Brainstorm in Progress: techbeat

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Friday, June 01, 2012

Is the Internet making us stupid?

Marshall McLuhan caused wide irritation with his statement that the traditional, book-oriented intellectuals had become irrelevant for the formulation of cultural rules in the electronic age. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is an article I wrote for the Times-Standard "Tech Beat" column:

Is the Internet making us stupid? Variations on this argument have been floating around since Nicolas Carr first wrote “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in the Atlantic Monthly back in 2008. His idea is that the more we rely on computers to do our “thinking” for us, the weaker our brains become.

These arguments rely on a shallow definition of thinking. If I believe that the only way to express intelligence is through writing 20-page papers or consuming information in the same way that my grandparents did, then I am not that smart. Carr and others believe that if someone grows impatient with books, that person is experiencing some kind of cognitive deficit.

One problem with this argument comes from the fact that we really know little about cognition in the first place. Cognitive science is still in its relative infancy. This field is rapidly changing as technology advances, so making some kind of declaration on how we think and learn based on this new science is a bit premature.

And what if technology does change the way that we think? Is this necessarily a bad thing? Maybe that is how we evolve. We develop technologies to deal with problems in our environment, and as Marshall McLuhan says, “we shape tools and then our tools shape us.” He says that technology is just an extension of our natural faculties and abilities. We have the intelligence to invent fire and bicycles. Does this make us slower and weaker? Or did we invent stuff to make up for our weaknesses?

The Hansen Writing Ball, the first typewriter sold commercially, invented by Rasmus Malling-Hansen around 1865, first manufactured in 1870. This was a model from 1878. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carr recounts the story of the philosopher Nietzsche's introduction to the typewriter, and he says that “under the machines' sway” Nietzsche's writing became more terse and “telegraphic.” I think this is a good thing. It is refreshing when a philosopher can get to the point. My uncle Ed, also a writer, once said to me that “the word processor is to words what the chainsaw is to wood.” I knew exactly what he meant because I wrote a book in 1990-91 using a typewriter. It was the last major project I did using a typewriter. The typewriter had me on the floor literally cutting and pasting pages and paragraphs together. I may have enjoyed the process at the time, but I would never go back.

Carr discusses McLuhan in his article: “Media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought.” I agree with this. At various times in human history, our media, from the cave paintings of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc to the Internet, has gone from being an oral and visual culture to a written culture and now back into a visual medium of connections. We are connected to the information, connected to one another, and connected to the means of producing information.

We have to let go of the idea that there is some kind of privileged media. Socrates distrusted writing because it removes people from how he thought we really learn, by having conversations. Carr talks about “deep reading” and that somehow, with all of this access to information, our reading will become shallow and sporadic. He seems to forget the mountains of trash that have made it into print (novelizations of television shows, for instance). Someone can read books their entire life and not make it out of the shallows.

Thomas Claburn wrote an article in the Oct. 15 edition of Information Week called “Is Google Making Us Smarter?” where he cites a study showing that there may be some benefits to computer use, especially with older adults. The study involved 24 volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76, half of whom had prior Internet search experience. According to the article, “Participants' brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while they conducted Internet searches and read books. The study participants showed similar brain activity when reading, but when searching online, those with prior Internet experience also showed activity in the frontal, the temporal, and the cingulate areas of the brain, areas associated with complex reasoning.”

We are in a new era. But despite the fear we may have of new media, according to publisher Timothy McSweeny, “... there isn't as much bad news as popularly assumed. ... Book sales are up, way up, from twenty years ago. Young adult readership is far wider and deeper than ever before. Library membership and circulation is at all-time high.”

The latest technologies include new definitions of what a book might be. They might not be in traditional print. They might come on Kindles, Nooks, iPhones and iPads, and the Internet itself. But people are reading. Between Harry Potter and all of the vampire novels, the future of literacy is assured.

