Serendipity35

Synergy is one of those words that caught fire with the general public in the late 20th century, especially in tech-related fields. In general, it is taken to mean the interaction of two or more things (organizations, substances, products, fields, etc.) that produces a greater effect when combined than separately. For example, if two colleges work jointly on a project, or the way there was cooperation between some pharmaceutical researchers in developing the COVID-19 vaccines.

But the word synergy is not a recent addition to the language. It appeared in the mid 19th century mostly in the field of physiology concerning the interaction of organs. It comes from the Greek sunergos meaning "working together" which comes from sun- ‘together’ + ergon ‘work’.

It has been used in diverse ways. In Christian theology, it was said that salvation involves synergy between divine grace and human freedom. I received a wedding engagement announcement that talked about the synergy between the two people. (They do both work in tech fields.)

The informational synergies which can be applied also in media involve a compression of transmission, access and use of information’s time, the flows, circuits and means of handling information being based on a complementary, integrated, transparent and coordinated use of knowledge.[32]

Walt Disney is given as an example of pioneering synergistic marketing. Back in the 1930s, the company licensed dozens of firms the right to use the Mickey Mouse character in products and ads. These products helped advertise their films. This kind of marketing is still used in media. For example, Marvel films are not only promoted by the company and the film distributors but also through licensed toys, games and posters. 

Shifting to tech, synergy can also be defined as the combination of human strengths and computer strengths. The use of robots and AI are clear synergies. If you read into information theory, you will find discussions of synergy when multiple sources of information taken together provide more information than the sum of the information provided by each source alone.

In education, synergy can be when schools and colleges, departments, disciplines, researchers,

The term "walled garden" once only meant a literal garden that was enclosed by walls.  Though I tagged this post as "tech" and "Open Everything," this topic is not about things being open at all - which of course is a topic of those who discuss openness.

There are literal walled gardens in the world. These gardens are surrounded by walls to keep out animals, unwanted human visitors and in some places, the walls shelter the garden from wind and frost. They can also be decorative and there may be smaller walls within the walled perimeter. These days if you hear the term there is a good chance that it is a figurative walled garden which is a closed platform or closed technology ecosystem. Since we borrowed the term "ecosystem" from nature and have since created manmade ecosystems (or damaged natural ones), it makes sense that we turn botanical garden ecosystems into technology ecosystems.

A tech walled garden is a closed platform or closed technology ecosystem which is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and/or media.With that control, they can restrict convenient access to non-approved applicants or content.

We contrast this with an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content.

Whether on the broader Internet or a smaller network, a walled garden is a restricted section that only approved users can access. I first encountered this in the earliest days of the Internet with the walled garden of the school nework where I taught. Their server granted access only to students and staff and even that larger walled garden had smaller walled sections withing delegated only to faculty or administration.

It all sounds like something safe - maybe even comfortingly safe. A walled garden can also refer to a closed or exclusive set of information services where a user is unable to leave the closed environment without the owner giving limited points of entry. One example of this comes from Apple’s hardware, software and services work. They work well together as long as you use Apple's devices and services. (see this Wall Street Journal video report)

The Apple walled garden is so closed that it has been targeted for antitrust scrutiny. The recent Epic vs. Apple case is an example of that. The Fortnite video game developer made the case that Apple's walled garden is a monopoly that forces developers to use Apple's in-app purchase system, which gives Apple a 30% cut of all sales.

Walled gardens - literal and figuartive, botanical and technological - have their purposes and will continue to exist, but it is very nice to see gardens and tech ecosystems that are open too.

A few years ago I was writing about how a lot of people were looking to save money on their TV entertainment by what was known as "cutting the cord" since it meant disconnecting from a cable service. Those services had boomed in the 1970s and 80s and had brought clear channels from local and distant services and led to the rise of services like HBO and Showtime. People are still cord-cutting, but things have changed.

We tired of $100+ per month channel bundles that included lots of channels we never watched. People wanted a cafeteria-style choice. Just pick the things you wanted. But cable companies didn't want to offer that. So, people began to drop their cable contract and replace it with streaming TV services and perhaps a TV antenna or device that offered local channels, news, and a kind of all-in-one bundle.

In 2015, I wrote about a group of people that I called "The Disconnected" and I did a presentation on how we might connect to the disconnected. The disconnections ranged from cord-cutting to ownership of things (home, cars, physical media) and possibly from education and the world. Since then, I have added other disconnected aspects of our lives.

