Dave's Whiteboard

Stephen Downes recently posted a detailed essay on “21st century skills,” An Operating System for the Mind. He’s asking whether and why a common core of knowledge is necessary, and whether students ought to be tested on that core.

Downes is thorough–copied into Word, the post comes to eight single-spaced pages. I wanted to read it and follow what he’s saying, which explains this post. If things aren’t clear here, blame me.  Then, read Stephen’s original for yourself.

The bottom line: while factual knowledge is helpful, certain key skills are essential; they are a kind of operating system for the mind, which can then work with data from the outside world.

What’s at the core?

By “core knowledge,” he’s talking about a body or collection of things that provide the basics in a given field (e.g., you “need to know about bones to study medicine”).  He’s not saying you can’t teach (or learn) facts; learning facts is “the great shortcut in human development.”  And in order to do anything, you need to know stuff.

The question is, why these specific facts? In other words, is there a common core?

Downes says that facts learned as facts (like the multiplication tables) are a kind of direct programming, the sort of thing that remains unquestioned.  And, frankly, facts aren’t enough.

It’s not just the facts, ma’am

Here’s my summary of his six main reasons that an education based strictly and solely on facts is insufficient:

• Too many facts: you can’t learn them all, so you have to know how to find them.
• Facts aren’t fixed: things change, and we need to learn, to “change the previously existing state of our knowledge.”
• Some facts matter more: we have to select and filter so that we can decide what facts are important to ourselves and to others.
• Calling something a fact doesn’t make it one: we need to compare and assess things presented as facts.  (For example, I have no interest whatsoever in any “facts” proving that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.)
• Some facts invite acts: we need skills to decide whether the facts we have are something we should act on, and the sense that we can by acting create new facts.
• Facts aren’t capabilities: Beyond seeing the possibility of acting, we need the ability to act.

The flip side of these insufficiences, for Downes, becomes a summary of so-called 21st-century skills.  I like that there’s nothing about multi-tasking or hardware infrastructure or evolutionary changes to the brain in them.  They’re stated in more general terms, and could have applied a century ago.

So what’s different?

President Kennedy said at a 1962 dinner for Nobel laureates:

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

But that was 47 years ago, and 28 years before the world’s first web server.  We’ve got more facts and less static facts all the time.  (Remember how science “knew” that stomach ulcers were caused by stress?)  Beyond knowing what’s new and what’s changed, we have to cast a wider net.  Here Comes Everybody is not just a book title–it’s a new form of input.

Downes argues we also have new types of knowledge and skill, and that more of us need to use them every day.  (Baby Boomers are sometimes uneasy when they read “email is for old people.”)

Consider also the skills needed to manage just your professional presence and reputation.  That used to be done almost exclusively on paper and in person.  Now you’ve got networking sites, blogs, personal domains, avatars… your “online self” is a sort of conceptual clown car, with all sorts of characters inside.  Good thing we have so many more ways to do that.

Downes says, in part, that the role of facts is decreasing as the need for dynamic skill increases:

People need such greater capacities in literacy, learning, prioritizing, evaluation, planning and acting.

Facts: they don’t compute

Downes has an extended, useful comparison between these skills and the way we use computers.  To vastly oversimplify, other than its operating system, a computer doesn’t know anything.  (I tend to say it’s dumb as a rock but fast as hell.)  “If we had…programmed into [the computer] the knowledge of finances, literature, and mathematics, it would have been a less useful computer.”

That’s why, when we design computers, first we build the hardware, then we install the operating system, then we install application programs, and only then do we add the data – the facts with which we expect our computer to work.

The same principle applies in education and learning.

Take driving, for example. If our knowledge of how to drive depended on a set of facts, then at a certain point it would become impossible, because while we could teach people how to drive on common streets and in common situations, as we drive further and further away from home, in newer and different vehicles, our knowledge becomes less relevant, until eventually we are simply unable to drive. If, instead of focusing on the ‘facts’ of driving, we think of driving as an activity or skill, then we are able to adapt, and develop new abilities, and new knowledge, mastering the ability to drive in strange places as we progress.

…which is why Downes sees 21st-century skills as an operating system for the mind.

What the new operating system does

These skills enable us to navigate, to see, to understand, and to make our own decisions.  More important, says Downes, they change how we see facts.

To me, this is like the old view of the atom as an indivisible particle.  A fact is a thing, it’s true, it’s “real.”  Downes argues that “our relation with facts is much more contingent than previously supposed.”  (His italics.)

