Jeff: Hello, and welcome to an EdTechTalk discussion of Dave Cormiers learning in a time of abundance. This is Jeff Lebow in Busan Korea.
Jen: My name is Jennifer Majorle, in Laval, Wisconsin.
John: My name is John Shinker, and I'm in still Ohio.
Dave: And I'm Dave Cormier. I'm in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Jeff: And we are a gang of old friends and Ed tech talkers.
Jeff: Who haven't been active in a while.
Jeff: but are gathered here to discuss Dave's new book
Jeff: and but today we're gonna be talking about his introduction. But since it has been a while
Jeff: and it is possible that we might have new viewers. Well, it's possible we won't have any viewers, but some of them might be new, and in that case we thought a little background, information and introduction of ourselves might be in order. I. In. In Dave's introduction he writes back about the early days of being locked out of a classroom and making the switch from textbook to internet. In the late nineties. I was around for those days.
Jeff: I was looking through our old messages, and we were exchanging netscape voice mails. I wasn't able to open them. But I'll download a Codec. And somehow hopefully figure that out
Jeff: there were mentions of 6 A. M. Song room.
Jeff: outings and and whatnot. But anyway, so we've been friends for a very long time, and in 2,005 we started this little site called Ed tech talk that blossomed into a community of educators talking about Ed tech stuff
Jeff: I currently teach at a university in Poussin Korea, where?
Jeff: I use
Jeff: technology in a variety of ways to torture my students and facilitate learning.
Jeff: That's me. Who are you, Jen?
Jen: Thank you. Yes, I think I was next to the party. I was in grad school. I was getting my masters at the time.
Jen: and I needed a class project. And so I was a fan girl of Ed tech talk. And so
Jen: I wrote off and said, Would you have a need for some assistance on your webcam. I think it was called at the time right Red Webcast Academy teaching folks how to use all the the tools that were available for folks to do webcasting at the time. And yeah, I got a response back, and and then the rest is history there the next? I guess we're saying like 9, 19 years, I think that we've we've known each other
Jen: and I think in in person. I've only E met each of you once, which is still kind of, I think, kind of cool. Maybe, Jeff, I've met you twice. Maybe. Yeah, I think maybe we did a conference or something. So yeah, very, very close friends who really haven't had a chance to meet so much in person. But spent tons of times to every Sunday night right for about 10 years, plus we we were together and so in the in the interim. After that first greeting I
Jen: continued, my education, finished my Phd, and then I've started a nonprofit in the meantime. And I currently teach at University of Virginia. So that's my story.
John: And I'm the relative newcomer. I was a listener, started listening to the podcast. In 2,000, late, 2,005 and
John: although
John: some of you may differ. I I had blogged about this, the the podcast. Not being quite so groundbreaking, and that
John: I was commenting on Jennifer being a breath of fresh air to the group.
John: and was called out on it.
John: So the actual words were, So you think you can do better, and and was drafted to
John: to
John: come. Talk to you guys and make fun of you every
John: I am. I'm working in K 12. Education for my whole career. This is the end of year 31, where I talked for
John: 6 or 8 years middle school and high school computer applications and coding, and then have been the guy in charge of technology and public school districts since that so worked in
John: 4 different school districts now, and I've been in my current one for 4 years. And
John: I'm basically responsible for all things
John: tech making all of that stuff work. But really the exciting work is, is, what effect does this have on teaching and learning. And how do we do things with technology that we can't do without?
John: So that's been my
John: focus for the last 30 years.
Dave: So my name is Dave Cormier. I currently work at the University of Windsor. As a learning specialist I have a bit of a I think of myself as an educational vagabond. I kind of wandered around a bit. I've worked I started working as a teacher near Jeff, and then eventually kind of close to Jeff.
Dave: And he did save my tail any number of times. The first couple of years I was trying to do this. So I I I both blame and thank Jeff for starting me down the Ed tech path many, many years ago.
Dave: And for me this has always been about how the technology changes, what it means to learn, like what it means to be in a classroom, what it means to do those things and through being in I've done
Dave: recruitment retention communications. I've been an educator. I've done Ed tech inside the K 12 system. I've managed to Med school for a while. I've done all kinds of different jobs and always sort of peeking around trying to figure out how the system works and how we can make it a little bit better, maybe.
Dave: Right now I spend. I teach in the faculty of education at my university, and I also help faculty understand how the digital impacts their classrooms. And I just wrote a book.
Jen: Which is why we're here.
Jeff: Can I.
Jen: Segue that is beautiful, that is beautiful. Alright. So if the guys are okay, are you ready for me to jump in and fire some questions that are good friend, date.
Jeff: Please, do.
Jen: Alright. So, Dave, let's start out with the title of the book learning in a time of abundance. I like the title, but I like the second part better. Personally, little editorial comment. Here the community is the curriculum. I think we're gonna spend a lot more time, at least, in my my series of questions. We're focusing in on the introduction, and we'll, I think. Oh, I don't think we mentioned this, but our plan is to continue this as a as a weekly installment going through sections of the book. And we're just kind of starting out slowly here.
Jen: Going through the introduction, and we're gonna spend a lot of time talking more about the abundance part of this of your of your title. If that's okay with you, and you certainly can, you know, add some other things to that. But let's start out with kind of a softball. Here you're you've been a blogger for a long time. We've just kind of gone through your history being a a webcaster, you know. Why, a book what you know and I kind of I in my questions here, which I gave you a chance to look at? I kind of sarcastically said.
Jen: Where your blog post to confining. Did you need more, you know. More space, more words. But yeah, kinda give it us. Give us the the reason why your motivations. Why? Why did you write the book.
Dave: There. There are probably 3 things the first thing is, I've always wanted to write a book. I started trying to write one when I was 22 it's still out there somewhere. The that I tried and failed and started a publishing company with the whole idea that I was gonna publish books my whole life.
Dave: So there's always been this sort of thought in the back of my head that sometime on my to do list was getting a book written.
Dave: This person at a conference about 5 years ago, came up to me and went. I just can't. It's not enough time. Did you write a book or something?
Dave: And I was like.
Dave: I I suppose I could do that literally. That was the whole part of that conversation, and it just stuck with me.
Dave: Also, I've been trying to explain the same kinds of things for a long time.
Dave: and I find that it is too confining. The blogs are too confined. I'm afraid, to say that I know you're joking, but I think you're right. I just. I wanted to try to. I've I've been thrown a number of people's books over the years and gone. We'll just read this
Dave: in that. Here's this big concept that somebody is trying to explain and get through it. So I wanted to at least sort of take the work that that I've tried to do, and the thoughts that I've stolen from all my friends and put them together into one spot, so I could sort of say, like, this is the piece I'm trying to. This is what I'm trying to say.
Dave: and in a way that one could be brought to other people so like the people who've come back to me and talked to me about the book. So far most of them are not educators. Most of them are not my colleagues. Most of them are just random people in my life that I happen to know at some level who read a book in a way that would have never read a blog post. Right? So it it reaches another group of people that I would never, ever do. And the fifth of my 3 reasons is that
Dave: it's on the vague hope that it ends up on a policy maker's desk, because my blog is never going to get there.
Dave: But there's a chance that the book does. And so
Dave: it's another chance, another, another attempt at trying to impact
Dave: the discussion in the field in the ways that I think are important.
Jen: Yeah.
Jeff: What title? I'm just curious. When did you cement the title? Did you start with it? Did it occur along the way, or at the end.
Dave: I had a bunch of different ones. It the
Dave: lease gallery passett. Who you guys might know from. I think times higher.
Dave: One of the she's a writer, anyway. She works at at Georgetown.
Dave: and candles. She and I had been talking about this, and I was about 2 months into starting to write the book, and she goes, what are you trying to talk about? We went back and forth and back and forth. I'm like, Oh, basically, it's abundance. That's the thing that I'm actually talking about. And once I had that, I basically had a version of the title, it went through a bunch of variations, and the community's curriculum has been part of it from the beginning
Dave: that I always knew that it's the underlying concept of all the work that I've been trying to do. So it's it's sort of the.
Jeff: Do you remember any of the alternatives.
