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Well, I haven’t made time to write in the last week and a half.  Shame on me.  I felt especially slackish after seeing how Tony used his “just playing around” time this past week…  So awesome!!

My reflections over the past week or so have been reminiscent of the entire semester…  What is it about technology, media, teaching, learning – the human brain…?  How is this coming together for me?  With lots and lots of questions.  More questions.  Better questions?

I opined to Gardner a few weeks ago about how I wish there was a neuroscientist in our group – so many of the readings, ponderings, and discussions seemed to repeatedly bring me back around to thinking about how we think and how our brains operate as human beings.  Why hasn’t “artificial intelligence” risen to the level of human performance?  How do you design opportunities for learning that meet the diverse needs of a group (whatever the size) of learners with unique brains, experiences, backgrounds, needs and thinking styles?  How can we best balance breadth with depth?  What role do “the rules” play?   How can we better understand the opportunities that exist in “filling in the blanks”?  How do we design opportunities for learning that preserve the “in between” space where learners can explore the blanks?  How do we inspire motivation to do so?  So many of these questions are inherently intertwined with the workings of the human brain and things like cognition and motivation.

Much of this re-inspires my curiosity about how the human brain works, and what patterns of cognition make us uniquely human – and beyond that, uniquely individual.  Why has AI failed?  (And I get that it hasn’t entirely – there are plenty of intelligent systems, but I’m not aware of any that can be described as seeming to replicate human thinking/intelligence and interactions or relationship-building.)

I imagine it’s largely because humans are not entirely rational beings.  We often employ reasoned irrationality.  Reasoned irrationality.  We make decisions and do things that do not appear to make rational sense, or fit “the rules,” or set up desired outcomes – yet it’s still not completely random.  There’s always a reason that on some level makes sense to us (barring mental illness or some other altered state condition… and maybe even then?) – otherwise, we would not choose that path.  And yet it’s still not predictable.  How could you program that?

There are so many questions I don’t have answers to…  Why does my three-year-old seem to loathe pants?  Why don’t people care to follow the directional arrows in the Kroger parking lot?  Why is changing a small piece of the world sometimes quite satisfying, and sometimes frustratingly not enough?  Just how, exactly, is bacon so awesome?  Noticing and considering the questions, playing on the fringes of them, brainstorming with others about them – leads to insight and discovery,  even if the initial question remains unanswered, or problem unsolved.  That’s what I’ve gained most from this semester’s seminar experience.  That, and the reminder to make time for these explorations, for diverse relationships, for fun, and for pushing some boundaries.

Thanks, all!

Part of my reaction to the past two weeks came together for me as I listened to my own voice talking about the power of building awareness and insight by creating experiences for people outside of their usual context.  “The ropes exercise” is one of my favorite – not only because there’s no better way to break the ice than by showing up in a group of adults with an armful of ropes – but mostly because it creates a low-risk experience in a safe environment through which we learn immensely valuable things about how we think and work, which we then can apply better in the day-to-day context of our roles and lives.

This is also what gaming  is about for me – and what I really walked away from Sherri Turkle’s article with.  I have long been attracted to games of strategy – whether puzzles, fantasy exploration, simulations – and the attraction is in the challenge, being compelled to strategize and experiment with different approaches in order to be successful.  The link between all of these things is that they help us learn how to think – and if we’re active in a variety of pursuits, they help us figure out how to think about things differently.  This is where great opportunity still exists…  Gaming isn’t just about the time spent in the game…  It’s about how we strategize about the game when we’re not playing it – how we might investigate possible solutions by connecting with other players, searching resources, even figuring out how to access easter eggs and cheats.  How can viewing things from different angles change your approach?  Sometimes you have to backtrack to find the path that goes forward.  Sometimes you have to use a tool in a way different than its usual intended purpose.  Games involving strategy challenge our mind in ways different than our day-to-day experiences… AND those challenges, ways of thinking, and exploration can then be utilized in our day-to-day experiences, in our learning, in our leading – to make us more effective.

