Jeff: Hello, and welcome to EdTechtalk's Discussion of Dave's new book
Jeff: learning in a time of abundance this week we are discussing chapter one change has never been a bargain. I am Jeff Lebow in Poussin Korea.
Jen: My name.
Dave: So me.
Jen: Hello! Oh, I think I'm next
Jen: sorry, although it was kind of an introduction when he's raised about that. But my name is Jennifer Madrel, in Laval, Wisconsin.
John: You want me to go next.
Dave: I'm ready.
John: And next this is John Shinker, in Stow, Ohio.
Dave: And I'm Dave Carmia in Windsor, Ontario.
Jeff: My first question was, gonna be, you know, it's been a number of years since we've done this on a regular basis. And it's gonna ask how everyone's doing after last week's return to webcasting any sore webcasting muscles or
Jeff: flashbacks to the 2,000 aughts.
John: Clearly, we're all back 100% ready to go like we never missed the beat.
Jen: Pretty much how I remember things, Jeff.
John: And then.
Jeff: Yeah, we should clarify the order in our pre show.
John: My microphone doesn't work. Jennifer's camera doesn't work, and nobody knows when to talk. So other than that we're great.
Jen: I logged in 90seconds before we started. So yeah, seems pretty much the same.
Jeff: Before we jump into Chapter one. Any highlights from the past week. Any
Jeff: a tech news or
Jeff: exciting things to share?
Dave: That's funny. You say that because I've been working away on on stuff this week trying to get my head around. I did a couple more AI presentations.
Dave: More of my march of sadness.
Dave: And I was part of a 3 part conversation with
Dave: some folks on Thursday.
Dave: and we're seeing schools really try to find
Dave: a positive narrative
Dave: like, what's the positive narrative look like like that? Seems like we've we've transitioned.
Dave: It's like everybody has now turned the corner. It's funny because it's only been. I only feel like it's been the last 2 or 3 or 4 weeks.
Dave: But now everything I'm reading is people, what's the positive employ? What? How are we gonna integrate this in? How are we gonna get this done? So.
Jeff: This being AI, AI, yeah.
John: We started at
John: staying away from the fear like it wasn't a you know. We should block this. We should stop it. We should try to keep people from using it like from the very beginning we were. This is here, and our students are gonna use it. So let's find a way to navigate forward. I think what I've been seeing in the last.
John: I don't know. This calendar year, for sure. Maybe the last couple of months is the move
John: away from? How do we use AI to do the same old things better, you know. So all of the marketing is. Oh, it can write your recommendation letters for you, and it can create lesson plans, and it can grade your essays. And whatever. And
John: we're really our teachers are actually pushing. How do I use this to improve student engagement? How do I create innovative project based learning things for my kids to do that are relevant to them so like using the add to sort of help, do the things that are hard to quantify. Instead of just
John: doing the repetitive tasks faster or better, so that that leaves me optimistic that we can find ways to use AI to leverage it with our people to make learning better for kids.
Jeff: Right. The optimism spreads. I had an exhilarating week.
Jeff: having a bunch of media to play with and publish for the first time.
Jeff: And so Ed tech talk now has an Instagram and a tiktok and a thread. And I'm not. I'm never gonna say like and subscribe, be aware and ignore, but they do exist and.
Jen: No worries. It's.
Jeff: Just becoming Literate. You know, I haven't really published a lot of media in years and just becoming literate in shorts and the publishing format and how things work.
Jeff: Was just a week of learning and excitement for me.
Jeff: We're killing it in Korean, Tiktok.
Jeff: because when you publish the Tiktok it uses your SIM card
Jeff: to identify where you are. Vpns wouldn't change anything. So it's going. We go like 99% Korean market. But we're getting a surprising number of likes like more than 200 views and a bunch of likes, although that's the way Tiktok works it. Everyone talks about that. Getting beyond the 200 line. I think it just tosses it out
Jeff: to 200 people, and if it's getting a lot of engagement it will keep going, and if not.
Jeff: you get stuck there.
Jeff: And my, my project for this week is going to be getting up to speed with modern podcasting.
Jeff: Oh, how I miss feed, burner.
John: Pop up in my feed, because, you know, I'm still subscribed, and then.
Jeff: Did.
John: Yeah. And then it it wouldn't play the episodes. An error occurred. Try watching this video on Youtubecom, or enabled Javascript.
John: which is odd.
Jeff: So I've got some.
John: Dedicated feed app, but you know it's there which is cool.
Jen: This is. This is such a perfect segue to our conversation tonight. You you'd almost think that Dave had thought about these things before he started writing this point, and we thinking about them for years.
Jen: But should we hop in? Should we hop in, or do you have any anyone else.
Jeff: Let's.
Jen: Alright, very good. Okay. So so to kind of like in the format we did last week, if you guys are okay with it, I'm just gonna kind of pepper Dave with some questions, and then I've got questions for us to kinda come back through at the end. To kind of think about. So chapter one. So we've said, our cut the coverage is on implications of technological innovation. And so before we start, it's just kind of Maya side. My master's degree was at Indiana University and instructional systems technology. And this is
Jen: a huge part of what we covered way back when you know, 20 whatever years ago, and they were covering things that had happened from Rogers and the fifties, and whatever on diffusion of innovation. So, as I was going through it. It's like, Oh, my gosh! You know, the technology changes. The issues are the same, the adoption. And
Jen: you know, laggards and all those, you know, early adopters. All those types of things are kind of jumping out at me. So, Dave, I just kind of wanted to start out if you could kind of give us a sense, why did you start your book out with this like? Why, you know, this doesn't necessarily perfectly align with the title of your book, or what we talked about. Is kind of the things of about a abundance, and things like that, where where you'd be jumped right in talking about technology as a as a change process.
Jeff: And Dave.
Dave: Interesting.
Jeff: Facilitate the publishing of reels and shorts. Can you please limit your answers to 60secs of.
Jen: No worries.
Dave: More unreasonable request
Dave: never been raised.
John: And be a problem.
Jeff: You have no idea how much time I spent this week editing Dave.
Dave: Oh, God!
Dave: Now I'm all under pressure. So first I switch those chapters around about 17 times at the beginning. So with this kind of thing. Where to start is always the question, do you start talking about abundance? Do you start talking about uncertainty? Do you start talking about the education system.
Dave: and I think what I was trying to do was get
Dave: people in the mindset of their own experience rather than the education, experience, or the theory experience. But really, where you're at as a person, and that technological shift is one that people have some kind of
Dave: direct relationship to. So I was hoping it was a softest start of all of the different options, because it's not really a book about schools, though it, I think, has implications for how we think about schools.
Dave: It's a book about how we learn and how that has to adjust as we go forward. And I like, for instance, the reason why I chose the telephone examples. It's something that everybody can have some kind of relationship to.
Dave: And it's interesting because I get much better feedback about this stuff from older people, but I think it's because they've seen more of the transition. So the people who have talked to me about this Booker in their seventies are all like, and I remember, and I remember having this argument with somebody about how we were supposed to use answering machines. And then I remember the first time that I got was on a call with Jimmy, and you get the whole story starts to blow up right. I was hoping would hit people where they were from
Dave: 60secs show.
Jeff: Nicely done.
Jen: But yeah, I mean, maybe this is a I'll kind of maybe we'll pepper some questions to be today, too. But I have always considered. And I'm gonna kind of bridge to now, technology integration and bringing technology into the learning systems and what we do as being a change process because of, like as I kind of my background with it. So you know, John, you spend your day trying to get folks up and running and technology and responding to things that are coming in. Do you view? Have you ever thought of
Jen: technology, integration and the the change aspects of it, and how it's change changes to the system, and how people react to that change. And
Jen: those issues.
John: I I think so. I mean.
