Network Society has new tools for learning,
*but it also redefines what learning means
*Risto Linturi, Research Fellow,
Helsinki Telephone Corp., Finland
Ladies and gentlemen,
You do realize that in todays society it pays best to be different. When information flows fast you cannot make much money from common knowledge. One needs to specialize - cultural and informational richness does not come from everybody having the same information. But to be different requires certain stubborness and it requires also very high respect for other people and their different capabilities. And especially it requires very good co-operation and communication amongst the cooperating parties.
Computers and communication change our environment. They will change how we teach and how we learn but they also change what we need to learn and who actually learns. Networked people and their computers resemble more and more neurological networks. If we think about learning and what it means - it means that we reach correct decisions more often or faster. For an individual this means better connections between neurons in our brains and suitable chemicals in their nearness. If we give each employee a mobile phone - organization reaches correct information faster and makes decisions faster - it has learned.
Organizations have to be taught as living organisms where part of teaching happens through creating communication links and automated routines. Just compare this to the way the braincells interlink and reinforce the links. Similarities are clear.
We measure IQ:s to get a feeling for peoples brain capacity. The more connections and the faster pathways the higher IQ. Organizational intelligence can be increased by enabling better and more dynamic communications channels and information systems inside organizations and in our networked society also between interlinked organizations and their customers at home.
Ladies and gentlemen. We are entering a new world. Video telephony was earlier just a dream in science fiction books and then a laboratory toy. Now it is quickly growing from special equipment into a standard feature in every new home computer.
There is very much information in our facial expressions and very much time consumed with travelling to see those expressions. They are necessory to create trust when negotiating, when getting information and when just getting a feeling of the other person.
Let us now think for a while how we learn. My own basic method is that I experiment, gather data and then try to create a theory. Then I communicate that theory to others and try to fit it everywhere. Other people argue with me and then I slowly have to accept the limits and faults of my theory. At the same time I learn a very important lesson. I learn about others - I learn what they know and I learn which part of my own knowledge is special and I also learn to communicate my own knowledge efficiently. I even might learn that we do not all appreciate same things even if we understand their meanings.
There are many others who learn by doing, by listening, by reading. Most people however learn best when they have questions and their questions are answered. Interaction is key element to learning and it can be real or it can be simulated - built into the things we study.
What we learn is mostly not data, the important things are values, feelings and insights. We have entered an age of complexity. More and more of us live in abstract worlds with very small connection to other peoples realities. Information is very easily available through networks, experienced advice is also available. In this networked age information is not of prime importance. Networking skills and understanding the underlying subjective values - that is important and that we have to learn ourselves. Why, who and where - are important, what and how are easier to ask from others when necessary.
I will now show you the quality of picture over regular telephone line when the telephone exhanges have been modified to support todays fastest digital technology.
Usual interpretation of this technology is Video On Demand. Movies and the news whenever. This is not very important. This technology can work both ways and it can chance the whole structure of advertizing and content from centralized back to distributed. It can change the information creation model so that we all become contributors for daily information richness.
You can imagine that every home, every club, small company, every karaoke bar, every teacher and musician or any church could have their own TV-stations and channels. There are lots of people who claim that it is expensive to create good content. I think that if I put a camera in front of my aquarium and broadcast it to the network there would be at least ten people who think that it is better than anything coming from television and the operator could pay me for getting them ten customers.
I tried to do a 15 minutes documentary movie on my home automation and it took me one and half hours to do it. Seminar audience liked it better than my actual presentation. The difficult thing in creating content is to try and interest millions of people in something that they actually do not need so that the advertizers would be satisfied. Doing a tv-documentary that interest those who actually need the information requires very modest efforts.
Think about putting a camera in front of every teacher. Think about when students and pupils can freely choose when and where they study and what sort of curriculum they create for themselves. This is an age of lifelong learning and breaking of stable hierarchical structures. Remote learning facilities are key to this change.
Let us now jump to another issue. In Helsinki we are building a local broadband island. Our network can be considered as an intranet for our more than 500.000 telephone subscribers. We wanted to get them to understand that they belong to our network and we wanted them to find their way around both in the physical city and also the virtual contents in our network. We also wanted to create an user interface that does not need teaching and that really helps in everyday life. I will next show what we ended up with.
