 Let me welcome everyone welcome to the Future Trends forum. I'm Brian Alexander the forum's creator host and chief CAD herder for the next hour of Conversation and I'm absolutely delighted with this week's guest We have a terrific topic and I'm really looking forward to our conversation to introduce this week's topic in guest I have to mention two things first of all In the Future Trends forums career, we've looked at a wide range of topics involving technology in it Education we sometimes zoom in to incredibly detailed technical details But we also like to step back and think conceptually about the history and the theory the criticism of technology and how it works and Today's topic is going to look at how technology changes humans and vice versa and in that context How does that transform education? Now the second wave introduction is to point out that this week's guest is a long-time forum Participant Tom Hames has been with us and asking great questions and telling terrible jokes all the time We've been really really grateful for him and all these contributed and we're delighted to introduce not only him But also his new book Discovering digital humanity if you'd like to take a look at or buy a copy just click the discovering digital humanity button Down on the left side of the screen and you can learn more from there now without any further ado Let me not for the first time bring our friend from the blue room in Texas onto the stage Welcome Tom Hey, I guess I've gone from the green room to the blue room Well, I guess you have and as long as you're not put in the red room for trouble Give me time I Started I'm doing exactly that. I am doing precisely that to give you to give you time And I will also give you a hard time depending on how it goes Tom, I don't I don't think we need to introduce you to people too much because people know a lot about you They threw your conversation through you and through what you've been writing in the form But also I just want to give people a chance to think about where you might be headed What are you going to be working on for the rest of 2022? Do you have another book coming up? Are you going to be teaching more government classes? What's what's uppermost in your brain? Well, those are not necessarily the same things as What I'm going to be doing is what's in uppermost in my brain. I never know exactly where that's going to go Next I've kind of been kicking around the idea of another book When my publisher and I had talked about this book, he said this is this is the it's a it's a really good book but you're fixing problems that people don't necessarily know they have and Or you're defining solutions to problems that people don't necessarily know that they have and so I've actually been thinking a little bit about working backwards from discovering digital humanity and Looking at you know going back in some ways to my social sciences roots and looking at some of the constructivist and how we how we Construct our realities around the goals that we're trying to achieve and then and then go from there to how do we plug in the relevant technologies, so That's kind of where I'm going. I put a link to a blog I wrote this week. That's kind of thinking thinking in those terms I'm also working with the shaping edu project where I'm innovator in residence and and Innovation strategist and what I'm doing there is I'm working on the tool set project that we've we're slowly but surely getting off the ground to Again use these sort of principles of Goals first and then defining tools around What your goals are as a way of Selecting tools in a more efficient and effective manner I mean, I think one of the things that we have struggled for the first 20 years of ed tech or Technology as we understand it and I'm gonna I'm gonna put that date arbitrarily sometime in the 1990s But you know, we've been primarily concerned with getting things to work I mean, it's early days technology, you know, and and you remember what an LMS looked like in 1998 And and getting that to a level of scalability and reliability has been a big focus of what? We've been you know what we've worked on you and I and other many others in this room. I'm you know For the for it for the last 20 25 years 30 years almost now COVID is It is the 2020s right last time I looked it was still the teens But now the problem has shifted in the last five years or so at least To where we have this plethora of tools available to us and the challenge in my mind is selecting what tools we need to do to we need to select to create our technology environments and My goal has always been to try to help Normal people teachers whatever to and students to to To create To select these tools using you know coming up with frameworks to help people approach them in such a way that they don't get overwhelmed And so that's been a big thrust over the last year and going forward. It will be to well Thank you first of all for for a solid answer which manages to nicely combine both the ideas you're thinking about as well as the projects you're working on Quite seriously that does it very well Friends if you if you haven't had a chance to read Tom's book and a few of you just went and bought it, which is a great thing I'm gonna ask a few questions based on the on the book if you have had a chance to read it This is a great time to ask or be offered questions, of course, but as we go Tom has a great gift for elegantly phrasing and compressing complex problems into really accessible Sentences, so please feel free to jump in and and ask what you know push back or ask for more Or offer an example of that kind of thing Tom one of the one of the things that there are a lot of pleasures I found in the book Which is one of the reasons I read a forward to it Is that you have with great grasp of history where you bring in everything from Tom Engelbart and their birth of arpinette You talk about the birth of Apple jobs in Wozniak and all of this you bring it up Knit it together with your own biography and you bring it to the present I've heard some analysts say that right now We are kind of in the position with computers network computers as people were with cars in the 1920s You know, we've gotten to the point where they're they're working and they're at scale and they've Ripped up and changed quite a few things, but like you said, we're now moving past the point of Is this thing on or we're getting it to work and now we're starting to look hard at how things are changing us I'm curious in education What kind of non? academic Technological habits are we bringing in to academia? I mean as the digital world changes us outside of campuses How does that alter