Serendipity35

Awhile back, edX CEO Anant Agarwal wrote in Forbes "How Four Technologies Created The 'Perfect Storm' For Online Learning." The four technologies are cloud computing, video distribution at scale, gamification, and social networking. A commentary by Stephen Downes doesn't question the impact these four have had on online learning, but he does question Agarwal's claim that each is a part of edX.

For example, he notes that the claim that "social networking" is present is because it uses a discussion board. That is certainly a stretch. For gamification he cites "simulation-based games, virtual labs, and other interactive assignments," none of which is integral to edX.

Downes considers the article "lightweight" but though there may not be a perfect storm it is worth noting the impact of those four things beyond edX.

Cloud computing has allowed exponential scalability in many sectors including online learning. Online learning platforms (Does anyone say learning management systems anymore?) became more responsive and faster.

Scalability was certainly key to the emergence of MOOCs. When some colleges tried their own MOOC offerings they realized that they couldn't handle the jump from courses with 25 or 100 students to ones with thousands of students. Of curse, even if you are still offering smaller online courses, the cloud allows all students to benefit from faster, more responsive platforms.

Video has been a part of online learning for 40 years if you go back to ITV, videotapes, CDs and DVDs. Broadbandallowed video to stream and sharing and distribution really hit about the same time as MOOCs were starting to gain initial momentum. YouTube and Vimeo allowed some smaller institutions a way to distribute high-quality videos.

When I was at NJIT, I got the university to sign on in 2007 as one of the first of 16 universities to use Apple's iTunes U. That gave us a much larger presence in online learning. I wrote about it extensively on this blog. But iTunes U didn't grab the market share the way MOOCs and YouTube did. The interface was not friendly to universities or to users. You don't hear it mentioned much by educators now and I doubt that it will exist in 2020.

iTunes U was important for sharing university lectures and some supporting documents. It was more open than what we would expect from Apple because the content was opened up by the institutions (colleges and also educational institutions like museums). I consider it an early tool in the MOOC movement. 

Gamification has been a buzzword for a long time, but it still hasn't made its way into most learning platforms by for-profits or in colleges. There's no doubt that instant feedback and more active engagement in the learning process produces better success, but I find faculty still back off at the word gamification. Some of that fear or disdain is because they associate it with videogames and gaming sounds less "educational." This is a misconception, but one that has persisted. I always used to say that just say "simulation" instead of gamification and you'll get more buy-in from faculty. Sometimes that worked.

Simulations that use game strategies and components can be used in virtual labs and many interactive activities, knowledge checks (graded or not) and assignments in order to promote higher-order thinking tasks such as design, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The "fun factor" shouldn't be ignored although that is part of the hesitation from faculty. There is this sadly persistent idea that learning is supposed to be difficult and not fun.

Social networking came on strong in the era of Web 2.0. Today it comes in for a lot of criticism. I believe that many educators who were using Twitter, Facebook and other social sites in their teaching have backed away. part of that is the criticism and privacy issues on such sites and part of it is that there are some tools built into platforms that allow for a more private social experience. However, posting your thoughts in an LMS for the rest of the class really doesn't duplicate or approach the experience of posting it online for a large part of the world. Twitter boasts 330 million monthly active users (as of 2019 Q1) and 40 percent (134 million) use the service on a daily basis (Twitter, 2019).    The chance to interact and possibly collaborate across the globe is no small thing.

What will create the next perfect storm in online learning? Agarwal suggests that the next four high-impact technologies will be AI, big data analytics, AR/VR and robotics.

A friend of mine recently retired and she told me that she wants to move "out of her comfort zone" and try new things. My first thought was that this was a good idea, but the more I thought about her plan, the less "good" it seemed.

After years of teaching and a few vacations in Italy, she decided she wants to live there for a year. She sold her house and her car, got rid of a lot of stuff, put the essentials into storage, and took off for Florence, Italy.

I realized that I had more fear about her trip than she had. It was too far out of my comfort zone.

The graphic below popped up on Pinterest and got me thinking about that confining comfort zone.

We all have a comfort zone in our jobs, in school and in life. As a teacher, I think I often intentionally tried to push students out of their comfort zone. Why? Looking at the graphic, I would say that I agree that the path to new learning and growth means pushing through your comfort zone.

There is an unsurprising plethora of sites with recommendations on how to break through your comfort zone. How many apply to education?

• Acknowledge what it is that is holding you back. Literally write down your fears. Then rationalize each fear by flipping it over (a cognitive behavioral therapy technique) and deciding what the worst-case scenario would bring to you. 
• Many sites advise starting small. Set yourself small targets to that desired destination.
• If your first steps outside your comfort zone don't go as planned don't be quick to reverse course and run back into the zone.
• Changing your routine can help. Work in a new place. Try a new approach. means going to the same places, which can stifle inspiration and spontaneity. New thought patterns encourage us to break away.
• Connect with people who are already in the learning or growth that you aspire to achieve. Mentorship.
• As the graphic suggests, getting out of your comfort zone may require acquiring new skills. Education is often not only a necessary element but may be a fear for some people. Older workers may not be comfortable going "back to school." The cost of education can be restrictive, but there are so many free MOOCs and other online learning options that can help with both fears.
• Create challenges for yourself and celebrate victories with actual tangible rewards.

The "cobra effect" is the term used for when a well-intended attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse. This unintended consequence is often is used to describe environmental, economic and political solutions that work in reverse.

The term Cobra Effect" originated when there was still British rule in India. The British government wanted to reduce the number of dangerous, venomous cobra snakes in Delhi. They offered a bounty for every dead cobra. So, people were killing them and collecting the bounty. At first, the idea worked. But some enterprising people began to breed cobras to collect more bounties. The government became aware of this abuse and ended the reward program. The cobra breeders had no use for the snakes and released their stock (though it's not clear why people didn't just kill them while they had them in captivity) and as a result, the wild cobra population further increased.

I wrote about this term on my origins site and included a more modern example of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change trying to reduce greenhouse gases by offering carbon credits for destroying harmful gases (particularly HFC-23, a byproduct of a common coolant). As with the cobras, companies began to produce more  of the coolant so that they could destroy more of the HFC-23 byproduct waste gas and get additional credits

Is there a Cobra Effect in education? Are there solutions to a problem that make the problem worse? If you think you have an example, send me an email.

 

This is a good RadioLab program that gives many other examples of the Cobra Effect

The Verge reported that in another move to gain more of our personal data, Google is teaming up with the nation’s second-largest health system, Ascension, in an effort it’s calling Project Nightingale.

Ascension will share the personal health data of tens of millions of patients with Google’s Cloud division in order to develop a search engine for medical records and other new artificial intelligence services for medical providers. That sounds helpful. But the announcement came right after Google announced it was buying the fitness tracker company Fitbit.

We could assume that Google is interested in selling this kind of hardware, but access to Fitbit user's personal data could be an even bigger and more profitable asset. (Fitbit data has already been used in some serious but not health manners - such as police investigations. )

Google is certainly not alone in wanting to gain this type of personal wellness data and do health care-tech collaborations. Apple would like to see its watch (similar to but more powerful than most fitness trackers) function as a medical-monitoring device. Its health data-sharing capabilities through Apple HealthKit are being enhanced.

All these companies will point out that the data they obtain is anonymized, but there are many examples of anonymized data being reversed so that it is far less anonymous. Are laws and policies ready for all this?