Deep learning in the Age of Distraction

Deep Learning in the
Age of Distraction

Dr. Alec Couros
University of Regina
August 2011

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/will-lion/3974469907/

Changes

Early Day of PC in Schools Today’s Social/Mobile Reality

media stats (2010)

• 107 trillion emails (89% spam), from 1.04 billion users.

• 255 million websites

• 1.97 billion Internet users

• 152 millions blogs

• 600 million Facebook users (sharing 30 billion pieces of
content per month)

• 2 billion videos watched on Youtube daily

• 5 billion photos hosted on Flickr
Stats as of January 2011 via Royal Pingdom

Children and young people are described as ‘the
collaboration generation’, eager to work together
towards common goals, share content and draw upon
“the power of mass collaboration”. This combination of
individualisation and collaboration is often presented
as giving young people a propensity to question,
challenge and critique. These are individuals who
“typically can’t imagine a life where citizens didn’t
have the tools to constantly think critically, exchange
views, challenge, authenticate, verify, or debunk.

The Digital Native - Myth & Reality, Selwyn (2009)

“... age is not a determining factor in students’
digital lives; rather, their familiar and
experience using ICTs is more relevant.”

“... age is not a determining factor in students’
digital lives; rather, their familiar and
experience using ICTs is more relevant.”

“... the notion of ‘digital natives’ is inaccurate:
those with such attributes are effectively a
digital elite. Instead of a new net generation
growing up to replace an older analogue
generation, there is a deepening digital
divide ... characterized not by age but by
access and opportunity.”

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dkuropatwa/4285762190

danah boyd

•(Post WWII) “Spaces like dance halls, roller
rinks, bowling alleys, and activity centers
began offering times for teens to socialize
with other teens.... By the late 20th century,
shopping malls became the primary public
space for youth socialization. While
shopping malls once welcomed teens, teens @zephoria
primarily seen as a nuisance now.... What
emerged with the Internet was a radical shift
in architecture. It decentralized publics.”

Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites, boyd (2007)

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/alainbachellier/2572801898/in/photostream/

danah boyd
•“The profile serves as a digital representation of
one’s taste’s, fashion, and identity. In crafting the
profile, people upload photos, indicate interests,
list favorite musicians, & describe themselves
textually & through associated media.

•“The vast majority of social network site use
amongst use does not involve surfing to strangers’ @zephoria
profiles, but engaging more locally with known
friends and acquaintances.

•Youth look to older teens & the media to get cues
about what to wear, how to act, & whats’ cool,
Socializing Digitally, boyd (2007)

Michael Wesch

•“What you see on Youtube are
tremendously deep communities ...
people revealing parts of themselves
that they refuse to reveal even to their
family or to their closest friends.”

•Youtube mitigates our desire to
connect without the constraint.

@mwesch

“Heroes for our Mediated Culture”

“As we are drained of our “repertory of dense
cultural inheritance”, we risk turning into “pancake
people” -- spread wide and thin as we connect
with the vast network of information accessed by
the mere touch of a button. (Nicholas Carr, 2008)

David Crystal

5 Main Myths

•Texting is full of abbreviations
•The abbreviations are new.
•The fact that people leave out letters
show they don’t know how to spell.

•Young people are putting these
@mwesch abbreviations into home and exams.

•Texting shows the decline of the
English language.

Texting & Literacy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boj8VYzDAy8

“... in an information-rich world, the wealth of
information means a dearth of something else:
a scarcity of whatever it is that information
consumes. What information consumes is
rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its
recipients. Hence a wealth of information
creates a poverty of attention and a need to
allocate efﬁciently among the overabundance
of information sources that might consume it.
(Herbert Simon, 1971)”

Deep Learning
• “Deep learning is learning that takes root in our
apparatus of understanding, in the embedded
meanings that deﬁne us and that we use to deﬁne
the world.” (Tagg, 2003)

• “Characteristics of deep learning are the integration
and synthesis of information with prior learning in
ways that become part of one’s thinking &
approaching new phenomena and efforts to see
things from different perspectives. (Kuh, Chen,
Laird, 2007)

Models of 21st Century Learning
• The Collaborator uses networks of people, knowledge,
skills & ideas as sources of learning - emphasis on
social interactions.

• The Free Agent makes use of continuous, open-ended
& life-long styles and systems of learning.

• The Wise Analyzer gathers evidence of effective activity,
scrutinizes it and applies its conclusions to new
problems & new contexts.

• The Creative Synthesizer connects across themes and
disciplines, cross fertilises ideas, integrates separate
concepts & creates new vision and new practice.
21st Century Learning and Learners, Friesen & Jardine (2007)

21st Century Readers/Writers Must ...
• Develop proﬁciency with the tools of technology.

• Build relationships with others to pose & solve problems
collaboratively and cross culturally.

• Design and share information for global communities to
meet a variety of purposes.

• Manage, analyze, & synthesize multiple streams of
simultaneous information.

• Create, critique, an analyze multimedia texts.

• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these
complex environments.
NCTE Framework for 21st Century Curriulum & Assessment (2007)

Example #1: Using Relevant Modes

Jenny Johns

Example #1.1: Using Relevant Modes

@danikabarker

Example #2: Power Of (Global) Audience

ps22chorus.blogspot.com

Example #2.1: Power Of (Global) Audience


Beyond Friending, Gold, 2011


“My student was delighted by the attention her blog
post had received; it gave her conﬁdence in her
writing and bolstered her enthusiasm for our class....
We were no longer studying an important work of
20th century literature within the narrow context of my
syllabus; instead we had become part of a
conversation that involved the broader reading public.
As a professor, I was displaced from the centre of the
conversation, which became more open, distributed
and student-driven than it had been before.”

Beyond Friending, Gold, 2011

Example #3: Giving Voice

@bryanjack

Example #3.1: Giving Voice

@kathycassidy

Example #4: Going Deep

@ddmeyer

Example #5: Utilizing Networks

@langwitches @hdurnin @glassbeed

Example #5.1: Utilizing Networks

Example #6: Importance of Multimedia

@karlﬁsch

Example #6.1: Importance of Multimedia

@kutiman

Example #7: PD Anytime, Anywhere

Example #7.1: PD Anytime, Anywhere

@jgates513

there are thousands of examples

but this is not the norm

Sharing

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dolmansaxlil/4802611949/

On Sharing ...

“it’s about overcoming
the inner 2 year old in
you that screams
mine, mine, it’s mine.”
(Wiley, TEDxNYED, 2010)

Identity

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jaumedurgell/740880616/sizes/l/in/photostream/

“You are not Facebook’s customer.
you are the product that they sell
to real customers - advertisers.
Forget this at your peril.”
(Greenberg, 2010, via tweet)

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/will-lion/3356252350/

“Education ... has produced a
vast population able to read but
unable to distinguish what is
worth reading, an easy prey to
sensations and cheap appeals.”
(Trevelyan, 1942)

Don’t limit a child to your
own learning, for he was born
in another time. ~Tagore

http://couros.ca
couros@gmail.com
@courosa

Deep learning in the Age of Distraction

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