The Monkey Business Illusion

If you watched the video in my last post (Perceptual Blindness)---did you spot the gorilla?

Believe it or not, in the original research conducted by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, roughly half the audience missed the gorilla!

“Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice a fully-visible but unexpected object when you are focusing attention on something else.”

Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris have recently published their insights and findings related to inattentional blindness (also called perceptual blindness) in their book The Invisible Gorilla. 

What does the study prove? That we often see only what we choose to see. And the testimony of witnesses may not always be reliable (understatement!). And that learning designers need to keep their content design simple, uncluttered,  and focused. Especially if the resource is likely to be viewed only once. 

Perceptual Blindness: To See Or Not To See?

Watch this original video of a 1999 study conducted by cognitive psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. I'll write more about this and the latest research on this subject in my next post!.

Who's driving?

Some time ago, I had started a review of the many ways in which technology can be used to support teaching and learning.

Before launching any learning programme, it's always a good idea to mark out a baseline, working out your start point and what your finish goals are. Some tools you can use to find out what learners already know are surveys. If you winced at the word 'survey', try this painfree online survey tool.

You can also have some fun and help learners gauge their own progress with classroom response systems. And of course, you can improve access by offering podcasts and lecture webcasting. Carnegie Mellon offers an interesting overview of the possibilities here.

To help your learners work on their research and writing abilities, there are a range of social software tools - a module wiki, a group blog, asynchronous discussion forums, web quests, YouTube videos, podcasts and other forms of learner generated content, open to review and comment. All of these provide excellent built-in audit trails and enable learners to custom build their own e-portfolios and reflective journals.

For the presentation of data and research, there are now a host of charting and mapping tools available. This article sets out a few more tools available to academia.

More on e-learning tools here. The only way to really learn about the possibilities is to really use these tools. If you've been relying heavily on powerpoint slides and one-way transmission lectures, try turning the tables and letting your learners take the wheel for a change. Let them choose their own presentation tools. And let them have a bit of fun!

Empower and Include

It's been a busy time. I finally did manage to pass my driving test (a very kind examiner, the winter chill and empty roads helped me overcome my mind numbing fear of tests!). Tremendously liberating. Still don't have a car, but it's nice knowing that there is now no other bar to mobility. So Empowering!

So, today, I focus on Empowerment.

And if and how global learning assets and open source education can be used to foster empowerment.

"The idea of empowerment is that those who have little or no influence, such as excluded people, are able to develop informed opinions, to take initiative, make independent choices and influence change...

It also means that those with influence actively change their attitudes and rules and change the way decisions are made through involving excluded people."

Source: The EQUAL Community Initiative (whose activities have now been completed).

Empowerment is the opposite of Powerlessness, which is described in the Voices of the Poor: Crying out for Change as "the core of the bad life", manifesting in "the inability to control what happens, the inability to plan for the future, and the imperative of focusing on the present". Read this global study by the World Bank published as a three part series "Voices of the Poor".

Powerlessness is a serious constraint on the ability to pursue happiness. Its antidote, true empowerment, must be preceded by a recognition of the need for some degree of equality. And for that there must be a change in attitudes and a fundamental shift in how education and learning is offered and made available, accessible and inclusive. It means turning things upside down and inside out. It means Open Education.

As a launch pad into the study of this immensely exciting arena, read Michaeil Feldstein's primer on The History of Open Education here.

Today, every institution that offers education must seriously assess their responsibility to the marginalised and the excluded and think about how they can empower the powerless. And how they can share their assets and benefit from the amazing possibilities for exchange.

Breaking patterns of learned helplessness

A few years ago I'd reached a serious low after a major upheaval and disruption in my life. I had to make a choice, between a rock and a very hard place. With little to guide me but instinct, I opted for change. It was a tough decision. The consequences were far reaching, for me, my family and my infant son, as it took me without preparation into unanticipated single parenthood.

The early years were hard. I was struggling to stay afloat and cope with the physical, financial and emotional strain of raising a child in India on my own. One day, a well meaning aunt in her well meaning way said these words to me:

"Your life is finished -- you took a bad decision and you ruined your life. Why not just admit it and give up? Not everyone finds happiness - stop trying to fight your fate."

Thank you dear aunt. Your words words created in me the sort of reaction physicists are trying to create in the Large Hadron Collider. The Big Bang. It accelerated the atoms of my being out of the terrible black hole of apathy and helplessness. It was time to give my fate a good kick in the butt. That day, I broke free. No more thought was wasted on wondering whether I did right or I did wrong. I decided to trust myself and believe I did what needed to be done.

Learned Helplessness is a self-perpetuating and self-defeating plague that fosters in people the belief that they are helpless victims of circumstance and that they have no control over the things that happen in their lives. It is a conditioning mechanism that engenders passivity and subjugation. It disempowers us and destroys our connections with hope and joy.

Ken McLeod explains it beautifully in his article, Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness is often rooted in the home. As parents and teachers, we unwittingly subscribe to the system that fosters learned helplessness. We often pass on our own learned helplessness as an inheritance to our young. Recognising this first will lead us to a way out.

And yes, there is a way out. It involves recognising obstacles and learning skills to overcome them.

In McLeod's words,

"The cost, however, is high. We can only undo learned helplessness by severing our internal connection with the system that gave rise to it. "

Where else do we see learned helplessness? In schools, in educational institutions, and societies where differences and questioning minds are not tolerated. Wherever patterns of belief and thought have become calcified and brittle. Wherever hunger and poverty prevail. Wherever there is exploitation and corruption, violence and abuse.

To sever connections with such systems is to leave behind and let go of everything you may have ever known. It's lonely journey. And the only person you will please is you. But don't give up. And don't teach anyone else to either.

Go out there and fight your fate. The truth is no one else can fight this fight for you. Break free and discover a whole new world!

Suppliers of Independence and Mobility

I saw this sign as I walked through the city centre in Llanelli on the way to the Tinopolis office. "Suppliers of Independence and Mobility". Oh how wonderful to be able to buy these in a shop! How many of us have faced and live with limits to independence and mobility? Some of us may even wonder what these words really mean. To be able to stand on one's own feet, financial, emotional, physical independence. To be able to move as one wills. Move physically, grow emotionally, explore, experiment, and find one's niche and place in this world. That's what education can provide. Independence and Mobility.

Potential and The Field of Infinite Possibilities

A million ups and downs and detours and retreats and recoupings bring me to this blog. Six Degrees of Potential stems from the idea that human potential is limitless and takes a bit of nurturing in order to translate into six degrees of freedom.

Here, I will explore and park thoughts related to learning, teaching, education systems, and the achievement of human potential. Most people dont even come close to achieving their amazing, innate potential. Environment, education, and mentoring and motivation have a lot to do with it. I'm interested in learning, how it happens, why it doesn't happen, how we inadvertently build and how we can break down barriers to learning. How learning happens all the time, learning without boundaries, and learning in all dimensions.