>> Donald Brinkman: Hello everybody. I am here and I am pleased to introduce Miguel Nussbaum. He
is here visiting us from Chile where he is a researcher for Computer Science at the School of Engineering
of the Universidad Católica de Chile. McGill is been working with us for, I don't know, 5 or 10 years now
developing innovative education technologies. He has worked a lot in collaborative technologies and
most recently with working with our multi-mouse toolkit and creating something that he calls one
mouse per child. He recently won a LASSER [phonetic] grant, a South American Research and Innovation
Grant that we also contributed to, and he is here to talk about old work, new work and future directions,
so without further ado, Miguel.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: Thanks a lot Donald. Hi. It all started 2006 as Donald just mentioned me when I
met Ken Tado [phonetic] in Berkeley in one of the first, it was the first conference of ICTD, where I
discovered that they had made a driver that allowed you to connect more than one mouse to a
computer, and I saw a wonderful opportunity to lower the cost of what we were already doing in
collaborative work with work on PCs at the time, so what we do at the beginning was putting the
software that we already developed for doing small group collaborative learning with kids in one
computer and three mouse. The idea basically was that these kids could work together inside the
classroom and really transform the classroom experience in such a way that the kids are the first actors
in the classroom, those that really are working and the teacher is the mediator for the kids that need it.
What we saw is that for these types of activities the kids really collaborate, interact and coordinate their
work. What we lost from what we have done by having the PCs all wirelessly interconnected is the eye
contact because kids were looking to the screen and they were not looking at each other as they were
doing before. However, for the small kids they gained a lot because as we see here they had a common
space where they were working on before they had their own machines. Now the machines were
simulated by three individual spaces. The kid that had the blue mouse could only work in his own space,
the blue one, the red one in their own space and so on. And there was a common space where the
construction of the solution will stand. Before this construction was done in the virtual world where
everyone had a piece of this, so this focused attention of the kids and improved learning.
What we are doing now in the same direction, we are doing work like this one where you can see the
idea behind it was that you have to order objects. The kids have pieces of this object that had to be
ordered in a descending way. We do the same type of activities now but for language learning. Our
idea was what happens if we add to one machine three phones with the microphones instead of having
the individual teaching learning of languages, we have collaborative learning of languages. And the idea
behind here is the following. Each kid you saw in the film has a set of objects. In this case the yellow
one for which is a party, the red one is a birthday and I have to combine and synchronize with the
numbers so to build the correct phrase. But instead of clicking to the objects, what they do is they have
to speak. So for example, the yellow one it touches the button on the keyboard so the system says your
turn. You have to talk and he says day. And if the system recognizes that day was spoken adequately, it
is accepted. Afterwards this guy says I will now because say are, and he says are. However, it is not
spoken adequately and the system says did you mean are? What is important is feedback is not only
heard by the red boy, but those with the other two, so the other two heard how the red boy said are
and what the feedback was, so there is all a collaboration in the pronunciation between the guys, so
they are collaborating not only how to construct the words but also they are collaborating in how to
really speak the different words.
What we found out which is very interesting, here is a photograph. You see the three kids looking to the
screen and working together and here you have the collaborative work and here you have the individual
work. What we saw here is that the differences between the different groups, this is a collaborative
one, versus the control group which was a teacher with no technology. Here is the collaborative one
where the both with technology one collaborative and the other indeed one and this is individual with
the teacher. And note that the significant differences were mainly in listening because there was a
difference between using and not using technology compared with control and on the other side there
was a difference between the collaborative with technology and without, use of technology and without
technology, so we saw that there was an improvement because the collaboration really allowed the kids
to pronounce better the words. So they learn to pronounce better the words. So there was a real
improvement on working collaboratively in this one to three environment. I think I have again the
wrong presentation. I am sorry but I have again the wrong presentation as before.
>>: Something about that presentation you really like.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: Yeah. Let me go again. It is the same problem I had before, exactly the same.
That cannot be. I am sorry about that. Okay, let's continue.
>>: The other one.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: We ask ourselves how can we introduce games into this type of environment?