faculty staff and students when they get unless at foot on campus when they enter a library or a classroom? I would say less than you might think in some ways Because I mean looking at my own students the level of technological sophistication that they have Is not, you know, they're able to broadcast more. They don't necessarily recognize the implications of broadcasting more and But you know in some ways tick-tock and and And Chats and and texting and all that sort of stuff is not that dissimilar from the kind of note-passing We used to do in the old-fashioned high school. It's just with a bigger audience and a more distributed audience The sophistication with which people approach technology is still in many ways very limited I mean again my students may be good at certain kinds of technology But the kind of deeper technologies that are involved in serious ideas exchanging Is is something that they've never had to do before and the hard part for them is honestly the it's not so much The technology is a little bit of a challenge. It's more of a challenge than I often think it I mean it surprises me sometimes how much of a challenge it is for my students, you know the first time I exposed them to authoring a website or Something like you know and I kind of ease them into that Using I let my students create their own discussions in canvas for instance as as a way of creating a light website And they create a blog and so on and so forth that kind of stuff though. They've never had to do before Their familiarity with the word processor is limited You know Google Docs yeah, and some are better than others obviously, but there's a wide spectrum there And it really comes down to whether or not anybody's ever asked you to write anything seriously before or to create anything Multimedia and when I say multimedia, I mean just using images visual communication, which I talk about in the book too those kind of things You know they consume it that they don't necessarily don't know how to create it yet So that's been a big focus, especially in my teaching side Um faculty in many ways. I mean I've had to I had to help a lot of faculty at the beginning of the pandemic sort of Panic panic transition into remote teaching And You know Understandably there again the pressures there. There's a wide range and some people have been doing this stuff for a long time And the usual suspects of people who I've been working with for years If not over a decade in many cases They kind of they did new things. They used it as an opportunity to change But you know it was it's more about Reconceptually conceptualizing your paradigms, you know, I never did a how to use this technology session when I was doing that It was always how to think about assessments in a remote teaching environment. Yeah, and I remember for instance, I had a English as a second language Professor came in and she was all a panic and she's I do all I do these quizzes in class to see if they're Understanding stuff and able to relate stuff and I'm afraid that I'm not gonna be they're gonna cheat on it It's not gonna work right and so on and so forth. Well Take a phone Have them record themselves. Everybody can almost everybody can the ubiquity of that technology is pretty widespread So have them record themselves and and and now you've also got their speaking capabilities The objective here is do they understand English? Can they speak it? Can they and can they relate it back and so on if that's the objective of your assessment? Which it was this isn't actually a better way of doing it than the way you used to do it in class, you know I'm curious. I'm curious Tom Just just one quick story I had a friend of mine who was teaching at a college aimed at Japanese teenagers And he found that the students had almost no experience with Microsoft office. They've not used word. They hadn't used Excel. They'd use numbers and text all the time Which is entirely on phones, right? And they were off of it But I'm curious that quite a few of us celebrate the idea of digital technologies and it as a way to enhance productivity But that's right producing stuff making stuff creating stuff You know, we have John C.B. Brown. You know celebrating fandom and that kind of thing But but you're saying that most of your most of your population the students and faculty come to campus Experiencing the digital world primarily as consumers Yeah, I mean I think it there are exceptions obviously, but But I would say and I teach at a community college So my students tend to be less less affluent less have less access to basic digital To you know to the kind of technology is necessary to create things and There goes there goes one of my dogs I really hope so and if it was something else I'd be deeply disturbed But to be able to create things and They don't have they may have a phone but not a computer And creating things on a computer is not impossible, but it's it's difficult, right? And Uh, and so That's interesting and that's that's an important transition. That's an important shift In in in the chat, uh, john holandbecker says that you will treat computers as appliances Um, and I think in this sense is that kind of passive appliance like a television or a clock radio Well, let me you know, uh when That's a very very powerful statement and that helps explain quite a bit of our experiences. I think I I and in the in the chat rock sand mentions her g oven is as interconnected and so that's another appliance No One of the powerful themes in in your book is getting people to think in two ways And I think these two ways help us think about ways of making people more generative more productive One is by emphasizing structure and one is by emphasizing space And I'm I'm wondering if you could just say a bit about the structures that you're playing with and recommending to people What kind of pedagogical or other design structures do you recommend for really unleashing the creativity and learning of students? Well, I mean, I think you can't You have to recognize structures as inherently conservative organisms Um, because we build structures in order to Put things in place in order to freeze things in place and there's there's there's I'm not saying that's a bad thing But that's what they do. I mean, that's why we build a structure. That's why Um, everyone drives on the same side of the street, uh in this country at least Everyone writes from left to right in english, uh, everyone But these are structures that we put in place in order to Create efficiencies and but we also have to recognize that they they freeze us into place Like let's just pick writing for a moment. That seems like a such a totally