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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Bob Kahn

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Bob Kahn

The scientists who make apps addictive | The Economist - 1 views

www.economist.com/...ntists-who-make-apps-addictive

Addictive Design Behavior

shared by Bob Kahn on 07 Dec 21 - No Cached
  • n 1930, a psychologist at Harvard University called B.F. Skinner made a box and placed a hungry rat inside it. The box had a lever on one side. As the rat moved about it would accidentally knock the lever and, when it did so, a food pellet would drop into the box. After a rat had been put in the box a few times, it learned to go straight to the lever and press it: the reward reinforced the behaviour. Skinner proposed that the same principle applied to any “operant”, rat or man. He called his device the “operant conditioning chamber”. It became known as the Skinner box.
  • But behaviourism never went away completely, and in recent years it has re-emerged in a new form, as an applied discipline deployed by businesses and governments to influence the choices you make every day: what you buy, who you talk to, what you do at work. Its practitioners are particularly interested in how the digital interface – the box in which we spend most of our time today – can shape human decisions. The name of this young discipline is “behaviour design”. Its founding father is B.J. Fogg.
  • He noted that “interactive technologies” were no longer just tools for work, but had become part of people’s everyday lives: used to manage finances, study and stay healthy. Yet technologists were still focused on the machines they were making rather than on the humans using those machines. What, asked Fogg, if we could design educational software that persuaded students to study for longer or a financial-management programme that encouraged users to save more? Answering such questions, he argued, required the application of insights from psychology.
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  • The experiment was significant, said Fogg, not so much for its specific finding as for what it implied: that computer applications could be methodically designed to exploit the rules of psychology in order
  • get people to do things they might not otherwise do.
  • he added a qualification: “Exactly when and where such persuasion is beneficial and ethical should be the topic of further research and debate.”
  • captology
  • ” (Computers as Persuasive Technologies).
  • behaviour design
  • The emails that induce you to buy right away, the apps and games that rivet your attention, the online forms that nudge you towards one decision over another: all are designed to hack the human brain and capitalise on its instincts, quirks and flaws. The techniques they use are often crude and blatantly manipulative, but they are getting steadily more refined, and, as they do so, less noticeable.
  • This is dangerous.
  • This is amazing.
  • three things must happen at once. The person must want to do it, they must be able to, and they must be prompted to do it. A trigger – the prompt for the action –
  • When motivation is high enough, or a task easy enough, people become responsive to triggers such as the vibration of a phone, Facebook’s red dot, the email from the fashion store featuring a time-limited offer on jumpsuits. The trigger, if it is well designed (or “hot”), finds you at exactly the moment you are most eager to take the action. The most important nine words in behaviour design, says Fogg,
  • “Put hot triggers in the path of motivated people.”
  • The more immediate and intense a rush of emotion a person feels the first time they use something, the more likely they are to make it an automatic choice. It’s why airlines bring you a glass of champagne the moment you sink into a business-class seat, and why Apple takes enormous care to ensure that a customer’s first encounter with a new phone feels magical.
  • Such upfront deliveries of dopamine bond users to products
  • way Instagram lets you try 12 different filters on your picture, says Fogg. Sure, there’s a functional benefit: the user has control over their images. But the real transaction is emotional: before you even post anything, you get to feel like an artist.
  • Fogg’s principles: “Make people feel successful” or, to rephrase it, “Give them superpowers!”
  • project called Send the Sunshine
  • Mike Krieger, went on to co-found Instagram
  • Social-media apps plumb one of our deepest wells of motivation. The human brain releases pleasurable, habit-forming chemicals in response to social interactions, even to mere simulacra of them, and the hottest triggers are other people: you and your friends or followers are constantly prompting each other to use the service for longer.
  • Their aim was to get as many followers as possible – that was their definition of success. Every new follow and every comment delivered an emotional hit
  • But a life spent chasing hits didn’t feel good. Moseley’s respondents spent all their hours thinking about how to organise their lives in order to take pictures they could post to each persona, which meant they weren’t able to enjoy whatever they were doing, which made them stressed and unhappy. “It was like a sickness,” said Moseley.
  • One of his alumni, Nir Eyal, went on to write a successful book, aimed at tech entrepreneurs, called “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”.
  • vary the rewards it received
  • This became known as the principle of variable rewards.
  • Every time we open Instagram or Snapchat or Tinder, we never know if someone will have liked our photo, or left a comment, or written a funny status update, or dropped us a message. So we keep tapping the red dot, swiping left and scrolling down.
  • “The job of these companies is to hook people, and they do that by hijacking our psychological vulnerabilities.”
  • Tristan Harris
    • Bob Kahn
      Bob Kahn on 07 Dec 21
       