I wish we had time enough yesterday to hear from everyone about the artifacts they brought. I wish I could have stayed longer to hear others share. I’m glad Amy blogged about hers…  What struck me about those who did share is that we were all talking about how the artifacts represented experiences that caused/allowed us to think about things differently. And that different-thinking changes you as a person.  It’s not possible to go back to the way of not-different-thinking, it’s not possible to keep from applying that new lens in different places.  I love that.

Interesting reading this week on learning webs and “deschooling society”…  It resonates, because the design of a learner-driven learning web is how I personally have experienced my best learning.  Technology has evolved to the point that if a learner takes on this responsibility – seeking out objects, models, peers, and educators that fit their needs and nourish their curiosities – achieving the outcomes is not only possible, but truly real.  However, this approach hasn’t replaced traditional schooling, merely supplemented it.

Makes me wonder how we would be evolving as humans if either (a) it did replace traditional schooling, or (b) began at a younger age.  I think many people start seeking out these things on their own in early adulthood; what if it began at school age?

A couple of things clearly and squarely landed with me – objects and artifacts… digging in and taking things apart to understand how they work… experimenting to experience how the world works.  To this day, I remember my mother walking in on me in my room when I was about 12… with a telephone taken completely apart, pieces all over my floor.  “What are you DOING?!” was her immediate response…  “I took it apart – I wanted to see how it works,” my reply.  She was aghast, and I’m sure also completely convinced that the phone would never be restored to working order.  But it was.  And I had gained knowledge and understanding, in a very real experience.  Her reaction and my experience were a perfect illustration of experiential learning – having not experienced taking the phone apart, but merely seeing dozens of pieces laying on the floor she had no way of comprehending how I might begin to put it back together.  But having taken it apart, I knew exactly what to do.  And had higher-level knowledge about the technology to boot.

Second, the idea of seeking out skill models…  It’s astonishing to me how often this falls short, even when it is sought.  I’m struck at how far we’ve come from apprenticeship type experiences and relationships.  In so many of the settings I’ve participating in – when teaching people a skill, the experience falls so far short of someone accomplished actually modeling the skill.  Rather, it is more often directing or telling someone how to do something – possibly also then giving feedback to refine the performance.  But how often do experts actually show a learner how to do something – modeling technique?  Demonstrating trouble-shooting?  The only way to build skills is to practice them – the best way to start to understand what to do is to see someone else do it…  Where do we miss opportunities to show rather than telling someone how to perform a skill?

As educators and leaders, where are we missing opportunities to empower learners to take ownership for seeking out the opportunities and connections they need to explore the knowledge and skill areas important to them?  Within or outside classrooms?  How can we help learners discern and identify valuable role models and mentors?  It seems to me that we can achieve greater transformation from within by encouraging this mindset…

“Where to begin” on Turkle’s essay has yielded to “where to begin” on leaving the class discussion.   I still have lots to ponder and write about my experience of her essay – but today’s session was profound.  What was set up on the “topic” of gaming gave way to quite a deep and multilayered discussion and experience centered on the human condition, human development, learning, and interpersonal interaction.  To me this is largely the point – the opportunity – in considering gaming as a framework through which we can engage our brains and beings in a different level of consideration, exploration, potential understanding…  As one who definitely prefers a “the possibilities are endless” type of game, I was all over it.  However, again the aftermath has left me filled with wondering about how to take all of this possibility and leverage it in creating “spaces” or experiences that encourage and allow people to engage (whether fully aware of the levels or not) in a way that proves transformative to their experience.

When did you first begin questioning the rules in school?   I forget exactly how the question was phrased, but it was fascinating to consider – then to hear not only the various perspectives represented in the answers, but also how that experience wound up shaping people.  For me it was 1983 – 5th grade.  Looking back, it was the perfect intersection of context, players, and a new level of understanding.  The teacher was Mrs. Leisure.  The boy was David Cerf.  Mrs. Leisure had just been in the game too long, I think.  David Cerf was my first crush.  Mrs. Leisure had tired of giving consideration to the question, “Why?”  This seemed such a crucial imperative to me…  and I put the pieces together: the “rules of school” were often arbitrary.  And I figured out that pushing buttons was not only entertaining but in itself fascinating and engaging – and that there was a way to do it that did not explicitly break the rules, AND at the same time earned me social capital.  Kaboom – the perfect storm.