John: I think that
John: often I remark more about what it doesn't change and how you know we've spent 20 years on educational technology. And we've, you know, we've invested all of this time and and money into infrastructure and professional development and
John: and learning theory. And then you walk in a classroom, and it looks very much like it did when I was a student there. I think that the change that we see is more subtle than that. The the
John: the
John: cultural institution that is school looks like school and looks like school, as always look. But some of the things that are going on are different. And technology helps us do those things.
John: I don't know if that answers the question at all.
John: I think the tech.
John: The technology is more incremental rather than transformational. So it, you know, new things become very shiny and kind of blow up and flash, and then you. You come back to it a second time or a third time, and then it starts to have a real impact and and sort of change the way we do things.
John: So
John: I guess I'm
John: I'm often skeptical of of the new shiny thing, because often that new shiny thing has to go through a couple of iterations before
John: you know, people think through
John: the practicality of of what the implications are.
Jeff: So are you buying Dave's argument in chapter one, that this latest change is not incremental, that it is transitional.
Jeff: transformational.
John: I think that
John: it
John: it's it took 25 years. It took 30 years right?
John: I mean to go from
John: information being scarce, the information being abundant.
John: took a generation.
John: and and that's short in the span of human history.
John: But it's not not short within a person's lifetime.
John: you know. If you if you look at the the first time you guys did a webcast right, there wasn't anybody on the Internet yet to hear it.
John: So it's it's one senator with a phone, but the other.
Jeff: Yeah, that's hard.
John: Don't have phones yet.
Jeff: That's why no one was listening.
John: That's why there were. Only, you know you had 200 Tiktok views, because there were only 200 people on Tiktok when you started, Jeff.
Jeff: That was 19.
Dave: 98, in case you're.
John: Yeah, right.
Dave: First, web first, webcast.
Jen: I think, though, yeah. And you're hitting on something that's I think we could spend a lot of time talking around. And it is kind of the. My next question was this difference between incremental change and transformational change and the way you described it? The book I'll you can correct me if I'm paraphrasing incorrectly here. But basically, that incremental change is doing something. It's replacing something like we're we're not necessarily doing something that is significantly different. It has a significant life. So I think kind of our first conversation was.
Jen: you know, AI is now having the opportunity potentially to do something we've never been able to do. Maybe we it'd be kind of interesting to kind of dissect that statement, because, you know, maybe we can find ways that was but like, really, when you think of our webcasting and what we were doing before, we were kind of sort of replicating the radio and finding a new way to reach people, and maybe there was some degree of
Jen: interaction with your audience. It was a little bit different. But kind of what? What are your thoughts on that, Dave cause? Clearly you made a big distinction talking about incremental information on trying to set the boundaries on what the 2 are. So you kind of wanna riff on that a little bit.
Dave: For sure. I agree with John. I don't think it's been transformational in schools.
Dave: because in schools what you have is a gigantic stable.
Dave: resilient curriculum
Dave: that a bunch of technology has been pushed up against.
Dave: Right? So I don't think it's been transformational in the places that I've seen it. There are certainly things that happen in schools. There are some people who are doing transformational work with specific technologies at specific times in schools. But, broadly speaking, no, it's not true. It's transforming the system because the system comes through a giant bureaucratic
Dave: load and takes a long time to do anything
Dave: for me. The transformation has happened in our lives.
Dave: not in the school, but the way that we learn outside of the school.
Dave: So if you take I keep thinking of the little old Italian lady. I never had the courage to ask about her cooking, who lived around the corner for me down the street here.
Dave: who obviously cooked, for the people in her like area would come outside with food. And there's this whole thing that I could see, and she would have been my only access to whatever it is. She was cooking 30 years ago, like that. That. Ability to access information outside of the place that you grew up
Dave: was, go to a bookstore and try to find a random book about it. Maybe
Dave: right. That access is something that changed, and I'll I'll disagree with John on this point. It hasn't taken 25 years.
Dave: I think it took me 25 years, for I was trying to say which makes me dumb, but I don't think it's like magically just started now.
Dave: I think that as soon as you've got that sort of availability of the Internet, once it crosses that 50 range inside of a society where people are no longer beholden to their neighbors for information where they're no longer
Dave: constrained by their community. So like Jeff. I I'd love to hear
Dave: from your perspective what it's like for someone to have moved to Korea when you did.
Dave: And what's like for someone to move there now.
Dave: like to me. That's the difference.
Jeff: And you know I can talk about. Oh, my goodness, it has changed so much in A B and C way someone who's moved here 10 years ago would say the same thing. Oh, my God! It's changed so much from their perspective.
Jeff: you know.
Dave: From an information gathering perspective like the way you had to find information. I got there in 98, and you're like 2 years before, I think.
Jeff: Yeah, 95
Jeff: So
Jeff: yeah, I mean, but I think, well, that's true. You know, living as an expat, I had no access to my home countries, media
Jeff: and and news, and that was much more challenging in the Internet. You know, I could go to the old cnn.com, or whatever, and watch the page slowly load. Now I watch whatever I want pretty much the same stuff I'd be watching if I was living in the States.
Jeff: I get the media from everywhere.
Jeff: Where I am does not affect the media that I consume, or the information I am exposed to.
Dave: How did you teach yourself to read Korean?
Dave: I.
Jeff: Got a book.
Jeff: and
Jeff: spent about 3sech.
Dave: It's actually, really easy.
Jeff: So jumps in.
Dave: 26 characters, 24 characters.
Dave: But it's all that sort of difference, and how you would accrue in from I'm I remember showing up in in a I won't give you guys the region in Poussin, but as a random area in Poussin.
Dave: and not having a map and not having any idea what anything said, and not having id idea where to go, and having no pathway to find that out.
Dave: So basically, I had to walk from store to store, walk into the store to find out what kind of store it was.
Dave: and then like, and slowly find a place that I later found out was probably not a place I should have stayed but now you would open up your phone and you would find the places that will take the hotels in the year by age you'd find the restaurants. You'd find the reviews. You find all those things, for wherever.
John: Phone and and point it at the sign, and it translates it in real time and tells you what it yeah.
Jeff: But the point here is that daily life has been transformed
Jeff: by
Jeff: prevalence of the Internet.
Jeff: but that school systems have not been transformed.
Dave: I. That's that's the position I would take up. Yeah.
Dave: And I think that the way that we learn has not adjusted to the way that we learn in everyday life.
Dave: Right? And that's the that's it.
Dave: Good idea.
Jen: But I think that's where it ties back to what I was saying. With my tie into like Rogers and diffusion of innovation. There are huge obstacles and barriers within the system that are pushing up against it. And so you know some of the things that you know. Hopefully, we'll get some time to talk about it like the implications of change. There's like positive in implications, then the negative. And so certainly, when I started my semester this year at Uva we had our first session on academic integrity issues around AI.
Jen: And so those types of issues, those potential negative consequences.
Jen: are kind of within the system working to say we're gonna ban it because we're so scared of it. And we're not going to even explore the positives. And so I think that's where some of those kind of like systemic issues and diffusion of innovation to me are so interesting. It was like, change. The technology change the issue, whether it's incremental or transformational. I think that gets to the heart of what John was saying and what you were responding to.
John: Is that fear, or is it just skepticism?
Jen: I think that's just the cool part to explore cause there's some people who are just like, look at our like over the years, the web heads, or whatever like some people
Jen: see that changes a potential, and they just run with it. They're the pioneering spirits, and then they run with it. And so we were saying 20 years ago that Web 2, all was going to take over schools, and you know we would be all kids would be on Twitter. Well, you know we could.
John: It did. We just don't call it web 2.0 anymore.
Jen: Yeah, we well, and we don't let them go on the Internet, right? We wouldn't let them go. So yeah, so that's those are some of the questions I have that follow is like, I think it's kind of cool now, with our benefit of hindsight. Looking back 20 years, you know, how are, how have we adjusted, and how have we adapted to change over the years? And how? What can we draw from that? As we now look at AI and other
Jen: whoever who knows what else is on the on the horizon. But yeah, so, Dave, did you have any comments like or like. Ha! Your distinction between incremental and transfer is that kind of where you
Jen: wanted to leave it? Or do you have anything else that we didn't
Jen: cover on that like, how you make that distinction.