And we have done a lot of work in games, but the most interesting one is the usage of first-person
shooting in this type of environment. How can you use such a terrible game as Doom for teaching kids
inside a classroom? What we did here is the kids have to order numbers. And what they do they have
to move in a maze and find the numbers that they are assigned to, and then they have to capture or kill
or whatever, let's say capture the numbers once they know the corresponding sequence. So for
example, you have 23, here you have 19, and here you have 5. So each kid owns a number and the kids
have to capture the numbers in the correct sequence, so it is the same idea as before, but instead of just
being sequencing numbers, we have the idea of first-person shooting where the kids have to find the
numbers and then select the corresponding numbers. We just made the usability analysis of this game
and we haven't done the experimental work yet but we will begin this in late March. The school year
starts in March in Chile. These are the photographs when we did the first usability analysis.
Then we said how can we teach science in such an environment? And what we did was Coulomb Law
which is what you have here and addition of forces. What you have here is the three kids. This is the
first one, the second one and the third one and here you have electric charges where they can select if it
is, how much is positive or how much is negative their charge is. And the aim is to move this electric
charge considering their position which they can move because, even their positions and move these
charges towards this portal. The problem is that they have asteroids here and they have to take care
that the charge does not collide with the corresponding asteroid. So what you do here basically is you
play with your position and the amount of charge so playing with the different forces until you really
move this asteroid here. There are different difficulty levels so it starts very simple and can get very,
very complex and we did a comparison study to see how important it was for immersion in such a game.
Here it is important to notice that the Patagonia rules are intrinsic to the game rules because the game
rules are basic Coulombs Laws, so if you really understand Coulombs Laws, you can solve the problem,
so to really make this work you have to understand Coulombs Laws.
Here you have to same rules but now you have a narrative. You have a story. You have an environment
where this occurs. We want to understand how important the immersion aspect was in such a game.
Here at the movie where you see these boys working on this game. You have two groups here, three--
oh, I am sorry. I shouldn't do that. Sorry about that. There it is. So you see how concentrated they are
when they are playing. And they are really collaborating.
>>: At least they had fun.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: They had fun. And what is interesting is that there were 30 kids and if I am not
wrong, three of them independently asked us where they could download these games. And the game
was Coulombs Law so that the gaming rules were Coulombs Law and they really enjoyed it very much.
So the numbers we got were the following. What is interesting is that we have the game where you
have this virtual word in the narrative and the non-fantasy game and there was no statistical difference
between both numbers and there was no difference between boys and girls at the end. So what we saw
is that if the rules of the game are real Patagonia rules and you can build the game with your Patagonia
rules you don't need really a fantasy behind it, because the game really merges with pedagogy. It's not
so easy to bring up such a game. The trick is how can you build such types of games. Yes, that is a game
that we have to handle.
>>: Okay, cool. Was there a baseline condition where they didn't play the game at all and they just did
conventional study?
>> Miguel Nussbaum: No we just compare in this case both of them. No, the idea was really to, we
didn't have a control group there. There are the phones which I already said. Then we moved to 1 to
10. In 1 to 10 it gets a little more complicated because now you need a projector, you need the
computer and you need the mouse, the mice and the set and you need also perhaps our experience and
that is a hint that if you're going to do things like that I recommend that D-Link. The D-Link hub is for us
the most reliable hub. If you're going to have 40 something mice, you need very reliable hubs. Because
it is very cumbersome to find out where your problems are and the D-Link is very, very reliable. On the
other side you also have to do it in such a way that you are sure that your games are not going to
disconnect because you are going to have trouble in the middle, because the kids are going to move and
the cables are going to disconnect. So you have to have him wired in a very intelligent way.
Here is the one to 10 and the idea here is that the kids really collaborate using them, and with the virtual
world. Let me go here and with the virtual world. So this is really important. That is a collaboration
between the kids and the virtual world. And the idea behind was to bring World of Warcraft into the
classroom. That was really our motivation. World of Warcraft was four years ago a big, big, big issue; It
is not today as it was four years ago, but we started what is really World of Warcraft? World of Warcraft
was first a game where hundreds of thousands interactive and work together, collaborated together and
we said we don't really need such massive participation. We only want only the kids of the classroom to
participate. We wanted multiplayer. We wanted collaborative and we definitely don't want it online.
We want it to happen in the same place located people.
So instead of having a passive multiplayer online game, we transformed it into a classroom multi-player
essential game. And what we did we first did a game for [inaudible], no one speaks Spanish, for a
[inaudible] for they, I am so tired. [inaudible] animals that only eats vegetables?
