5 Things: Computers
Posted: September 15, 2014 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: computers, education, five things, general education, obsolescence, resources, thinking Leave a commentIn the interests of blogging more usefully, I’m trying some “5 point posts” in areas where I have some reasonable knowledge. Hope they’re useful!
- Computers neither like you nor hate you.
If I had a dollar for every time I saw someone go through some sort of ritual like pleading with, patting or hitting a computer, I’d be a very rich man. We often talk about computers as if they understand what we’re talking about (a fallacy that can trip up novice programmers, thanks for the reminder, Mark!) and this assumes that there’s some kind of mind in there. I know that you all know that it’s not actually true but we have to stop acting like it’s true as well.
If you have important documents on your computer – then back them up, somewhere. If you are writing large documents, save them every 5 minutes or so. And check regularly to make sure that they’re actually being saved. The amount of preparation you put into making sure that the computer doing something ‘bad’ won’t actually affect you will directly reduce the amount of stress that you feel when it does go wrong. The computer is neither your friend nor your enemy and it will do what the programs tell it to do – not what you want it to do or what any reasonable person would do. This is pretty much true across every computer and operating systems. The computer can’t tell your vital photos from an old recipe copy you don’t need and it most certainly has no idea that you have a deadline – you’re just more likely to make mistakes because you’re under pressure.
One of the best things you can ever install to stop your computer “behaving badly” is anti-virus software that you keep updated. Yes, it costs money (sorry) but how much is your time worth? If you can say “Yes, I lost the last 12 months work and it will take me a week to get my computer working again and I don’t care” then you can skip Anti-Virus. Everyone else – please install supported Anti-Virus software (look on line for customer reviews and recommendations, I make none here.) Having your computer hacked isn’t some jolly pirate image that pops up and goes “ho ho ho”. Modern attacks can wait, encrypt your backups and then charge you money to get at your own data – deleting it if you don’t pay. Computers don’t hate you but there are a lot of haters out there. One of the biggest threats is becoming part of a BotNet, a collection of computers that are being used to conduct unauthorised or criminal activities, without the knowledge of their owners. Not that worried? BotNets can be used to host all sorts of things, including child pornography chat servers and files. But don’t be worried! Install good anti-virus software instead and keep it up to date!
Now, very, very few people are “bad with computers” but a lot of people have had unfortunate first encounters (and that is far more likely to have to do with the computer than with what you are doing) and have retreated to what is, essentially, a position of superstition. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that…
- Computers are everywhere.
And this is why not being comfortable with computers is going to be more of a problem. I have now learned to program (in simplistic form but still) everything from cars to video recorders, including my vacuum cleaner, because all of them have little computers inside them. It will, sadly, get harder and harder to stay away from them. I’m not advocating some Butlerian evolution of the machine but it’s just happening anyway. Do they work exactly as we wish? No, but I’ll get back to that later, because they are close enough most of the time.
So you probably already have one at home, in some form, which brings me to…
- Computers need to be replaced and upgraded.
This is a bit of a pain, particularly for those who don’t like (or prefer not to) change or have no cash (or anything else that says “I don’t want to upgrade”). The computing hardware will eventually break down and the more active the life of the computer, the more likely it is for something to go wrong. Laptops tend to die before desktops because of vibration, dust and heat, and tablets and phones are easy to drop. That’s why the point I made about backing up is really important anyway and triply important for anything vaguely mobile.
Companies regularly declare an end-of-life period for their software and hardware and you have to keep an eye out for this as, after this time, you will no longer get updates for the software and the hardware. An unsupported computer is a crash waiting to happen and a security hole that you could drive a truck through. So not only do you need to keep using something supported, you have to keep patching it (downloading updates from the company and installing them) to keep it safe. In 2008, an unpatched Windows XP box would be hacked in, on average, 4 minutes of connection time. XP itself was released in 2001 and it was officially declared end-of-life on April 8, 2014. That’s over 12 years, compared to the usual product cycle of 10 years. But now, unless something big happens or you happen to be running ATMs, you will not get any more support for Microsoft on this operating system. Which means that, soon enough, your machine will take but minutes to infect and become part of someone else’s network of compromised machines – if it hasn’t happened already.
Hardware does change and removing old machines can be painful when you have a trusted companion that is still working. However, these sorts of changes (like Apple’s removal of support for the PowerPC chip) are advertised well in advance (it took 7 years for Apple to stop supporting the PowerPC) and there is at least one silver lining on the creep in hardware and system specifications. If you buy 12 months behind the release of new technology, you should still get 5-ish good years out of your machines and avoid paying full price – plus you can buy refurbished models from early adopters with more money than sense. However, be careful and don’t buy something from a discontinued line because it is cheap – it will end-of-life much sooner than the low-end new line hardware.