Geoff Cain is a member of the Redwood Technology Consortium and director of distance education at College of the Redwoods. Contact him at geoff-cain@redwoods.edu.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Facebook and My 1000 Closest Friends

This is an article I wrote for the Times Standard "Tech Beat' column for May 11, 2012:

I have read a few claims recently about the detrimental effects of the Internet. The most recent one came from the New York Times in the article “The Flight from Conversation” by Sherry Turkle, a professor from MIT, who says that the Internet is making our relationships with one another superficial. Her idea is that we are mistaking our “likes” on Facebook as real conversation and our “friends” online as real friends. I think this argument comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of online communication.

Turkle says that for the past 15 years she has studied connective technologies and talked to “hundreds of people of all ages and circumstances about their plugged in lives.” She relies primarily on anecdotes, and one of my favorite quotes from economist Roger Brinner says that “the plural of anecdote is not data.” A collection of subjective experiences does not make them objective. Anecdotal evidence is of limited usefulness; it can provide case studies and be the starting point for research, but it is generally considered as weak evidence.

Turkle says that the little devices we carry around with us are so powerful “they change not only what we do but who we are.” I basically agree with this. I don't particularly think this is negative. People write less. Last year the post office closed 3,700 locations. Some of this was due to expanded retail marketing, but much of it is because email and texting make most letter writing superfluous. Does this mean that somehow our correspondence is less meaningful?

I have hundreds of anecdotes of my own. Let's take my community college cafeteria in 1984. There were no cell phones. There was no email. The college library had a non-networked computer lab with TRS 80s. Our only hope was to actually talk to somebody face to face. I would go into the cafeteria, buy a cup of coffee, sit down at the table, and ask the nearest girl “What classes are you taking?” or “What's your major?” with what I hoped would pass for something not quite entirely unlike sincerity. One might suspect that, even though I was trying to start up a conversation, I may not have been really all that interested in what classes they were taking or what their major might have been. Needless to say, my intent was to have a conversation. More often than not, the “conversation” stopped there. But once in a great while it led to more coffee elsewhere.

Today, I have 879 friends on Facebook, but let's take a closer look. I do not expect birthday cards from 875 of them. I originally started using Facebook because many educators and instructional designers I met at education conferences (both face-to-face and online) were using it to share materials, links, and contact information. This accounts for at least 300 of my “friends.” About 200 of my “friends” are literary journals, editors, and literary agents. They never call or come over for dinner, yet I follow them on Facebook because I write and want to keep up with what is going on in the literary world.

A little over a hundred friends on Facebook are family. Some I see often, and many of them I have never met. Some of these distant cousins live in Ireland. We will be using Facebook to plan a birthday/family reunion this December when my father turns 80 and my little brother turns 50. There is nothing superficial about that.

You might have friends at your local service organization, temple, or church. But what happens when you go to that weekly meeting? Do you have a deep conversation? Maybe not, but you probably know that if you need help, you have a community to fall back on when things are tough. Or you might be willing to lend a hand to someone who is in need. It might be something simple like a lift to the hospital on a Monday morning or a chore that an older person might find difficult to do. When you meet those people, you might just smile and nod. The “like” in Facebook is that smile and nod.

Social networks can be superficial, and yet over and over again, we see that when there is trouble, those friends in social networks can have a major impact. I am thinking here of the Arab Spring and the communications networks that sprang up out of Twitter to change the face of the Arab world forever. Maybe the technology has allowed us to see the superficial surface of human communication frozen in time in the social network, but that is not how we should be judging technology because most people seem to be using to enhance their connections with one another rather than trivialize them.

Geoff Cain is a member of the Redwood Technology Consortium and director of distance education at College of the Redwoods. Contact him at geoff-cain@redwoods.edu<

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Mobile Learning: Education is Everywhere

This is an article I wrote for the "Tech Beat" column for the Times-Standard:

Darrell is a part-time student who does not own a car. Every Tuesday and Thursday, he takes the hour-long bus ride to school. Like many students at his community college, he works nearly 30 hours a week while taking three classes. Between work, commuting, and attending classes, he is hard-pressed to find time for studying.

