Is Multitasking More Efficient?

Is Multitasking More Efficient?:

"New scientific studies reveal the hidden costs of multitasking, key findings as technology increasingly tempts people to do more than one thing (and increasingly, more than one complicated thing) at a time. "

"The researchers say their results suggest that executive control involves two distinct, complementary stages: goal shifting ("I want to do this now instead of that") and rule activation ("I'm turning off the rules for that and turning on the rules for this"). Both stages help people unconsciously switch between tasks."

"Rule activation itself takes significant amounts of time, several tenths of a second -- which can add up when people switch back and forth repeatedly between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem more efficient on the surface, but may actually take more time in the end."

"Understanding executive mental control may help solve "fundamental problems," says Meyer, "associated with the design of equipment and human-computer interfaces for vehicle and aircraft operation, air traffic control, and many other activities in which people must monitor and manipulate the environment through technologically advanced devices.""

This article, and the study that goes with it, seems a bit slanted if you ask me. When I was first told about this piece a sweeping statement was made like: "Oh, kids aren't multitaskers! Ha, ha! They're wasting time... Haven't you seen the new study?" Yet the study only proves that we polychrons are wasting milliseconds... yes, "tenths of a second"... as we switch from task to task. I think the overall assumption or argument that says multitasking wastes time needs more than just milliseconds to convince me.

However, the idea that we can cut out even those few tenths of a second by better understanding our executive controls and innovating our UI now becomes even more appealing to me. I mean... isn't that the idea behind the dashboard widget and the firefox plugin? To bring the functionality of one thing to another and yet keep the same interface?

Lifestream - Classstream?

Google recently bought Jaiku, a micro-moblogging site (that's micro-blogging like twitter + mobile blogging) that also keeps track of when you post to your blog (via an RSS feed) and when you post to your flickr. It also posts a timestamped record of what you listened to on iTunes or Last.fm and what you last bookmarked on Del.icio.us. So they take all that info and put it into a feed or "lifestream."

Now, I teach 2d Foundations and Drawing... which aren't necessarily heavy on computer use (all my students keep blogs, use a textbook wiki, photoshop, that's about it). But I was thinking about how great it would be if I did have a feed, or if we all had access, to a "classroom feed" or Classstream that would work something like this:

10:14pm Allison finished 15 thumbnails for homework
1:42am Anthony posted link to article on Fred Wilson
9:37am Bob posted to blog: Principles of Gestalt
12:00pm Johnny needs feedback on sketch for assignment - visit blog
3:30pm Anthony posts picture from Toledo Museum of Art
and so on...

How could you see this useful in your class? In an online class?

Second Life and Machinima Resources

For anyone interested in Second Life Education (SLED) I urge you to join their respective listserve mailing lists. The SLED community has been thriving for several years and can provide a great bit of knowledge. Have a question about Second Life? Search the archives!

SLED listserve: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators
SLED Archives: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=001010425210852223575%3Ajldmgpuier0
SLED Wiki: http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

Machinima listserve
SL has recently started a listserve for anyone making or interested in machinima.

Machinima listserve: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/machinima

SL Machinima will save YouTube

Reuters/Second Life � HBO buys machinima film created in Second Life: "“You can build visually rich dense environments in an incredibly short amount of time, and you can work collaboratively using the tools of Second Life,” said Gayeton, who currently works for the virtual world development agency Millions of Us. “It gives you an idea of how animation will look five years from now.”"

Think of all those sub-par videos on YouTube that could have been more effective, artistic, or powerful with a budget. Making machinima in SL is like making movies with an endless budget. If you can dream it, you can visualize it in Second Life. Granted it will take some time, effort, and know how.

I would like to differentiate from the statement above however... SL does not produce high quality animation. It is shaping how animation will look five years from now not on cinematic or graphical quality... but based on the fact that it comes to the masses in the age of socially motivated peer production; a time when a younger generation of content creators is willing to produce for little or no financial gain, to experiment and take risks with limited resources or expertise at their disposal, and unafraid of critical peer review.

Animation, like film, is a highly refined art form with masters of its craft held in the highest regard. So how will a new generation of "tinkerers" affect it? I must admit... I am one of the tinkerers. I recently created a machinima video to promote the sale of my graphic novel.