Fifth through seventh grades were my most openly rebellious in school.  After that I learned better to play the game, and didn’t really find myself questioning the rules so much anymore… but accepting them and then looking for the ways to find infinite possibility within them.   That, after all, is part of the beauty of rules – however arbitrary or beyond our initial control – they give us the boundaries within which we have to play.  And then our own acuity, creativity, and ingenuity are free to take us just about anywhere – within the confines, yes, but the possibilities still can seem nearly endless.  Perhaps a reason why The Iowa Baseball Confederacy remains one of my all-time favorite books, and baseball is my favorite sport.

“Why not baseball?” my father would say. “Name me a more perfect game! Name me a game with more possibilities for magic, voodoo, hoodoo, enchantment, obsession, possession. There’s always time for daydreaming, time to create your own illusions at the ballpark. I bet there isn’t a magician anywhere who doesn’t love baseball. No mere mortal could have dreamed up the dimensions of a baseball field. No man could be that perfect. … The field runs to infinity,” he would shout, gesturing wildly. “You ever think of that, Gid? There’s no limit to how far a man might possibly hit a ball, and there’s no limit to how far a fleet outfielder might run to retrieve it. The foul lines run on forever, forever diverging. There’s no place in America that’s not part of a major-league ballfield.”  (W.P. Kinsella; The Iowa Baseball Confederacy)

At any rate, along this path, I learned to employ conformity at the surface: going along to get along.  Underneath and behind the scenes – exploring, pushing, experimenting…  This continued until – umm, …  This continues.  🙂

I would have written a blog post on this week’s reading, but it already exists in its entirety, and to try to serialize it for your consideration would take away from its cosmic meaning immensely. So please close your eyes and call on my ethereal creation to come fully into your consciousness from the cosmos.

Okay, this reading was a bit surreal…  Having grown up in the era in which much of this theoretical thinking was coming to fruition – and in some cases had arrived – reading about the imagining of it is beyond interesting to me.  Much of what was written in Kay/Goldberg’s Personal Dynamic Media has made its way into modern personal computing.  Some of it is still a bit “out there”, but also still has intriguing potential.

I got my first personal computer (my own, personally, not a family computer) when I was in the 6th grade… the year was 1984.  I went halfsies with my dad on it… an Apple IIc.  Check it out – it bears an amazing resemblance to the Dynabook mockup displayed in the writing.  It truly was a laptop computer, less than 2 inches thick, and portable (it even had a built-in carrying handle!), though it did require an external screen.  It allowed me to explore personal productivity and creativity in a whole new way.  It also better incorporated a graphic user interface and set the stage for the ever-evolving intuitive Mac OS interfaces…

Speaking of intuitive… that’s what Kay and Adele were getting at, right?  A platform that works more seamlessly with the way we think, explore, create, revise, build…?  That’s why systems, programs, interfaces that are intuitive resonate with us today.  In order for the machines to “serve” us well, they should work the way we’re wired to think and produce (whatever it is we’re producing, and the writers do a great job of exploring across a range of disciplines, which I appreciate immensely).  While some are nerdy like me and enjoyed the “art” of learning hex code to program colors, or the precision and expertise required for a programming approach to early CAD programs… who can argue with the ease with which we can select a font/background/fill color with point-and-click from a menu in a place that makes sense and is easy to find, as we do today?

Beyond intuitive interfaces, they were also getting at a range of user-specified or defined customization.  A concept that much interactive media is finally coming to explore and leverage.  Customizable web page layouts, news feeds, menu and file structures… these are all examples of ways in which interfaces have been designed to allow users to further “design” or at least create custom definitions so that their system presents in the way most useful to them.