Fortunately for him, though, while taking the bus one morning, he found himself sitting next to one of his fellow classmates, Julie. He told her about his frustrations with his schedule and the homework and how he didn't feel like he had time to see a tutor. She told him about the many educational sites that can be accessed on the phone. Sites like the Mobile ESL page from Athabasca University (http://eslau.ca) that has online grammar lessons and short self-tests that will help you check your work. She also pointed out that parts of the college's own learning management system were accessible by phone. She even had one instructor who was using an electronic textbook that was accessible by smart phones.

Darrel quickly took to the world of mobile learning. His phone was no longer just for texting and music.

What exactly is mobile learning? Mobile learning (often called “mlearning”) is any learning or instruction that takes place at a specific location but relies on a mobile device to access the information or event.

Mlearning often depends on “smart phones.” Smart phones, such as the iPhone or Android, are basically minicomputers that can connect to the Internet via wifi or through the phone network. Any phone that can connect to the Internet can participate in mlearning. Mlearning is also taking place on tablet computers such as the iPad and the highly portable netbooks. Not all phones are smart phones, but they are becoming more and more widespread and common. Soon, there will be no other phone but a smart phone.

What are some ways that instructors can use phones for learning? They can host content that is easily accessible to phones on the Internet. Many software packages make mobile-friendly websites out of the box, and many phones have simplified web browsers that help make accessing the information easier.

Many resources and institutions, such as the New York Public Library, have mobile-friendly sites. And speaking of libraries, a number of libraries, such as Oregon State and Yale, are taking advantage of mobile phones with a “Text-a-Librarian” service.

Mobile phones often have applications on them that will allow them to read electronic books. Tens of thousands of books are available for free on the Internet through sites such as gutenberg.org. Amazon's Kindle software is available for phones, but there are many free non-corporate readers out there as well.

Instructors can ask students to gather data with their phones. Often, smart phones include cameras. That, combined with the Internet connection, allows students to post photographs online. Students can also post data to websites, blogs, or wikis. This can allow students to gather information in the field.

Mobile phones can also read barcodes and special versions of barcodes called QR codes that will allow users to interact with objects. QR codes are used in science and art museums on the description cards for exhibits or works of art. When they are scanned, they might give more information via text, audio, or video, or it might take the visitor to a webpage.

Mobile phones are natural portals to sites like Facebook and Twitter. Some instructors will use services like Twitter to send announcements, as a “back channel” discussion site for lectures, and as a way to continue the community of the classroom beyond the walls of the college.

Sample of a QR code.

Mobile phones are also used as “student response systems.” Any mobile phone can be used this way. Using websites like Poll Everywhere (www.polleverywhere.com), instructors can set up polls that the students can respond to in class. Give three choices for an answer, for instance, the students can text a number to respond to their choice. Instructors can get instant feedback no matter how large their class is.

Smart phones like the iPhone or the Android have an “app store” associated with them. There are numerous free applications that can be used on a phone that allow students to learn anything from languages to the Periodic Table.

There are many ways that both students and teachers can take advantage of phones for teaching and learning. It is important for educators to understand that students often will be catching what they can of their learning experience when they can catch it. Everyone benefits when we use tools that, by default, make the learning materials as accessible to as many as possible when they need it.

Geoff Cain is a member of the Redwood Technology Consortium and director of distance education at College of the Redwoods. Contact him at geoff-cain@redwoods.edu.

NOTE: Drake Teller posted a comment at the Times Standard: "Also check out Celly, a free service with group texting and instant polling. However, with Celly you can send and receive polls from the web or from any sms capable phone. Thus, it does not necessarily require a smart phone to have class discussions, send alerts, or gather student response (like a software clicker w/o the software). For more info: http://cel.ly/schools