Bus Uncle - 2

Since I reported the "Bus Uncle" vidoes from YouTube.com, more variations have appeared. Here are some more interesting updates.

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Why Commerical Games Will Not Work in Education? And What Is The Alternative?

[An early draft - comment welcome. Do not quote without contacting me first for updates to this essay.]

Introduction

There is a lot of hype on using commercial games in education lately. The premise is that commercial games are engaging and hence by using commercial games, educators can engage learners in their learning. Commercial game is the modern Torjan Horse for conquering the minds of our next generation – so many of us hope!

Unfortunately, this is not an informed expectation. There are millions of failed commercial games. So not all commercial games are engaging. Different genres of games attract different gamers. So even successful commercial games are not universally engaging. Commercial game designers single-mindedly create engaging games. When we try to add additional requirements, such as delivering learning outcomes, the result is disastrous. Game designers acknowledge the problem as evidenced by all the conferences about “serious games” lately.

Successful commercial games cost millions to develop. Education does not have that money. Even if education does have that money, one would question the wisdom of investing such good sum of money in commercial game design without the evidence of effectiveness.

A commercial game may cover a topic in a subject domain. Education covers hundreds of topics in thousands of domains. Again, in order to cover most topics in most subject domains, we need thousands or millions of games. Learners do not have the time to play all these games. Education will not be able to afford the cost of building such games.

However, game community does tell us one very important message. When properly designed, learners can be engaged in games. James Paul Gee shows us that everyone can learn something from games. So instead of dismissing the use of games in education, let’s embrace the concept and find out how we should do it.

Using Real Games For Education Purposes

SimCity is one of the most successful commercial games and has been used quite extensively by educators. Player assumes the role of the chief architect and mayor of a city. Player is responsible for building and managing the city. As the player builds the city, in-game SIMS (simulated citizens) would come to the city, engage in different activities and generate a tax base for the player to continue developing the city. In the paper Playing With Urban Life: How SimCity Influences Planning Culture Daniel G. Lobo explained that the work of Forrester, Alexander, and Rybczynski have served as SimCity’s foundational ingredients. It seems to be an endorsement of the use of SimCity for urban planning courses where Forrester, Alexander, and Rybczynski’s models are examined. However, the “black box” nature of a commercial game and the demand of engagement for the game designers have also included some unspoken assumptions. These assumptions undermine the usefulness of the game in serious educational settings. Lobo pointed out that the SimCity’s game goal is to build a megacity and the player is given absolute power of being the “god” in the simulator. “Unwieldy growth and megalomaniacal, destructive behavior are the two poles of city operation and the player’s most likely courses of action.” This is not the kind of message we want to give to our learners.

X-plane is a very interesting flight simulator. Firstly, it is developed and marketed by a one-man company called Laminar Research based in the owner’s home. Secondly, people have been asking how he can compete in the flight-sim business, make money and survive since 1994. The answer lies in the way x-plane has engaged a wide community which supported the development. Thirdly, this simulator allows users to create planes - different type of planes including Space Shuttle and simulated flight in the atmosphere of Mars to amazing accuracy of the Physics involved. Fourthly and most incredibly, x-plane received FAA approval to train pilots towards their commercial certificate !

Amazing as it may sound, I downloaded a demo copy and tried to “play” with x-plane to fulfill one of my childhood dreams of becoming a pilot. After installing the software, I looked at my monitor and my brain went blank. I did not know what I had to do, or what I wanted to do with the simulator! I lacked a “game goal”.

These two stories tell us two things.

First, educational use of game will require the game’s underlying black box to be opened. SimCity’s failure of being a good educational game is because of its underlying black box has assumptions contradictory to the values we want to teach. X-plane is successful enough to be endorsed for FAA certification because of the accurate underlying Physics-engine modeling of the aerodynamics of the air-foils. People can create more planes for x-plane is also because of the opening of the game’s “black box”.

Second, an amazing game like x-plane is not engaging to me (even I have a childhood dream of being a pilot) because I have not formulated a game goal. X-plane does not have an implicit game goal, making it more like a simulator than a game. SimCity’s failure as a simulator is exactly because there is an implicit game goal in the game – and the game goal does not necessarily match (in some cases, actually contradicts) the learning objective!

The second half of my last statement is actually very interesting. Can we find games whose engaging game goals are in alignment with learning objectives?

Simple Games

Sivasailam Thiagarajan , I called him Thiagi as most people who know him would, started his consulting business in 1976 from his basement. Now, 30 years later, he continues to operate the same business in pursuit of the same mission. During these years, he has designed hundreds of training games and activities. His games do not have complex graphics, no animations, simple, usually run for a few minutes. However his games are engaging, inspirational and sometimes very funny.

Here is a link to an email game called DEPOLARIZER: http://thiagi.com/email-depolarizer.html. It is a bit too long to copy here. Please review the game before reading on.

In this Thiagi’s email game, there are 5 rounds. Participants are asked to give their positions on a 9-point scale on an issue. They are then asked to predict the average of the group, then role play to provide statements at the extreme positions. The final step is to predict the average of group after revising their personal positions based on reading of the extreme position statements.

This game is applicable to almost any subject/issue. It is collaborative, can be played without much interference to the normal work schedule of the participants.

I played another Thiagi’s email game (called half-life) for a group of online role play simulation users in higher education institutes about 3 years ago. During the 2 weeks of playing the game, I did not lose even one participant throughout the 4 rounds of email exchanges. During the face to face debriefing, there was a heated debate of the outcome of the game too.

Thiagi’s game is a shell (he calls it a frame) whereby we can adapt to different subject matters. It is engaging not because it has high production value. Like chess, it is engaging because of nature of the game is engaging. It is engaging because these games give the player a real sense of freedom to do whatever they like and bear the consequence of the player’s action. It is engaging because there is a meaningful game goal. It is engaging because it is challenging.

There are deadly dull boring content which one must master in a subject matter, such as the names of bones for a medical study, the chemical symbols of the elements in Science etc. We can sweeten the learning process using a competitive game, like “Who wants to be a Millionaire” or “Trivial Pursuit”. We make use of the competitive nature of the players. We can make use of the pacing (as in shorter time for each higher level) to ensure mastery and fast recall of facts. (Hint: how many times we keep playing the same console game just in order to get a higher score?)

The Role Of Game Design

I started this essay by proclaiming that education games will not work. I must admit there are critical elements of game designs which are useful and informative in our endeavour to create engaging learning. Next, I will explain what I have learnt in the last 5 years as Fablusi designer. I am in a privileged position to be able to see many engaging role play simulations being prepared and delivered to hundreds of learners in a broad range of subject areas.

Game Goals And Learning Objectives

Here, I want to make explicit the distinction between game goals and learning objectives. Game goal is the position a player wants to achieve at the end of the game within the context of the game. It is the “winning” position. Learning objectives are things an external institute (one who provided the games in the first place) wants the players to acquire during and/or after playing the game. Game goal is a powerful motivation for player. If the game goal requires the learning of something, players will have a strong incentive to get that knowledge in order to achieve the game goal. Roger Schank asked “Why would anyone learn anything if not to help in the pursuit of a goal?” . By creating a scenario and giving a learner a role in the scenario, Schank set up a goal for the learner. In pursuit of the game goal, the learner seeks out advice from experts (provided as short video clips in one implementation I have seen), makes decisions and eventually achieves the game goal. Although I called that particular implementation a glorified multiple choice, there is obviously a certain engaging facet for some learners.