Dave: I have a list of them somewhere. I'll get them for the next.
Jeff: Show notes.
Dave: Within the show notes. Yeah, I have a list of them somewhere. I had tried them out, and there's a whole bunch of crazy things that that were in there. But I'll I'll get them in.
Jen: You know what I'm gonna go off script for my next question. I wanna loop John in, because this is like before we even get to the introduction there. Your acknowledgments, and very prominently described. You said that John was instrumental and kind of keeping the project moving. At least that's the way I interpreted what you were saying. So do you have any comments on that? And, John, if you wanted to kind of talk about your your involvement.
John: I think he I think he over it, overstated my contributions. I I just kept asking when the book is going to be done, because I want to buy the book handed to people and say you need to read this because
John: I I mean, we've known Dave for almost 20 years now trying to summarize. Dave
John: is really hard to do. It's easier to hand someone book. So I just kept saying, I need book. Where's the book? And
John: you know. Do you need me to read a chapter? Do you need me to make some comments? And then he foolishly allowed me to read some of it
John: many times.
John: and gave him some comments, and that created the next 3 years work for him.
John: But it was. It was fun to go through that process, especially knowing Dave and knowing what
John: trying to say and knowing how he talks and how he logs it. And really the book is a different voice. It's still very much, Dave, but it's a different voice from what you would hear on podcast. Or what you would read in the blog post. And so it it was kind of fun watching that transformation from Dave
John: talking things out and getting them on onto the screen and then
John: watching that
John: become a book was really cool.
Jeff: In the spirit of keeping traditions alive. John, I don't love your audio.
Jeff: Oh, no.
Dave: That feels good.
Jeff: Little tinny like. I'm wondering if you're using the onboard mic.
Dave: I'd like to go back like while John is figuring out his audio. He's a bold face. Liar! He.
Jeff: That is.
Dave: We did an awful lot on on a detail level on a day to day level, having somebody who
Dave: who trusts you enough to tell you how bad something is is essential for this kind of pro part, this kind of project, and there are a bunch of different moments where Tom is like no.
Dave: no.
John: First? Is this any better?
Jeff: I think so.
John: Audio-wise.
Jeff: Maybe what do we think?
John: Little tiny little tinny. Oh, okay, hmm!
John: That's all of the microphones that I have right here.
Jeff: Yeah, is it an like, are you on a laptop?
Jeff: Yeah.
Jeff: I feel like it's using the onboard mic, and.
John: If you're not distant.
John: It was using the onboard mic and I switched to this mic.
John: What's the matter.
Jen: Sounds better.
Jeff: Okay. Alright. I was just.
Jen: Oh! This is this is.
Jeff: Is this?
Dave: Together blast from just like the old days.
John: Yeah, right? I tried to get the the camera as bad as possible, too, but.
Dave: And.
Jeff: And we should get on the record. Do you have pants on.
Jen: That's right.
Jen: Oh, Gotcha! I wish I'd have answered that.
John: I can't really wish them.
Jen: I don't know that wedding.
Dave: Yeah. Don't get them like.
Jeff: In the video. By the way.
John: Dave and I met with me making fun of them, right? So
John: I that can't be anything. I can't give him any feedback, except here's my reaction to the thing that I'm reading
John: And actually, I've I do that with a lot of people, and some of them are appreciative of that, and very gracious about it, and some of them are really not.
John: But that that's all I can do is here. Let me read this and look at it through my lens, and I'll let you know what I think, and then you're going to go make
John: of it what you will, so.
Dave: Plus his grammar is really strong, which is actually really helpful as well.
Dave: Which I didn't know at all. But he's he's got. He's one of those people as a really good eye for the mistakes of others. Take that, however, you like but he did a really nice job of picking out a lot of sort of just badly formed paragraphs, and that kind of stuff, too. So it's really helpful.
Jeff: And his audio is better. And since we're slow walking this a bit, let's not overlook Mom.
Jeff: The dedication is for my mother, who still teaches me how to face uncertainty, which implies that you. This uncertainty is not a new thing.
Jeff: that you have grown up with uncertainty.
Jeff: Anything you'd like to say to Mom.
Dave: Yeah, so my mother is my mother was my baseball coach and my hockey coach.
Dave: My mother taught an entire
Dave: years of hockey players how to stop both ways, but could only do it one way.
Dave: She taught us all how to do, risk shots in hockey, but didn't know how to do it herself.
Dave: She fixed my pitching stands, having never pitched in her life.
Dave: She's one of these people who can just look at a situation. We'll try hard enough at it and just beat it until it
Dave: submits.
Dave: And in a super optimistic and super positive way.
Dave: John spent a lot of time around my mother, and probably has a sense for what that looks like.
John: Awesome. But Dave's mom and my wife are besties online, and it's hilarious because they've they met on that one occasion for weekend. And I think it's more than anything else. Teresa
John: does not
John: care to have filters.
John: and she's gonna tell you
John: what she sees and the way it is, and what you need to do, and
John: you're gonna do it or not. And if you don't, then you're wrong.
Dave: Even if in this case you happens to be the lawn mower following one phone call, which is just before I wrote this dedication, and I got a phone call with my mother, and she's like I had a chat with a lawn mower today.
Dave: and she goes. I was out and stopped running when I was mowing the lawn. My father passed away a few years ago. So Mom is now taking over all these tasks, and learning how not only to drive the lawn, moreover, but to repair it. So she goes. I had the laptop out on top of the, or I guess ipad out on top of the lawn mower, going through Youtube videos, trying to figure out how to fix it. And it fixed right after I had a serious conversation with it, and told it that if it did not fix, I was gonna take it back and get another one, and that was the last thing she had to say to it. Apparently it worked after that, so.
Jen: I know where.
Dave: Yeah, I did.
Jeff: Alright, I think we can move on to sentence number 2.
Jen: Alright. Okay. Well, let's circle back to the comments you were making about. Audience a little bit and when we over for all the years we did. I'm gonna give a little preface to the question over all the years we did at tech weekly. It was very much for an an audience of geeks. Really, even, I think, even just like on a general educators, would have even been a little unsure of what we were talking about. I don't think we always know what we're talking about. So what is it like? Kind of that process of
Jen: writing for a more general audience yet kind of keeping that same important message that you're trying to drive through, that you've been like you said talking about for years.
Dave: That's a great question.
Dave: some of it was.
Dave: I had a couple of people in my head who I was thinking about and trying to explain this to
Dave: I think over the years having started out a lot of my talks, talking about French postmodernism and rhizomes, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I got to the point where I realized that
Dave: having to explain everything to someone first, so they can understand the context before you can explain something to them. It's not very helpful.
Dave: So th the that was the voice I was trying to find for the book was, we're talking about a a really complex system in education, an extraordinarily complex concept and learning.
Dave: and then trying to talk to people in their everyday lives for how they've seen this because one of the criticisms that I have for a lot of educational theory is it talks about education as if it's removed from life.
Dave: What talks about learning is that is removed from life. And education system necessarily kind of is. But we learn all the time right? So one of the things I talk about in the book. You know, you can learn to be a bad person.
Dave: Learning is something we do automatically, and I think there's something in everybody's everyday experience where we have a connection to learning. And it was that piece I was trying to reach
Dave: so that I could provide some context
Dave: for the overall concept. So it took some work. The the
Dave: John and Lori were helpful. With that the editors were helpful with that.
Dave: and then, just I had my sister in my head the whole time.
Dave: Right? I'm
Dave: she's smart but she doesn't know anything about the field, and she's pig headed so I was really trying to convince her.
Jeff: She read the book, and what does she think?
Dave: She read a draft actually before it went in. I I got very rapid responses. My sister doesn't have doesn't spend a lot of time in any one issue. She's perfect as a judge, actually, because she can take in all the information, give a ruling and then move on
Dave: and she was the same way with book. She gave a lot a lot of good feedback. Actually she she followed along so she enjoyed it.
Dave: She's a bit more straight line and rigid than I am, though so some of the
Dave: wandering approaches to education are probably not quite her thing.
Jen: I think my comment last week was, I noticed your sentences were very short, and I was very surprised by that.