I could not afford studio time on an infinity wall to shoot this properly in real life. However, with machinima... it took only 3 hours to make that video. And that includes building the drawing table.

Next week in Ann Arbor Michigan my newest video, "Machinima Paradiso", opens at The Project Gallery in a show titled, "My Private Utopia" (more info at the site). This machinima video is almost 5 minutes in length and includes scenes over large bodies of water, flying through a movie theatre, and down a NYC Times Square like corridor of giant images. If created in real life, I am approximating the budget to be well over $750,000. However, I have been able to put it together on my laptop in little over three months.

Is machinima a new form of storyboarding? Will it produce a new farm-team-crop of filmmakers and animators? Will access to this media in both SL and through outlets like YouTube reshape our idea of what can be produced "on a budget?"

Quechup to the times...

Quechup.com is one of the newest social networking sites to pop up and has made quite an impact on me, albeit in a negative way.

Earlier today I was invited to join the network. I accepted the invite and decided to make a profile and check it out. During the set up it said it would look though my gmail address book and see who else was on Quechup. After it got done thinking, there were four check boxes. It said "would you like to be friends with these people". Since they were already on Quechup, I clicked yes.

Apparently when I clicked yes, Quechup sent emails to EVERYONE ELSE in my address book inviting them to be my friend on the Quechup site. (For more of my personal reactions to this incident, check out my personal blog at www. anthonyfontana .vox.com). This is a familiar process for those who use facebook. However, without one additional page asking if I'd like to invite everyone by email.

This incident (and of course, a PAID networking site) got me thinking about the amount of trust we put into social networking sites. It may have said somewhere on that page "would you also like us to spam everyone in your address book with an invite to our site?" But my intuitive reaction was to click yes, invite the four friends you have checked. There was a level of trust there, built by similar interfaces on other sites, that Quechup took advantage of.

Now comes the kicker. During my profile setup, it asked me questions about height, eye color, as well as whether or not I live with my children. However, when I tried to enter simple information in the text box, things like "I'm an educator," or "I use Second Life", an error message appeared informing me NOT to put that sort of info on their site due to "identity theft on social networking sites." It then gave me the same error message when I tried to enter such things as "art, movies, and music" as interests.

Here, Quechup is trying to build a false level of trust by insisting that they are protecting me, meanwhile collecting a lot more information than other social networking sites have. Was I willing to give up the info... sure. Will I now? I don't think so.

How can we establish trust with websites that promote trust in relationships? What role does intuitive interface play in our expectations of service? What happens to our trust when these expectations are not met or even worse broken?

Web 2.0 Learning Community at BGSU

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Back to School

After a long summer hiatus, I will now be posting more frequently on this blog.

I spoke with someone recently who told me they had been checking this blog, actually visiting to see if I had posted. I informed them about RSS feeds and Google Reader (which I use). For those that don't know, when I open my Google Reader web page, I have all the blogs that I am interested in right there in front of me and can easily see what they've posted.

To subscribe to this blog, click the subscribe button located at the very bottom of the page (scroll down all the way).

In a Web 2.0 Learning Community meeting, hosted by the BGSU Center for Teaching and Learning Technology, I was caught off guard when one of the members thought it odd that they could not "look at themselves" (in the face) when they chatted in Second Life. Immediately I thought of my Yahoo IM profile pic that started at me when in IM chat. Meanwhile, in SL (Second Life) I was chatting with my avatar's back to me. Was this unintuitive? Was I more likely to say something different when looking at a pic of myself vs. my representation of self (or the back of my representation)?

I think that intuitive controls or modes of communication become so favored that we have a hard time adapting to new ones. This argument seems in line with the polychronic classroom for two reasons:

1. Students coming from college prep or lecture heavy schools actually CAN take notes. They also may actually prefer a straight lecture.
2. Students who spend much of their day IMing and typing in shorthand may not be able to take such good notes. In fact, they might not even be able to decipher what is important and what is not during a lecture. How might the intuitive nature of communication or information acquisition differ for these students? How may it be accommodated?