Web 2.0 Dialog Reflection

I find that a lot of social media tools like Twitter and Reddit are limited to a shallow and superficial exchanges. A short, staggered conversation flow isn't conducive to in-depth and elaborate dialog. It seems more effective for announcements and basic content sharing.

Real time voice conversations generate a more natural dialog flow. In virtual reality, when coupled with avatars able to express some basic body language, conversations feel almost like speaking to someone in person. Videoconferencing provides a similar experience in digital space. These communication formats generally seem to provide for fewer but stronger links between participants.

If my purpose is to build a network of people I can leverage to advance my research and professional goals, my time is likely best spent in spaces that allow for more in-depth conversation. If my purpose is to keep abreast of announcements on events and funding opportunities, for example, my time is likely best spent in the more superficial, broad range platforms.

AltspaceVR

AltspaceVR, https://altvr.com/, is a free social media platform in virtual reality. The program can run on a computer as a 3D PC world like SecondLife. It can run on most all the VR headsets, too. The community is active with over a dozen events every day. Language classes, meditation groups, VR developer meetings, concerts, movie and game nights, and more fill the schedule. Each event happens in a world. More worlds are available just to hang out and visit. Worlds are made by community members. Some are public and some are private; some have activities, some are just places to gather.

While I have only had positive experiences interacting with others in this space, AltspaceVR does give the user the ability to mute or block any other user. Muting renders the person's avatar inaudible and blocking renders the person's avatar inaudible and invisible. The program also gives users an easy way to download and save or completely delete all of their data from the platform.

AltspaceVR provides some basic tools for building custom worlds and hosting your own events. Ready-to-use worlds are available for common types of events, like lecture halls, conference rooms, and game halls. These template worlds are not persistent; you schedule a time for them to be active. The software integrates with Unity, though, for anyone interested in making a completely custom and persistent world. Check out Mark Gill's "Building Worlds in AltspaceVR with Unity3d" video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8xgR3cDMjk for more details about making your own virtual world.

Santa Fe Institute

The Santa Fe Institute (SFI), https://www.santafe.edu/, is a private research institute dedicated to applying complexity science across the "physical, biological, social, cultural, technological, and even possible astrobiological worlds." The institute was founded in the 1980s, mainly through efforts of senior researchers at Los Alamos. They now have an impressive roster of faculty and associates that span 80 institutions across 20 countries.

These people also span an impressive array of disciplines: computer science, biology, astrophysics, sociology, thermodynamics, the arts, and more. I am probably most impressed that they intentionally include artists to facilitate scientific discovery. SFI's Broken Symmetry Society, https://www.santafe.edu/culture/broken-symmetry-society, focuses on building and sustaining this synthesis of art and science.

SFI provides many opportunities for public engagement, as well. They provide courses on a variety of topics, both in-person and online, https://www.santafe.edu/engage/learn/courses. Some of their online courses are free, some require a fee. They cover a diverse array of topics, from fractals to the origins of life, https://www.complexityexplorer.org/. They also host a weekly podcast that I always find informative and engaging, https://www.santafe.edu/culture/podcast. They have made a lot lectures available through YouTube, too, from speakers they have hosted over the past 30 years, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9rHXgUE9pikzYcGrAujMXQ. I encourage you to check it out!

The Future

The higher education system has had some trouble adapting this year. After listening to a podcast on imagining the future (not a very good one so I won't bother you with the link), I've been wondering what higher education might look like in the future. I came across two sources this week that had some ideas.

One source was the Williams (2017) "Assessing collaborative learning: big data, analytics and university futures" article from class. This article presents ideas for assessing groups of students using analytics. This could be a mechanism to measure performance on authentic and complex problems. Employers consider these problem-solving skills important but it has been difficult to quantify these behaviors in a learning context. Analytics may help.

The other source, "How higher education may go best of breed, be disassembled amid online learning" by Dingan (2020) at https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-higher-education-may-go-best-of-breed-be-disassembled-amid-online-learning/, focused more on how higher education could adopt new business models the way many communication companies have done. Maybe the software-as-a-service model could work. Badging, MOOCs, self-directed learning - those could all be leveraged for such a change.

It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out over the next 10 to 20 years. Do you have any predictions?