Yes, forced obsolescence sucks but we actually don’t have to buy the new shiny every time (not that many of us can afford to) and knowledge of the refresh/end-of-life cycle will help you to make a good decision. Those of you who are supporting older family members, I know it sucks but you’re going to have broach the issue of operating system changeovers before they become part of an distributed denial-of-service attack on some government department or have all of their e-mails encrypted for a $500 decrypt fee.
- It doesn’t really matter which computer you use, if it works for you.
I’ve used pretty much everything in the way of computers and I use what works for me, when I need to. Right now, I’m using a lot of Apple gear because I’m not doing as much gaming and it all does what I need. If I were working more in different areas, I might be doing a lot more in Linux. I’ve worked with Windows before and I’ll probably work with it again. In 10 years time, who knows?
I have no strong opinions as to what is best and I’m certainly not going to lecture someone on their choice. If they’re obviously unhappy, then we might chat, but don’t let anyone tell you that you’re right or wrong just because you have this system or that. (Unless it’s horribly out of date or not backed up, in which case, please look into updating/upgrading/fixing!)
- Computers are here to stay and the computing profession has some work to do
And that’s the truth of it. We have a long way to go in making computers work better with people, that’s for sure. It would be great if we could be more ambiguous and hand wavy with a machine and get it to do what we want but there’s a lot of things to get working before that happens. However, hand on my heart, it is so much easier to use computers now than it was 10 years ago, let along 20 or 30. I genuinely think that we are going to see better and better ways to work with them as time goes on so, please, hang in there if you’re having trouble. That next upgrade might be just what you were looking for, even if it seems like a pain at the time.
When Does Collaborative Work Fall Into This Trap?
Posted: September 11, 2014 Filed under: Education | Tags: advocacy, blogging, collaboration, community, crowdsourcing, curriculum, education, educational problem, educational research, ethics, feedback, Generation Why, higher education, in the student's head, interested parties, learning, principles of design, student perspective, students, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking, universal principles of design, University of Southampton, Victor Naroditskiy Leave a commentA recent study has shown that crowdsourcing activities are prone to bringing out the competitors’ worst competitive instincts.
“[T]he openness makes crowdsourcing solutions vulnerable to malicious behaviour of other interested parties,” said one of the study’s authors, Victor Naroditskiy from the University of Southampton, in a release on the study. “Malicious behaviour can take many forms, ranging from sabotaging problem progress to submitting misinformation. This comes to the front in crowdsourcing contests where a single winner takes the prize.” (emphasis mine)
You can read more about it here but it’s not a pretty story. Looks like a pretty good reason to be very careful about how we construct competitive challenges in the classroom!
We both want to build this but I WILL DO IT WITH YOUR BONES!
Proud to be a #PreciousPetal, built on a strong #STEM, @PennyWrites @SenatorMilne @adambandt
Posted: September 11, 2014 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: advocacy, Australia, authenticity, blogging, community, education, ethics, higher education, Ian Macfarlane, Macfarlane, Minister for Industry, Minister for Science, politics, precious petal, science, thinking Leave a commentI am proud to be a Precious Petal. Let me explain why I think we should reclaim this term for ourselves.
Australia, apparently, does not have a need for dedicated Science Minister, for the first time since the 1930s. Instead, it is a subordinate portfolio for our Minister for Industry, the Hon Ian Macfarlane, MP. Today, he was quoted in the Guardian, hitting out at “precious petals in the science industry” who are criticising the lack of a dedicated Science Minister. Macfarlane, whose Industry portfolio includes Energy, Skills and Science went on to say:
“I’m just not going to accept that crap,” he said. “It really does annoy me. There’s no one more passionate about science than me, I’m the son and the grandson of a scientist. I hear this whinge constantly from the precious petals in the science industry.”
So I’m not putting words in his mouth – that’s a pretty directed attack on the sector that happens to underpin Energy and Industry because, while Macfarlane’s genetic advantage in his commitment to science may or not be scientifically valid, the fact of the matter is that science, and innovation in science, have created pretty much all of what is referred to as industry in Australia. I’m not so one-eyed as to say that science is everything, because I recognise and respect the role of the arts and humanities in a well-constructed and balanced society, but if we’re going to talk about everything after the Industrial (there’s that word again) Revolution in terms of production industries – take away the science and we’re not far away poking things with sticks to work out which of the four elements (fire, air, earth, water) it belongs to. Scientists of today stand on a tradition of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge that has survived many, many regimes and political systems. We tell people what the world is like, rather than what people want it to be, and that often puts us at odds with politicians, for some reason. (I feel for the ethicists and philosophers who have to do the same thing but can’t get industry implementation partnerships as easily and are thus, unfairly, regularly accused of not being ‘useful’ enough.)