The Scarlet Letter Simulation , a role play simulation , is “a psychological examination of the values, mores, and traditions impregnating American literature as portrayed by Nathaniel Hawthorne's characterization of early American Puritan culture. The simulation aims to explore the themes of sin, hypocrisy, repression, self knowledge and the fall of Puritan society. Players will experience the conflicts inherent in questioning why individuals struggle with their actions and feelings, why individuals feel the need to chastise others, and how individuals deal with the conflicting desires of nature and the demands society”. Some of the roles in the simulation are taken from the novel, some are created by the simulation designers Mary Noggle and Roni Linser. To start the game, players are asked to write a “role profile” which gives a description of the role (and the hidden agenda of the role). This set up a game goal and the ownership of the role. Unlike Schank’s implementation, the game goals for each player are not the same although there is a common learning objective. Furthermore, as the game progresses, the game goal can change. We call this dynamic goal-based learning.

Again in the Scarlet Letter Simulation, the game started as the moderator released a “kick-start” episode – a compelling reason for the roles to act. In fact, this simulation, two kick-start episodes were used, the second one brought the players 15 years later.

Engagement is about engaging the mind. When the players own the role they play and have the freedom to do what they wanted to do – and enjoyed the consequence of the actions, the engagement is overwhelming. When the Scarlet Letter Simulation was used, all students read the text thoroughly, some several times. This was the first time in the history of that course that all students did extensive research beyond the basic reading in order to play the role. This is the power of game goal.

White box game engine

The games which can be used successfully in education, such as x-plane, Thiagi’s simple games and role play simulation all have one common characteristic – the underlying game engine can be easily modified and adopted for different learning objectives. The Scarlet Letter Simulation ran on Fablusi™ online role play simulation platform which is based on a role play simulator generator .

Game engine can provide an engaging framework or as a simulator. The role of educator is to create compelling game goal which when achieved will require the mastery of the material that was covered by the learning objectives.

Designing of games for use in education requires a shift of the focus of the creation process. Traditional instructional design calls for identification of learning objectives, the material that support the learning objectives and then formulate the sequencing of the material. In designing games for education, after identifying the learning objectives, we look for a scenario in which players need to have progressive mastery of the material covered by the learning objective in order to achieve interesting and compelling game goals. Learning is the by-product of playing.

Collaboration & Minimalist Design

Thiagi’s email games and online role play simulations share two features which are very desirable in education – collaboration and minimalist design.

Both of these designs require players to be competitors and collaborators at the same time. All the role play simulations on the Fablusi™ platform supports an additional layer of collaboration. A team of players is to play one role! It is required that a role to act coherently throughout the period of the simulation, players, when playing in a team, need to co-ordinate among themselves in order to ensure the role is acting coherently. That would require the articulation of tactics and strategies adopted by the role among the team members. This process of articulation serves as a learning process that we aimed for.

Thiagi’s email games and online role play simulations do not have elaborate and expensive graphics. The focus is to elicit the imagination of the players – not the designers. Without those expensive 3-D virtual environment or graphics, educators can create the email game or an online role play simulation in very short time, typically half an hour for email game and a day for role play simulation. Both email game and role play simulation runs for weeks. That is a very effective use of development time.

Conclusion

I believe that a direct adoption of commercial game, an attractive proposal as it might look at first glance, is not the best approach we should take. Rather, I suggest that we should look beyond games and identify what really capture the minds of our students. Engagement is about engaging the mind. Like chess, the production value of the chess piece is secondary to the engaging nature of the game.

I have been involved in an engaging pedagogical design for the past 5 years. The engaging nature of online role play simulation is unquestionable, both from the data log showing when the players were online and the amount of time they spent within the simulation. The learning outcomes were surprisingly pleasing. Learners went beyond the traditional requirement and searched out more information in order to play the role. The learning is much deeper.

In this essay, I have shared with the readers several key messages. The most important one being the design of game goals which align with learning objectives. If the game is engaging and the game goal is compelling, the players will master what is required to achieve the goal.

“Why would anyone learn anything if not to help in the pursuit of a goal?”

Learning is ...

Some selections from the Web:

Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values, through study, experience, or teaching, that causes a change of behavior that is persistent, measurable, and specified or allows an individual to formulate a new mental construct or revise a prior mental construct (conceptual knowledge such as attitudes or values).. [Learning definition from Wikipedia]

Learning is to incorporate new information or skills into the learner's existing knowledge structure and to make that knowledge accessible. . . . and many other quotes. [Quotations on Teaching, Learning, and Education]

Learning is the result of "mental construction." [snip] by fitting new information together with what they already know. [Constructivist Teaching and Learning Models]

Learning is a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world. [Driscoll (2000) as quoted in Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age]

In cognitive theories, knowledge is viewed as symbolic mental constructs in the learner's mind, and the learning process is the means by which these symbolic representations are committed to memory. [Cindy Buell as quoted in Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age]

Learning is a socially enacted process, promotes the principality of the individual (and her/his physical presence – i.e. brain-based) in learning [Comment on social constructivist views in Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age]

Learning, as a self-organizing process requires that the system (personal or organizational learning systems) “be informationally open, that is, for it to be able to classify its own interaction with an environment, it must be able to change its structure…” [Luis Mateus Rocha (1998) as quoted in Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age]

Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.[Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, my emphasis]

Service-learning is "a method under which students learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences that meet actual community needs, that are integrated into the students' academic curriculum or provide structured time for reflection and that enhance what is taught in school by extending student learning beyond the classroom and into the community." [Office of Student Volunteer Services]

[snip] liberal learning by pursuing intellectual work that is honest, challenging, and significant, and by preparing ourselves to use knowledge and power in responsible ways. Liberal learning is not confined to particular fields of study. What matters in liberal education is substantial content, rigorous methodology and an active engagement with the societal, ethical, and practical implications of our learning. [Statement on Liberal Learning]

Kindergarten Computer Centers

Simple games for the young!

Learning happens best when ...

A few selections from the web:

Learning happens best when driven by self-interest, when it's self-initiated, and when it's allowed to happen wherever and whenever the interest strikes. [Life-based learning]

Learning happens best when the learners interact both with the information and with others. They discuss their understanding and communicate that understanding with others in their online learning community. There is a more effective understanding of the content and they are more likely to be able to apply it to different situations. [e-Learning Communities and Cultures]

Learning happens best in context, that is, when there's a real need to know.... Learning happens best when caring adults work with the child, have loving relationships, and explore the world together in ways that are interesting and fun. [Making the most of childhood: the importance of early years]

Learning happens best when leaders are stretched beyond their current levels of knowledge, skills, thought, and expertise - but that this is done in context. [Leader Development Across Cultures]

Learning happens best when

* all of your senses are engaged, not just hearing and sight, but smell, touch and taste;
* your technology is integrated. It should not be an end in itself, but a tool, which enhances your learning experience;
* you feel safe and secure. Learning is about risk taking. A sense of safety and security encourages you to stretch outside of yourself to achieve your best;
* you actively participate, you are actively engaged in making your own learning happen;
*you're connected to the world. There are levels of connections that you make with other learners, with teachers or "guides," with the school as a whole and with your community;
* you feel a sense of pride about your school and your community.

[Student Design Competition Mentoring Guideline]

Learning happens best when people are actively involved in their own learning; when they can draw on their own experiences; when they can connect thoughts with their feelings. [What is Peace?]

