February 27th, 2010
Yesterday, I attended the RoSE Design Charrette, hosted by the Transliteracies Project at UCSB. Under Alan Liu’s guidance, many interesting, innovative interdisciplinary projects have emerged from this program.
In anticipation of attending, I read the online description of RoSE. Like seeing a movie preview, I started to imagine what I thought RoSE would be. I hoped for an improvement on current content delivery systems, in particular, I wanted something that could ease the challenge of finding high-quality information online. A couple years ago, I had a conversation with one of Transliteracies’ project members, Pablo Colapinto. As most good conversations happen, this one was over lunch and I was expressing my dissatisfaction that we weren’t living like the Jetsons yet, in particular, how they could tell their computer what they wanted to eat and it would appear on a conveyor belt.
As our conversation continued, Pablo asked me, “How would you like your information served?” This question has stuck with me, because it seems so necessary and practical, and yet doesn’t seem to be addressed by current systems. Why, when engaging in search or any use of the Internet, can’t the user filter information according to demographics or other preferences?
To a certain extent, online advertising practices provide a model for this type of targeted content delivery. Using psychographic (e.g., attitudes or opinions), sociographic (e.g., purchasing behaviors) and demographic (e.g., age, ethnicity, location) data, advertisers create profiles of specific types of users. Online user behaviors are culled by Google Analytics, Facebook Connect, and many others. Our offline data is also collected and connected to our online behaviors. Offline data aggregators include Acxiom, Experian, and TargusInfo. Combining data about what we buy with information about what websites we frequent, advertisers put us into affinity segments, which are basically groupings that reflect our behaviors and preferences. For example, someone who recently purchased a BMW and read TripAdvisor reviews for the Sofitel is likely to be put in the luxury segment. Likewise, someone who booked a Disney vacation and researched vaccination information would probably get categorized into a parenting segment. Using behavioral data of others in the same affinity segment, advertisers can predict the types of ads likely to interest you.
The problem here, of course, is that it’s creepy for our browsers or search engines to start targeting content delivery based on behaviors/preferences we’re not 100% aware are being collected. However, if so much data is being collected about me, I’d like to use it to make my life easier. There’s an obvious tension between privacy and convenience.
The process could be transparent. I could set my browser or search engine preferences to deliver information based on my preferences. Just like ordering a sandwich, where you get a list and tick the boxes you’d like, I’d like a preferences option with drop-downs where I could say how I want my information delivered. I could finally have the option of filtering for the types of websites I’ll actually read.
Given the data that Google and others collect, it seems completely possible for me to enter my age, location (although I think Google already knows this), and an interest, say ‘teaching’ into a Google search and the search engine could target its results based on what others with my similar preferences selected. The results would be similar to Amazon’s “people who purchased this book also bought…” or “people who viewed this page ended up…” In essence, I could be served the information I want using filters based on information Google already collects, and using affinity segmenting to determine what I might like based on the behaviors of others with my shared filters. I think to a degree this already happens, but is often apparent in ads/sponsored links (and the process isn’t transparent), rather than actual content filtered on projected usefulness/relevance.
These preference filters could sit on top of existing search algorithms. For example, when I search for Gran Torino, my preference filters would indicate that I’m interested in teaching, so I’d be served content based on what others interested in teaching viewed in relation to Gran Torino. Ideally, instead of getting all search results related to the film, I would receive listings targeted toward classroom use or discussions related to education. At the very least, perhaps search results could be filtered based on what others in my affinity group viewed, so it would prioritize reviews, places to purchase, etc., that I’m most likely to visit and save me a bit of sifting.
Borrowing the model of affinity marketing, by categorizing myself based on preferences, I could benefit from the collective behaviors of people with shared interests. This preference filter would make the current obtuse practice transparent and adds convenience to my search.
Joseph Turow addressed a potential downside of targeted information delivery in his lecture “When the Audience Clicks: Buying Attention in the Digital Age” presented at the Oxford Internet Institute. There’s a danger that once my Google searches and news viewing starts to be delivered according to my preferences, I limit myself to only viewing information tailored to me. Potentially, as targeting becomes more sophisticated, we may lose the breadth of information currently provided by newspapers, television, and our expansive searches, and only receive information that confirms our beliefs or supports our preferences. While to a certain extent, current media options already allow us this option (e.g., Fox News), we may further limit ourselves as content delivery becomes more targeted.
