The Unevenly-Divided Future, or, Leveling the Digital Divide

This course has provided me with so many opportunities to re-visit some of my favorite pre-doctoral literary favorites, including William Gibson. I finished his novel "Idoru" while riding home on the train from evenings on the town in Tokyo several years ago while on a business trip to Japan. The term "prescient" applies here, as I would look up from the book and still feel immersed into the world that Gibson had created in a slightly more modern Toyko. Gibson has an interesting way of looking at the world, and has a unique turn of phrase in his writing, and I've enjoyed all of his books. The statement "The future has already arrived--it's just not evenly distributed" was excerpted from a National Public Radio interview with Terry Gross on the "Fresh Air" program, November 30, 1999.

This quote speaks volumes, very succinctly stating the nature of what we refer to as the "Digital Divide". A separation of haves from have-nots with regard to technology and information--however, it is my own point of view that this divide is being closed rather quickly, as information access used to be the exclusive province of those with assets and connectivity, all of which required funds. However, we see in today's world that information access and the technology needed to get it have become cheaper and more readily available. The advent of wide area wifi networks, and the affordable cost of smartphones with the ability to access them has made the access concept more of an on-ramp than a barrier.

An additional factor to consider is that with large-scale manufacturing of these hand-held devices, the concept of "economy of scale" comes into play: the more that are made, the less they cost per unit as companies recoup their R&D costs and set-up costs for assembly lines. The end result is that the hardware is almost free, and any cost is the result of services required that are supplied by wireless carriers. These fees have gone down significantly in past years: I recently switched carriers and bought a new iPhone, and managed to save significantly on our monthly household wireless bills by going with a family plan that gives me a full data package plus calling and text messages and a separate line of service for my husband's phone with calling only (he is a phone Luddite) for less than I paid for my original data service only on the other carrier. Once again, economy of scale.

The other example of economy of scale that came to me as I listened to the podcast and vodcast was the "One Laptop Per Child" initiative spearheaded by Dr. Nicholas Negroponte of MIT. This foundation's goal is to provide every child in the world with a basic low-cost connected laptop computer that has software already loaded in order to support and encourage them to learn, connect, and change the world as they do so. The success stories from this program are compelling, and the push for computer literacy as well as basic literacy will help nations who have traditionally been on the wrong side of the divide to close and bridge the divide.

Another initiative that is not so much technical but one which promises to institute change for the better in the world's poorest nations is the work of Dr. Greg Mortenson, the author of "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones into Schools". Mortenson believes that education, particularly the education of the girls who will raise the next generation of children. Not only does literacy have a direct effect on infant mortality, but it also exposes children to new ideas and concepts that they would not otherwise have contacted. His efforts have been concentrated in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and he has succeeded more often than not, even though he is changing cultural norms and beliefs.

For me, the path to closing the digital divide is going to require both technology as well as basic literacy. Together, those two factors create a powerful set of tools for their users.

References

Central Asia Institute. (2010). Accessed at http://www.ikat.org/

One Laptop per Child. Accessed at http://laptop.org/en/vision/

Mortenson, G. & Relin, D. O. (2006). Three cups of tea: One man's mission to promote peace . . . one school at a time. New York: Penguin Books.

Soloway, E. (2009). Podcast.

Module 4: Second Life as a Disruptive Technology

Second Life as a Disruptive Technology in Education and Training

I would like to introduce you to my avatar, Snowball Svoboda.

She represents me and my involvement in Second Life, where I have been a resident for three years. I see the virtual world through her eyes, and together we explore educational opportunities and new learning situations. We are members of the Second Life Educators and Second Life Researchers communities, as well as Real Life Educators in Second Life. Those groups alone can keep an avatar and her person busy most days. There are lectures, discussions, courses, symposia, concerts, and exhibits going on all the time in-world, so I have to pick and choose the events that are most useful for me, because I could easily become so involved that I would neglect my First Life obligations. Unfortunately, Second Life has not yet evolved to the point that I can send my avatar to an event and have her take notes and report back to me. That could potentially be the beginning of “virtual cloning”!

In the workplace, Second Life is becoming popular as a training and collaboration space, especially in companies that are geographically distributed and where meetings are conducted via teleconference systems. People attend these meetings, but their value is limited because there is no real engagement. Many attendees start checking their email, planning grocery lists, and other non-related actions. However, as noted by Chuck Hamilton, IBM’s new media leader for the 3-D internet team, “You can come to the meeting as a fish”(Gronstedt, 2008)--you can be creative, and as you express your creativity, you become more engaged in what you are doing. Additionally, you now have a (virtual) physical presence in the room, which also leads to more participation and direct involvement, and all without the need to leave one's office or home, fight traffic, or incur travel expenses.

