Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else’s vision.
Penn Jillette, Interview in WIRED magazine
Growing up I was a huge fan of both Choose Your Own Adventure books and more traditional linear novels. I certainly liked the idea of being able to choose my own path in the story, however, I never seemed to choose correctly and always ended up making choices that lead to an unfortunate and premature end. On the other hand, with the more traditional novels I was never left disappointed at how things ended. Whether I finished the last page with a feeling of sadness or joy I cannot recall a single time where I wished it had ended differently, even in the most tragic circumstances. The linear novel may have restricted my involvement in plot development, however, I think that it was precisely because my involvement was limited (i.e. that I sat back and plugged in to some else’s vision) that I was more satisfied and enriched by the experience.
Matters of choice have been on my mind as of late (mostly due to the fact that I am reading The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz) and issues of technology almost always are. I’ve pretty much taken it as a given that more user choice, more interactivity, is the golden standard that is being aimed for as technology develops and evolves. However, I can’t help but wonder if there are certain situations, in entertainment, education and user interface (three areas where interactivity and user choice are touted as ideal) where choice should be restricted and the flow of the narration or the experience should be left to those who are skilled enough to make those choices in the first place.
Would I have felt differently if I had made more successful choices while reading the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a child, or is there something to be said for sitting back and plugging in and letting a experienced storyteller choose the adventure for you?
Apparently Apple Inc. has some of the most outdated environmental policies around which means that their computers are responsible for a lot of toxic e-waste. Specifically, their computers are manufactured with toxic chemicals that seep out into the environment as they sit in landfills and they do not currently offer a recycling program* to help reduce the e-waste their devices produce.
Greenpeace has launched a campaign to encourage Apple to stop using toxic chemicals in their computers and to start a product take-back plan like other computer manufacturers such as Dell and HP. To support the campaign, you can check out the cleverly designed web site and if interested sign a petition.
*correction: they do offer a recycling program, however, this should read “adequate recycling program” as the program is very limited and only offered in the US.
I had hoped to do a proper write up of this year?��Ǩ�Ѣs FITC, however, now that several weeks have passed and my mind has settled slightly, I thought I would share this list of key lessons learnt instead.
- Personal work fuels the corporate work ?��Ǩ��� Geoff Lillemon (personal and corporate) and Stefan Sagmeister were two good embodiments of this mantra.
- Controlled randomness is cool ?��Ǩ��� Mario Klingemann and Joshua Davis are two shining examples ?��Ǩ��� but I much prefer ordered connections.
- Web developers are the new application developers ?��Ǩ��� Apollo from Adobe (coming soon) allows web developers to write applications for multiple devices.
- Screen capture is a great way to do self-promotion and Kevin Airgid has some excellent examples of how to use screen captures to demo your work.
- Interaction and not animation is the real aide to online learning. Kristin Henry rightly pointed out that animation is just a series of still images where as interaction requires user participation which is necessary for learning.
- I prefer Super Mario hacks over Atari hacks.
- Matrix mythology always makes for an interesting dinnertime discussion
- The dot-matrix printer is a damn cool instrument
- I enjoyed the creative talks more than the technical ones, mostly because the creative talks shed a lot of light into the artists creative process which I find absolutely fascinating (Geoff Lillemon, Stefan Sagmeister, Joshua Davis, Margo Quan Knight, Geoff McFetridge) and the technical talks weren?��Ǩ�Ѣt technical enough to really be useful.
- We need more females to present and represent at FITC
Event pics can be found here.
I happy to announce that just officially signed up for FITC 2006, Canada’s first and foremost Design and Technology Festival. This will be my third year in attendance and I’m very excited about this years line up. A few of the Speakers/Sessions I’ve been eyeing include:
I’m sure the list will grow with time, but for now I see plenty to keep both my left and right brain happy.
There have been several times after sitting through a long session at the computer that I’ve re-entered the real world and found myself wishing I could hit CTRL-Z to undo something. This often happens after an intense Photoshop session as image manipulation is an activity requires constant revisions, a series of undos and redos until you get it just right. Apparently I’m not alone in this as other Photoshop users as well as gamers have reported experiencing a similar phenomenon. This transference of computer commands into real world activities has always puzzled me, so I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw this commercial.
Last week I was fortunate enough to be in attendance for David Jonassen’s thought-provoking talk “Engaging and Supporting Problem Solving Online”. I had not heard of him prior to this engagement but within minutes of his presentation I wished that I (along with everyone else involved in education) had heard of him sooner.
What he had to say was simple and obvious yet totally overlooked for the most part in education - knowledge that is constructed in context is more meaningful, more easily integrated, better retained, and more transferable than knowledge created in an artificial situation like an exam. Given that we encounter numerous problems during the day - from where to park to what to make for dinner - problem solving is the most meaningful and relevant activity that we engage in.
Instead of teaching for tests Jonassen suggests that we should be teaching in for the real world - after all, it’s in the real world and not an examination hall that the application of knowledge truly counts. This means you have to engage learners by creating an authentic learning environment that has meaning and Jonassen suggests that technology can be a useful tool in creating these environments. Currently, technology for the most part is being used as a way to distribute course content that was previously delivered on paper - class notes, readings, tests, etc. This is all fine and dandy, and hopefully a few trees have been spared thanks to this electronic distribution process, however this hardly classifies as online learning. You don’t change learning by simply changing the distribution of the learning materials.