Dave: I think. Just to one comment. And one of the things that you said, I think inertia is the biggest piece of this giant systems. It it's inertia.
Jen: Okay.
Dave: Giant systems just don't move.
Dave: I don't think that people are at the At the
Dave: Pardon. The expression at the chalk face are resistant overall. Some of them are
Dave: but if you ask a teacher about changing curriculum, they'll go. You know. I need to do assessments right?
Dave: And they're like, well, what do you mean? More like? Well, we've got like standardized testing is coming up. So like, I need to get this stuff done.
Dave: So like, I appreciate what you're saying, but if I don't grade this, the students are going to do the work, and if they don't do the work, then I'd be ready for their test
Dave: if they're not ready for their test. Then when they get the high school, they're gonna be ready for the tests.
Dave: and then if they don't do that in high school, then when they get to university, they're not going to be ready for those big sized classrooms to be able to succeed.
Dave: and we're not going to be able to get have any any doctors to be no doctors anywhere in the world
Dave: like literally. That's the conversation as it goes, and then you say, but but but they're like no, no, I totally agree with you. I just like wh. What would I do?
Dave: Right? That's it's there's a giant system.
Dave: And the things we're talking about are transformational.
Dave: which the system can't handle
Dave: it just it doesn't do transformational.
Dave: It only does incremental.
Jeff: Does that blanket statement apply to all education systems? I mean, certainly there are pockets of of systems that might have been transformed, be it
Jeff: Ib. Schools or
Jeff: Montessori, or some alternative schools or teachers within schools that are adapting it.
Dave: They be. The exception that proves the rule is what I would say.
Dave: We have so many more people in traditional school systems. So you take Amelia Reggio, or you take
Dave: Montessori, or like there's in half a dozen schools I've talked to over the last couple of years who are like trying to make technology schools.
Dave: I'm trying to make those kinds of schools. And what you see, what happens to them is they do transformational things right. And then the parents stop paying them
Dave: because they have an expectation of what they want, and they're not getting it. And then slowly, they become like traditional schools again.
John: Right.
Dave: Because at the end of the day all of those schools you talked about are paid for by parents.
Dave: and parents want the thing that they got before.
John: Is it.
Jeff: Think they got.
John: That's why the institutions survive that. That's why universities are 400 years old.
John: and there isn't any site you're using on the Internet. That's more than 20 years old. All the stuff that you started out using doesn't exist anymore, like nobody's going to. I mean, they exist. I guess Yahoo still exists. Ebay still exists. But you know you're not. You're not going to Geo cities to set up a website anymore.
John: The technology industry innovates quickly and burns out quickly.
John: The educational institutions are
John: the opposite of that. They they innovate very slowly, but then they have the resilience to last for centuries.
Jeff: Isn't? Aren't the parental preferences based on outcomes and and desired goals, be it getting into a good university or getting a good job, or dare I say it becoming a well rounded human being? And if the current system isn't achieving that
Jeff: and some alternative system is, aren't they going to prefer that.
Dave: No, I I don't think so, Jeff, I mean, are there parents who understand the system deeply enough to understand the relationship between how their kid does in high school, and how they get into university.
Dave: Sure.
Dave: broadly speaking, though, high grades, good.
Dave: right, and as long as the grades are high, but not everybody's.
Dave: because if everybody's grades are good, then my kids, grades being high, don't count
Dave: right? And so
Dave: they're they're not in a position to evaluate
Dave: how well the system is doing when they're not in the school.
Dave: so they don't see what happens on a daily basis, anyway.
Dave: And we don't talk about like. If you look at the average
Dave: system that talks to a parent, whether it be
Dave: Edsb or school, whatever. John could list off the all the names for you, but I've been in some of those conversations at the end of the day. They tell parents how like.
Dave: how well a child has behaved, and how much, how well, they've sort of done, what they're supposed to do and what they grade. They got on a test, and whether they went to school
Dave: right? Those are not markers that are going to give a quality response.
John: And then how? How rigorous is the curriculum! So.
Dave: Rigorous.
John: How many years, how many years of calculus did they take in high school? So how many you know?
John: How much time did they waste learning math.
Dave: But in the.
John: And now.
Jeff: Is that how you feel as parents.
Dave: I had to teach my grade. 8. My kid when they were in grade 8. How to play the game of school cause they were trying to learn, and it was really hurting them in class.
Dave: So I explained to that child, I said, Look, you're in a game.
Dave: The teacher has something they want you to say, and every time you come up with something else you're failing at that game you don't have to believe it.
Dave: But if you want to succeed inside the system, and it's up to you. But if you do want to win the game, then what you have to do is figure out what game the teacher is playing and just play. It
Dave: is not about learning.
Dave: Soon as I told the child that, and we work through that their grades improved by like 15%,
Dave: and they were watching. And then they managed to figure out how to con the teacher into letting them do whatever they wanted to. Which is, they do what they do now.
Dave: So I told.
Jeff: Well, this is very depressing. I hope you've got some good news by chef.
Dave: Da da.
Jen: And also after.
John: Ha! Ha!
Jen: Yeah, I don't know.
Dave: I'm not saying there are fantastic teachers in my in my kid school, or fantastic teachers all over the place. The problem is, the system is incredibly resilient.
Dave: So just to give you one more super optimistic view of the system. And as it works, we've moved towards giving kids
Dave: an amount of money in the university they're going to, based on what their actual grade is. So 85 to 90, you get 1,090 to 95, you get 2,095 to whatever you get 3,000.
Dave: So the only thing that matters to the parent
Dave: is what the actual grade is on the assignment. What they learned in it is not well, they got high grade, so they learned like, it's not that they don't care about learning. It's just
Dave: they they got a 95, they clearly did. Well.
Dave: so
Dave: increasingly, we're shoving ourselves into that sort of quantitative approach to learning
Dave: that increasingly forces you towards the opposite of what we're talking about here, right? The opposite of sort of exploratory, or trying to understand the complexity of the system where we move down a few chapters uncertainty, all those things.
Dave: We're getting further away from that when I think we should be going in the other direction.
Jen: Yeah. And that translates all the way through to to college. I I can give you example. And I it kind of gave you wanna earlier, when I said, we started out the semester talking about academic integrity? Meaning, can I tell that the work you turned in is your work because I have to put a grade on this. And so the reaction at the beginning, this semester, I don't think it's changed much from the University, is we don't use AI to to help generate our assignment. You know
Jen: that students don't should not be using it. That would be a violation of our honor code.
Jen: I don't know how you'd ever detect. And then you get into issues of like that. I'm sitting here policing it. I'm not even teaching. I don't know what I am. What is my role? What is their role? I'm generate using AI to generate the lesson plan. They're responding to it with AI. And who's you know? What? What is the what are we grading? Even? What? What is? What is the outcome that we're we're trying to measure, let alone figuring out a way to measure it. And so I think that kind of plays in. What again I was saying is this whole idea with the system is just gonna win, because
Jen: it's just much easier. And then I would do wanna make sure. Also, this might be a good segue to your example with the Senate and the phones. Because I think reaction within the system we're seeing in education idea that we're going to first off ban it, you know, which is, that's that's like the gut reaction. And then you get people freaking out. They don't want to learn it. You've got even, you know. Okay with me for pioneers that are running out and
Jen: trying it. And then they're you're kind. They're kind of seeding the the knowledge of to those are that are the early adopters and things like that. So yeah, you want to kind of tile us into your Senate example with your with the phones. And then we could kind of Riff on that. How compared.
Dave: I love. Yeah. So it was one of those things I just came across when I was reading about this. The this is story from 1,930 in the Us. Senate, where one day the
Dave: people who do send it business went inside the Senate and replaced all of the pick me up and yell into it phones with phones, with a rotary dial on them.
