New Apple Tablet Steals the Market

The Onion lampoons the iPad saying that Apple CEO Steve Jobs stayed up the night before the presentation sticking iPhones to a cafeteria tray.  Jobs’ said that 75 million people already know how to use the ipad, those iPone, and iPod touch users.  With that in mind the similarities between the iPad and the iPhone cannot be denied; as I see it, scale is the major difference.

Creative Commons

The thing that intrigues me about the iPad is not what it can do, its what the competition cannot do.  The Kindle e-reader that Amazon released in late 2007 has likely met its end, at least in the four hundred dollar category.  Barnes and Noble’s Nook, another e-reader, priced at two hundred ninety-nine dollars, will likely fare the storm against the five hundred dollar iPad.

If price is no issue, no other gizmo really comes close to the iPad’s versatility.  ten hours of battery life, 3g capability, lots of applications, and gobs of accessories make the iPad the new everything tool.  However all of this versatility does seem to cut Apples market a bit.  How many apple products does one need?  I certainly do not expect to see someone with a iPhone, an iPad, and a macbook pro.  I will be interested to see comparisons of relative sales between the products.  Truly, the iPad could replace all of these.

With all the hype, and the excellent release Apple and Jobs have given the iPad, I’m wondering if it bakes cookies? (I’m sure there is an App for that)  I will save final judgment for when people start getting these gadgets and discovering if they do in fact fit the bill.

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Online Therapy?

I read an article today in the New York Times that discusses the possibility of Computer-mediated therapy.  Of course this needs more studying, but I am a believer in the Social Information Processing Theory and therefore find the concept of online therapy highly plausible.

I have been thinking about the effectiveness of teaching through a computer-mediated format as compared to the traditional face-to-face format.  My research indicates that CMC is a plausible form of relational communication if it is used right.

Social Information Processing Theory

Joe Walther published the first work on Social Information Processing Theory (SIPT) in 1992.  In a nutshell SIPT asserts that computer-mediated-communication (CMC) is just as effective as face-to-face (FtF) communication, but CMC takes about twice as long as FtF communication.  Walther compared the relative efficiency of CMC compared to FTF to drinking a cup of coffee.  If FTF is a gulp, then CMC is a sip, it will take longer but it can still finish the whole cup of coffee.

A drawing of Joe Walther from his website

Cybernetics a beginging

Norbert Weiner is credited with creating the term cybernetics, which is based on the Greek word for “steersman” or “Governor”. Basically Weiner was working on artificial intelligence to create an antiaircraft system that automatically adjusted future trajectory by taking into account past results. Claude Shannon developed a theory of signal transmission for the Bell Telephone Company, in striving to maximize line efficiency with as little distortion as possible. This dealt with technical communication in the literal sense. The notions of cybernetics that I am most interested in are those which are not directly related to telephone lines, but rather in how humans communicate with others, very specifically how we learn and also, how we teach.

A phone call is made. One person calls another. Information is exchanged and the call is ended. Communication just happened; the exchange of information. During that process many things happened which influenced the effectiveness of the communication. This is the guts of cybernetics. Cybernetics breaks that same telephone call down.

Cybernetic theory on CMC V. FTF study

In order to complete my senior seminar last semester I presented my study regarding the comparison of CMC and FTF forms of pedagogy.  I did a tolerable job in presenting my ideas clearly, but the question and answer session was where things started to take off.  Given the brief amount of time that was allocated for questions and answering not all of the questions were answered.  So I want to illustrate how my project represented cybernetic communications theory, and expound on the results.

The theory of Cybernetics is ultimately one of bandwidth.  In any form of communication bandwidth is a major consideration; however this is magnified in the study of different forms of communication as a form of pedagogy.  I buy into the social information processing theory, which, unlike media richness theory, asserts that CMC is just as effective as FTF communication, but that it takes longer.  CMC is likened to sipping your coffee through a swizzle stick instead of gulping it, you can still drink the same amount of coffee, and it’s just that it takes a longer amount of time.

In a nutshell, I believe that a rich form of CMC has the ability to convey the same amount of information as FTF communication, but that it takes longer.

The cybernetic model looks at communication as a whole system, below is an image representing the theory.