Learning happens best when it involves a continuous and interactive cycle of planning, application, feedback, and reflection, and when it occurs among those who have built strong relationships through mutual respect and trust. [TEACHING PHILOSOPHY]

Learning happens best when it happens for its own sake. (a child's innate desire to learn is a far more powerful motivating force than any external reward - or threat.) [Overview of The Free School]

Learning happens best when we are all working together, (students, teachers, and parents), to develop a rich learning environment spanning home, school, and the greater community [Monarch Alternative Community School]

Learning happens best when experience is involved. [Meet the Teachers - Elizabeth Smolcic]

Learning happens best when students and teachers are excited about what is being learned. [Educational philosophy by John M. Green, my emphasis ]

Learning happens best when you can browse around in a problem space, savoring the shapes, fiddling with the bits and pieces, twiddling the knobs--but always, always, taking your time. [Review of Papert, The Children's Machine]

Learning happens best when student-teacher relationships are based on mutual trust and respect... student, home and school have a common goal, interact positively and are mutually supportive. [Our Beliefs about Teaching and Learning]

Learning happens best when in "wholes" rather than in disjointed, decontextualized parts; learners perceive and participate in authentic uses of what is being learned; we value and take advantage of the social nature of learning; learners have control over what, when, and how they learn; earners have opportunity to reflect on their learning. [I Hate This Book Now: Re-imagining the Role of Packets in Teaching Reading and Writing ]

Learning happens best when when we act, and reflect on our actions before we act again. [Leadership Qualities]

Learning happens best when people first feel confident that they can do what they’re being asked to do and can trust that they will have the resources needed to do it. [Employees Remember Informal Learning Best]

Learning happens best when people participate in different communities to practice. The best collaboration environments provide the opportunity to meet, share ideas, discuss, and learn from one another’s experiences. [The York University Landscape Plan]

Learning happens best when individuals are provided with hands-on experiences that encourage observing, questioning, and problem solving. [Spectrum School]

Learning happens best when we are personally motivated and mentally challenged. [Where Are Young People Really Learning? ]

Learning happens best when when it is fun. [Course Philosophy of EDU 314: Teaching with Computers in Elementary and Secondary Schools, State University of New York College at Cortland]

Learning happens best when it is initiated by the learner. [The Concept of Unschooling]

Learning happens best when it is directly related to a person's life, goals and interests. [Course Objectives of EST 426/ ENS 626: Concepts of Sustainable Development, Suny-ESF]

Learning happens best when children are actively engaged with the world around them. [Bllingham Cooperative School]

Learning happens best when there is cooperation between teacher and student and when the student's own interests and desires are respected. [Ad of seeking a new President, The American College of Sofia, Bulgaria]

ASCILITE 2006

ASCILITE stands for Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education has been hosting its annual conference each year in the first week of December. There is a cult-like following each year where we met up with old pals. I met people like Stephen Downes many years ago at ASCILITE.

This year, the theme is "Who's Learning? Whose Technology?" and will be held in University of Sydney. The paper submission is due end of this month (Monday 31st July 2006 at noon, Sydney time). Those outside Australia please note that Australia East coast is +10 hours GMT, so treat the deadline as Sunday!

From the conference website:

The theme encourages you to confront one or both of these questions. (We recognise that most members of ascilite are free spirits and you will do what you want anyway. But linking to the theme will give you an edge in getting a place on the program.) [my emphasis]

Traditional Chinese Character

United Nation wants so stop using traditional Chinese from 2008. Please help to stop this by signing a petition at http://www.gopetition.com/sign.php?currentregionfiltered=237&petid=8314

Some background [my view]:

While Chinese has many different dialects (Cantonese and Mandarin are two of the more popular dialects), we have a unified written character set for 5,000 years - until the simplified Chinese was introduced. The traditional set, consists of about 56,000 characters, is used in ALL Chinese written work ever since the beginning of the written Chinese culture. Obviously there is a rich culture embedded and will only be understood if the traditional set is continuously being used.

Simplified Chinese reduces the set to about 3,000 characters. A lot of characters are either dropped or combined. Hence there will be a very significant overloading of meaning, which was clearly represented by different characters in the traditional set. I believe such an overloading eventually lead to a lost of Chinese culture.

Language is our most important tool to enable communication, between parties at present and between generations. The switch from traditional set to simplified set cut off the link between past and present - a sad situation for the Chinese as a whole.

Simplified Chinese as a way to reduce illiteracy and promote Chinese as an easier language is also a weak argument. I have read a study which suggests that we need around 800 to 1000 common characters in order to understand national newspapers. Chinese students, in Mainland, Hongkong and Taiwan, are able to read national newspapers by Primay 6. Can English, or any other language, do that? My mother, according to her, has only 3 years of education. She can write to me in Traditional Chinese with no problem!

Let me give an example.

When I came to Australia, I have big problem ordering food in restaurant - still the same today (My favourite disk is "me too" which has helped me to overcome this handicap!). Beef, pork, chicken, fish, lamb suggest nothing to me if I don't know each of these word individually.

In Chinese, 肉 means meat. If you are reading a Chinese menu, 牛肉, 豬肉, 雞肉, 魚肉 or 羊肉 means the meat part of the corresponding animal. So, even if we don't know what do 牛, 豬, 雞, 魚 or 羊 mean, we still know that the dish has meat in it. The equivalent of these in simplified Chinese are: 牛肉, 猪肉, 鸡肉, 鱼肉, 羊肉. There are the same number of words that you need to know. However, as I know the traditional set, I have no problem reading the simplified set. But not necessarily vice versa!

Chinese do not have variations for tense, gender nor number! Time is either implicit from context or explicit using words to represent the time.

Please support me and vote to keep the traditional set of Chinese characters and help to preserve the culture of China!

Medical use of Virtual Reality

This is a simple but effective concept. Use VR games (in vast space) for people with claustrophobic when they need to enter small space (such as MRI scanning). By focusing on the game, people won't realise that they are actually in a small space.

My visit to USA

I will be visiting USA in late Oct and early Nov to attend a LoW3 (Leagues of Worlds)at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, from October 30 to November 3 2006. It may be good opportunity to meet some of you before or after the meeting.

As many of you may know, I have been doing a lot of work on the use of online role play simulations in the past 5 to 6 years, some work in SCORM and various other things. I would be most interested to discuss issues of mutual interest. If you like, I can also present my latest research (online role play and games in education) to you, your colleagues or your instructional technology students.

Leave me a comment if you are interested.

Browser Grades

by Nate Koechley

For web developer like me, I have been using Firefox for quite some time. Judging from the table, it is the only A-grade browser across a broad spectum of OS.

Hey, Linux is not listed in the table! But I know Firefox also works well in the several desktop Linux I have tried, including Federo 5 and Ubuntu.

A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers

by Amanda Lenhart and Susannah Fox

Some findings and some unanswered questions:

54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.

Eight percent of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog. Thirty-nine percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs. What about the rest of the world? [my question in bold]

37% of bloggers cite “my life and experiences” as a primary topic of their blog. Politics and government ran a very distant second with 11% of bloggers citing those issues of public life as the main subject of their blog. What is the percentage who blog educational issues?

34% of bloggers consider their blog a form of journalism, and 65% of bloggers do not. 57% of bloggers include links to original sources either “sometimes” or “often.” 56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post either “sometimes” or “often.”

95% of bloggers get news from the internet, compared with 73% of all internet users.

Reflection on the Eve of International Conference on the Use of Books in Education 2031

[Note: This article is originally published in Hong Kong Association For Computer Education 2005 Year Book]

Tomorrow I am going to deliver a keynote to the ICUBE 2031. What should I say, I wonder.

25 years ago, the pendulum of pedagogy started to swing into the experience-based elearning. Has the pendulum swung too much?

In late last century, Tim B. Lee invented World Wide Web and made communication and computing a ubiquitous part of everyone’s life. Big international corporations started to carry out business and some became very successful. New ventures, such as Amazon and Google also started in late 1990 and early 2000. Everyone was trying to figure out what this WWW and Internet was about. About that time, people bought their music (about 10 songs) on a plastic disc called CD for about $1000 today’s value, around $30 at that time. Looking back, we could understand why the music industries were very eager to protect their monopoly market. The whole music industries were dominated by a few big players. Then iTune from Apple came along. With hindsight, we knew that iTune was a way for Apple to sell their personal music storage/player, iPod – which could store about 3000 songs. However, it started the revolution by allowing people to download songs at $100. It still sounds very expensive in today’s terms. No one would pay that amount of money when the marginal cost of production and digital distribution was near zero. However, please remember that at that time, a typical radio station had only a playlist of about 300 songs. Anyway, that was the “content is king” era.