Dave: and the senators were furious because they didn't know how to. Suddenly they were forced to be the ones operating a telephone
Dave: right? So they used to pick up the telephone and talk to an operator
Dave: who was the person who actually operated the phone. And we move that up a step so that you could actually dial person directly.
Dave: There are huge advantages and disadvantages to that from a practical standpoint. But there's a bunch of like day to day things that they were complaining about inside of the Senate notes like cause they were trying to pass, pass a bill to get rid of these phones. So how am I supposed to remember all these numbers? How am I supposed to what I use 2 hands to use the telephone, and then it was like, I don't have enough light in my room. I can't even see the telephone these small numbers, and I'm moving a dial, and I keep calling the wrong person.
Dave: And they're all things that for those of you don't know what a rotary phone is. Please check the Internet. But you know, I'm doing this thing. And for those of us who actually remember using one of those you you could dial the wrong person. It's hard, but you could
Dave: but that change that. The sort of technical change had this huge sort of response. And I think a big part of it. And I think it's something we see anytime. We look at the conversation around technology. It's abundance information. And it's impact on people is that
Dave: people who are successful currently
Dave: are very resilient. They're very
Dave: resentful and also
Dave: nervous and anxious about things that they don't know how to do
Dave: so. Picking up a telephone is something professionally. Everybody knew how to do one day, and the next day they had no idea.
Dave: So then they're looking at this thing in their office and going.
Dave: I used to have this feeling of comfort. Pick it up, get me, Jimmy, right?
Dave: And now
Dave: I have to find Jimmy's phone number first. Where did I put the numbers?
Dave: And now it's over there. So how do I
Dave: kind of move over, and you and suddenly I feel anxious about it. I don't know how to do it.
Dave: and I think when we look at sitting around the table with
Dave: decision. Makers, and I know John, for sure has been in a bunch of these conversations. I'm sure, Jen, you've seen that as a consultant I can't imagine, Jeff, you haven't been pulled in a half a dozen rooms a year to talk about this.
Jeff: So avoid them. But yeah.
Dave: Well right. But when you sit at those tables people are like.
Dave: there's a point at which you can just see them turn off.
Dave: And you're like, Oh, you're not listening anywhere, are you?
Dave: Like I? I went. I went one step too far, and suddenly the changes I'm talking about don't make any. They you do not want to engage with them anymore.
Dave: And to me that Senate example has all of those pieces right.
Jeff: By the way, my favorite part of the Senate example were the younger senators who said their version of
Jeff: Okay, boomer, like we like.
Dave: But it's really more convenient.
Jeff: Figure out how to use a rotary dial.
Jen: It's like.
John: And also the case.
Jen: Yeah.
John: Where it's. It's very visible that they don't know how to use the phone right? Because everybody knows when they call the wrong number. They're gonna talk to somebody that they didn't intend to. It's very embarrassing for them. And you know, we see that all the time, because
John: the way people react to that is, they make fun of the technology. Right? Is my clicker going to? I can't connect to the projector. I don't understand, you know, and they make light of how people.
Dave: The issue.
John: Technology is, you know, when my kids were in grade, 1 one of their one of their projects was they. They grabbed a macbook from the cart, they opened up their Powerpoint, they connected it to the projector, did their presentation, shut it all down, went and sat down. When you know they're 7 years old, and this was
John: almost 20 years ago now, and you know, but people with master's degrees and doctorates don't know how to connect the projector. And then they make fun of the technology. Because of that. It's the same thing. It's embarrassing to not know it.
Jen: On the yeah. And then there's fears, too. I've had. You were saying, Dave, like having meetings. I've had teachers flat out. Just say, this is going to replace me. Why, why would I help promote a technology that's going to replace me? So there's that fear fear as well.
Jen: okay, so should I get into the questions I have for the group or do, what do we have anything else? Do you want to say anything else about the chapter that we didn't. Are there any main themes that I kind of missed.
Dave: No, I I mean, this is such a great, it's so fun to talk this out.
Dave: So no, I I feel good about it. Please continue.
Jen: Yeah.
Dave: Coming next, though.
Jen: I kinda hinted at a lot of the questions already. You know, we have our our 20 year history, which I just always love to kind of tap into, because I I just think that
Jen: the cut the thing changes. But the issues don't for a lot of times. And so as a group. I just kinda wanted to kinda you. Let's just bounce some ideas off each other. Where did you start 20 years ago in terms of technologies that you thought we're going to. First of all, did you think anything we've ever talked about would be transformational? Or did you think it would be more incremental some of the things that we ed tech weekly.
Jen: How did you view this things we were talking about.
Dave: I think the one that I
Dave: that blew me away the most was rightly the first time I saw it
Dave: the first time I saw people use it, and everybody was in the document at the same time. And I was like, Whoa!
Dave: How is that? Even going to work?
Dave: And for probably I don't know. Still, now I do it, for I'll throw 50 people into the same document just for entertainment value.
John: Hmm.
Dave: I'm still entertained by it.
Dave: I don't know that it's transformational. It is heavily. It's a big change, maybe not a transformational one but
Dave: it. The the knock on effects of it are really interesting. Like anytime. Anybody sends me a dock file to work to work on. I get twitchy.
Dave: Can you not share that someplace? So I don't have to send back a version of it to you because I'm gonna freak out
Dave: so that kind of like. It's made those different changes in the way that we work together, but not a transformational change. But I still remember the first day
Dave: when I first saw it, I was like that. Can't work
Dave: even make that work.
Dave: Yeah.
John: And then it was, how many people can we have in here.
Dave: That's right.
John: The very next step was, how.
Jeff: But let's break it, and then.
John: Yeah, I think it was 30 in initially, I remember, it might have been 20. I remember putting enough people in to break it
John: like right off the bat. But yeah, that that the way we collaborate. And I. Still, you're right. I get twitchy, too. When I see someone open.
John: you know a word document or a Powerpoint or something, and it's like I can't edit that you're gonna have to.
Jen: And there's versions, and it's like, Oh, no.
John: Updated Updated Updated Final Version.
Jen: Yeah.
Jeff: And at least for me, this is not an issue of just old people, because my students have to be trained to use the Google Space. Some of them are familiar with it, but some are used to sending hungle files, which are, that is, the Korean word processing program, which only works in Korea.
Jeff: and you have to have that program in order to open or edit.
Jeff: And it it takes like they still just well, I'll send you my assignment. No, you will publish it where you're supposed to publish it, so I can have access to it, and that is,
John: Yeah.
Jeff: Lengthy process for some.
John: So the thing that helped that in my world is in case wall of education, everybody uses chromebooks.
John: and once chromebooks were available, 85% of schools was the last number I heard, and that's been a while. Give a chromebook to every kid.
John: And so the entire industry, if you can call K, 12. Education and industry runs on Google. So the people who are dragging their feet like sending, and it the only entity that does it is the State, because
John: the State of Ohio doesn't allow their employees to use Google docs. So they're sending attachments. And you know, in Microsoft formats. But they're the only ones right? So everybody else, even new superintendents coming in new school Board members like everybody's, already on board, which is super helpful.
Jeff: Is, that's a change from 20 years ago, because I feel like, 20 years ago Apple was dominant in the in the education space.
John: Yeah, I mean, and we, I am in one of 2 schools in the county that uses apple products with every kid we every kid gets an ipad, and every staff member has
John: an ipad and a macbook. And we are 100% Google.
John: So they all use apple devices to access the Google ecosystem because Iworks is really flaky when you get into trying to collaborate.
John: But so.
Jen: So to answer my my own question. I thought the whole thing was transformational because I I was sitting there as an insurance underwriter, and it took my first online class.
