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Take 30 minutes and watch Al Gore’s presentation at TED 2008. It’s an update to his first one, and is simultaneously more depressing because of the sheer scale of new data, and much more uplifting when framing the response as a call for higher consciousness to break out of our current democratic crises that are allowing the climate crisis to take place.

In yet another episode of TedTalks synchronicity, immediately after writing the post on Digital Natives and the spaghetti sauce varieties, the next session I watched was Barry Schwartz on The Paradox of Choice.

While Malcom Gladwell (and Howard Moscowitz) were describing the need for different varieties addressing different preferences, Barry Schwartz warns about the far side of that slippery slope. Having too much choice is paradoxically not a freedom-inspiring situation. Instead, an overabundance of choice does a couple things:

1. Paralyzes the individual. With so many choices, the perceived need to make The Right Choice makes the decision(s) more difficult. This is easy to see - just take a kid to a fancy(ish) restaurant and hand them the menu. Odds are, they'll wind up making a big fuss about not knowing what they want, even as the waiter is waiting beside them for their order. They can't cope with that number of choices. All they want is macaroni, but they're offered Chicken Penne, Stuffed Rigatoni, Pasta Carbonerra, etc… Too many choices results in an inability to choose.
   Barry's example was the relatively recent shift in our relationship with medical doctors. Long ago, if you went to a doctor and had something wrong, they told you what needed to be done, and it was done. Now, you are provided with a series of options, each with their own pros and cons, and you are expected to make the decision. But you have no medical training. And are likely not in top form, so probably shouldn't be making Big Decisions anyway. And the doctor is a medical expert, but is deferring to an untrained amateur.
2. Internalizes blame for unhappiness with the choices made. If a person can only choose from 2 options, they tend to be either happier with their choice, or less distraught about a bad choice ("Hey, what could I do? There were only 2 choices…")  If there are 100 options, then a person blames themselves for making a bad choice. ("Stupid! You made the wrong choice! Your life would have been so much better if you had picked option #67 instead of option #43. Moron!")

So, what does this mean for education? If we need to address variability in preferences, as demonstrated by Howard Moscowitz' work, we need to balance that with the need to avoid paralysis due to an overabundance of irrelevant or equal choices. (some of his examples really showcase problems with capitalism run amok - arms races between competing companies, resulting in 100 varieties of blue jeans, 1500 perfumes, 600 models of cars, etc…)

I would suggest that both perspectives are critically important, and that the product of reconciling the two is that we must identify key variables and populations and develop appropriate options to effectively address those variables. But no more than that. Any more variability would lead to false options. It would have the appearance of improved freedom and choice, but the result would be decreased satisfaction with the experience.

What does this mean? It means that we shouldn't be leaning toward infinite variability. It means we shouldn't be leaning toward monolithic solutions. We need to be finding an appropriate middle ground. Maybe that means having 2 LMS options supported on a campus. Maybe that means supporting 5, 10, 20 different social software applications and a handful of ways to integrate them.

I think we need to be working to develop a series of best practice guides, and figuring out which clusters of individual preferences can be addressed together, and by which strategies. Of course, the first logical step is to properly identify the clusters of preferences and predispositions, and determine which groups are defined by these clusters. Then, we need to find strategies, pedagogies, and techniques that effectively address the needs of these groups and clusters. Then and only then can we properly design, develop and integrate platforms and applications. This isn't rocket surgery. It's just a matter of taking the needs of students (and teachers, and parents, and the community) seriously rather than dictating the One True Solution, or feeding them an infinite number of options.

We need to pick up the role of the old-school medical doctor, acting as benevolent expert and guiding the novice through a field of choices. We can do this by designing and developing a select range of effective choices, and helping our studends and teachers to select the one that best suits them.

Brian wrote about about the EDUCAUSE ELI web seminar on net gen learners , and after reading that post and the great comments, I got to thinking about the overgeneralization of the mythical "Digital Native". Fast forward to this morning's bus ride, where I'm watching Malcom Gladwell's presentation at TED2004. Now, Malcom is the author of The Tipping Point , so I was expecting some discussion of how small changes build up to affect large, even transformative effects. But, he wound up talking about something so much more interesting, and likely more important to my perception of students. Spaghetti sauce. No, really.