innocuous Structure, but it's also creates a space in the sense that As you write in a traditional sense It creates a linear narrative, you know, you go from bottom atop the bottom You know left to right You know and then and there and it's a chain. It's like a giant snake if you you know, look at how you read a book, right? But if you switch over to visual learning Or I mean visual communication now all of a sudden you can communicate in a totally different ways, you know, you can you can Break up that visual that that that linear story telling right by the way Tom does a great job of that in this book. Um, he has a whole series of concept maps and uh, and and diagrams which are just fascinating And uh, really really deep. I really recommend them For that. So if you if you need to talk to anybody about creating infographics, definitely talk to tom Please keep going I mean, I do I do my best, uh, but uh, you know and and you know, there are still I still run up against technical barriers there Uh, but it's gotten a lot better But the what I try one of the things I try to teach my students For instance is is how to think about the structure of their work And and I force them into writing stuff, of course, but then I force them to take that writing and turn it into visual communication By building websites and things like that and saying look this works differently Think about this site and the way this works differently from the way you would think about Writing a paper in another class. Uh, you're you're communicating similar information, but you can tell different kinds of stories With different kinds of structures and so one of the big things that I say, you know I know that's not really the kind of structure you were asking about but one of the things that I You know, we have to recognize the structures are everywhere and we don't necessarily we take them so much for granted in many cases That that we don't challenge them And digital technology challenges many structures now if you go to a more traditional higher education structures Um, you know, if you think about does learning Why do we have classrooms? I mean, why are they there the way that they are? Why do we have, you know, butts and seats and all the other stuff that goes with classrooms? And there's structures that grow out of those classrooms because now all of a sudden you have a you have a a sunk cost that You have to you have to use this classroom and the campus around it And some parts of the campus are more valuable than other parts of the campus And different colleges and universities have different valuations on which ones are the most valuable than which ones aren't There was you know for a long time We've had this kind of debate about classroom formal learning spaces versus informal learning spaces and the and and how informal learning spaces always get short shrift In part because there's no one who's able to put their flag on it and say this is mine Right, that's the whole point of an informal learning space, right? But these things create structures and classes, you know the physical space and I you know, you know I've done a lot of work on on learning spaces as well You have to look at these things and we're back to space too, but you have to look these things in in context Of the larger structures that they both create and exist within so we have classrooms. Okay classrooms now say you have x number of students sitting in y amount of space and That's non-fungible, right? You can't put two classes in the same classroom at the same time It's non-fungible in the sense of fire codes and things like that as well You can't put more students in there without you know Creating other kinds of problems. You can't put more than one teacher in I mean you can but it's you know Physically you have to and then what about whiteboards and other kinds of you know You have a big board at the front and that defines the the space as well Let me let me pause you for a second here because because I want to get to space and that's a that's a that's a huge subject For us to pull I'll come back to structures in part because you've gotten some really good questions and comments on them Yeah, I want to make sure that we that we adhere to them being a bad way not following the chat closely enough It's all right. You don't have to I mean you're you're the guest You do what you do what is comfortable and best for you Saras and Gregorio points out that Treating technology as appliances helps explain why we get so enraged with them. Yes Which is a really really good point we've also had some Carolyn Coward says she really appreciates the discussion around perception and value Which is I want to highlight that because that's that's really very important And then also we had a really really interesting comment from michelle miller She says quote it strikes me at the project created for an audience of one And usually discarded and forgotten right away is another structure that deserves challenge I've been building in ways to make work public for years and I need to do more I'm just talking about the audience of one being the instructor the instructor right Mm-hmm And did you want to Well, you know, I I can say that um All of the work in my class is public Every paper is a blog that I mean every quote unquote paper, you know the traditional role that a paper falls That that a paper Has within an instructional Environment is is a public discussion I mean I allow my students to create discussions and we use canvas. So it has a functionality to do that And they all read each other's stuff as well as I read it. They all comment on each other's stuff And then in addition the final product that they create is a public outside of canvas website And everything builds toward that that website and again, that's an artifact that they can keep with them moving forward it has that permanence that a Uh, it has that permanence that you know something shoved in versus something that shoved into my filing cabinet for three years And then destroyed when we hit the public records act end of or whatever it's called We have to keep papers Yeah, I don't want them writing for me. I'm not their audience at the end of the day Um, they think I am because I have that I because I dole out the value in the class, which is the great and um And I'm trying really I've always struggled against that to try to get them to think much more broadly against how that works In terms of you know, sharing their ideas. So, um, that's great. I In in the chat carolin adds. I'm sorry carolin crawford says my courses include assignment components called collegial community as beyond the walls Which is really really