So, how to tame the super-sized information portal that is the Internet without sacrificing the breadth and choice we love? I’d like a balance between sifting through a mountain of results to find a few relevant links and restricting myself from broader views based on preferences I select. Seems possible. Perhaps we don’t need to keep the filters on all of the time, but they’d be there when we need them.
As it turns out, RoSE addresses issues of humanities scholarship, namely, identifying relationships between authors and their work. While it didn’t fulfill my Jetsons’ fantasy of chocolate cake on demand, it did prompt me to dream for a bit and envision the type of search I’d like to use.
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February 16th, 2010
This morning, our local radio host was ranting about people “cheating” on the Tuesday trivia question. She complained that they’re a small radio station and can’t afford to give prizes every week and, of course, now with Google, people always get the questions right. The radio host said the questions should be something that stump you or cause you to yell the answer at the radio and/or grab your phone. She raises an interesting point: Google has changed our culture from one of guessing to one of finding.
When I lived in the Los Angeles area, our radio station, KROQ had a similar quiz, but instead of asking questions like “who won the Super Bowl in 1984?” or “what year was Willie Mays born?” they asked esoteric questions that only devout fans of a particular band, with deep background knowledge, could answer. Now, of course, Google allows us all, to some extent, to have that deep knowledge with a quick keyword search.
There are still trivia-type questions that can’t be Googled, though. The radio station could play 2 seconds of a song and have people call in and guess the song/band/whatever. Or, they could ask which other songs have a similar chord or something. Surfer magazine used to have a picture of a surf spot and challenge readers to guess where it was, then publish the answer in the next issue.
I guess our local radio station needs to figure out what kinds of things experts/fans uniquely know and direct the Tuesday trivia questions to them.
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February 11th, 2010
Recent releases of the iPad and Droid met with anticipation and enthusiasm. As users of technology, we seem to be excited by what’s next and new, but I wonder how long we will sustain this energy. Will we reach a point where we’re fatigued? With the release of Google Buzz this week, I’ve noticed that I’m tired, and I’m not alone. The same friends and colleagues who anxiously shared or sought Google Wave invites seem quiet, reluctant, even suspicious about Google Buzz.
In Evan T. Straub’s article “Understanding Technology Adoption: Theory and future Directions for Informal Learning” (Review of Educational Research, June 2009), he likens our pattern of technology adoption to Sisyphus’ rock: “As Sisyphus was condemned to eternity of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to have to roll it back down again, the average individual is doomed to a cycle of continual technology implementation.”
Slowly, we went from e-mail at work to e-mail at home to cell phones to texting to carrying our music, maps, Internet connection, etc. everywhere we go in the convenient form of an iPhone or other smart phone. Since constant communication is a seductive incentive, we’ve adapted quickly to new tech innovations, but will we reach a point where we feel fatigued? Currently, we seem to embrace new technologies, or at the very least learn them because we view them as necessary. What is enough in our tech enabled world? I think the current answer is we have no idea.
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February 6th, 2010
A colleague of mine recently asked for reading recommendations in the area of Educational Technology, and I started thinking about the trail I followed (a la, Vannevar Bush) to arrive at my current notions of the field.
I taught college composition from 1998-2003. Some of my colleagues were teaching Dreamweaver or FrontPage in their composition classes. By teaching, I don’t mean that they were teaching how to communicate on the Web as much as how to use the programs, in other words, they were spending class time showing what each button of the respective programs did. In essence, their courses were software instruction classes instead of writing classes and, in my opinion, the students’ writing suffered.
I came to composition instruction fresh from industry, where technology was a tool to get a job done. I wondered how, as instructors, we could use technology to fit our needs, rather than the other way around. This, I found, was not a popular approach in my department. Once I entered grad school, I signed up for the main listserv in the field of computers and composition and made a disappointing discovery — they, too, were focusing on how to fit their lessons around the technology. In fact, in 2005, I attended one of their conferences at Stanford and spent three or four days completely frustrated by the focus on technology, rather than writing. Who cares about Drupal or Flash if the students can’t write?