I had the opportunity to be addressed by the Minister at Science Meets Parliament where, like something out of a David Williamson play, the genial ageing bloke stood up and, in real Strine, declaimed “No Minister for Science? I’m your Minister for Science!” as if this was enough for a room full of people who were dedicated to real evidence. But he obviously thought it was enough as he threw a few bones to the crowd. On the back of the cuts to CSIRO and many other useful scientific endeavours, these words ring even more hollow than they did at the time.
But rather than take offence at the Minister’s more recent deliberately inflammatory and pejorative words, let me take them and illustrate his own lack of grasp of his portfolio.
My discipline falls into STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – and I am scientist in that field. Personally, I like to add an A for Arts, as I am rather cross-disciplinary, and make it STEAM, because that conveys the amazing potential and energy in the area when we integrate across the disciplines. So, if Science is a flower, then we have a strong STEM in Australia, although it is currently under threat from a number of initiatives put in place by this very government.
But what of petals? If the Minister knew much botany, he’d know that petals are modified leaves that protect parts of the flower, attract or deliberately drive away certain pollinators, building relationships with their pollinating community to build a strong ecosystem. When flowers have no petals, they are subject to the whim on the winds for pollination and this means that you have to be very wasteful in your resources to try and get to any other plants. When the petals are strong and well-defined, you can draw in the assistance of other creatures to help you use your resources more wisely and achieve the goals of the flower – to produce more flowers over time.
At a time when bee colony collapse is threatening agriculture across the globe, you would think that a Minister of Industry (and Science) would have actually bothered to pick up some of the facts on this, very basic, role of a mechanism that he is using to deride and, attempt to, humiliate a community for having the audacity to complain about a bad decision. Scientists have been speaking truth to power since the beginning, Minister, and we’re not going to stop now.
If the Minister understood his portfolio, then he would realise that calling Australia’s scientific community “precious petals” is actually a reflection of their vital role in making science work for all Australians and the world. It is through these petals, protecting and guiding the resources in their area, that we can take the promise of STEM and share it with the world.
But let’s not pretend that’s what he meant. Much like the staggering Uncle at a Williamson Wedding, these words were meant to sting and diminish – to make us appear hysterical and, somehow, less valid. In this anachronistic, and ignorant, attack, we have never seen a better argument as to why Australia should have a dedicated Science Minister, who actually understands science.
I’m proud to be a Precious Petal, Minister.
An open nelumno nucifera flower, from the Botanic Gardens in Adelaide. Via Wikipedia.
MOOCs and the on-line Masters Degree
Posted: September 10, 2014 Filed under: Education | Tags: blogging, community, education, educational research, georgia tech, higher education, measurement, moocs, on-line learning, resources, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking Leave a commentThere’s been a lot of interest in Georgia Tech’s new on-line masters degree in Computer Science, offered jointly with Udacity and AT&T. The first offering ran with 375 students, and there are 500 in the pipeline, but readmissions opened again two days ago so this number has probably gone up. PBS published an article recently, written up on the ACM blog.
I think we’re all watching this with interest as, while it’s neither Massive at this scale or Open (fee-paying and admission checked), if this works reasonably, let alone well, then we have something new to offer at the tertiary scale but without many of the problems that we’ve traditionally seen with existing MOOCs (retention, engagement, completion and accreditation.)
Right now, there are some early observations: the students are older (11 years older on average) and most are working. In this way, we’re much closer to the standard MOOC demographic for success: existing degree, older and practised in work. We would expect this course to do relatively well, much as our own experiences with on-line learning at the 100s scale worked well for that demographic. This is, unlike ours, more tightly bound into Georgia’s learning framework and their progress pathways, so we are very keen to see how their success will translate to other areas.
We are still learning about where MOOC (and its children SPOC and the Georgia Tech program) will end up in the overall scheme of education. With this program, we stand a very chance of working out exactly what it means to us in the traditional higher educational sector.
An inappropriate picture of a bricks-and-mortar campus for an article on on-line learning.
