e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

Google isn't making us stupid - it is challenging our design

Tom King posted to something to Twitter that caught my eye about a piece that Tom Kulhmann of Articluate wrote. Thx for the pointer Tom (Tom King that is).

Geez, I can't even go with "Tom K" to differentiate here...OK how about,  the piece that Kuhlmann wrote is entitled "Is Google making our e-learning stupid?" and is a play on a piece by Nicholas Carr that appeared in the Atlantic Montly entitled "Is Google making us stupid?" Bear with me, I know its a lot of stage setting.

I had read the piece by Carr (thank goodness his name isn't Tom) and I liked it. What I didn't like was the discussion that seemed to grow out of a bunch of people who didn't even read the article. Anyway, Carr cites Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts who argues that "Reading, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It”s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains." Awesome, of course as an anthropologist/historian, we kind of knew that. We're familiar with the impact that technology has on reading and larger impact that has on society - affecting the way people read is one of the most powerful pressure points in civilization.

Wolf also argues that "When we read online, she says, we tend to become "mere decoders of information." Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged." Now that I have a bit of an issue with. When we start talking about our ability to make rich mental connections, I don't think that has ever been stronger  - what has happened (IMHO) is that we have moved that activity from a solitary pursuit to a collaborative one. Just look at the process of writing this post. I read King, then I click and read Kuhlmann, that jogs something and I go to the Carr piece - then I have two more pieces that I'm going to mention that hadn't thought about connecting until now and then I'll hit "publish" and all of this will go public for consumption, comment and so on. So, back to Kuhlmann.

I love what Kuhlmann does is this article. Here is a veteran of elearning and guess what he is talking about? DESIGN! Brilliant observation that if our literacies are changing, e.g. the "power browse", the duh, maybe we should change the way we provide information to people. Let's not forget that eLearning, by definition is "e" so it only stands to reason that maybe we should look to the dominant ways that people consume other forms of "e" materials for clues on how to shape ours. Great stuff! Practical tips as well on the rapid design front.

I do however, want to point to two additional pieces that somehow I have been able to make mental connections between...if you haven't already, read James Paul Gee's book What Video Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Important work there on how to understand games as another form of literacy - as you read, just substitute Google for games and you'll get the idea that different may or not be better or worse but it is different and our understanding, our mental models need to change to keep up.

Finally, kind of on the other side of the coin, read "Hamlet's Blackberry: Why paper is eternal" by William Powers. For the anthropologist in me, this article was a clear rejoinder on the power of the physical to affect multiple cognitive and emotional domains.

Wait...I forgot to include "Why Professor Johnny Can't Read: Understanding the Net Generation's Texts" from Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley. Takes up an extends Kuhlmann's point and goes from his rapid elearning focus to a focus on education and on the responsibility if not the requirement of teachers to work to understand the texts of next-generation students. Brilliant!

So this was a long post and I'll assume you just skimmed it. :-)

The Web is Not Public...But maybe It Should be or maybe Not

Have you ever been walking through a shopping mall and at one of the intersections, seen some that looked like street signs pointing toward this anchor store or that anchor store? Isn't there always some kind of central square in a mall where either Santa sits or performances take place? Benches to sit on? Ever notice how these spaces mimic city squares or streets? here is the critical difference...they are not. No free speech applies here. No freedom to assemble. No freedom of press or religion. These are not public spaces.

This mimicry of public space includes the Web. From cable companies being fined for throttling bandwidth, to issues of net neutrality to unexplained censorship, we are reminded daily that the Web is actually a very private place. Why is this important to remember at all? Because the mimicry is so good. Maybe the Web can be some kind of Habermas-like salon but its not. It rides on commercial pipes owned by for-profit companies and we are largely at their whim. Second Life/Linden Lab is really just a Web-hosting company that lives in San Fran. We are seeing the tools which may build the first extra-national entity but it does not exist yet. Now, back to my coffee and our regularly scheduled blog.