Cybernetic model of Communicaiton

The person communicating, which for my study was the instructor, encoded his data into spoken words in the case of the FTF portion and into a text format for the CMC section  and transmitted that to the students to uncode and receive.  Along the way, these codes were bombarded with numerous channels of noise which limited their effectiveness; attention span, volume, and clarity are all things to consider when thinking about noise.  I believe that the CMC form has a lot more room for noise than FTF.  The FTF students were lectured by a knowledgeable and entertaining instructor and then tested on something, while the CMC students were taken out of their comfortable surroundings in an FTF class and instructed in a bland text based “read this” pedagogical style.

Both of the groups, FTF and CMC were challenged by outside forces seeking to interfere with the instructors intended message of transmission.  I suspect that the CMC is more widely affected by this than the FTF; I will try to examine that in future work.  Also the form of communication has a lot to do with the amount of noise it is susceptible to; new forms of CMC should be examined along those lines.  Cybernetics is however highly applicable and a very interesting lens to view the examination of effectiveness of different forms of communications as pedagogical tools.

CMC V. FTF Pedagogy Results

The FTF students score noticeably higher overall.

Actual Grades:

Test Results: Grade Distribution

Grade	Student Grades
	CMC		FTF
	#	%	#	%
A	0	0	2	10.5
B	2	15.4	2	10.5
C	0	0	6	31.6
D	2	15.4	4	21.1
F	9	69.2	5	26.3

The students were not very accurate at anticipating their grades.  The FTF students were much better than the CMC students.

Anticipated Grades

Grade	Number of Student Responses
	CMC		FTF
	#	%	#	%
A	2	15.4	2	10.5
B	7	53.8	6	31.6
C	5	38.5	8	42.0
D	0	0	3	15.8
F	0	0	0	0

Computer-Mediated Communication V. Face-to-Face Pedagogy

http://drew70millions.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/computer-mediated-communication/

I’m working on my presentation to defend a research project I did for my communication degree.  I conducted an Objective study that compared the effectiveness of Computer-Mediated Communications(CMC) and Face-to-Face (FTF) learning styles.  For the purposes of this project the form of CMC that was used was asynchronous and synchronous.  The students had access to a static text based document, and the ability to virtually speak to the professor using their choices of messaging, both synchronous and asynchronous.  The FTF group learned by lecture.

31 students were involved in the study.  I utlized first year compositions from two sections of the same class taught by Dr. George Williams.  This professor served as a mentor for me in the development and execution of this project.

In a nut shell, the FTF students blew the CMC students out of the water.  It was interesting to note that students who participated in the FTF section, were far more able to accurately anticipate their grade on the testing of the subject matter.  Students who took the CMC version of the test were very optomistic about their performance, and seemed to feel that they learned the material.  According to the results, they did not learn the material.

Big Brother is watching and somehow that's okay

I am a big fan of 1984, and A Brave New World.  I recognize that with the increase in live time social media that privacy is willfully being given up.  It is interesting to me to see how widespread this becomes:

I’ve engaged some of my professors using various social media resources, some of it positive, some of it not so much.   However, it allows me to view them as individuals, and not just teaching-drones.  There is a balance of how much information to publicly disseminate, and how much to hold on to. I’m still finding balance.  I likely will not be interested in any of the ideas presented below, at least for the moment.

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3705/professor-encourages-students-to-pass-notes-during-class-via-twitter

This link details a professor who is encouraging Graduate students, to use twitter during class to have a “back channel” of communication.  …The professor can see this, and somehow that’s okay.

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http://www.locaccino.org/

Allows people to track you down using the GPS in your phone.  I have not played with it yet, so I am unsure of its relative complexity.  But still, it allows people to track you down…and somehow that’s okay.

All of these things point to a new, less-private communication paradigm.  Personally, I’m waiting on holograms.

Computer Mediated Communication

Lately, the vast majority of my research interests have been in computer-mediated communication (CMC).  Last Fall I invested a significant ammount of time delving into CMC, and the Social Information Processing Theory.  I like the analogy SIPT provides;  CMC is to FTF as a Gulp is to a sip, you can still get the same amount, it just takes longer.

This semester I have been working on a research project that is measuring the effectiveness of CMC compared to FTF, and also the students perceptions of it.  In my readings on the subject I have never seen one study that did both of these things.

Currently I am finishing up my article and findings.  I will be posting insites and interesting tid-bits from it over the next couple of days as I invest this weekend towards finishing my writing.

Versus