Why Distance Learning?

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.866)
Hello everyone and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for educators who are engaged with live virtual learning experiences, whether they be content providers who produce and facilitate or educators who want to complement their curriculum and learn more about the medium. We interview content providers, industry professionals, field experts, and educators who love and use live virtual learning. And this week our guest is Thor Pritchard. Thor, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Seth Fleischauer (00:31.278)
And welcome as always to my co-hosts, Allison and Tammy. Hello, ladies.

Seth Fleischauer (00:39.445)
Tammy, could you introduce Thor for us?

Seth Fleischauer (01:27.506)
And I assume that's over in Hood River, Thor, is that where you go? Since you're based in Portland.

Seth Fleischauer (01:40.766)
Yeah, yeah. The only thing better than having a boat is having a friend with a boat. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, so you meant far offshore. You meant like in the ocean, sailing. Got it. Wait, did you just say sail to Hawaii?

Seth Fleischauer (02:07.19)
Wow, what does that take, like three weeks to get out there?

Seth Fleischauer (02:17.178)
Oh my gosh. And what did you, what did you learn about yourself on this trip?

Seth Fleischauer (02:29.383)
Fair, fair. Looks like we've got a retirement plan brewing. Awesome. Well, in the meantime, you are working to support ad deck companies in their effort to create tools and practices that help K-12 schools adopt technology.

I'm really fascinated about this intersection of cognitive psychology, technology, and learning science. I'm wondering with someone who has that background and who's based in those fields, what are some things that people should know, people might find surprising, most educators might engage with you and say, oh my gosh, I had never thought of that when I thought of teaching.

Um, what are some of those things that are like these, these nuggets that you pass on to people that you find are the most common things that you're bringing to the conversation?

Seth Fleischauer (04:51.924)
Hehehe

Seth Fleischauer (06:01.256)
Hehehe

Seth Fleischauer (06:12.761)
Hehehehe

Seth Fleischauer (06:37.547)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (06:51.778)
Hehehe

Seth Fleischauer (07:06.462)
Well, I've got a question, I think, for both of you here, which is that like, because Allison's huge, a huge gaming proponent, gamification proponent. And I just want to challenge this a little bit. Like we hear about dopamine, we hear about the way that social media companies exploit it, that like, you know, slot machine kind of scroll down. Obviously, the literature around that is all very negative, right? Where we're...

dopamine becomes addictive, it is, you know, pointing you in directions that are good for the tech companies, not necessarily for the people. Is there a fundamental difference in using dopamine to get to educational aims? Is there a difference between that and using it to get to non-educational gains? Because there, a cynical view might be that like, okay.

If you're using a bad way to get there, then maybe it's not worth getting there.

Seth Fleischauer (08:35.236)
I don't think those are our listeners.

Seth Fleischauer (09:29.879)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (09:41.038)
Hmm. Yeah, I-

Seth Fleischauer (10:01.504)
Wait, hold on. Is Angry Birds smart or stupid?

Seth Fleischauer (10:09.206)
There's a whole lot of math in there, Allison.

Seth Fleischauer (11:30.015)
I'm sorry.

Seth Fleischauer (11:45.336)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (11:52.005)
laughter

Seth Fleischauer (11:55.956)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (12:02.294)
Love Icivx.

Seth Fleischauer (12:47.426)
But if it does move the needle on student achievement, though, shouldn't that be a fairly easy sell? Like, if it is actually doing what superintendents care about, it's just a matter of showing evidence of that. Or how do you advise your clients on navigating that?

Seth Fleischauer (14:34.274)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (15:38.496)
Hehehe

Seth Fleischauer (15:49.483)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (16:31.274)
Yeah, and I think you were talking about, you know, the right tool for the right time for the right task. I think you have four things there. But as I was thinking about it, I was like, you have four things there for like five different levels of stakeholders, right? Like you've got the kids who it has to work for, you've got teachers, you've got to be able to have the principal support that the district level people are going to fund it and the parents have to like not make...

too much of a stink or else none of it's gonna work at all. Right, so it's like, you know, those four things times five, like is that like 40 chest, like how do you get people to solve this problem? Is there a matter of simple luck that comes into it? Like what's your secret sauce?

Seth Fleischauer (18:47.266)
Teachers love those tools. Any professional learning, it's like, did I get a tool from my toolbox? Is that where we are?

Seth Fleischauer (20:36.707)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (20:41.078)
Yeah, you...

Seth Fleischauer (20:45.274)
Yeah, yeah, and we'll just get more so. You mentioned some tools being good for remote learning, some tools not. I'd love to hear your cognitive psychologist perspective on which tools are good for remote learning and which ones less so. This is the Wide Distance Learning podcast, so I'd love to bend the conversation in that direction.

Seth Fleischauer (21:32.748)
Here, taste this.

Seth Fleischauer (23:37.805)
Yeah

Seth Fleischauer (23:56.306)
I love that metaphor because there's some like sort of outlandish combinations that looked really cool in those books and there's some where like you know you had two that were right and one that wasn't and you were just like there's something off here. So yeah, yeah I like that a lot because there is a science to finding the ones that match but there's an art to finding the mismatched ones that combine and create something beautiful.

Seth Fleischauer (25:19.586)
Got scientific backing for blogging and gaming, I think you just became Allison's favorite guest.