neat. Uh, and then john holandbeck has a question for you Let me put this on the screen Um, is there a stage of innovation where it becomes invisible and thus people don't make websites anymore? What doesn't marshal occluents and medium as a message still affect the learning environment? Well, I mean the whole idea of technology should become is that it should become invisible I mean, I use that metaphor in the book, uh, when I talk, you know, it's specifically around my photography I mean, I I do as you know, I do Do some photography And people are always I remember people always come up to me and say, you know, what kind of gear did you use to shoot this? And I said it's not important. Um, I've been very conservative with I'm conservative with technology as a whole I'm not a curmudgeon But if it if it doesn't do what I need it to do, I'm not going to use it All right So I my goal is what I can create with the technology Not what the technology itself is and so within the world of photography you have these gear heads Who always have to have the latest and greatest gear, you know and spend huge amounts of money on stuff um, I Am very conservative. I don't I try not to buy more than well I don't buy I haven't bought much lately at all because I've got what I need But uh, you know as I was acquiring lenses I never bought more than say a lens every six months to a year Because it took that long for me to figure out how to use it To where it became invisible You you have you know with with the key to good photography is not to be doing photography The key to making music is not to be playing a violin. It's to make music You may use the violin to make the music If the violin has to disappear for you You should not be fighting with the technicalities of that or the piano or whatever pick your pick your instrument Same thing's true with photography. The same thing is true with any other technology I want to write. I don't want to use a word processor You know, I want to take pictures. I don't want to use a camera So, uh, that that that that invisibility is absolutely critical I mean, we have so many technologies We don't even think about that are that are that are constantly a part of our lives No, sometimes we do need to step back and consider are these things holding us back And keeping us from doing things um, but uh, sometimes But you know, this this is a technology. This is a technology. This is a technology Kevin Kelly argues that we're we are a technology. We've we've grown ourselves into our technology You know because we invented cooking we changed the biology of our digestive systems for instance You know, we can't eat raw meat all day long anymore. Uh, but you know, and he makes a good point We are our our first domesticated animal is us Right, so that's another thing I have to say, you know with when it comes to technology is we need to look at that as an entire spectrum And pick the one that's appropriate to our needs I've I've kind of asked them that that's well first of all first of all, john That was a great question. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, john And I threw into the chat a quote from a computer scientist I admire might wiser mark wiser about that on tom. Thank you for the for the answer friends If you're new to the future transform, that's an example of using that q and a button down there in the bottom of the screen The question mark So just please feel free to toss in your q or your a at any point We'd be glad to share the latin and you can tell he's eager eager to to respond And again, if you'd like to join us on stage, you don't have to give me a dose of my own medicine yes You don't have to be in blue Just click the raised hand and in fact, um, if that's if that's tear much Let me just put this click this little teal colored button and it'll zap you up on stage right away But um, let's get let's get over to space now I mean, that's another huge theme in your book and then your book. There's a great the final frontier I'm not gonna go there. Uh the The the great description. I mean, you're the one who said a lens should be invisible and like well, yes, right? that's the idea but um But uh, but you you have a great description of the project you worked on the west houston institute They took a great deal about changing the the physical space Of and i'm going if you could just say a bit more about that And and friends, I would love to hear those who are interested in this. Please. Please chime in How do we how do we redesign space to account for the design of technologies and how has technology already changed the space that one in Well, the problem is it hasn't to to a great degree I mean essentially, you know our mutual friend rubin has the samer model and and most of the things we are seeing in classrooms Which are quote-unquote technology our substitution Um, you know people come to me and they go I use I mean it back in the day I haven't done this job in a few years now, but people used to come to me all the time I use technology in class. I use power point. I'm like, okay Well, can you explain to me how this is materially any different from the slides you used to make on on on pieces of transparent plastic I mean, yeah, maybe prettier, but fact functionally it's the same you're doing the same thing, right? So, um So In the way we design those rooms is again getting back to that earlier point I was making about classrooms The rooms are still designed in those ways now. We have legacy classrooms as well Which is which is a major issue? Although who knows maybe cova to solve that problem for us and we can just stop using those because the students are coming onto campus anymore Which is uh, you know, but one thing about uh, you know the physical spaces the west Houston institute um I have to be careful about how I talk about the west Houston institute in the sense that There are a lot of unrealized things in that space that was designed by a team that has largely left the college and this is a this is this gets back to that basic human problem And um people aren't really using the space and this is I've known this this is This I've known this was a problem all along when it comes to space. You can design the greatest classroom in the world And people will line up the chairs to face one direction of the room and tell nobody to move the furniture around, you know um and the The key to I think learning space design in now and in the future is is just this idea of flexibility and fluidity and and the realization that students are going to learn differently in the sense that They don't have to be tied to a physical space to learn I mean that's never really been