Jen: Either you had a really like an editor.
Dave: No.
Jen: Was me. It was.
Dave: It was very. I very much tried to write that way. I was trying to write in a sort of quick, staccato way that made it approachable and sounded
Dave: and and sort of space the language out so that it sounded. I've never really thought about this consciously. So if I'm kind of wandering all over the place. I apologize.
Dave: but I was looking for this sort of conversational tone, so that when you read it you'd kind of be fighting with me in your head the whole time.
Dave: And that's or agreeing with me or coming out. And it's it's it's been. It's kind of worked out because I've had.
Dave: like a few dozen people, come back to me and and
Dave: talk to me about the book.
Dave: and
Dave: I can tell that they were having a whole conversation, because some of the stuff they're coming to me with. It's not in the book.
Dave: Like. There's a whole other piece they're bringing to it, too.
John: In my mind. I challenged you on this, and then you rebutted with that.
Dave: That's right. That's right. That's right.
Dave: Yeah, that's cool.
Jeff: You say education is separated from real life.
Dave: Yeah, totally. The system of education learning is.
John: And school are separate.
Dave: Yeah, can you select?
Jeff: Rate, on that.
Dave: Sure, when I talk about education, I mean, I'm not saying this is every definition of education, but the one that I use in the book is that education is when you're talking about the system.
Dave: So teachers and schools and curriculi and all the rest of that.
Dave: And learning is the thing that happens to humans.
Dave: And if you look at just today, we got a new announcement that cell phones are not allowed in schools in Ontario
Dave: which they announced 3 years ago, too, and 2 years ago, too, they keep announcing it.
Dave: But it's just. There's no way to talk about the way that people learn without the Internet anymore
Dave: like it, it's just not real life.
Dave: And so, having learning happen separately from that or education happen without that, to me is another one of those cases where we step away from the way people learn in their regular lives, or we'll work, learn in their work lives, or any of the other parts of their life.
Jeff: With the way the education system currently is not necessarily.
Jeff: That's what it has to be.
Dave: I don't think it has to be. I understand that you end up with some structure like you need to put some structure in place like kids have to be bussed around places. Maybe.
Dave: There are buildings, and John will tell you that you need to connect wires to things or something I don't know
Dave: but.
Jeff: And none of which necessitates being separated from your life.
Dave: It, doesn't. It really does. I mean, good teachers have been doing this for generations. I'm not suggesting it doesn't happen in any classrooms.
Dave: But I know a lot of people who think of, you know, we're just shoving facts into people's heads.
Dave: and that's what we should be doing right? That's their perspective. That's that's what doing your job means.
Dave: yeah, which is not the way anybody lives their life.
Jen: Got got your answer, Jeff.
Jeff: Yes, thank you. Page 2.
Jen: So weird to have a script. Okay. So now let's let's kinda we got you the learning and the title.
Jen: We don't have to do time, we could skip that. So let's just hop right into abundance. So actually, in my notes, I talked about abundance. I interpret that as being abundance of information? So can you kind of take us through? Are you speaking of other things besides abundance of information, or what? What do you? What is your what are your thoughts on abundance that you're trying to describe to us?
Dave: I fudge that throughout the book you copy?
Dave: So I do. It is definitely information about ends and the separation between information, scarcity, and information. Abundance, I think, is one of those fundamental shifts that's happened to us.
Dave: I also think there's an there's an abundance of connection as well that goes along with that. So I was talking to a bank manager today
Dave: about her daughter's cell phone usage. Not sure why this keeps happening to me.
Dave: But
Dave: how? And I was saying that you know they're in constant contact, and there's something exhausting about that. And there's some. There's an expectation that comes along with that, and there's an abundance of connection that comes in with that. That's very, very different than what my childhood was like.
Dave: Right? I spent a lot of time waiting to meet my friends
Dave: or having just left my friends, and they don't have that experience, or
Dave: they're waiting. And their friends could be connecting, and they're not
Dave: right, whereas when my friends weren't connecting with me, there was no chance for them to do so anyway.
Dave: So I wasn't in that constant sort of
Dave: space where I was knowing that I was being ignored, whether they are or not.
Dave: and I think that that abundance of connection.
Dave: for instance, is another place in which the the technologies really change the way that we interact at a social level.
Dave: And I think it changes like there's all kinds of ways that connection changes things like there are lots of people now who never actually learn anything for themselves. All they do is ask someone else.
Dave: because they're never actually alone.
Dave: Cause I'll just what do I do? This tick?
Dave: so yeah, I think that abundance spreads out. But it's all about the way that the digital sort of
Dave: provides and over provides, as the case may be.
Jen: Yeah. And and one thing that I really walked away. Was this idea that it's it is a new reality. It's more than just having information, because we've had.
Jen: especially now, like we've had decades where we have Wikipedia where people weren't. You know, we're kind of freaked out. And what does that mean?
Dave: Still are.
Jen: You are right, and you know Google will let you go all off into all kinds of different directions and tangents. But I think you're really
Jen: the way I interpret it again is like, like, really like, now that we we do have a new reality where.
Dave: You.
Jen: This is just even we were kind of joking before we signed on that. You know, we've been doing this 20 years. Some folks haven't even maybe weren't even born that are now going to be teachers pretty soon. But so what? What folks who have grown up with this? And now this is their reality.
Jen: Could you want to speak to that at all like wh. How you how you frame that because I think that was mentioned several times in the introduction that it's like our new reality.
Dave: Yeah, I think the ways like, there's a bunch of examples in there where talk about
Dave: how like I talk about going to the doctor, and how, being a doctor has changed so much in the last cause, I and I basing that on like the 10 months I spent in the Med school. But I talked to a lot of doctors, and this is a conversation I kept bringing up
Dave: and
Dave: like, especially for emergency doctors. The experience is so different. You know. People come in and go. I have this.
Dave: and then
Dave: often. Usually they're wrong, or at least partially wrong or kind of wrong or right, but don't understand the context, or whatever that is.
Dave: And so they don't have the authority they used to have.
Dave: There are other ways in which them, lacking that authority is probably okay, because there are ways in which no doctor can know everything, and I think there are certainly doctors who took advantage of that
Dave: that sort of one way, one directional sort of approach to information. Right? They had it, and they could withhold it or give it when they wanted to.
Dave: But our experience with doctors is fundamentally changed in that way. The power structures change the ability of people to find out about things and coming in with those different perspectives has really changed.
Dave: And because now, if you have a feeling, you could spend 4 h on a variety of websites discussing what that feeling might be. And so any of these oper, and then all of the Facebook reels, or Instagram reels or Tiktoks, or whatever you happen to do, will all start getting
Dave: filled with whatever that is, thereby reinforcing whatever it is, whatever dark hole you've gone down, it's because the abundance comes at you from all these different ways. So
Dave: you've had this thought, you jump in as you jump into the Internet and start finding out about it. And then you start getting
Dave: remarketing on Facebook from some company that sells pills for that, and then, like it all comes at you right.
Dave: And we're just. There's nothing that we've done to prepare us for that.
Dave: We don't have any tools.
Jen: And so one of you. I don't think you mentioned this in your example, that you that you drew from your from the introduction with the doctor example.
Jen: I think it also comes into play in terms of what does a doctor need to learn when they have at their disposal? You know, ipad, or whatever it is that they're standing in front of the patient with. So how now? Making this kind of segue now getting into thinking about from an educational standpoint. From a learning standpoint. We spent countless weeks on our prior years of webcast talking about what it means to learn and how we should be teaching and what it means to be a good learner, so
Jen: kind of helping us, for you know, to foreshadow what you're gonna be talking about in subsequent chapters of the book. How does an abundance of information impact these
Jen: issues? I just mentioned, both positively and negatively. Just kind of throw some at us just to kind of give us a sense of how this is covered in the book.
Jeff: Just to add to that question in the book you talk about the disdain patients might have for a doctor who's using his phone to look something up, and my reaction was, no, I'd actually have disdain for a doctor who's not using AI or not using tools. And I don't know if I'm a typical patient or not. But
Jeff: just that was my thought related to that question.