>>: Herbivores.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: The herbivores eat vegetables; the carnivores eat herbivores and you have to be
an equilibrium in the system. What is the name of this, the food chain? The food chain, the biggest
problem we have is that we started with the food chain because it was, because we did this in XNA and
it it's a big, big project with a lot of quests where each quest was a particular objective. The first system
took us a year and the second system another year, but the problem is that the food chain is taut only in
90 minutes in sixth grade and you don't see it much more, so you make a huge effort for 90 minutes and
the teacher has to learn how to use something for 90 minutes, so you have to think twice what kind of
software you were going to do when you know how much they are going to use it in school. That was
our first learning. The second learning was that making such a game is really not easy and there were
rules that came through from our experience when we developed this game. We did this with Jan Plass
of NYU. And it is published in computer education so I am not going through this but if somebody
wants, just send an e-mail and I will send you the paper because there are really good guys about how
they develop such a game.
Together with that game we did the electric charges game. This is the first version of electric charges
game where you had nine kids working together, but really they were in groups of three, so you have
the group of reds. That is two of them; I don't see the third one. The greens, this is one, two and this is
the third one and the blue ones. This is one two and three. So they had to move between them there
were charges so to move to different charges. Each one has charges. There is a green, the red charge
and the blue charge. So they were really three groups sharing one big screen. And what we discovered
was that it was much more efficient to have the groups each with their own small screen than sharing
this big screen. So if you're going to have a big screen use it for doing really a work where all of them
are collaborating as the one that we did with this classroom to play an essential game.
Then we moved to 1 to 49. In 1 to 49 things get much more complicated. You have an empty room with
the mouse already preset. Our experience is that the setup is so high that it is very decidable to have a
classroom which is a lab for the one most per child, because setting this up is a huge problem. It would
be nice and we were talking with Donald how to get rid of the mice and with cameras it could be a good
idea to follow. This work was done in India. You were at one of the schools; you went there, yeah? This
was done in one of the schools in India. This is photograph Santiago. This is a photograph and Costa
Rica where we were in late November early December. This is Brazil where we were in September and
this is in India; you might recognize these children. [inaudible] gave us a school and we were there a
couple of times, if I am not wrong, doing some work with these kids.
The things we did and this is a film shot in India where you see that each child is working at their own
pace with their own nano window. What do we do in this nano window? In this nano window basically
we allow each kid to work at their own pace. That means that you have an intelligent tutoring system, a
rule-based system that allows the kids to work interactively with the system and advance at their own
needs. And since the system has persistence, once the lesson is finished the system saves the state so
that the next lesson the child continues where he was. Here you have the feedback for the teacher
where the teacher knows where the different kids are and the feedback that each child receives is
following. He did it right; he did wrong. He finished one of the rules. This kid is sleeping, that means
that at least for a minute he hasn't done anything and this kid is in deep sleep, which means for the last
3 minutes he hasn't done anything, so that the teacher knows where he should address his attention.
On the other side if the teacher doesn't know the name of the kid, he just clicks here and the name of
the kid pops up.
What we did is we compared the one mouse per child with a system where we used exactly the same
engine, but we used an interface for a net book and compared the net book with the 1 mouse per child
and we also did it with paper and pencil in 15 sessions for 45 minutes once a week. And the results are
very interesting. What you see here is the percentage of students that achieved a given level, so you see
for example, that the kids that worked with paper did much more exercises then the kids that were
working with the net book or their interpersonal computer, the one mouse per child. And why is this?
Because these kids cannot advance at their own pace; these kids advanced at the pace of the feedback
which means that if the system doesn't allow us to continue to the next exercise if they have not
achieved really that level. Whereas these kids are working with paper and pencil and the problem with
paper and pencil is that you decide how good you are. There should be a teacher that supervises it.
>>: [inaudible] performance, this is just how many exercises they got through?
>> Miguel Nussbaum: It is just how many exercises they got. And we were a little afraid because we
saw that these kids were doing much faster and we thought that they were learning much faster,
however, the learning was not so. Even the groups that were formed randomly, the paper and pencil
had a percentage much higher but the improvement was much, much lower in the three groups and
what is interesting is that the interpersonal computer and the net book were similar. They were
significant differences here. What happens here is that we see that for these kids there was no real
difference. Now what I am trying to do now, for me the next step is to show not in small-scale but in a
big scale I would say 100 schools to show that this type of thing really makes a difference, because it is
not only about technology as I am going to show you later, it is about also how you transfer this
technology. So what we need now is independent assessment and see really how you can make this
work in hundred schools, and how much do they learn compared with a randomized experiment in a
real environment. It is now just one school or five schools, where you really have to go much bigger
number of schools.