Second Life, for those companies and organizations that have made the leap, has become a disruptive technology in a most constructive interpretation of disruptive: Second Life affords the opportunity to treat everyone in a large geographically diverse organization to equal access to events sponsored by the parent company. The Chief Learning Officer at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) championed the use of Second Life in conjunction with CSC's 50th anniversary celebration--the training organization sponsored a research grant that funded the development of an island (a discrete piece of property in Second Life) to be used initially for sales training, and was later co-opted to develop a virtual tour of CSC's 50 years of history. These applications were so successful that the learning team has reclaimed the island as theirs and are now using it for new hire orientation training. Because CSC has numerous branches all over the world, this arrangement guarantees that all new hires receive the same information without the company incurring travel expenses (Huntley, 2009).

As a technology, Second Life displaced stand-alone simulation programs, as well as some of the computer games using avatars. What made Second Life truly unique, however, is the fact that everything in Second Life is created by users. Linden Labs provides the raw materials (called "prims" for "primitives") that can be morphed into almost anything the builder can imagine. Avatars are created as generic characters, and each user customizes their avatar's appearance, clothing, and accessories (wings are always an interesting concept, although they are not necessary for flight in Second Life). An additional technology that has been at least partly displaced by Second Life in those places that have embraced virtual worlds is the teleconference: why sit in a room staring at a speaker (the electronic kind) when you can gather virtually?

Before I get too far down the road cheerleading for Second Life, I would be professionally remiss if I did not also address the concerns about Second Life: namely the fact that it is used by many international criminal and terrorist organizations for communications between their personnel. What is an advantage for business and education is also an advantage for the bad guys, but for different reasons: this way they can meet without being in the same location (and creating what my uniformed colleagues refer to as a "target-rich environment"). They do not have to leave their safe havens and travel, all of which potentially exposes them to the folks who are looking for them. Like most anything else, Second Life is a double-edged sword that can be used for good or for evil.

Because Second Life is only limited by the number of servers that Linden Labs can support, it is never likely to become overcrowded or overused. Also, as long as users keep coming up with new applications, events, and purposes, there will always be a demand for Second Life. I would predict that it has at least 5-10 more years before it runs out of ideas/inspiration.

As an educational tool, Second Life has acquired a large following in some very interesting places: a government agency needed to train personnel to become fluent speakers of Korean. Traditionally, this was done in a classroom, taught by a native speaker, with the standard drill and practice and rote memorization of vocabulary that many of us have come to expect. Someone at this agency got very creative, and got funding to buy an island, where they developed and built a traditional Korean village. Instructors developed avatars in traditional Korean garb, and student avatars were dressed in school uniforms and were expected to follow the protocols of school in Korea, including standing in respect when the instructor enters the room.

Here's where it gets interesting, though: because this became an exercise in total immersion is both language and culture, students were becoming proficient in spoken and written Korean much more quickly than their traditionally-trained peers. They performed better on standardized tests, and impressed the instructors, all of whom had taught the traditional classes previously. How did this happen, you are asking? The actual research has not been published for many reasons, but mostly because this agency does not publish for the benefit of the rest of the world. However, those of us who were in the room when this information was briefed to us developed a theory which could be worth pursuing: adult learners tend to be a bit risk-averse in a classroom. If they are not absolutely certain of the right answer, they will just sit quietly and try to become invisible. However, we also know from prior research that adults learn best by making mistakes and examining the mistakes of others. Therefore, the instructor needs to get someone to give an answer in the first place. The Korean instructors noticed that in the virtual classroom, students/avatars were much more willing to respond to questions and provide answers and input. This gets into some deep psychology (see Dr. Nick Yee's dissertation for much more detail on this concept, called the Proteus Effect), but because students feel that the mistakes are being made by their avatars, and not by them, it was safe to take the risks. Students would learn from the mistakes of the avatars and move on.

Other social benefits of Second Life echo the benefits of the internet in general: the ability to connect people from a wide geographic span to collaborate on a variety of projects and activities. For those interested in architecture and design, several years ago a Non-Government Organization (NGO) doing relief work in Nepal needed to build a new clinic. They could not afford a traditional architect's fees, so someone floated the idea of a contest in Second Life. This took on a life of its own, and a self-selected group of volunteers, real-life architects, students, wanna-bes, and just plain creative people pooled their expertise and ideas and, using a wiki model of collaboration, developed a design for the new clinic, which ended up winning an international design prize (Wikitechture, 2008).