John: Well, but then, you, you know, are you disagreeing with the doctor? If they land on a different site from the one that you went to. And so they determined that you actually don't have cancer.
Jeff: Ultimately I want them to have reliable medical Gpt.
John: Right like.
Jeff: Can use.
John: I'm not sure reliable fits with all those other words, but.
Jen: That's in another chapter, right?
Jeff: Yeah, yeah, we're getting ahead of our snow.
Dave: The fact that we've come up with 4 different ways of looking at this to me is indicative of the problem
Dave: right? So whatever way you look at it like we all have these different. The the relationships we have with doctors used to be pretty set
Dave: right. You'd go to the doctor. The doctor would tell you what was wrong, or they wouldn't, because they didn't know. But then you were done. You could get a second opinion, and we have that sort of cultural idiom that that's out there about getting a second opinion. But that involves you going to a doctor and having them tell you whether or not you had something wrong with you. That was the whole relationship.
Dave: We couldn't have opinions about which way it should work
Dave: right. And that's where, when you look at the way that I haven't answered your question yet, Jen, but that's because we are distracted by these other comments.
Jen: We have an abundance of questions.
Dave: Yeah, abundance of questions. So I think that
Dave: that's another thing we have to worry about right? And I think part of the whole landscape here, and I didn't say a lot of this in the book, because I'm not a psychiatrist.
Dave: but I think a lot of the landscape here of anxiety here
Dave: is about how many choices people need to make.
Dave: And you don't just make the decision to go to the doctor. You have all these other contexts around. How you go to the doctor, what do I want from them? What do I expect from them? What's this relationship gonna be?
Dave: What do I need to read before I get there. How much do I trust this person? Should I go to that?
Dave: And that doesn't even mention alternative medicine and all this other stuff that's out there around people's health as well.
Dave: To go back to Jen's question.
Dave: which is going to be restated by Jen. I hope so. I'm actually getting it right
Dave: hanging in my head there for a minute, and.
Jen: No. So yeah, you know, we're kind of talking generally about abundance of information. You use the doctor example. And so I was saying.
Dave: How do they learn?
Jen: Yeah. So how? How they learn? How do we teach? What it? What does it mean to be a good learner, which I think is kind of a we could. I have a whole section on all of these topics, but just kind of as a preview of kind of how how you frame these things within the book.
Jen: One.
Dave: So.
Jen: Your general thoughts.
Dave: I wanna, drop a couple of pieces of context here. Most of the cognitive science literature around how we should teach
Dave: will tell us that we should really focus on background knowledge before we get into any higher level. Thinking like you need the background knowledge before you can do anything else.
Dave: That setup for learning is a setup for experts. Right? So that's me learning about science. So I can get a Phd. In that kind of science.
Dave: It doesn't work for any of the rest of us who don't become experts in whatever field we're learning, because then we may learn like
Dave: I don't. Maybe John has used a lot of calculus in his life, but I have not
Dave: and we learn all these things with the expectation that we might take that pathway to expertise.
Dave: But there's a
Dave: there's an opportunity cost there of deepening our knowledge on things that we might actually use
Dave: and because of that, they're looking at the success of chess players, for instance. So if you're developing a good chess player, they need to memorize everything so they can have all of the moves in their head so they can see all the moves right closed idea. It's a game with ways to win and lose, but those are the models that the
Dave: that end of the field would want us to follow right? Because they're looking to build the scientists of tomorrow.
Dave: whereas I don't think our particularly K. 12 schools are in the business of preparing our scientists for tomorrow. I'd like them to do good with citizens
Dave: who can make good decisions on regular everyday things. So saying that
Dave: I don't think our education system should be designed overall to make doctors. We do that in doctor school. So the thing I have to say about doctor School doesn't necessarily apply to everything else at the point I'm trying to make.
Dave: But, doctor School
Dave: I don't know why, I love saying that so much. But I really do.
Dave: is there's a whole lot of sort of facty business that you need to put into your head according to the way that the system is set up.
Dave: though most of them are looking, are moving towards a competency based approach
Dave: rather than a fact based approach. So all medical schools all around the world are making that transition.
Dave: we have traditionally said, you need to learn this background knowledge. Now, the truth is, it's this background knowledge
Dave: amongst this much knowledge in the small amount that I can show you in 2 years, which is in Canada, at least the amount of time you spend before you go and do. Your first placement
Dave: is maybe the same size.
Dave: but the overall size of what's available has expanded exponentially around it.
Dave: So while we could do it the same way.
Dave: what we're gonna find is doctors increasingly need to go beyond that basic knowledge to be able to answer the sort of day to day questions that they're dealing with.
Dave: That's not to say that. Go ahead.
John: Instead of a a year. 3 Med student knowing 1% of all of the stuff they're know. They now know point 0 0 one, because you can't. You can't keep them in Med school for 100 years.
Dave: That's right, which is not to say that there are definitely skills that we should just train people to do. So. I'll give you an example. I bought a lot of pigs feet
Dave: while I was at the Med school.
Dave: You buy them in bulk. You put them in the freezer, and the students take them out, put slices in them, and use them to practice suturing.
Dave: I. There's no other way around learning how to suture but suturing.
Dave: and there are lots of skills in the Med school that you should definitely just friggin practice until you get it right. I have a terrible stitch in this left hand from when I put a chisel into my hand 2 years ago, which will tell you that there's at least one Med student who did not learn how to stitch.
John: In all fairness. That was your mom.
Dave: It was not but I. So I'm not saying there aren't skills you should train. I'm saying that overall
Dave: we're we're getting a smaller and smaller subset of what's overall available doesn't mean there aren't core skills. It doesn't mean there aren't like I'm still there are people who would argue against me. But I still think memorizing things like times tables is useful. Think there's a subset of things that are just useful to memorize. It's just an understanding that that subset is not gonna help you with life as much as it would have
Dave: 50 years ago.
Dave: So.
Jeff: No, it will.
Dave: And I
Dave: oh, so imagine like learning with the abundance, right? So what we need to learn how to do
Dave: so and again, using the everyday example here of the the heat pump that I bought from my house in December.
Dave: My furnace stopped.
Dave: I've been kind of thinking about trying to change the way my house gets heated. But I had vaguely thought about it. And then suddenly, I have like 6 h to try to make a decision and trying to pull in enough information and sift through all of the marketing that's involved, and try to understand
Dave: where I'm being misled, where there are bad actors who are trying to influence me. And then eventually, at some point, there's no right answer. You just have to decide.
Dave: That's what real life looks like.
Dave: And I think the more we do that in our classrooms, the more we help our students
Dave: with scaffolding and structure and feedback on how they make decisions about how they learn, the more they're going to be prepared for dealing with all this abundance.
Jeff: And the kind of navigating their way through like I'd rather have a doctor who's really good at finding the connections he needs to make to diagnose me than someone who can suit your well, because eventually they're gonna be using the sutertron 300. That does it perfectly every time.
Dave: I mean.
Jeff: Able to find the information connect to the expert. Have AI analyze my X-rays or whatever to get the best outcome.
Dave: What's interesting. You say that cause there's a lot of the stuff they teach is about flowchart decision making. So when you look at if I don't know if they're any house fans, but it's never lupus
Dave: but
Dave: they have a way of at like you do a test, and that test breaks off this part of Flowchart. You do a test that for breaks off this part so that you slowly whittle down from what it could be based on what you're seeing through testing to what it might be.
Dave: And it's not accurate. I mean, anybody who's been to the doctor with something that isn't visibly broken will tell like
Dave: it's often a journey.
Dave: But it's all flowcharts.
Dave: So a
Dave: system it doesn't have to be AI. Actually, it just could be like a literal algorithmic system that just
Dave: sort of helps you down the flow chart. And they're kind of using that, anyway.
Dave: The AI part scares me a little more than it scares you, Jeff.
Dave: And again.
Jeff: Haven't studies shown that AI is better at
Jeff: analyzing a lot like X-rays or
Jeff: different medical tests.
Jeff: And it's early on. I mean, you've got to think that's going to get better.