We have done this for arithmetic and for fractions. Here you have for example a representation which is
number and have to construct a number, and I didn't mention what is very important, we didn't realize
until last year that what is really very important here is that the children construct the answer. It is not
a multiple-choice question, but they really have to construct it. They cannot guess it. So there is no way
of guessing. They really have to learn what the correct answer is until they really get it. And it is red,
red, red and in comes the teacher and explains to them and they advance when they really get the
point. So you have a number equation and a number solution or a graphic representation, a graphic
solution, graphic representation, number solution or you can even have words. So you see that even in
such a small screen you can get a lot of different ways of doing things. For example, [inaudible] sitting in
the back and I don't have problems in reading this. And what we have seen is the focus of the attention
of the kids is really perfect. You can see especially in the photograph here of Costa Rica, look that the
kids are looking to different spaces in the screen, because each of them are looking at their own box.
But they are really focused their attention to their own screen. Look how she is counting.
And the last thing which we are just now finishing is we are doing decimals so you have now for example
decimal representation. You can also have graphics, for example here which is the green or the jail so
here appears bigger, equal or less, so in this way what we have achieved that we have math for first to
sixth grade. I wouldn't use these for first graders. I would start it with second graders because I am not
sure if first grades are really mature for such a system. Last year we got a grant from Microsoft and
Excel where we introduced games and the games we did I would say are not as mature as I would say
this is for really doing a big scale. I think we have to do a second iteration there. We are doing a second
iteration. These were more entertainment games and really games where we have a more rules related
to what kids have to do. Here for example they are building a bridge. Here they have to collect
chickens, collect fishes or they have to how you say darts. The problem here, more than the games is
they are multiple-choice types of problems. We discovered that the kids began to guess. Here we saw
that the real importance of constructing the answer. So now we are doing a second generation where
we have different types of games and the kids have to construct a solution. I am going to test this this
year. Here you see how it looks like. There is a real photograph where you have to, all of the kids
playing the different games.
And we saw with this type of infrastructure you can have a super clicker, which we named the
augmented clicker. Augmented clicker does in the clicker, you have a question and you have
alternatives, but instead that the answer corresponds to the whole classroom how you can know exactly
what each kid did. So in this case you know that this kid was wrong; this kid was right and you can also
have a whole complete view of the whole classroom how they are doing. So I would say this is
synchronous interactive system with much more detailed information than a regular clicker with a very
simple infrastructure, just one mouse per child. We have the super, super clicker which is a synchronous
clicker; because this is a synchronous because all of the children have to work at the same pace and here
is an asynchronous one where each child works at its own pace. What we give them is a guide, two
guides of paper sheets. In one of the guides you have the questions and in the other guide you have the
feedback. So since the kids have to work at their own pace, we have two states. First the kid has to look
to the question. So they answer. He looks to basically to the question with the corresponding answer
so he has to answer the question, and here he has to first confirm that he is effectively in question
number one. So he is in question number one and we are saying that the first letter of the first word
starts with ee so he can choose different ones and, for example, this is the first one and ee or do or qu
so he can select one and if he is not right the system will say hey, take care. This is not the right
question. Look to your right question. So we are sure that he is in question number one. So once he
confirms that he is in question number one he has to respond. When he responds and now he is
confirmed and then he goes to response and when he responds he can be right or wrong. And if he is
wrong we give him feedback and we send him to the corresponding feedback and in the feedback he
also has to confirm, for example, where his feedback, feedback 53, he has to confirm that it starts with
the given word so that we know that he is reading the corresponding feedback. What is very interesting
is that what we saw is that the kids, this is the time that the kids took for questions, this is the questions
and this is the answers, and this is the time that the kids took for the feedback. Look. The curves begin
to separate after 6 seconds and what we saw is if the two kids took more than 6 seconds in the
feedback, 71% of the answers were correct. But if they took less than 6 seconds 37% of the answers
were correct. That means that the kids that really read the feedback learned more than the other ones
and the feedback really helped the kids to learn more.