In terms of opportunities for furthering education… I found myself pondering the possibilities here.  As we think about systems that are designed to work in terms of how we think – either broadly as human beings, or more narrowly (customized) as individuals…  how might we also leverage this technological design flexibility to encourage dynamic approaches to thought, or stretching to new ways of thinking – in ourselves and our students?  Can we design and utilize interfaces to function in different ways – to be utilized as a type of simulation – thus forcing us out of our comfort zones into thinking and problem solving in different ways?  I could see this being both excruciatingly frustrating and immensely transformative (in the end!)…

(But I wanna know for sure…!)

Wow, all I can say is that Dream Machines was a welcome change of pace from previous weeks.  Nearly everything articulated in that article/book resonated with me.  And it’s got me thinking much more specifically about how we use technology to support and augment the human learning experience.

First of all – technology for automation and/or re-creation of current processes and approaches: sometimes a good thing, but we definitely need to understand when.  I appreciated the consideration of technology in education…  do we simply employ technology to perpetuate the same old approaches?  In cases like manufacturing, repetitive processes, dangerous operations – automation is a brilliant solution.  Where the outcomes of the process or system have not been thoroughly proven, however, automation may simply make an undesirable effect more efficient.  Not “success” in my book.

“Everything is interesting, until it is ruined for us.”

This quote gave me pause, made me chuckle, then made me sad.  It’s true!!  And throughout my time reading Ted Nelson, I was entertaining mental images of my three children – often each entertained (and yes, LEARNING) simultaneously on separate screens in our house.  Jake, my 3-yr-old, is still young enough that he enthusiastically greets me with a charged, “Mommy!!!” when I walk through the door every evening.  But it’s mere seconds later that he’s asking where my iPhone is.  Often only because his sisters are already utilizing two iPads.  Both of my preschoolers are developing skills in dexterity, spacial awareness, prediction of consequences, recognizing and writing letters and numbers, basic arithmetic, art and music by using these incredibly accessible and intuitive interfaces.  Interfaces which – by the way – also make user exploration and creation incredibly accessible.  My 12-yr-old has created original films and movie trailers, original music compositions, animated cartoons, and can find a tutorial on ANYTHING under the sun by smartly searching online.  As I reflected on my own early learning, and the access technology gives us to pursue our own curiosities and interests – I realize I learned just as much about physics from playing “The Incredible Machine” as I ever did (more?) in any classroom.   So, needless to say, I related to his assertion that technology needs to be accessible, intuitive, and allow the user to self-direct, nurturing natural interest and curiosity.

The other thing I found myself coming back to over and over is the notion of exploration and truly experiential learning.  Nelson references several times over the role and importance of feelings in the fantic space and user interface.  I kept thinking about the power of multimedia to not only impart information but to make an emotional connection with users – something that makes the experience of it memorable and impactful.  For me, personally, this is often achieved at the intersection of music, inspiration, and relationships.  My daughter and I undertook a creative project a few years ago that became highly meaningful (for me, and others) – because it brought all of these things together, and in a way that wouldn’t have been easily possible without the technology used for recording, capturing images, combining image and sound to create the music video, and on-demand publishing.  Personal beliefs aside, I believe this is the kind of approach that can create impact, on many levels.

While he didn’t articulate this explicitly as related to experiential learning, it’s my belief that there’s an indisputable connection.  A key element of this is our human need for first-hand experience to make learning momentous and real.  Think about it: as parents, educators, mentors, coaches, advisors – we’ve all been in situations where we have expertise to offer (often gained through painful or embarrassing previous experience), we offer it, then sit back and watch as our kids, students, mentees, athletes, advisees run full throttle into their own mistakes, errors, pain… AND LEARNING.  So it’s worthwhile to think about how we can promote learning through engineering a more creative approach or environment that will allow for and even promote their exploration – a “safe” environment for experimenting, “failing”, making and working through mistakes and errors, and therefore learning in the most palpable way.  Technology gives us amazing virtual ways to do this…