      The creator of The Social Dilemma and HumaneTech.com
  • he argued that they needed to see themselves as moral stewards of the attention of billions of people.
  • design ethicist and product philosopher.
  • “Behaviour design can seem lightweight, because it’s mostly just clicking on screens. But what happens when you magnify that into an entire global economy? Then it becomes about power.”
  • Whoever controls the menu controls the choices.” The news we see, the friends we hear from, the jobs we hear about, the restaurants we consider, even our potential romantic partners – all of them are, increasingly, filtered through a few widespread apps, each of which comes with a menu of options. That gives the menu designer enormous power.
  • The more influence that tech products exert over our behaviour, the less control we have over ourselves.
  • The environment in which the machines sit is designed to keep people playing. Gamblers can order drinks and food from the screen. Lighting, decor, noise levels, even the way the machines smell – everything is meticulously calibrated. Not just the brightness, but also the angle of the lighting is deliberate: research has found that light drains gamblers’ energy fastest when it hits their foreheads.
  • The casinos aim to maximise what they call “time-on-device”.
  • variation in rewards that is the key to time-on-device.
  • “Some people want to be bled slowly”
  • “the machine zone”
  • You’re in a trance,” one gambler explains to Schüll. “The zone is like a magnet,” says another. “It just pulls you in and holds you there.”
  • “The world is turning into this giant Skinner box for the self,”
  • The gambling executives Schüll interviewed were not evil. They believe they are simply offering customers more and better ways to get what they want.
  • “You can’t make people do something they don’t want to do.”
  • Tristan Harris sees the entire digital economy in similar terms. No matter how useful the products, the system itself is tilted in favour of its designers. The house always wins.
  • But the imperative of the system is to maximise time-on-device, and it turns out the best way of doing that is to dispense rewards to the operant on a variable schedule.
  • If we are captives of captology, then we are willing ones.
Bob Kahn

How Technology Can Address Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs | TeachThought - 0 views

teachthought.com/...ddress-maslows-hierarchy-needs

Maslow

shared by Bob Kahn on 18 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Bob Kahn on 18 Jan 17
     
    "How Technology Can Address Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs"
Bob Kahn

Padlet - "Use this week" tool video - 0 views

padlet
started by Bob Kahn on 04 Aug 16 no follow-up yet
  • Bob Kahn
    #1 Bob Kahn on 04 Aug 16
     
    free tech for teachers video of new padlet update
Bob Kahn

History Timeline Site - 0 views

educational technology technology integration history timeline
started by Bob Kahn on 04 Aug 16 no follow-up yet
Bob Kahn

Why Ed Tech Is Not Transforming How Teachers Teach - Education Week - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...h-is-not-transforming-how.html