Then we said how can we collaborate in a big, big classroom? Because we started with collaboration
and we are moving in that direction, but we really wanted a collaborative classroom. How do we get a
collaborative classroom? So what we did here. You don't have 49 kids here; you have 20 kids. Here you
have a double entry table where you have in this case the parts of the phrase and here you have the
different letters and each kid belongs a letter. For example, the kid, this is green drop of water is cheap.
So where is he belongs--he owns cheap. He belongs this. So look, he belongs this. This should be an
adjective that starts with DEF. Is this right? No. This is not right because it doesn't start with DEF; it
starts with C. But here somebody that is telling him I want to exchange your word with mine which is
invention. So this guy wants to exchange this word with this other word. However cheap is not a
preposition, so if they do the exchange it would be wrong. If they make the exchange and it is wrong,
they lose two points. If they make the exchange and it is right, they went two points and you see it
here. Kids have negative numbers and kids have positive numbers.
So they cannot make changes if they have both to be sure and both have to agree. If both agree and
they make the exchange, and here for example, he agreed, and now if he accepts and then they would
lose the points. And what we saw here is that the kids that got these languages, the silent collaboration,
why silent collaboration? Because look we have 20 kids here and another 20 kids here. These are
looking to this projector and the other one looking to the other projector. And the kids have to
collaborate with peers which are not side-by-side. What happened is that they began to shout. See
how he is shouting. He is shouting to somebody hey, I need your word. Please give me your word. So
this was a little loud. So we said how can we do something different which is not as loud as that. And
this is the newest work that we have done. I don't know if you know Tonda Yong [phonetic], do you
know Tonda Yong? He is a researcher from Poland. He sent me one of his master's students and one of
his PhD students and what we did is the following. Now you have the whole class. You divide the
screen by four. So in this case you can have 9 kids or up to 10 kids in one of these squares. So this is
one group. This is another group, and so on. And the teacher supervises all of the groups. What they
have to do is they have to construct a triangle with two sides that are the same.
So initially the points are random and each kid belongs a point, a vertex. And what they have here is a
polygon which is not a triangle, so the teacher says you have to build a triangle. How do you build a
triangle? The kids the first time have to find out that they have to collapse the vertices until they reach
three vertices and then they have a triangle. And the feedback, the immediate feedback is this face.
This face is not happy and this face is extremely happy and it finishes and says okay. So the face begins
to move. You see how the face is beginning to move at this time that it is getting closer and closer to
the answer. So what they are doing is they are constructing collaboratively and really collaboratively
because each kid is accountable for one of the vertexes and what one kid does interferes, not interferes,
relates to the work of all of the group. So what we saw is things like, for example, that this kid says hey,
you have to move and if he doesn't move. He goes here comes and begins to do something like this
over this thing and says come here, come here, come here. So the kids have begun to help each other in
a silent way. And we really saw that here that shouting, there was some shouting, but much, much less
than the other. Now I have a Master student who we want to see how we can do this type of work but
not only for geometry where it is explicit that you can do things like that, but now for language and also
for math.
And the last topic is okay we have done so much software, Patagonia software, however, teachers don't
use this software. When we're there, they use it, but the day we leave the school and left them alone,
they stopped using it. And we [inaudible] and [inaudible] were working something that now we are
talking about orchestration. And the idea of orchestration comes from the following. There is a deep
problem behind. With the multi-mouse we saw this explicitly not in one classroom, not in one city. We
saw this in Argentina, in Brazil and Costa Rica and in Chile. What happens is that we are in fourth grade
for example, and the teacher has to teach a given subject because the curriculum says he has to teach a
subject. However, if you look to the kids and you can see exactly where the kids are, you will see that in
one classroom you have kids that still don't know how to add numbers with four digits. You see kids
that don't know how to subtract numbers. Kids that are beginning to multiply, some kids now know
how to divide and very few kids are close to where the teacher really is. But the system don't care
because the teacher has to follow the curriculum. So the teacher is teaching to almost nobody. He is
teaching what he has to teach and he really doesn't care, or he cannot really follow the pace of the
other children. So what we say is that we have to support these children while you also lecture. So you
have to orchestrate the classroom in such a way that some time you give it for the kids to come closer to
your needs and while you teach this you have to complement what you are teaching with what you
know your kids are. So orchestration is to give the teacher a general strategy of how you are going to
follow the curriculum, how you are going to script each of the classrooms and how you are going to
integrate conventional literary sources. This is of course just a guide for the teacher and the teacher will
see how he is going to use it. However, you really structure the classroom in such a way that the
teacher has an idea on how to improve what he is doing using technology.