true, but we've kind of kitted ourselves to thinking that a lot of learning actually happens in a classroom uh The reality is of studies after study has shown that a small percentage of what a student learns in a given semester Actually takes place within the physical classroom itself their exceptions But you know in terms of how much they retain over the long term deep learning that has to happen outside the classroom Through their own self-learning through their own study Through their peers and and that whole aspect of it that is often again a secondary concern to people designing spaces Because they're all about capacity. How many space people can we get into this space? actually the campus that is open that I helped design that is opening in three weeks two weeks In some ways is learns from the lessons of the westeastern institute in that The spaces are designed in such a way that uh, it it really forces People to use it in a very flexible fluid way and that can scale so what that means is you walk into the building and The main area and I wrote an article about this, uh, a Few years back called it's called the stack model st ac Um, uh, which is stands for stickiness tool sets Adjacencies and community and this is a model for the the heart of the campus the center of the campus This is really an informal learning space model in that you walk into this space you have Places where the students can sort of nest where they can make their make make make themselves at home Where they can put together groups You don't have to be taking physical classes in the building to do that the the design of this particular building was driven in part by Uh a mandate from the president who said to me he said we have we we're we're being required by the board to Have more people in this building that the square footage technically allows for And uh in terms of you know the enrollments expectations, uh for this particular building And I said well, okay, then you need to divorce this idea of square footage from enrollment And of course we've got digital tools So build a building that's hybrid, you know build a building for hybrid students as opposed to Having that somehow be a separate thing and we need to get away from these arbitrary distinctions of online versus hybrid versus in person I think every class should have some element of that wherever possible realizing that of course that if someone's taking a class That's a thousand miles away from the professor The in-person aspect of it is going to be constrained obviously But in most the vast majority of distance ed students are not taking classes like that Especially at the undergraduate level so build a campus that serves Someone who's taking classes online who doesn't have the flexibility of schedule That allows them to be in English class from 9 30 11 every Monday and Wednesday Without significant disruption because of work or family or other things But that when they do have time to come in there's a place for them Right, they come into the space and so this space again is designed to be very flexible and fluid It's designed to have a lot of adjacent support areas. So it's got a maker space design lab right off the main informal the main space in the middle is all informal learning But you've also got informal support spaces like design lab library counseling for the don't forget the emotional side of all of this and And tutoring and they're all right there when you come in and they're designed so that you know again They're not the classes are all upstairs The classrooms are all upstairs because if you get assigned to a classroom, you're going to go to that classroom, right? I mean Right, so you put that in the back the back part of the building You put the classrooms in the because you know if somebody says to you go to room 342 You're going to go to room 342, you know If someone says hey, you know what you might want to go check out tutoring or go to the library Or check out this maker space. They're doing some cool stuff in there It's up in the back corner of the building in room 342. You're never going to go there No, no, but you put it in the front You put it all in the front and this all drives again from that whole idea of of technology serving The campus and so these are all technology spaces in certain ways the building itself is a technology And so that space aspect of it can really drive that community aspect and the other part the last part of the SAC model So there's the adjacencies was you got to have the right support people too That are there on staff librarians people who get overlooked all the time in short staff librarians maker space technicians tutors and counselors And those guys need to be available as much as is budgetarily possible We can't overlook the human aspect of this And then give them an environment which it's they can work where you have that fluid kind of environment And oh by the way, you can design online spaces that do exactly the same thing. As a matter of fact, it's easier If you have the tech if you have the space for it None of our lms's are designed that way right now that i'm aware of Mark corporate wilson asked in the chat. How do we expand this model to all users all the time and perhaps that's That's one way is to apply that to online learning Yeah, no, there's there's a virtual aspect to the stack model as well. And that's a that's actually chapter in the book I wrote Last year learn at your own risk Is in here, but it's available online. It was published in current issues in education last Jay was I Wait a minute. Again can't pandemic. I have no idea of time anymore Say that was summer of 2020. So that was what almost two years ago It's it's hard to it's hard to describe at times. Uh, we Yeah, um, a couple of questions that have come up and I want to make sure that we get a chance to share them And a couple of comments michelle miller points out that at her institution. They have some Rooms that are designed like you described, but no one can ask for them. They are only randomly available Which is interesting Lisa gustinelli rocks and risking a few others have pointed out that when you ask students or the community what they Want either in a classroom or in a library often is comfort That they want a place where they can flop down and and and relax Um, but we did have a question from noa geisel It says you make a point to call out informal learning spaces learning happens whenever wherever learning happens even beyond Also for of our classes. What's your vision of a future that closes the disconnect between formal recognition of informal learning Well, let's get back to the question of structure Um, what I think