CodeSpells! A Kickstarter to make a difference. @sesperu @codespells #codespells
Posted: September 9, 2014 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: advocacy, blockly, blogging, Code Spells, codespells, community, education, educational problem, educational research, games, Generation Why, higher education, in the student's head, learning, principles of design, resources, Sarah Esper, Stephen Foster, student perspective, students, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking, tools, UCSD, universal principles of design Leave a commentI first met Sarah Esper a few years ago when she was demonstrating the earlier work in her PhD project with Stephen Foster on CodeSpells, a game-based project to start kids coding. In a pretty enjoyable fantasy game environment, you’d code up spells to make things happen and, along the way, learn a lot about coding. Their team has grown and things have come a long way since then for CodeSpells, and they’re trying to take it from its research roots into something that can be used to teach coding on a much larger scale. They now have a Kickstarter out, which I’m backing (full disclosure), to get the funds they need to take things to that next level.
Teaching kids to code is hard. Teaching adults to code can be harder. There’s a big divide these days between the role of user and creator in the computing world and, while we have growing literary in use, we still have a long way to go to get more and more people creating. The future will be programmed and it is, honestly, a new form of literacy that our children will benefit from.
If you’re one of my readers who likes the idea of new approaches to education, check this out. If you’re an old-timey Multi-User Dungeon/Shared Hallucination person like me, this is the creative stuff we used to be able to do on-line, but for everyone and with cool graphics in a multi-player setting. If you have kids, and you like the idea of them participating fully in the digital future, please check this out.
To borrow heavily from their page, 60% of jobs in science, technology,engineering and maths are computing jobs but AP Computer Science is only taught at 5% of schools. We have a giant shortfall of software people coming up and this will be an ugly crash when it comes because all of the nice things we have become used to in the computing side will slow down and, in some cases, pretty much stop. Invest in the future!
I have no connection to the project apart from being a huge supporter of Sarah’s drive and vision and someone who would really like to see this project succeed. Please go and check it out!
The Earth Magic Sphere image, from the Kickstarter page.
Funding Education: Trust me, you want to. #stem #education #csed
Posted: September 8, 2014 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: advocacy, Australian Universities, blogging, community, education, ethics, higher education, in the student's head, learning, luddites, reflection, resources, student perspective, students, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking, universities Leave a commentSome very serious changes to the Higher Education system of Australia are going to be discussed starting from October 28th – deregulating the University fee structure, which will most likely lead to increasing fees and interest rates, leading to much greater student debt. (Yes, there are some positives in there but it’s hard to get away from massive increase of student debt.) While some university representative organisations are in favour of this, with amendments and protections for some students, I am yet to be convinced that deregulating the Universities is going to do much while we labour under the idea that students will move around based on selected specialisations, the amount of “life lessons” they will accumulate or their perception of value for money. We have no idea what price sensitivity is going to do to the Australian market. We do know what happened in the UK when they deregulated fees:
‘Professor Byrne agreed, but said fee deregulation would have to be “carefully thought through so as to avoid what happened in the UK when they did it there – initially, when the fees were uncapped, all the universities just charged the maximum amount. It’s been corrected now, but that was a complete waste of time because all it did was transfer university costing from the public to the private sphere.”’
But, don’t worry, Professor Byrne doesn’t think this will lead to a two-tier system, split between wealthy universities and less-well-off regionals:
“I’d call it an appropriately differentiated system, with any number of levels within it.”
We have four classes! That must be better than have/have not. That’s… wait…
The core of this argument is that, somehow, it is not the role of Universities to provide the same thing as every other university, which is a slashing of services more usually (coyly) referred to as “playing to your strengths”. What this really is, however, is geographical and social entrapment. You weren’t born in a city, you don’t want to be saddled with huge debt or your school wasn’t great so you didn’t get the marks to go to a “full” University? Well, you can go to a regional University, which is playing to its strengths, to offer you a range of courses that have been market-determined to be suitable. But it will be price competitive! This is great, because after 2-3 generations of this, the people near the regional University will not have the degree access to make the money to work anywhere other than their region or to go to a different University. And, of course, we have never seen a monopolised, deregulated market charging excessive fees when their consumer suffers from a lack of mobility…
There are some quite valid questions as to why we need to duplicate teaching capabilities in the same state, until we look at the Australian student, who tends to go to University near where they live, rather than moving into residential accommodation on campus, and, when you live in a city that spans 70km from North to South as Adelaide does, it suddenly becomes more evident why there might be repeated schools in the Universities that span this geographical divide. When you live in Sydney, where the commute can be diabolical and the city is highly divided by socioeconomic grouping, it becomes even more important. Duplication in Australian Universities is not redundancy, it’s equality.