Seth Fleischauer (25:28.238)
I'm gonna go.

Seth Fleischauer (25:33.923)
I'm sorry.

Seth Fleischauer (26:45.214)
Yeah, Thor, I want to change gears a little bit here because you were mentioning up at the top that there are all of these scientific developments from decades ago that we have not yet incorporated into education. So I guess I'm asking you for the trends from, I don't know, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, like what are the trends that are going to like show up soon in education?

Seth Fleischauer (29:10.852)
Hehehe

Seth Fleischauer (29:59.202)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (30:02.491)
What are the other three parts that you think are necessary for transformation?

Seth Fleischauer (30:15.947)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (31:36.252)
Heh.

Seth Fleischauer (31:53.762)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (32:12.679)
Hehehe

Seth Fleischauer (32:25.262)
Huh.

Seth Fleischauer (32:37.069)
Hehehe

Seth Fleischauer (32:42.752)
Hehehehehehe

Seth Fleischauer (32:52.178)
Yeah, fascinating stuff. The last line of questioning I want to pursue here, because you have this cognitive psychology background, everything we've thrown at you so far, you've pulled it out and been like, well, here's the research. I have to ask about live virtual learning. A lot of our listeners are in the live virtual learning community. Obviously, the entire world suddenly pivoted to this space in March of 2020, or in some cases later than that here in Portland.

But what does the research say about live virtual learning and does it inform at all where you think this might go? Like, what are some of the frontiers of live virtual learning that have not yet been explored that could be supported by the science?

Seth Fleischauer (35:07.406)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (36:53.159)
Ha ha ha.

Seth Fleischauer (37:42.295)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (38:05.579)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (38:13.527)
Hehehe

Seth Fleischauer (38:23.063)
Virgin Mai Tai, yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (38:47.694)
It's like Chat Roulette for teaching.

Seth Fleischauer (39:03.31)
Fascinating. I love those. So, you know, when I first asked you to come on, like this, it's a bit of a stretch for us to have someone like you on this program. We deal with, we interview a lot of people who are immersed in live virtual learning and that's their thing. It's amazing to hear your perspective on this. And why I was certain you would make a good guest is that you would have a perspective on this. But I do want to ask you our titular question. I was considering rephrasing it for you, but I'm not going to.

Thor, why distance learning?

Seth Fleischauer (41:10.07)
Awesome. Thank you so much. One place that people can find you would be the local EdTechPDX meetups that you and I are collaborating to organize these. This comes out after our next meetup, which is May 6th, but we'll have another one after that. So if you are in the Portland metro area, please do check us out there. Where else should our listeners find information about you and about Clarity Innovations?

Seth Fleischauer (42:14.574)
Well, that is definitely the intersection that our listeners care about. So we will send them there. Thank you so much for your time today. I know Allison, then you dropped classics in there, by the way. And so now you're like if you weren't her favorite guest already, my god.

Seth Fleischauer (42:36.106)
Yeah, she usually gets excited, but not even this excited. So well done. For our for our listeners, if you'd like to support the podcast, please do share it with a friend, follow us, leave a rating or review. As always, thank you to our editor, Lucas Salazar.

And remember that if you want to know the answer to the question, why distance learning? Check out the people we highlight on this podcast. These are the people who are leveraging this amazing technology to truly transform the learning experience. Why distance learning? Because it's accessible and it's awesome. See you next time.

Thor Prichard (01:00:29.882)
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Allyson (01:00:31.897)
Yay!

Allyson (01:00:36.91)
Yay, hi!

Tami Moehring (01:00:38.623)
Hello.

Tami Moehring (01:00:44.651)
I would be happy to. So Thor leads a team of 30 former classroom educators, designers, producers, and engineers that help publishers, ed tech organizations, and technology companies design and build solutions to improve the process and practice of teaching and learning with technology. His professional interests are focused on the intersection of cognitive physiology, technology, and learning science.

He has spent most of his time consulting with clients about their product strategy in the K-12 education market, helping them bring into focus what the next three to five years look like. In his free time, he enjoys offshore sailing.

Thor Prichard (01:01:32.678)
Uh, no, I usually do a lot of my sailing on the Puget Sound area. A friend of mine has a boat up there, which is always the best arrangement for sailing is someone else owns the boat.

Tami Moehring (01:01:42.119)
Ooh, way to think business.

Allyson (01:01:46.756)
Yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:01:47.358)
That is exactly right.

Tami Moehring (01:01:49.648)
Otherwise you gotta store that thing somewhere.

Thor Prichard (01:01:52.41)
Yeah, Sanlianhu, Hawaii and elsewhere, yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:01:58.234)
Yeah, I did that back in 2016. It was a wonderful race. It was about maybe a dozen or so boats that did it. It was great. It's the Vic Maui race every other year they have it. So yeah, two weeks, about 2,600 nautical miles. Yeah, 15 days is what it took us. So yeah, it was a trip of a lifetime. It was tons of fun.

Allyson (01:02:09.084)
That's amazing.

Allyson (01:02:20.624)
Yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:02:24.23)
But I could do this all the time. Ha ha ha.

Allyson (01:02:26.082)
Yeah!

Allyson (01:02:30.768)
that this is it.