The way we orchestrate the lecture is the following way. We address the three different moments of
the class, opening phase, instructional phase, closing phase and activities we give them are first
indication about how to organize the students, what type of questions have to be asked of the students
and the answers he can expect and how to really react to these answers. What activities he should do
and how really the children should do these activities, how to integrate digital and non-digital resources
and how to do formative assessment every moment so to know the state of the kids, and finally what is
very important how to schedule all of this so that the time assigned to each activity is respected so that
he can really do all of this and the resources that we give him we don't, we not only give him the
technology, we also give him paper guides, interactive guides for PowerPoint presentations with or
without audiovisual support and individual or work with or without technological support, participatory
interactive activities. How work what we're doing now, we started just this, we are going to start it now.
We have the activities for the one mouse per child for the net book and now we also have it for the web,
and the idea is that the kids can do homework and that this homework is synchronized with what they
do at the classroom, so the system saves the state and the system automatically gives them homework
with some rules behind so they can advance much faster with his homework. So that's it. That is what I
have done in the last couple of years.
[applause].
>> Donald Brinkman: So we have a few people here in the room. I suspect a lot of us are remote and I
don't know how to get your questions, but I am going to open up a little bit of Q&A because we have
some time here, so anyone that wants to ask some questions, and Miguel.
>>: I have a question about that when I'm looking at the conditions of the using like the, for the math
problems, the combined multi-mouse situation versus the net book versus the paper and pencil and we
saw marked improvement between the electronic versions and the paper one and part of your
observation was that the students just kind of go along at their own pace, but they wouldn't really be
self checking. So I wonder is there anything that you could do even with the paper though to make it a
little bit more evaluated so like, you know, if like maybe after they finish it they have to turn it over and
look at the answer.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: Yes, we did this. The paper guide was made in such a way that they had like 10 or
20 exercises and then came automatically the answer guide. So they had to look back and see what
were wrong. But the problem was they looked and it was wrong and it was wrong and they go forward.
It was wrong. Yeah, so they didn't do it again. So the point here is that the teacher should be much
more active. So the teacher should go to the guy and say hey, you have so many wrong; you should do
all of these again. But the kid would say but I don't have a place where to do it again, yeah. But on the
other side once it's electronic, if it is wrong, it is wrong and you cannot go further until you get it.
>>: And the problems that the kids, the different kids they were different enough so that they couldn't
copy.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: No, there wasn't a copy because the teacher looks hey you are copying. You
shouldn't be copying. That is something the teachers know. They shouldn't be copying. No, that was
not the problem. The problem was that when the feedback came the kids knew that it was wrong.
Okay it's wrong. But what I do if it's wrong? And said to the teacher, please because we saw that
problem and you tell them when they wrong tell them please do it again. And the teacher said yes, do it
again, but that was not really mandatory.
>> Donald Brinkman: Anyone else?
>>: Did you ask the teachers why they don't use the games after you leave?
>> Donald Brinkman: And Miguel, can you repeat the question?
>> Miguel Nussbaum: Yes, if we asked the teachers why they are not using technology once we leave. I
would say one of the problems was the set up, definitely was the set up. And the second problem was
the guidance. That is why we are so concerned about the guidance, because when we were there we
didn't go all the weeks. We went every two weeks normally in this project, the last one. But we tell
them what to do and after we leave, there was no guidance, so they felt very lonely and I would say they
are not confident enough with the technology. They feel that what happens if they are not here, who
can help me, so if I don't use it nothing will happen. So better, it is less cumbersome for me not using it.
And that is why I think that if we structure everything, it would really help them to show them the way
what to do what type of question and everything is not, it is really nicely done because it is very
important how you present this information. It cannot be information overload. It is very simple so
they can teach very fast, use all of this, we believe that you can make a difference, and this year we will
have an experiment where we will have teachers with this orchestration and teachers without this
orchestration and see, just let them alone just with orchestration and see what happens. So we really
want to see what happens with a good orchestration, and we are investing a lot of effort into doing a
very good orchestration.
>>: Can you talk a little bit about your [inaudible] to the one mouse [inaudible] I came in late and so I
am not…
>> Miguel Nussbaum: In what sense?