The pandemic that forced disconnections in early 2020 has accelerated some of that. Ironically, as disconnected as we became to friends, offices, campuses and stores, most of us became more connected to media.

Cord-cutters still needed an Internet service and that connection became quite critical in these pandemic times. We needed it to continue working, learning and staying in touch with other people. Those connections are very important, but I also have been thinking about how connected we have become to those streaming services on our screens for entertainment.

The tech divide either got wider the past year or minimally became more obvious. Home Internet speeds should be at least 15Mbps (megabits per second) for each device you plan to have running at the same time. That means that those two TVs, the laptop and three smartphones and one tablet all playing at once would ideally have a connection of at least 105Mbps. That’s a lot to ask of a DSL or satellite service and from most cable company broadband services. Those people with access to fiber broadband or some other fast connection had a big advantage.

It is now almost a decade from dropping your cable connection and moving to streaming and now I am hearing more people complain about the cost of buying all the services needed to keep up with the content that all your friends are telling are essential viewing. 

What is the cost of having Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Plus, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock, and others and also a bundle of live TV channels such as YouTube TV or Sling TV?

Yes, there are a bunch of free (ad-based) sources of streaming video too (Crackle, IMDb, Kanopy, Peacock, Hoopla, Pluto TV, the Roku Channel, Tubi TV, Vudu, etc.). 

You might also want a streaming device that connects to the Internet and allows you to show things on devices on bigger screens (Chromecast, Roku’s Streaming Stick, or Amazon’s Fire TV Stick. 

At one time, I could watch Disney films on Netflix, but Disney and most of the other content providers have now decided that they are better off offering their content on their own services. YouTube TV recently was removed from Roku. Battles will continue.

If you cut the cord, will you soon need to cut or narrow the streams flowing into your home?

When I was in a doctoral program in pedagogy, I recall didactics being a subject of discussion. I saw it mentioned recently and tried to recall what we had said about it years ago in that program.

If you just look in a dictionary, you'll find that didactic is defined as something intended to teach. It is often concerned with having moral instruction as an ulterior motive. For example, a didactic novel could be one that tries to expose social injustice.

We spoke about didactics as a discipline concerned with the science of teaching and instruction for any given field of study. Didactics is a theory of teaching, and in a wider sense, a theory and practical application of teaching and learning. That also sounds like pedagogy.

Pedagogy is more focused more on the strategies, methods and techniques associated with teaching and instruction. In our study of pedagogy, we spoke about the ability of a teacher to match the theoretical foundations or concepts that we studied with practical methods using them in a classroom. We also wanted teachers to be able to respond and adapt to the learning strategies of their students.

Didactics is teacher-centered. Pedagogy is learner-centered since teaching must be adapted to respond to student needs.

The didactic method of teaching follows a consistent scientific approach or educational style to engage the student’s mind. It is often contrasted (or confused) with dialectics and also with the Socratic method.

Dialectical thinking refers to the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and then to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of these seemingly contradictory things. A dialectic is when two seemingly conflicting things are true at the same time. For example, “It's snowing and it is spring.”

The Socratic method is simplified as "asking questions" but is a three-part method: Give an initial definition or opinion. Ask a question that raises an exception to that definition or opinion. Then, give a better definition or opinion. Teachers and learners employ this method even if they have never been trained to do so. It is a natural way to learn, though it is more effective when done intentionally.

Did I become a proponent of didactic teaching? No. I took it as another tool in the toolbox. I continued to think of pedagogy as the art of teaching and didactics as the science of teaching. I became most interested in andragogy - the method and practice of teaching adult learners. I was teaching graduate students who all adults.

There was so much theory. At that time, open learning, also known as experiential learning, was the new kid on the block and posited that people can learn by themselves, in an unstructured manner, on topics of interest. Learner-centered approaches were much in vogue at that time and didactic learning wasn't very popular with my learning cohorts. They found the focus on outcomes and an overall goal of knowledge with a teacher as an authoritative figure more than as a guide and resource for students to be old-fashioned.

By the time I left my Ed.D program, I had so many theories in my head that the labels fell away and I was following mostly those that overlapped. I thought that some of the basics of andragogy also applied to younger students. I prefer it when learning is self-directed, experiential, utilizes previous and background knowledge, is relevant to current roles and is mostly problem-centered. And one of the principles of adult learning that Malcolm Knowles presented still makes me smile: That students are motivated to learn. That is probably the key principle in any method of learning.