The “content is king” paradigm was also the big driving force in the delivery of education. I can recall that online universities were rare and have received little recognition. However, the residential universities were all facing substantial pressure from the students who were demanding online access to their courses. So many educational institutes, starting with the higher education sector, used systems called “Learning Management Systems”. It was a wrong term. LMS did not manage “learning”. LMS was basically a student administrative system to log students’ access to “content”. The teachers, extinct today, were deemed as the expert in the domain they teach. Teachers put online what they thought would be useful to the students. Students received little support in learning. They were basically asked to read the content. Whether students understood the material did not matter. Students had to take an examination at a fixed time in the year to assess whether they had understood the content. If they failed, they discontinued their studies and fees paid were not refunded.

One may wonder why such irresponsible education establishments would be there. Well, at the time, information and access to information was not as easy as today and education was a “people filtering” system (sorting out different people to do different jobs), not about developing personal potential to the full. The universities were able to maintain their status by having huge physical libraries where books were stored. People could access information only by visiting the libraries and read from limited copies of books. Things started to change in around 2005 when Google started to scan books and made the content searchable. At that time, people had to pay subscription to “digital library” in order to access the online content. Of course, we now know that the situation had changed since 2015 when Google made all information available free to the world.

Having said that, there were pioneers who understood the fallacy of the “content is king” paradigm. MIT had begun their process of putting all their course material on the Web for free global access. BBC in UK also started to put their historical archive of videos available online, but limited access to people living in UK only. Organisations, such as EFF as it was called then, were fighting to make information free and against the increasing long copyright protection. Driven by their advertising-based business models, search engines, Google in particular, were making more and more content available online which eventually killed the “content is king” paradigm. The early version of the current geographical data visualization was called Google Earth. It was the beginning of making huge data repository online for people to mash up with other uses they could imagine.

The greed of the publishers and some corporate owner of the content and their inability to adjust to the new business model also contributed to the decline of “content is king” paradigm. As the subscription of the paper-based journals, digital libraries and paid music continued to decline, the fees continued to climb instead of falling (due to their monopoly power). At some point, even the most well-resourced libraries could not afford the fees. People just gave up the paid content and totally switched to free content. (BTW, at the early part of this century, paper was still produced from dead trees and could not be changed once information was PRINTED or WRITTEN on them.) Universities started to encourage their staff to publish online by changing the promotion criteria.

One may ask why publishers could own so much content and why teachers were willing to forfeit their rights just for publishing. Before 2010, most universities were judging their staff by the ability to create new information, not by by their ability to help students learnt. “Publish or perish” as it was known. In order to ensure the “quality of research”, the publication had to be published and undergone a “peer review” process - basically a process in which a few anonymous peers would rate the publication before it was published. The publishers basically organized peer reviews and demanded the copyright to be transferred to them for the work to appear in the publication.

We may laugh at how ridiculous that may sound. Teachers were paid to help people learn, not to produce more content. The fact was that at the time, few understood the learning process and delivering content was the mainstream strategy. Teachers were promoted based on publications.

By 2015, many of the Generation X have achieved executive levels at education institutes and government agencies. Some remembered how frustrated they were when they had to learn from content without support. Some were determined to change the way education should be delivered.

The momentum actually started about 25 years ago when Tim O’reilly coined the term “Web 2.0” and put the focus squarely on treating the Web as an interaction platform, instead of a delivery platform. Simulations, both rule-based and role-based were also started to receive more attention in the elearning field. In the same year, my own role play simulation platform, Fablusi, got its first major customer – the US Army War College. The general acceptance of learning via experience (virtual or real) became mainstream in 2015. It took almost 10 years to reach that stage.

Today, are we over-emphasizing the role of experience in our education for our future generation? Are we spending too much time in simulators? With their dependence on their personal agent, our kids cannot even do a simple addition by themselves! They cannot remember name of the last UN president. They will just not be able to enjoy great TV games like “Who wants to be a Millionaire” popular in the early 2000. Should we start focusing on the value of the ability to memorize at least some critical information, e.g. the birthday of your spouse without the personal agent? I don’t know how our kids can survive a day with their agents switched off. Books, obviously different from 25 years ago, should have a new life in the future education of our kids. Our next generation should learn to survive without their personal agent. That would be my plea to the audience tomorrow!

Filed on 15th March, 2031.

Plagiarism

At the 7th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training, there was quite a bit of discussion and presentations on Plagiarism.

From the paper by Ass. prof. Nina Ree-Lindstad, Ass. prof. and Academic Librarian Kristin Røijen, Ass. prof. Tone Vold titled Experience with a plagiarism control module,

Encyclopaedia Britannica defines plagiarism as:

“The act of taking the writings of another person and passing them off as one's own. The fraudulence is closely related to forgery and piracy—practices generally in violation of copyright laws.
If only thoughts are duplicated, expressed in different words, there is no breach of contract. Also, there is no breach if it can be proved that the duplicated wordage was arrived at independently.”

However, this is not the only definition I heard during the conference. In Automatic Generation of Plagiarism Detection Among Student Programs by Rachel Edita Roxas, Nathalie Rose Lim and Natasja Bautista, they plagiarism detection program includes features to detect "modification of control structures, use of temporary variables and subexpressions, in-lining and re-factoring of methods, and redundancy (variables or methods that were not used)." This is more than just "copy-and-paste" plagiarism defined by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

In Impact of Unethical Practices of Plagiarism on Learning, Teaching and Research in Higher Education: Some Combating Strategies, Subrata Kumar Dey and M Abdus Sobhan looked at plagiarism in three different levels: students, researchers and teachers. In their survy of 6 higher education institutes in Bangladesh, they found out of 85 samples from "regular students", 3 downloading the material from Internet and submit as it is, 45 copy from peers, 22 buy from private tutor, 2 collect and submit old work, 76 use downloaded material with modification without mentioning the source, 65 copy one or more sections from books, articles etc without citation. Only 14 do not plagiarise.

Beyond the issue of copyright, plagiarism will be hindering the understanding of the material.

I have agreed with Ian Kennedy to start a process to create a common understanding of what is plagiarism in education (may be separately for higher education, secondary schools and life long). We agree that a board community based definition would be useful.

I will post here when the process starts.

Are students ready?

At the 7th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training last week at Sydney, I heard Prof. Shirley Alexander talked about her research in the state of online learning. At the moment, it seems that online learning in traditional universities has its place, but is only the best alternative.

During discussion, she also said that there was a case in which she thought the course was delivered excellently using role play simulation. However, after the course, students were complaining and ended up in an inquiry. The reason was that students thought they were asked to do too much work. "Why the lecturer did not tell us the answer right the way".

Obviously, the students were not prepared to "learn" - they were expected to be fed with information!

There is something I need to think carefully.

Literature Circle

I have a meeting with Dr Pam Macintyre and Dr Ric Canale. Pam introduced the concept of Literature Circle whereby students takes on different roles during the study of literature. Some of the roles are Summarizer, Discussion Director, Investigator, Illustrator, Connector, Travel Tracer and/or Vocabulary Enricher.

I see that as Literature Circle provides a further "framing distance" in terms of study a work compared to using role play simulations (e.g. those Fablusi driven role play, such as The Scarlet Letter Simulation: An Examination of People and Times. In role play simulation, students play immersive roles (as character of the work) and have the freedom to develop the character and the direction the story could have developed. This enables students to really understand the character, the context surrounding the story and develop empathy and emotional links to the issues. In literature circle, students take a more "distance" / outside view into the story.

The two approaches have different application and merits. It depends on what is the learning objectives of your course. I do believe that role play simulation would give the learners much more fun in studying literature.