EdTech technology integration

shared by Bob Kahn on 23 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Case study after case study describe a common pattern inside schools: A handful of "early adopters" embrace innovative uses of new technology, while their colleagues make incremental or no changes to what they already do.
  • Case study after case study describe a common pattern inside schools: A handful of "early adopters" embrace innovative uses of new technology, while their colleagues make incremental or no changes to what they already do.
  • Researchers have identified numerous culprits, including teachers' beliefs about what constitutes effective instruction, their lack of technology expertise, erratic training and support from administrators, and federal, state, and local policies that offer teachers neither the time nor the incentive to explore and experiment.
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  • One-to-One Institute,
  • develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress."
  • "The 90 percent in the middle, they all have overhead projectors, there's a teacher computer, they use some sort of PowerPoint," Ms. Austin said. "They're using [technology] to enhance what they're doing, but they haven't really given students control over it."
  • 2009. A survey of 3,159 teachers found that when teachers did allow students to use technology, it was most often to prepare written text (61 percent of respondents reported that their students did so "sometimes" or "often") conduct Internet research (66 percent), or learn/practice basic skills (69 percent).
  • Far more rare were teachers who reported that their students sometimes or often used technology to conduct experiments (25 percent), create art or music (25 percent), design and produce a product (13 percent), or contribute to a blog or wiki (9 percent.)
  • 'domesticated' innovative technologies
  • had adapted an innovation to fit their customary practices."
  • he concluded, "even in computer-based classes, teacher-centered instruction with a mix of student-centered practices was the norm."
  • "In general, teachers at many schools seemed to view technology as a more valuable tool for themselves than for their students,
  • access to technology is no longer the main barrier
  • "second order" obstacles.
  • One big issue: Many teachers lack an understanding of how educational technology works.
  • But the greater challenge, the researchers wrote, is in expanding teachers' knowledge of new instructional practices that will allow them to select and use the right technology, in the right way, with the right students, for the right purpose.
  • confidence in trying it out in their classrooms. If they do not believe that they can use technology to accomplish their classroom goals, they appear unlikely to seriously attempt it.
  • "pedagogical beliefs"
  • philosophical belief that tactile learning is important for young children.
  • innovative teachers can be heavily affected by pressure to conform to more traditional instructional
  • test-based accountability system isn't exactly supporting the transition to student-centered, technology-driven instruction
  • totally changing the way you do your job takes a ton of time and work.
  • "What I'm finding is I'm having a hard time doing it that right way, a wholesale change."His attempts to move in that direction have been frustrating and draining.
  • "job-embedded" professional development that takes place consistently during the workday and is tied to specific classroom challenges that teachers actually face, rather than in the isolated sessions often preferred by district central offices and written into districts' contracts with their teachers.
  • "When learning experiences are focused solely on the technology itself, with no specific connection to grade or content learning goals, teachers are unlikely to incorporate technology into their practices,"
  • "The smarter districts use those teachers to teach other teachers how to integrate tech into their lessons,"
  • "The dumb ones use vendors to provide professional development and force teachers to attend those sessions."
  • Bob Kahn on 23 Dec 15
     
    Article about hurdles and solutions to helping teachers create student centered learning using technology. 
Bob Kahn

18 Simple Ways To Make Your iPad Faster - 0 views

www.teachthought.com/...-ways-to-make-your-ipad-faster

iPad faster

shared by Bob Kahn on 07 May 15 - No Cached
  • Bob Kahn on 07 May 15
     
    ipad
Bob Kahn

My Library - 0 views

www.diigo.com/rwkahn3

coding

shared by Bob Kahn on 28 Mar 15 - No Cached
Bob Kahn

How learning to code might improve writing skills - ICT and Computing in Educ... - 0 views

www.ictineducation.org/...ht-improve-writing-skills.html

code writing skills learning

shared by Bob Kahn on 16 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Bob Kahn on 16 Feb 15
     
    How coding can help writing.
Bob Kahn

Programming Power? Does Learning to Code Empower Kids? | DMLcentral - 0 views

dmlcentral.net/...oes-learning-code-empower-kids

shared by Bob Kahn on 16 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • it’s clear that even professional coding is a complex and precarious activity.
  • incessant updating of skills and fluency in different programming languages, coding packages, operating systems, and so on—such an impossible learning requirement that many programming experts barely know what they are doing.
  • “ignorant expertise,”
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  • Even more alarmingly, the technical complexity of programming means that many programmers are so absorbed in solving technical problems that they overlook the human and social consequences of what they are producing
  • software development has high failure rates to show it.
  • how dominant capitalist algorithmic ideology works.
  • how political and economic ambitions around learning to code rest on glossy representations that bear little resemblance with the reality of instability, dysfunction and failure in the software landscape, or with the ideologies underpinning its practices.
  • about the democratizing potential of programming and arguments advocating learning to code that are based on ideas about learning to produce and not just consume technologies.
  • it’s important to be a little cautious of the claims around “democratisation,” “co-production,” “presumption,” and so on, that accompany these kinds of arguments.
  • He argues that the software algorithms running in social media are a new source of social power, or “algorithmic power,” that is increasingly altering the actual functioning of culture in everyday settings.
  • commercial sponsorship of learning to code initiatives and activities by many of today’s most powerful social media and computing companies is evidence of this entanglement of media engagement and corporate power in an increasingly algorithmic culture.
  • be studied and researched carefully in order to get past the hype.
  • Looking at learning to code in terms of power serves as a reminder that while programming may be an empowering activity, it is also shaped by wider issues of power in educational technology, the political and economic power that shapes programming, and the algorithmic power shaping cultural participation with digital media.
Bob Kahn

A Digital Future: K-12 Technology by 2018 - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...future-k-12-tec_b_3930632.html

education technology future k-12

shared by Bob Kahn on 17 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Bob Kahn on 17 Sep 13
     
    Matthew Lynch describes 1, 3, 5 year ed tech horizons for k-12 learning.
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