At that point, Larry Cuban’s Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom (2001), addressed my concerns. While Cuban is skeptical about educational technology, he also reports on successful use of ed tech, and that’s what interested me. In particular, he described Esperanza Rodrigues’ preschool classroom at Benjamin co-op, in the Bay area. In teaching students about shapes, Rodrigues blended strong practice using both offline and online techniques, seamlessly moving between using and not using technology to enhance the learning experience. By strong practice, she had a clear lesson plan and learning goal, she engages the students in the learning process, reinforces the lesson and pushes them beyond their comfort level to a new understanding. In my opinion, Rodrigues demonstrates best practice in using technology in education — she uses it as a tool to enhance a strong lesson plan, it is not the main feature and she has not formed her lesson to fit the technology.
A few months later, I read Richard Mayer’s (2001) Multimedia Learning for the first time. I was happy to discover he was at UCSB and started attending his classes. Multimedia Learning establishes clear, rigorous methods for measuring whether learning occurs in multimedia environments and whether the technology enhances or detracts from the learning environment. Mayer offers research-based recommendations for designing learner-centered multimedia environments. [Note: Rich Mayer is my advisor. My research, thinking, and teaching have very much benefited from his mentorship.]
Around that time, James Paul Gee (2003) published What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, which approaches the question of technology and learning differently from Mayer’s text, but nonetheless makes very strong contributions. I was most interested in Gee’s claims about why video games are so compelling. The main take-away messages for me in terms of effective ways to incorporate technology into learning environments were the concepts of active learning (see DH Jonassen for more info), pushing students beyond their zone of proximal development (see Vygotsky for more info), and allowing for risk taking by making the consequences for failure low.
I became increasingly interested in student classroom engagement and wanted to compare engagement in classes that taught the same lesson, but one used the learning concepts I was studying and one did not. My colleague Doug Bradley and I developed a learning simulation in which we incorporated Gee’s and Mayer’s ideas. Not surprisingly, in classes where computers were available, but not used, students had high levels of disengagement, using the computers for off-task activities such as ESPN, shopping, and entertainment (we conducted this study before Facebook was popular). In the classes where we used the simulation, off-task activities were minimal, indicating that students were highly engaged (abstract available on ERIC).
While I’ve read many interesting and useful books and articles on Educational Technology, Mayer and Gee are my main influences. Another text of interest is Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point (2000), Chapter 3: The Stickiness Factor, where he discusses why kids love Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. Michele Dickey’s (2005) Engaging by design: How engagement strategies in popular computer and video games can inform instructional design, published in Educational Technology Research and Development presents research-based findings about engaging students using techniques from video games. Of course, there’s many others.
In her recent interview on Frontline, Sherry Turkle said “The point is we’re really at the very beginning of learning how to use this technology in the ways that are the most nourishing and sustaining. We’re going to slowly find our balance, but I think it’s going to take time…” She said that technology is neither good nor bad, but it is powerful. When considering the history of reform in education, we’ve jumped from one promising method to another. I agree with Turkle that the key is balance. We should prioritize learning and engage teaching methods that will best enhance the learning experience.
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February 2nd, 2010
My dissertation is now available online, thus increasing the chance that more than three people will read it. Here is the abstract:
In university settings, students are increasingly required to conduct online research to complete course-related assignments, yet often receive little instruction in the skills necessary to proficiently locate, evaluate, and use the information they find. By comparing the processes of 150 graduate and undergraduate students during a 50 minute online academic research task, this study examined the role of prior knowledge and cognitive processing in proficient online literacy practice. The findings of this study challenge the assumption that technology alone is all that is needed to effectively complete online academic research. Results of this research indicate that students who bring academic experience to an online academic research task are more likely to succeed than those with technical expertise alone. Furthermore, analyses of students’ cognitive processes yielded insight into online literacy proficiency, defined as the ability to select sources relevant to the research task, synthesize multiple perspectives to build understanding, and effectively communicate that understanding. While certainly requiring medium-specific adaptations, online literacy is not very different from offline literacy. Without the essential literacy skills of gauging credibility and synthesizing materials to form and communicate an understanding, the ease of information access afforded by the online environment does not matter. Findings from this research additionally show that deliberate practice afforded through years of schooling more significantly contributes to online literacy proficiency than short-term instruction.