• Facts are not independent of how they’re expressed. Literacy means reading the lines, and between the lines, but also “reading faces, photos, ideas, omens, and portents.”
• Facts change. That’s a fact.  The earth isn’t the center of the universe.  Solid rock isn’t solid.

nobody
belongs anywhere
even the
Rocky Mountains
are still
moving
— George Bowering

• Some facts are salient, some aren’t. There’s no one set of facts that’s important to everyone.
• You can learn to tell fact from non-fact. Detecting deception (or, I think, error, or misrepresentation) is a skill, Downes says, “and you need just as much as your computer needs to be able to detect malware.”
• You’ve gotta decide. This point is key: decision-making isn’t rote performance, which means it’s not based solely on facts.
• You need to act. That action depends on skill much more than on a big ol’ heap of fact.

To be a man is to be responsible: to be ashamed of miseries you did not cause; to be proud of your comrades’ victories; to be aware, when setting one stone, that you are building a world.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I’m skillful enough to let Downes finish for himself:

We still to a great degree treat facts as things and education as the acquisition of those things. But more and more, as our work, homes and lives become increasingly complex, we see this understanding becoming not only increasingly obsolete, but increasingly an impediment.

Today…if you simply follow the rules, do what you’re told, do your job and stay out of trouble, you will be led to ruin. It’s like sitting on a log floating in a river: it works for a while, and seems like the safest place to me, but all the while, you’re approaching a waterfall. Whether it be a financial crash, the degradation of the environment, war and terrorism, or even something as simple as a car accident or family crisis, you will need more and more the ability to keep yourself afloat in troubled and rapidly changing circumstances, and an abundance of facts will not help you, it will instead sweep you over the waterfall.

CC-licensed images:
Rolodex cards by mrbill;
facets of faces by Axel Bührmann.

One semester, as an undergrad, I took a course on ancient epics:  Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Voyage of the Argo, the Aeneid, a couple of side trips along the way. The University of Detroit is a Jesuit school, so we called the professor Father (not Doctor) McKendrick.  I recalled him as I read a post on Dean Shareski’s Ideas and Thoughts blog.

Here’s why: we spent the opening night of class—two and a half hours—on the first seven lines of the Iliad.

Dean Shareski is a digital learning consultant for a public school division in Saskatchewan.  His post, Dealing with My/Our Attention and Information Issues, is well worth reading, even if like me you aren’t involved in the education of children.  Rather than offer a top-five list, he says he wanted to “share a few things I think can be helpful in a day of attention deficits.”  I thought I’d highlight a few here.

Simplify the complex

Dean points to the Common Craft videos as great distillations of complex topics.  He suggests that educators sometimes reject technology in the classroom because of the complexity.  (I’d add that the techno-jazzed can sometimes contribute to that rejection, at least in the world of work.)  “We can spend lots of times examining the intricacies of using media, but without a good story, it doesn’t matter.”

Sometimes good enough is good enough

“When you get 3 million search results, sometimes you settle,” Dean says.  Be honest: when’s the last time you clicked through to the fourth page of a bunch of Google results?    This is not to say “settle for anything.”  It’s more like, “Where are you going, and how long do you plan to pack?”

I’m iterative.  A lot of the time, what I produce gets better if I’ve had the chance to revisit and rethink it.  Heck, sometimes when I’m explaining something, I’ll interrupt myself as a clearer picture emerges in my head.

But there’s sometimes (often?) a diminishing-return factor, and occasionally the procrastinator’s optimism.  (A standing joke with a video producer was, “We’ll fix it in post,” meaning the post-production process.  Sometimes you can’t fix it; sometimes, there isn’t going to be a post.)

Snacking versus eating

For me, this was the grabber in Dean’s post.  I could easy snack all the time, whether you’re talking about information or food.  There’s not necessarily anything wrong with snacking, but for myself, I have to choose to focus.

I’ve always been something of a generalist, at least since I decided not to study English in grad school.  At the same time, I’m drawn to detail when I can discern a story.  When Father McKendrick spent all that time on seven lines of the Iliad (there are nearly 16,000 lines altogether), he turned them into a framework—as Homer had—to invite us further into the story.  Not a snack, an appetizer.

Rage–Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feast for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

(Greek text from the Perseus Project;
translation by Robert Fagles)

I received the following comment to my last post about #lrnchat.  I’ve decided to display it here, rather than with the other comments on that post.

Personally I think that #lrnchat, in twitter, is more akin to spam. I don’t follow #lrnchat and my twitter stream is spammed.

I get twitter – but using twitter for chatting – no. There are chat rooms, chat programs, and established methods of having real time chat that people have been using for a long time (IRC anyone?)

#lrnchat to me seems like using what’s new and shiny for something that it just doesn’t do well and annoys people NOT part of the conversation.

Dr. Pepper

I’m doubtful Dr. Pepper is the commenter’s real name, and the email address provided is of limited value in learning otherwise.  Dr. Pepper nevertheless remains covered by my blog’s guarantee of satisfaction.)

