Great Talk About Education, Creativity, and Individual Differences

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

Sir Ken Robinson

My notes from the talk:

Education is meant to prepare us for a future that is uncertain.
Creativity is now as important in education as is literacy.
Child says, “I’m drawing a picture of G-d.” Teacher said, “But nobody knows what G-d looks like.” Child says, “Well, they will in a minute.”
Three kids playing the wise men in a school play. The first one says, “I bring you gold.” Second, “I bring you myrrh.” The third says, “Frank sent this.”
Kids will take a chance. They are not frightened of being wrong. If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will not come up with anything original. We run our companies – and national education systems – to penalize mistakes. We are educating people out of their creative capacities.
We don’t grow into creativity. We grow out of it. Or, we are educated out of it.
Shakespeare was once seven. He was in somebody’s English class. How frustrating would that have been!
Every education system in the world has the same hierarchy of subjects. Math and science, then humanities, then the arts. There isn’t an education system in the world that teaches dance with the regularity with which we teach math. As children get older, we begin to concentrate on the areas from the waist up. And then we concentrate on one side of the brain. In fact, if you really look at our educational system, the whole thing is structured to produce university professors.
For university professors, their head is just a transport mechanism to get their heads to meetings.
Our education system is predicated on the needs of academics. The academics have designed the system in their image. It is causing academic inflation.
Intelligence is diverse. We think about the world in all the ways we experience it.
Intelligence is dynamic. The brain is not divided into compartments. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It typically comes from interdisciplinary interactions and ways of seeing things. Corpus callosum, which joins the two halves of the brain, is thicker in women. This makes them better at multitasking.
Intelligence is distinct. The lady who did Cats was taken to a doctor when she was eight because she had so much trouble concentrating in school. The doctor listened, and then said “Mrs. Lynn. Jillian isn’t sick… she’s a dancer.” So she took dance lessons, and found her gifts. How much better than putting her onto Ridlin.
We have to rethink the principles on which we are educating our children.
If insects disappear, life on Earth would end. If people disappeared, all other forms of life would flourish. (J. Saulk)

Architectural Bias

I have been musing for a week, or so, about a problem that I am dubbing "architectural bias." The basic issue is this: Information systems are frequently used to provided information to people to support (or 'scaffold') their decision-making. But since the outcome of any rational decision depends on the information available, it is plausible that differences in the choice of information to present, or the means of presentation, would influence the decision that is made.

How information is represented to a person by a computer is often the result of earlier choices made by the architect(s) of the system. Therefore, my question is "to what degree do choices made by the architect of a system impact the quality of decisions made by users of that system?"

If you make the leap to considering the differences in how people interpret various media, this rapidly becomes a UDL issue.

How so? Let's take a hypothetical business decision, and match it to a corresponding portfolio of information. Let's say that it is a decision about purchasing a product... a book, for example. You need a book about UDL. Okay, what information systems do you have available to support your decision making, what information do they provide you, and what media do they use to convey that information? Let's say you are going to use Amazon.com as a decision support system. Amazon will provide you with details about the book, a list of vendors which offer the book, prices for the book and for shipping, pictures of the book. But if all of the vendors offer the book for the same price, how do you decide? What role does the order in which they are presented to you play? Is this order a function of the system architecture? Certainly. What if there are vendors which differentiate their listings with flowery words, or with appealing graphics. What if one of the vendors has a video clip of an attractive person telling you how much cooler you would be if you bought the book from them?

Arguably, this particular example may sound a bit more like a Madison Avenue marketing analysis than a UDL situation, but I think the core issue is an important one. In all sorts of systems we influence user behavior through the choice of information that we provide them, and the media which we use to convey it. However, I've never heard or read anyone discussing the role that this architectural bias actually plays in user choice.

Not directly UDL Related, but cool...

