Citius, Altius, Fortius

The Olympic Games started on Friday. You can watch them on TV, watch them online (e.g. on YouTube), follow results and schedule times on a mobile app, and you might even follow the event results from spoilers available on news and social media websites before the event airs. The “Digital Era” portion of the Olympic Ceremony honored Tim Berners-Lee, who is widely known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. It seems that he even tweeted live from the stage:

From Tim Berners-Lee's Twitter:  http://twitter.com/timberners_lee/

The World Wide Web, no doubt, has made so much possible as it has allowed immediate access to newly shared information. Some have even been frustrated by this access during the Olympic Games due to the spoilers. They say it has changed the spectator experience from the traditional way of broadcasting the Olympic Games. It seems the best way to avoid this frustration is to avoid the spoilers, and I think we enjoy the Olympics for more than the results of the events.

The Olympic Games are certainly about results of competitions, but  there are other celebratory purposes of the Olympics and Paralympics. The London 2012 Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee have formulated the motto specific to the 2012 Olympic Games as “Inspire a Generation.” Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, and Sebastian Coe, Chair of the London 2012 Organizing Committee, reveal their messages behind the motto in the London 2012Olympic Games Opening Ceremony Media Guide.

Rogge says:

“For the thousands of athletes participating at London 2012, the Games represent the culmination of years of dedication, sacrifice and training. Athletes are the true heart of the Olympic Games, and this is their time to shine, to put in the performances of their lives and to inspire a generation.”

Coe says:

“We want the Opening Ceremony and the Games to leave the world with moments and memories of joy, and of what’s possible, as athletes from more than 200 nations – more than the United Nations – come together in the Olympic stadium to participate in the world’s greatest peaceful gathering of nations, and inspire a generation. An extraordinary journey is about to begin. Thank you for sharing this with us and the world.”

Thus, we should understand the motto, “Inspire a Generation,” as an expression celebrating the exemplification of Olympic qualities of the participating athletes: sharing the world, dedication, sacrifice, training, the joys of high performance, and the creation of moments in front of the world that share and explore the possibilities of harmony between performing well as an individual and performing peacefully.

Those Olympic qualities represent expressions of the principles and general motto of the Olympic Games, “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” which translates in English as, “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” Pierre de Coubertin deemed this phrase the motto of the Olympic Games when he founded the International Olympic Committee, which organizes the Olympic Games. According to The Olympic Museum Educational Kit, Hope: When Sport Can Change the World, the Olympic maxim, “Encourage effort,” is derived from the Olympic motto and olympism, a philosophy of life that bases “exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind” on the joy of effort and will to share the world.

It is easy to see the embodiment of these Olympic qualities in the athletes who trained for and compete in the Olympics. We can also see celebrations of these qualities and the development of them in some of the commercials aired during the 2012 Olympic Games. Consider the following examples:

Ryan Lochte, "Warming Up": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0e6q4vm4Rc&feature=relmfu

Allyson Felix, My Journey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGzMA-7SiRg&feature=plcp

I hope we are all inspired by the athletes competing in the 2012 Olympic Games, but I also hope that we don’t have functional fixedness about Olympic values and qualities. You don’t have to be an Olympiad to experience the joy of effort geared towards improvement of mind and body. Improving yourself towards being a balanced whole of qualities of body, will and mind does not require beating Phelps or Lochte in a swimming pool. Consider Nike's commercial, Find Your Greatness. 

Aside from realizing that greatness is wherever there is joy of effort towards some sort of improvement, we should also realize that your event(s) need not be athletic. Your event could be learning, teaching, designing, helping, building an application, starting a non-profit, or even organizing the Olympic Games. Whatever your event(s), it must involve you being active. GE didn't build advanced imaging technologies that support biomechanical explanations of human motion by passively sitting around. The World Wide Web didn't appear from nothing. It began with Tim Berners-Lee actively trying to make it happen at some point. Joyful effort must have a beginning, like the swimmer in the Kelloggs commercial:

This video is from the KelloggsUS Youtube Channel.

As we watch the Olympics, we can be inspired by their qualities, accomplishments, and participation in events that celebrate joyful effort to develop faster, higher, and stronger, together.  

Taking Notes While e-Reading

In the recent years people have posed the question, "Will eBooks replace textbooks in education?" I think one important standard to consider is contribution to learning processes--particularly to the note taking process.

Taking notes about textual materials helps one increase his or her comprehension of the material, and reviewing notes later helps one improve recall of the material. Educational psychologists have explored many different ways of taking notes on your own paper about whatever you are reading, be it electronic text or text on a paper-based medium.

