So @ Steve Swettenham - you're prompting several questions here.  Which two dimensions are you referring to in your response? And another question - could Net app'd learners be completely free of the digital appurtenances of the last century?

@ Mary McNabb - 2D refers to the width and height screen interface that humans are currently using to view and navigate.

An Australian researcher believes that she can create a quantum computer, which may qualify as a new form of computing; mix that with AI and robotics, and you have a recipe for homo sapien redundancy.  Hence, net app'd learners may be "freerer" of the digital accoutrements by developing actual survival skills (i.e., how to tell time, find your way, or understand weather patterns etc... when their Apple watch runs out of energy).

Being tethered to an energy supply to access the digital world is tenuous compared to the ancient technology of rock paintings, clay tablets, and hemp scrolls; but being tethered to an app cloud (clouds come and go), is not independance for the enduser (rather a dependance that is reminiscent of an addiction).  As for your last question, would it not depend to some extent on the individual learners and societal interests? (i.e., a return to the Apple commercial of 1984).

2D like books and maps?

Of course, our intelligence is and has long been tethered to and totally dependent on not only others around us but also the embedded knowledge of our forebears in the tools, products, and processes they create. It's not an optional extra - it is the nature of our engagement with the world and an inextricable  part of our very thinking. As we build more of that into the tools themselves there are huge potential gains - we get smarter and more powerful - and huge potential losses, including great risks of taking away our power to control the things that matter most to us. Power supplies and network dependence are very tangible frailties (and two that will hopefully be solved in the not too distant future), but we must inevitably become more and more dependent on others of our species too, sharing the cognitive load as well as the artefacts. That has been the essential thrust of the past few thousand years. I think part of the longer game is augmentation - at first, the clunky head-mounted or phone-based stuff but, later, a far more invisible and symbiotic relationship, in which we share in an enhanced and shared reality to which many contribute, and in which those 2D screens and separate information devices largely disappear from the physical space (though many will reappear virtually). Whether this turns us into the Borg (Mark Zuckerberg as the Borg Queen?) or whether we become a more connected, enlightened, caring species in the process hinges quite a bit on the decisions we make now. Interesting times!

Jon,

I agree with your comments:

The only thing that the researchers could really have been looking at here was not the extent of antisemitism on different social media, but the ease with which they could find it.

Thanks for sharing.

I'd still love to supervise a comparative study into the use of learning styles vs use of astrology or phrenology to pick a teaching strategy. I strongly suspect there'd be no significant difference. It would be equally good fun to invent a plausible but totally unfounded learning style theory and compare that. Maybe something based on the big 5 personality types so that it seems sciencey.

Your comment on personalization is spot on. In some ways it would actually be worse if it worked. Even if a system does increase the speed/efficiency of learning as a result (as measured in tests) the assumption that the teacher-specified outcome is the one and only point of the learning process describes pretty much everything that is wrong with our educational systems today. Not a recipe for cognitive flexibility, not transformative, not life-changing, just a better form of indoctrination.

I think we could get a grant for a phrenology study. Surely, it will be resurrected as a new fad in education any day now.

So, you are saying indoctrination is a bad thing?

Interesting article Jon. I can believe that 80% of teachers in the UK and the Netherlands believe that student learn best in their prefered style. (I wonder what the percentage would be in Canada.)

I used various learning style inventories for quite a few Septembers for a couple of reasons. They gave me a chance to learn a lot about students and their approaches to things like following directions in a way that engaged them - who doesn't like thinking about themselves? It also gave me the opportunity to introduce the concept of metacognition and using strategies for learning. I was also curious about the whole idea and noticed that although I had inventories that were designed to be age appropriate, students didn't develop preferences until they were 10 or 11. Until then their profiles were flat. 

In the end, if they prompt teachers to accept learning strategies that are different from their own and encourage students to think about how they learn, there is some good in them, but they're a long way from science. 

Jon,

Thanks for sharing the book. I look forward to reading it.

Thanks also for sharing your stand about readings not being required. I have been trying to communicate same to my students and they both like and fear the freedom.

Hi Dr. Dron,

Interesting topic. Your comment about having reserve if this was automated reminds me of Linus Torvald's concerns when his lieutenants wanted to use automated code merges. He resisted for a while and then wrote Git. It's become common place to just trust code merges now with high degree of confidence. 

What concerns you with an automated system for detecting and responding to attacks when there are known patterns? Assume of course that there these changes still hit the Wiki history and there is some way to appeal. (I'm not enticing you to write this tool though ;-) )

-dc-

Machines might be very good at *identifying* problems, and that's great, but humans are needed to react to and deal with them: there are infinite possible ways to do that, and there are always vastly many opportunities to heal rifts, and make things positive again. It's about humans socializing with humans and the smartest AI in the world does not yet (and likely never will) know what it is like to be a human, so will not be able to respond creatively or appropriately to that unique social context.

ps. for lovers of analytics, this is of course integrally supported. You can use any analytics tools you like.