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Review by Bojan Tunguz for The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning)
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The “Digital Age” that we live in has been the subject of many (too many?) books, articles, essays and blogs in recent times. Everyone who has not lived in a cave in the last few years realizes that the pace of technological advancement is increasing, and many of the traditional forms of communicating, working and shopping are continuously being redefined. Despite all of this, the role and the form of higher education have hardly changed, aside from PowerPoint presentations replacing most writing-on-a-blackboard styled ones. On the other hand, it is unclear whether any of these new technologies do in fact aid the learning process. As someone who has implemented many of these trends in college classes that I had taught, I have to admit that the jury is still out on the actual impact that the new digital technologies can have on students.
This short book raises many interesting points and it provides references to several novel learning and publishing tools that I will be happy to try out. The book itself was written using some of those tools in a very collaborative process. It provides a prescription for implementing many of these tools and techniques in academia. However, it is not clear to me what exactly would the implementation of those tools and teaching techniques accomplish. In fact, there is very little hard analysis in this book that one can find in most social-science publications. Overall, this book provides more starting points for further consideration than actionable ideas for further development of higher education. It is a worthwhile read if one doesn’t expect too much.
Review by DWD for The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning)
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This kindle “book” is sort of a preview of a much larger work the authors are currently writing. In reality, this should be read like a very long magazine article exploring how the digital age may affect and is affecting higher education in particular and to a lesser extent elementary and secondary education.
The “book” begins and ends, to its disadvantage, with a lot of jargon-filled commentary such as: “We contend that the future of learning institutions demands a deep, epistmogological appreciation of the profundity of what the Internet offers humanity as a model of a learning institution.” (loc 50) Yes, yes, yes. This is college writing at its classic wordiness.
Fortunately, once we get into the heart of the paper it gets quite interesting and more reader friendly. There are some big, important questions being asked here, such as, “Why go to college to get information when it can be found in 3 seconds on the internet?” and “Is the purpose of college really to learn skills under the tutelage of acknowledged experts?” (If that is so, why was my smallest class at Indiana University 8 people and the average was around 40?)
The authors seem to be leaning away from the traditional expert model of the university and embracing the collaborative model of the Internet. They use the model of Wikipedia, which is the poster child for what is right and wrong about the internet. Anyone can edit it, which means anyone with knowledge can add to it, but vandals can also damage the site or ignorant people can include their “facts” as well. One of my high school students added his own name to the site for the band Korn as a “spoon player”. It stayed up there for months.
But, this model has strengths as well. As a group, we certainly know more than we do individually. The trick is using the experts to weed out the inaccurate information. The authors are especially interested in global participation – they are imagining projects with participants from all over the world, which is easily possible right now with sites plenty of online sites, not just public ones like Wikipedia. What they don’t have is an answer as to how to connect the experts with the students all over the world and make sure that the “facts” that are being learned are actually facts.
The meat of this paper is quite interesting and would make for a great classroom discussion. What will education in the future look like? What will college mean in the future – will it mean that an area of knowledge has been mastered or will it mean that the holder of the degree has demonstrated the ability to work towards an abstract goal for an extended period of time? I think the latter has been reality for a while now and the diffusion of information technology will only make it more so.
Review by Kevin L. Nenstiel for The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning)
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Davidson and Goldberg state that changes in communications technology in recent decades demand concommitant changes in how schools, especially colleges and universities, educate our young. I agree. But our authors take that premise and run with it in some directions which I don’t believe are supported by the evidence.
Our authors insist that conventional education, with its hierarchical social groupings and insistence on individual work, will prove completely unsustainable in coming years. I wonder if they have read their history seriously enough. Their warnings repeat, nearly verbatim, statements made when moveable type, film, and television challenged former paradigms of learning. A time traveler from 1975 might be astounded to see that videotape hasn’t rendered teachers obsolete.
