e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

"Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns" (Forbes)

I'm reading this article by Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson in Forbes drawn from their book and they are saying some good things.

"A powerful tool to help reach this goal is online learning technology, which offers students the ability to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in the places and at the pace they prefer. But with the shift to student-centric learning, assessment--the art and science of testing children to determine what they have learned--can and should change, as well."

OK. I'm good with that, in fact right on!

Then there is this: "When students learn through student-centered online technology, assessment and individualized assistance can be interactive and woven into the instruction rather than tacked on at the end of the process. Software makers can also use the feedback loop to learn how to improve their products for different kinds of learners."

Sure. You bet. Now I'm thinking though that I need to read the book - the article jumps back and forth between a corporate training example and how K-12 online assessment could change and that left me a bit confused. I also want to see if the book says anything about game-based learning because the feedback loop that they describe and the constancy and immediacy of feedback could have come from a game design textbook.

Kindle vs. Textbooks

(BetaNews link)

So according to this article, "32.7% of a textbook's cost comes from paper." Let's leave everything else aside for a moment and just ask why would a textbook publisher be reluctant to engage with a technology that could increase its profit margin by 33%?

TechCrunch even weighs in by suggesting that Amazon could license the right to produce "Kindle" devices (thereby employing the MSFT strategy of not caring who builds the box but who builds the OS for the box):

"Imagine if Amazon launched a licensing program that gave hardware manufacturers the ability to build Kindle clones, along with an incentive to sell them at near-zero margins. Amazon would give those manufacturers access to the core Kindle hardware specs (there’s no real magic there anyway) and the right to call it a Kindle device so long as they also put the core Kindle software on the device. That software links the device to Amazon’s store, meaning downloads revenue flows through Amazon."

So now let's think about the students...the BetaNews article does have some good comments as does the TechCrunch article but none that really sway me from thinking this could really positive in not just Higher Ed but K-12 and corporate/adult training as well. Imagine a hardware platform that blended something like the LifeScribe's SmartPen and an eBook reader - the device both displays the textbook and records the audio of the lecture and links that audio to the relevant text or vice versa.

Oh and don't forget the whole not killing trees, reducing the carbon footprint of shipping all that paper and so on.

"Ebooks: The sceptics" (Guardian UK) What a load of crap!

So I guess the Guardian (UK) went out and asked some authors how they felt about eBooks. One author laments not being able to spy out what people are reading on the train. One makes a comment that I'd like explored a bit further; "As a writer - well, if enough people begin to use them, the consequences for writers are, frankly, disastrous, so it's hard to feel sanguine." Finally, one is actually " horrified by the idea of ebooks" and that she loves the "feel and production of books, and I covet them as possessions."

What a load of self-indulgent crap. How in the world would the medium of "E" versus paper be "disastrous"? Does anyone think that there were similar laments when vellum was over thrown for onion paper or whatever? Or is it maybe the business model impact that scares this author? The one who loves the feel and covets books? I get that. Man, do I get that. Feel the same way. BUT if we can use technology to eliminate the energy, money, and natural resources dedicated to the book production business - I'm there. If we can use technology to create a world where students don't have to carry freaking backpacks with wheels because of the weight of textbooks, I'm there. If we can create a world where textbook authors and producers are not enslaved by the fear of not pleasing the Texas and California school boards (because they are released from the chains of physical production) and so don't create watered-down, bland and damn near untrue texts - guess what? I'm in. Sorry - I'm off my e-soapbox.

Let's go ahead and solve the future of publishing right now...

So I was reading this post on Slashdot about a Chronicle of Higher Ed article on the growing piracy of textbooks. Turns out that there is this site, Textbook Torrents, that is using BitTorrent to distribute free copies of expensive textbooks. Also turns out that right now the site is down and/or removed from its host but that is not really the point.

The Chronicle article quotes Edward McCoyd who heads up the Online Piracy Working Group of the Association of American Publishers, "It is troubling that there is a culture of infringement out there." I find that amusing. Having been a student for a good chunk of my life - and let me tell you - history grad students can buy literally a shelf of books each term - I chuckle when I hear someone from the publishers express bewilderment that anybody would use technology to avoid hundreds or thousands of dollars in book fees every term. My favs include the new edition that includes like maybe a new chapter and obsoletes every used version out there so either you can't sell a book or you can't buy used but have to buy new. The other good one is buying a $100 book, using it lightly for a term and then getting $25 back on it. That's awesome. Really Mr McCoyd...you're surprised? Really? I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner and isn't bigger.

I'm struck also by the announcement that the new version of the Kindle from Amazon.com is coming soon. Hmm..a vastly imporoved e-book reader and a publishing paradigm stuck in the 19th century. I mean honest to goodness, this is more blatant than the record industry...I mean when you eliminate paper, material, transportation and binding costs from the production of a book...then you really need to stretch to defend keeping your current price model don't you? Can publishers PLEASE get a freaking clue and come up with a costing model that reflects their editorial and royalty costs and then create an electronic distribution model that is easy to use and then quite acting like piracy can be stopped...it can't...but iTunes has showed us that there can be viable economic models that make use of technology instead of opposing it.