The other minor thing to remember is that the word University comes from the Latin word for whole. The entire thing about a University is that it is most definitely not a vocational training college, focussed on one or two things. It is defined by, and gains strength from, its diversity and the nature of study and research that comes together in a place that isn’t quite like any other. We are at a point in history when the world is changing so quickly that predicting the jobs of the next 20 years is much harder, especially if we solve some key problems in robotics. Entire jobs, and types of job, will disappear almost overnight – if we have optimised our Universities to play to their strengths rather than keeping their ability to be agile and forward-looking, we will pay for it tomorrow. And we will pay dearly for it.
Education can be a challenging thing for some people to justify funding because you measure the money going in and you can’t easily measure the money that comes back to you. But we get so much back from an educated populace. Safety on the road: education. Safety in the skies: education. Art, literature, music, film: a lot of education. The Internet, your phone, your computer: education, Universities, progressive research funding and CSIRO.
Did you like a book recently? That was edited by someone who most likely had a degree that many wouldn’t consider worth funding. Just because it’s not obvious what people do with their degrees, and just because some jobs demand degrees when they don’t need them, it doesn’t mean that we need to cut down on the number of degrees or treat people who do degrees with a less directly vocational pathway as if they are parasites (bad) or mad (worse). Do we need to change some things about our society in terms of perceptions of worth and value? Yes – absolutely, yes. But let’s not blame education for how it gets mutated and used. And, please, just because we don’t understand someone’s job, let us never fall into the trap of thinking it’s easy or trivial.
The people who developed the first plane had never flown. The people who developed WiFi had never used a laptop. The people who developed the iPhone had never used one before. But they were educated and able to solve challenges using a combination of technical and non-technical knowledge. Steve Jobs may never have finished college (although he attributed the Mac’s type handling to time he spent in courses there) but he employed thousands of people who did – as did Bill Gates. As do all of the mining companies if they actually want to find ore bodies and attack them properly.
Education will define what Australia is for the rest of this century and for every century afterwards. To argue that we have to cut funding and force more debt on to students is to deny education to more Australians and, ultimately, to very much head towards a permanently divided Australia.
You might think, well, I’m ok, why should I worry? Ignoring any altruistic issues, what do you think an undereducated, effectively underclass, labour force is going to do when all of their jobs disappear? If there are still any History departments left, then you might want to look into the Luddites and the French Revolution. You can choose to do this for higher purposes, or you can do it for yourself, because education will help us all to adjust to an uncertain future and, whether you think so or not, we probably need the Universities running at full speed as cradles of research and ideas, working with industry to be as creative as possible to solve the problems that you will only read about in tomorrow’s paper.
Funding Education: Trust me, you want to.
Rage Against the Machine
I have a new book out: A Guide to Teaching Puzzle-based learning. #puzzlebasedlearning #education
Posted: September 5, 2014 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: blogging, colleagues, curriculum, design, Ed Meyer, education, educational problem, Generation Why, higher education, in the student's head, raja sooriamurthi, reflection, resources, shameless self-promotion, student perspective, students, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking, universal principles of design, work/life balance, workload, Zbyszek Michalewicz Leave a commentTime for some pretty shameless self-promotion. Feel free to stop reading if that will bother you.
My colleagues, Ed Meyer from BWU, Raja Sooriamurthi from CMU and Zbyszek Michalewicz (emeritus from my own institution) and I have just released a new book, called “A Guide to Teaching Puzzle-based learning.” What a labour of love this has been and, better yet, we are still still talking to each other. In fact, we’re planning some follow-up events next year to do some workshops around the book so it’ll be nice to work with the team again.
(How to get it? This is the link to Springer, paperback and e-Book. This is the link to Amazon, paperback only I believe.)
Here’s a slightly sleep-deprived and jet-lagged picture of me holding the book as part of my “wow, it got published” euphoria!
See how happy I am? And also so out of it.
The book is a resource for the teacher, although it’s written for teachers from primary to tertiary and it should be quite approachable for the home school environment as well. We spent a lot of time making it approachable, sharing tips for students and teachers alike, and trying to get all of our knowledge about how to teach well with puzzles down into the one volume. I think we pretty much succeeded. I’ve field-tested the material here at Universities, schools and businesses, with very good results across the board. We build on a good basis and we love sound practical advice. This is, very much, a book for the teaching coalface.