Maps for Education

I was tickled to see the Google Earth education link https://www.google.com/earth/education/ in our list of tools to explore this week. One of my very favorite Google Earth layers of all time was the model of ancient Rome. It was such a trip to see the layout of all the famous buildings. It was even more fun to look between the ancient view and the modern view, checking out scenes of the coliseum the way it looked when new compared to how the city has grown around it over the centuries...almost millennia. Exploring Google Earth in virtual reality is even cooler. You get a real perspective of landmarks worldwide. You can even 'walk' around and tour the inside the coliseum.

While the Google Earth software and data offer some excellent learning opportunities, ESRI, I think, has some of the best geospatial education resources. Check out https://www.esri.com/en-us/industries/education/overview for some samples. One if ESRI's biggest education strengths is the breadth of contexts they cover, from the water cycle to sustainable development. Story maps are one tool they offer that can be used to great effect in the classroom. https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-storymaps/overview

Map are a remarkable cognitive tool to help us understand the world around us!

Miro = great collaborative note-taking tool

I had a collision between real people and web 2.0 in a conversation with a friend last week. She recently took a design thinking MOOC-style class from Stanford, and was impressed by their use of Miro for remote collaboration: https://miro.com.

Miro is a group note-taking platform. It works like a whiteboard, though it can function a lot like infinitely zoomable post-it notes, too. They have many display templates available: brainstorming, concept mapping, calendars, flowcharts, fishbone diagrams,.... You can sign up for free to try it out.

You can find out more through their introductory video:

The tool seems rather complicated at first glance, although I understand that when a project is designed well, it can be a simple and seamless experience for the end user. Find more information through Miro's training site at https://academy.miro.com/.

Flattening the knowledge

I've been listening to lectures from the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) lately. SFI is a research institute focused on complexity science. Knowledge, learning, and computational modeling are regular topics, as well as my research focus, so I'm enjoying it. You can find a variety of their content at https://www.youtube.com/c/SFIScience/featured.

One recording I especially enjoyed was a lecture by Scott Page given over 10 years ago about his book The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. (I don't have the youtube link but you can find it on castbox.) He explores the mathematical evidence of the value of diversity. In many cases, it turns out that diverse groups of people generate better solutions to problems than a group of experts. It comes down, in part, to the different ways people code and organize the world for themselves, and the variety of tools people can collect to apply to a problem. The guy was really funny, too.

I came across the idea of flattening knowledge when I was listening to some of these lectures while driving. Unfortunately I don't know if it was from the recording above, or maybe Mirta Galesic discussing Social Learning and Decision-making, or any or the others.... But the idea is that, if an educational method or product becomes too widespread, the collective knowledge of humanity gets less. The world is full of people with all sorts of ideas. Constraining all those ideas to one subset of possibilities eliminates the other options, flattening the overall potential. What does this mean for instructional designers?

Deepening the experience

The iLRN2020 conference offered a wide variety of media types to presenters, from a standard presentation video, to a PC 3D environment, to a fully immersive 3D environment. I attended presentations in all these modalities to gain a better sense of how immersion impacts an informal learning experience.

I think we all know what it is like to watch a video. The live chat function expands the experience by offering an alternative communication flow, but also detracts by dividing attention from the video.

Video Example

The PC 3D presentations both looked and felt more like attending a presentation in a lecture hall. You could even sometimes hear the conference staff chatting on the stage, getting things ready. I even had to get up and move my seat once because the person in front of me was blocking my view while I was watching people set things up. The zoom tools in the software gave a good view of the presenter, though, whether you were in the front row or back up in the nosebleed section. The live chat could be helpful and/or distracting, the same way it was with the video. But it felt more like I was sitting next to chatty neighbors rather than like I was watching 2 simultaneous and somewhat interconnected conversations. The conference also hosted round table conversations. The space was set like a conference room, and people spoke at will around the table, led by the presenter. It was not quite as easy to converse without all the body language, but it was much easier than talking in chat form.

PC 3D

The headset VR experience was excellent. The group had thoughtful conversations. The avatars expressed body language more than the PC avatars, so the conversation was more fluid. Raised hands, gestures, and moving mouths helped guide everyone, along with floating hearts and other emoticons. I also found it easier to speak up in a crowd of strangers while comfortable at home and looking like a robot than when I'm in real space.

Headset VR

If you would like to explore how different modalities impact brain activity, check out the studies from the Cuseum, at https://cuseum.com/neuroscience.