Jonassen suggest that we go beyond this distribution model and use technology to create meaningful learning environments that support problem solving. In these environments, technology is used both to distribute information about the problem and to help guide users towards a solution. Although problems will differ both in complexity and across domains, what is consistent is the way that technology can be applied to assist in the problem solving process. Simulations are easily accomplished thanks to the data crunching power of computers and are an excellent way for students to experiment with different variables and their resulting outcomes. Simulations would work for a variety of different problems including supply/demand analysis in economics and physical simulations for engineering. Jonassen also suggests the use of constraint-based discussion boards where restrictions are placed on the types of posts students can make in a discussion by encouraging researched-based as opposed to opinion-based responses. These types of boards would be very effective in for domains where problem solving requires decision-making and argumentation skills, such as design or policy analysis.
Using simulations and constraint-based discussion boards are just two examples of the many novel ways to use technology to create meaningful learning environments that engage the learners in problem solving. These are by no means fancy solutions - they are novel in their underlying approach and not in the technology used to implement them. Before we can effectively use technology we must look at how we are teaching. Once we understand that technology is the tool and not the teacher we will be able to harness the full power of the technology and teach to meaningful learning outcomes that support problem solving.
More information on David Jonassen’s work can be found at the Center for the Study of Problem Solving and on the Design Constructivist Learning Environments resource page.
I came across the article “Wired up, plugged in, zoned out” this morning which made me livid. I’m usually a pretty calm person when reading the paper on a bright Sunday morning, but the paranoia and one-sidedness of this article deeply troubled me. While I could go on about all of the benefits of technology and some of the drawbacks, it basically comes down to the fact that we can’t wholly blame the technology for how it is used and instead we have to look at the users and why the users make the choices that they do. I felt compelled to make a comment on the Globe and Mail site (a first for me) which went as follows:
I use personalization to filter out the junk that is delivered by the so-called “common sources” that this article praises. Personalization will eventually result in the death of pop culture and I can’t help but wonder if that is such a bad thing if that means we no longer have to read about Bradgelina or listen to “My Humps” by the Black-Eyed Peas.
Personalization gives the user the choice in what they want to consume. Some people will make choices that result in an echo chamber and others will make choices that result in a bazaar of opinions and options. Instead of cursing the technology for giving us the power to choose perhaps we should look at how we are making choices. Individuals need to be taught how to evaluate various news sources and empowered with critical thinking skills to assess the content being provided by those sources. Personalization by technology is here to stay and instead of yearning for the good ol’ days of the “daily masses” we should be encouraging individuals to create the best possible ?��Ǩ?�daily me”.
It may seem out of context without having first read the article but my point is clear - the problem is not that we can choose but how we make choices. Personalization technology will keep advancing like the juggernaut that it is and we need to keep up to speed by ensuring that information literacy and critical thinking skills are taught so that we are making the choices and not the technology.
Given the recent debate over the accuracy and merit of the Wikipedia project, I found this Penny Arcade piece to be rather funny and fitting:
For every John Doe, Adam Curry and Skeletor there are hundreds of people who are contributing accurate and (relatively) unbiased information to the project. It is only through collaboration and peer editing that the most accurate information will persist. Although Wikipedia may be more susceptible to the rantings of a lunatic, thanks to collective intelligence and peer review these postings can be corrected and filtered out. This is something that can’t be said for the so-called experts over at Encyclopedia Britannica (who could also be considered ranting lunatics depending on your point of view). As far as I?��Ǩ�Ѣm concerned, Skeletor could be a Wikipedia contributor just as easily as he could be on the Encyclopedia Britannica payroll. I prefer the collective intelligence over the opinions of paid experts, and it turns out that according to a recent study by Nature both are equally reliable sources of information.
Thanks to Andrew for bringing this humorous and illuminating Penny Arcade strip to my attention.
Tagrolls are a handy way to display your del.icio.us tags as part of your website making it easy for yourself or anyone else to browse your bookmarks by topic tags. There are several customizations which can be done to display your tagroll using the del.icio.us service including specifying the order, size, and color of the tags. Using these customizations a lot of additional information about your tagging habits can be conveyed in a visual way. When creating my own tag cloud, I choose to use colors and sizes that would display additional information about my tags - a large font and a hot color (red) for my most popular tags and a smaller font with a cooler color (blue) for the less popular ones. I ended up with the following two tag clouds:
When displayed as a tagcloud sorted by frequency, you get a nice looking gradient that not only looks cool but that says a lot about my tagging preferences. When displayed as a tagcloud sorted alphabetically, you get a more ordered listing with “hotspots?��Ǩ�� representing the most popular tags. The alphabetically listing conveys the most information since it provides two ways to scan (alphabetical listing and visual clues to frequency) whereas the tagcloud sorted by frequency only allows for browsing by frequency, something which is enforced twice in this organization. Although I like how the gradient looks visually in the transition from hot to cool, I choose to go with the alphabetical ordering, as it is the easiest way to scan a list of information and the “hotspots”, given their color and size, provide a visually attractive and effective way to identify the most popular tags.
Originally published December 12, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.
Great article that contains some handy tagging tips and information on how to use some of the more obscure del.icio.us features such as the inbox. Well worth a read for both the beginner and experienced del.icio.us user.
read more |Â digg story
Originally published December 12, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.