It’s great to finally have it all done and printed. The Springer team were really helpful and we’ve had a lot of patience from our commissioning editors as we discussed, argued and discussed again some of the best ways to put things into the written form. I can’t quite believe that we managed to get 350 pages down and done, even with all of the time that we had.
If you or your institution has a connection to SpringerLink then you can read it online as part of your subscription. Otherwise, if you’re keen, feel free to check out the preview on the home page and then you may find that there are a variety of prices available on the Web. I know how tight budgets are at the moment so, if you do feel like buying, please buy it at the best price for you. I’ve already had friends and colleagues ask what benefits me the most and the simple answer is “if people read it and find it useful”.
To end this disgraceful sales pitch, we’re actually quite happy to run workshops and the like, although we are currently split over two countries (sometimes three or even four), so some notice is always welcome.
That’s it, no more self-promotion to this extent until the next book!
Talking Ethics with the Terminator: Using Existing Student Experience to Drive Discussion
Posted: September 5, 2014 Filed under: Education | Tags: authenticity, community, curriculum, education, educational problem, ethical issues, ethics, feedback, Generation Why, higher education, in the student's head, learning, principles of design, reflection, resources, student perspective, students, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking Leave a commentOne of the big focuses at our University is the Small-Group Discovery Experience, an initiative from our overall strategy document, the Beacon of Enlightenment. You can read all of the details here, but the essence is that a small group of students and an experienced research academic meet regularly to start the students down the path of research, picking up skills in an active learning environment. In our school, I’ve run it twice as part of the professional ethics program. This second time around, I think it’s worth sharing what we did, as it seems to be working well.
Why ethics? Well, this is first year and it’s not all that easy to do research into Computing if you don’t have much foundation, but professional skills are part of our degree program so we looked at an exploration of ethics to build a foundation. We cover ethics in more detail in second and third year but it’s basically a quick “and this is ethics” lecture in first year that doesn’t give our students much room to explore the detail and, like many of the more intellectual topics we deal with, ethical understanding comes from contemplation and discussion – unless we just want to try to jam a badly fitting moral compass on to everyone and be done.
Ethical issues present the best way to talk about the area as an introduction as much of the formal terminology can be quite intimidating for students who regard themselves as CS majors or Engineers first, and may not even contemplate their role as moral philosophers. But real-world situations where ethical practice is more illuminating are often quite depressing and, from experience, sessions in medical ethics, and similar, rapidly close down discussion because it can be very upsetting. We took a different approach.
The essence of any good narrative is the tension that is generated from the conflict it contains and, in stories that revolve around artificial intelligence, robots and computers, this tension often comes from what are fundamentally ethical issues: the machine kills, the computer goes mad, the AI takes over the world. We decided to ask the students to find two works of fiction, from movies, TV shows, books and games, to look into the ethical situations contained in anything involving computers, AI and robots. Then we provided them with a short suggested list of 20 books and 20 movies to start from and let them go. Further guidance asked them to look into the active ethical agents in the story – who was doing what and what were the ethical issues?
I saw the students after they had submitted their two short paragraphs on this and I was absolutely blown out of the water by their informed, passionate and, above all, thoughtful answers to the questions. Debate kept breaking out on subtle points. The potted summary of ethics that I had given them (follow the rules, aim for good outcomes or be a good person – sorry, ethicists) provided enough detail for the students to identify issues in rule-based approaches, utilitarianism and virtue ethics, but I could then introduce terms to label what they had already done, as they were thinking about them.
I had 13 sessions with a total of 250 students and it was the most enjoyable teaching experience I’ve had all year. As follow-up, I asked the students to enter all of their thoughts on their entities of choice by rating their autonomy (freedom to act), responsibility (how much we could hold them to account) and perceived humanity, using a couple of examples to motivate a ranking system of 0-5. A toddler is completely free to act (5) and completely human (5) but can’t really be held responsible for much (0-1 depending on the toddler). An aircraft autopilot has no humanity or responsibility but it is completely autonomous when actually flying the plane – although it will disengage when things get too hard. A soldier obeying orders has an autonomy around 5. Keanu Reeves in the Matrix has a humanity of 4. At best.
They’ve now filled the database up with their thoughts and next week we’re going to discuss all of their 0-5 ratings as small groups, then place them on a giant timeline of achievements in literature, technology, AI and also listing major events such as wars, to see if we can explain why authors presented the work that they did. When did we start to regard machines as potentially human and what did the world seem like them to people who were there?
This was a lot of fun and, while it’s taken a little bit of setting up, this framework works well because students have seen quite a lot, the trick is just getting to think about with our ethical lens. Highly recommended.