What about taking notes on a device while reading an e-book?
I pose answers to this question in my new Prezi presentation. 

Taking Notes While e-Reading on Prezi

Recent Coursera Additions

This video is from the Coursera Youtube Channel.

The video above previews a free online course that Fatimah Wirth, an instructional designer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, will offer with Coursera, a company that partners with universities across the world to offer a free courses online. Wirth's course, Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application, will cover the fundamentals of facilitating learning through online courses and prepare instructors to convert one's classroom-based curriculum into meaningful web-based courses. 


Wirth is one of many professionals who have committed to delivering online Coursera courses. Earlier this week, Coursera announced that 12 additional universities, including three international institutions, will offer courses through its course management system. Below is a list of all of the universities that now partner with Coursera (the red ones are international institutions):

1. University of Pennsylvania
2. University of California, Berkeley
3. University of Michigan
4. Princeton University
5. Stanford University
6. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
7. University of Toronto
8. Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
9. Johns Hopkins University
10. Duke University
11. Rice University
12. California Institute of Technology
13. University of Edinburgh
14. University of California, San Francisco
15. University of Virginia
16. Georgia Institute of Technology
17. University of Washington

Also, Coursera recently received $16 million in venture capital funding and $3.7 million in equity investments, bringing its total funding to over $22 million. For more information about this, see here, here, and the Coursera Press information.

Coursera offers its courses for free to anyone around the world. People who complete a course do not get college credit, but they do get a certificate of completion signed by the instructor of that course. The courses tend to include video lectures, lecture notes, interactive exercises, and peer review grading systems for any project-based assignments submitted. Two computer science professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, from Stanford University founded Coursera with the following pedagogical functions in mind:

• facilitate quick and effective learning of new concepts or material
• permit opportunities for mastery learning by offering multiple attempts for demonstration of knowledge
• facilitate the retrieval of learned material and improve long term retention
• provide immediate feedback on assignments

We can expect features that fulfill these functions out of Coursera courses, which cover topics in biology, philosophy, engineering, physics, computer science, the humanities, business, management, economics, math, statistics, medicine, education, information technology, and design. 

If you are interested in instructional technology, instructional design, or the integration of online resources into education, you might enjoy these upcoming Coursera courses:

• Charles Severance's Internet History, Technology and Security
• Fatimah Wirth's Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application
• E-Learning and Digital Cultures from the University of Edinburgh
• Kevin Werbach's Gamification
• Scott Klemmer's Human-Computer Interaction
• Jean-Paul Restoule's Aboriginal Worldviews and Education
• Michael Kearn's Networked Life

For more information about Coursera's history, goals, and activities, check out the preview of Daphne Koller's TED talk at the TEDGlobal 2012 conference on the TED Blog.

If you want to explore other e-Learning projects and Massive Online Open Courses projects, check these out (most of them offer or support free courses or lessons):


Class Central
The Khan Academy
The Minerva Project
Udacity
MIT Open Courseware
Edx
The Faculty Project
CK12
The Saylor Foundation
TED Ed
Youtube Edu
Apple iTunes U
Academic Earth
P2PU
Skillshare
Scitable
Codecademy
Open Yale
Open Culture

Your #1 Information Highway: The Internet & Web

Image: ©iStockphoto.com/Silent47

The Internet and the World Wide Web.You know them--those things you use when you connect to a network to access websites and resources beyond your computer. What precisely are they? Well, uh... I don't know everything about them, but I know some.

There are many ways to describe the Internet and the World Wide Web, and they not only span across a lot of technology resources, but can also be related to a very large amount of online resources that depend on them. I think many of us appeal to many meanings of the terms 'internet,' and 'web,' each of which will reference some combo of what they rely on, how they work, how they are designed and developed, the resources involved, and how they can be used. The relations between the Internet and the World Wide Web involve networking of complex information technology architectures, access to a way of sharing "data" or information, the design and development of websites and online resources, and a vast "web" of websites and online resources, all of which no one will observe in their lifetime. Few would even want to count them all. 

However, if we look at the history of computer science, we find a clear-cut distinction. The internet, which originated in 1969 as a network of computers called ARPANET, is now the largest network of computers connected through complex technology architectures. The World Wide Web, which was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1990, is just one of the many internet-based ways of accessing information. The Web was built "on top of the internet," providing access to interlinked websites and their corresponding web page documents. 