Jen: And I was like, Oh, my gosh, everything is about to completely change. And that's when you know Web 20 was just coming out, and the fact that I could talk to I don't know, Jeff, if you were where you were in New Hampshire a bit, and wherever you were. Canada, I was like, this is unreal. Yeah, I can have like study groups in college. And I was able to, you know. See, my professor, but to be able to connect
Jen: at a distance and and time shift. Time didn't matter. I could do things. Respond to a discussion board 3sech after somebody else posted it. All those things to me just felt
Jen: big and then like over the course of the 20 years, I feel like I've either had to be a salesperson for that, or to like respond to the negative consequences of that.
Jen: Twitter, said Twitter. Remember how excited we are. We're the first night to Twitter. I don't know if we thought it would like change, you know. Geopolitical, whatever maybe it has. I don't know. I don't think I was thinking of that when we were we were laughing about people telling I had a bagel for breakfast, I think, is kind of the extent of the conversation.
John: I think it's it's smartphones more than than social media. Remember, we were on Twitter for 3 years before the iphone came out
John: right, and if you think about
John: how
John: mobile devices, I mean just just not having to burn Podcasts onto CD, so you listen to them in the car.
John: you know, saved me hours a week.
John: That whole connected everywhere all the time.
John: I think, was maybe as transformational as
John: social media, and and the ability for
John: everyone to be a publisher, and everybody to share this thing with the world, or as much of the world as wants to pay attention to it.
Jeff: It's fun to reminisce about transformational moments as a Gen. Xer. You know, first one is Pong.
Jeff: Gopher.
John: I love Gopher and.
Jeff: When I started.
John: List.
Jeff: Which for those who don't know, was the Internet before the World Wide Web Text based tool out of Minnesota, I believe. And that was like, Wow, oh, okay, I can get information about anything.
John: So if I can talk about that for a second, pre go for right. If you wanted information, you had to guess where it was, and then go check right. I'm gonna Ftp to, you know Washington University and St. Louis, and see what's on their server, and if there's anything there I might be interested in Gopher was the first time you could actually create, like a menu or a table of contents that actually pointed to different places on the Internet and connected things together.
John: That that was.
Jeff: Real player was, was.
Dave: So I was just gonna say, there are 3 things
Dave: right. There's you say, go for I I think of it as the Apache foundation. But whatever I can put a thing out.
Dave: there's search. I can find a thing. And then there's I can get to the thing. So the phone
Dave: right to me. It's those 3 pieces together
Dave: that you're when I hear Jeff talk about it. Those are the the elements of it, right? Like
Dave: I can put it up online so people can see it.
Dave: I can find it. So that difference between the guessing that John's talking about. And then the phone thing that John was talking about. Where then, no matter where I am, I can do the searching thing to find the posting thing.
Jeff: For me. The next transformation was real player and real audio, and realizing that oh, I can actually publish audio and like, there can be this global conversation.
Jeff: And then it was like Net 2 meeting.
Jeff: or I forget what it was called. But it was like the first early Skype kind of thing.
Dave: Where.
Jeff: Living in Korea. All of a sudden I could talk to my family and friends for free as opposed to paying, you know, a dollar 50 a minute.
Jeff: And then like, when I think about the phone and the whole social media thing
Jeff: that was more incremental
Jeff: in the big picture, it was transformational. But I didn't have a moment of like, Oh, wow! Twitter is going to change the world or Facebook, you know, it's like
Jeff: there was just this flood of new tools and sites. And oh, things are becoming more social.
Jeff: That was the frog getting boiled in the pot of water it wasn't like.
Jeff: and all of a sudden, wow!
Jen: So how is that similar or different to where we're sitting now with AI
Jen: like our how do you view
Jen: it? Say, it's Ed tech weekly, and Jeff puts in a link. Look at this new chat. Gpt thing. What are we gonna do with this like? How how does that all fit in with what? What we've seen.
Dave: I I think the most important thing is that it collapses to the 3 things that I was suggesting are the most important ones. So it collapses, search
Dave: and content.
Dave: So it removes the where the thing came from, and who actually made it.
Dave: And that's where I think 20 years from now that's where we'll see the huge implications is that it wipes out the human
Dave: right? It may have come from humans, and eventually it won't. So if you look at.
Dave: you know, a ticket never would say
Dave: the we're gonna get to the point where it's going to be. AI looking to AI generated text that look to AI generated text to create AI generated text.
Dave: So I think in the long run, that's the huge piece
Dave: on a day-to-day basis.
Dave: I mean.
Dave: it's gonna
Dave: lead to some bad report writing.
Dave: But a lot of bad reports are already out there. Now.
Dave: I'm not sure that the balance is gonna be worse reports.
Dave: Like, I think when it go ahead. Sorry.
Jeff: If Jen doesn't mind. I had a question that I actually kind of wrote down. You were in the chapter talking about the example of a child looking for how does a giraffe sleep?
Jeff: And you conclude that part by saying the Internet is not an abundance of information we want. It's an abundance of all information
Jeff: which to me, okay, so so does that. Does that mean the information isn't useful to me? It made me think about curation and the value of
Jeff: either verified or some kind of human checked
Jeff: source of information. And I thought of like Wikipedia.
Jeff: So Wikipedia isn't perfect.
Jeff: but.
Dave: Great, though.
Jeff: It's pretty great. And it's there's a a level of curation that I trust more than just some
Jeff: random Youtube video. So in this world of AI generating content from AI is, is there hope for some kind of human involved curation that will aid
Jeff: that validity
Jeff: and trust.
Dave: I mean that.
Jeff: Great.
Dave: That'd be great. I mean, you remember when we interviewed Larry Sanger about this right in 2,006, do you remember that conversation
Dave: where he was like what Wikipedia was. Only the training program. What we really wanted to do was build new Pedia, which was all expert, vetted material so that we could have a trustworthy place to have on the Internet.
Dave: And Wikipedia was supposed to be that
Dave: But like, I can't imagine how they would have negotiated difficult dialogues in that model
Dave: right? Like I don't know how they went and negotiated the current crisis in the Middle East
Dave: or any crisis in the Middle East. Let's face it
Dave: like. I don't know how.
Jeff: Seems doable.
Dave: And expert like.
Jeff: It seems like you could say, all right. Here are a variety of perspectives.
Jeff: And here's this person's background. And here's what you need to know, to kind of fully understand where they're coming from.
Jeff: And here's 5 different ones.
Jeff: You can make up their own opinion.
Dave: In that model he was paying people.
Dave: So then you have to go out and pay experts which ends up being different than a whole community coming together with different voices, like, I think the money there makes it harder.
Dave: Because then somebody has to choose which experts they're gonna hire rather than everybody with a vested interest, comes in and has a voice which is what Wikipedia looks like.
Dave: which I think turns out much better. I think Wikipedia is the most amazing thing the Internet ever made.
Dave: And I think it's amazing, and I will defend it and stomp the floor for it every day.
Dave: because it's still better than almost anything else you're gonna use. It's better than AI.
Jen: Is Wikipedia still banned in K. 12 schools. John, or anyone who could.
John: No, it's it's
John: I see more push back in higher. Ed. Dave can can fight me on this. But
John: I think the the arguments against Wikipedia that we were having in K. 12,
John: you know, 15 years ago. We're still around at least right before the pandemic at at higher Ed in terms of
John: I think K. 12 gave up on on vetting sources at some point, and just kind of threw their hands up with the I came from the Internet and would just leave it at that, whereas
John: higher. Ed, I think, wants
John: things to be better
John: cited.
John: And and so you know, and and Wikipedia is cited. But it's you know. Well, let's let's look at the value of these things that are in the footnotes, and you know, make sure that it's all reliable information. At least that was my impression from talking with college professors.
John: you know, before the pandemic.
Jen: Do you ban many sites, John, like
Jen: Youtube or any of it? There.
John: No
John: You know. The law says we have to ban stuff that is
John: harmful to minors.
John: Child, pornography and obscene.
John: and and
John: there are a lot of gray areas there. But
John: for the most part we we leave most of the stuff unless unless it creates a problem.
John: you know, or or.
