The iPod University: Can the classroom

survive it?Derrick de KerckhoveFacoltà di sociologia

Università Federico IINapoli e

McLuhan ProgramUniversità di Toronto

The iPod University

A scenario

• Tomorrow all classes are given at-a-distance. The students stay at home or go on the road and download their courses. They consult visually as well as auditorily their professor at given appointment times over their mobile phone. They get together on line and via SMS and play games. Kids have

access to Google. From G-Earth to G-Scholar via all G-services. From their

cell phone.

Wi-Fi and the “Always On” culture• Web media

• Mobile media• Podcast Media

• Social Media (complex mix of networks human and technical)• Emergent, partly self-organizing patterning

• Evolving cognitives architectures

Three Screens Profile

0.6

1.5

2.5

2.0

LaptopComputers

DesktopComputers

Televisions

Mobile Phones

Share of Screens

30%

38%

23%

9%

Number in Home

Q.1

Change in Time Spent with Three Screens versus 2-3 Years Ago

7%19%

5%

10%

26%

11%

33%

32%

21%

27%

12%

32%

11%

31%23%

Mobile Phone Television Home Computer

Much Less Now Little Less Now No ChangeLittle More Now Much More Now

Net Change: +33% -22% +47%

Q.3

The Aural Society (Marco Susani)

Total Surround

… Any TIME connection

Any THING connection

Any PLACE connection

Source: Adapted from NRI (Japan)

• On the move

• Outdoors and indoors

• Night

•Daytime

• Between PCs

• Human to Human (H2H), not using a PC

• Human to Thing (H2T), using generic equipment

• Thing to Thing (T2T)

• On the move

• Outdoors

• Indoors (away from the PC)

• At the PC

Screenology

• The new cognitive arena• Multiplication of mind by software• Externalizing memory and

intelligence

Graphics: Peter Marshall

• Emigration of the mind from the head to the screen

• The screen is where physical, mental and virtual space

coincide• Recovery of control from the

zapper to the computer• Resensorialization of

communications• Sharing the responsibility of

making sense with the screen

Principal Characteristics of the electronic screen

Connected

Immersive

Penetrable

Interactive

Tactile

The a versus the e-principle

• Page• Static• Analogical• Frontal• Actualized• Esplosive• Abstract• Desensorialed• Icons as

illustrations

• Screen• Dynamic• Digital• Immersive• Virtualized• Implosive• Concrete• Multimedia• Icons as verbs

Connected intelligence

• Connective not collective

• Intersubejctve (Francisco Varela)

• Embodied (face-to-face interactions)

• Thought is not internalized speech, but speech is externalized thought

CONNECTED INTELLIGENCEON LINE

• More human than technological• Multiplicative

• Always in favour of more connections, but also more pertinence (hypertinence)

• Always in favour of more autonomy• But without losing the connection

• More collaborative than competitive

Broad trends in new media, which may be viewed as anything from flash-in-the-pan fads to society-changing paradigm shifts, have

appeared almost yearly (Wikipedia)• ca. 1996 - Broad popularity of Internet,

e-mail, web content • ca. 1997 - Video games start to gain

mainstream media recognition • ca. 1998 - Media conglomerates embrace the

Internet, streaming media, electronic commerce

• ca. 2000 - instant messaging, broadband, digital photography, DVD

• ca. 2002 - web logs, peer-to-peer file sharing

• ca. 2004 - Social software, GMail, del.icio.us, Flickr, tagging and folksonomies

What’s a “folksonomy” (Sergio Maistrello)

• folks + taxonomy (Thomas Vander Wal 2004)

• Popular taxonomies, ethnoclassification

• Classification by keywords (tag)

• Without base structure

• Without predetermined relationships between elements

• Spontaneous and collaborative classifications

• Suitable for non hierarchical contexts

• Work in progress, built on the go by its users

• Reflects the conceptual models of its users

The great “folksciclopedia”

