Schedule/PlanJan 27, 2012 FridayLive! Usual schedule, including:
Fundamental Questions - tlt.gs/FQanswers
Todd Zakrajsek
1. What do you most want to gain?
2. What do you most cherish and want not to lose?
Google+ Hangouts
POLL - WHO HAS READ ENDER’S GAME? Within 1 year More than 1 year ago, but after year 2000 Between 1990 and 2000 Before 1990 Never
POLL - What was your stage of life when you FIRST read Ender’s Game? Father
Mother
Adult not a parent
Undergraduate
High School
Pre-High School
Never read it
POLL - How many times have you read Ender’s Game? Never Once 2-5 More than 5
SUMMARY OF ENDER’S GAME STORY - Ilene Frank VERY BRIEF history of the story or book as such - influence in Science Fiction Ender Wiggin, age six, is selected by international military forces to be trained to lead. Ender and his parents are given no choice. In Battle School and then in Command School, Ender advances in a computer training game farther than anyone before, and then to simulated battles... before his 10th birthday. The novel depicts a powerful educational system that includes "tracking", simulations, teamwork, projects, and other forms of instruction - even experiential learning. It raises questions about student choice, matching students with instructional options, and the role of computer simulations. - Adapted from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/endersgame/summary.html
What was the major impact on you from readhing this story/book?
Any favorite or recommended excerpts or related readings?
Watch Whiskey Tango Foxtrot 90 Seconds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10N8096MTGg
POLL
Will you go to the movie?
Yes
No
Depends on reviews
Other
POLL
Reaction to the educational implications - the model of future education
Liked it first time I read it
Disliked it first time I read it
Changed my mind on later reading or later discussion, thinking
Have not changed my mind
NA
CORE DISCUSSION GOALS:
- Educational Implications
- Tech Implications
- Implications for the role of parents in education vs. the role of the state vs. the role of the school administration?
Who is responsible for providing the broader context for those teaching/learning with games and simulations... to avoid the risk of the initial educational goals and issues getting lost as participants become too deeply engrossed in the game/simulation? How avoid losing the baby when throwing out the bath water? Who should have been at the table for the planning and implementation of the educational approach in Ender’s Game? Implications for today? For new TLT Roundtables? ENDER’S TEST
INVITATION Feb 10 3:15pm ET Free online live tlt.gs/EndersGameTest
"Ender's Game" immerses us in a painful mix of the real and artificial in future education. "Ender's Test" will guide/measure development of artificial courses - as the Turing Test does for artificial intelligence. Help us identify essential course elements, how they’re changing, and shape Ender’s Test. [Apologies to Card, Turing & admirers.] In the context of Ender’s Game and the ways in which it has been confirmed or challenged, FQ: WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO GAIN? WHAT DO YOU CHERISH AND WANT NOT TO LOSE?
What’s next? What should/could any of us do next? Next week? in the next few months? For next academic year?
Feb 10, 2012 3:15PM ET Ender’s TestIntro"Pre-Session" - Sample FQ recording and LTA
I. Intro A. Why we're trying this live F2F and online Reflects some of the opportunities and constraints associated with the topic! Need to identify a VOC [voice of the chat} to represent the online participants who are logged in individually Need to identify a VOR [voice of the room] to represent the participants who show up in the meeting room assigned to this session during the Lilly Greensboro 2012 Conference This session will consist of several modules, each beginning with some kind of presentation or media and ending with an invitation for everyone to participate in some way - trying to be very clear about how and the differential in roles of the VOC, VOR and others.