Human Ingenuity at its best

When we talk about learning/education as developing the human capital and potential, sometimes, it is odd to find that best invention came from need.

From BBC news, after years of neglect and civil war, the railways in Cambodian has only one passenger service per week.

So people in the north west of the country, near Cambodia's second city of Battambang, have taken matters into their own hands.

They have created their own rail service using little more than pieces of bamboo. The locals call the vehicles "noris", or "lorries", but overseas visitors know them as "bamboo trains".

If we are to learn anything from the story, we should design our courses so that students have to solve real life problem as a goal.

Internet Neutrality - 2

The last mile, controlled by BIG telcos sucks! Especially in Austrlia!

Most home's last mile is owned by Telstra - a monopoly. But my internet broadband connection is with another ISP (Telstra's own ISP is about 2 times more expensive). So when my telephone line drops, I needed to wait for Telstra to connect/repair - which takes 24 to 48 hours. This time, it took 76 hours. AND only after Telstra restored the telephone connection that I could get my ISP to connect/restore/repair my broadband connection. I have been waiting for 24 hours already. Nothing seems to have happened yet.

I am posting this via abother broadband connection - lucky I have two, but it is still not good enough. I paid for both and would expect both to work!

I thought about the problem of Internet Neutrality and am convinced that it is based on greed that telcos are trying to resurrect their failing business model. They wanted to make more money (just like the bank - this is a discussion for another day). They own the last mile - hence we are paying for the ISP connection. They are hard in negotiation with other ISP at the backbone inter-connection. Since these are business to business negotiation, I believe they are less likely to exert monopolistic pressure. So they turned around and try to bully the small customers.

Robert X. Cringely has a post If we build it they will come which supports "People on local levels band together and create a cooperative, through which they pay for the installation of their own Fiber-to-home connections." [from How To Solve The Net Neutrality Problem]. This would effectively raise the community into the status of a small ISP. As such, the community would need to negotiate at the backbone inter-connect level. The dynamics has not changed. The big telcos will still have the power to bully such small ISPs into accepting unreasonable terms.

No country in the world would and should allow private companies to own the main highways connecting the cities. (OK, there are stupid governments who gave private companies the right to charge toll!) This is a matter of national economy development. No one will live in a house where the only road leading to the house is owned by a private company who will charge you money when you pass everytime!

Robert's suggestion is like having a co-orporative to own the road common to our neighbourhood.

As far as the analogy goes, I believe, like geographical connectivity, the "last mile" should be a public good!

Back to the national highways, many tollways will revert back to public ownership after a certain period (after the cost of building the highway has been paid back). By similar argument, no country should allow private companies to own the backbone of internet traffic on which so much economic potential are growing. National backbone should be a public good.

Just like roads, the economic is NOT the road itself. Roads enable goods to move! Network transport is not the value of the network. Network transport facilitate value growth!

International traffic, internet traffic, should be negotiated at an international levels - this would be another discussion another day.

The Stroop Effect

from Cognitive Daily by Dave Munger

Dave has created a little demo to illustrate. It is an animated GIF.

You'll see an image flash quickly, followed by a blank screen. As quickly as possible after the image flashes, say the color of the rectangle in front. Ignore any words printed on the rectangles; you just want to name the color of the rectangle in front.

There are two parts in the experiment. You task is to find out which part is easier, the first part or the second part? Here is the experiment.

When I did the experiment, about 125 people have done so before me. The majority agrees with me. (or I agree with the majority!)

So, what is the implication when we are trying to tell something to our learners? Avoid Stroop effect! In order words, make sure we provide a consistent experience throughout. Is that too much of an extrapolation from this little experiment?

Half a brain

via BoingBoing

This week's New Yorker features an engaging article by Christine Kenneally about hemispherectomy, perhaps "the most radical procedure in neurosurgery." In this procedure, an entire side of the hemisphere is removed as a treatment for cancer or chronic seizures. The incredible thing is that if the hemispherectomy is done when a patient is very young, the remaining hemisphere does double duty and the child often develops normally.

From Half a Brain via Children with half a brain

Half a Brain is Enough is the extraordinary story of Nico, a three-year-old boy who was given a right hemispherectomy to control his severe intractable epilepsy. Antonio Battro, a distinguished neuroscientist and educationalist, describes his work with Nico over several years and explains how a boy with only half a brain has developed into a bright child with relatively minor physical and mental impairment. Eight years later, he runs and plays with only a slight limp. So far, there is no significant cognitive or affective disorder and it appears that Nico's so-called right-hemisphere skills--mathematics, visual arts, and music--have migrated to the left hemisphere. At school, he performs as a child of his age in arithmetic and music; only his draftsmanship and handwriting are poor for his age, but he has not lost his cognitive spatial ability. Battro and his colleagues have been studying and teaching Nico with computers and he is mastering written language with a word processor and is able to make good graphic designs with a computer. Nico performs well above average verbally, a left-brain skill.

This is remarkable. There is lot of things we don't know about the brain and obviously how we learn.

Telcos, Media, Portals and their parallel in distance education

From my own unpublished work:

The role of the University, according the Dearing Report (Dearing, 1997) is “to enable society to develop and maintain an independent understanding of itself and its world”. Laurillard (1999) interprets this definition in seven components as:
society --> working beyond the nation state
develop --> carrying out research
maintain --> being responsive to change
independent --> without reference to politics or profit
understanding --> formalised knowledge to enhance action
itself --> human sciences
its world --> natural sciences

The interesting point of this interpretation is the additional meanings Laurillard assigns to "understanding". To her, academic understanding, as distinct from common experiential understanding, is a result of a "reflective" process. The pedagogical underpinning of this interpretation is that the university's role is more just the transfer of knowledge.

Brown & Duguid (1995) take the community's perspective. They argue that a central part of what Universities do is to grant degrees, as a kind of gatekeeper of qualification for the community. The general community's experience of universities is of a degree granting body.

However, what a degree really represents or may misrepresent is a complex issue. One of the most valuable aspects of a degree is not what can be assumed about the knowledge possessed by the holder of the degree but the experience of scholarly or professional community that it signifies. For example, certain assumptions may be made about a degree gained from an institution with strong research programs in the field compared with one from an institution that does not.

The research role of universities as knowledge creation agent is highly valued by academia and promotion is largely related to research activities. Until recently, teaching performance has been ignored in the reward structure in many Australian universities. It appears to be widely assumed that there is a strong link between research success and the quality of degrees granted by an institution. Nonetheless, the problem of maintaining quality of teaching programs has gained far greater attention in institutions with a strong research focus in the last decade, clearly as a result of trends in mass education.

Brown & Duguid (1995) summarised that universities provide:
1. teaching and learning
2. enculturation of students into a community of scholars and/or a profession
3. creation of knowledge by conducting research, developing and testing new knowledge and new ideas
4. a degree granting mechanism

Note: The ideas presented above were based on 1990's thinking.

Here is some ideas related to Telcos, Media and Portals by Leo Hindery at the Convergence 2.0 conference, summarised
here

broke it down into three columns using a powerpoint slide: Portals (AOL, eBay, Google, MSN, Yahoo!), Content Providers (ABC, NBC, Disney, et al.) and Non-Broadcast Distributors (Cable, RBOCs, Satellite, Wi-Fi etc.) Hindery points to the portals column and says that the $225 billion market cap represented by those five companies can be directly linked to lost money in the valuation of the companies from the other two columns. This imbalance, he says, will correct itself.

He predicts that fully two thirds of the $225 billion comes from advertising dollars. The problem, as Hindery sees it, is that the portals built their fortunes on non-proprietary content. The content providers will encroach on the portals territory and steal back the lion's share of the money the portals have accrued. He said of those 5 portals listed above, 4 would fold eventually, or be acquired.

