What can technology help us learn
[Music]
i moved to syria in 2009
i stayed there until the war broke out
in 2011.
i didn’t realize it at the time but i
was beginning a journey in education
i began life in syria as a humble
computer scientist
now i build and design education
technology
and i want to share with you the power
and importance of this world and the
duty that we have in ensuring that it
works
for us so back to 2009 when i moved to
syria i knew almost nothing about it
i just knew that i wanted to go there
and study arabic
but i fell in love with damascus
immediately
the smell of hostok alhamdiyah the taste
of beck dash ice cream
the feeling of warmth from the people i
met
i rented a house that looks across all
of damascus
i could listen to the call to prayer
listen to it slowly make its way from
mosque to mosque across the city
and slowly i learned what the words mean
how the people are called to pray
my favorite ones are sung at dawn
they mean come to pray come to pray
prayer is better than sleep that’s what
it says prayer is better than sleep
i took their word for it early on though
i was struggling
arabic has a really complicated
structure and it means that for every
one word in english you have to learn
two or three words in arabic and when my
teacher said to me one day
leishma tudoros which means why don’t
you study
i knew something was wrong with my
method
every night i was studying hours and
hours and hours
but for some reason i wasn’t learning
and i remember i was
i was getting out my word list and i was
covering the words up and i was testing
myself
and mostly i got it right and i guess
that was part of the problem
you can’t really test yourself when
you’re just covering up words from
one minute one minute ago so i got it
my laptop i connected my dial up
internet
and i did some research i discovered
flashcards it’s a really simple device
you have one english word on one side
and the corresponding arabic words on
the other
you put them all in an envelope you take
out that envelope
on one day and then you test yourself
and if you get it right you put them
into another envelope
if you get a word right five times in a
row
you’ve learnt it now i didn’t even know
how to say envelope much less want to
fiddle about with all of these envelopes
so i did what every self-respecting
computer scientist might do
and i thought i could write an app to
solve this problem
i made myself a little flashcard out
i coded up the user interface i added
the words
but most importantly i decided when and
how often words flashed up
splashed up to me i even researched this
thing called
spaced repetition to ensure that i put
those words into my long-term memory but
what was i really learning
i was remembering the words but could i
use them
could i use them in speech could i
understand them when spoken
in truth my language learning out my
flashcard app
it was just a beginning i researched all
these other tools i came across
duolingo and rosetta stone but
ultimately they were just
the same as mine they were just this
kind of pattern matching tool they pose
learning as a problem to be solved
without social context
and then set about solving it as though
it’s just a problem for engineers
it felt to me like there weren’t really
any teachers or
pedagogy experts in the design room
so i became one i taught english in
syria in damascus in melbourne and in
sydney
i even taught asylum seekers on
christmas island that’s another story
i read book after book after book about
teaching and learning
and i applied what i learnt each day in
the classroom
it turns out that apps like duolingo are
based on an old
and fundamentally discredited form of
teaching known as grammar translation
the idea behind it is that if you can
translate enough words
enough sentences enough paragraphs into
another language
then you can speak it right turns out
not really
and the other part of duolingo is
repetition
drilling it’s a kind of behavioralism
the idea that just
acting out the actions of an expert
makes you an expert
but if you imagine your korean-speaking
wives telling you to
take out the darned rubbish please does
she really want you to say
right back to her take out the darned
rubbish please or does she just want you
to take out the darned rubbish
modern language teaching is about using
the language not just being drilled
again and again
now duolingo have attempted to take on
some of these criticisms and if you look
carefully under each sentence
there’s a little discuss button and it’s
an attempt to bring in some kind of
social constructivist learning
but really their heart’s not inner users
keep using
the user base grows revenue increases
but this is not a bad thing do not
misunderstand me here
technology can be a huge multiplier for
learning
it’s just that we need to recognize that
duolingo’s aims are different to ours
duolingo wants us to increase our
engagement
with the app rather than the world our
aim
is to increase our engagement with the
world using the app as a tool
so how might apps like duolingo help us
do this instead
here are some possibilities at the start
of the day duolingo
could ask you what are your aims or what
are your goals
and then it could set you challenges to
achieve that day
at the end of the day it could ask you
how long you’ve spent using the language
then a new aim for users and designers
alike becomes
maximizing the ratio between using the
language and time spent in the app
because we know that’s what drives
learning
and what about the context your context
outside the technology
a key part of learning is connecting it
to what we already know
sometimes what we already know can help
us learn other times our preconceptions
can hinder us
there’s a lovely fable it’s called fish
is fish
it’s about this really really curious
fish who’s desperate to know what life
is like on land
so he befriends a frog who of course one
day goes to land
and then comes back and he sits
he sits the fish down he says fish i’ve
been to land and this is what i saw
i saw a bird flying around i saw a bull
sitting in the paddock with horns i saw
a human
all dressed up with somewhere to go
and the fish nodded nodded very well
very wisely with that same feeling of
learning that we’ve all had at some time
and he swam away thinking in his mind’s
eye
about a fish with wings swimming along
another fish with horns and a final fish
that was all dressed up in a top hat
and a suit but somehow swinging up
swimming upright
the point is context is important
duolingo doesn’t know what you already
know or what you don’t know or what
preconceptions you might need to break
in order to help you learn
in fact the gamer gamification
principles behind dual lingo
mean that it’s it’s better if you get
most of your answers
right because that’s what will keep you
coming back confident that you get all
the answers right
the next time you open the hour but
sometimes you need to take a risk
sometimes you need to do something like
go to a
pa bar go to a pub
maybe even tell a joke in a pub
because there are plenty of bars and
pubs in syria
now think back to your last technology
based learning experience
was it a slide and video based piece of
compliance training at work
how do you work differently now was it
watching your kid lose themselves on an
educational ipad game or
even one that isn’t educational but has
supposed benefits for learning
where links made in class back to logic
or to reasoning
another way of looking at this is how do
these companies judge themselves what
are their metrics
engagement engagement app opens
sign-ups that’s what drives revenue
and even in education we have this thing
called education analytics
but ultimately it’s so often just a
page opens time spent on a page
time spent on a page how do we know that
they weren’t just confused
i know there is a growing movement in
the world around humane technology and
that’s a great thing
but the technology companies they always
have an out
who doesn’t want ads that are more
personalized to them rather than just
random
why shouldn’t you get a notification
about cat videos while you’re trying to
read wikipedia
after all that’s what engages you
but education technology is different
values matter
learning helps us act positively within
this world it helps us understand this
world
it helps us solve today’s problems and
it helps us get ready for tomorrow’s
problems
and all the big companies are making big
bets on education
apple facebook microsoft
google they know that today’s students
are tomorrow’s customers tomorrow’s
workers the potential power of these
giants is immense
but how do we ensure that they design
in a way that helps us connect with the
world not disconnect
do they design with humility or are they
arrogantly separate thinking that they
can own and control the entire learning
process
all for themselves
as education technology seeps further
and further into our world
we should ensure that these companies
treat our minds and treat our kids minds
like the precious things they are
where the technology is designed just to
play a role
a role in learning a role in our lives
whether technology helps us engage as
well as disengage
where it’s purposefully designed to help
us connect to the rest of the world
and helps us realize our potential where
it helps us
not just memorize words in arabic but
connect to those who speak it
here