Dave: I mean, I'm I'm sure there are tasks that it can do better, I think.
Dave: What? Again those back of the napkin conversations with the doctors would tell me is that
Dave: if they had the chance of knowing everything
Dave: or convincing their patients to do what they were told, 100% of them chose, convince my patients to do what they're told.
Dave: which is not something. The AI system's gonna do.
Dave: So to me, I think the identification part is important, but it's really not the job unless you're.
Jeff: Otherwise they should be learning more social skills and negotiation skills.
Dave: I would love that that'd be fantastic.
Dave: And actually, those those courses don't go over very well inside the Med schools, as I understand it. Certainly in in the Med school I worked in, and others I've talked about because those kids have been brought up. They're they're the ones who got 100 on everything
Dave: right. They're the ones who've been rewarded for getting everything right
Dave: for having the right answer to the question. And so you bring them into the socialness of medicine class. And suddenly, they're like, what do you want me to do?
Dave: What's the question? What's the test?
Dave: How do I get? How do I get a hundred on this?
Dave: So the idea of exploring their feet like not all of them. There's some
Dave: amazing students that I work with who were more than ready to jump on that journey, but a lot of them were not.
Dave: That's hard to teach, too.
Jeff: Kind of raises the question of expertise, which I think might be the next question.
Jen: It is. You guys just keep seeing up these circuits for me. Yeah. So this is a bit of a pivot. To kind of drilling down now and then additional themes that were covered in the intro that you're we can let you
Jen: riff on a little bit here as a preview. But yeah, if we had all this information out there, kind of Jeff is saying like, who put it there and like, who who's the expert that put it there? And how do we measure expertise? How do we fact check? How do we determine? What are our trusted sources? So how does that play into your book, and what we're going to be hearing in future chapters.
Dave: I think that's the hardest, I mean.
Dave: And then we've, I think, at some level. We've always done this badly, so like when I was in
Dave: high school, I was told to look at the publisher
Dave: and the city the publisher was from, and somehow that was relevant.
Dave: But nobody ever explained to me why
Dave: or how I was supposed to decide whether or not it was a publisher who I should trust like I how would I know that, anyway.
Dave: I can understand its validity to people who are already experts, and Ch is a perfect example. Chache is great. If you're already an expert in the topic. You're searching, man. It pulls stuff together fast, and you're like you go through. And you're like, Nope, that's good. That's fine. Nope, and you can go through it, and you could pull it out. And you've got a document ready, and you're good to go
Dave: right. It's great in that sense. If you're it's just filling in the typing
Dave: and putting it together in a structure that's tidy. And then you can kind of edit. And you go along. I think the Internet's the same. Right? So if you're already an expert.
Dave: then you're not going to get tricked by all of these things that take you outside of that context.
Dave: Most of us all of us are not expert at something. Most of us are not expert at anything.
Dave: And so that puts you in a really bad position. If your only tool is using expert tools to evaluate everything and you ain't got them.
Dave: then it's just it's a free for all
Dave: right. So there's really great methods out there for fact checking. Certainly the Sif method that Michael Cawfield pull together is the one that people point to the most
Dave: and that's fine, if the thing you're looking for has a right answer.
Dave: But if it's
Dave: how do I impact poverty in my home city
Dave: which are real live questions that I would love for us to be more worried about in our schools. I mean, we do projects.
Dave: Certainly. My kids have come home with projects they've done and stuff like that.
Dave: But they're projects that have right answers inside the school that get graded for getting the the right way, even though we know those don't work inside of our cities.
Jen: Yeah. And I think, the the third part of what I was mentioning or asking about was being expert expertise, in fact, checking, but the the trusted sources piece.
Dave: Yeah.
Jen: We went through that with Covid.
Dave: I'm right.
Jen: Getting our information. You know
Jen: we get we used to get our parents generation listen to like Walter Cronkite every now, now we're listening to Joe Rogan, or a countless number of other Podcasters like, who do we?
Jen: You know? Who do we get our information from? And who do we trust? Yeah.
Dave: Yeah, this, there's this
Dave: foreshadows for later. But the whole idea of research, like I did my research
Dave: is just.
Dave: It's every time I hear it now it gets terrifying. I always sit with my students, always force them to go. Did you search, or did you research like? Let's just calm down a little bit here.
Dave: Research is something you can do if you have expertise. Searching is what you're doing without it. And there are definitely ways of searching better or worse. And there are sources that
Dave: I trust, but they're based on my values.
Dave: right? So
Dave: I think mostly the New York times does a reasonable job. There's a whole swath of people in your country who do not believe that
Dave: right? And for them
Dave: that newspaper doesn't reflect their values.
Dave: And it's not about truth. It's about.
John: Resources, too, you know, in in the mid twentieth century you have 3 news sources, so
John: as long as they're all on the same page. That is truth, because that's the only source you have.
John: I think now, with this many voices, you know, it's like like having 2 watches. You never really sure what time it is.
John: and and the more voices we have, the more opportunities there are for people to attack any single one of those, because they disagree with it.
Dave: And and there's more people to be in the vacuum of people who believe the thing that you are believing right. So I always think of flat Earthers, who are amongst the most mysterious of groups to me, cause I can't imagine how you can live on a round planet and think it's flat
Dave: but they do.
Dave: and there's enough of them
Dave: to all convince each other that they do
Dave: and there's enough of that sort of group thing to pull together, and there are enough people out there who will say, Don't trust authority.
Dave: and of course, sometimes you should not trust authority.
Dave: You know it's it's a complex situation. But.
John: Well, I guess I guess, too, that's that
John: that abundance of connection, because they can find each other in ways that they couldn't.
John: 20 years ago.
Dave: For sure.
Jeff: Terrified of the current misinformation landscape. But part of me is a little bit optimistic, like answering, how how do I deal with poverty in my town?
Jen: You fell up. I think.
Jeff: I feel like there's the potential for the tools to analyze. This is how a million different communities have dealt with it. And these are the outcomes. And here is some neutral analysis
Jeff: that is based on data. Now, how you choose to accept that data is, you know, gonna be related to values and what you want to hear, but like the potential to get, not the answer, but useful neutral information exists or will exist. Won't it.
Dave: I would argue that it won't.
Dave: I mean I I can't tell you that it won't. But certainly that's the the dream of the Meta study right?
Dave: So if I take 800 studies. So John Hattie is famous for writing a book about 800 studies about education.
Dave: Right? It's the classic, massive meta study. I've looked at so many versions of education. I can tell you what improves learning the most.
Dave: the problem is, is each one of those 800 studies
Dave: has measured learning slightly differently in a slightly different context, that when you put them together
Dave: the ideas don't that it doesn't they? Would I? They would argue that because I've done lots of them. It levels out
Dave: which is true. If the thing you're counting is a counting noun.
Dave: So if you do 800 Mega studies on
Dave: the number of
Dave: mosquitoes in a community
Dave: right? There's an actual number of mosquitoes
Dave: you could count. Maybe you can't. But there is an actual number right? There's a real fact that you could find out, and people's ability to study those mosquitoes are going to balance out, and then you're going to get a number that works out.
Dave: If you don't believe that learning can be counted which I don't.
Dave: then you're not measuring learning. You're measuring
Dave: the way a test
Dave: measures people's recall of something that happened in a classroom with a random person in front of it.
Dave: So you're not actually. And that's the same thing with poverty. The the thing you're going to have to measure
Dave: is going to be what.
Jeff: I'll see and.
Dave: Total.
Jeff: Given certain variables and resulting outcomes.
Dave: But the messiness is on all the things that you didn't tell me
Dave: so at some level. Are you counting the number of people who go
Dave: to a
Dave: to a community food place, because if you are, that might be indicative of the community food place is working well, or it might be indicative of the fact that there's more poverty in that city.
Dave: So the measurement you take doesn't give you that information.
Dave: It's a number you can count.
Dave: but it doesn't have the context to it.
Dave: Right? That's the problem with a Meta study
Dave: is at some level. If the thing you're meta studying is recovery rates for people to be able to go back to running after they have a meniscus tear
Dave: at some level. There's a real number in the world that tells us whether or not someone ran again after meniscus hair, which is why we do a lot of metast studies and in the sciences and in medicine.