I may not know what makes the Internet work the way it does, all of its relations to the World Wide Web, or all of their possible uses. I do know how to interact with my computer to access the online resources I want to access, find new online resources, and do the things I want to do with online resources. I also know that one primary value of online resources is their multimedia value. (Some other primary values are access to multimedia and the abilities to create and share multimedia).  Multimedia resources present more than just visual representations of words as text. They can also visually include graphics, diagrams, and moving pictures or animations; auditorily include sounds, words or music; or combine these different forms of media into a resource that you can hear and see. 

Consider TED talks as examples of  online multimedia resources: TED talks. TED is a non-profit that hosts conferences where interesting thinkers and doers around the world give talks in roughly 18 minutes or less. They talk and use multiple kinds of media (text, pictures, animated demonstrations, sound effects) to share their works or ideas with their audience. These talks are recorded and then uploaded to the Web as a multimedia resource. For an example, see John Maeda's talk about design, simplicity and complexity: john_maeda_on_the_simple_life. 
 

Most importantly, though I do not know every detail of the Web or Internet, I know how to figure out the features I want from an online resource, how to search for or find it, and how to take steps towards integrating online resources into my life. What is missing from online resources and the Web/Internet information highway is not access. Being able to access online resources and content from any device that can surf the Web is the greatest value of the Web/Internet information highway because it allows you to access information from wherever you are and wherever your device can go. 

What's missing from the Web is our abilities to know what we are looking for (what challenge or problem we want solved or the questions for which we want answers). Only we can know them. Web browsers, search engines, some social networks and certain applications are getting better at predicting what we want access to based on our habits of Internet exploration, profile and activities, but only you can decide what you are looking for, and that is as it should be. Deciding what to look for--whether you are looking for a set of features, a resource with all or any of those features, or a particular kind of experience--is essential to an self-regulator's Web learning experience. Knowing how to search for those online resources and how to integrate them into your life are key skills for applying, not simply being entertained by, online technology resources. 

If you don't know very much about the Internet or the World Wide Web--or at least you do not know too many technical details about it. We can certainly use it to learn more about it. If you have not heard of Coursera, check out their web page: ABOUT COURSERA. They are a company that works with top universities to offer anyone in the world (who can access the Web) free non-credit courses (you can get certificate of completion) about different topics. One of the upcoming courses, "Internet History, Technology, and Security," with Dr. Charles Severance, starts on July 23, 2012 and will include interviews with  innovators who helped shape and develop the Internet. I'm registered!

Below is a list of some other helpful online resources for learning more about the Internet. 

• The first website: http://info.cern.ch/.
• A History of the Internet from the Computer History Museum.
• The Internet Society:  http://www.internetsociety.org/internet.
• "The Internet Explained":  http://www.southbourne.com/articles/internet-explained

Lastly, in his TED Talk, "Six Ways to Save the Internet," Roger McNamee offered some interesting remarks on the Internet, Software, and Hardware technology industries in 2011 and some interesting predictions and perspectives about the future development and use of the Internet. I am not sure how I currently think about such trends and predictions, but I know that some recent advancements from companies like Google (e.g. Google Play and the Google Nexus) and Microsoft (e.g. redesign of the Bing search engine to make it the first search engine with a social network integration; Search Goes Social) both challenge at least a little of what McNamee says and support part of what he says. Check it out.

This video is from the TEDxTalks Youtube Channel.

Human Application

©iStockphoto.com/aluxum  Cristian Baitg

For every task we complete, it is best to begin with what is essential to that task. No matter how complex the task, if you can break it down into doable time-bound tasks, you can complete it. However, if you are not completing what is essential to the task, you will not complete the task! In this post I am going to try completing an important, but complex task: discussing the relevance of learning and human application to each other. 

In my first post, I talked about how applying technology resources can help us do things that we ordinarily would not be able to do by virtue of one's abilities--strengths and weaknesses--alone. I said that human application involves more than entertainment or engagement alone. I also said that human application is a relationship between one's efforts to use one's abilities and something else used within a process to achieve some result by a deadline or throughout some duration. That something else could be technology resources. 

That something else will always involve using some of your learning skills, especially your sensory abilities, memory, attention, and other cognitive skills. Think about it. Using a technology resource to help you manage your time or take notes or store and organize computer files involves using your learning abilities to not simply learn how to use it, but also to actually use it. Try using your Evernote account or mobile device without looking about it or thinking about it. You can't! Looking and thinking about it are learning abilities, and you'll use them with everything you use or apply. 