Jen: And learn from that right? Because we certainly talk back in the day things were banned a lot, right? Teachers would try to use something at school and would not be able to do it. We talk about some new technology, and they wouldn't even
Jen: you know. One thing I think we if I had to critique us over the last 20 years. We we were so.
Jen: Jeff, I I love that you're positive, and we're always very positive
Jen: we're coming from a very specific you know, we all can afford it. The Internet. We can all afford good computers, or whatever
Jen: and we probably don't spend sufficient amount of time talking about those that can't. And then probably all these privacy concerns and safety concerns. And what are they doing with data that we have and things like that. So you know, again, I feel like the negative knowing Jeff. Jeff is like super positive always. But like, how do you.
Jeff: Get out of me.
Jen: No, I know. Sorry.
John: We'll make a grumpy old man out of him yet.
Jen: That's right.
Jen: But you know, how does that all come into play? As far as you know.
Jen: they're going to be collecting a lot of ton of data on us. Now we're every every time you put in a prompt somebody's storing what you ask the same way, Google, or whoever stores. What your searches are are these things we need to worry about?
Jen: And is it much different than what we've had to worry about in the last 20 years?
Dave: Search histories are pretty stark business man.
Dave: Have you ever done them on Google on the Google Trends?
Dave: I'm sorry.
Jeff: What is that?
Dave: On Google trends when you go through and see what the histories of what people have searched. Because this, the same thing that happens on Google, right? They record every search. And then that data is available.
Dave: Those patterns are a little scary already.
Jeff: Well and the on the individual level. I don't know if you guys saw the social dilemma on Netflix, but it talks about how these, you know, companies track they know when you broke up with your partner, and which you know
Jeff: your cycle. It like they know way too much on the individual level. All you know, based on serving up the right
Jeff: amount of engagement and commercial.
Jeff: Content.
Jen: So maybe the way to leave it is there are positives, and there are potential negative consequences. And we just have to think about those we're and we're rolling.
John: I just wanna know which of
John: the thousands of periodic table apps actually survive to the test of time.
Jeff: Stay tuned. We'll get back to you on that.
Jen: Well, that's that's the extent of my questions. I didn't really have any more to share
Jen: or to ask.
Jeff: So I mean the title change has never been a bargain.
Jeff: Yeah, alright, Pollyanna, Jeff like, would any of us want to go back
Jeff: 2
Jeff: 50 years ago. Level of technology.
Jeff: I mean, yeah, there is good and bad, and there are concerns on an individual and a societal level. But I like being able to have a conversation with you guys for free. And I like all the
Jeff: stuff I can do in 2,024 great bargain, and I pay so little
Jeff: I'm sold. It is a bargain.
Dave: So I'm just gonna read the quote that it comes from.
Dave: So progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it.
Dave: Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, All right. You can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance.
Dave: So it's not saying that it's not good.
Dave: It's that it's not without challenges. That's right. You're you're trading one thing for another all the time.
Dave: Right? So it's not that
Dave: in the key there is to take a look at what we're trading.
Dave: and ask ourselves, what is it that we valued about what was there before.
Dave: So I'll give you an example to me. One of the huge trade-offs is boredom.
Dave: We've lost the necessity of boredom. Anybody who has into to Jen's comments. We should say it more often
Dave: if you have access to technology. If you've got the connectivity, if you've got those things, if you have that
Dave: you no longer ever need to be bored.
Dave: and on the surface you're like, whew! No more boredom! Certainly me at 7 years old, kicking around my backyard northern New Brunswick would have been ecstatic about that right. But
Dave: the lack of boredom really troubles your ability to be creative
Dave: right? So if you just feed your spare time with whatever comes at you, whatever you can get. You don't have those moments of
Dave: you know what I'm just gonna think my way through that, or like. I tell my 18 year old I can't believe I'm saying that 18 year old.
Dave: The reason you can never remember to do something is because there's never any quiet in your mind
Dave: for those things to come back to you for you to remember. You need to do them because you.
Jeff: Always remember, do things when you were 18.
Dave: Definitely, not
Dave: definitely. Not.
Dave: What I'm saying is is that boredom can get filled in a variety of ways. I had the choice to fill in a bunch of ways. I certainly got less and less productive doing that as I got older.
Dave: But now, in order to be bored, you have to make the effort.
Dave: That was not an effort I had to make when I was sitting in my basement when I was 16,
Dave: but I have to make an effort to be bored. I have to actually choose the quiet.
Jeff: Fair enough, and I think they're.
Dave: Great skill. Right? I think it's great.
Dave: and that's all I'm saying.
Jeff: I said.
Dave: Valuable.
John: You get to choose it.
Dave: Hold on to it.
Jeff: Right to me. A bargain is getting
Jeff: something valuable at a good price.
John: So you like.
Jeff: Feeling, yeah.
John: Using different definitions of bargain.
Jeff: Okay, Dave.
John: Saying, you're trading something to get.
Jeff: Sure.
John: The cool stuff.
Jeff: Absolutely.
Jeff: It's never been free.
Jeff: Free.
Jen: That one!
Jeff: But the other thing I notice in my students is like.
Jeff: there's a certain human capacity to naturally compensate.
Jeff: and I see my students how much they enjoy. Vinyl, how many are taking photos with traditional cameras? How many are not online? I would say, a good 30%
Jeff: ish, just a guess are not on Instagram. Do not have any social media because they are aware of the effect.
Jeff: So. And like, there's a certain premium placed on. Oh, we're doing like an old folksy. We're gonna go offline for 3sech. So like, I feel like there's still a human capacity to compensate in some ways.
Dave: But.
John: My kid found.
Dave: You're you're supporting exactly what they're choosing to do it right.
Dave: And that's what I'm saying. So when when you think about what you need to teach a child.
Dave: 40 years ago I didn't need to tell you to choose
Dave: to find a place that didn't have entertainment that was specifically
Dave: aligned to you. I didn't have to have that conversation with you. I had to have the obvious one. You're bored. Can we just find you something to do
Dave: now it's the opposite. So it's not that one is necessarily better or worse than the other. I think the current state probably is a little better. I'm just saying that the lesson is different.
Dave: And so if we're teaching those kids inside of a school, just to use a random plays, example for teaching them. Inside of a school. We have different lessons that they need to learn
Dave: because of the information ecosystem they live in.
Jeff: And you're saying the system is not doing that very well.
Dave: I don't know if it can.
Jeff: Best domain name we ever came up with was trust in education, teaching, responsible use of social technology didn't go anywhere, but great name.
Dave: Name.
Jen: I think. You know, they learn this is people within the system. Learn and kind of what we're talking about. About. Last week is, folks have seen some of the negative consequences potentially of having Facebook or whatever it might be. And so they learn. And a certain percentage kind of falls off and plus. It's not necessarily that bright, shiny object that it was to us
Jen: 20 years. And so it's like, Oh, yeah, either they were born knowing it, and it was always a given first assess kind of like poking around and seeing what it's all about.
John: The bright, shiny objects are the novel things right? That that's part of. Why Vinyl is research. My kid found a camcorder in the basement, said, Hey, can I use this? I I found some cause. There were some unopened to new tapes. I said, Why don't you just use your phone? And they said, Well, but I wanna try to go ahead.
John: They can't figure out how to put the tape in which is hilarious.
John: So.
Jen: In real.
John: But it's it's the novelty thing, right? It's not the same thing that they're used to, and and that's what makes it cool.
John: That's why, we have a Victrola.
Dave: Do.
Jen: But, Jeff, I'm positive I am. I would not be
Jen: hanging around here if I wasn't patented about
Jen: the potatoes. Thanks.
John: Keep it.
Jeff: Hope, alive.
John: All.
Jen: Right.
John: See, there's 2 of them there.
Jen: Don't get me started, though I could tell you all the things that are gonna go wrong.
Jen: Yeah.