They go on to extol “virtual” educational models which take place without “the contiguity of time and place.” Which sounds good, but my own experiments with structural flexibility teach me that, if I don’t require my students to be in a room at a certain time, more than half of them will never do the reading or write their assignments more than a day in advance. I doubt even Goldberg and Davidson believe that classes without classrooms will ever be more than icing on the cake for advanced students. They concede early on that “most virtual institutions are, in fact, supported by a host of real institutions and real individuals.”
Though some students love learning enough to be self-motivated, they are not the majority. Many, if not most, regard classes, even within their majors, as a nuisance. I would love it if my students had enough ambition to undertake the kind of team tasks Davidson and Goldberg describe, but anybody who has taught more than one or two semesters knows that if you get three students per class who don’t need to be prodded, you are one lucky cuss.
I found one comment our authors quoted to be all too telling. A respondent to an early draft of this paper insisted that “open-ended assignments provide the opportunity for creative, research-based learning.” This is true, for those willing to embrace such opportunity. But this respondent sought out and answered back to a scholarly paper; I might get two students per semester with that level of ambition.
I would absolutely love to assign more open-ended research projects. I would love to let my students take ownership of the learning process. But I have learned the hard way that they usually will not. I had two students drop my class this past semester because, even with five days’ warning, they considered a ten-question reading quiz on a twenty-page chapter too onerous.
Likewise, these authors repeat the claim, which I keep seeing lately, that Pokemon teaches youth important matematical and reasoning skills. I don’t doubt this. But my colleagues in the Math Department tell me that only a handful make the leap that allows them to apply Pokemon-based math skills to diverse real world applications. Most still rely on the institutional classroom to make that connection for them. Regular students still need the skills and structure only a conventional four-wall classroom can provide.
Consider Wikipedia, which the authors extol, claiming that professors disparage the site without merit. Yes, its many user/editors keep it up-to-date and Open-Source. Yes, the collaborative model ferrets out innacuracies. But even laying aside the limits of a tertiary source, its programming model leaves it vulnerable to pranks and hacks by idiots. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if students utilized their discretion to screen out obvious bunk, but they don’t. Too many students receive content uncritically, and I get papers riddled with inaccuracies.
Institutional schooling has survived past changes in the media and cultural landscape because it works. Sure, it will have to adapt to the influence of the new technology, just as it has before. But as long as most youth need mature guidance to take on the skills and responsibilities of adulthood, there will be a place for a classroom with a clear leader judging progress. Davidson and Goldberg claim the old models have become obsolete, but that just doesn’t bear up to scrutiny.
Review by Rev. Dr. Charles Erlandson for The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning)
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“The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age” is a free Kindle redaction of a larger book to come: “The Future of Thinking: Learning in a Digital Age.” It proceeded from the MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, based on a collaborative work on this subject. The thesis of this Kindle book is that “the single most important characteristic of the Internet is its capacity to allow for a worldwide community and its endlessly myriad subsets to exchange ideas, to learn from one another in a way not previously available.”
As a teacher and priest, and one interested in how the new technologies are changing us, I found the book fascinating and that it raised many important issues. In short, I find that the book makes the reader aware of how the world is changing, especially the world of education, and makes the reader think about the relationship between technology, especially the Internet, and education. However, it makes promises based on misunderstandings of human nature and behavior without acknowledging the limitations and failings of Internet technology and the ways we use it.
The first chapter is titled “The Classroom or the World Wide Web? Imaging the Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.” It argues that institutions of learning have changed far more slowly than the modes of learning offered by the Internet. Furthermore, rival institutions of learning such as the Internet challenge traditional institutions such as the hierarchy of teacher and student, credentialing, and restriction of admission. While these ideas are provocative, I find that there is a one-sided presentation that only looks at the possible positive outcomes of Internet learning and overstates its case. For example, it’s unlikely that the hierarchy of teachers and learners will ever be abolished, even if the nature of these may change. There will always be some who, through experience, position, or wisdom, become the leaders of others. Also, the authors seem to assume that the fact that the Internet democratizes in terms of opportunities people have will necessarily result in equal outcomes. However, as in every other area of human behavior, people will not use the Internet equally, and, thus, there will be an inequality of outcomes. The section on participatory learning was useful. But here, again, the authors do not adequately deal with the issue. They raise the issue of growing dropout rates and the divide between those who are educated and those who are not, but they offer no solution – only a vague promise that participatory, networked learning will make things better. In extolling Wikipedia as a collaborative, participatory, networked work, the authors don’t address the fact that Wikipedia is often inaccurate and that people with power, whether corporate (such as government, corporations, or political groups) or individuals (such as hackers) can manipulate information.