For those who are physically challenged, Second Life offers a taste of what normal could be: avatars can walk, run, dance, and even fly even though the people behind them may be confined to wheelchairs. Hearing impaired people are right at home in Second Life because the use of text is quite extensive, even though a voice chat capability was recently implemented. Most of the events that Snowball and I attend are done in both modes, as computer speeds in some regions are too slow to support real-time voice. Several programs have used Second Life to teach life skills and communications manners to autistic/Asperger's patients, and there is an active group of autistic individuals who have formed a support group in Second Life. Children who have suffered traumatic circumstances find it easier to talk to a friendly avatar on the screen ("just like television only it talks back to me!"), so the virtual world becomes a tool for therapy as well.

I could go on and on, because in three years I've barely begun to see all that there is to see and do in Second Life. However, I'll wind it up here and just suggest that as Ed Tech students, we should all be at least conversant in functioning in a virtual world. It costs nothing to sign up for Second Life, and for those of us whose First Lives are sort of limited (that would be me: grad school, full-time job, and a business owner), it offers a wealth of experience that we don't even have to leave our computers to participate in. See you in-world!

References

Gronstedt, A. (2008). Be First in Second Life. Training, 29-30. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

Siekierka, G., Huntley, H., & Johnson, M. (2009). Learning is center stage at CSC. T+D, 63(10), 48-50. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.


Wikitechture on YouTube (2008). Accessed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amCi90zH3VI&NR=1

Yee, N.. The Proteus Effect: Modification of social behaviors via transformations of digital self-representation. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, United States -- California. Retrieved October 28, 2010, from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text.(Publication No. AAT 3267669).

Obsolete Technology--Super-VHS Tape

Super VHS (S-VHS) tape introduced in 1987 by JVC Corporation of Japan. It was marketed as an improvement to the existing VHS standard, capable of displaying recorded material at a vertical resolution of 420 lines. This was the result of an improved magnetic tape oxide coating that recorded a higher-quality luminance signal to the tape, which was the same size as a regular VHS tape. The recording format for S-VHS was viewable on S-VHS equipment, as well as on VCRs with a special added feature that enabled S-VHS playback. However, the same tape could be recorded upon in VHS mode, and played back in any VCR, so the media itself was backwards-compatible. VHS tapes could be played back on S-VHS equipment--however, the image quality still looked like VHS.

This technology innovation yielded a 60% improvement in image quality over VHS, which could reproduce images at 240 lines under optimum recording/playback conditions. It competed favorably with the analog laser video disc in terms of picture quality, although it still lacked such capabilities as freeze-framing (without damaging the tape) and searchable chapters.

As the NTSC television standard displays of the time were capable of 525 lines of vertical resolution (and most broadcast signals were sent out at about 330 lines of resolution), this improvement was initially well-received. VHS had created the ability to "time-shift" broadcasts to fit the consumer's schedule, and the ability to record and play back one's favorite shows had made the VHS video-cassette recorder a standard part of many households.

However. analog laser disc technology was beginning to emerge (and quickly morphed into DVD technology), VHS had won the "Format War" with Sony's Betamax format, and consumers were ambivalent about upgrading their VHS technology for an improvement that was better, but not compellingly so. Sony took sufficient notice of this technology to introduce a potential competitor, ED-Beta, which delivered slightly improved video quality and actually competed with their own professional Betacam format. However, when consumer acceptance didn't happen, Sony quickly discontinued their competition and a format war 2.0 was avoided.

S-VHS recording got limited acceptance and use in the consumer market. In the professional market, it had a slightly longer run, as the tape was not excessively expensive, and the recording quality allowed for the capture of images that could be edited and copied onto VHS tapes at a higher resolution than VHS was capable of displaying, giving the best possible video image. The tape did not lend itself to reuse, as its condition would deteriorate quickly once it had been re-recorded over several times. However, TV and news organizations used S-VHS as a medium for fast and cheap acquisition and editing purposes until digital tape became affordable and available.

S-VHS recording was replaced by digital video standards such as D-VHS, DV, Digital S (D-9), Digi-Beta, Beta SX, DVCAM, DVCPRO, and DVCPRO-50. All of these recording media used a digital encoding system of recording, and would reproduce a standard-definition image that ranged between 450-850 lines of resolution. Beyond that point is considered high-definition, and the modes and technologies change substantially.

Reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-VHS