Further, this research presents and tests a cognitive process model for online literacy proficiency. The model illustrates the interrelated cognitive processes of online literacy while additionally demonstrating the significant contributions of expertise to proficiency. While the scope of this study is limited to college students completing an academic task, the model has implications for other online literacy practices.
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February 1st, 2010
What do you do with the stacks of journals you amass annually as part of your professional memberships? Use them? All of them? Add them to the “free take one” stack in your department’s mailroom? I recycle them on a quarterly basis, after perusing the Table of Contents and any potentially relevant articles. Do we need to receive print copies?
I’m going to use the American Educational Research Association (AERA) as an example of poor practice. Members automatically receive Educational Researcher and have the option of 1-2 additional journal subscriptions added for free. AERA does not offer members the option to receive current journals digitally. Environmentally, this practice is irresponsible, but the following text indicates a larger problem with AERA’s access to scholarship:
AERA is pleased to offer online access to the AERA journal archive — including full-text search capabilities — to members through a joint project with JSTOR. Access may be purchased at the low subscription price of $40 a year and is available only to current AERA members.
Journals in JSTOR have “moving walls” that define the time lag between the most current issue published and the content available in JSTOR. AERA journals have a five year “moving wall.” This means that the most recent issues available to AERA member JSTOR subscribers are from five years ago. The “moving wall” shifts each January when new issues are posted.
I have a problem with their five-year “moving walls.” As AERA describes, there’s a time lag. To impose a five year time lag for scholarship that likely took two years to publish is unacceptable.
Basically, anyone doing research who does not have access to the print publications must wait five years to access the articles. AERA is not alone in this publication practice, many well-established academic journals delay online publication.
Why?
What threats to intellectual property exist if an academic journal publishes its contents online? While I’d like to see this information freely available, let’s consider the question within the current confines of subscription-only library databases. What is so dangerous about publishing research, within the context of a peer-reviewed academic journal, online? Libraries and databases have already established a functioning profit model whereby articles are accessed through subscription or one-time payments. The research is already published and widely available in print, so availability/increased access shouldn’t threaten the intellectual property.
In fact, other print-based academic journals that do publish their articles within the database model send quarterly alerts that include the Table of Contents and links to the articles (with a subscribe or buy option, of course). I’m actually more likely to read these articles because (1) convenient access, (2) I can read them the way I usually read articles, print, highlight, and/or highlight in Adobe Reader, (3) they’re portable, and (4) I can organize them the way I usually organize articles, on my hard drive.
So, AERA, why the five year time lag?
I think we often fear what we don’t understand. Judging from their website, their clunky conference submission system, and their year-long delay in posting papers from their annual conference, AERA seems hesitant to enter the digital space. Regardless of the excuses, this digital ignorance is threatening educational scholarship. True scholarship is a dialogue, a sharing of information that advances our thinking. By limiting access to only those who receive the printed copies of a journal, AERA is, in effect, denying many scholars the opportunity to participate in this conversation.
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January 27th, 2010
Well, Apple’s much anticipated tablet is here: the iPad. Without the benefit of testing it yet, I did a quick tour of the features demonstrated on the Apple website. It looks like a grown-up iPod or iPhone…larger screen and more functions. In fact, maybe it’s the future of laptops — touch screen keyboard, slim design, everything in one place.
I’m most interested in iBooks. I was wondering if vendors would sell a chapter at a time, or the entire book. As Brad Stone pointed out in yesterday’s edition of The New York Times, there is concern that Apple will deteriorate profits and presentation of books the way they have music by allowing users to purchase single songs, rather than entire albums. Already, Google and Acrobat make it possible to keyword search books and articles, so in theory, someone can read a section completely de-contextualized from the larger document. However, a spectre of the larger document is still present, whereas with iTunes, users can download a single song without any experience of the larger context. From the brief description on their website, Apple seems to be selling the book as a single unit, but we’ll see.
