops, handhelds, what’s next? Moving through the list the range of what is possible increases. Technological change begats social change. As the possibilities expand the established order must change in order to accommodate them. Denying the new possibilities, repressing the new found freedoms, comes at an escalating cost the longer they are denied. The question becomes how do we incorporate these new abilities with their concomitant expectations? There is resistance because doing so upsets the established order. That established order is usually the result of a great deal of work, not to be cast aside lightly. How do we integrate this new thing into the existing system while making use of its new potential?
How do we carry forward what is useful and valuable in the presence of this new thing?

There are two kinds of technological change: incremental and disruptive. Incremental changes can be woven into existing systems without too much stress. They are just a better way of doing what is already being done. Most people can accommodate better fairly well. Disruptive changes on the other hand, by their very nature change everything. They can’t be fit into an established system without changing the system itself. Computers on their own, are an incremental change (from an education point of view). A faster calculator, a more forgiving typewriter, a more precise drawing tool and so on. Computers connected to the internet, the World Wide Web. Now that’s disruptive change. Nothing is the same once it tries to accommodate the web. Any system that tries is going to be transformed by it in unforeseen and perhaps uncomfortable ways. Education is starting to deal with this. The next few years are going to be painful because the web can’t be held back any longer.

So what do we do? Just what L. did. She tried something new. And her classroom, her teaching methods, her teaching strategies have been disrupted. She’s not alone in this. It’s as though she’s come to the edge of the map and stepped into the part labelled ‘There Be Dragons’. And they are there. They are called administrators, parents and veteran teachers. People who know what they’re doing, who know what to expect because they know the way things work. They know. But disruptive changes, change the rules. You do something they don’t know; in their eyes, you’re probably wrong. Applying the old standards, expecting the old results is a recipe for conflict in the presence of disruptive change.

Incorporating the web as an integral part of class instruction takes a new set of skills. A new way of thinking of course content and of leadership. What does it mean when every student has access to exactly the same information as the teacher—more than anyone can ever absorb. How does it work when anyone can talk to anyone else at anytime—without disturbing anyone else? What happens when the inert knowledge prescribed by the curriculum comes to life in the students’ minds? Standardized testing doesn’t account for that. The K-12 curriculum can be thought of as a set of expanding boxes each one slightly larger than the one before. The classroom has kept students in the box; the web lets them out. Like Pandora, we’re not going to be able to put them back. We are still early in this transition period. It is going to take a few years before we have a stable system again, and it’s too soon to say what it is going to look like. There’s more than one way to help students “grow into the fullness of their humanity.” The principles are the same though the particular tactics might change. I think if we can hold onto those principles that L. knows intuitively that we will be fine, and so will our students.