What do you think, Arnold? (Image from moviequotes.me)
Memories in Amber: How I possibly mildly embarrassed Christopher Priest by Emphasising the Influence of His Writing. #loncon3 #worldcon
Posted: September 4, 2014 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: an infinite summer, christopher priest, contemplation, education, fiction, higher education, Infinite Summer, loncon3, students, summer, thinking, time travel, worldcon Leave a commentMany, many years ago, I read a short story about a young man and woman who, on an English Summer’s day, are frozen in time by visitors from elsewhere, probably the future. There’s a good story that follows, which I won’t go into here, and I really enjoyed it. The only problem was that I read it when I was about 10 and I was at someone else’s house, flicking through their book collection. After that point, although I remembered the story, I did not remember either the title or the author.
Now, this begin before the age of easy searching, I really had no simple way to find the story, unless someone else had read it and recognised my telling of it. When you tell your version of a story to someone else, it’s much like when you make a map – you put the things that interest you on there and this often reveals how much difference there is in interpretation.
Some years went by, probably about 25 or so, and I had taken to browsing collections of short stories in second hand book stores, looking for the work. It wasn’t a full-time occupation but, if I ran across a new store, I’d duck in and see what they had. I must have looked over about 10 countries, on three continents, idly looking for a story that I (by now) dimly remembered.
One day, I found it. The name of the story was “An Infinite Summer” by Christopher Priest, who was actually someone I had read and enjoyed for his novels, in a collection of the same name. I was so delighted after so many years of searching that the bookseller asked me what was up and, on hearing the story, gave the book to me for free.
This happens to be the version I have now. A simple cover belies a complex set of stories.
And it’s still a great story. Character driven, well-written and with just enough time travel to make it work, without bogging down in the unnecessary mechanics of impossible machines.
Let’s move forward to this year, some 10 years later, and I happen to be at LonCon3, the World Science Fiction Convention for 2014, in the room for the sessions “In Conversation: Naomi Alderman and Christopher Priest”. I’m rather excited as I’d never seen Priest in the flesh before and his story is a part of the unfolding of my life. It wasn’t exactly a Golden Fleece but it was definitely a plank on the ship!
So the conversation unfolds and, delightfully, Priest is fiery, smart, opinionated, unrepentantly definite about things that I also happen to be unapologetic about and then he talks about his writing.
“I don’t believe in aliens, space ships or time travel”, he says, which explains much of his work and its fascination with a very human future, devoid of most of the tricks that are used to bring tension into the narrative. But the time travel thing piqued my curiosity, because “An Infinite Summer” is a glorious tale of time and time lost, told within the mythical context of the endless English Summer.
Question time arrives and I pose a question: “You say you don’t believe in time travel but what about ‘An Infinite Summer’? That’s a fantastic time travel story!”
There’s a pause, some time for recollection, and he says” Well, yes, they stopped people in time.” A pause.
I went on, “But weren’t they people from the future?”
And he pauses again, nods, and there is a bit of a chuckle from the audience as the moderator notes that I appear to know that work better than he does now.
“Yes,” he says, “thank you.” I must be honest that his “thank you” sounded a little… cool but I suspect that this was because I was terribly embarrassed myself for putting him in that position.
And yet, what a testament to the strength of the original work and its concept! There I am, transfixed and frozen in time at a moment where a much younger Christopher Priest is writing this story – this story reaches out to me and holds itself in my memory and it is a part of the mythology of my own life. Yet, he, having set the tableau down, moves on to do other things. This is “An Infinite Summer”, told with new players, and possibly, having written this down, somewhere it will be told again.
You never know how people are going to remember you and, in the short span that I’ve been blogging, it’s come back to me how some of my posts resonate deeply with people (not many) and they remember the contents more than I do. Yet I’m already moving on and looking ahead to other things. I should have known this because, as an educator, I sometimes have a bigger place in someone’s world than they do in mine – which I’m trying to change by getting to know my students better. I’m an okay person but I’m a lousy creature of myth.
I don’t actually think I bothered Mr Priest with this and I still love that story – now it’s helped me to realise and appreciate how your works can be seen over a lifetime but also, before I actually get much older, to realise that what I have done is another set of steps towards what I’m going to do.
Thank you, Christopher Priest, for a wonderful story, an experience that echoed it, and being extremely willing to participate with a community that obviously enjoys your work.