PBS is premiering a 10-part series this Sunday called "Carrier." It's a documentary about Navy aircraft carriers and their crews.

http://www.pbs.org/weta/carrier/

From the preview, it looks like they did a pretty good job of capturing the almost surreal experience of being onboard. Not an easy feat. Brings back a lot a of memories. Makes me very glad that I served, and that I chose to come back to dry land after my third cruise.

Homework 4 - Graphics

I'm not sure why Blogspot has put this huge gap at the front of the entry, and I haven't figured out how to get rid of it... but the post is below the white space.

The objective of our fourth lab is to use pictures as a communication tool. I chose to employ graphics to try to describe a framework that I've been developing to analyze information work. I'm leaning in the direction of calling it something business-ish like "the intelligence value chain" or the "information value chain," but these carry some connotations that I haven't fully considered. So, for now, I'm calling it the "Information Value Spectrum." I believe that the key to developing a useful process is to have computers and people interacting at the "Effective Collaboration Interface." In other words, computers should be used to convert data into information, and then communicate that to people. People should then incorporate this into their knowledge and apply wisdom in handling complex problems. Here's my attempt to explain this with graphics:
	The font was chosen to convey a techno affect. Even though it is a bit less readable, I think it provides a better feel.
	The overview provides a strategic framework. In particular, it specified that there are four components to watch for in the first part.
	I've struggled with using pictures to represent the concept of data. But by using the clouds, I attempt to imply that data is a bit ethereal. In particular, the space between the clouds shows these pieces of data to be isolated from one another.
	The richness that is created by connected data to create information is shown by expanding the picture, and converting the name and phone number into a caption.
	This picture is intended to convey the affect of making a decision and taking action. I think it's pretty obvious that she's calling someone. The caption enhances this by stating who she is calling.
	This picture was chosen to convey people who understand the importance or the impact of something they have learned. So the story is that their ability to see the value of Pat and Jill's new idea is an example of wisdom. Computers do not react to things the way the people in this picture do.
	Now I go back and use graphics to restate that progression, adding that it's really moving from a sort of simple intelligence to a complex intelligence.
	The picture stays here as a reference point as I begin to explain how to use it.
	Rather than just labeling the axis "computers" I include an icon as a graphical queue.
	The curve shows how computers are excellent for for processing simple data, but become progressively less good as you move toward wisdom.
	I leave the graphic in place while continuing with the explanation.
	Again, an icon for people rather than just a label on the axis. Also, the computer icon is dimmed to draw focus to the relevant topic: people.
	Now the curve for people is added, overlaying the curve for computers. The graphic makes the point that people and computers are perfect opposites in this model.
	For a totally new concept, I didn't know how to start of with a picture. Perhaps I could have started with the picture from the last slide, put an arrow at the intersection, and then asked a question like, "so what happens here?"
	Back to the graphic, with both icons at full brightness to convey that they are both in focus now.
	And now the icons are dimmed, so that focus is drawn to the arrow in the middle.
	Summary is just in text because the graphics wouldn't fit well here. In order to summarize the whole lesson with pictures, I'd probably just need to review the whole sequence of slides quickly.

Web 2.0 Video

During the presentation I attended at lunch today, the presenter shared this video with us. It's a thought-stimulating short movie describing the evolving relationship between people and information technology.

The Web is Us

We used to talk about technology as a tool. It is becoming more acceptable for people to talk about human-technology collaboration. I'm still of a mind that the next step is more accurately described by the word "convergence."

Stolen from Karen's Blog

Good article from Cringely...

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080321_004574.html

Convergence as a Life and Death Issue

I read an article this morning that highlights a problem with the interface between people and technology. The title of the article is Misdirected Email Doomed Convoy.

How many times have you received an email that was actually intended for someone else? I have actually built a collection of these stories that I use in class to scare my students into paying closer attention to detail before hitting "send."

This article says that an email sent to a wrong address kept a convoy from receiving updated instructions. 10 people died (another is missing in action, but presumed dead) and 17 were wounded.