B. What began my interest in developing "Ender's Test" Summary of Ender's Game SUMMARY OF ENDER’S GAME STORY - Ilene Frank VERY BRIEF history of the story or book as such - influence in Science Fiction Ender Wiggin, age six, is selected by international military forces to be trained to lead. Ender and his parents are given no choice. In Battle School and then in Command School, Ender advances in a computer training game farther than anyone before, and then to simulated battles... before his 10th birthday. The novel depicts a powerful educational system that includes "tracking", simulations, teamwork, projects, and other forms of instruction - even experiential learning. It raises questions about student choice, matching students with instructional options, and the role of computer simulations. - Adapted from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/endersgame/summary.html
DISCUSSION QUESTION OR ACTIVITYRole of VOC, VOR(s) Polls about familiarity with Ender's Game [see Jan 27 polls] Poll about participation in Jan 27 online discussion of Ender's Game
POLL - WHO HAS READ ENDER’S GAME? Within 1 year More than 1 year ago, but after year 2000 Between 1990 and 2000 Before 1990 Never
POLL - What was your stage of life when you FIRST read Ender’s Game? Father
Mother
Adult not a parent
Undergraduate
High School
Pre-High School
Never read it
POLL - How many times have you read Ender’s Game? Never Once 2-5 More than 5
POLL
Will you go to the movie?
Yes
No
Depends on reviews
Other
POLL
Reaction to the educational implications - the model of future education
Liked it first time I read it
Disliked it first time I read it
Changed my mind on later reading or later discussion, thinking
Have not changed my mind
NA
II. Why bother? Why now?
QUESTIONS about "Artificial Instruction" please consider: - What is a course? What are course materials, course resources, course plans, course designs, course activities, course assignments? Who owns what?
What is independent learning? What kinds of learners do not need a teacher for what kinds of learning? What are the characteristics of a “teacherless” course essential to convince the students who take it that they have a teacher? Why do/don't you care? When young people are trained to make video-game-like decisions that result in real explosions, what are the educational implications? Why do/don't you care?
PLENARY LILLY GREENSBORO 2012 8:30AM Variability - "You all think you're seeing, hearing the same thing, but you're not." "Constructive process" All learning includes and depends on affect/emotion [SWG - Sarah Stein NCSU "experiment"- most students believe that advertising, commercials are quite effective but that each of them personally have NOT been influenced by ads, commeercials. Can be extended to other beliefs? Principles? Susan Phillips UNCG Audiologist - "natural" changes of aging apply to OTHERS... The Invisible Gorilla
It is hardest to abandon the hidden hope of wishful thinking
when it is too late to deny the accumulating signs of change
but too early to understand and accept their implications.
That is when we most hope for impossible reassurance:
for an explanation of how we can continue to succeed, as we have for so long,
without changing what we do. - SWG TLT-SWG Blog
A. Summary of previous discussions of Ender's Game and Ender's Test Almost impossible to get people to discuss the design of a test that would confirm that technology had successfully eliminated the need for a live human teacher in an undergrad course without ending up discussing more than I expected (and more than I could avoid) what the characteristics of undergrad courses that do have teachers in which the teachers make important, perhaps essential contributions. So I've begun to be pleased with that pattern, but want to try to get a little further, perhaps in a slighlty different direction, today. To focus on designing or at least describing some elements of a test for instruction that relies more on technology and less in at least some ways on human teachers - and is at least as "successful" as alternatives that rely less on technology and more on teachers. For some teachers, some learners, some purposes, some conditions, ... etc. So here are two scenarios to frame our discussion:
B. DYSTOPIA - Dehumanized Drone Operator Ender's Game Milgram's Experiment Drone Missile
begin with something like this scenario, perhaps with videoclips: SOMEONE WHO IS HAS AN ENTIRELY SHELTERED LIFE/EDUCATION - POSSIBLY INCLUDING LONG SESSIONS ON VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES - THEN JOINS THE ARMY AND BECOMES AN OPERATOR FOR UNMANNED AIRCRAFT MISSILE LAUNCHERS I, and possibly some others, might worry that such an operator might lack some scruples and sensibilties that we might hope would help this person make responsible decisions with some sense of ethics, empathy, etc.
Think about Milgram's experiment, Ender's Game, and this clip from "The Good Wife" - [young soldier operating drone that blows up a car and several people on another continent"] Someone could get an entire K-12 and college education via homeschooling and online courses without ever engaging in a frequent, fluid, meaningful way with more than a couple of peers, parents, and neighbors. And then that person could join the army and end up operating unmanned drone aircraft with missiles see 2011 "Air Force Drone Operators Report High Levels of Stress,... the operators’ jobs: watching hours of close-up video of people killed in drone strikes. After a strike, operators assess the damage, and unlike fighter pilots who fly thousands of feet above their targets, drone operators can see in vivid detail what they have destroyed [many thousands of miles away on another continent]. " - "Air Force Drone Operators Report High Levels of Stress," by Elisabeth Bumiller, December 18, 2011 New York Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/world/asia/air-force-drone-operators-show-high-levels-of-stress.html
C. True Life Family in Rural USA 2012 - Good Beginnings - Combining new, recent, and traditional options for children's education and life in family and community. Example where the role of tech in education, even in a pattern/example quite independent of "traditional" options, can be very effective, responsible, well-rounded.