There is also a discussion going on at Tony Karrer's blog, about a more open textbook creation model. That is also an important facet here - I trust textbooks to be highly authoritative sources of info and want them to be peer-reviewed and professionally edited but we need to keep haing that discussion about the 'authority' of certain texts over others. The other interesting piece is that I wonder why the textbook publishers have not more fully embraced electronic publishing since at the K-12 level at least, it would that would go a long way to freeing them from the tyranny of the Texas and California textbook markets.

The Kindle - Prepping the Ground for eBook advances

Love it or hate it - the Kindle is acting a bit like a bow wave on the e-book front. This post from Crave lays out some of the specs of a new reader from Netronix. Why is it that I think that as Jeff Bezos continues to apologize for Kindles being sold out, that these other companies are looking at this demand and reacting? The iPhone changed the discussion and I think the Kindle is doing the same.

The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (ed. Katie Salen)

(link)
"In the many studies of games and young people's use of them, little has been written about an overall "ecology" of gaming, game design and play--mapping the ways that all the various elements, from coding to social practices to aesthetics, coexist in the game world. This volume looks at games as systems in which young users participate, as gamers, producers, and learners.

The Ecology of Games (edited by Rules of Play author Katie Salen) aims to expand upon and add nuance to the debate over the value of games--which so far has been vociferous but overly polemical and surprisingly shallow.

Contributors:
Ian Bogost, Anna Everett, James Paul Gee, Mizuko Ito, Barry Joseph, Laurie McCarthy, Jane McGonigal, Cory Ondrejka, Amit Pitaru, Tom Satwicz, Kurt Squire, Reed Stevens, S. Craig Watkins.

About the Editor
Katie Salen is a game designer and interactive designer as well as Director of Graduate Studies in Design and Technology, Parsons School of Design. With Eric Zimmerman, she is the coauthor of Rules of Play (MIT Press, 2003) and coeditor of The Game Design Reader (MIT Press, 2005)."

**You really can't go wrong here for $13..

Tell me your latest/greatest books on learning....

Yes, I am a book-loving geek. Even worse, I like bookstores better than I like libraries because I like to write in my books as I read and dog-ear pages and in general, rough them up a bit as I read them. I'm also usually working on two or three books at a time, not because I'm that smart but just because I usually have one staked out in a couple of different locations.

So I was just wondering, there must be other book lovers out there and I hope (especially on this blog) that there are people who are reading books about learning. My question then is "what are the books you are currently reading or that you think people should clearly read on the topic of learning?"

Books like Flow, Emergence and How Computer Games Help Children Learn are on my list that  I have read and that I think are generally valuable for anyone to read.

Now I got like 8 comments so far on my "this doesn't look good for MSFT" post, which was a bit surprising, so let's here it out there...what are the books that you have either read or have in your "To Be Read" pile on the topic of learning?

The Kindle: Tom Crawford Executes a Perfect Double Rebuttal with a Twist

Tom Crawford rebutted my defense of his rebuttal of my original post. Phew. While Tom again, makes some cogent points, I'm compelled to point out a couple of my own.

First, he describes my original post as "overly-ambitious praise of Amazon's new e-book reader." Now I went back and re-read my post and I used phrases like "maybe" and not bad and the tone just doesn't strike me as being over-the-top but maybe that's just me. To clarify though, I haven't even held one of the darn things but when as dominant a player in a market like Amazon comes out with an e-book reader, I do think that demands our attention.

To my point about wanting textbooks to be available on the Kindle, Tom says that he thinks that it may be a long time before we see that. I think though that we are in violent agreement here and that I actually make that point as well in the original post. Tom argues that there are two operant biz models, sell the device at a loss and make money off the books or discount the books and pop people for the cost+profit on the device. I think that is a largely correct but incomplete assertion. I think that book publishers could heavily re-vamp their production and cost models, eliminate costly physical distribution channels and greatly increase the margin on books that would sell substantially below what their paper cousins go for now. I also think that publishers could look to develop new value chains to derive revenue from new sources- access to authors' archives, notes, etc - almost like the 'special edition'  of a DVD.

As to the flaws in the device design and my kinda lame defense of "its first gen" - Tom is right in that this isn't the MP3 player market - it seems that Amazon could have done some more refinement of the device before setting it loose. On this point though, I think I'll lean on the fact that with such a high profile device from such a high profile company - I think they will have both the money and willingness to make significant design changes in 2 or 3 gen devices - Bezos has a lot of ego points riding on this...

Finally...Tom.....Happy Holidays! :-)

Tom and I disagree and then I kinda support his argument?

Recently a fairly rare thing occurred and Tom Crawford an I disagreed about something - and it wasn't who's turn it was to buy the round - it was about my post on the Kindle. That was/is a discussion about a specific device and how I think it can be best used. I did want to point out however, a paper that does something that I haven't really seen done before in comparisons of  e-book readers (or really reading on a screen in general) vice reading from paper.