I think a definition of learning is hard to give, but I’ll give it a shot and try to live with myself if my definition has flaws. I have a philosophical background, which analyses and synthesizes a lot and is hard for me to escape. Rationalists say the key is reason and reflection. Empiricists say the key is experience. I think reflection and experience are both important, but only when understood in terms of sensory and cognitive abilities that one has. Learning is something each individual can do, not something only a few are capable of because of gifts inherent in their natures.

I think that learning is more than what meets the eyes, ears, nose, taste and touch. Learning can involve these things, but not all learning topics require each one or any one them. A science of learning can look to internal processes of a mind to understand how learning and experience are more than observation. Yet, much of the scientific community seems to restrict itself to that which we can all observe out of a fear of generalizing private idiosyncrasies that either are not observable to all or do not apply to all instances for all observers. Unfortunately this puts some restrictions on scientific efforts to understand and defend the important roles of cognitive abilities in learning.

I think the five biggest restrictions one can put on learning, “scientific” or otherwise, are to (1) ignore data relevant to topics one wants to learn about, (2) assume that all things of a certain kind have the same fundamental, overall nature (e.g. assuming that human nature as common abilities exhausts the nature of an individual), (3) ignore differences, whether subtle or obvious, (4) commit fallacies in one’s reasoning, and (5) ignore, under use or sabotage one’s own cognitive abilities.

Learning also involves bodily activity to help manage information. We currently live and learn with technologies and other resources that we interact with to help us consume information, manage or store information, and create or share information.

So what is learning? Well, it involves using the sensory, cognitive, and bodily gifts inherent in one’s nature and those one has developed at a given time to acquire new skills or abilities, practice performing to meet some standard, acquire new knowledge, and understand what one knows in new ways. Conceptual abilities are essential to some types of learning. Sensory abilities are essential to some types of learning. Bodily abilities are essential to some types of learning. However, none of these three types of abilities are necessary for all kinds of learning. Memory and attention are!

Cognitive abilities, especially attention and memory, and the three kinds of aforementioned abilities—conceptual, sensory, and bodily—are building blocks that help us learn, develop and use more complex learning abilities like academic skills, professional skills, and self-management skills. 

Each of us understands what motor skills we have, in some sense, when we use them. Maybe you don’t know the anatomical, physiological, biomechanical, and neurological details of how you get around, but you at least have a user knowledge of decisions you make and for how to move your eyes, arms, legs and other parts of your body. Now consider what you mental or cognitive resources you use on a daily basis. You know, those powers of thinking, imagination, memory, attention and creativity, among others. You may not know every anatomical, physiological, or neurological detail about using them, but you make decisions to use them based on how you have used them before and your awareness of them. 

Yes, we can use technology resources to help us perform a task or achieve an objective. Doing so will require some knowledge of how that resource can be used. Knowing what is essential to that resource is a great start since what is accidental to it can change. Since you cannot use technology without the use of learning skills,  you should also know how to use your abilities strategically to accomplish what is essential to your task.

I said before that mere entertainment, though a good thing, especially for engaging people, is missing something that human application and learning involve. Remember that human application is a relationship between one's efforts to use one's abilities and something else used within a process to achieve some result by a deadline or throughout some duration. That something else could be technology resources or one's awareness of one's knowledge and abilities.

Human application of oneself or technology resources does involve using one's learning abilities--which are just sensory, cognitive, and bodily abilities that can be used to learn--but so does entertainment. Well, entertainment and and human application have that much in common, and being entertained certainly makes human application and learning much more enjoyable. However, there is something missing from entertainment alone that is in human application: effort to try improving something in your life, be it your own knowledge, learning abilities, or some result(s) external to you. Someone who is only entertaining oneself or only being entertained at the moment is content with not trying to improve some result, process, or ability outside of being entertained. When we learn, however, we are trying to improve our knowledge (e.g. learning a language, increasing your vocabulary, or looking at prior knowledge in new ways), our learning abilities themselves (e.g. increasing your memory or attention span), or some human application involving how one can apply one's abilities to some complex task (e.g. work on the job, professional development, or designing a course). Human application involves trying to improve.

Other than the fact that learning skills are used every time you use technology resources or do any task whatsoever, what unites learning and applying technology in ways that point to specific tasks to be completed? What is the glue that holds together all of our efforts to learn, to complete a task, or to apply technology resources? Value! For value, we must also look at and inside ourselves to figure out what we want, need, and can benefit from. We must look inward for value, room for improvement, and for developing awareness of our capabilities if we are to learn, perform, and live well. 