Dave: And I guess
Dave: the only the the point of that. To go back all the way back to our general is ask the question. She asked the start. Why, this chapter here the point is, is to talk about how those things have changed and the differences that are out there. That very conversation, we just add, and we had a much more tactical conversation than most people gonna have. Real player probably won't come up in every one of those
Dave: but or the Apache foundation like, but at the end of the day those changes are ones that people have felt
Dave: right. They felt that their privacy is certainly different than it used to be.
Dave: Right. My, the the ways in which people are trying to scam you are a little bit more complex than they used to be.
Dave: But at the same time my mom got
Dave: bone scam the other day, which is, you know, 70 years old.
Dave: That's we've been doing that forever. So it's not like a A fully all the time. But I think
Dave: people's relationship to how they get information, people's relationship to how they learn things.
Dave: people's relationship to how they deal with political issues. Those are the ones I really care about.
Dave: And I think it's the stuff we do the most.
Dave: So I'm I'm right now still trying to write this piece about training people for the stuff they don't care about.
Dave: which is the vast majority of the training that the teaching that we do, we teach people who the things they're not going to be experts in
Dave: for that stuff. I think it's where really matters, because we're gonna go out and use. Not that book that Jeff learned that probably had all the characters right before it came to him to learn Korean, but random information.
Dave: Which, when there's a right answer, like what are the 24 hungle characters.
Dave: is fine, but when it's.
Jeff: Something to.
Dave: Vote on, or who to vote for. Yeah.
Dave: who to vote for? It's gotta be close to you, you guys. Right now, I mean.
Dave: you're running up against the the information ecosystem right now in the States is unbelievable.
Dave: Right? How does anybody manage that?
Jeff: Is it that much better in Canada?
Dave: We're just not as, everything's it's like Texas, like, you guys are the Texas of Canada. Everything's just bigger in the United States like, yes, we have a big problem. Here. We have the same political shifts. We've got the leader of the Conservative party hanging out with white Nationalists, and like.
Dave: we've got problems, it's just not as
Dave: like
Dave: the with the core cases. And like
Dave: 24, 7, like I, I was on Cnn today for 5secmin, and I saw tick or tape of every word somebody was saying inside of a courtroom.
Dave: Like we just can't manage that here. We don't have the attention span.
Jeff: We make our politics a reality, show like no one else.
Jeff: no perfect.
Jen: That's right.
Jen: Alright!
Jeff: So what's coming up next week? Give us a trailer.
Jen: What's the what's up.
Jeff: Abundance.
Jen: Or second chapter abundance.
Jen: He's got.
Dave: It's abundance I just checked in the book.
John: Hmm, yeah. The.
Jen: So look.
Dave: Yeah.
Dave: abundance. That whole thing is about how it's the thing the technology gives us. So the first thing is how the technology impacts things. And then the thing the technology I think most impacts is abundance which goes back to those 3 things I was talking about
Dave: the Apache foundation, or I can now post things. Anybody can post things on the Internet.
Dave: search. Anybody can find things on the Internet, and then let's call it cell phones. Anybody can get access to do those things.
Dave: It means that we have all this information all the time.
Dave: and it used to be that the precious bit of information you had about the cool restaurant
Dave: was, you know, a thing that you could trade on, whereas
Dave: now I'm in a group of 50,000 people in my local community that only has, like 400,000. But they're like 50,000 people in this Facebook group.
Dave: constantly talking about every restaurant anybody's ever been to
Dave: and it's just a different problem.
Dave: right? And I think
Dave: that's the way that's the difference we all deal with. And I think it has a huge number of knock on effects in terms of how we interact with each other.
Dave: how we conserve or pro like preserve our sanity, or whatever like even Drew, who are talking about with the politics. Right?
Dave: It's not that. It's the first time any election in any country has been fraught.
Dave: It's that you just have so much more of it.
Jen: How did we forget? We forgot one guys? The ability to scale and moocs. We didn't say the word mooc.
Jen: and are transformative. Whatever happened to the Moocs. They're supposed to disrupt education as we know it have they?
Jen: Are they.
John: Every time I hear somebody talk about it he apologizes.
John: Look.
Dave: True, I do.
Dave: I think there are places where first of all, the only people who are talking about disruption were people trying to sell you something.
Jen: David Brooks in the New York Times.
Dave: Yeah, it was that kind of thing right?
Dave: There'll only be 10 school. There'll only be 10 universities
Dave: at some point, and and nobody who was serious about any of this thought that
Dave: I think the real potential was in
Dave: places where scaling was needed. So like there's been huge successes in places like Malaysia and India and
Dave: Indonesia has had huge successes with it. I think there are places where they've managed to do some good work.
Jen: Well, I think it ties into what you were saying. Are we using Moops to learn, or are we using Moocs to accredit? And I think the accrediting side was a big challenge and and didn't scale necessarily in the United States. And maybe like you said some arguments. But the learning part, I think, yeah, I've been able to
Jen: do a lot of informal learning on your own. Yeah.
John: I think the challenge of connecting is also
John: wrapped up in that. I mean, if if education were just about disseminating content.
John: then books are easy, right? You you just disseminate the content to everybody.
John: It's that. What am I doing with this? How am I reflecting on it? How am I applying it? How am I using that knowledge to create something new?
John: That's where things get
John: super difficult, because you need to be in a community of practice to make that happen.
Jen: Wonderful. Thank you.
Jeff: So tune in next week our conversation continues with chapter 2. Abundance.
Jen: Hey? I'll try to prepare more than 2secmin before.
Jeff: No worries. I thank you so much for
Jeff: prepare to helm.
Jeff: Want to see our Tiktok numbers.
Jen: Sure.
Jen: Oh, wow!
Dave: That's a lot of lakes.
Jeff: That's a lot of likes.
Jeff: And you know, 8% of the people watched a full 1secmin.
John: Gold.
Jeff: And our viewership
Jeff: is 98.3%. Korea.
Jen: Did you say? 8% watched 1secmin.
John: Yes.
Jeff: Well, the entire 1secmin, the whole 1secmin. Video.
Jen: All one, yeah, but 8%. Okay. Okay.
Dave: It's actually good.
Jeff: Yeah, whereas our Youtube numbers.
Dave: There were a lot of Youtube links. I got confused.
Dave: Where is the home video for the full video?
Jeff: Last week I streamed on my Youtube channel because the Ed Tech talk one had just been activated and was not capable of doing.
John: Couldn't see, streaming.
Jeff: So
Jeff: originally the one that was posted with Jeff Lebo. Now, Ted tech talk and we're streaming on it. Tech talk and everything's publishing in a tech talk. So these numbers, it's interesting. They kind of went up in the beginning and then have really plateaued the full length videos.
Jeff: Okay, this was I. So we did the full length. That's gotten 12 views in 5 days.
Jeff: The clips one view no view.
Jeff: And granted at Tiktok, Youtube doesn't have a lot of followers.
Jeff: the Instagram.
Jeff: This one got a hundred 30 views.
Jeff: and John John is very popular. He got 1, 77.
Jeff: What did John.
Jen: Wow!
Dave: On, yeah.
John: Wow!
Jen: I don't think I even.
John: Cause you spell my name wrong.
John: It was the other.
John: It's another person.
Jeff: John, I did make a spelling mistake. I left one of the ends out of abundance in one of them.
John: Oh, going back.
Dave: Abutance.
Jeff: Buddhist, yeah, that's.
Jen: Oh, I am good.
Jen: Aye.
Jen: this is yeah.
Jeff: Heard about Da Vinci resolve
Jeff: the device.
John: Yes.
Jeff: So
Jeff: yeah, like I said, it's I. I very much enjoyed sort of getting back into the game a little bit, and
Jeff: you are my uses.
John: Descriptions. Yeah.
Jen: And followers on the Instagram.
Jeff: Growing. That's like.
Dave: Were, we.
Jeff: 100%.
Jen: Well, there's 4 of us here.