The rest of the chapters are titled “Pillars of Institutional Pedagogy: Ten Principles for the Future of Learning,” “Challenges from Past Practice” and “Conclusion: Yesterday’s Tomorrow.”
Throughout the book, it’s clear that Marshall McLuhan’s proverb, “the medium is the message” becomes important in answering the question of what the implications are for Internet for education. In summary, this work raises a lot of the right questions about technology and education but answers them in a one-sided way.
Review by Alberto Vargas for How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times
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Rawles is a great non-fiction writer, and this is a well written book. However, it has some major faults:
- The book is for hard core survivalists only. It assumes complete and absolute break down of civilization. It does not deal with “simpler” short-term emergencies (tornado, fire, flood) that you can ride out living in your normal urban or suburban environment. The book is practically all about establishing a well-stocked remote rural retreat, which you defend tooth-and-nail against looters and invaders, while keeping the curtains down not to let them see your window lights.
- Rawles preaches to the choir, not to the uninitiated. If you are not familiar with the survivalist vernacular and have not read similar books / blogs, you will find this book a little jarring and over your head. In fact, Rawles often cross-references his fiction novel Patriots as supplementary guide. Speaking of preaching to the choir: all these five stars reviews which are highly rated as helpful – feel free to ignore the ones written before October 2. Given that this book started shipping on the last day of September and is not available for Kindle, there is simply no way people could have received and read the book before Friday October 2. Rawles is known for encouraging his blog readers to all buy the book on the same day to create a “bestseller” effect on Amazon, and this carries over to the reviews. So beware.
- Book is way too tiny and short for much useful learning. In fact, each chapter is basically a thoughtful intro followed by a list of items to get, with some quick facts (e.g. how long honey or wheat can be stored, where to buy the containers, etc). There is barely any attempt to teach survival attitude and skills – those are farmed out to other books or training courses. To the author’s credit, he has plenty of great pointers to other books and courses. However, you are much better off going there in the first place.
- Rawles has a misanthropic, dog-eat-dog sense to his writing, both in this book and in Patriots. It is too much about hunkering down in your darkened bunker, eating MREs, and using plenty of ammo to keep the less fortunate souls away. While it is possible that a major event could end civilization as we know it, I do wish Rawles had a more positive tone and attitude, at least when trying to covert newcomers to his cause 
There is one really big issue with hard core survivalism in general. If a truly massive global or nationwide disaster comes to pass, the likelihood of surviving it is low, no matter how well you prepare. Surviving a nuclear war or a mass epidemic is unlikely, and more about random chance than preparation. The survivors are bound to come together in sizable groups for strength and protection. If a well armed gang or ex-military unit converges on one of the Rawles-style rural retreats, game is over. So at the end of the day, at least to me, hard-core survivalism comes across as a militaristic make-believe game, mostly indulged by paranoid guys. Last but not least, unlike “soft-core” temporary disaster survival, what Rawles recommends is expensive and requires major lifestyle changes, which limits its appeal tremendously.
So, what’s good about this book? The chapters on food storage and vehicles stand out. Also, if you are looking for a primer on surviving a major end-of-civilization disaster, this is a great starting point. To the author’s credit, his survival blog has more readers than most daily newspapers, so he knows his stuff, whether you agree with him or not.
