Author: Jon Cano

What is the capitol of Assyria? One sec…

In the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur and his knights must answer three questions to cross the bridge of death and continue their quest.

If only Sir Robin had had an iPhone….

This week I’ve studied the concept of connectivism, a theory holding that in the digital age, knowledge is not learned, but rather accessed and managed via networks which are external to the individual. Learning is the process of bridging “nodes” of knowledge, and having those bridges at the ready when called upon. Poor Sir Robin needed to phone a friend.

In pre-digital days, if I asked you what the capitol of Assyria was, you might have used an encyclopedia, or asked a historian. Nowadays you can easily check Wikipedia from a connected device. You don’t need to store the information in your brain the way Sir Robin did. Connectivism holds that this new circumstance, the nearly limitless on-demand nature of information, eases the pressure to store knowledge in our heads, and favors the skill of forming connections between ourselves and sources of information.

As a consequence of this shift in focus, argues the theory, we have drastically changed how we think and learn. A logical conclusion is that instructional systems should pivot their pedagogy towards harmonizing with this new way of learning.

I have questions. As we guide learners to be “network-builders” won’t we degrade their ability to perform original research? Who will be the generators of new knowledge? What is the nature and quality of the new knowledge humankind is supposedly generating at next-order rates? If learning is self-guided, how will employers or universities discern the value of diplomas?

Who will motivate and reward expertise? Many educational theorists complain that our current pedagogy is built on an industrial model, biased toward preparing workers to serve corporate priorities. I don’t believe this to be true in all current pedagogy. Public schools are still teaching Shakespeare and world history. While traditional academic subjects have both their theoretical and their applied aspects, I would hypothesize that it will require a sophisticated level of “curation” or guidance on the part of teachers to maintain a blend of theoretical and practical study. Young learners gravitate to subjects that have meaning in their immediate lives. Learners living on the low end of Malinkowski’s hierarchy of needs might need more than a little guidance on even the available lines of inquiry.

To be fair, advocates of connectivist pedagogy admit that there is still a need for guidance by experts. Flawed as they may be, current educational practices will need more than what connectivists offer if there is to be a ground-up overhaul of the system.

Above the Din

In a July 2017 TED Talk, former Google “design ethicist” Tristan Harris pulled back the curtain on an aspect of social media (SM) that we suspect is there, but seem to dismiss. Social media companies have control rooms where dedicated experts work day and night to keep us online, clicking, liking, responding and interacting. Instead of material goods or cash, media giants compete for our attention. They invest heavily into stimulating our use of social media to keep us engaged with them. Like casinos with free drinks and no clocks or windows, social media spaces are psychologically engineered to keep us from pushing away from the table and walking away. They can be similarly unhealthy.

Since much of the content on SM is user-generated, Twitter and the like need us to feel inspired to respond via posts. It is possible to be a passive user of social media, viewing others’ Facebook posts and Instagram pages, but these sites are incentivized to spur us into action. Kitten videos are nice, but they don’t necessarily incite the level of emotion that causes one to voice a public response that will keep the user-to-user ping pong ball in play. Eliciting a heightened emotional state is effective in keeping users actively engaged. Not all of those emotions are positive, but they work.

“Outrage works really well at getting attention.”

Anger causes us to block out other emotions and stimuli. It dominates our consciousness until it is resolved. When it is directed at social media content, the emotion and the content can form a positive feedback loop of ever more consumption. The accessibility and availability of vast volumes of outrageous content have changed our relationship with social media.

I mentioned that Mr. Harris is an “ethicist.” His dire report on how we are being guided down a path of outrage was not delivered without a way out. His call to action boils down to media giants being better stewards of the world-wide conversation. Being the skeptic that I am, listening to Harris’ presentation, I put on my billionaire CEO hat.”Where do my advertising dollars come from if I dial down the outrage,” I asked.

I’m learning how to leverage the massive social media landscape in order to establish learning modes for my 21st century learners. Coming from a traditional teaching role, I’ve noted the transformative effect Sanpchat, et c. have had on attention spans and social lives. I’m concerned that learners will struggle to switch contexts from casual socializing to study or work. My lessons will not be “click bait” or shallow headlines, and I don’t want them to be treated as such just because they arrive via channels that deliver that sort of thing. Blogger Christopher Pappas agrees, and adds that frequent SM users risk “cognitive overload.” Will I need to have a control-room full of engineers helping me to compete for my learners’ attention amid a world full of chatter? Will they be hopelessly distracted by notifications on their phone if that is where my next learning module is accessed?

Mr. Harris asserts that to pull ourselves out of the outrage-loop and return to healthy levels of screen time a few changes are needed:
1. We users need to recognize how vulnerable we are to marketing and persuasion by manipulation-experts who don’t have our best interests at heart.
2. Media companies should be more transparent about how they manipulate the dialogues they host, and
3. A ‘design renaissance’ should occur in which social media spur us to a healthier kind of action, both online and off.

Can it be done?

The Center for Human Technology has some ideas to help us design ‘healthier’ online consumables, for lack of a better word. Check out their Humane Design Guide here.
What do you think? Pick one of Mr. Harris’ three changes above and make a realistic suggestion about how it can be achieved. We’d love to hear from you.

Mom! Get out of my (publicly accessible digital) room, and close the door!

When we were kids, my mother gave my sister a diary, so that she could write down her private thoughts. It had a miniature lock and key, so she would know she was the only person with access to it.

I caught my mother reading that diary. More than once. As young as I was, I didn’t know what to do about it. Should I have told my sister? I’d be snitching on my mother. But I did not like the fact that she was violating an explicit privacy policy. It also sent me wondering if and how she might be spying on me.

Was my mother being ethical? She was likely looking for signs her daughter might be struggling in ways she didn’t want to share. Her gift of a “private” diary was definitely deceptive. What about me? Should I have told my sister what I saw? What unspoken compacts would I violate if I kept quiet?

What is the relationship between young people, the online social platforms they use daily, and their parents? Is it okay for parents to snoop on them? It’s not like they need to pick a lock to see what their kids are posting on Instagram or Facebook. Nevertheless young people expect parents to observe boundaries, to refrain from watching their every online move. This ethic, which they believe adults should understand, can easily transfer to the social media companies. Teens are by and large either under-informed or unworried about how their online footprint can haunt them and be used against them.

In 2015, the Thrive Foundation for Youth published an exhaustive report on media use by teens and ‘tweens.’ The report paints a ‘whack-a-mole’ landscape in which parents are only privy to a fraction of the depth and breadth of their kids’ activities. Kids are adept at concealing the full picture of their online presence, while also ironically wishing their parents understood their digital social lives better.

Both groups have plenty to learn. Parents are generally only partially aware of how kids socialize online, and with whom. Furthermore, at a meeting to which adults were not invited, kids have drafted a set if rules they expect mom and dad to understand and follow when it comes to reviewing their online posts.

The trust kids place in their adult guardians to know where the line is drawn is quaint. If they place a similar level of faith in the best intentions of the giant online companies whose terms of service they have signed, they risk a persistent, easily discoverable, indelible digital legacy.

When I taught high-schoolers, I asked them to look into the future, at their 30-year-old selves. I asked if they thought that person was happy with all the choices they were making today. As often as not, they looked at me with an expression that said, “I fail to see the relevance of the question.”