>>: Well, just vision of where you expect this to go in terms of as you mentioned…
>> Miguel Nussbaum: Where to go. I would say two words, the rich world and the poor world. In the
rich world where we are here, and for example, let's say they ask us [inaudible] and in this [inaudible]
they have a very nice new machine which is as big as this one with a projector. It is a computer that has
a small projector that can project something like this surface and with good light. It cost $350. And
each kid with his own mouse, and since this computer you forget it because it is so small you put it over
there on the table with a plain piece of paper and you have this really, really good computer and since
this is also Wi-Fi and the kids know exactly what is going on. So I would say this is, for me this is as good
as we can get with today's technology. I think this is a very nice frame for doing small group
collaboration in the classroom, and I showed you here there are a lot of things that you can do with
small group collaboration with this training with more than one mouse per child is the interpersonal
computer. The [inaudible] need this thing the interpersonal computer because this is one computer for
all of these kids. I would say I like personally think this is more not only affordable, but more versatile
than giving each kid a tablet, because the tablet is more cumbersome. What we saw was they pocket
PCs. They don't really share the information. In the interpersonal computer they really share the
information and you can do almost everything there. Of course the pedagogy assigned is not obvious.
You have to really do good instruction on the side. But you can do a lot of things there as I showed you
in this presentation.
And then here comes the other world, the poor world. In the poor world I would say, I remember when
I came to Ken Tado with the one, two, three. I said this is very nice but it doesn't solve my problem he
told me. We need a solution for 50 kids. You remember when I first received you in Bangalore. And so I
come the next day with the 1 to 49. Here today in computer you need not more than a double core. A
double core with two gigs of memory cost today $350 and then you need a projector, a VGA projector
which costs $350 so you are out $700 and the mouse and perhaps we could do it even with cameras, but
today with mouse, the mouse for 50 kids it is another perhaps another $300 so it's $1000. So it is not
anymore the technical cost of technology. The kids are not going to use it the whole day, so the kids will
use it at most once a day, at most. So a group of kids can share this if they are inside a lot. So if you
make the cost per kid is around one dollar per day, one dollar per kid per year. So it is not anymore the
cost of the machines; it is now how do you introduce something like this in the school and the school
really make good usage of it. So that is the problem now. The problem is not the cost of technology;
the problem is now how do we change what is going on inside the school. Do you agree with me?
>>: I would say there is also the cost of maintenance and support which often ends up being multiples
of the hardware cost.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: But the good thing is it is only one computer.
>>: I agree, so there are some things but otherwise I think, you know, this is certainly the way into
having multiple kids interact with computing.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: And another thing which is good is it's only one computer which the kids are not
really having to touch with computer so the possibility of putting viruses inside is much, much smaller.
>>: What about the factor of kids enjoying learning this way as opposed to learning the traditional way?
Is there a way to measure that? Are they enjoying it from what you see in the classroom?
>> Miguel Nussbaum: I would say more than enjoyment. What really drives me is since 1995 when I
started working with technology in the classroom, I cannot believe that in 2012 now, I said this in 1995;
kids of today are completely passive in the classroom. Because the teacher is the main actor as here I
am the main actor and you are completely passive. And the kids, we are in a generation where the kids
are really very interactive and very graphic. The classroom everything is passive and words, just words,
so we really need to change this classroom to a classroom where the kid is the first person actor and we
need a teacher. I definitely do believe we need a teacher. I always have mentioned the teacher in my
presentations, because the teacher is the mediator. The teacher is the one who knows where to go and
who to help at each moment. I need a teacher that is very active in the classroom and moves in the
classroom to see where he can really act and help those kids, so I see more than being happy inside the
classroom, I would say being engaged in the classroom, engaged in learning. And of course if we can do
it through games, why not? Of course, that is why I am starting to produce games. But the point here is
engagement, that the child is really responsible for his own learning. That is the main point because
today kids are not responsible, nobody makes them accountable, not even, if we go back here how can
the kids be accountable for their learning if he is teaching this and he knows that all of these kids didn't
understand anything of which he explained. However, he has to teach it because the system asks him to
teach that and that happens worldwide.
>>: Do you ever worry about, so one thing I would be concerned, so you imagine the system that was
[inaudible] that you showed 50 kids up in the grid, they are doing stuff and the system realizes this kid is
not doing so well on [inaudible]'s numbers. It goes down to find smaller numbers. He's not doing good
at that. It goes down adding numbers and so on and so forth. Do you worry at all about the
embarrassment that that child may feel because he is kind of out there in front and all of his peers can
see oh, that's that guy. He is not doing as well as the others.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: No, we are not seeing that. We are in urban and rural schools in Chile and Costa
Rica and we really didn't notice that. We were working with small kids, third grade we haven't worked
with older kids. But it hasn't been a problem. No it has not.