Of course, to access these fun features, iPad users must have an account with AT&T. So, our reading will be mediated by both Apple and AT&T. If we don’t wish to have an account with AT&T, we won’t get an iPad. More discomfiting, is if a book isn’t in Apple’s catalog, it won’t be available for reading on their tablet. True, this problem exists with Kindle, but Amazon has such a large catalog, it hasn’t seemed problematic.
Before these technologies, our reading was mediated by what was on our shelves, our libraries’ shelves, and the shelves of our local bookstores. Now, in theory, the world is at our fingertips. I have to wonder what we’re losing, though. I remember as a kid finding old books like Hitchcock’s The Three Investigators series serendipitously at my local library.
No one would have recommended it to me and I don’t think it will be a candidate for iPad, but Hitchcock told good stories and I much preferred his series to the more popular Nancy Drew because they were less predictable. What serendipity are we losing by relying on e-catalogs instead of local bookshelves? Definitely, a counter-argument can and is being made for increased accessibility, but I wonder if, the goal is ease of access rather than breadth and relevance of material. Taken a step further, are these new devices selecting popularity over quality, and if so what will we miss?
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January 16th, 2010
I just read William Zinsser’s beautiful address to incoming international students at Columbia’s school of journalism. Toward the end, he says:
“The epidemic I’m most worried about isn’t the swine flu. It’s the death of logical thinking. The cause, I assume is that most people now get their information from random images on a screen—pop-ups, windows, and sidebars—or from scraps of talk on a digital phone.”
In an article in the New York Times this morning, Anand Giridharadas claims that we are becoming linguistic utilitarians, treating language “as computers do, as a protocol: a code that machines use to communicate with other machines, a code that is not savored or loved, a code that exists to get the job done and works precisely because it is boring, standardized and pragmatic.” What an unfortunate description of current language use! This claim is pretty bleak and omits the most interesting part of the story.
As many scholars point out, the advent of computers, Internet, text messages, etc., have increased literate practice. Up until the early 80s, most executives dictated messages/letters for others to type. Phone conversations were the norm of business communication, rather than the exception. Innovations such as e-mail and texting, however, require us to think and communicate textually.
Recent additions such as texting and Twitter seem to move us toward less words, rather than providing a space to expound upon our thoughts. Often, these shorter phrases lead to impoverished communication, but they don’t need to. Zinsser’s address emphasizes a point that Nancy Duarte consistently makes in her book slide:ology (2008): the importance of message. A benefit of abbreviated communication is the pressure to condense our message into a sentence. We now need to identify the most salient part of what we’re trying to say and communicate it clearly and concisely.
Clarity and conciseness are a benchmark of good writing regardless of medium. Before Twitter feeds and Facebook statuses, however, we had the luxury of space that a page provides to develop our thoughts. Many abused this privilege. To be an effective communicator in this new space requires skill in condensing a message into a single, compelling sentence. Likewise, in longer pieces, each sentence must have a message.
Now, as Duarte and Zinsser point out, is where story is important. We no longer have the luxury of space for a data dump. Readers expect a lot from our single phrases or sentences and if there isn’t a story or some coherent theme tying our ideas together, we may be read, but we won’t be understood.
True, students are now expected to compose in new media. We assign them to create video, images, presentations, or blogs of their ideas. Rather than seeing these new media as a threat to literacy, especially to good writing, we should engage the possibilities these modes afford.
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January 12th, 2010
Responses to my earlier post about Google-proofing essays made me think about the purpose of “research” assignments in the primary grades. James Ford mentioned that when he was 8 years old, he would copy text out of an encyclopedia. I did, too. Of course, we were handwriting, so we engaged in a low-tech copy/paste.
Reflecting on this practice got me thinking about the purpose of the assignments: report on the state of Kansas, for example. I remember I needed to find out what the capital of Kansas was, the state bird, state flower, and a map. Report is important here. There’s no room for synthesis in this type of assignment. In fact, though the final product was a couple pages about Kansas, the assignment really could have been a fill-in the blank sheet.