John: I am not subscribed at tech talk. But I am subscribed to josephines.
John: and she has
John: posted one video, in her life.
Dave: Yeah.
Jen: Joe. That's exciting. Then I'm happy for you to
Jen: that. You're learning.
Jeff: And it is all about the shorts.
Jeff: and I have to say, like.
Jeff: it's how I mean. I like these lengthy conversations. But in terms of the media I consume.
Jeff: I like it short.
John: Yeah.
Jen: I have to follow on Tiktok.
Jeff: Course, editing Dave down to 60secs, you know there's a lot of like cuts.
Jeff: and and anyone to 1secmin. But.
Dave: I look I resemble that remark.
Dave: I've gotten so used to doing everything in like 40secmin chunks
Dave: that
Dave: although I still tell everybody that the only reason I can do any of these things is because of it. To talk
Dave: like John and I were talking about this the other day just about people's inability to look at a chat while they're talking.
Dave: People just can't.
Dave: They cannot do it like. And I don't mean I mean one person, I mean. The vast majority of people cannot talk and see a chat.
John: If they're moderating an online conversation, they have to stop and check the chat, and then they see the comments from 15secmin ago, and then they try to re circle back to those, and
John: you've lost it.
Dave: It was such good training.
Jen: Chef. Somebody has ed tech talk you had to be ed tech talkers.
Jeff: Yeah. On. Tiktok.
Jen: Who is this person?
Jeff: A teacher in Texas. I think.
Jen: Sure in Texas. Yeah.
Jen: alright, I'll follow her, too. Give her a little love.
Jen: Nice job.
Jen: Good job. See?
Jeff: So you're on Tikjen.
Jen: I certainly am
Jen: I. I spend many, many, many hours a week on Tiktok.
Jeff: Oh.
Jeff: isn't it? It's so good like, it's really just a well designed
Jeff: platform.
Jen: Oh, and it's it, the algorithm algorithms, right? I mean, I'm just.
Jeff: What do you get.
Jen: Lesbians from Canada is my niche.
Jeff: That's it.
Jen: To be my.
John: A.
Jen: That.
Dave: We have a very fine crop up here, actually.
Jen: That's true.
Jen: Lots of subaru lots of schemes.
John: Huh!
Jen: Probably. Taylor Swift. Lots of Taylor Swift, but I think everybody's probably getting inundated.
Jeff: Yeah, I tell my students I my Tiktok, would really bore them. I get no dancing. I haven't seen my money. Don't jiggle jiggle in months.
Jen: So what's your what are you getting? What are you paying.
Jeff: I get. I get a lot of science, some tech. I get a lot of end of life.
Jeff: I started following Hospice, Nurse Julie.
Jen: I follow that? But yes, I get served up. Her.
Jeff: And then there was Sid, a 24 year old in La, who was diagnosed with cancer to sort of maintaining her positivity through the journey. So now I get a lot of people, particularly younger people, who are confronting the end of their lives.
Jeff: And it's really compelling
Jeff: food for thought
Jeff: and
Jeff: it's it's a little, you know, not morbid. But
Jeff: yeah. So I get that, and then let like lots of storytelling.
Jeff: lots of people talking about their dates and things which.
Jen: Well, politics, obviously. Do you get politics? I'm just.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah.
Dave: We can.
Jeff: It sounds like.
Dave: Animals.
Dave: I owe you animals.
Jen: I don't get any animals.
Jeff: I get more animals on Instagram than Tiktok
Jeff: got you? Are you boys on Tiktok?
Dave: It's not my go to I.
Dave: We had a whole thing in the house about getting out of Tiktok, so I jumped along with it. I got out. I still have an account there. I don't use it anymore.
Jen: I have never both.
Jen: I've never posted one thing on it.
Dave: That is, Jen, though, just to go back to where we were in the conversation.
Dave: That's the thing that's changed in the last 20 years more than anything else is that people on the Internet don't post anything on the Internet.
Dave: 5%. I can't even imagine what the percentage difference is now between an amount of content consumed.
Jen: I'm assuming.
Dave: Kind of content. Creation created. Yeah.
Jen: For sure.
Dave: More like a TV. Now.
Jeff: It could be the percentage who post nothing. The percentage who post to a a walled garden.
Jeff: and then the
Jeff: public posters.
Dave: Yeah, for sure, like even you're so you're saying. Josephine only posted one video.
Dave: She just I, she said. Oh, I posted this thing, and I was like.
Dave: Oh, you you must have met.
Dave: whatever the other, it's not post, but.
Jeff: Sorry.
Dave: She would, she would never make it. It was a stored cause. She'd never make it permanent. And that's the thing that even 10 years ago
Dave: people were crafting their Instagram accounts.
Dave: And now people don't post on their Instagram accounts anymore unless they have a specific thing that they're selling.
Jeff: Are you her close friend.
Dave: I have no idea.
Jeff: Because you can share it with just your close friends.
Dave: Youtube.
Jeff: On Instagram
Jeff: up.
Jeff: can you.
Dave: If someone else is your close friend.
Jeff: No.
Jen: Shadow.
Jeff: Know, who.
Jen: Created a problem and
Jen: salt and.
Dave: No, you know what. We're super lucky. At this point
Dave: the kids are more posey than Ren. But the kids are pretty good.
Dave: You know you're never getting the whole story from anybody.
Jeff: Nor should you.
Dave: Alright!
Jeff: Should have. Some privacy from their parents!
Jen: Your work is almost done. I mean, what can you.
Dave: Yeah.
Jen: Do like I mean.
Dave: Soon.
Jen: Right on it.
Dave: But they're pretty communicative, like we get a fair amount.
Dave: And
Dave: if there are things that she is running through a different vein that's
Dave: doesn't bother.
Jen: About Snapchat? Are they still using that those youngsters.
Dave: Not mine.
Dave: But I think that's that's like a lot of that stuff is school by school, right? Like
Dave: you'll end up being one group of people who use it. Another group that don't like they move around.
Jen: I I was way past that. That would have just been weird for me to be on Snapchat like.
Jen: Not that. It's not weird that I'm in tic. Tac! But.
John: I had a conversation with the fifth grader last week, who is super excited and motivated about getting access to Snapchat.
Dave: Oh, wow!
John: If she takes, if she gets all A's and she takes honors classes in seventh grade, she can have Snapchat Snapchat, which is 2 years away.
John: but like is all about it, like I need to take honors classes, so I can get access to Snapchat.
John: And I, said Snapchat, really.
Dave: Currently.
John: I said, if it still exists when you're in seventh grade, you knock yourself out.
Jen: Next week I'm gonna go eat dinner.
Dave: Yeah, I gotta go grab my kids from the pool.
Jen: Travel.
John: I gotta go ben conduit.
John: I'm learning how to bend conduit. Have you ever tried it? It's not as easy as it looks.
Jen: No, I.
Dave: Didn't think it looked easy. Is it plastic or metal?
John: Metal.
Jen: Oh, madam!
Dave: Feeding it. No.
John: Using a conduit vendor.
Jeff: Sounds like good tiktok material.
John: I'll I'll return it after I'm done.
Jen: Stuff is still recording. Oh, man, we better understand you this on the minute shorts.
Jeff: Don't worry.
John: This is. This is why he's recording it.
Dave: More conduit, more conduit.
Jeff: I'm.
John: I'm building trellises for the garden, because I want to build arches that the plants can grow over, and I'm making them doing it by bending half inch conduit.
Dave: So I'm literally designing a new vegetable garden bed for my backyard right now.
Dave: so we need to talk. You should come on.
John: Over and look at mine.
Dave: I should I should.
Jeff: Ad builders, podcast right.
Jen: I'm thinking another.
Jen: how do you.
Dave: Literally just I just price somebody bringing soil to my house.
John: Soils it.
Jeff: I will, on that exciting note, as always a pleasure, see you next.
Jen: For now see you next slide.
John: Bye, bye.