Easter Eggs

In Geek Speak, an Easter egg is a piece of a program not documented, not obviously available, and offering something of possible interest. There are similar things in Second Life, so I will use the same name.

I am using Easter eggs to present how-to packs in Second Life. I am combining a demonstration object in Second Life with a vid in YouTube. I make an object that can be used to learn or practice some skill. This has to be a small unit so I can make a corresponding vid that shows an avatar using the skill to make a new or changed product.

The object is a starting kit, with part of the work done. The skill(s) are needed to complete the product.

How many have I done? Counting the one I did yesterday? One.

That one was introductory. You can see it on YouTube. Title: Easter Eggs Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy_vGu3uMNQ

The main learning objectives were: taking objects into inventory; dragging objects from inventory and adjusting their position; extracting content from an object; applying a texture from inventory.

The learner can get a copy of the object in SL and try it out. The object carries a link to the vid, so the learner can watch the vid for an example. The unit is self-testing because the learner shows competency by completing the task.
Inversely, the learner can find out about the object by watching the vid. With good use of tags, a person could go to YouTube and search on {SL demo texture} to find demo vids about using texture in Second Life.

You may notice that no classrooms are occupied in learning from a how-to pack. That qualifies it as part of my “Learning without Classrooms” thread.

Learners without Classrooms

Learners without Classrooms
A while back, I suggested that virtual reality might be useful as a way to provide learning opportunities outside of classrooms.  Just last week I cited data describing the growth of online learning.  This week I am going to point to some routes that I think are opportunities to develop nontraditional methods for learning.

I have been exploring the use of Second Life as a medium for instruction.  It is accessible without cost and will probably run well on any computer that is adequate for Win Vista.
But more recently, I have been exploring a route that is immediately available to anyone with broadband.  That is, to use the capabilities on Second Life for the creating of videos.  

Here are a few of the videos I have made:
Hobo Village 1
Interview with a Dragon
Dragoneering
The Bridges of Hobo Village

The Watery Slide of  Spritely Pixel

None of these is directly instructional.  But they do illustrate what a person could do in SL.  That capability can be applied to any objective.  In The Stories of Hobo Village, I am combining the SL capabilities with blog capabilities to support collaborative fiction.  Clearly one could do the same for instructional material.  Indeed, the pattern of collaboration would probably follow closely the pattern in the fiction blog.

YouTube is available to host the videos (free).  I find that the camera work, editing, and voice-over can be done in a reasonable amount of time.  (Of course, if I did it better, it would take longer.  For further comment, see Satisfice.)   I am providing technical background in part of my web site:  The Meaning of Second Life.  

I expect to make additional vids more directly targeted on instruction about elements of Second Life.   I will comment about them here when they are posted.

The Other Attention Disorder

Here I was focusing on the problem of attention deficit. I completely overlooked the other attention problem. Attention Surplus Disorder. That’s when you can focus on something quite well but pick the wrong thing to focus on. Clayton Christenson gives an example in "The Innovator’s Dilemma" (Harvard Business School Publishing). He describes the example in this podcast: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail135.html

He examined the rise and fall of companies like Digital Equipment Corp. The very fact that I have to spell out that name tells about the fall. Thirty years ago, I would have written DEC and expected people to know what I meant.

His conclusion was that this and other companies that were run over by disruptive technology failed because of good management. The management focused attention carefully on matters relevant to keeping and improving their business position. They never lost sight of this goal. So they never noticed the disruptive technology of microcomputers. That technology was too primitive to offer them competition. They did not worry about it. Until it was too late.

Another name for focus is tunnel vision. (Thinkerer, Idea Slogans)

And now for something completely different.

According to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), during the 2002–03 school year (the last data available), 36 percent of U.S. school districts (5,500 out of 15,040) had students enrolled in distance-education programs, and 38 percent of public high schools offered distance-education courses. The DOE study had 328,000 students in 8,200 public schools enrolled in distance-education courses. As of November 2005, the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) listed 157 unique online learning programs in 42 states in its database, including 32 virtual charter schools, 3 online home-school programs, and 53 public, non-charter virtual schools that offer programs. The DOE’s 2004 National Education Technology Plan predicted that with the “explosive growth in the availability of online instruction and virtual schools … we may well be on our way to a new golden age in American education.” Virtual schools have arrived—and with them, a host of challenges to our notions about school and schooling. (The Virtual Revolution by RANDALL GREENWAY and GREGG VANOUREK )

Of course, remote learning is too primitive to threaten the Great and Powerful Education System. Besides, this new wine is being decanted from the old educational flasks. The basic rule of medicine is that it has to taste bad. And the basic rule of education is that it has to be boring. Education over the internet can also be boring. Just more efficiently boring. There is a rumor about entrepreneurs getting involved. But educators don’t need to worry about that. There will be plenty of time to worry about it later.