Thor Prichard (01:02:32.298)
So, yeah, absolutely.

Thor Prichard (01:03:24.774)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:03:29.714)
Right, right. Well, part of it is like there's always been a close relationship between psychology and education and in cognitive psychology, really study of the cognition and memory and how the brain works and those kinds of things where the systems underlying how everything's organized upstairs, so to speak, and really how that relates back to learning comes out in lots of different ways and perception in memory in terms of recall and retention. And there's been lots of research all through the decades about a lot of these topics, but not a lot of it sort of.

jumps over the fence into the education very often, or it will take decades before it does. So a lot of times it's really helpful to be thinking about what are those big pillars of research showing in the cognition and cognitive psychology area and realizing, oh, there is a parallel to that and what we should understand about the learning sciences is actually another way of looking at the same problem. When we look at, say, assessment and really a big factor of predictive quality assessment is retention, recall, how often you practice,

asked to recall the information, how often you're asked to integrate that information with other related pieces of information, and the more connections you can make to that one piece of data, the better you'll be able to recall that data kind of thing, or infer or abstract from it. So that's all been shown in the psychology space back in the 60s and 70s, only, what, 60 years ago? So education, though, is picked up on that in the last 40 years or so.

Allyson (01:04:52.229)
Hehehe

Thor Prichard (01:04:59.488)
But are still lagging and still happening. For example, a lot of research into motivation and understanding behavior change that happened in the late 90s and into the 2000s really showed that technology can be a carrot to helping change behavior. And really became like it wasn't about the technology, it's more about just understanding behavior and motivation. And whole research has been around that. BJ Fogg has made a whole business out of that. There's a whole model theory of change that he's done.

really kind of solidifies a lot of that understanding. And only now we're starting to see products start to take advantage of that. Now, we've seen a lot of consumer products take advantage of that, like, remember Farmville and all those kinds of Candy Crush games, et cetera. All of those are using the same techniques that the researchers shown. That's how you affect behavior change. It's that dopamine hit. It's that immediate gratification kinds of things. I don't want to gamify education, but gosh, there's a lot of ways we could actually simplify

the sort of grease the skid sort of speak to be able to be more productive, more effective at learning and teaching with technology. So like a book he did back in 2003, that would only be 21 years ago, really sort of outlined how this would work. And to this day, those are still great guidelines and thinking about how to use this for good and how do you help improve the practice and process of teaching using technology in the right ways.

Allyson (01:06:13.948)
I'm out.

Thor Prichard (01:06:29.348)
years is taking a look at what kinds of ways does this research show this has a positive effect and helping our clients take advantage of that in their products.

Allyson (01:06:39.132)
It's so exciting because it's knowledge creation just backed up by motivation. And it's just, and again, gamify education all the way because that's what it is. Life is a game if you want to make it that. What motivates you, what makes you excited and gets you wanting to make a difference in whatever field or whatever way your voice is there. So, so exciting to hear all of the psychology that backs that up or talk about it. Read Write Web.

Thor Prichard (01:06:43.702)
Yeah. Yes.

Thor Prichard (01:06:51.375)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:06:57.082)
Right.

Thor Prichard (01:07:02.847)
Right.

Thor Prichard (01:07:06.202)
Yeah.

Allyson (01:07:15.068)
2012 is when I did my first work on it, yeah.

Tami Moehring (01:07:19.095)
Thanks for watching.

Thor Prichard (01:07:29.462)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:07:35.478)
Right.

Thor Prichard (01:07:46.287)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:08:00.112)
Right.

Thor Prichard (01:08:07.27)
Mm-hmm.

Right. You know, that's a great question. And that's part of where some of the more recent research in the aspects of, you know, deeper learning, deeper understanding, the idea of longer engagement with reading those kinds of practices and how that is, it's not so much about the duration, but it's about letting your brain, letting it percolate and helping it sink in. And I'm using very non-academic terms. So hopefully your reader's not going to write in and say, you are not studying the research correctly. But there is tons of work.

Allyson (01:08:36.346)
Don't worry.

Thor Prichard (01:08:40.038)
There is tons of research started to look at this. Okay, how do we...

balance this attention demand cycle that dopamine is really encouraging a short-term fixed kind of thing versus that longer term better sort of like broader strokes aspect of understanding that comes from multiple exposure to text or to whatever content it is multiple practices of it using in different ways And having that happen over time It's the idea of like, you know You've read some really deep stuff and it's really complex and hard to unpack

back to it, you're going to have better understanding of it because you literally let your brain recharge. Like people forget that our bodies are organic and biological. And so there's a lot of that still has to happen in learning. You can't automate that out of the equation. Right. So, so trying to find practices that really emphasize that balance is really essential. And I think though the research is still early in understanding where is that balance? What are those practices?

Allyson (01:09:41.964)
Yeah, I think, oh sorry, just to add on, I think that it really is a good question. The idea of smart, when I do my research, I guess the terms that come up are smart versus stupid games. So like Angry Birds, what is the objective of Angry Birds? Like you just, no, I'm just saying you can make, you...

you can decide to read the research that you like. No, I agree. Okay, okay. But I'm saying when I was researching this initially in 2012, if you're thinking about what are you being asked to do and what's the end result? What is the simulation? What's the objective of that game? When you look at like to Thor's point, when you look at a certain game that's asking you to go through a variety of simulations that's tailored around storytelling.