Here are two reasons that Leo Hindery is wrong:
From Cable Guy Says Portals Are Toast

The fact is, right now, most people look to their broadband provider as nothing more than a pipe. They want the pipe separated from the rest of the content and services that are offered. Fewer people are using the email and web space their broadband providers give them -- knowing they can just get a Gmail or Yahoo mail email address and webspace and take it with them when they eventually switch broadband providers. People generally don't like their cable company or their phone company. It's rare to hear anyone talk favorably about them. The less beholden they are, the happier they are. Of course, at the same time, Hindery seems to (again, like a traditional cable guy) completely discount the fact that people go online for communications just as much, if not more, than content. People aren't going online to get Disney or Time Warner content -- but to email with people, to instant message with people, to read and post to blogs. It's about communications (what some like to call "user generated content" these days)

From Cable Dreams

But Hindrey is also missing that the business model of controlling proprietary content due to massive capital outlays and control of distribution channels is, well, no longer the only game in town. There's a new distribution sheriff in town, and his name is search. His deputy is the open Internet. Get used to it. It's not going to go away.

Return to education, and distance education in particular.

Can higher education institute still claim the high ground of "to enable society to develop and maintain an independent understanding of itself and its world"? How long will education institute remain as the gate keeper of qualifications? Or more significantly, how important is qualification when determining the success of an individual? Is there any change in pavements for "a cultural enculturation of students into a community of scholars and/or a profession"? Is that better done in a campus or is that better done in the workplace? Is teaching compatible to research? Can these co-exist within a higher education institute or be better separated out?

Are there any parallel between the potential change of roles of education institutes and the role of telcos & media? Is there any equivalent of "portals" (Google, Yahoo, etc.) in education space which will disrupt the "business model" of higher education institutes?

Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain

Another must read article from Creating Passionate Users on April 17, 2006. How have I missed it?

:-)

Mirror Neuron - 2

I have some opportunity to read some of the articles provided by Graeme Daniel wonderful WWWtool post and am fascinated by the implications.

The must read article is the "original" piece MIRROR NEURONS and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution by V.S. Ramachandran in the June 2000 issue of Edge. Ramachandran opens by asking a few puzzling questions:

1) The hominid brain reached almost its present size — and perhaps even its present intellectual capacity about 250,000 years ago . Yet many of the attributes we regard as uniquely human appeared only much later. [snip]
2) Crude "Oldawan" tools [snip] emerged 2.4 million ago and were probably made by Homo Habilis whose brain size was half way (700cc) between modern humans (1300) and chimps (400). After another million years of evolutionary stasis aesthetically pleasing "symmetrical" tools began to appear [snip] And lastly, the invention of stereotyped "assembly line" tools (sophisticated symmetrical bifacial tools) that were hafted to a handle, took place only 200,000 years ago. Why was the evolution of the human mind "punctuated" by these relatively sudden upheavals of technological change?
3) Why the sudden explosion (often called the "great leap" ) in technological sophistication, widespread cave art, clothes, stereotyped dwellings, etc. around 40 thousand years ago, even though the brain had achieved its present "modern" size almost a million years earlier?
[snip] [my emphasis]

... any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action, e.g. tasting a peanut! With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: "mind reading" empathy, imitation learning, and even the evolution of language. Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds." (I suggest, also, that a loss of these mirror neurons may explain autism — a cruel disease that afflicts children. Without these neurons the child can no longer understand or empathize with other people emotionally and therefore completely withdraws from the world socially.)

Mirror neurons can also enable you to imitate the movements of others thereby setting the stage for the complex Lamarckian or cultural inheritance that characterizes our species and liberates us from the constraints of a purely gene based evolution. Moreover, as Rizzolati has noted, these neurons may also enable you to mime — and possibly understand — the lip and tongue movements of others which, in turn, could provide the opportunity for language to evolve. (This is why, when you stick your tongue out at a new born baby it will reciprocate! How ironic and poignant that this little gesture encapsulates a half a million years of primate brain evolution.) Once you have these two abilities in place the ability to read someone's intentions and the ability to mime their vocalizations then you have set in motion the evolution of language. You need no longer speak of a unique language organ and the problem doesn't seem quite so mysterious any more.

Wow! Human become human when our brain has developed the mirror neurons. With mirror neurons, human no longer depends on "a purely gene based evolution". We evolve by "learning".

Without the knowledge of mirror neuron, I wrote about how I thought we learn in Learning Design and Learning Design - 2. I proposed that we have an internal world view which is the overall accumulated experience we have since birth. It turned out a better explanation came from mirror neurons:

Mirror neurons were discovered in monkeys but how do we know they exist in the human brain? To find out we studied patients with a strange disorder called anosognosia. Most patients with a right hemisphere stroke have complete paralysis of the left side of their body and will complain about it, as expected. But about 5% of them will vehemently deny their paralysis even though they are mentally otherwise lucid and intelligent. This is the so called "denial" syndrome or anosognosia. To our amazement, we found that some of these patients not only denied their own paralysis, but also denied the paralysis of another patient whose inability to move his arm was clearly visible to them and to others. Denying ones one paralysis is odd enough but why would a patient deny another patient's paralysis? We suggest that this bizarre observation is best understood in terms of damage to Rizzolatti's mirror neurons. It's as if anytime you want to make a judgement about someone else's movements you have to run a VR (virtual reality) simulation of the corresponding movements in your own brain and without mirror neurons you cannot do this. [my emphasis]

So our ability to learn, ie learnability which is based on mirror neuron, is deeply linked to our empathy system - the ability to put ourselves in someone's shoe when we see things happen to them.

Translating this to learning design, if I may, would be to provide deep empathy links to subject matter and use demonstrations.

From Memory and the Brain

Although most adults have likely seen and held over 10,000 pennies during their lives, few can pick the correct picture. The reason for this is simple: We don't really care enough to memorize what an exact reproduction of a penny looks like since a penny has such little personal value. With over ten thousand exposures to the stimulus, the response is still inaccurate without a personally motivating linkage to details in the coin. There are two groups of people who can make an accurate identification of the penny. They are either professional coin collectors or penny-pinchers. When there are emotional "hooks" planted for the learner, the probability of subsequent recall increases dramatically.

One way of establishing an emotional link, and be able to break the link *after* achieving the learning outcome is to use role play simulation (such as those powered by Fablusi). With proper orientation and debriefing, de-roling and reflection, the learning is deep and memorable.

The flat world and the future of developed countries

The concepts bring forward by Thomas Friedman's book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century has been labelled "lemming-like" advocate of changing global economic conditions [Lemmings Marching to the Flat World Drum Beat]. As I have commented earlier, the opposite view (spikiness) is more appealing to me and would offer better direction as to how developed countries should prepare our next generation.

From CIA - The World Factbook:

The restructuring of the economy and resulting efficiency gains have contributed to a more than tenfold increase in GDP since 1978. Measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, China in 2005 stood as the second-largest economy in the world after the US, although in per capita terms the country is still lower middle-income and 150 million Chinese fall below international poverty lines.

With huge amount of untapped cheap labour, China (India and many developing countries as well) will continue to be the world's sweat-shop and factory, producing commodities at costs unmatchable by developed countries. With the size of the economy comes the impact on the world's global economy too. So the question is "how developed countries can remain at the top of the economic food chain and maintain the current standard of living?"

David Warlick made a great point:

I maintain that it isn’t necessarily programming or even engineering, although I agree with Alfred Thompson’s comment that exposure to and understanding of the engineering and even the programming are critical. We do not need to dominate these areas, however, in order to remain prosperous or even in a position of leadership. We do need to be figuring out those contributions that we are uniquely good at. [my emphasis]

One of the direction suggested by David is our astounding capacity for play. ... We should master responsible joy, and export that. ... I believe that it is the creative arts that we should be emphasizing, every bit as much as the technical arts.