The basic rule of disruptive technology is that it has to break basic rules. That means, of course, breaking free of that other attention disorder. The disorder that is easily recognized as tunnel vision. A few years too late.

Alertness Deficit Disorder

And the miracle cure discovered by the ancients!

A funny thing happened while I was trying to do more research on ADD, ADHD, AD/HD or whatever. I got distracted. I discovered a new disorder. Alertness Deficit Disorder. Not a new problem. People have wanted to control their level of alertness since (I suppose) the dawn of civilization. But only in recent years have people realized that not-getting-what-you-want is a disorder.

I suppose that the need to be alert on demand arose with the dawn of civilization. Back before then you had lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my! Those were probably adequate to keep you alert.

But with the dawn of civilization, I suppose, people invented meetings. That was probably the origin of Alertness Deficit. Not a disorder yet. Converting it into a disorder required ages of technological development. In the meantime, the ancients discovered the cure. Coffee!

This was an accomplishment even more admirable because they didn’t know the name.

The discovery of coffee made it possible to hold meetings without people going to sleep. We enjoy (or suffer from) the results of that discovery even to this day.

What called my attention to coffee was all this talk about how people “suffering from” ADD had difficulty staying focused on a task. It was a classic case of the dog that didn’t bark. Or the elephant in the living room. How could people go on about treatments for lapsing attention without mentioning coffee?

I did a Google search on
coffee caffeine
and found about 600K items. So somebody noticed the connection. Just not the people who view the condition as a treatable disorder and want to investigate treatments. According to the BBC, a common over-the-counter treatment for ADD is coffee or caffeine.

As an aside, John Grohol, of Psych Central, offers a list of Common Behavioral Techniques for ADHD Treatment. Sorry about that. My attention just wandered. Is that ADD or do I just need more coffee?

Critics will say that Alertness Deficit Disorder is really just another example of ethnogenic disorders. We have a cultural demand to focus on topic and on schedule. Topic and schedule to be specified by the culture. Failure to comply is a disorder. Fortunately, caffeine seems to be an effective treatment. That will spare us all the reports about Alertness Deficit Disorder. You can’t make money on a problem people already know how to solve.

Even without their coffee, people are alert enough to figure that out.

Medical Evidence on Some ADHD

Some. Not all.

Lead Exposure Tied to ADHD Symptoms: New York Times Syndicate - May 01, 2006

Lead exposure is a known risk to the brain and to cognitive functioning. A study by Dr. Tanya Froehlich (Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center) extends this knowledge specifically to ADHD symptoms. (Research presented at 2006 Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting.)

The research also shows an interaction with a particular genetic variation. This information suggests that ADHD is a real disorder. For children who have lead exposure and the genetic variation. It might also suggest to parents that appropriate medical tests could clarify a possible diagnosis of ADHD.

(I haven’t abandoned my suspicion that some cases of ADHD result from inaccurate expectations about attention span.)

It is possible to measure the lead burden in a child’s body. Perhaps a proposed diagnosis of ADHD should be a warning to make that measurement. Lead comes from environmental exposure. Such exposure could occur in a home, school, playground, or elsewhere. (Exposure is not limited to slums and industrial areas.) If a child’s lead burden is unusually high, a parent might want to look (or get tests) for possible sources. If the lead exposure continues, further cognitive impairment is likely. If the exposure is at school or at a playground, many other children may also be at risk.

It may be possible to diminish the lead burden by chelation therapy. I don’t know how effective such treatments are. Nor do I know whether reducing the lead burden would reduce the cognitive impairment. Those questions will need to be settled by further research following up on the research cited above.

A child with ADHD from lead exposure may still benefit from treatment of the symptoms. But that medication does not treat the medical cause. It might even function to reduce the symptoms and leave the cause untreated, to produce further problems later.

The identification of a particular type of ADHD (by cause) is indeed useful, particularly since it suggests concrete actions that parents may take. And establishing a credible medical cause with objective diagnostic indicators will make some people more comfortable in viewing ADHD as a genuine disorder. Not just a convenient way to deal with troublesome kids.