GOOD example of the BEGINNINGS of how people can combine a variety of new/recent and old options to provide a potentially valuable new kind of education - which can and will most likely differ a lot in response to different families' goals and needs and different resources becoming available and having one of the parents who is well able to identify and take advantage of new options.
, social networking relationships & activities, playing acoustical musical instruments in non-virtual marching band, competitive flippy cups, church group highish-tech internet-connected pedometer fund-raising, attitude about history courses taught by showing R-rated movies in full in classroom, ... [I think this story is even better in the context of the mother's variety of work/educ experiences and recent ability to use and growing reliance on voice recognition tools] It might not be so terrifying for the rest of us if these children ended up as drone operators... but I hope they won't!
D DISCUSSION QUESTION OR ACTIVITY FQ Activity
III. Re-orienting Ender's Test: The role of "Caring" in the Lilly Test or WGU Test
Less like Turing Test, more like a "Lilly Test"(nice option) or the "Western Governors' University Test" (nasty option) Recognize that it's probalby not so important whether students can be certain that that do or don't have a teacher in their course. More important that the course provides a combination of resources, guidance, engagement or disengagement, suitable tot he needs and intentions of everyone who is being served by it. NOTE: "everyone who is being served by a course" certianly includes the learners, but quite often includes a variety of other constituencies and beneficiaries - whether they be intentional or unintentional, aware or unaware of their status.
Several student panels and other reports from participants at Lilly Conferences and elsewhere in recent years reconfirmed the great importance and impact of "caring" in undergraduate courses. I sometimes believe that "engagement" is a portmanteau code word for several kinds of caring: faculty who care about their subject and their students; students who care about their peers and learning; academic professionals who care about providing effective teaching/learning resources in conjunction with courses; and so on...
QUESTIONS about "Artificial Instruction" please consider as background or context for next discussion: - What is a course? What are course materials, course resources, course plans, course designs, course activities, course assignments? Who owns what?
What is independent learning? What kinds of learners do not need a teacher for what kinds of learning? What are the characteristics of a “teacherless” course essential to convince the students who take it that they have a teacher? Why do/don't you care? When young people are trained to make video-game-like decisions that result in real explosions, what are the educational implications? Why do/don't you care?
Role of VOC, VOR(s)
In what kinds of courses does caring NOT matter? For which kinds of learners, teachers, purposes, institutions?.....
IV. Proposal: The Caring Test for Artificial Instruction Develop methods (rubric?) for identifying courses that can benefit more/less from increasing the role of technology and media AND SIMULTANEOUSLY decreasing the role of human teachers and other academic professionals A. Not good enough for any children B. Good enough for other people's children C. Good enough for my children D. Good enough for all children
A. No satisfactory way at this time to use technology in this kind of course to reduce the role of people, esp. teachers, and still provide a course that would be considered adequate for anyone.
B. Some ways available at this time to use technology in this kind of course to reduce the role of people, esp. teachers, and still provide a course that would be considered adequate for some learners. except that some learners might prefer and benefit from this alternative.
C. Some ways available at this time to use technology in this kind of course to reduce the role of people, esp. teachers, and still provide a course that would be considered adequate for most learners. Most of those who can afford higher fees and who know about this option would be likely to choose it. But some learners might choose other options for idiosyncratic reasons and resist pressure to abandon their favored, but recognize by many as inferior, alternatives.
D. Some ways available at this time to use technology in this kind of course to reduce the role of people, esp. teachers, andl provide a course that would be considered better for most learners than any previous or current alternatives. Only learners with perverse notions would choose other options. Most would happily abandon previously favored options.