Brenda Brathwaite, the Media and the Seduction of the Innocent

Brenda Brathwaite and I spent a lot of time together while I was growing up. She wasn't actually there and honestly I didn't know her name for a long time but the products that she helped develop taught me a great deal. They taught me how to solve complex problems, they taught me how to pay attention to details, they taught me how to think about building a team with supporting abilities and clearly defined roles and responsibilities. They didn't teach me these things all on their own but they served as instructors of sorts and they served as great laboratories for me to test out these new theories. Sound like good products right? You've probably guessed that these were games. Specifically the Wizardry series.

So when I read this article by her in The Escapist, I almost wanted to come through the article and fend off these naysayers who were responding negatively to the work done by one of my favorite designers. I also wanted to do this because I have had this same negative reaction from people myself when I tell them that I am in some way involved with the creation of videogames - oddly enough though, not from children.

Then I got to this quote from Tom Forsyth,

"'That Ug, always holding things. His front paws will develop in funny ways. Why can't he walk on all fours like normal proto-hominids?' And so, whatever the kids spend the most time doing, that's always what parents think is a waste of time, and what is corrupting their lives. It doesn't matter what that is. If all they did was homework, parents would be worrying that their kids aren't becoming well-rounded people. And, in fact, parents do this - enrolling math nerds in karate classes and the like. There is no way to win - parental paranoia ensures that kids are always doing the wrong thing."

I was struck by how dead-on similar these arguments sound to the furor that was evident in the 1950s when computers didn't exist but parents and even the U.S. Senate was convinced that comic books were corrupting an entire generation of children. The penultimate point in this fight was the 1954 publication of Dr Frederic Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent." Wertham was a psychiatrist who saw homosexual undertones in the relationship between Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman as a lesbian and both overt and covert images of sex and violence everywhere.

So my conclusion is just to press on. There will always be objections - be it the revolutionary aspects of Mozart's compositions, the world-changing nature of radio ('classroom of the air'), the subversive nature of Sesame Street, rock-n-roll or video games...in the words of that poet/revolutionary Bob Dylan:

"Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'."

Generational Change in the U.S. Military (strategy+business)

(strategy +business link)

I think this article is nice treatment of the generational shift as it may play out in the U.S. military. There are of course parallels to not only other militaries but to the corporate sector as well. This sounds familiar:

"Not long ago, one of the authors of this article was asked to lead a U.S. Air Force study on the implications for the military of this new online generation. The request came from senior officers who had been appalled to discover a number of junior officers using the still-
permissible Facebook Web site for the purpose of organizing their squadrons. These senior officers were having difficulty with the concept of using a civilian social-networking site for military purposes. What would that mean for military security? How would it affect the control and vulnerability of squadrons in the field? And from the perspective of DOD “middle management,” what was a major supposed to do? Forbid the behavior and risk losing the real benefits of an online community? Or protect it and risk the wrath of more senior officers who just didn’t understand?"

**I should also say kudos to strategy+business for while they do require registration to read this full article online, the full PDF version is freely available with no registration.

Zuda: A great way to discover great comic talent or more death by amateur Mr Keen?

According to this article, DC Comics is sponsoring a new site known as Zuda. The story states that:
"Zuda is giving users two ways to reach potential fame. The first is by keeping an eye out for particularly impressive submissions and offering the artist work at DC. The other is a public system that lets Zuda users vote and rate submitted comics after a select group of 10 has been picked out by Zuda editors. This is a monthly process, whose winner gets a one-year contract with DC to produce a weekly Web comic."

Now I love this because I am both a fan of comics and because I love to see talents like RedvBlue, Broken Saints, Little Ninjai, Electric Sheep, XKCD, Penny Arcade and 3 Panel Soul (see comic above) get discovered. I suppose however, that the patron saint of experts, Andrew Keen, would just see this as another double-plus un-good attack on the the "Authorities." Too bad Mr Keen, I'm looking forward to some great new comics.

If there are 'Digital Natives' does that mean there is no 'Digital Ellis Island'?