How difficult is it for a person with average text abilities to mistype a word, or an email address? Of course, we all do it all the time. In fact, even professional writers still rely on professional editors to proofread their work. Isn't it then reasonable to assume that there is a high likelihood of errors in any typed text? Is it also reasonable to assume that there would be a higher likelihood of errors among a population with text disabilities?

Email, ladies and gentlemen, is not a UDLified communication tool. In fact, it isn't even a very sophisticated tool for people with high text abilities. It's popular because it's a cheap way to communicate. (Reference Tom Malone's The Future of Work).

My point is that it is important for us to step back and look strategically at our world. Businesses, educational institutions, and military organizations are all complex systems. Systems are composed of people, processes, and technology which are coordinated to achieve a desired result. We need to understand where to use each of those elements within the system, and how they interact. Allowed to evolve without regulation, systems take on unstable forms and eventually collapse.

In the case of these soldiers, the breakdown occurred at the interface between the sender and his/her keyboard. The situation could have been prevented by a more robust interface at the sender's side. Something that provided a scaffold to help the sender ensure that he was typing in the address correctly, and that the address was for the correct recipient. Maybe this is a visual aid, an auditory signal, or just a check routine that runs behind the scenes in the computer.

Beginning the Ending

I've gotten rolling with my final project. I think. What I intended to do is to create a multimedia module which shows what the Information Value Chain is, and applies it to (at least) one realistic scenario. I've presented this framework before in slides where I could talk people through it, but I've never attempted to make it a self-standing module.

What I've found is that it really feels more like I am writing a movie (or video game) than developing a learning module. Except that at every step along the way I have to catch myself and ask, "is that content relevant or irrelevant? Is it socially or culturally biased? How would that be interpreted by someone with low hearing, low vision, low strategic function, etc."

I am firmly committed to making this real and relevant. It is an important and serious topic, and the audience is professional adults. So I cannot dumb it down or make it childish. Not that it can't include humor... but it needs to be appropriate. I normally plan to spend eight hours of development for every one hour of deliverable content. But it looks like navigating the path of developing media with universality in mind is going to quadruple that development time. At least for my first one.

On the upside, with practice this will just become my new process. It will get easier and faster for me as I experiment and incorporate it into my style. And then, I can see how the stuff I produce is going to be better the whole way around.

Education as Punishment

Wow! I got an email from a professor at GSE with a link to this presentation:
http://www.weisserman.com/assets/2008/2/12/cyberactivism.pdf

The slides at the very beginning struck a chord for me. Here is the fascinating series of definitions they give (emphasis added).

1. A voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles, in which the outcome is uncertain at the outset, is a game. (Note that this definition includes art as a kind of a game.)

2. A voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles, for which an algorithm maximizing the likelihood of a positive outcome exists (regardless of whether its existence is known), is a puzzle.

3. A voluntary attempt to overcome necessary obstacles is either activism or entrepreneurship. Either attempt represents what we will call “projects with a purpose.”

4. An involuntary attempt to overcome necessary obstacles is a duty or an obligation.

5. An involuntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles is a punishment.

Isn't participation in classroom instruction an involuntary activity for young learners, as discussed at length in class? In my domain of interest, the adult workforce, training and education are often equally involuntary; they are either employer-mandated or required to maintain professional competence. So in many contexts within our society, learning is basically a form of punishment.

I'd argue that every media has some "friction" for all learners. But different media create more friction for different learners at various times. Overcoming this friction - these obstacles - is the key to learning.

In UDL-speak, I think I'd call an unnecessary obstacle a "construct irrelevant characteristic of the media for which a learner has low ability." So UDLifying content works to eliminate unnecessary obstacles, thereby transforming a punishment into an obligation. An improvement, for sure, but still not good.

In order to make the next step, and move from involuntary activities to voluntary ones, we need to look at learner motivation and find ways to make learning enjoyable. That opens the door for learning to be viewed as purposeful, and perhaps even fun!