Review by adp113 for How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times
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I have followed Rawles blog and his writings. This book is pretty OK, and here is why. The book does provoke a lot of thought, but.. Here is where it misses. The situation that Rawles describes, he has not lived through. I still have a rather normal life I have to live and for most of us, ditching it all and moving to the mountains is not a feasible option. He often cites needing a years worth of anything on hand, but what happens after that year? Do you really want to live in a place of constant death and destruction. He lists a lot of doomsday scenarios by where the ones who survive will not be the lucky ones.
I think the much more likely future is similar to what happened in Argentina or what has been slowly happening in South Africa.
So while next spring I will be tilling up a good part of yard for a garden, harvesting rain water, and buying and stocking in bulk. I will not be buying a GOOD location or a buying an old diesel junker truck to get there.
There is a lot you can learn from this book, but don’t make it your sole reference. Where you live determines your survival strategy, there is no one size fits all approach.
Review by Joel M. Skousen for How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times
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As one of the original pioneers in the survival and preparedness field, I have been critical of arm-chair survivalists who lead people astray with bad advice, product recommendations that don’t work, and fail to take into consideration the fact that most people just can’t head for the hills without destroying their financial lifeline. Self-sufficiency is fairly expensive, takes a lot of skill, and can’t be done on a whim.
Jim Rawles’ book is not in that category. He has lived everything he recommends, and thus gives the kind of savvy advice that carefully guides a person through the tough choices necessary for contingency planning. Moreover, he is very open about the pitfalls and cautions that readers must avoid in order to develop a successful retreat plan. I found myself agreeing with almost every recommendation he makes.
Highly recommended!
Joel Skousen, Author of The Secure Home, and Strategic Relocation–North American Guide to Safe Places
Review by Michael Z. Williamson for How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times
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This book doesn’t cover every detail of every disaster, of course. No one book could. What it has is easily referenced, concise summaries of particular events–hurricanes, earthquakes, brush fires, economic collapses, grid failures–and summaries of preparations one can make. Then, those preparations are roughly described.
All this gives a person or family a handy guidebook to create a disaster plan from.
Obviously, not all disasters have equal probability, nor are relevant to all locations–brush fires and hurricanes don’t affect me in the Midwest. Tornadoes, flash floods and blizzards do, as might a New Madrid earthquake. Long term societal problems aren’t currently a problem in the US, but are in quite a few other western nations, such as Argentina and sometimes Chile. There’s even advice on a checklist to prioritize exactly those issues.
As usual, a lot of the negative reviews revolve around a provincial “it can’t happen here” mindset. A given disaster might not be likely in your current location at your current time, but places, people and societies change. Preparing ahead costs little, and can save your life. If you never need it, think of it as insurance.
Review by Rangegal for How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times
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Rawles has been providing an important service to the readers of his books and of his survivalblog for years. Disasters happen regularly all over the world, and Rawles has the best and most relevant info on how to prepare and cope with these life-threatening problems and this book shows you how to do it. I recommend everyone read his books and blog and take steps to prepare for what will inevitably come, be it storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorism, economic breakdown, or civil unrest. Do a little bit of preparing every week and you’ll sleep better knowing you can keep your family fed and sheltered in case something bad happens. If it never comes, all the better! We all have home and car insurance, right? This is just another kind of insurance.
Bojan Tunguz 9:05 pm on September 16, 2010 Permalink
Review by Bojan Tunguz for The Civic Potential of Video Games (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning)
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Video Games are one of the most widespread and enjoyed forms of entertainment amongst the young people today. In recent years the video game industry has been quietly outpacing the movie industry in terms of total number of titles and the revenue. Video games have, for better or worse, become a part of mainstream. And just like any other form of entertainment in the past that was disruptive enough to change the whole way that we spend our leisure time, the ascendance of the video games has been greeted with its own share of controversy. Many societal ills have been purportedly traced to the increased play of video games, and several high-profile crimes involved individuals who had were known to have spent many hours playing very violent games. And yet, it is far from clear that the effect of video games on the society is exclusively, or even primarily, a negative one. In this short book the authors are drawing on their own research in order to show some very positive effects that video games have on the civic engagement of youth. It is a fascinating work that will hopefully challenge some misconceptions and provide a more positive and balanced outlook on this topic.