Thor Prichard (01:10:10.162)
The judgment's left to the listener.

Thor Prichard (01:10:23.262)
Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.

Allyson (01:10:37.328)
but you're ultimately intrinsically learning to repeat that skill in different scenarios. It allows those challenges to motivate you the same way as people could say working out's an addiction, you know, that dopamine, what you're chasing. But really, you know, we're wanting to study, be the best and most scholastic. But really what you would hope to do is that you're motivating yourself to achieve more, to get to a level that you feel proud of. So whether that's like...

Thor Prichard (01:10:38.465)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:10:51.378)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Thor Prichard (01:11:03.623)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (01:11:05.604)
going up in a headstand in yoga or like totally rocking it in Assassin's Creed Origins, like then that whatever that motivation is, you know, that's what's going to be pushing you to hopefully succeed. So I think it's that intrinsic component. The same way as if you get 10,000 steps, you get a coin. I'm my health benefits there, but I just want that coin. I don't know why I want that coin, but that's what I'm supposed to achieve.

Tami Moehring (01:11:14.212)
I'm sorry.

Thor Prichard (01:11:18.781)
Right.

Thor Prichard (01:11:26.97)
Right, right.

Thor Prichard (01:11:31.311)
Mm-hmm. No, that's true

Allyson (01:11:33.84)
But that's just, again, and I don't like the word stupid. I would just say that was just what would come up is like ask yourself, what is the vehicle? How is this a vehicle to get announced?

Thor Prichard (01:11:39.568)
Yeah.

Right, right. Maybe it's more shallow versus deep games, right? Yeah, yeah.

Allyson (01:11:44.756)
Yes, thank you. 2012, I was also, as I say all the time, fighting for a blog post to be considered credible.

Thor Prichard (01:11:53.306)
Well, yeah, those were the days, right? We've come a long ways. But that's interesting about gaming and learning, because there's the aspect of there are some games, like iCivics makes a lot, Filament Games makes a lot, that are very good under the serious gaming idea. They've got lots of research. It shows it makes a difference. But the problem isn't so much the academic or the research side or the effectiveness and the pedagogy side. It is a buying problem. It is an aspect of a game is meant to be fun,

Tami Moehring (01:11:53.793)
What?

Thor Prichard (01:12:23.3)
and engaging to a student, the actual user of it. Those are exact opposite things that a school district superintendent wants to spend money on directly because they can't see that as serious, as academic, as learning, as how is that going to move the needle in student achievement. They need something that's tried, true, and can see it and feel like it's that's academic. That's going to be real learning. That's going to help my students achieve. So it's a perception problem in those different users.

Allyson (01:12:48.988)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:13:07.035)
Right, right.

Well, it's the aspect of Lego has been investing lots in illustrating the value of play and the value of giving open-ended time for, you know, four-year-olds, five-year-olds, pre-K, kindergarten, first graders to actually play and explore their physical environment, to build ideas, you know, build on their ideas, et cetera. But that's a lot of time that is consumed doing play instead of working on your ABCs or your math or whatever. And so from an academic perspective, it can come up, you know, it's the same thing.

challenge of how do I show my community, my parents, that their kids are learning when all they're gonna see is, you know, they spent two hours playing with Legos. Parents there might be like, well that's just play. Why am I having a school give time for play? This is a time for learning, right? There's this perception problem of play is not seen as learning or having open-ended exploration where kids can make mistakes or try and iterate and do different kinds of things

Allyson (01:13:48.4)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:14:09.956)
as working on a worksheet, you know, or taking a test or being taught directly, you know, and didactic kind of method. So there's this aspect of perception differences. So a superintendent or curriculum director has this balancing act of, I know it matters in the research, I know my teachers enjoy it, but I have to be able to justify it to my community that this is a worthwhile investment and not just seen as...

Allyson (01:14:11.547)
Hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:14:33.242)
I'm spending money on Legos or on devices for play. I mean, this is the challenge that the maker space community has been struggling with is this stuff really works. This stuff really changes students' engagement, their motivation, their commitment to lifelong learning, but yet schools are reluctant to spend that much money on it because they don't see how it directly changes their math scores or their reading scores kind of thing.

Allyson (01:14:38.901)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:14:59.002)
And that's an unfortunate problem of how we have schools organized too.

Allyson (01:15:01.888)
It is. Tammy and I were just recently speaking to a group that was talking about the amount of financial attendance, the idea that you can actually see attendance rates go up by 60% in some cases, which only brings funding up for the school. The funds only get more for the school because you have more students attending. They're just, like you said before, there's just not enough research to see that value to change or mix with that perception

Thor Prichard (01:15:25.224)
Right.

Allyson (01:15:32.012)
that idea that when we didn't have iPhones, you learned how to text under the desk because you were going to do that anyway. But that's like a scary tool that now is invited in some cases into the learning experience. So interesting to see how they build up.

Thor Prichard (01:15:39.454)
I'm going to go to bed.

Thor Prichard (01:15:45.862)
Right. Mm-hmm. Right. It is about that, it is about what is the right tech in the right way with the right content, with the right pedagogy. That's the big equation. All four of those things matter.