If we are to find new ways to apply technology resources to get or do what we value, then we must also look at what we are able to do in new ways. If you can increase your awareness of your skills and abilities, you can not only use them more strategically to accomplish your tasks or apply technology to accomplish your task well, but also look at your abilities in new ways. If you can look at your abilities in new ways, you can find new, more effective ways of applying yourself and your technology resources to growing past your current limits--to learning, performing, and living well. 

Technology Resources

Superheroes. Let's begin with the idea of special powers that make one capable of transcending regular, human limits to accomplish tasks that you want to complete. If you could be any superhero, who would you be?

©iStockphoto.com/PeskyMonkey

If I could be any superhero, I would be The Flash because he can act, react, and think at superhuman speeds—that is, speeds that ordinary humans cannot—but can also live with ordinary humans without being separated from civilization or left behind. 


Whereas humans need calculators, computer software, or teams of people to displace the time it would take one person’s mental and physical efforts to find answers and communicate them, The Flash does not. He can think at high speeds and, thus, perform mental procedures (e.g. calculating and weighing business costs and benefits or thinking about how to communicate something to someone) with relative ease as compared to ordinary humans. Whereas humans use technology to save time and skip mental or physical work, The Flash does not. 

However, being able to slow down and take one’s time is vital to enjoying oneself and relating to other humans. If one was stuck thinking and acting at the speeds that The Flash can think or act at, then one would sacrifice one’s ability to relate to humans, which is the very fabric necessary for business, family, friendship, or any human relationship. We can imagine The Flash trying to dance with a lady at super speeds; it just would not work out for him if he was stuck in super speed mode. Luckily, The Flash is not stuck in superhuman speed. He can enjoy the best of both worlds, the human and the superhuman.

Check out the profile for The Flash at the DC Comics website: The Flash. On July 12, 2012, it read:

"High-speed Internet, 4G wireless, the latest operating system for the industry's most souped-up laptop... and it's all still a snail's pace to The Flash."

The Flash can travel faster than the information you access through your applications on your operating system and the data traveling to and from your device (computer, tablet, or phone) through your Internet connection or connection to a 4G wireless network. We can imagine The Flash outpacing wireless networks...

This video is from the T-Mobile Youtube Channel.

Check out Verizon 4G, Sprint 4G, and AT&T 4G. 

My overall point in discussing The Flash or superheros in general is not that we should try to emulate superheroes or measure how much faster a DC comics superhero is than your 4G network. My point is that the human application of technology resources can be like superhuman powers that superheroes use. Technology resources can be applied or used to do things that we ordinarily cannot do by virtue of our own abilities alone. 

It’s no news flash: We are human. I am not the Flash. Neither are you. We live as people with different strengths and weaknesses, but we all have limits to our abilities--mental and physical--that restrict what we can accomplish. We can do much of what the Flash can do, but not at the same speed.


Applying technology resources to the tasks we want to do can help us get these tasks completed--completed much faster than without applying them! Think about it. Let's say you want to calculate how much tip to leave your waiter or waitress. When you use a calculator program or calculation function in a program on your device, you can calculate the amount in a minute, perhaps less. You don't need any secrets of doing math in your head or pen and paper. The application of computer software can displace the time it would take one person’s mental and physical efforts to find answers. This is because the application of the software displaces the mental and physical efforts you would otherwise do. So can other applying technology resources!


Human application is a relationship between one's efforts to use one's abilities and something else used within a process to achieve some result by a deadline or throughout some duration. Applying technology resources can help us do more things during shorter periods of time, but application is not merely using technology for entertainment. Entertainment is important, especially for engaging people. However, entertainment alone guarantees neither results and processes outside of being entertained nor sustainable learning   and capacity building. Human application involves more, which I will discuss in another blog post.


To conclude this discussion, consider again The Flash. Though we should not emulate The Flash and try moving or thinking at speeds faster than the transfer of data across 4G networks, we can do four important things. First, we can integrate 4G networks and their benefits into our lives. Second, we can try moving, thinking and living at speeds appropriate for our abilities (e.g. typing a blog entry in an hour), our relationships (e.g. the instructor's relationships with his or her students), and our processes and efforts to get results. Third, we can try getting better at doing these things with practice, by building awareness of our abilities, and by developing additional abilities. Lastly, we can apply technology resources to help us accomplish things that we ordinarily would not be able to do by virtue of our mental and physical abilities alone. 


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Author's Note: I enjoyed writing this first post and I hope you all did as well. Keep reading, and be sure to check out my next post about human application.