>>: [inaudible] their own tasks, they don't…
>> Miguel Nussbaum: I would say if you look to this photograph is so nice. I always think I hope it is not
so far away and it should come soon. This is the perfect picture. Look how they are looking to a small
screen see? Everyone is looking to a different place because everyone is looking to their own screen.
>>: Except for the one in the middle who was counting her fingers [laughter].
>> Miguel Nussbaum: Yes, she needs a little support [laughter]. She is doing support.
>>: So I just want to say one thing on the question of the future vision. This is from the perspective of
MSR and potentially the [inaudible] we talked to Miguel and definitely the idea of using cameras are
Kinect, ceiling mount, is something we can track the children's hands and bring this still a lot less
invasive, input it into a multi-mouse system is really exciting but as you mentioned not here yet.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: But it doesn't look so far.
>>: It's not so far and I think there are a lot of existing work around tracking and this kind of stuff that
can be done with simple machine vision, but in terms of the environment, the platform really, the way
we envision this is as one mouse per child is a platform where you can think of this providing an
ecosystem, trying to build up an ecosystem where a multiplicity of partners could create little apps that
fit inside this one factor, one on top of another that use the same kinds of iconography, a, common
language of iconography plus the control size , so that it is easy for teachers to and students to like just
dive into this. And thinking about adaptive learning on an even larger scale where students can be
working at different levels within the current system, but what if when a student is finished with their
work instead of only one topic that they can actually go to work in another topic, or even when talking
about working with teaching to the top end of the class or to the middle third or however the teacher
decides to strategize. Say they are teaching to the middle third, those students who are ahead of the
curve or who've already finished all their stuff, they are starting to get bored and part of the teacher's
job is to keep them occupied. And you could give them additional assignments or things like that, but
you could also do things like something when you think about games for learning, what if we just give
them games. Not even needing to be educational games, but simply as some kind of a reward where
you can say that they can, those kids can play a little Drop Seven or Farmville or whatever the heck it is
that amuses them, and it keeps them occupied and also acts as sort of an extrinsic motivation and
incentive for the other kids to get finished so they can get some kind of reward.
>> Miguel Nussbaum: So to interrupt, I would say that the secret is this, to find out games where the
rules of the game are intrinsic because they all have got rules. This is the secret. This is a game and
engaging game but Coulomb’s Law. Who could believe that the people to play Coulomb’s Law?
>>: [inaudible], you know, I'm a little bit skeptical about that that claim because if you think about firstperson shooter, it's based on physics but you're not really learning physics by playing the shooter. I
mean even though the mechanism of control is Coulomb’s Law, they are learning if they move this guy
close to this then he moves further away, and if he moves this one towards this other negative one and
it gets closer so they are learning how to control which is fun, and I would agree that they are your using
intuition for how electrical fields are working but [inaudible].
>> Miguel Nussbaum: Yeah it's not everything there. It is not everything there of course. That's why I
said you have to integrate. It's not only the [inaudible]. I said it. You have to have other resources too.
I mentioned that at the end.
>> Donald Brinkman: And I think there are other ways that we can wrap this. We talk a lot about
framing things, wrapping games around core educational experiences, but you can almost imagine
wrapping an education around a core game experience with this. For example, if you have maybe 20
students who have their little one mouse per child context around a shared window where they are
catching fish or building a castle or engaging some cooperative play, where every time they complete
one of their little drill assignments, it's filling in this picture or filling in pictures of the puzzle, so you
create that sort of magic circle of gaming around something that you don't have to worry about.
Because I agree with you; transfer is a huge question and traditional entertainment, it is the problem.
We just have them work and we put the game in a separate context so that the two don't… Why do we
have to blend them together all the time? Anyhow. Thank you everybody for coming out and I hope
that this was entertaining and enlightening just in terms of our next steps, you know, we are looking
forward to try to help Miguel to scale this thing out. We want to go to 100 schools in Costa Rica next
year, that is at least a near-term goals so if is there is anyone out there watching this if you think you can
help, let us know. And thanks a lot.
[applause].