Dave: But when you talk about poverty it's not. I can't have 7 povertys.
Dave: I can have number of people below the poverty line
Dave: right? And I can measure whether or not they're getting a certain amount of money. They can kind of do that. But then you're measuring money. You're not measuring, you know what I mean, like, it's always.
Jeff: Yeah, you know, it's not gonna be perfect. But I feel like there's still.
Jeff: even in qualitative matters, useful
Jeff: information that can be gained
Jeff: not a definitive decision. But you know, on a smaller level, okay, neighboring community, A did this and neighboring community. B did that. And A worked better. Okay, that's my Meta study.
Jeff: So, but.
Dave: Better that ends up, being hard to know.
Jen: Yeah, okay, and just to like, step back. Just a.
Jeff: Where's your common sense, young man?
Jen: Oh, no! No! So nice!
Jeff: Yeah, see? It.
Jen: In. It's in my dissertation. One of the things I looked at looked at the measures of the community, of inquiries perceptions of students looking at their cognitive presence, social presence and teaching, that presence against a learning outcome.
Jen: So when you look at Liz, as Dave saying at the vast number of people who've looked at the community of inquiry. They look at learning in terms of learner perception, and some of the measures almost look like satisfaction. Some of them are. Test, some of her Gpa. Some of them are completion. Some are present but they're still calling it in some way, shape or form learning.
Jen: And so when we did ours, we had definitions for perceived learning, and we had link definitions for, and it more of an objective matter measure meaning something that the teacher gave. There was no correlation between the T. The learners perception of whether they learned and an objective measure of the teacher that just was none. However, there was a almost a perfect correlation between satisfaction and perceived learning.
Jen: So here all these studies are out there studying, perceived learning. There's they're studying satisfaction, and it had nothing to do with whether this, you know, some of the we had 3 measures of objective measures of learning, and one of them was the teacher saying.
Jen: basically from your gut, do you feel this person can walk out in the world and do what you taught them to do in this class like, will they be able to do what the the you know? Objective measures are that you were attempting to teach them in this class.
Jen: and again, like there was no, there was no correlation
Dave: Did you control that number for gender.
Jen: Oh, we probably did. Yes.
Dave: Because I'd be really curious to know how much
Dave: that differs by gender. Whether or not the dudes in the class are like, yeah, I taught them great, and they'll be fine whether or not there's a.
Jen: Yeah. But but to kind of I hopefully, that kind of ties into what you're saying. And and Jeff, to kind of answer your question like what they Ca everybody in all these prior studies that we were you kind of had in our lit review. They all said that they were examining learning.
Jen: but then you really kind of drill down with their measure of learning, was all over the place.
Jeff: Has the age of abundance made this more difficult to solve. Poverty like, I don't feel like we had great answers before, and now, because of the abundance. It's harder. I feel like, if anything, we've got at least more
Jeff: data, even if it's not
Jeff: totally reliable. And it's wonky in some ways.
Dave: It's 2 answers to that. First, like riddling Weber from the seventies would tell you that that's asking the wrong question that you can't solve for something like poverty, because it's a wicked.
Jeff: He's not on the show, and it's our show, and we.
Dave: You know, for a good deal.
Jeff: Move on!
Dave: You can only deal with a small part of any one of these problems and asking the big question is always the thing that gets you into trouble.
Dave: Because you can't solve it because we can't even agree on what it is.
Dave: I think that the more the extra data helps in some cases, and in other cases it just like when I look at education specifically, it's a nightmare.
Dave: because every single person who wants to make an argument, can pull out a paper to support that argument. They can pull out 20 papers. They can pull out a hundred papers to support whatever random position they might have
Dave: like I I play this game with my students all the time, right where I'll come up, and I'll give them one side of an argument and say, Oh, go look for this, and then I'll give them the other side. And they're like.
Dave: we just read all this
Dave: unbiased.
Dave: objective literature that said that this was true.
Dave: and then we go, and they're like, Well, this all says that it's false.
Dave: How can like what's the right answer? And the answer, of course, is that I don't know what there's right.
Jeff: To Dave's class.
Dave: Today's class. You just still have to decide what you need to do in your classroom.
John: Over there.
Dave: Yeah.
Dave: but that's that's the problem with abundance, right? Is like anything. It's the Joe Rogan thing, right? Like.
Dave: if you're looking for a reason to have someone not mask. You can find one study somewhere. That proves one thing.
Dave: and then a bunch of people will know that they're gonna get attention by following up that study with another one. So somebody else is, gonna make one. And suddenly you have 20 studies that all go were based on what happened in like the flaws in one man. I'm making this part up now, but the flaws in one manufacturer is mask technique that's been extrapolated to all masks.
Dave: or takes the idea of masking out of context
Dave: or claims that if someone wears a mask somebody else can still get sick, which is, of course, true.
Dave: It's that it reduces it statistically, and it has a statistical impact on the population is the point. But that's a subtle point that's boring, but with abundance. You can find somebody to contradict that. I'm sure we could pull up a paper that totally contradicts what I just said.
Dave: That's the problem, and everybody can find it. And so if you're only looking for the things that support your existing position.
Dave: you can find that.
Jeff: Well, I'm gonna keep Hope alive and see if it lasts until chapters.
Jen: I love you so.
Dave: So good.
John: As well.
Jen: Alright. So we've got about under 10 min here. So I'm gonna tee up one last theme for you that runs throughout the book, and you said, actually runs throughout your career in your life when we spoke last time was uncertainty. So describe how all of this relates to uncertainty.
Dave: Though
Dave: I feel bad for the student who's this story's about because I've told it a thousand times. But it it really was the starting point for me. So I had a student who came up to me in the second week. He was working for me, and he went.
Dave: Dave, I have to apologize to you, I said. Oh.
Dave: and he goes nice nice student. No reason to. Nothing had just happened. And he goes. You've been asking for my opinion for the last week and a half, and
Dave: I assumed you're relying cause no adults ever ask me a question without already knowing the answer.
Dave: That to me describes the way we've developed our education system, right? We have a system where, for a lots of reasons.
Dave: we
Dave: tell students that questions have answers.
Dave: and their job as students is to discover the answer that the person in front of me already knows. So it's it's just a hiding. So I have the answer. I'm hiding it from you, and your job is to figure it out.
Dave: That's sort of the game that we're playing
Dave: and then, like my friend the bank manager who I was talking to today, who is saying that she's increasingly finding that it's there are a lot of people who she's interviewing, and who she's trying to train, who, once they meet up, they run into a situation where their judgment is required, where they have to make a decision.
Dave: They just freeze
Dave: right? And we've seen this in my conversations with the social work program, with the law program and whole bunch of other people where that ability to confront uncertainty is the thing that
Dave: students are struggling with the most.
Dave: I don't blame this generation. I don't think, I think that all of the things people have to decide all the time are partially to blame for this.
Dave: I also think that
Dave: we've increasingly structured our education system to be
Dave: analytic so that we can get data that we can test it. So we can check to see if people are performing. And we've been forcing ourselves increasingly in that direction, and that that has a huge impact on the way we think of learning because we think of learning as getting the right answer.
Dave: But most of life is not like that. Like most of the decisions we make. Should I have a cookie right now?
Dave: I'd be really happy if I had a cookie I could really like one.
John: But we.
Dave: Yeah. Scoop.
John: We get stuck trying to come up with the right answer. And it's just like, I mean, we're we're doing some traveling this year and several overnight flights, and we need neck pillows for sleeping on a plane. So my wife ordered 12 of them
John: and said, We're gonna try all of these, and we're gonna return the ones that we don't want. And they're they're sitting in a box, you know, on the other side of this wall. And somehow I have to come up with a way of evaluating these 12 different neck pillows. Now, because reading the online reviews just wasn't enough.
John: And you know, when every my my kids struggle with that right? Because every decision they make is, you know, they have to be right. And there's so many variables and so many factors that they just get paralyzed by that.
Dave: And do you know who tells you what's right, Joe Rogan?
Dave: Joe Rogan tells you, if something's right.