This was the truly meaningful take-away for me…  How can I leverage technology – as a leader, educator, parent, mentor – to make sure those I’m helping to grow have spaces in which to experience life in a way that educates them and allows them to grow as human beings.  This isn’t purely information-based… it is truly about experiencing the world – relationships, reactions, consequences, variables, emotion – all of it.  It’s why rote memorization does NOT equal understanding.  It’s why history repeats itself.  There are pieces of learning theory that clearly fit into this – knowing that we make neural connections for new information by linking it with old, through metaphor, informational/rational in concert with emotional – and these are all things to take into consideration.  Technology – particularly multimedia approaches – allows us to provide experiences, exposure to phenomena, link information with real-world impact in ways that students may not have had readily access to in the past.  THIS is what it’s about.

With apologies for my earlier, quite reactive and emotional, letter…  The group discussion started with me just as frustrated as I had been while trying to wade through your article.  But ended with me giving you a great deal more consideration – and credit.  Not that I understood the content of your writings any better.  But I was quite intrigued to consider what motivated them…

It all started with a question about “worry”…  “What was Dr. Englebart’s worry?” they asked…  What did you hope for? What was your hope for human beings?  “Competence” was my answer…  and suddenly my head was swimming around in self-determination theory.  You may have cloaked yourself in studies and exploration of circuits and electrical impulses and machines – but you were a psychologist.  A motivation theorist.  A came across Self-Determination Theory (SDT) years ago in my quest to unearth some grounded psychological and behavioral research to support meaningful content around the elusive topic of “motivation” for a professional development workshop I was revamping.

 Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985b; Ryan & Deci, 2000) has proposed that individuals have three innate, psychological needs. These are the need for competence , which concerns succeeding at optimally challenging tasks and being able to attain desired outcomes (e.g., Skinner, 1995; White, 1959); the need for autonomy , which concerns experiencing choice and feeling like the initiator of one’s own actions (deCharms, 1968; Deci, 1975); and the need for relatedness , which concerns establishing a sense of mutual respect and reliance with others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Harlow, 1958).   – Exerpted from “Intrinsic Need Satisfaction: A Motivational Basis of Performance and Well-Being in Two Work Settings: Paul P. Baard, Edward L. Deci, and Richard M. Ryan, 2004

NOW I have something through which I can relate to you – in fact, to see a brilliance in your quest.  I still don’t understand all of the technical aspect of what you were exploring and proposing… but I think I have a glimpse into the “why.”  I think you were on a quest to enhance human beings’ ability to satisfy these three universal needs, and to be self-determinant about it.  In what ways can we leverage technology to support satisfying our needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness?  THAT is the question…

Thanks, also, to all of my fellow seminar participants for unwittingly opening a door through which I could happily wander into more purposeful and meaningful consideration.

Sincerely,

Me

Thank you for your writings on “augmenting the human intellect.”  I think.  Actually, no…  Wait…   Uggh.  Perhaps I could use a P/H/C/LAM-T to help me understand your article.  Or perhaps a more helpful method of augmenting my intellect would be for you to have found a way to simplify the stimulus.  There may have been absolutely amazing stuff in your paper, but I couldn’t even read the whole thing.  I hope that someone else’s intellect is more capable than mine, and through some primitive and low-level direct communication can explain to me some ways in which I may gain understanding and find it useful.

Sincerely,

Me

Boy, I left today’s seminar session with my mind abuzz. I love the “why” question, and was reminded of its power… There’s a reason Toyota founded a TQM process with this as its basis. There’s a reason it’s the question I go to repeatedly in coaching, motivation, performance management and assorted other organization effectiveness interventions… It provokes our minds on a quest toward understanding.

There’s a reason. For everything, actually. Sometimes we don’t discover what it is. Sometimes we don’t arrive at an answer. If we do, there’s often little satisfaction in it because the process of getting there raised a dozen other questions we’re already more interested in.

I left today highly energized. Not because I had answers. Rather because I had gained insights, identified other questions, found synergy in shared interests with others… And reminded that this energy is what engages learners. Not answers, facts, data – but process, exploration, questioning. It is an empowering catalyst…