BTW, this “bubble” theory wasn’t arrived at, it was predicted all along. It was written up in Time Magazine, (if my memory serves me correctly) in the late 80’s. No more would we all sit in front of our TV sets at 8pm to watch The Cosby Show, and see the same news and same commercials. It was predicted back then that information would become very individualized. It even went so far as to suggest that it could defragment society so successfully that the great melting pot of information could work to keep some social groups down, feeding them advertisements that only perpetuate a particular demographics perspective and keeping them there, like liquor and cigarette ads in the projects. But most people will never know this is happening to them, so their view of the world will become quite small. I think this is especially true for the younger generations who will use their smart phones for almost everything. Smart phones generally offer up only one search engine: Google.

I am increasingly amazed at how fast information from my searches and fed back to me in a matter of moments through my Yahoo account or my Facebook, or otherwise. It actually has a creepy feeling to it and I find myself wanting to find smart ways around it.

What I do find intriguing is the virtual thumbprint of an individual’s psyche, from their search patterns. Now that is fascinating territory to me, and scary.. What can and will people, corporations, government do with that kind of information? Wait – didn’t we see this movie? Wasn’t it called The Matrix?

Alas, it comes down to checks and balances, educating the masses, keeping people aware of their own behaviors and choices. We’ve been riding the wave of the Super Information Highway, and it is doing exactly what they said it would do. Now, as individuals, we have to decide to be smarter than the machine, or be sucked down the rabbit hole. Think I’ll watch the Matrix today.

We might wish that we are provided with “unfiltered info”, but that is just impossible. If your search query matches with 300000 pages, you will not carefully study all the entries. They will be presented to you at least as a list, and you will skim through the top 100, at most. Such list would not serve to your best interests. Using the human brain metaphor, you just don’t want to overwhelm your consciousness with the raw sensory data that actually streams to you every second.

Thus, providing you with “most reasonable” guesses is not only desirable, it just happens automatically, even if the service provider doesn’t do any filtering (ie, you will use only the top 100 matches).

So, the big question is not whether we want filters there to be, but rather what the filtering algorithm should be like, and what possibility the should should have to configure it’s functionality.

The filter you described is called “confirmation bias” within the context of sociology(http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html), and this personalized filter bubble will only cement the said bias. Making democratic debate more difficult, if not impossible at all(http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_lost_art_of_democratic_debate.html).

This product is a better user experience than reading a physical book. But it’s also a prime example of identifying a neat technology, and then finding a reason to use it in school, which is ass backwards.

Educators need to figure out what they want students to learn, and then find a technology that helps them learn it. Students could play forever with this book, but all they would learn is Al Gore’s view of how we solve our environmental problems. They would not learn contrary views, and they would not be taught to think critically about whose views they accept.

The successors to textbooks surely will be digital, but they won’t be a textbook at all.

They won’t be created by an education company that bends to politically driven agendas, a phenomenon that has been around long before last year’s Texas controversy;

“chapters” won’t reflect the perspective of just a few writers and editors, but rather the voices of thousands of scholars and educators;

in subjective areas, they won’t require students to memorize particular “facts” and viewpoints, but rather will encourage them to think for themselves, and form their own perspectives; and

they won’t impose a “one size fits all” approach to learning on a diverse group of students, with different interests, abilities and needs.

The successor to textbooks will be created by a group of passionate educators who collectively decide that no one should have “ownership” over what is taught in schools. It will leverage a curated collection of the best free content online, supplemented by some traditional textbook content in the sciences and math.

I was just thinking that there are already names for this sort of thing. We call them applications, interactive multimedia presentations, even websites. If someone put that in front of me and asked, “Do you know what this is?” I would confidently have several names for it, and book wouldn’t make the list. And I’m a huge fan of ebooks, I have two Kindles, so I don’t think it’s just that I’m biased towards bound material.

I’d really like to see some reading comprehension statistics on things like this versus more linear presentations of information too. I’m not just being critical, I’m genuinely curious about whether being able to interactively explore presented information leads to better, worse or the same retention as reading through it in the more traditional linear, guided way.

This video points out many very current issues with our lack of evolution in the education system. The section on community learning and self teaching reminds me of the ted talks by Sugata Mitra. He portrays self learning as individuals teaching themselves, but also by students teaching students with the direction of a teacher. His studies show that students learn the material faster and retain it for a longer duration when they are actively teaching each other in a communal environment. Here is a link if you are interested. http://www.ted.com/speakers/sugata_mitra.html

If we adapt to be more discriminating, within the existing sea of media, it might help us learn to master our attention spans.