Being Honest About Stress, Challenge and Humanity: R U OK? Day #ruok
Posted: August 26, 2014 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: advocacy, authenticity, blogging, community, depression, education, ethics, higher education, honesty, learning, reflection, robin williams, ruok, students, teaching, thinking Leave a comment
The RUOK™ logo from https://www.ruok.org.au
R U Ok? Day (September the 11th) is coming up soon, with its focus on reaching out and starting conversations with people that you think might not be ok, or might benefit from a friendly conversation. It’s a great initiative and, as someone who has struggled with mental illness, I’m so happy to see us talking openly about this. For me to out myself as having suffered with depression is no big thing, as I discuss it in other parts of the ‘net, but I realise that some of you might now look at what I do and what I say in a different light.
And, if you do, I have to tell you that you need to change the way that you think about these things. A very large number of humans will go through some form of mental issue in their lives, unsurprisingly given the levels of stress that we put ourselves under, the struggle some people have just to survive and the challenges that lie ahead of us as a rather greedy species on a finite globe. So, yes, I’ve suffered from depression but it is an illness. It is treatable and, when it is treated and managed, then you can’t tell that I have problems. In fact, like many people with the problem, even when I’m suffering, you wouldn’t really know. Nobody asks to get mentally ill so stigmatising, isolating and discriminating against people with a treatable mental condition is not just wrong, it’s pretty stupid. So let’s get beyond this and start talking, openly.
That’s where RUOK? is great because it gives you a day and some agency to reach out to someone who seems a little … off and ask them if they’re ok. Trust me when I say that 99% of them will appreciate it. Yes, 1% might give you some grief but if I knew a bet would pay off 99% of the time, I’d take it. The web site has some great tips for starting conversations so please read them if you’re thinking about doing this. (Pro tip: starting a conversation with “You should just cheer up” is not a great way to start. Or finish. In fact, just scratch that and try again.)
I am very open with my students, which I know some people think is potentially unprofessional, and I am a strong believer in cognitive apprenticeship. We are, pretty much, all the same in many respects and me pretending that everything I do comes fully formed and perfect from my amazing brain is a lie. My wisdom, such as it is, is the accumulated memory of the mistakes I’ve made that haven’t killed me yet. My students need to know that the people around them struggle, wonder, stress out and, quite frequently, rise above it all to keep on doing wonderful and beautiful things. I am still professional but I am honest and I am human.
I want to share with all of you something that I wrote on the death of Robin Williams, which I’ve edited slightly for language, but it’s been shared a lot over my other social feeds so it obviously resonates with people. However, many of my students won’t have seen it because I keep my private social life and ‘work’ social media separated. So here it is. I hope that you find it useful and, if you need help, maybe nudges you to help, and if you know someone you’re worried about, it inspires you to ask them “R U OK?”
Mental illness is a poisonous and weird thing. If your eyes changed function, you’d see things differently. When your brain changes function, everything gets weird – and the only impression you have of the perceptual world is suddenly flawed and untrustworthy. But it’s a biochemical issue like diabetes – regulatory systems that aren’t working properly and cannot just be “got over” by thinking happily. Ask a diabetic whether they’ve “really tried” to handle their sugar and see how far that gets you. 🙂
I wrote something, years ago, that I’ve never posted, to try and explain why some people just can’t stay. The nastiest thing about mental illness is that it can show you a world and a way of thinking that makes suicide apparently logical and, even more sadly, necessary. If you saw that world, then maybe you wouldn’t stay either. This doesn’t make it easier on the survivors but it’s important to recognise the role that an actual illness plays here. That f***ing ba***rd, cancer, takes people from us all the time but it at least has the decency to wield the knife itself. Depression puts the knife in the hands of its victim and makes it look like calculated agency, which hurts the people left behind even more.
There is no magic bullet for helping people with mental illness. Some need visible support. Some need solitude. Some need to work. Some drown in it. That’s because mental illness affects people, in all of their variety and their glorious irrationality, and I am no more a poster child for depression than anyone else. I can’t even tell you how to help me and, given how much I communicate, that’s the most irritating thing of all. But I do know that the ongoing support of caring people who are watching and listening makes a big difference and those of you who are aware and supporting, you keep up that good work! (And thank you, on behalf of the people who are still here because other people helped.)
It’s a sad day with Robin WIlliams passing but this is only a part of him. It’s a sad and mad part of him and I wish it hadn’t happened but I won’t let it define him, because his struggles were a part of him and his contribution to laughter and joy were so much greater. The least I can do is to see past his ‘mental diabetes’ to celebrate his actual talent and contribution. And offer my deepest sympathies and condolences to his family and friends.
Rest well, Robin.