Allyson (01:16:00.408)
Yeah, Daniel Pink's book, Design Thinking, is always, I go back to that a lot, just that idea of how design being a part of education, especially in today, when you're thinking about the information, how we receive, how we interpret, how we synthesize, analyze. A lot of that is visually, it's visual driven. It's, so it's always interesting to think about how does that also come into that motivating factor of gamifying.

education or using technology.

Thor Prichard (01:16:30.162)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:16:45.974)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Allyson (01:16:46.338)
Ehh-heh

Thor Prichard (01:17:02.297)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:17:10.68)
Well, I mean...

The way we try to remind our kind of clients about this is it's an aspect of how you speak to your different audiences really matters. And what you do for your superintendents and directors of curriculum is you don't focus on the game, you focus on the learning and the positive benefits it brings, the second order change you see from it. And if anything, avoid screenshots. Don't let them see how much fun it is because they might get cold feet. But then for the educators and the students,

engagement, the interaction, and for the teachers, where does it fit into your teaching? Because that's the hardest part about games is, do I open a unit or lesson with the game to introduce the concept? Do I do it as a way to practice a concept? Or do I use it as an end result, a capstone activity to finish the concept? But that only works if the game is related to that concept, right? If I wanna just go play in Minecraft, open-ended wise, that's not gonna be a really good learning game. But if it's a Minecraft world that's been pre-built,

around showing and demonstrating photosynthesis, that's a really interesting opportunity for learning, right? But is it better to them for students to engage in that when they've already understood the way photosynthesis works, or is it better to introduce it as understanding how photosynthesis is related to cell structure and cell health and plant growth and all that, and then you use other learning techniques to get to it? Like it's really another tool in the toolbox as a teacher to know what is the right

way to reach my students where they're at with the right kinds of content and materials they want to learn about.

Allyson (01:18:50.256)
Just make it easier.

Thor Prichard (01:18:50.374)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Allyson (01:18:56.36)
Well, and also not only just the tool, but then the way that it's easily able to work, that the training comes with the tool because sometimes it feels as though, or I wonder, do you feel as though that's sometimes the missing link, that the hardware might be there or the application or the software is there, but the training isn't available to actually really see it as a tool?

Tami Moehring (01:19:02.475)
Thank you.

Thor Prichard (01:19:04.21)
Right.

Thor Prichard (01:19:20.154)
Yeah, that's...

Yeah, I mean, that's always a challenge. There's never enough time. And that's the hardest part about a lot of times in implementation, especially when it's a new class, a new category of tools that never existed before. Because there's a lot more work that has to go into the paradigm shift of understanding, oh, I'm gonna go about this in a totally different way and how I'd organize my lesson because of this tool. Whereas if this is like a cool tool that can grab pictures off the web in tournament and animate GIF, I might understand that conceptually, can easily work with that very quickly.

But there's also an aspect of every educator doesn't need to know every tool. What is really more important is pick four tools and be extremely good at those four because you're not just about the number of tools, but you got to think about those other dimensions of which tools work best with which content areas, which tools work best with pedagogies, how do I organize my classroom, my students, are they face to face, are they remote? Some tools just aren't going to work remote, but others are going to work really good that way, right? So it's not about the volume. It's about the depth of knowledge of those tools.

because I'd much rather see educators be really solid and using four tools in very diverse ways with their students because they know how it reaches those students or how they can teach differently with those than the teacher that knows 35 tools only in using them each in one way. Like that's gonna drive that educator crazy and eventually burn out. Especially in the era of where technology is rapidly accelerating, you know.

Allyson (01:20:37.061)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Allyson (01:20:45.254)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:21:07.87)
Sure, well, I mean, the two that, and I can really take this from the pandemic experience of going rapidly to live remote learning was the two biggest losses were robotics and science probeware. So, I think that's a great question.

You know, there's no way schools had enough science probeware to send all the experiments to every student at home. And there wouldn't necessarily be a guarantee of adult supervision in doing all those experiments of, is this a base or is this an asset at home? You don't want to use your little brother and little sister as a taste tester on those things, right? Exactly. So that was hard to do. But things like Vernier and Pasco both have ways to do that. So the teacher could do demos, record them, share the data remotely so they could actually get the data into the tools they could use.

Allyson (01:21:33.82)
Hehehehehehe

Thor Prichard (01:21:48.924)
and remotely analyze it. So that was a nice accommodation. But some of the robotics companies just didn't have virtual robots. It was a crate full of robots sitting in the school that no one could use. Some districts were trying to figure out, well, maybe we need to send each one home and then rotate it and stuff. That was just generally hard to do. But there were a couple that had virtual environments for their robots. And so that was a much easier accommodation for doing it remotely. You know, like SAM Labs was doing, they had already,

built the hardware pieces, they were doing stuff where it's just a virtual environment and showing how you could do circuits and build inventions and stuff and they had curriculum for it, whether or not you had the physical objects. So that worked really well.

So it just kind of depends. Now at the same time though, even if you're still face to face, there are some virtual tools that are just really a lot easier to handle as an educator in terms of classroom management. If you've used any of the visual math models, you know, you've got the little cube blocks or you've got pattern shapes, you've got number pieces, you got tokens everywhere, you got stuff in every corner of every classroom, right? And that's a pain to manage, right? Or clean up. And a virtual math manipulative where there's no worries about someone shooting

Allyson (01:22:51.108)
Yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:23:00.832)
bands off their geoboard to the kids in the classroom.