I remind you that learning means that one reaches correct conclusions faster. This can be reached by giving people better tools and teaching how to utilize them. Aquiring new tools is the most fundamental part of learning.
What you now see is Helsinki modelled in three dimensions. You can open your computer and start floating around the streets. If I call my mother and she would not answer I need not wander what has happened. I open my city, go to the neighrours door and push the doorbell. I only know the neighbours nickname but the model will connect my telephone call from the virtual doorbell.
If my younger kid would like to visit her aunt for the first time alone. I would ask her to open the city and go to the busstop and select the right bus and then leave at the correct busstop. When she has managed to do it couple of times in virtual Helsinki I could let her go in real life. There are thousands of different applications with this kind of living maps. If I need a taxi I just point and click at the closest free taxi, view their prices and place an order. Then I can view how the taxi arrives and I step out to the rain just in time.
If you want to listen to the sermon you select the church you want to enter, or the ice hockey match. No need to check the channel guide.
How many of you remember more than one hundred telephone numbers? … But all of you remember one hundred thousand or one million places. It used to be so that if you did not remember where food could be found or where it was hidden, if you could not find the way back home or to shelter you were soon dead. We are built the way that we learn places easily.
Why not build the user interface so that it helps us to use existing knowledge, existing capabilities and helps to keep us connected to the real world and informed about the real world. We need to be connected to physical reality and not just the imaginary virtual one. If we create a different virtual reality for each interest group we are no longer able to communicate efficiently with each other and organizational intelligence deceases.
The city was quite empty. This is not our intention but it is still under construction. Virtual environments can help us learn to interact with others. Let us now view a virtual youth club.
Psycology has made big advaces when studying how we see or recognize things. All these people are at their homes and instead of watching the TV they are communicating with each other. They have sensors connected to their joints and what you see are their actual movements.
They can also talk to each other or view sceneries from other youth clubs in the electronic windows in the walls. This is better than conference telephone and better that tv-channel selector. It supports the way our brain works.
It is not better than going there yourself but we must compare these things to the way people actually do behave and not to some nonexistent ideal. When TV got more channels the programs were segmented to different audiences. This lead to families no longer watching tv together. Now very many watch tv alone not being able to express themselves and not being able to learn from other peoples reactions. This what you see is one means of getting people back together even when watching tv.- By the way - the microwave oven has lead to families not eating together any more. An important learning environment has been destroyed.
Let us now go back to computers and learning. I just recently saw Sibelius Academy master class students being taught with video conferencing system by an american maestro. We arranged the demonstration to the finnish minister of education as part of a joint program for remote teaching with the music academy. It was very interesting to follow the teaching and the students learned much that their own teachers had not been able to teach. Travelling would not have been an option due to the distances.
My older daughter learned to play the piano with no teacher. She had tried to study the karelian instrument Kantele with a teacher but teachers always have too little time and she was not motivated to practice alone. I got her a teaching program and a keyboard to the computer and she got very well motivated into that. The computer showed which keys to press, showed al mistakes and did not let you forward before perfection. It was endlessly patient and my daughter could not argue with it. It was also rewarding and the program was funny in many places.
After finishing the teaching program she managed among others the easy version of FurElise and played it exactly as a machine. I have very seldom heard so completely lifeless music. After this I disconnected her from the computer and got her better instrument and the much more difficult original notes. She learned them alone practicing very hard. -Slowly the feelings entered the music as the background metronome was left off.
My kids have also played many computer games. Especially my younger daughter. She has learned to understand english from playing the games. One game was especially good from my viewpoint. It is called Jones. When you play it you have to devide your time between eating, studying, working, applying for jobs and so on. The game teaches very efficiently that you cannot start from the top. You have to keep yourself in condition, you have to study to achieve something and sometimes you also have to have fun. Computers are very good teachers in many specific issues. Piano-playing was an example of behavioral learning and the game was example of a simulation which developed cognitive skills and even what one would call wisdom by experiencing personal simulated desicion making and their results.
And a final point. If we really try to educate people on languages and other issues so that they could better get along. I do not understand why we do not teach them to use language translation programs. I studied german for three years and now I read all my german content pretranslated to english by altavista translation system. I also read portuguese, italian, french and spanish without ever studying them and still making far fewer mistakes than I did with german on my own. We are human beings and we are tool using animals. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you found some of these viewpoints interesting. Thank you for your attention.