DISCUSSION QUESTION OR ACTIVITY Identify examples of categories A and D above. Discuss usefulness/uselessness of B, C. Consider combining B & C.
V. Next Steps DISCUSSION QUESTION OR ACTIVITY Role of VOC, VOR(s) What kinds of pressure are you under that might be ameliorated by doing something with this kind of test?
What might you do soon, with a few colleagues, to take a small step in this helpful direction? Be as specific as possible
Join us on Friday <DATE> 2pm ET for a follow-up. Volunteers for updates, progress reports? NOTE: Progress reports could be about changes in the pressures you've identified here Resources or atitudes you encountered that either enabled or impeded your expected progress
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What’s the difference between “real” and “artificial” courses? <create this video> Why bother? Who cares? When does caring matter?[Is the goal of AI - Artificial Instruction similar to that of AI - Artificial Intelligence? I.e., to be able to convince people who interact with AI that they are dealing with human beings?] <Most of this section should be presented via YouTube video: AFTER video ask “Why, how was this different from my doing this section live?” See Turing Test ; See publishers offerings of “entire” courses, course sequences that colleges/universities can “rebrand” as their own; add story about teacher’s wife working invisibly in his online courses>
What activities or features would convince a student who is taking a course that there is a human teacher in a meaningful role, even though the student cannot see/touch/smell the teacher? I.e., what are the characteristics of a “teacherless” course essential to convince the students who take it that they have a teacher? Who cares? Why does/doesn’t this matter? For whom?
Challenge: Develop a new test, which I'm tentatively calling "Ender's Test" - a bit of a spoof/allusion to both Ender's Game and Turing Test. The idea is to develop a test for determining whether an undergraduate course is being "taught" by a human or not.... Like the Turing Test for determining whether a device that is communicating with someone is a human or is an "artificial intelligence." The context is the growing pressure on faculty and other academic professionals to adapt, recreate, etc. courses that have been entirely or mostly based on face-to-face interaction and "traditional" teaching/learning resources into "courses" that include more online activities or elements or resources.
TASK: Describe activities/features/patterns/capabilities that would convince a student who is taking a course that there is a human teacher in a meaningful role, even though the students cannot see/touch/smell the teacher.NOTE: Happily, developing a list that accomplishes goal #1 seems unavoidably to accomplish goal #2 at the same time: 1. Identify features/patterns/capabilities of an “artificial” course that would enable it to avoid detection as such... enable it to convince students that they were taking a course with a human being in a significant role. 2. Identify activities/features/patterns/capabilities of a human teacher that are likely to engage students more actively and effectively in a course, that are likely to be perceived as demonstrating why it is important for a human teacher to have a significant role in the course.
ESSENTIALQ&A Being able to provide meaningful answers to questions asked by students OWNERSHIP Being able to “make the course your own” Even when two or more teachers use identical syllabi, reading lists, LMS modules, “lesson plans”, ….
OPINIONS Being able to express an opinion in response to questions/statements from students RELATIONSHIPS Being able to establish and build relationships with students
HELPFUL BUT NOT ESSENTIALINTERRUPTIONS Being able to permit and respond meaningfully to students’ interruptions Being able to replicate human interruption patterns, responses, … Technical telecommunications issues (full- vs. half- duplex, etc.) Social/cultural differences; issues
CARING Being able to convince students that the teacher cares about them individually, as a group Being able to convince students that the teacher cares about the subject matter, the course contents Being able to demonstrate or emulate empathy!
INDIVIDUALITY Being able to present, during the course, personal memories, ideas, opinions related to the subject Being able to communicate to the students a “sense of character” for the teacher; e.g., speech patterns (fast, slow, …) communication traits; persona Being able to have a unique “voice” Being able to offer random idiosyncracies AMUSING(?) Being able to generate at least one student rating on RateMyProfessors.Com!
NOTE: Just reviewed the ratings for Richard Rorty and added a new one (I do not have an account of any kind at RateMyProfessors) today Nov. 30, 2011. I have not seen or spoken with him in many hears. He was my adviser for my undergraduate Junior Paper, and a very highly regarded teacher and thinker. He died on June 8, 2007
Happy Weekend!
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