Dave: Yeah to me, that's the appeal.
Jen: Let's do the chase. Yeah.
John: It's the certainty. Yes.
Jen: Uncertainty in the way.
John: She does that too.
Jen: Yeah. Oh, that's a huge.
John: Very common.
Jen: Totally.
John: And it apologizes. Unlike Joe Rogan, it apologizes when you call.
Dave: But I think that's that's the keystone, right? If we prepare you for certainty.
Dave: and then you don't find it. Then you look for something that is certain.
Dave: And you've had other demagogues in your country whose names I won't even mention
Dave: who have made their business on just telling people the truth, even if it's even if it's patently the opposite thing that that person said 2 months ago, it doesn't matter as long as it tells me what I should do
Dave: right? Because I'm accustomed to that kind of.
Dave: And it I I think we're we're training ourselves into that. I think it's it's there's a Volvian problem here.
Jeff: While we're talking about neck, pillow consumption and demagogues. One of my takeaways, one of my takeaways from the introduction is that, wow? This book doesn't seem particularly about education or technology. It seems more about societal systems and moral values. And like you talk about. I I feel like there's this
Jeff: underlying tone about the corporate interests and marketing. You talk about the evolution of marketing.
Jeff: Yeah, you know.
Jeff: what is the difference between
Jeff: Instagram feeding me ads of minimalist hiking footwear or hairy growth which I find ageist and insulting cause. I've never searched for that, but it still gives it to me versus Edward Morrow, selling cigarettes on his newscast.
Dave: Right? What's the difference?
Jeff: What? Yeah, like, I got the sense. That part of this transformational thing is that this has changed the where the role corporations are playing and marketing is playing is has changed. But yeah, has it?
Jeff: Or how so?
Dave: I mean, yes and no. The technology that we have
Dave: shapes, the way the things that people can do. So if you look at Bernays who designed some of those ads.
Dave: He understood radio before everybody else did.
Dave: He understood that having a trusted voice
Dave: could sell something way better than anything else, and that having a slogan
Dave: spoken and even written. And there's a lot of that sort of text marketing as well could make things true, right that if we get a slogan, if we put that together, the thing that we're saying becomes the truth. So the example I use in the book is the di, the diamond wedding ring that has to be 2 months salary.
Dave: There's it's just something somebody made up, and then did a bunch of ads for it. And TV was really good for that, because you get the same thing everywhere. It's like you were saying earlier where it was only 3 channels.
Dave: So there's only 3 news networks, and so they all say the same thing. Then
Dave: it's the same with this right. If the ad says the same thing everywhere afterwards, and starts to become part of the truth.
Dave: Now.
Dave: little things can become like that, and they're increasingly hidden, right? So it's not
Dave: an obvious ad.
Dave: Have these lucky strikes, and you can be as smart as I am
Dave: right. It's built into 27 paid tiktokers.
Dave: plus the 3,000 people who are unknowingly copying those 27 paid tech talkers and are spreading it without being paid, because they don't even realize that they're part of the marketing campaign.
Dave: And it's coming in
Dave: subconsciously right. You're not seeing it in the same ways. It's hidden in all kinds of ways, plus instead of you getting marketed to
Dave: through the I won't go too far back during the commercials at Jeopardy which brings everybody in
Dave: you. So that when you walk away from the television you're no longer being marketed to in your house. Now you're being marketed to at every part of the place, right? Every time you try to do anything
Dave: you get hit.
Dave: So I think it's the same thing they're trying to do, which is make money.
Dave: But there's so many more tools and so many more ways of of getting it done, and so many more ways of slipping it in.
Jeff: So that's the technology. What about the corporate and governmental systems? Have they changed, or their.
Dave: Wow! Some of them have
Dave: so if you look at
Dave: the information firms in Macedonia like Holy Baby
Dave: there are people who can be hired to do almost anything to to push forward almost any agenda
Dave: and there are certainly governments, Jeff, you'll remember, who have approached some of your material, even back in the nineties
Dave: you had some server problems based on some government influences back then.
Dave: So it's not like that's brand new, like the Internet's always had some of that.
Dave: I think it's gotten more complex, I think increasingly, there are.
Dave: And anybody who is trying to convince you of something.
Dave: so I don't want to make this sound tinfoil high conspiracy like.
Dave: Put it in to put it in plain language, to to to finish up by doing the thing that Jen said I claimed to do. In the first place.
Dave: if you were try, if your job was to try to convince somebody of something. Wouldn't you use the Internet?
Dave: And governments are in the business in some cases of trying to convince people of something a lot of that it certainly in my country I'll speak, for mine is good. They're trying to convince you to sort your garbage properly, so more of it gets recycled.
Dave: It's still being marketed. It's still like.
Dave: tut! What's the the economics term the nudge marketing like? There's all that stuff that's happening. They're trying to do good.
Dave: I'm just saying that not all governments are trying to do good at the same time and in the same place. Some of them are not trying to.
Jeff: Or does good mean the same thing to everybody?
Dave: To all people fair enough. I thank you for giving us the positive note. There, Jeff.
Jeff: Well, I that's not particularly positive. I think it's it's.
Dave: More positive than what I said.
Jeff: I mean, cause you, you talk about trying to make positive changes. But that's going to mean a lot of different things to different people.
Dave: And right.
Jen: Yeah.
Dave: Find out in the next chapter.
Jeff: Yeah.
Jen: Out, and the next installment of.
Jeff: Change has never been a bargain.
Dave: This is this is very good.
Jen: Alright. I think we brought it right to the end of the hour. Nice job!
Jen: Any other questions we missed that from the introduction.
John: Did you check the chat room? See if anybody put any questions in.
Jeff: Oh, yes, we've we've forwarded them all.
Jeff: Okay? Good.
John: Good. Just wanna make sure we don't miss anybody.
Jen: I'd like to take.
Jeff: Our our viewer
Jeff: probably one of us. But we will be back, I think, next week to talk about Chapter one the same time.
Jeff: And if anyone is watching us, thanks.
Jeff: yeah. And if not, had a great.
Dave: Thanks guys, like.
Jen: I bet we sold. I bet we sold
Jen: copies
Jen: filling the bag.
Jeff: Have to work on our marketing technique.
Jen: Yeah, work in our market.
Dave: That's right good to get a Tiktok version of this.
Jeff: Alright, and all of our viewers stay tuned for the post show.
Jeff: Otherwise, see you next week.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: That was fun!
John: Edit this, now.
Jeff: No. Yeah.
Dave: Like the reason that I.
Jeff: Yeah, said the humor.
Jen: I had it.
Jeff: We were pretty perfect. That was a precision operation.
Dave: Balance the audio levels.
Jen: Is that even a thing with you'd have to.
Dave: I mean.
Jeff: Yeah, I'll see if I can get the old feeds going. Make sure that like. Cause I mean, like, it's so easy to just toss up the video.
Jeff: But like.
Jeff: I still listen a podcast and
Jeff: I don't know how friendly it tech we haven't. Techtalk hasn't produced audio in quite a while.
Jen: So this truly is a drupal still is is that like.
Jeff: Rupert, Mother F. And 7.
Jen: Really, it's still a thing chugging away.
John: Which
Jeff: I'm trapped. I mean it. Tech talk probably could be updated without too much pain, since we've already abandoned all the the big issue with. That was the audio embeds. But no one listens to audio on a website anymore.
Jeff: My career bridge site has all sorts of functionality that's really hard to make the jump from drupal 7 to drupal 8. I'm playing around with a backdrop, which is a new open source Cms design for drupal. 7 people who hate the upgrade.
Jeff: But that'll be my next vacation thing.
Jen: I found this is going way back. Do you remember when I moved over to Wordpress Room drupal? There was like a.
Dave: My audio, carry over.
Jen: It was awesome. That's what I moved my website whatever, 15 years ago.
Jeff: Still. Okay with wordpress.
Dave: Who is.
Jen: I love that. Yeah, so well. Only for me.
John: I use it all the time.
Jeff: Do you use the new wordpress or classic?
Jeff: Are you okay with blocks and Gutenberg and all that.