William Powers, media critic for the National Journal writing for Harvard's Shorenstein Center, has penned a powerful article entitled "Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper Is Eternal." As an anthropologist concerned with the interaction between culture and technology, this is one of my favorite quotes from the piece:

"There are cognitive, cultural and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-it note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve or store information. Paper does these jobs in a way that pleases us, which is why, for centuries, we have liked having it around. It's also why we will never give it up as a medium, not completely. For some of the roles paper currently fulfills in our media lives, there is no better alternative currently available. And the most promising candidates are technologies that are striving to be more, not less, like paper. Indeed, the pertinent question may not be whether the old medium will survive, but whether the new ones will ever escape paper's enormous shadow."

I think this distinction of paper as a technology versus paper as a cognitive medium is a powerful one and one that deserves more attention (forgive me if that attention has already been I am simply ignorant).

Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: The Blog Book Tour - Week Two

So the pressure is on. Everyone knows that Week Two, Stop Two is clearly the most critical stop on a blog book tour. ;-) I am following some great bloggers like Tom King, Tony O'Driscoll, and Cammy Bean. (as an aside, since a couple people bring up how they read they book, and as a recovering grad student - I thought I'd link to a post I did on "inspectional reading" that still gets a lot of hits - evidently that's what they call it at MIT...we called it 'gutting a book'. :-))

Actually, the cool thing is that no one knows that but we're giving it a shot - or rather Karl Kapp is helping us take a shot. I love the idea of a blog book tour and kudos to Karl for both the book and this idea. The LCB Big Question and this exercise I think really demonstrate the virtual collective that we have out there in the ether in some virtually concrete ways.

Karl's book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning is a great read and I can say that with some authority. A whole back I got on the list to serve as a reviewer for Pfeiffer (the publisher) and occasionally I get an email asking me if I'd like to review a book that is been submitted and so it was I came to meet Karl's book. I will add this insider's note...this was a happy meeting...some books, well let's just say you'd rather not meet them.

Karl though, I think got a bit of a surprise from this reviewer. Usually they (the publisher) asks for something like 4-5 pages of notes; I think the Word doc I sent back in was something like 18 pages! Karl really touched a nerve! So trust me folks, I've been through this book with a fine tooth comb and have had great discussions with Karl over it and can heartily recommend it. That being said, I wanted to recap a few of the notes I took (excerpted from the document I sent back to Karl - page numbers are probably off since these would refer to galley pages). *the trick being, you kinda need the book to make sense of the notes ;-)

• the idea of "knowledge transfer" in the context of these affordances and technologies is critically important, probably THE key to making this topic relevant as you move up the command chain.
• Pg. 37 – I think what is interesting about the Resilient trait – is that these dynamics that you cite have always been present – whether in the form of the coach who just won’t let you quit or that one great teacher that we have all had  - but these episodes were sporadic and intermittent – games allow everyone who plays them to have that experience.
• Pg. 41 – The point about socialization is important – I think about a Boomer boss needing to understand that his Gamer employees understand face time differently but value it nonetheless. He/she needs to think about the negative reaction that could come about if the enterprise has something like IM deployed but the boss won’t let the Gamer see if he is online or available. This is how they build virtual friendships.
• Pg. 45 – Last paragraph – Yes! And don’t forget the companion web site and blog where people will exchange their stories of success and failure in implementing these ideas and where they will be able to form a community around your ideas and grow them into the next book!
• Pg. 124 – Great story here to open Ch 4. The critical question is of course – why gadgets over toys? I think that the answer is kind of near the heart of an essential characteristic of the gamer generation – a toy represents someone else’s fully realized and produced idea while games, gadgets and gizmos are tools with which gamers construct and produce their own ideas – this is the idea that experiences should be able to be customized by the person in them.
• Pg. 153 – Ahh…the Kobayashi Maru…one of the holy objects of the gaming world…right up there with this last monolouge from the 1st Matrix movie…
• Pg. 165 – The point about your son exploiting the flaw is important – we need to think about how we can manage gamers so that they retain this drive to seek out the edges and not beat this out of them.
• Pg. 189 – I think the point you make about the large pharma company creating an environment is hugely important one. There must be associated cultural change to ‘permission’ these kinds of activities – it must be perceived that the organization values it.
• Pg. 224 – I think that in your discussion of virtual trainers you have hit on an important topic and one that I think has multiple layers of design implications. An initial note – on the topic of what these virtual trainers have to look like in terms of graphics, I’d recommend Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun. Both make the great point that the human species studies nothing as closely as other human faces – we are experts – and that is what makes building a human-quality face on the computer so hard (famous game designer Warren Spector has said that “we can do faces just well enough to be creepy”) but it also provides us with a way out. Scott and Raph both point to the fact that while yes, the faces in Half-Life 2 are amazing – they are also clearly not real but that if I do this ( you will immediately, inevitably and crossing all age, gender and cultural barriers – understand that as a face. So again, I think we will need to focus on the qualities of the human/machine interaction that are important – like the quality of conversation. I think that chat bots like those from AIM and MSN and others like ALICE and even a game like 20Q all represent modalities of interaction that are more doable and I think ultimately more useful than something with high graphic appeal.