Allyson (01:23:03.19)
Hehe

Thor Prichard (01:23:04.434)
is a lot safer, a lot easier to manage and maintain. And the virtual manipulatives can give you more affordances that you didn't have with the physical ones. Like you could do area and things like that on a geoboard that you couldn't do in the physical one, right? So in some cases it's good. In some cases it's not as good. It just, again, it's that aspect of being more intentional about thinking about the right combination. You know, like maybe those old flip books that had like the top, the middle, the bottom of a person,

Allyson (01:23:33.345)
Yes!

Thor Prichard (01:23:34.228)
combination. The same is true when it comes to using instructional technology. Okay, which tool, which content, what pedagogy. It's those are the three flip cards you're using all the time to find the right fit. Yes, exactly. Right, right. Do they have wings? Do they have horns? Do they wear shorts? Do they wear pants? Do they have tails or not? Yeah, same idea, same idea.

Allyson (01:23:39.376)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (01:23:44.973)
Yes, your mythical creature, what you're going to create.

Allyson (01:23:51.12)
Yes!

Thor Prichard (01:24:02.902)
I'm out.

Allyson (01:24:03.501)
Yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:24:10.682)
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:24:17.256)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:24:21.426)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right. Like I remember when we were working with the National Writers Project, this was 20 odd years ago about web blogging, when it used to be called that, now just blogging, right? And how blogging is a great way to teach the writing method because the idea is that it's not, when you're writing and you don't know who's reading it, it doesn't really have any value or worth to you. But if you know that you're posting it and you're gonna get comments from people and be, wow, that's, I gotta write Willy-Rell, or to help reinforce that that's the first draft,

Allyson (01:24:30.384)
Yeah

Thor Prichard (01:24:52.968)
get comments, now I'm going to post a revised draft. And having a blogging tool that can show your deltas, your differences, your revisions, helps the educator see the learning progress from rough draft, next draft, to final draft, and seeing the comments and feedback and get the kudos from people as a reader, as an author, was really empowering. So that was an easy adaptation of a tool to their writing method. It was a great matchup for that purpose, right?

Allyson (01:25:24.776)
I'm just like, I am so excited about all these words. I am so excited. This, I was like, yeah, I can't wait to send all of your words to everyone in my graduate school. Cause I was like, this, this blog is more relevant than this book published at this time. It's still Will Richardson. Oh my goodness. I was like on a, yeah. Oh my goodness. Yes, Will Richardson. I would like live and breathe his blog and be like, ah, update, update.

Tami Moehring (01:25:25.808)
Yeah

Thor Prichard (01:25:34.654)
I'm gonna go to bed.

Thor Prichard (01:25:46.072)
Oh well, yes. Yes.

Thor Prichard (01:25:52.624)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (01:25:53.728)
Yeah, and also just the idea, even I really like academia and scholarship, but even being able to think if you do like that type of writing or if that's something that interests you or skills that you like to practice, being able to write for an audience that is online that wants to be a little bit more accessible than the scholarly journal that I'm citing, you know, huge, huge sentences from.

Thor Prichard (01:26:03.488)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:26:16.514)
Yeah, right, yeah.

Allyson (01:26:19.752)
I think is also just an example of that, say, you know, the same idea as the writing method. You need to be able to think about the structure, the story, but also who is your reader and how do you captivate them. And, you know, I still, I actually just thought to myself, oh my goodness, what was the name of my graduate school blog? I have to like go look it up and what a, because it was part of my profession, you know, learning how to become a professional.

Thor Prichard (01:26:31.871)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:26:38.426)
Hehehehe

Thor Prichard (01:26:42.846)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.

Thor Prichard (01:26:50.27)
Sure.

Allyson (01:27:04.773)
Ha ha ha!

Thor Prichard (01:27:05.177)
No.

Thor Prichard (01:27:11.73)
I wish I could tell you, but the only reason I can't is because I'm not as caught up either. So there is an aspect of a lot of stuff is continuing to emerge around understanding cognition and the brain and how...

learning works.

Thor Prichard (01:27:55.276)
I really regret not having enough time for is looking at what is out there in the last just last two decades, right? Like you said, that could actually be very useful to be thinking about in product development and advancement. And it doesn't happen fast enough. And I think it's gotten better, I'd say in the last 25, 30 years, but it's gonna

always be a slow spot. And I think that's okay, because part of it is in the academia side, you're really just exploring the edges of human understanding and knowledge. And you need a lot of that to be replicated, you need that to be more robust and really see does it apply in all circumstances and different content areas, et cetera, that it's okay that it takes a little bit to trickle down into, well, then what does it look like in the classroom, how teachers are taught, how they, what learning practices they learn, their teaching strategies, and then look at what is products developed around that.

like any product developer, if you don't have an educator on staff, you're not going to succeed in education. I think the second requirement is if you don't have somebody understand the learning science or the cognitive psychology behind it, understanding what is this doing as an affordance to improve that learner's outcome, then you're also going to be handicapped a little bit in being successful. The last one that a lot of people would say is, well, what's their AI strategy? I'm like,