For some games it is intuitively plausible that they may have a positive impact on the civic engagement. The most obvious example is SimCity, where the player assumes the role of a mayor and tries to develop the city in the most optimal way. However, the research presented in this book shows that even playing certain games like Halo has a significant correlation with the civic engagement.
The authors of this book distinguish between social and civic behavior. They show that the vast majority of kids play games with others at least some of the time, but this does not necessarily translate into a civic engagement. In order to measure the actual civic engagement several measures are employed and described.
The single biggest finding that is presented here is that kids who are very frequent players of video games are actually slightly more likely to be civically engaged. The authors are careful to point out that this is only a correlation, and leave the possible connection between the two for some other study. Even so, this finding is very important as it challenges the preconceived notion that gaming and civic engagement are antithetical to each other.
The book ends with a few suggestions for parents, teachers, youth and the game developers. Based on the findings presented here and a few sensible principles the authors make recommendations on how to make the gaming experience more useful and relevant for the civic engagement of the young people.
Even though this book is written from a very strong social-science perspective, it is very accessible and should appeal to the general audience. In fact, I hope that a lot of people do read it as it will certainly contribute to the public discussion of the role that video games play in the society.
Kevin L. Nenstiel 9:44 pm on September 16, 2010 Permalink
Review by Kevin L. Nenstiel for The Civic Potential of Video Games (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning)
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Kahane, Middaugh, and Evans point out that the bulk of America’s discussion about the public consequences of video game play have been mainly moralistic, not rational. Scare-mongers warn of isolated, maladjusted youth failing to engage with our public sphere, while digital media boosters extol technology’s equalizing traits, but “the relationship of [video game play] to adolescent development has not been fully explored.” These authors purpose to remedy this oversight.
Our authors point out that certain video games, like “SimCity” and “Quest Atlantis,” have been used productively in school environments to teach public interest and engage youth in civic engagement and public discourse. By engaging students in intricate simulations of democratic institutions, these games teach youth to care about living issues and real-world concerns. From this, the authors extrapolate that other games which rely on complex relationships with other humans and with technology, like running a guild in World of Warcraft, may teach engagement with democratic institutions. As they say, “the same kinds of experiences that foster civic outcomes in well-controlled classroom studies may achieve similar results in gaming environments.”
On the one hand, I have no trouble believing this. My grade school teachers used this same basic claim in explaining why I should play “Oregon Trail” on the Apple IIe. And I can see where guild organization can teach youth to love the social contract just as my generation learned from Student Council elections. On the other hand, our authors haven’t yet proven to my satisfaction that, just because kids could possibly learn civic responsibility from games, a sufficient mass of them actually do.
Still, I’m willing to suspend judgment and hear these authors out for two reasons. First, they acknowledge the important role teachers play. Unlike tech cheerleaders who claim the web renders classrooms obsolete, these authors admit that teaching through games requires the concerted involvement of teachers, parents, and game designers. They even spend time on questions of reconciling technology to the classroom, and on teaching parents and teachers what we need to know.
Second, the authors admit the limitations of their own study. Rather than elevating themselves and their conclusions as other studies in this series have done, our authors concede that they have proven correlation without proving cause; that in some cases they have been unable to prove aything statistically significant; and that their biggest discovery is how much research still remains to do. Even if I can’t completely get behind all their conclusions, I can appreciate their honesty and admire their rigor. And that more warmly inclines me toward these authors’ conclusons.
Perhaps we can best regard this white paper as a prolegomena to future research in a developing field. The authors’ last big section discusses several domains still open to new discovery. I look forward to seeing how (and if!) games really do help students’ civic education, and how I might incorporate such new discoveries into my own classroom.