we need to be working toward it. Okay back to the classroom If you have classrooms classrooms create schedules Right, and you can't manage classroom space without having a class schedule, right? So that means that the students a have to be Physically in that place during that time Which for some students is not a problem if you're in a residential college and That's your life That's great if you're in a commuter school where you may have a job or other responsibilities outside of college That can become a real challenge, of course That's an equity thing That's uh, you know is is is the fact that you have to make people be in the same place at the same time But you have those schedules and those schedules drive metrics As has done alamedos likes to point out the measurement aspect of it the the lowest lowest hanging fruit, you know the The way the board looks at your performance as a president is enrollment enrollment is driven by ultimately tied to these ideas of scheduling and physical presence on campus And we've transferred that into the online environment, which is a complete McLuhan esk mistake as far as I'm concerned, but okay fine It's a bookkeeping thing, right? So the answer to the question is is that if you treat every learning experience as an informal As an informal experience that lasts a semester long and you allow the professor and the student to negotiate What that means to them over the course of that semester And you create environments that are flexible enough so that the professor can go I need to meet with 10 students out of this class or this group Or all of the students or maybe I need to meet with multiple classes at the same time But only do it twice a semester or do it, you know at this point in the in the process now you've kind of decoupled this idea of physical space and classrooms and schedules most importantly This is the middle element that you kind of jumped over a little bit. This is time and how we Structure time and how we think about time and how technology changes How first of all technology chain created time in the first place We didn't have time in the way that we have it now until the 19th century I mean we had clocks But the way it regulated our clocks it didn't matter until the point at which point You had to show up at a certain time in order to become part of the machine Which is called a factory if if no one shows up If you're missing critical critical people in that assembly line and remember humans were part of the machine in the industrial age Then the factory doesn't go You know if all the guys are painting the car doors don't show up one day or you know Then the factory doesn't go right So you become part of that process and part of that machine. That's why we created time Is for that and an education adopted that from an efficiency standpoint 100 plus years ago and that you know, we moved away from this much more informal flexible model that we had In the pre-industrial era around education now the problem with the flexible models. It's hard to scale Because that was really just you know, if you wanted to become a lawyer You found a lawyer and you studied with that lawyer And then at a certain point you passed the bar and you became a lawyer Same with a doctor, of course Doctoring was a little different back in 1780 and then it is today, you know as I like to tell my students Now we're talking about safe medical procedures in 1780. There was no such thing as a safe medical procedure Um Right, but these structures we have to recognize that they're you know, we have artificial structures of time We have artificial structures of space which are tied to physical spaces and if we Mix and match those physical and virtual spaces Then we can break down those structures Which allow us to create a much more informal learning process. The other problem with this is that I have to learn English between 9 30 and 11 That may not be my best I mean, I may not be thinking about English at that point It may not be the best focus time for me for whatever reason But it's the class I could I could get because the schedule was full, right And so I'm in this class and I have to adapt and some students are good at it and a lot of students are not Uh, and to be able to turn on at that particular moment in time and and learn on q Learning doesn't work that way humans don't work that way. So you have to create a more A more flexible environment where learning is ultimately a negotiation between the faculty or the teacher and the student And how we measure learning is a negotiation between the teacher the student and the institution Yes, yes very much a negotiation Well, this this is terrific stuff tom and and friends if you haven't read his tom's writing You can see now why some of us love it so much In in the chat carol and crawford says Education adopted the factory time because workers need to be showed up on need to be taught time So quietly until allowed to speak but in the seat and not be allowed to move to the next bell, etc Um, we have a question that comes up from Lisa gistanelli, which is a great question We've been talking about the lms. We've been talking about the classroom But let's bring up another one. Uh, what do you think of zoom and other similar platforms for distance learning? It seems to me the interface seems to be changed It's time to get rid of the 20th century boxes of learners. What about virtual worlds? so I'd say ask me that question again in 10 years um As as we talked about a few weeks ago when we talked to mai and emory and the the question that I brought up at that point The xr technology that exists today is just not there yet and and there are significant chunks of the population myself included that have physical issues and Accessibility issues to that not to mention the cost and all the other stuff that goes with it, right? So, um I'm not sure that's a viable alternative yet But to get to the heart of the question and talking about zoom um In some ways, it's no worse than a than a room with the chairs bolted to the floor Uh, in some ways, it's a lot better. Um, you know, you have to think of these things in relative terms I think that Of the platforms, uh, you know in terms of things that I've actually had to Try to teach in Zoom does provide me with the greatest amount of flexibility in terms of both interacting with my students the combination of zoom and screen sharing um, I use concept mapping fairly heavily in my in my classes with murrow to not only to Hammer home the visual communication idea and sometimes I use it to help them understand complex concepts by drawing a picture for them Right, but also because it's interactive Um, my