This post by David Weinberger pointed me toward the Digital Natives project. This is a research site and the description from the site reads in part..."The focus of this research is on exploring the impacts of this generational demarcation. Through discussions with youth, the project will address the issues and benefits of this digital media landscape and gain valuable insight into how youth make sense of their experiences online. This information will help us make recommendations to educators and legislators in a way that supports young people and harnesses the exciting possibilities their digital fluency presents."

Some of the topics that the research will seek to address include: Digital Information Overload, Digital Information Quality, Digital Opportunities
Digital Education,  Digital Identity, Digital Creativity.

So aside from the fact that as an anthropologist, I'm just interested in this sort of study, why should anybody in the "learning" industry care? Well, ever try to turn a battleship? Here is a hint - it doesn't happen quickly. Anybody care to describe the pace at which change moves across the field of ISD as nimble and/or agile or even just quick? No? Well then, we need to maybe pay attention to this kind of research and the kind done by John Beck and Mitchell Wade in Got Game and The Kids Are Alright (among others) so that we can begin the process of turning this battleship around in time to maintain a degree of relevance or effectiveness.

DEATH to the Old School Model of Academic Publishing!! Grab the torches!!

I swear I am so p#ssed off right now I can barely see straight. Reading through all the background material on the virtual economies spat in the post below, I came across a mention of an article in a journal I was not familiar with, Games and Culture.

As a lifelong student and a former (multiple) grad student, I did my little mental version of a happy happy joy joy dance - I like journal articles is the point. My heart sank when I looked at th URL and it indicated that this journal belonged to the SAGE Journals family. I knew immediately that since I am not currently affiliated with an academic institution and my money tree is a little wilted, I would never have access to to this article or journal. Oh, I could pay $15 for access to one article, or $83 for an individual, print-only subscription but you know what? I could also wish really hard and see what happens - the point is neither one is going to happen.

This kind of old-school BS mentality just drives me crazy. Ask yourself, how much did SAGE pay the authors of the articles to write them? Um, I'm guessing nothing. Well let's allow for the costs of assembling and maintaining a peer-review group for the articles. Allowed. Now let's do the math on how best to recover that cost....sell one article per month at $15 a pop plus some institutional subscriptions or sell thousands of the article at a greatly reduced price - I'm betting that the audience that would pay a lot less for this article is vastly larger than the audience that will pay full price. Dammit people just do some simple math!! HEllloooooooo...Long tail anyone???

I also applaud and support the efforts of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) to end this kind of stranglehold on research.  Read some of the articles (here, here, here) and then someone freaking explain to me how publishers can hire marketing firms and lobbyists to attempt to prevent research that is funded with public money from being made freely available to the freaking public THAT PAID FOR IT!!! Holy Cow! The gall, the unmitigated gall of these freaking dinosaurs to try to restrict the flow not of free information but information that is ALREADY PAID FOR is just beyond the pale. I swear I hope the internet and the web continue to provide new ways for people of conscience to work together and share the results of that work and that the parasitic, vampiric publishers who are so stone stupid not to recognize a tectonic shift in the publishing world (which offers new ways to actually make more money) when it rears up and bites them on the ass  - are quickly conisgned to the dustbin of history.   

"Purpose and Innovation" in strategy+business

strategy+business has a good article online entitled: Purpose and Innovation: How to optimize corporate R&D Efforts by Nikos Mourkogiannis. I like the article and love the table at the end of the article where it characterizes the purposes of certain companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Sony and IBM as falling into categories such as heroism, discovery, altruism and excellence.

I think that 'purpose' could easily be substituted with 'culture' but I like the explicit nature of purpose. For a more in-depth exploration of how this can manifest itself within an organization like the U.S. Marine Corps, pick up a copy of Making the Corps by Thomas Ricks (the same author who wrote Fiasco).

Maybe it's just the anthropologist in me but  I think that we continually underestimate the importance of how  our instructional efforts can infuse or support or even subvert an organizational culture.