Are children learning how to be discriminating on levels adults (with their ‘comprehensive education’) don’t appreciate or are children truly all at sea?

I know I can’t bear to watch “Horizon” anymore due to its repetitive nature (dumbing-down), but perhaps more information sinks in over the length of a modern “Horizon” in comparison to how much we really took in watching an old-style 1970s version. After all, if we only watch the first and final three minutes of a programme, we probably know the same as we would from watching the full show.

There may be two main functions of an educational system. One is about having a certain set of skills: the ability to multiply or list uses for a paper clip.

The other function is about developing members of a society, teaching people how to get on and interact with each other. This way people know how to use their skills to be successful. So we share stories with the next generation. We transmit culture.

I think this is a useful way to frame the decision-making process: what skills do students need now that the current system doesn’t teach well? And what social values should we be sharing with students that we aren’t now?

Students probably do need to learn more “divergent thinking” skills (problem identification, solution generation, decision-making) and implementation skills. In UK they call these “Enterprise” skills.

As far as the society side of things, I think the system is… continued here: http://www.timwoods.org/2010/12/28/the-innovation-gap-in-public-schools

The system is a full EEG, and also monitors emotional state and facial expressions. There are already a several users working on lucid dreaming – using the EPOC to pick up the dream state and then pushing stimuli (sounds and flashing lights) to the user so they know they are in the dream state and can take control.

What you describe as a statistical database of ‘pull’ brainwaves in the world is exactly what Walter Benjamin sought to achieve with his ideas on translation. He had a metaphysical concept of words (signifiers) and objects/notions (the signified). It’s been quite a while since I thought about that – I’m glad for the opportunity to ponder potential future manifestations of his vision.

The idea of using pre-defined brainwave patterns (brain) for tasks is much like assigning mouse-gestures (hand) or voice-commands (voice). It wouldn’t matter if a user mapped “monkey doing the salsa” thoughwave to “pull”. Even if the user visualized a monkey doing the salsa, the cube would pull.

This differs from the technologies where, when you think of ‘pull’, the ‘content’ of the brainwave is interpreted, as opposed to the pattern. Is that possible? Given all the languages & interpretations of ‘pull’, can that even be done? Maybe, with a statistical database of ‘pull’ brainwaves in the world! But still, that would be like a voice-recog. software listening to ‘what’ you are saying as opposed to ‘how’ you are saying something.

And the colors thing, did the headset ’see’ what color the user is thinking of? Or are colors mapped to wave patterns too? Means I still can’t show the world my concept-art?!

The program is designed to provide a much more natural way for humans to digest large palettes of information without losing their way — an idea that anyone who has analyzed giant spreadsheets may welcome. And while it has something in common with spreadsheets and many other technologies, Flake says Pivot is so new and different that it’s difficult to even picture what it does without seeing it in action.

Presentation Transcript

Elearning has not changed

• elearning or “electronic learning” is very broadly classified as a learning imparted using some electronic media .
• Basic delivery methodology has not changed.

1. Content has moved from WBT (CDs) to Web
2. More LMS functionalities developed
3. Some development in reporting and assessment has been made

3. Why eLearning is not so effective

• Human being learn when we want to learn for whatever motivation there is for learning. eLearning will fail when it is pushed
• Difficult to assess and report
• Emotionless
• Not action oriented
• Generally a lot of theory and boring

4. New eLearning

• Immersive learning: using technology that would use visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory stimuli
• On demand learning: learn when I want to learn and what I want to learn (bio- technology)
• Augmented reality learning: creating imparting content using augmented reality and game technology (more fun)

5. How to Measure

• Compare: teach the same content with both, old fashion e-learning and the new elearning techniques and assess the trained person
• Effectiveness can be compared by knowing how the person is performing in the field after imparting the content

• Face
• Fingerprint
• Palm scan
• Iris scan
• DNA

Behavioural

• Keystroke
• Signature
• Voice

Other identification methods include vain patterns or their signatures, recognizing heart beats, 3d face recognition.

Iris patterns a unique to each individual as our facial details. Currently we are in the phase where the database is been created. At present, it is used mostly in airports and hospitals however I think it will be a gradual rollout of the biometrics system.

In few years time, I think people would start using biometrics systems just beyond criminal justice system.

Handprints are also different for each individual along side of the figure prints. The machine records the vain and arteries in your hand that is another means of confirming you are who you say you are. The latest recognition tool that is in research is to identify individual by recognizing their walk pattern