students what what I did today for instance with my students is I I have an ideology um Grid essentially where you We're when you're talking about, um Uh ideology it's really on two two two, uh two planes. You've got uh freedom versus equality You know, how much freedom are you going to take away from those people who have Stuff whatever that stuff may be power money Capabilities and give it to people who don't have it, right? That's essentially that's one question of ideology That's one trade-off. You have to make this is a fundamental. It's the heart of what we think of the civil rights And anyways, okay, and it costs us the spectrum again It's we'd like to think of it It's just you know, I don't want to pay taxes to pay for these people to do x y and z Have health care go to school etc etc That's one aspect of it. Uh, but it's also power. You know, I I don't want to give up my advantages when it comes to Access to voting rights as and make it easier for these people. That's also the same question It's just it's just spelled out a little bit differently. It may not be it's power and money Then the other one is uh, your relationship with government and how much government pushes back on you You know the and civil liberties is basically what it boils down to freedom versus order How much order are you willing to give up? How much freedom are you willing to give up in order to achieve a certain amount of order? You know, if you like lots of anarchy try Somalia out for a while and see how it goes for you, right? But on the other end if you want too much order, well that has some problems too You know, as I tell my students, this would be a very simple class in north korea Um plenty of order, right? Um, but anyway, so you you put these two things on You know freedom in the top left corner equality on one side and order on the bottom And this creates a grid, right? And most american politics falls into liberal libertarian and conservative There's a fourth one which is called communitarian American political culture just really doesn't sustain that but that's lots of order and lots of equality think china more than Sort of that's a long discussion. Don't want to get anyway So what I had my students I put this in murrow And my students have been working on these challenges all semester And so what I asked them to do today Is to say, okay, we're getting to a point now where we're proposing policies and solutions to these challenges that that we've been working on Where do they fit on this challenge? I mean, what are you asking people to do? Are you asking them to go more toward equality? Are you asking them to go more toward freedom Versus order or more order, you know, most of them are not too conservative to be honest But uh, or at least they find out they're not too conservative But you know, people think they're asking for something that's very liberal But it's actually pretty libertarian things like access to voting and stuff like that, which is really a libertarian thing because One of the key tenants of libertarianism is to be able to throw the bastards out And so if you don't have good voting rights, it's hard to do that, right? So, you know and this gets them to reframe the problem But again, I'm having them do that interactively in bureau Sharing the screen with zoom As an exercise and and then discussing it and going through it and saying, okay What if we move this over here a little bit more? Do you understand how this goes? It's a very powerful tool So zoom gives me a lot of freedom to do that sort of stuff. I also think it's a much flatter platform than some of the alternatives um, I it's the danger with remote learning is Um The sage on the stage is very easy to do that and just keep talking like I'm doing right now Um, and the difficulty and something you pull off rather well is is getting the audience involved This audience is unusually motivated Compared to my students My students will just sit there and let me yak all day long and I have to come up with multiple Ways of connecting with them. But your class is a required class for all students, isn't it? Yep Yeah, so almost no one wants to take it Almost everybody here is here voluntarily True true your difference But the other thing is that the way we've learned to do education is we've turned students into widgets And um in the industrial model, you know, people are like students are our customers. I'm like, no, they're not they're our product Um, this is a reeducation camp. This is not they're not they're not customers in the sense of someone buying a car from me Um, they are and and I'm not saying that in a in a pejorative way I'm just saying that that's the way the system is designed right now When we start talking about individualized learning and we talk about serving the students because The way to think about individualized learning. We're serving the students But we're also serving a larger community because we're creating better widgets that are more Self-directed widgets that are more uh, and they're more individualized right that though that and we're working It's more artisanal right our production of of stuff the more individualized we can get Digital technology can be Digital technology makes everything uh, it's it's it it tends to do the emperor has no clothes, right? So um, one of the things that struck me over the last several years is In some places particularly, I mean, I it's never really clear where these places are but students hate online learning and I think that's Not necessarily because it's any worse or better than what they were experiencing in the classroom But it's more distant and alienating because of the digital distance that we have here and Hold on one second. Hold one second. Um, you know lisa durf already Teased you for you know saying oh, you think you talk too much But another lisa, um had a question and she volunteered kindly to be on stage. Let me see if I can bring her Um, this is lisa. Good to know me. Who asked a great question? Oh An old and good friend Maybe I should have um Put on my camera. I'm sorry We had it on before we go ahead All right, it's not let me turn on but okay Go ahead. Um, well now what I'm I'm talking about is I I'm in a k-12 school as an instructional technologist I'm also at the university. So you I get I get both ends of it but uh when we when students k-12 students were At home learning during the lockdown What I was talking about zoom was to me zoom is a classroom with rows of chairs and seats Where you can't get up. You can't move. You're not comfortable Younger children really had a hard time Sitting or even you know all the way up to high school students had a hard time