Allyson (01:29:10.947)
Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Thor Prichard (01:29:16.416)
still nascent. It's not something that is a real, it's a real thing. Don't get me wrong. But it's also not yet transformational. We know that transformation is happening. We're living through it as we speak. We're dealing, we're learning about AI and it's the worst AI we're ever going to have. And it still looks like magic, right? That's the part that's a little scary is we think this is magic. Just wait, we'll see in the next three to five years and it will be breathtakingly different. So, so who knows? That's, this is the first

Allyson (01:29:32.764)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (01:29:39.9)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:29:46.476)
the emergence of the AI stuff, the generative AI part, which is only one of the four parts I think we need to see for real transformation, we're at the spot where we can't really easily predict the future kind of thing. Whereas ask me 20 years ago, I could have told you where we were going, how things were headed easily. So

So the other.

The other two parts we already have are image recognition and speech recognition. There was a real long lag of speech recognition and also there was the breakthrough that we had with Siri and Alexa that made it went from like 88% to 98% effectiveness. Now, again, that was for English speaking people. It's working on improving for other languages, still vastly needs improvement, but that's really remarkable. So you've got a way for a computer

and a system to know what we're saying and what we're looking like or what we're looking at, what they're looking at, what objects, et cetera. The other one is what I think is like more the task performance piece. So we've got things like, oh, sorry, the other one we actually have is a generative AI part. That's the part where, okay, now we can interact with a system that actually sounds like a human and creepily so sometimes, but it's actually really effective. And there's a lot of

Allyson (01:31:01.264)
Ha ha

Thor Prichard (01:31:06.834)
frontier to be explored and how we can use that. We can talk more about that in a bit about tutoring and other things. But that's one of the big breakthroughs, right? So it sounds like humans, it can interact with it verbally and it sounds like a human response the right way. Even speech synthesis sounds mostly human now. The one big part we don't have is the task performance part, which is the idea of, you know, I'm going to a conference, I've got lots of people on LinkedIn, computer, tell me who from my LinkedIn

Allyson (01:31:36.37)
Hehehehehehehehe

Thor Prichard (01:31:39.428)
It doesn't do that yet. When it does, that's going to be when we really see some automation, some real advancement in productivity, because right now I still have to scrape a website, figure out who are all the attendees, get the list from LinkedIn and match them up and see who's going. And that will consume a lot of time. But when we have task performance, which is something that the computer science community has been working on since the 80s,

we will finally have that real breakthrough where we can actually do tasks. And we can do things like the Apple Knowledge Navigator video of 1987 can finally be realized. And if you don't know that video, you should really go look it up on YouTube. It is creepily, eerily accurate to a T of all the technologies we have assembled, except for the task performance one.

Allyson (01:32:18.274)
We-

Allyson (01:32:29.1)
We will link it in the show notes just so everyone has an easy clickable link. Not, yeah. Get excited.

Thor Prichard (01:32:35.963)
Yes. Be prepared. It was 1987. So it's a VHS copy of a copy. So it's a little wavy and it's not HD folks. It's it's old school. But it makes it's really quite, you know, impressive. So

Allyson (01:32:46.152)
makes it even better.

Allyson (01:33:05.308)
Ha ha

Thor Prichard (01:33:11.812)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:33:18.604)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (01:33:20.944)
Hehehehe

Thor Prichard (01:33:23.483)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:33:40.142)
Right. Yes.

I can speak to the second part because my area of psychology hasn't been in the research of live virtual learning stuff. I'm just gonna assume there's all good positive things there. But I can talk to a little bit to the aspect of what's been missing in live distance learning that I think is we're on the cusp of doing more of because either because of the pandemic or at least the pandemic made the awareness of the general population of what's possible more prevalent. Prior to the pandemic, distance learning was always seen as that's an alternative program.

that's a separate specialty program that's not for the general Q public, right? But the pandemic proven it works for the general Q public. Yes, there are some affordances, some struggles, but we did reach almost every kid. We did find ways to engage them in different ways. Yes, there's a lot of struggle and mental health issues remain because of the pandemic for our populations. But we do see there's a lot of promise and a lot of potential that actually shown to carry its weight, you know,

that I kind of wonder about like the future is really about the technology integration and more thinking about technology less as a production medium like we're doing in a podcast today, but more of as a teaching assistant or a learning assistant. And that really comes from models that like, again, I look at, you know, one of my favorite genres of fiction reading I like to do is near future hard science fiction. So it just gives me a perspective on what's coming. That's not too crazy.

Allyson (01:35:08.732)
Yes.

Thor Prichard (01:35:13.784)
but how does society react to it? And a book wrote, this was back in 95, 1995, was called The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson, or Stephenson, depending how you wanna pronounce it, really was about education and about a device that was, that blew my mind. The idea being essentially like an iPad with an AI, virtual assistant, but it was really meant to be like, you could be learning from anybody, anywhere, anytime, and every individual student was issued a device

learning so like an educator still is working with a group of students but it's got essentially like a master class with all the learning assistants to help the educator know where to spend their time and attention with their students so if a student was struggling they don't have to go to some fancy dashboard like today look at charts and try to interpret oh these are the kids that need more assistance it's actually the learning assistants just telling them in their daily briefing oh Johnny and Susie are struggling with this concept of math

doing great with this concept in reading. So you should let them know and appreciate, give them some kudos, and these folks, you should spend some more time on in circles with them, right? So the idea of having a device where the learning can be facilitated beyond just the live virtual, or in preface to the live virtual, so you can have students more ready and anticipation and engaging, and then having that follow-up of learning from what happened, we're on the cusp of doing more of those kinds of devices and interactions with technology. I mean, there's one product already on the market called

which will it's made for teachers just to say turn it on when you start teaching, turn it off when you're done teaching, and it will tell you how much time you spend talking versus your students talking.