One of the comments (by Andrew Pass) posted in David's blog put it this way:

I’m not exactly sure what you mean when you write that we should export creative arts. [snip] However, if you mean that we should lead the rest of the world in the ability to develop innovative ideas, projects and technologies, I fully agree.

However, this will take a lot of work. As you know creativity is spurred by asking questions and then developing answers to these questions.

Now this is linked to education and how developed countries should prepare the next generation if we want to maintain our standard of living. Andrew continued to questions the practice of current education system asking if teachers have been encouraging our students to ask questions.

As anyone with a creative inclinatin will tell you, asking question is only the first step. Innovation is not just asking the right question. Innovation is about finding a solution. But innovation is not success or economic sustainability. A solution which solves a real problem at a better price is a potentially successful economic proposition. Developed countries should enable our next generation to be great solution providers solving pressing real world problems at acceptable price point. The implementation may be left to the sweat-shop, as demonstrated successfully by many brands such as Nike.

Failure is the mother of success (is it?). Developed countries should also cultivate a spirit of entrepreneurship and an environment for our next generation to take risks (in creating new solutions) and be rewarded. Penalty of failure should be low and limited. Opportunities should be ample and easily accessible. Education should encourage diverse angle of attack to the problem.

Education should encourage vigour in dealing with hard science subjects, compassionate views on social and human subjects....



ok, I am too carried away. I'll continue my journey of learning ...

Is $100 laptop project flawed?

By Andrew Donoghue

This is the question raised by Tony Roberts, chief executive and founder of U.K. charity Computer Aid International.

Even for charity work, there is a competition for "attention" as pointed out:

the OLPC project is also distracting from other worthwhile technology projects in the developing world.

So the $100 laptop project is a competition for Tony's own Computer Aid effort which has just celebrated shipping its 70,000th PC to the developing world.

Any project of such scale has impact beyond the immediate consequences.

First of all, the $100 laptop project will use Linux and hence will have an impact on distribution of OS of the installed computers. Together with China adopting Linux and distributing its own laptop to their students nation-wide, the installed OS in computers will shift significantly towards Linux.

As the installed base change, the focus of software development will shift as well. At the moment, it seems that most new ideas and software are oriented towards web-based, hosted solution (Web 2.0 applications) making the issue of installed OS more a non-issue. So I don't buy into Tony's argument that Nicholas Negroponte has misunderstood adoption of technology in poor country.

Some comments on the post argue that when millions are dying from hunger, the poor countries do not care about technology.

Again, this is not a black and white issue. While there are lots of people under the poverty line are struggling just to get food, many want to improve their livelihood and want to contribute to the well being of humanity. Education will make a difference and the $100 laptop will be important.

Technology, in fact anything else, is not cultural neutral. Introducing laptops into poor countries will also imply importing the cultural values into such countries. I also wonder if there is anyone who has looked at the impact from this angle. Please enlighten me.

An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist,...

by Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard E. Clark via HeadsPaceJ

from the Abstract

Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert-novice differences, and cognitive load. While unguided or minimally-guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half century that consistently indicate that minimally-guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process. The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide ‘internal’ guidance. Recent developments in instructional research and instructional design models that support guidance during instruction are briefly described.

Some of the key quotes I find interesting follows:

The authors based the argument on Human Cognitive Architecture which consists of sensory memory / working memory / long-term memory.

Inquiry-based instruction requires the learner to search a problem space for problemrelevant information. All problem-based searching makes heavy demands on workingmemory. Furthermore, that working memory load does not contribute to the accumulation of knowledge in long-term memory because while working memory is being used to search for problem solutions, it is not available and cannot be used to learn.

Another consequence of attempts to implement constructivist theory is a shift of emphasis away from teaching a discipline as a body of knowledge towards an exclusive emphasis on learning a discipline by experiencing the processes and procedures of the discipline (Handelsman et. al., 2004; Hodson, 1988). This change in focus was accompanied by an assumption shared by many leading educators and discipline specialists that knowledge can best be learned or only learned through experience which is based primarily on the procedures of the discipline. This point of view led to a commitment by educators to extensive practical or project work, the rejection of instruction based on the facts, laws, principles and theories that make up a discipline’s content accompanied by the use of discovery and inquiry methods of instruction.

Despite this clear distinction between learning a discipline and practicing a discipline, many curriculum developers, educational technologists, and educators seem to confuse the teaching of a discipline as inquiry (i.e., a curricular emphasis on the research processes within a science) with the teaching of the discipline by inquiry (i.e., using the research process of the discipline as a pedagogy and/or for learning).

The worked example effect was first demonstrated by Sweller and Cooper (1985) and Cooper and Sweller (1987) who found that algebra students learned more studying algebra worked examples than solving the equivalent problems. Since those early demonstrations of the effect, it has been replicated on numerous occasions using a large variety of learners studying an equally large variety of materials (Carroll, 1994 Miller, Lehman & Koedinger, 1999; Paas, 1992; Paas & van Merrienboer, 1994; Pillay, 1994; Quilici & Mayer, 1996; Trafton & Reiser, 1993). For novices, studying worked examples seems invariably superior to discovering or constructing a solution to a problem.

This 16 page long article is followed by another 6 pages of references.

Is photo cropping safe?

Save the image on the left to your disk somewhere you can find later. Then get an EXIF viewer and look at the thumbnail of the image. You will be amazed, I promise.

I used EXIFpro which is a shareware. For more demonstration, go to Tonu Samuel's site.

Teachers, this may be one way to find out the source of the photos submitted from your students. You may not like what you find!

The need of jargon

Jargon is
a characteristic language of a particular group
[http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn], or

The specialised or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group
[http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/demosites/series3/317/resources/glossary/gls_idx.htm] or

has also come to mean inflated, vague, meaningless language of any kind. It is characterized by wordiness, abstractions galore, pretentious diction, and needlessly complicated word order.
[http://members.tripod.com/hjohnsonmac0/TermsToKnow.htm]

It is generally agreed that using jargon in a piece of writing is bad writing. However from a teaching/induction point of view, we like our learners to become familar with the jargons of the trade/profession they are induced into.

What we should object, in writing, is the "wordiness, abstractions galore, pretentious diction, and needlessly complicated word order". When we are writing a piece for audience outside the community, we should try to avoid jargon - to a certain degree.

Some jargons refer to procedures (CPR in first aid for example stands for Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation, which when fully spelt out still means nothing to those without first aid training!), other refer to a theory (Newton's law of motion). Jargons, in fact, are short-hands.

Jargon is a necessary part of an efficient communication - provided they are part of a communication to the correct audience.

Mirror Neuron Research: Implications for Education.

by Graeme Daniel

19/06/06 issue of WWWTools for education opens by

Every so often, there arises a topic which grabs the imagination, not so much for its current implementation in educational practice, but rather by virtue of the exciting possibilities it seems to present.

Graeme is refering to Mirror Neuron, which fires both when an animal performs an action and when the animal observes the same action performed by another (especially conspecific) animal. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were himself performing the action [from wikipedia]

The list of articles to read is long and I have not had the opportunity to read them yet. However anyone interested in the scientific basis of learning should give these articles some attention and time.

Meta knowledge

Let say information is a node. In this information age, let say it is important to know how this piece of information is linked to other more important things, like social value, morals etc.

If we over-emphasis on the knowing the links (know-who, know-where) without really putting any effort in knowing the information itself (know-what and know-how), here is an example of how it may look:



Pointing out "know-who and know-where are important things in this highly connected world" is an important message by itself, however we should not under-estimate or under-mine the need of know-what and know-how in our education system.