I don’t agree with the implication that an extended conversation on Twitter is ipso facto spam, any more than Twitter’s trending topics are.  “Unwanted” doesn’t equate to “spam.”

Clay Shirky makes a related point in Here Comes Everybody: people over, say, 40 are in general unaccustomed to publicly-available messages not being addressed to them.  You now hear all kinds of conversations, but for the most part, as Shirky says, “they’re not talking to you.”

I agree there are many ways to have virtual conversations.  $100 against an 8-track tape, however,  says that the average age of an IRC user in the U.S. is closer to my dad’s than to my daughter’s.  IRC has its virtues and its charms, but in terms of its audience appeal, it’s ham radio with a keyboard.

The notion of “established” methods being preferable — which is what I think is being argued — is peculiar; it appears on a blog powered by WordPress (not yet seven years old).  More important, the notion ignores ample evidence that dozens of people–many of them technologically sophisticated–choose to chat via Twitter.

In other words, they’ve made their preference known.

As for annoyance, I’m sure Dr. Pepper is annoyed.  (Maybe even at me, since I willingly participate in #lrnchat and will likely strike again.)  What could trigger the annoyance?

• You follow #lrnchat, so you see #lrnchat.
• You follow people using #lrnchat, so their #lrnchat tweets show up.
• Someone you follow retweeted #lrnchat.

I see those in descending order of annoy-itude.

• If you follow #lrnchat and don’t like it, then you get several hundred action potentials a week (mainly on Thursday nights).
• If you follow #lrnchatters, well, that’s a thing they tweet about.
• If you only see #lrnchat in retweets, then the yoke is hardly bitter and the burden hardly harsh.

I can’t do anything about any of that for you, though you ought to be able to see  possibilities to diminish the impact of the first two.

Well, if I knew who you were, I could block you, and *I* at least would disappear from your Twitter screen.  You could block me with the same result.  But that’s just me.

Many Twitter clients like Tweetdeck include features to filter for or filter out by individual, by topic, or by string. That last could include a hashtag.

Otherwise, #lrnchat and Twitter conversations in general are like the tongue-in-cheek “endorsement” in a newspaper ad for 19th century humorist Artemus Ward:

I have never heard any of your lectures, but from what I can learn I should say that for people who like the kind of lectures you deliver, they are just the kind of lectures such people like.

Thanks to CKL’s HotSheet for the quotation. And thanks to Russell Hoban’s favorite badger, who inspired the title for this post.

Jam on biscuits, jam on toast,
Jam is the thing that I like the most.
Jam is sticky, jam is sweet,
Jam is tasty, jam’s a treat–
Raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, I’m very
FOND… OF… JAM!

Dear XXX,

Having trouble with your boss?  Wish you had a few more organizational options?  Try this:

• Send your boss to the first name in the list below.
• Make six copies, leaving off the first name and putting your own name and address in sixth place.
• Send the copies to six friends or colleagues.
• Within four weeks, you should receive 46,656 new bosses.  Some of them will be keepers.

“Some of them will be keepers” could be the motto for #lrnchat, a Twitter-based discussion held each Thursday from 8:30 pm – 10:00 pm Eastern time.  (Here’s how #lrnchat works.)  You participate by including #lrnchat (a Twitter hashtag) in any Tweet you send.  Following the conversation is easier if you use a tool like Tweetchat.

Last night’s topic was working with subject-matter experts (SMEs, which I insist is read as S.M.E. and not a rhyme for “twee”).  If that’s a topic of interest, you can find quite a few keepers in the transcript on the #lrnchat blog.

I decided to take a look at what happens at #lrnchat, using that transcript:

• In 90 minutes there were 671 contributions.
  That’s 7.45 a minute, or one every 8 seconds.
• 69 individuals posted at least one contribution.
  • The 5 most frequent contributors accounted for 27.9% of the total.
    (I was flabbergasted to see I wasn’t one of them.)
  • The next 5 accounted for 17.4%.
    (Ah, there I am, tied for sixth place.)
  • The top 14 contributors (20% of the group) accounted for 55% (take that, Pareto principle).
  • 26 contributors, or 37.7%, chimed in more than 10 times.

So what?

Clearly, you can’t get too deep when you’re talking with 68 other people and have a 140-character limit.  Within that context, though, I think the transcript shows:

• Little hierarchy. The topic’s open, and if you have something to say, you toss it in.  No talking stick, no mike, no facilitator’s blessing.
• Little guru-hood. The conversation ping-pongs, often but not always crossing the general topic.  No pontificating–your miter falls off because of the speed of the tweets.
• Open doors. You can mark an individual item a favorite (to find it more easily later).  You can send a direct message (private tweet) to someone.  You can just plan to contact later.