Which students did you choose to answer questions? Did you really pick on the front row, which is what research says you would do, or did you diversify and look at all your students in your classroom and everyone having a voice? And gives you feedback based on those kinds of teaching practices, right? Maybe you should talk a little bit less. Maybe you should use small groups. Maybe you should do all those kinds of things, right? So we're talking about measuring or mapping pedagogy back to technology, back to content. So it's a great teaching assistant. We already have some elements of that would be great for virtual teaching.

Thor Prichard (01:37:24.192)
teaching virtually with students, and you're noticing some students are lagging behind, you can just hit a button on your keyboard so that it's flagged so your AI assistant can remind you, oh yeah, don't forget, you noticed that Sally was off track or was giving you the confused eyes or whatever it might be that you can come back to and follow up on them. So I think that's a potential, is using device more to facilitate that. The other thing is to take advantage of the fact that there are 24 time zones on this planet.

Allyson (01:37:39.086)
I'm sorry.

Thor Prichard (01:37:52.726)
and students don't always learn from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. but they learn at 11 p.m. But where in the world could you be where it's 11 p.m. here and 3 p.m. on a beach as a recently retired teacher that you could be working and learning with students that are at 11 p.m. at night? Because I know no one locally here wants to be up at 11 o'clock at night tutoring students, but gosh, if I'm on a beach outside of Tokyo and I'm just sitting my Mai Tai, okay, maybe I'm not sitting my Mai Tai while I'm working with students.

Allyson (01:38:20.064)
Yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:38:22.56)
But you get the idea. I can be sitting on the beach reading my latest novel for later, and I can be interacting with students who are up at all hours of the day, because that's when they're up, and helping and supporting their learning. So that's a whole other model that we have never, you know, really researched or leveraged of that teach from a beach idea, where you could go to wherever, and there's always gonna be a student population ready to learn around the world, wherever they are.

Allyson (01:38:23.676)
For later, for later. Yeah.

Allyson (01:38:50.364)
Oh my goodness. Yay! Oh my goodness.

Thor Prichard (01:38:51.642)
Yeah, yeah.

But again, the technology's there. The means of doing that are there. So that's what I would really love to see come about.

Allyson (01:38:56.707)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:39:14.472)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:39:31.322)
Mmm.

Thor Prichard (01:39:38.77)
Ah, why distance learning? The library of Alexandria, let's go all the way back, was the collection of wealth of human knowledge, right? Of course it then burnt down, that was a real setback. But the idea of the distance learning is bringing down the barriers. It's removing the walls that are preventing people from gathering and from accessing knowledge in their own local community. Not everyone's got a physicist if you're living

in rural Oregon who can teach you AP physics or AP calculus or even foreign language besides Spanish and English. There's other languages around the world to learn. And it's hard to have those people in all the communities across rural America or around the rest of the world, honestly, right? So distance learning is a way to allow all of us to access that knowledge, the human knowledge that we have and be connected closer.

more close than we can be sometimes, even when we're in the same city, like you and I, Seth, right? So I think that's the power of distance learning. I've seen it forever, from the early days, the Florida Virtual, the Concord, the cyber school out of Eugene, Oregon, actually, one of the third earliest K-12 program in the country, right? But those are all programs that I saw the potential and value of like, oh, this is using technology, not just because it's cool, but it actually is making a difference in how we teach and how we learn.

And I've been a big fan of it ever since, right? So that's what I believe in, distance learning.

Thor Prichard (01:41:13.643)
Hahaha

Thor Prichard (01:41:21.512)
Yes, yeah.

Thor Prichard (01:41:27.799)
Mm-hmm.

Thor Prichard (01:41:38.35)
Yeah, besides our website, which I'm sure there'll be a link to elsewhere, we also do a blog with a lot of our learning experience designers who are former practitioners and their sort of charter as blog authors on our blog is really talking about that intersection of technology and education. What are those practices? What are those strategies that really work to make both products and services better from the industry perspective, but also what are those trends from the education perspective that the industry should be more aware of and paying more attention to? So we really sort of work.

at it from a very unique perspective and try to talk about that intersection very quite a lot obviously.

Thor Prichard (01:42:19.366)
Mm-hmm. Great.

Allyson (01:42:25.708)
I know, I am like, I don't have words. Oh my gosh, everyone that I know, I'm gonna be like, oh my gosh, you know what I just did today? Talked to, this is the best conversation.

Thor Prichard (01:42:40.566)
That's wonderful. Sorry.

Allyson (01:42:42.812)
I am so excited.

Thor Prichard (01:42:47.26)
Okay, we'll edit that part.

Allyson (01:43:04.164)
Yay.

Thor Prichard (01:43:23.698)
See ya.