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Travel is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to technology. What really works out in the wild? How are real people from different cultures and backgrounds using technology in their daily lives? And what happens when you mix travel with technology and learning? I recently packed up my trusty iPad, iPhone, and Android device for an around the world adventure, and hope to answer these questions and more along the way, so stay tuned!
Posted in Mobile
The other day a friend asked me a question about Myanmar. I was just there a month ago. I had read and researched the country extensively for the trip, and learned tons while I was there. And yet I drew a complete blank. At that moment, I realized how much I’m already forgetting from my travels over the past six months! It got me thinking about Hermann Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve and how technology might be used to make knowledge stickier.
The Forgetting Curve is the nemesis of learning. It illustrates the exponential rate at which we forget.
In formal learning programs, a technique called spaced repetition is often used to flatten the curve and improve memory. With spaced repetition, refresher sessions are triggered at increasing intervals of time, reinforcing what the learner has learned right as they are about to forget it. The result is a dramatic increase in retention.
This is great for structured learning where content to be learned is known and the moment of learning acquisition can be estimated. But what about my situation above? In this informal learning scenario, I don’t necessarily know what I’m going to learn or when I’m going to learn it. No one can anticipate that my Chinese taxi driver will explain to me what a hutong is on the way to my hotel. How can a technique like spaced repetition be used when no one (including myself) may even be aware that learning is taking place?
This is where social technologies may be able to help us out. Suppose you tweet during your vacation in each place you visit about things you’ve seen and learned. And then at spaced intervals afterwards, your tweets are aggregated and sent to you as a recap. In Clive Thompson’s recent article in Wired Magazine on Memory Engineering, he mentions an app called 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo that is already headed in this direction. This app mines your FourSquare checkins from a year earlier and sends you a summary via email. Imagine if that summary were fine tuned to only contain checkins related to a specific topic or location. Thompson calls it a “powerful jolt of reminiscence.”
Another app, Amazon Kindle Daily Review, takes your Kindle highlights (or the “popular highlights”) and redisplays them for you weeks or months later. “It’s like a book that leaps off the shelf every once in a while and reminds you of the stuff you’ve highlighted.” The recap is timed on a schedule designed to help your brain absorb your reading more deeply, something that might have helped me remember what I’d highlighted in travel books I’ve been reading.
These two apps demonstrate technology’s potential for improving retention of knowledge acquired via informal learning. By posting and tweeting our thoughts and activities, we create our own custom data repository that could potentially be used to help us remember the things we have learned. Had I used such a system to remind me of what I had tweeted and highlighted while traveling, maybe I would have remembered enough to answer my friend’s question about Myanmar.
Posted in Learning
I recently spent an amazing week in Australia with a talented group of tech entrepreneurs from around the world. Bill Tai, a well known and respected Silicon Valley venture capitalist and partner at Charles River Ventures, led what has become the innaugural MaiTai Oz event, a new branch of his annual MaiTai kite camp on Maui which brings over 150 innovators together. On the surface, the week was about kitesurfing, a passion common to the majority of the participants. In my opinion however, kitesurfing was merely a pretense. This event really was about getting a group of like minded, passionate people together to innovate the Bill Tai way, and drive innovation among budding entrepreneurs in Western Australia.
Typical business innovation initiatives focus on crowdsoucing ideas, vetting processes, ROI assessment, and business viability. What I saw at the MaiTai Oz event was refreshingly different. The focus was on a completely non-techie, unrelated discipline – kitesurfing. And yet innovative ideas flowed freely – from ideas for new mobile apps to strategies for finding and hiring engineering talent to new investment opportunities. It’s almost as if by taking themselves out of their day-to-day context, and moving to a completely unrelated, safe, stress free environment, the unbridled flow of creative juices was unleashed. A shared passion for kitesurfing acted as a catalyst for the formation of deep connections that will persist long after the event is over, and might just be the source of future innovations in technology.
I feel so fortunate to have participated in this event. Thanks to my new MaiTai friends, Alyssa, Chris, Dan, Jean, Jenna, Kaya, Richard, and especially Bill, for broadening my horizons. If I had to boil it down to one key takeaway, it is this: Some of the best innovation takes place when innovation itself is thought of innovatively. In other words, if you want to foster innovation the Bill Tai way, consider heading for the beach with your tech geek friends to catch some wind and waves.
Posted in Innovation, Learning
My iPad and mobile phone have been my primary computing devices throughout these past months on the road. In places such as Myanmar where I have had virtually no access to a regular computer or laptop, they have been my *only* computing devices. Through heavy, real world use, I know how mobile versions of regular web content can sometimes lead to profuse cursing (an outcome you should avoid if you are thinking of “mobilizing” your website). Here are a few pearls of wisdom I’ve drawn from experience.
With users increasingly accessing content via mobile devices, mobile access to your website should not be an afterthought. A frustrating mobile experience can leave a lasting impression that bleeds over into all interactions. You don’t want to be the reason a user is stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, cursing at their phone. Avoid shiny object syndrome, have a substantial reason for an alternate version of your web content, and always put yourself in the shoes of your users, and the result should be transparent access to the important stuff – your content.
Posted in Mobile
Mobile apps are a lot like a new pair of hiking boots. Until you’ve broken them in, used them a few times, and beaten them up a bit, you won’t know how good they actually are. I’ve beaten up and broken (literally) many a mobile app in these past months traveling around the globe. The apps listed below are those that not only held up to the test, they made it to the top of my list of “don’t leave home without” apps I use when traveling.
WIKIHOOD
FREE, iPhone, iPad, http://www.wikihood.com
This app takes contextual learning to a whole new level. It uses GPS to pinpoint your location, and then serves up a list of all of the sites and areas of interest within a fixed circumference of your location. It provides information about each site, and pinpoints all of the sites on Google Maps. My only complaint is that it does not allow you to specify a custom distance, but it is free, so still well worth the download.
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For over ten years, I have focused on the intersection of learning theory and cutting edge technologies to help people in the real world get stuff done. And I happen to love to travel. These are the stories from the trenches.
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