Jen: Oh!
John: I'm on. Yeah, I'm on wordpress.com, so I don't have much of a choice.
Dave: Yeah. Once you get your head around it, it's actually really good.
Dave: which just takes
Dave: it takes the time like, you've gotta really, you've gotta approach it like you've never used the software before.
Dave: and then just sit with it for a while, and then once you get it, you're like, Oh, this is way. Faster.
Dave: Gotta get there.
John: But on.
John: I don't spend time trying to manage the blog. I go to the edit
John: and create a post to put this stuff in there and
John: post it, and it's not
John: like I don't mess around with side bars and widgets and themes, and, like all I just.
Dave: Do hippies.
John: Like the stuff. And yeah.
John: I I always said that when I implemented it in my schools, I I implemented blogging software because I wanted teachers to be able to publish something as easy as sending an email. And that's kind of where I am now is like, open up an editor on a web page type in the thing.
Dave: Yeah.
John: For free to post it.
Jeff: And a question related to our topic at hand.
John: Proofread one of my one of my blogs, but not the other one.
Jeff: You know, as I've
Jeff: listening to your other interviews and discussions, it's always a bunch of old dudes, and maybe a few old gals.
Jeff: Where are younger people in this discussion? Have you had conversations about this
Jeff: with
Jeff: not your students, but with the young generation of educators?
Dave: You mean my students.
Jeff: No, I mean people who are teaching educators.
Jeff: Well, they're going to be educators. But like, do you ever talk to them after they graduate?
Dave: A little. I mean, I've only been teaching this group for 2 years. So it's a pretty small group, and I've got a group of educators here. I know here because half theater community or educators.
Jeff: Like those are face to face people. But like, you can go online and find a bunch of discussions about education.
Dave: They're on Tiktok.
Jeff: That's true.
John: They're they're
John: I think they're worried about different things.
John: They're they're certainly not looking at.
John: How do I infuse my teaching with technology right there. That's not the right question. They're looking at
John: inquiry. They're looking at student engagement. They're looking at project based learning. They're they're doing like those kinds of things, and they are talking about those kinds of things, but they're not doing it with us.
John: Swallowed.
John: you know, in our schools there's a lot of book studies. There's a lot of, you know, teacher groups getting together to work on things like that especially focused on at the primary building. We're we're talking a lot about what math instruction looks like, and
John: th! Those have been fun conversations to have cause they don't see me as a math teacher, cause they.
John: you know, I'm just the tech guy. But
John: So occasionally we'll surprise them by saying something that they're not expecting. But I think those conversations are happening in schools and in, you know, little conferences. I think. You know.
John: education conferences have changed a lot. Post covid, that we're not
John: having these
John: giant
John: 4,000 people events where you're going for 3 days and doing all you know. They're going to
John: a local place, a a school university for an afternoon, or for you know, a day and two-thirds of those people are online.
John: And so they're
John: watching and interacting. And
John: these are Zoom Meetings.
Dave: Yeah.
John: So it's happening, I think, that
John: the I've been frustrated by
John: the synchronicity needed in all of the tools, like one of the things that I liked about Twitter after you 3 convinced me to join was that the people that I follow and the people that follow me are not the same group.
John: Because my teachers and my learners are 2 different groups of people and most of the models, whether you're using a Google group for a community, or you're using slack, or you're using whatever it's. It's one group of people working together. And I struggle with that
John: that
John: I want people to be able to hear me, but I don't need to hear them.
Jen: So, Jeff, are you also saying like you know we have our 30. What do you say? 37,000 followers, or whatever on twitter. Are you saying like, where? Where is the next generation going? Where? Where is that 37,000 going? Is that also? We can.
Jeff: Not so much that I mean the 37,000, I think, are kind of the old time. Ed. Tech talkers. They're mostly genx. Maybe a few millennials.
Jen: Right. But are you saying like, where's like.
John: Them are retired like.
Jeff: Where where is this conversation happening with
Jeff: the newer generation? And John answered, a lot. It's happening in smaller conferences and in schools. But like, whenever you see someone posting a podcast or an online thing.
Jeff: it's usually older folks. You're, I mean, I do see younger Tiktok educators.
Jeff: Or you know.
Dave: Have you seen.
Dave: like how many people who are like 20 would you have on Instagram? Jeff.
Jeff: A lot cause. I friends with my students.
Dave: Oh, I right and I I can't speak for how it's working in South Korea, so I can't say for sure.
Dave: Here, at least
Dave: you won't.
Dave: you'll see that they have 5 posts.
Dave: and they.
Jeff: Stories, yeah.
Dave: It's all stories now. Nobody wants to make permanent contributions to the overall story.
Dave: and I think there's a I I can't tell you that there's a real connection. But I'm I bet you that that's part of the story, too.
Dave: is that people are loath to make the things that we just made.
Dave: because there was nobody else like. There was 12 of us on the.
Jeff: But I think the P. Like this is a professional conversation. This isn't talking about lunch. If I'm posting about lunch it might be a story, but like the.
Dave: They were folks responding.
Jeff: Thing about professional stuff
Jeff: are generally used.
Dave: Permanent!
Dave: They used to do them.
Jeff: Lunch.
Dave: Yeah. And now they've stopped.
Dave: Yeah, so
Dave: that that I think they've really shifted in in how open they are to putting. We've we've told them not to.
Jeff: Makes sense, I mean personal stuff. You might not want the permanent record, but professional stuff generally. I think people do even worse. They don't.
John: You, too, be great.
Dave: Told not to for a generation now.
John: I'm gonna apply for a job. And somebody's gonna find this video and then they'll find something I said half an hour ago that they disagree with, and
John: I mean I had. We had. We have 2 new board members who started in January, and one of them said, I watched your webcast. And I said, Okay.
John: and she laughed. I said, I'm glad somebody watched it, but like they.
John: they're really afraid of those footprints.
Jen: I think so unless you go to Linkedin, and it's hyper sanitized, and you're bright and shiny, and everything's great. Look at my promotion. Look at the.
Dave: Thing.
Jen: Published, or whether.
Dave: Sorry I get I get into my linkedin view here.
Jen: Yeah, quickly.
Jen: But I had people when I went through. I mean, even back from the old days when I was going through my masters and piece Phds and I would post my work, and I had faculty they'd be like, well, hey, I have assigned this every semester, so that you just shown. You know how to answer those things that wasn't great. But then I had a lot of students go. You know, we were talking about.
Jen: you know stuff that you might want, not want an employer to see. I got, for example, I hate group work. And so someone wanted to hire me to design classes that had tons of group work like. Well, she hates that. So we're not gonna hire her
Dave: It's right.
Jeff: Well, Dave has to go, and I have the one of my last batches of conversations with my students, so.
Dave: Oh!
Jeff: And hour.
Jen: Sounds good.
John: But you.
Dave: Well.
Jen: Have a great week.
Dave: Did you guys enjoy doing this? Was this.
Jen: Oh, it was fun!
Dave: Gonna
Dave: okay, it feels weird to be the focus of this much talk.
John: Wanted.
Jeff: Kind of normal to me.
Dave: Oh!
John: Does.
Jen: Hence my first question, Webcast, why did you need a book when I just.
Jeff: No, I'm kind of glad I was a little. The chat was a bit quiet, and I wasn't sure if if folks were on board, but I enjoy this.
Dave: I really enjoyed it.
Jen: We send a note out more than 25 min.
John: I especially like the part where Jennifer did all the work.
Jeff: Yeah big fan of that big fan of that, I mean, that's the norm.
Jen: No, no, Jeff. Now you gotta go.
Jeff: No, no, no, no, you you're big, Fan, and you don't need the elaboration. You can come up with 5 questions for each chapter, and we'll just chime in.
Dave: So good.
Dave: They were really good.
John: Can we call this the blah blah blah?
John: Just call it the blah blah blah.
Jen: You guys are saying right blah blah blah. And then I.
Jeff: Oh, God! I gotta get another domain.
Jen: Alright. See, you guys, next week, Tata.
Dave: Guys, see you later.
John: And to your kids, Dave.
Dave: I will see you.