Internet Neutrality

Being able to transmit any kind of content is important, to the well being of Internet as a whole and to eLearning in particular. If the US Telcos have their way, we can surely bet all innovation will NOT come from US anymore.

The need to lobby the US government to set up laws to make Internet packets both "content" and "source" aware is to protect the Telco's outdating business models. This has been explained clearly here.

Is Google, or any large content provider, really having a "free" ride? Absolutely NO! The issue is about Backbone interchange. Let me explain.

Most people, including me, is connected to the Internet via a "last-mile" provider (or an ISP). We pay a fee, either based on bandwidth, volume of traffic or both in order to get and send data packets. The ISP does not need to care whether the packets is incoming or outgoing except for billing purposes as long as the packets are delivered within their own network. There is NOT marginal cost for the ISP to carry these packets on their network. (Hence, in my opinion, it is fair to base the fee on a monthly flat rate depending on the "quality of service" rather than based on volume.) Of course, there is a huge investment upfront to build the network with the capacity to handle the traffic. Most of the fee we pay to the ISP is for paying back their initial investment and profit! If the demand is higher than the capacity, the network simply slows down! Remember those days when the Internet was *really* slow due to under capacity? Internet won't die under heavy load. The service level just drops and becomes unacceptable!

However, when a packet comes from a source *outside* my ISP's customer base or when I want to send a packet to someone outside my ISP's customer base, the packet needs to go to other ISP.

Carriers generally will have backbone interchange agreements with other carriers. What kind of deals are made, I don't know. I suppose they will negotiate hard in order to have the best profit for themselves.

If an ISP is stupid enough not to enter into any backbone interchange agreement, the customers will not be able to exchange data packets with those who are not within the network. I guess this ISP will die the next day due to lack of customers.

Now, back to the issue of "large" content provider. OK, Google may have its own backbone joining their data centers (Rumour has it that Google is actively buying dark fibre!) it still needs to enter into backbone interchange agreement with other Telcos. In a fair negotiation, the deal should be fair and Telcos should have covered their cost in the deal. Unless it is a win-win situation, there will be no deal anyway.

The need for Telcos to connect to Google's backbone is as much as Google needs to connect to other backbone. The network value is based on the number of nodes in the network!

Come on US Telcos, do you want to see your domestic traffic being routed to Korean before coming back to US because your US customers choose to connect to Korean's ISP for better experience and while you die from lack of customers? Do some studies to see how Telcos in countries with *real* competition managed to survive and posper, throw away your outdated business plan and participate in this new world. It is never too late! OK, your government may be stupid enough to pass those laws for you. It will just mean a slower and more painful dead!

Guinness: World's Largest Photo

from Wired News:

On Wednesday, the six photographers with the nonprofit Legacy Project unveiled their massive camera at a news conference. They hope to have a photograph completed by July 8.

The reason that this is announced in a news conference is:

The massive camera refers here is a decommissioned Marine Corps hangar, and

The photograph is a 31-by-111-foot black and white photograph on a piece of white fabric.

By the way, Guinness World Records has created two new categories for the project -- world's largest camera and world's largest photograph -- and will certify the records once the photo is complete.

Well, using a large room (or a hanger) as a pinhole camera is NOT new. Back in April, I reported about a teacher in Hong Kong converting her classroom into a pin-hole camera.

Education leads in innovation! Hurray!

BusUncle

I used some videos from youTube to illustrate the power of open content on 15th May, 2006. That particular video has been viewed over 5 million times over past few weeks and have almost 350 variants. See this link.

Here are some which I think particularly interesting. This is, I believe, is inspired directly by the video and an original composition and original lyrics.


Someone else took the sound track of this MTV

and put onto the original video to produce the following video:


The original video was taken on the upper deck of a bus from Kowloon to Yulong. Someone wondered, what would the journey like if it had not happened. Enjoy.

DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

By Jaron Lanier via BoingBoing

This is a definitely very thought-provocative piece, so are the comments in the Reality Club to the article.

I wrote about meta-meta-meta data over 1 year ago (I should finish the work!) noting that metadata is a "derivative" from the original data, usually with a purpose. "Metadata", as in Dublin Core, is for discovery of resources. So is inverted index used by major search engines.

Other metadata exist in many different forms to serve different purposes. RSS is another form serving the need of aggregators, which Jaron refers to collectives. To him, wikipedia is also a collectives, many anonymous authors aggregates information into a collection.

Metadata are themselves data and hence can further aggregate, recursive infinitum in fact.

Jaron warns about the lost of personality in the layers of layers of meta-ing. Using wikipedia as a specific example:

For instance, most of the technical or scientific information that is in the Wikipedia was already on the Web before the Wikipedia was started. You could always use Google or other search services to find information about items that are now wikified. In some cases I have noticed specific texts get cloned from original sites at universities or labs onto wiki pages. And when that happens, each text loses part of its value. Since search engines are now more likely to point you to the wikified versions, the Web has lost some of its flavor in casual use.

He also points out the success of some meta-blogs such as Boing Boing being

run by identified humans, which served to aggregate blogs. In all of these formulations, real people were still in charge. An individual or individuals were presenting a personality and taking responsibility.

In our field, we appreciate Stephen Downes effort because his OLDaily is a selection of pieces by him. We are looking at the world through a lens we have trust in.

In one way, aggregates/collectives are network, linking different pieces of information together. Collectives which carry "personality", such as Boing Boing and OLDaily have significant added values.

We get the maximum benefit from the collective only if we follow the links to the nodes and dig into the nodes. We learn from the nodes, NOT from the collectives. Collectives serve as a guide, a special viewing platform for us to see the world.

Learning is about experiencing the "stuff". Knowing-where and knowing-who are strategies that can help us find the "stuff" which may be of interest. We don't need to know everything to be able to do something, e.g. a pilot is not an airplane designer or a jet-engine engineer! We need the right level of metadata in order to satisfy our curiosity, need and work.

Open source in School - it is up the the director!

via Couros Blog

Peter Rock, a teacher in a West African school, attempts to bring open source software/philosophy into his school context have been abruptly blocked by his administration.

From Peter's Director's point of view, a committee's (whose members are hand-picked by the Director) unanimous recommendation is just a recommendation and can be revoked at ease. Unfortunately, the Director also adapted a personal attack tactics:

You have expressed strong opinions against Microsoft, obvious from comments made by teachers and students, statements posted on your classroom door, etc. In accordance with Personnel Section 5.032 e) Code of Professional Ethics, "All staff should refrain from proselytizing for a personal, political, or religious belief." Therefore, you need to refrain from placing undue focus on your personal beliefs concerning the philosophy and practice of Microsoft.

and misquoted the offending act which is a poster on Peter's classroom door:

The best reason to give a child a good school...is so that a child will have a happy childhood, and not so that it will help IBM in competing with SONY... There is something ethically embarrassing about resting a national agenda on the basis of sheer greed.

Hey, Microsoft is NOT mentioned in the quote!

Mignon McLaughlin of Around the Corner has written a supportive post:

This is Peter's moment to resist authority. More importantly, it will be a time to measure the committee's acquisition of the capacity to resist authority. The consequences are hurtful, but they are nothing when one is committed to the good of all, to ensuring the survival of the organization and the people who make it up. Simply, Peter must decide now if he is willing to be martyred for the decision of the group he led for two years, or if he's going to capitulate. Fighting to lose means accepting defeat, that the stick will be used. Yet, it's the only way to achieve victory in the hearts of the people who have placed their trust in him.

Personally, I believe that one must be in there in order to change "there". The Director has drawn out the ACE card and hence was quite determined to reject the committee's proposal. The Director's credibility will be at sake ONLY if Peter can demonstrate that the Director's decision is not made with good intention for the organisation. It is not about flighting based on personal belief. It is about efficiency and best decision for kids in the future. Again, future is future and we don't know the outcome yet.