Rhyme in History; Technology of the Lonely Heart (EDUC 8342)

This may seem a bit off topic but what can I say; it is a course post.

Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself.  At best, it sometimes rhymes”.  David Thornburg (2013) indicates that rhymes of history is one place to find emerging technology. A wonderful example of “rhyme of history”, is virtual reality.   Consider technology involved with dating and the ability to live a fantasy of possessing the characteristics you believe to be appealing to the opposite sex.  If you want long hair … you’ve got it; if you want hazel eyes … presto, they’re yours.  Technology that has served this virtuality (this may not be a word but sounds good) has varied throughout history.   I know what you are thinking but indulge me for a minute and analyze the following graphic.

Makes sense right? With any of this technology between you and a potential loved one, you can be the person you always dreamed of. There may be an entirely new branch of psychology to deal with people who start believing they are their “virtual’ self.

References
Thornburg, D. (2013). An amazingly incomplete emerging technologies bibliography. Lake Barrington, IL: Thornburg Center for Space Exploration.

Collaboration is not Science Fiction! (EDUC 8842)

As a naturally inquisitive person, I am always interested in how things work.  The human brain is always working even when our bodies are asleep.  A great book currently states that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”, meaning that there are no limits to what we can accomplish.  Humans have no problem pushing themselves to the limit, especially when there is a strong competing force.  However, when outmatched, we have no problem reaching for our “ace in the hole”; collaboration.  “Two heads are better than one”.  While there may not be limits to what we can accomplish, we can accomplish so much more and at a much faster pace when working together.  Collaboration is the sharing and completion of activities towards a common goal in a social or work-related setting (Iivonen & Huotari, 2000).  Humans have a natural instinct to work together, or collaborate, to accomplish a common goal.

To that end, technology has made the world a much smaller place and we find ourselves not only competing on a much broader scale but also collaborating on a much larger scale.  Globalization is but one example of the direction our new global society is traveling.  Please allow me to stray a bit … in the 1996 Paramount motion picture “Star Trek: First Contact” the earth’s “first contact” with an alien race is threatened by another alien race that travels back in time to eliminate that occurrence.  This alien race, which thrives as a “collective” order, realized through research that this was a pivotal point in history; when humankind realized that competition “was futile” and collaboration was more beneficial.  Of course, this alien race, called “the Borg”, did not meet their objective, but if it had been successful, humanity would have been stagnant and ripe for conquest.  This may have been “only a movie”, but it was clearly grounded in reality.

Competition with an equal or superior adversary serves as motivation for collaboration.  Pareto et al. (2012) conducted a study on how collaboration and competition impact motivation and learning.  Their findings indicated that a competitive and collaborative environment caused intense motivation which subsequently increased learning.  Returning to the point of Star Trek, it stands to reason that human beings would collaborate upon discovering that they were not alone in the universe.  In addition, the fact that the competition (aliens) was far more advanced would serve as motivation to stop the petty squabbling and collaborate.

References

Iivonen, M., & Huotari, M. (2000). The impact of trust on the practice of knowledge management. Chicago, IL: American society for information scienc annual meeting.

Pareto, L., Haake, M., Lindstrom, P., Sjoden, B., & Gulz, A. (2012). A teachale-agent-based game affording collaboration and competition: evaluating math comprehension and motivation. Educational Technology Research & Development, 60, 723-751.  http://web.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=6e889609-3c1c-43bc-9f72-c08e859bbd4a%40sessionmgr110&hid=114

There was a time!

At the risk of sounding “old”, I remember a time when people were afraid that the “computer” was going to take their job.  My training and development career began as a technical trainer.  I was responsible for training people on corporate application software.  It was the mid 1980’s and believe it or not computers had just graduated from the freezing computer room to the extra desk that everyone in the office shared.  When I say desk, I mean the computer was as big as a desk.  These shared computers would sit for days without anyone so much as glancing in that direction.  To motivate employees the company grabbed everyone’s attention, first step in Keller’s ARCS Model (Driscoll, 2005), by scheduling mandatory training for that “beast” of a machine.  And, to top it off the trainer was some young “whipper snapper” that will try to convince them that a machine can do their job better than they can.

The formula to winning over my audience was: 1) job/content knowledge, it was imperative that I understand the “pain” involved with their jobs in order to point out the “relevance”, second step in Keller’s ARCS Model (Driscoll, 2005); 2) open the course with a question and answer so they knew the training was not some “canned” presentation which demonstrated confidence,  third step in Keller’s ARCS Model (Driscoll, 2005), in my knowledge and that of the technological solution, and; 3) meet each and every student’s expectation, during or shortly after training, which increased satisfaction, fourth step in Keller’s ARCS Model (Driscoll, 2005).

References

Driscoll, M. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.