From the Trivium to the Quadrivium and beyond

E. Britannica (11th edition):TRIVIUM (lat. For cross-road,

i.e. where three roads meet, from tres, three, and via,

road), in medieval educational systems, the curriculum

which included grammar, rhetoric and logic. The

trivium and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry

and astronomy) together made up what is known as the

seven liberal arts

Humanities (Webster 1966)

Pl: The branches of learning regarded as

having literature, history, mathematics

and philosophy

E.B. 1966

A group of educational disciplines distinguished in content and method from the physical and biological sciences and, if

less decisively, from the social sciences. The group includes language and literature in

each of their principal examples (ancient and modern), the fine arts other than literature, philosophy, at least in its more traditional

divisions, and to a less clearly defined extent, history, where the boundary between the

social sciences and the humanities is most debatable. These are the core of the

humanities and are sometimes organized as a school or division in the modern university

Wikipedia

Wikiversity

Social bookmarking

Tagging

• Dare un link specifico fra un oggetto digitale, qualunque esso sia, e un tag disponibile per tutti gli utenti o per gruppi ristretti

• Tipo: <a href=“http://www.technorati.com/tag/[parola

chiave]” rel=“tag”>parola chiave</a>)• Inserire dentro un navigatore aperto • Tipo: www.del.icio.us.org

del.icio.us: inserting a link

del.icio.us: Main Page

del.icio.us: Personal Links

Clustering information

A general shift from hierarchical to associative

models of cognition

Clay Shirky

Hierarchy with links

Clay Shirky

With multilinks

Clay Shirky

Loss of categories with tags

Clay Shirky

Loss of boundaries in

disciplines

Emigration of memory from libraries to

networks

In an environment of ambient information, the job of the

educator is to manage ignorance, not knowledge

Changing profile of students

– User has changed and started being active and participative in a context of great technology maturity (and transparency).

– User is not only a reader/user but also writer/inventor.– The “wreader”– User identifies himself in a community (not

corresponding to the concept of Web community) and shares information and time into Social Networks, often “de-sctructured” and casual, but nonetheless efficient.

– Users become “authors”– The main instrument of this “revolution” is the

Weblog, born in 2000 and “boomed” in 2004.

Private Individual InternalizedNarrativeCausality TheoryLinear Silent ReflexiveCentered

Connected Group

ExternalizedNavigation

SamplingPractical

Hypertextualized

Semi-oral Interactive

Diffused

Google versus libraries

• The “Net Gen” considers the open space of the Web as their privileged information universe”

• “They prefer the open global search of Google to the richer but more labour intensive one of the library”

• “Student find library resources harder to use and opt to find things via Google by themselves instead of asking for help”

Text, context and hypertext

• Role of text: internalizing and silencing speech

• Power of context in oral societies• Vectorial biases of text and

context• Ambiguous status of hypertext:

– silent but shared as speech– spontaneous but archived– private but made public

Hypertext

Tim-Berners Lee’s first elaboration for the WWW

The next medium, whatever it is- it may be the extension of conciousness- will include television as it's content, not as it's environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individuals encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind. (Marshall McLuhan)

INTERACTIVE “WREADING”

The typical “wreader” : “Net Gen”

• Used to multimedia environment thanks to videogames and

laptops• Prefers to find out

things by trying them rather than refer to manuals

• Used to work in groups

• Multitasking• Sampling

Rethinking Education ?• From the page to the screen (new

cognitive strategies)• Protection of reading• Understanding media

• Ryerson Report on teamship and collaboration

Ryerson’s questionnaire

• 75 criteria• Numero 1: teamwork (4.69/5)• Two:how to present oneself

(3.87)• Three: how to make a working

plan (3.54)• Ten: network experience

E-mail, Chat, Forum MUD, MOO, Active Worlds Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn

Slashdot, Blog, WikipediaTagging, del.icio.us, furl

Progression in the complexity of on-line cognitive architectures

For a new pedagogical model

• Broadcast to networked• Memory to intelligence

• “Contact hours”• On line competencies

• Student-centered education

SMART LABSocial Media Application

Research and Tagging

Laboratory

Content & application for digital

environment users