Blurts

We were caught up in the OLPC project and bought one in the original buy one / give one deal. The program did appear to suffer from a sense of direction. First it was for developing countries and then a decision was made to sell in the U.S. There was a controversy over the operating system.

Now, it appears that the project is struggling financially as are most technology companies. It also appears that there is some competition in the super low end market – India has just announced a less expensive competitor.

Bring on the netbooks.

This online summary (note that it is itself a brief summary with an illustration) of a JEdPsych article by Clark, Nguyen & Sweller appears to demonstrate that when instructional materials with less text are comparied with a comparable lesson with more text more learning results from shorter explanations. I must admit I have not read the article (I recognize one of the authors and I am guessing the explanation has to do with working memory limits in multimedia learning – hence I must rely on my existing knowledge of this field to interpret the tip offered to me as a designer).

I don’t consider myself an instructional designer, but i am an experienced writer and there is always something counterintuitive about the claim that less is more. When I write, I do not say to myself – how can I draw this out and say the same thing with more words. Writing is not so much fun that I would rather spend 4 hours than 3. What I write tends to grow longer because in examining drafts I am concerned that something that could help the reader understand was not included.

Perhaps this is one of the situations in which simple guidelines can be misleading (why practitioners need to understand why and now just what). Actually, the post itself may be a great example of a brief summary that is understandable but potentially misleading. It appears that the research materials involved content in which the explanation is carried by illustrations and the text is mostly redundant. If illustrations do a good job of conveying an explanation, adding a great deal of text to the process overloads working memory and causes a detriment in performance.

This makes sense. Now apply this same guideline to the “tip”. In the case of the tip, the illustration conveys one message (number of words and performance, but does not convey another key message “when content involves informative illustrations and text). In this case, adding some words to clarify the characteristics of the instructional materials would have been informative and potentially prevented readers from drawing faulty conclusions.

Suggesting shorter text offers a better explanation than a longer text is very different from suggesting that a secondary message should not detract from the limited capacity necessary to process the primary message.

Perhaps the message should be that adding informative illustrations is more important that adding more text.

I apologize for writing a longer analysis than the instructional design tip appearing in the original post. You really have to read both posts for my comments to make sense. You will have to judge for yourself which body of content is actually is more informative and offers a more accurate expalantion of what the study implies.

I don’t mean to pick on the author. Rather, I mean to pick on an instructional approach that encourages guidelines over understanding. What is interesting in this case is that the guideline offers a good case for the limitations of the guideline.

BTW – read the comments in response to the tip post and it is clear that readers do not understand what the research article intends. For example, the research article would not explain the benefits of Twitter (I assume the commenter proposes that Twitter is good) – Twitter does constrain the number of words but does not allow informative illustrations. Since informative illustrations are the necessary condition for the reduction is supporting text, an erroneous understanding has been generated.

People interested in science often have experiences in their childhood that predict their adult interests. There is reference to this in “Outliers”. I came across a Ted Talk that describes the same phenomenon on a personal level (when did the scientific method originate and a personal story from Kary Mullis). Note comments on postmodernism.

I grew up on a farm and had an interest in science. There were various manifestations of this. One thing I remember that sounds strange now was that my parents let me experiment with chickens. I used to feed them different types of food and count the number of eggs they produced. I cannot remember exactly what I thought I determined, but I do remember keeping a notebook with a daily tally of eggs collected. Mom and dad did not care as long as I was willing to donate the eggs. Now, this story is not as spectaular as shooting frogs into space (Mullis\’ story), but I wonder how common such early experiences are?

BTW – Mullis does have what may be a less politically correct take on global warming and that makes him interesting as well.

I am in my office preparing for my grad class tomorrow evening. I am reading a 2003 paper by Burkhardt & Schoenfeld that offers suggestions for improving educational research and the difficulty of influencing educational practice via resesarch. It is assigned reading for the students in my class. At the same time, I am running a Twitter feed on my computer and most of the comments coming in are from the Educon conference. Just consider me one of those multi-taskers. It is an amazing contrast – I wish I could capture this comparison as an object lesson and bring it to class.

From Burkhardt & Schoenfeld (citing the 2002-2007 strategic plan of the Department of Education):

Unlike medicine, agriculture, and industrial production, the field of education operates largely on the basis of ideology and professional consensus. As such, it is subject to fads and is incapable of the cumulative progress that follows from the application of the scientific method and from the systematic collection and use of objective information in policy making. (p. 48)

From Twitter:

How do we get rid of the tests? How do we collect authentic data with teachers who don’t know what it is? Parents love their children.

Asking that those in an argument offer evidence is one of those tests of critical thinking used to evaluate credibility and being willing to examine data and the responsible methodology is one way to avoid ideology.

Those of us who are educators (and parents) ask for data in order to evaluate your proposals. Requesting evidence in support of recommendations is about understanding the history of our discipline and owning up to the reality that time and time again kids ended up being exposed to unproductive ideas that were later rejected.  Requesting evidence is simply prudent and complying with such requests is evidence of true commitment.

It appears that Britannica has given in to the popularity of participatory authoring and will allow users to edit its own online version.

Mr Cauz said that any changes or additions made to Britannica entries online would have to be vetted by one of the company\’s staff or freelance editors before the changes were reflected on the live site.

Britannica is particularly miffed that content produced by the organization does not appear prominently in Google web searches.

I tried the Britannica website this morning, but found no obvious change. Maybe you have to go through the registration and login process before you can participate.

BTW – the Britannica blog is kind of interesting. I found this old post on web 2.0 classrooms.

[Satellite image by GeoEye] – perhaps one of the most unusual photos from the inauguration. This image captured by the GeoEye-1 satellite. Offered according to GeoEye publishing guidelines.