I was surprised to find so few hyperlinks–I counted only 13.  Maybe that had to do with the topic.  I feel as though I’ve seen more in other #lrnchats, though this is the first time I’ve done detailed counting.

#lrnchat for me is like the bar at a face-to-face conference.  Or maybe the lounge area, outside the bar.  People are relaxed, have the conference topic in common; you can slide into or out of the flow.  You can, as the social media consultant Lawrence Berra said, observe a lot just by watching.  It’s not a seminar, it’s not an internship, but it’s certainly a network.

Are all the contributions worth noticing?  Of course not–but that’s a very context-specific answer.  What *I* find worthwhile is going to differ from what you find worthwhile, which is the whole point.  There’s lots of stuff in the #lrnchat stream. Which ones are keepers?  That depends on what you like to keep.

I collect rules-of-thumb the way some people collect fantasy sports-league players.  (Willy Pareto? Economist out of Turino Tech.)  But I’m cautious when the rule seems too broad or the numbers too specific.  After all, it wasn’t Vilfredo himself but Joseph Juran who suggested that the 80/20 rule be called the Pareto principle.

Lately I’ve been trying to change some everyday behavior, and so this PsyBlog post, How Long to Form a Habit?, pulled me in.

(Disclaimer: when someone asks, from a training viewpoint, “How long does it take to develop [whatever]?” I habitually ask myself, “How long is a rope?”)

The PsyBlog post says participants in a study (working on new habits like eating fruit with lunch or running 15 minutes per day) on average hit a plateau in about 66 days.  As the chart (from the post) shows, you get to your “drink more water” goal much fasts than your “do 50 sit-ups” goal.

The post links to an abstract for the actual study, which notes that of the original 96 participants, 82 had enough data for the study, 62 fit the statistical model, and 39 had “a good fit.”    And the range to automaticity varied–from 18 to 254 days.

I got curious and found some other items on habit, which Wikipedia defines as a routine of behavior, repeated regularly, that tends to occur subconsciously.

Under that definition,  I have a habit of carrying my wallet in my left front pocket; this is an oddity, I realize, but it’s behavior of longstanding, such that I feel strange to have the wallet anywhere else.

Habits are learned behaviors, and a 2005 article on CNET News cites an MIT study looking at how old (presumably bad) habits reassert themselves.  It claims habit gets established in the basal ganglia (site of, among other things, procedural learning and addictive behavior).

Backsliding is easier, then, and to counteract it, we may need to be conscious not only of the former habit but of the presumably better behavior we want to make as automatic as possible.

I found lots of silliness–21 days to establish a habit, or 99, or 60, and one guy who said he could establish one in a day.  (Maybe if you’re establishing the habit of having maple syrup on vanilla ice cream.)

If it’s not currently part of your standard behavior, then to establish a habit, you’re got to exert some effort.  Initially you’re likely dealing with a lack of immediate, enjoyable payback.  And almost by definition, you’re disturbing of your behavioral routine.

I found a 2007 Psychological Review article by Wendy Wood and David T. Neil, A New Look at Habits and the Habit-Goal Interface (21-page PDF).

Habits are learned dispositions to repeat past responses. They are triggered by features of the context that have covaried frequently with past performance, including performance locations, preceding actions in a sequence, and particular people. Contexts activate habitual responses directly, without the mediation of goal states.

In other words, acquiring a habit means you’re likely to repeat a given action.  Settings that invite that action do so directly–you don’t think about losing weight (a goal) as you do about eating fruit rather than a bag of chips.

Wood and Neil propose three principles:

• Habits are cued by context. You can learn to associate a context; after a while, the context can do its own triggering.  (This explains the advice to insomniacs about not watching TV, reading too much, or tossing and turning for long times in bed.  They’re working to create an association between bed and sleep.)
• Over time, the goal fades but the habit remains. ( “Habit context-response associations are not mediated by goals.” )This explains why my dad continued to buy kid-friendly cereal years after all of us were grown and married.  He’d done the grocery shopping for 20 years; his choices were a habit.  He didn’t eat the cereal himself, and my mother’s…feedback, let’s call it…took a long time to have any impact.
• Habits interact with goals. Initially, goals direct habits; over time, habits and goals influence each other.

It seems to me, then, that when we talk about acquiring good habits, we’re likely not only adding to our current repertory of activity; we’re likely replacing something seen as less helpful.

The Wood & Neal article discusses that at more length than I have space in this post.  Also, I haven’t fully established the habit of reading 21-page journal articles on the screen.  So I’m printing the PDF, and I’ll have a future post on habits, goals, and how they might get me to the gym more often while surfing online a bit less.