Jeopardizing Minds

We ask students to remember a lot. Much of this is factual information. And, much of this is forgotten after the exam. This is nothing new. What is new is the direction that technology is taking to retrieve the facts that we never retained or cannot remember.

During February’s Jeopardy special edition episodes, IBM’s Watson, a computer system designed to answer questions in natural language, won impressively over two Jeopardy record-holding participants. Watson won clue after clue, game after game, and is now being prepared for use as a diagnostic tool in medicine and other fields.

Human memory is no less remarkable. But, how we use our brains seems to change over time. In his book, Moon Walking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (2011, The Penguin Press), Joshua Foer describes the history of impressive memory feats dating back to the fifth century B.C. He writes, "Once upon a time every literate person was versed in the techniques [of memorization]...Students were taught not just what to remember, but how to remember it." This skill served members of oral cultures for centuries.

Today, memorization of large amounts of information has turned from being a practical tool to a mere stunt as we discover new methods of storing and retrieving information. Foer's book chronicles his study of, and preparation for, the U.S. Memory Championship which is about all that remains of this memorization form. This is not to say that memorization is not being practiced. We all follow strategies for storing and retrieving information in our heads—especially students (although, use of Watson during exams would probably be forbidden). 

We choose different memory strategies depending on how we expect to use the information. This result was studied in the late 1970s by Elizabeth F. Loftus (University of California, Irvine) who found students stored information differently depending on whether they expected to merely recognize the correct answer from a set of choices or were asked to recall the answer. Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow published an article in Science magazine (July, 2011) titled Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. She, too, studied the effects of our expected use of information on our memory strategies. According to Sparrow, “when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it." Put simply, we only memorize what we think we have to and look up the rest. We devise memory strategies appropriate to our expected use of the information. 

So, how are we using computer technology to help students improve their learning skills? What kind of memory strategies are we encouraging through practice? When we challenge students only with multiple choice questions are we encouraging a form of memorization that has decreasing utility? Since the 1960s, multiple-choice questions have been a favored computerized method of "engaging" the student through technology.  But, even by 1970 MIT researcher Jaime R. Carbonell ("Mixed-Initiative Man-Computer Dialogues") pointed out the limitations of these learning methods. In response, he developed a program called SCHOLAR that was capable of conducting Socratic-style dialogues in natural language on the topic of geography. Remarkably, this was done on a primitive computer (XDS-940) with incredibly small processing and storage capabilities. Over 40 years later our "go to" e-Learning tool continues to be the multiple choice quiz.

What kind of memory will humans need as the development of computerized search expands to eventually embed Watson on a chip? How are we helping enhance the student's ability to acquire the kinds of learning skills that will prove beneficial now and in the future? Is our comfort with recognition-based assessments that cover areas of factual knowledge ignoring a paradigm shift in the kind of information we need our brains to better organize and retain?

Just as the need to memorize certain types of information faded with the written word, perhaps we should re-examine the types of information we ask students to remember and the expectations we set for them in their use of that information. Minds that are trained to recognize answers or even recall large numbers of facts may be in serious jeopardy in a world where these types of memory retrieval feats are better performed by descendants of Watson.

On Why Our Nation is Stuck

I thought I'd share an inspiring clip (under 6 minutes) I came across in a post on a forum I follow.  It's an updated compilation of NASA video with Carl Sagan's voice-over explaining why humans go into space.

Watch the video 

Politicians are killing U.S. human space flight right now and the general public is oblivious.  It's sad.  It's not the most tragic thing, but deeply throttling back exploration is nonetheless a loss for this nation.

Here are two recent signs of this shift.  First, there is my recent conversation with a 20 year old student we'll call Buzz.  As I sometimes do, I started talking about spaceflight and the upcoming final launch of a Shuttle.  Buzz admitted that he didn't follow the space program too much.  Understandable.  Most people don't follow it unless there's a really big mission or (unfortunately) there's some sort of crisis.  I get it.  But, then Buzz tried to feign interest.  And, in as serious a tone as he could muster asked-- "Are they going to the moon?"  Seriously?  The moon?  Were you absent that day in school when they covered the 20th century?  I was flummoxed.

Then the very next day someone in the office suggested I take a look at Google's Scribe (check it out before they close GoogleLabs--a story for another time about retreating from success).  Scribe is like a Word doc editor except that it suggests the next word as you type.  Weird and sometimes creepy smart.  So, I tried it with some well-known phrases.  "Ask not what your country..." and "That's one small step for man" -- You get the idea.  It's probably not intended to find famous quotes, but I was giving it a try. Try it yourself.  Then I typed-- "We choose to go to the _______" and expected it to suggest moon.  It did not.  Google, with access to countless terabytes of data from which it can guesstimate the next word, completed the famous Kennedy charge to the nation with the word bathroom.  Yes, we choose (instead) to go to the friggin BATHROOM.  What??? And, I suppose "and do the other things...not because they are easy but because they are hard????"

So, if you are like me and feel that the country is adrift, is being driven off a cliff by conservatives, extreme conservatives, corporate interests, spineless politicians with no long-term visions beyond their next campaign, etc., etc., you now know why--  WE CHOOSE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!  From the Earth to the Loo-- a new HBO mini-series.

There you have it.  No need to take public opinion polls.  Just use Google to reveal where we truly are these days.  Why are they shuttering programs that once put Americans in space?  It's because we literally and figuratively cannot get off the can.  Our collective rear ends are stuck!

Anyway, watch the video and get inspired again.  Take your phone to the bathroom and watch it there.  It's only 6 minutes or less.  More time than that and you'll just aggravate your hemorrhoids.

Mixed Modals

This is my first blog.

Blogs require unique titles.  This is as hard as coming up with a really strong but memorable password. You try one after another until one strikes you as suitable.  Exhaustion from the process plays a big part in eventually finding something that satisfies.  I won't share the titles I rejected.  All the clever ones seemed to have been taken. However, as I tried out each one I found myself occasionally thinking-- "That one is certainly possible."  Eventually I stepped back from the process and saw this common phrase-- Certainly Possible.  Good enough.

The title "Certainly Possible" is fun because it's a mixed modal phrase I often hear people use (myself included) when they are minimally acknowledging the legitimacy of some assertion. It starts out sounding like a vote of support for some claim (certainly) but then diminishes that very endorsement by indicating the weakest modal claim for truth (possible). Ideas are sometimes like that.  They start out strong, bordering on something absolute. Then their value diminishes as they are scrutinized.  What's left is sometimes a small kernel of truth.  The excitement happens when these small nuggets of truth are connected together to form something bold and new.  At that point the declaration of possibility is a remarkable achievement.  We move forward a little in our understanding.

So, this blog is going to be about a lot of things.  It's my new sketchpad for capturing patterns I see in events and ideas. We'll see how this goes.  It's certainly possible that some good may come from these jottings.  I'll start with at least that much.