sitting in in front of a computer and interacting with a teacher As a box And so I just threw out the virtual world. I know we're not ready for that Yeah, but I because we're in the future trends forum I'm saying that I believe that there's going to be we're always talking about Learning spaces at in the physical space Yeah, I think there is going to be a big change in the learning space on the online the interface online platform now what what is that going to be too bad? It can't be a virtual world because that would be interesting Um, so why why not? I mean I'm just saying that the technology that exists today doesn't get us there Yeah, yeah, and I know teachers got very creative and how to keep kids happy they put videos up They didn't break out rooms, but um, it's you're still in a chair in front of a device So I will say uh that uh There is Absolutely more of a need for that in person. This is there's not it's not a light switch like anything else For younger children, it's pretty clear from the data and I'm not an expert on elementary education, but what I've seen and read about there You need that human interaction element the socializing aspect of it um, I think as we get older That you can experiment with more hybrid types of environments once you get to junior high high school levels And of course higher education Uh, and in some instances that's absolutely necessary, but yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm not suggesting that we do virtual school for first graders As a rule, um You know, obviously we don't want to kill them with the virus either or their parents or grandparents Let's not do that. That would be bad. Yeah, Lisa. Have you have you tried any of the other platforms? I mean, obviously you shouldn't think here has a lot of differences. Um, but I'm also thinking of In space and Vermont for example Yeah, I've tried some well, I've been participant as a participant in different webinars and things where I've tried all the different all the different platforms and some are better from than others Some have really good a breakout. I think that that's a big important thing is is the the setup of the breakout rooms if you're doing a webinar I I think we constantly talk about collaboration and education and then we get on zoom And everybody's just in there on a box And that's where where I feel like we're missing Something but I know it's developing and and going forward and maybe it's something to keep looking out for changes in the in the online Platform just as one day we realized the physical space needed to be changed Agreed agree. That's one of the big questions behind facebook is basically ultimately with their online with the metaverses to compete with zoom And and video conferencing. Um, I I I hate to wrap things up Lisa and tom, but but we're right at the end of the hour And you asked a great topic. Um, Lisa We can find you through arizona state through shaping you to you. Yeah, it's um, I'll put it in there It's just l g u s t i n e at asu.edu. I'll put it in the chat Thank you. That's a great video. Thank you very much Um, tom, tom, we're we're right at the end of the hour. You got a minute to say your your last words Well, uh, yeah, just real quick as a response to what lisa and others are saying is that it's not the technology It's what you do with it and and I think depends on the the platforms can be technology platforms or technologies can be limiting And you need to understand that you shouldn't accept that you should always be looking for How do I express myself authentically as a human being as a teacher as a creator? Uh, and that's what should drive your technology choices Uh, and so zoom versus shindig versus, you know, what what exactly you think think through your task first and work backwards to the technology Because at a certain point, you know, you get to a point where am I going to take a better picture with a cannon or an icon Right, you know, uh What does what does it for you right? Well, um, I'll tell you what does it for us is to have you thinking With us and talking about this That you you instill the great deal of energy in the chat with all kinds of questions and comments Um, my you know the question I like to ask everybody is uh, where can we find you? Online is is twitter the best way to keep up with you or your blog? Yeah, twitter's usually I mean whenever I write something I definitely tweet about it on twitter. Um, I do Write a lot for shaping edu on their blog and and and I do put things on on my blog shaping edu They just upgraded to a new Arizona state just upgraded to a new version of droopal And managed to lock me out of the shaping edu blog. So that's one reason why My blog it's on my site, which tends to get a little less traffic, but it's about eyeballs I'm not trying to make any money off of I'll know what you're sure to link. Uh, so so thank you and tom. Thank you. Thank you so much for spending an hour with us Unfolding you during your your fierce creativity your fierce wisdom. I really really appreciate it And uh, I'm looking forward to bringing you back on stage as often as I possibly can Oh, don't do that Well in the meantime, please Take care and be safe. Thank you Um, but don't go away yet. Let me just everyone. Let me just mention a bit more about where we're coming And but I just want to mention again, this is great to see All these questions the topics you want to keep talking about this you want to keep thinking about Structures for improving learning if you want to think about the purpose of education We can keep tweeting at this at ftte as the hashtag or tweet at me brian Alexander or shindig events Or hit up my blog brian Alexander dot org If you'd like to go back into our previous sessions not only to scope out tom But also to find some of our previous discussions including about space and about revolutions and teaching just go to tiny url.com slash ftf archive Looking ahead if you like to keep joining us and I want to welcome folks like adam We joined us for the first time we have sessions coming up on equity climate crisis transformation public higher ed Digital forward design a web 3 just going to form that future of education that us and you can learn more And if you'd like to just celebrate like we did with tom anything great that you've done shoot me a note I'd be delighted delighted to hear from you In the meantime, thank you all for being great participants for supporting all of us. We really really appreciate it It's a delight to think together and learn together with all of you Good luck the rest of this month of april. Please take care work hard and be safe. We'll see you online next time Bye-bye