Malcom told the story of a friend of his named Howard Moscowitz, who was hired in the 80s by Campbell Soup Company to help revamp the Prego spaghetti sauce. They wanted to come up with the perfect sauce, to gain market share against Ragu. Instead of trying to whip up a bunch of batches of prototype sauces to test on volunteers in order to find the perfect sauce, he identified a series of variables (things like sweetness, saltiness, chunkness, spicyness, etc…) and took the resulting 30+ combinations on the road. He gatherred hundreds of volunteers, giving them each 10 small bowls of spaghetti with a preselected sauce variety on top. He then had the volunteers rate the sauce on a plain old Likert scale, winding up with reams of data that didn't look like it made any sense. Until he started to analyze the relationships between variables.

Howard found that there isn't one perfect sauce. There are three. Something like "Regular", "Spicy" and "Extra Chunky". (the names were different, but you get the idea) Seems pretty obvious now, but at the time, everyone was looking to design a single perfect sauce, inspired by a typical Italian sauce (which was perceived by all as the Ultimate Spaghetti Sauce, of course). In all of the focus groups held over the previous 2 or 3 decades, not a single volunteer mentioned that they liked "Extra Chunky" sauce. They all said that they would prefer the thin Italian sauce. Yet, after analyzing his data, Howard could see that 33% of people prefer "Extra Chunky" with the remainder split between the other two varieties.

This tells me a few things that are actually relevant to my perception of students in general, and "Digital Natives" in particular.

1. There is variabilty in preferences (whether in spaghetti sauces so learning styles) and that understanding that variation is not only expected but necessary for success.
2. People don't know what they want. They might say they would prefer the Italian sauce, or pervasive ubiquitous online communication. But individuals either have difficulty identifying and communicating their actual preferences, or they may be truly unaware of them (whether as a result of cultural pressure or other factors).
3. We need to better understand the variables that affect our interactions with students. It's not enough to say that students are "Digital Natives" or "Net Genners". There is no One True Student. Individuals vary by learning style, experience/comfort with various strategies (online and offline), socioeconomic status, maturity, locus of control, etc… and we need to identify common clusters of these variables and develop strategies to support these groups (and the individuals that compose them).

We're already doing much to try to address these variables (blended learning to help students that have to work 30 hour weeks to access their courses when and where they can, etc…) but I think it would be much more productive to focus on these variables rather than brandishing labels like "Digital Natives" and "Net Genners"

Jeff Han gave a presentation at last year’s TED conference, showing his tactile interface system. Forget mice and keyboards. This is a less-creepy version of Minority Report. Or Star Trek’s LCARS interface.

I’ve watched it 3 times today. I want my next computer to work like this. How about a 30″ Cinema Display that tilts backward to become a tabletop surface with tactile interface…

It’s just synchronicity that this video happened to be next in the queue on my iPod this morning, less than 48 hours after the iPhone was demonstrated with its own mini version of this UI…

ps. I’d love to be a lurker at this year’s TED. I’d have to be lurking, because the caliber of the attendees is so unbelievably high. Maybe I could be an usher or something. It’d be totally worth it…

pps. aw, crap. TED2007 starts the day before I get on a plane with the family. Maybe 2008

I’ve been slowly working through the TED Talks video podcasts - making time to watch several sessions each week. I can’t even begin to describe what an impact they’re having on me. I’m starting to think differently about many issues - some I hadn’t even considered before, others I thought were outside of my reach.

I watched Majora Carter’s presentation this morning. She is the founder of Sustainable South Bronx - a grassroots movement she started in her community to try to bring it back from the brink of ecological (and social and economic) devastation.

I live in a pretty well-off community, in a pretty well-off city, in a pretty well-off country. I hadn’t given much thought to the connection between ecological, social and economic planning and well-being. Hearing about what happened to the South Bronx as a result of wanton exploitation of a marginalized region’s resources (human and environmental) made me wonder what we’re doing here in Alberta, where our entire province feels like it’s sole purpose is to extract oil from the tar sands. I’m wondering what impacts we’ll be seeing in 60 years…

I also watched Sir Ken Robinson’s session on creativity in the education system. Another absolutely amazing and provocative presentation that’s changed how I think about “non academic” education. If we don’t value and reward creativity in our young people, rather than drilling it out of them through an industrialized worker bee factory, we’re wasting the skills and talents we’ll need to remain flexible as a society.

The session list goes on and on. Al Gore on the environment. Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia. Negroponte on the $100 laptop. Aubrey de Grey on extending or preventing senescence (now THAT’s something that will have a HUGE impact - ethical and moral implications on both sides of his argument). Every single session has sparked something for me. I’m positive I’ll be percolating much of it in my head for years to come.