State name:
State capital:
State flower:
State bird:
[Paste map here]
Instead, this assignment took the guise of a research report. I remember spending a couple hours on Saturdays at the library, dutifully copying directly out of an encyclopedia, not thinking I was plagiarizing, but instead believing I was doing good work. Given the limited variety of encyclopedias, I have to imagine my teachers were familiar with the texts, especially because 25 students each year would likely turn in the same reports.
So, what is the purpose of research reports in the primary grades? Are students demonstrating their ability to find information? When asked to report on something, they’re basically asked to repeat what they find. There’s really no room for much else.
Copy/paste is not a new phenomenon brought to us by the computer. Blair (2003) describes similar, low-tech practices in the 16th-18th centuries, though it’s likely existed since there were printed materials and means to copy them.
What do we learn from copy/paste? I think we learn more from copy/paste practices than the popular press would have us believe. Taking the example from James’ and my third grade copying efforts, we learned how to find relevant information in a reference text and we read the academic language and selected appropriate passages to use in our report. By reading the encyclopedia entries, we started to familiarize ourselves with a form of academic language. Including the texts in our report helped us practice the language. Imitation is a form of learning, no matter how elementary.
In his book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future, Bauerlein (2008) describes the copy/paste practices of fifth graders as an example of the erosion of learning and deep thinking: “go to Google, type keywords, download three relevant sites, cut and paste passages into a new document, add transitions of their own, print it up, and turn it in.” This description, however, does not consider the full story. Perhaps the fifth-graders do engage in the superficial stages described by Bauerlain, but how do they select the relevant sites? Which passages do they cut and paste into their document? How do they transition from one idea to the next?
In my dissertation research, I noticed that, even at the university level, students frequently copy and paste. I don’t believe that the thinking stops when they hit control+v, though. Savvy students use the pasted information as a starting point or mid-point, not as an end. While locating the information is made easy by the technological affordances of Google and other search engines, the task of sifting through this information, finding relevant bits, and making meaningful connections remains a challenge.
Perhaps copy/paste is the beginning of the process. As students gain sophistication and their assignments ask them to synthesize, rather than report, these practices complement or supplement the more challenging sense-making processes in which they engage.
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January 7th, 2010
Most of the fun tech tools I use were shown to me by designer friends and colleagues. I find this realization interesting, because I’ve spent the past six years working closely with Computer Science students and can only think of one app a fellow student showed me the entire time we worked together. My art friends, on the other hand, always seem to be asking “have you seen this?” or telling me to “try this,” or, as was the case yesterday, installing a collaborative app, dropbox, on my laptop while I was watching a Youtube video on a different computer.
It makes sense, though. Artists use technology as a tool. Well, we hear a lot about using technology as a tool, but artists are seasoned tool users — they’re used to experimenting with variations of the same tool (different paintbrush sizes) or trying different tools to achieve a certain effect. They’re purpose-driven users who, in their tech use, generally start with a vision and then find a tool to fit, rather than the other way around. Or, they think of ways to use the tool differently, perhaps against its intended purpose.
Speaking of vision, artists are also comfortable with seeing something no one else sees and spending time pushing that kernel into reality. Often, this push involves time to learn how to present the vision with a new medium, mix colors, textures, text & images…in essence, try new approaches until it all comes together exactly right.
AP Photo/Arizona Daily Star, Greg Bryan
Thus, artists are undoubtedly hands-on technology users. They’re not afraid of breaking anything, making mistakes, or getting their hands dirty, because technology is a tool that like any other tool must be experimented with to understand its possibilities. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find Photoshop daunting. InDesign is similarly intimidating. Undoubtedly, these programs have a steep learning curve, requiring hours and patience for proficiency. Yet, I’m always amazed with how fluidly my artist friends use them. Come to think of it, many of my artists friends probably logged as much time in front of video games as my programming friends when we were kids.
For education, I’d like us to take an artist’s approach to teaching with and about technology. Let’s get our hands dirty, experiment without fear of breaking anything. Let’s have a vision first and find the tool to fit. Think of the beautiful result!
[Special thanks to the designers in my life who inspired this post: Tosh, Colleen, Russ, Safa, Nancy, Aaron, Rama, Loretta, Miljena, and Michael]
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