Author: H

2022 Year in Review
I’ve been dreading writing this blog. I knew it was coming. Last years’ Bests and Worsts of 2021 was one of my more popular articles. But this year, I’ve been filled with dread.

I’ve literally done the trick where I cleaned the toilet RATHER than write and get this blog published.

But time left in 2022 is very short and regardless of the fact that I’m SURE I’m going to hurt some folks’ feelings, it’s time to leave the 2022 cards on the table and walk away from the year.

So as I write this, I feel like Rocky Balboa sitting in the corner after a punishing round. I’m bleeding. I’m panting. And I can’t believe what just happened. But I know the next round is coming.

As per my tradition, I’m going to let a hell of lot more fly here on my blog than it the corresponding LinkedIn edition, if I do one there at all. [Editing note: I’ve decided NOT to post this to LinkedIn] But let’s get into it.

2022 – The Year of Silencing Women

Dictionary.com selected “woman” as the word of the year based on the phenomena of the definition changing. I’ve got many problems with THAT but still, I agree that women, globally, took a beating in 2022.

The year started with me already 2 months into fighting to organize a live, first-of-its-kind panel for the TC-ILE organization. In November 2021, a bunch of charter members volunteered towards an event for Education Week in April 2022. But right after that volunteering, someone needed to take lead.

Not a single volunteer stepped forward to lead the event: organizing, pulling together what the panel would cover, social media assets (and later, writing up and publishing the video and summary).

So as the first 4 months of 2022 passed by, I had *reluctantly* stepped forward to volunteer to lead.

Why?

Well, first, despite what some falsely believe, there is such a thing as a “born leader”, meaning someone who steps up to take a lead in a act of servant hood.

Second, I was familiar with nearly everyone on the panel.

But what I didn’t expect (and I probably should have) was that I would go through a total of 6 months of agony with this panel with:
- unanswered emails
- refusals to give information
- constant “I’m holier than thou” attitudes about the entire event.
Yet, once the event was upon us, lo and behold! Suddenly, they are very happy and shooting out social media (that I created) like madmen.

But it never escaped me once—- and here I get to the core of the issue —that by giving up my space on the panel as a speaker, I gave up my voice. Remember, no one else would become the moderator.

To be more specific, I FELT SILENCED.

May 2022

I was approached to serve on a panel for the WebXR Education Summit. Given how beat up I felt from the April event, I was relieved to think “Now, this time I’ll get a chance to speak!” I was promised that instructional design would be part of the topic. Yay! That would be great, since the last Education Summit’s instructional design session stank.

June 24, 2022

Roe v. Wade decision overturned by the Supreme Court. It rocked the planet. Regardless of anyone’s feelings about abortion, the faith that the US had in our Supreme Court justices was rocked because several of them went back on their word. These are LEGAL EXPERTS, people. If we had trusted that the Supreme Court was where final consideration and justice live, no more.

But I nearly wanted to weep for the world that my grand niece will grow up into. A world where her body will not be her own to control.

I don’t think we’ve yet lived out the consequences from this turning point.

Fast forward to July 2022.

Heather, we need to ask you to serve as the Moderator for your Education Summit session.

Here we go again. I FELT SILENCED.

I carried on and really did a good job since that moment during the day, the conference was sorta melting down behind the scenes and I just carried on as if conversations with professionals is something I do all the time. (’cause, I do.)

September 2022

An opportunity came up to talk about the metaverse at an entrepreneurial conference and I was available and local (both, relatively speaking. Actually renting a car and doing the drive for two days was a hassle, but I digress). I want to put the best face on this because I am a guest.

Now I did ask about the representation of women at this conference. I was told “with your yes, it will be 41%.” Not too bad and being there, I can say that I saw plenty of women. Business women, but women.

But in the panel was I on, there were 2 men and 2 women. The other woman was asked to moderate.

So…she lost her voice.

I actually talked with her about how that made her feel and if there was anything she and I could do together to mitigate that. She fed me the standard line of “Oh but as Moderator, I can control what questions are asked.”

Uh. OK. But truly, that’s NOT the same as answering those questions. I mean, with answers, I can swing a crowd around in any direction, I have influence. Her answer was like claiming that being wait staff at a restaurant is as good as eating there as a guest. It’s really not. It hurts me when I see women eating the shit they’ve been shoveled.

At least I’ll claim that 3rd times a charm because I was not demoted myself to Moderator.

But after all was said and done, I noticed how LITTLE people with visible disabilities were at this conference. That means that those with invisible disabilities were keeping them invisible. I remarked about that and got some weird “let me wrap my arms around you in a hug” statements about how I had rose above my disability (that I only alluded to, I did not disclose) by going outside my shell to serve on the panel.

They didn’t mean it poorly.

But I steamed in anger. STEAMED.

Blind people cannot just apply themselves harder to see.

Deaf people cannot just come out of their shell to hear.

Rinse and repeat: mobility and cognitive issues.

The blatant lack of respect for the population that needs accessible options is staggering.

Bests

OK, where are the bright spots, if there are any?

Working on launching a virtual campus for a tech-forward college was a very good exercise. I learned a great deal and my favorite part (hands-down!) was the students. We only had a few “groupie” students that stuck in with the beta test, but they gave me, personally, GREAT feedback as to what they wanted, liked, and enjoyed. Kudos to those students! I definitely have plans to use their feedback to make better future experiences.

The Mozilla Hubs community welcomed me as a semi-regular visitor. That was nice. Even though they are befuddled why I visit when I’m not a developer.

Also, warm regards for the panelists with me for the Education Summit. I truly believe that we worked well together, all had very valuable contributions to make, and it is a shame we only had 30 minutes to chat. All of them are fabulous in their respective careers. They get a big approval from me!

The IEEE 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Reality (ICIR 2022) turned out to be a small gem. I was a reviewer and attendee (thanks to the free admission for being a reviewer….THANK YOU!!). Sessions covered a nice wide variety of topics and yet it felt like the presenters were A. nice people and B. felt connected to the theme of “connecting XR to reality”. After some bitterness with other conferences (ahem, yes, by now I’m starting to officially say that I am not associated nor do I support the iLRN organization or conference), it was nice to work with a small but heartfelt group of researchers. This would be a little conference to keep your eyes on.

Ending the year

I continue to fight the good fight against truly poor statements about how VR/XR can be used in learning.

My weeks of work on analyzing The Bible Project (oops, they are now known as BibleProject) courses has led to me being part of their UX test group. I get to see some early designs and give feedback. And that reminds me, I’m behind on 2 reviews that are due today.

Off to 2023!
December 30, 2022
THIS DAY IN CHEMISTRY HISTORY. Or why I do not start meetings on time.
I’ve come to the point in my life where I’ve realized I’m rarely on time. And I’m OK with that. Said another way, I’m often late and I don’t care.

So…let me explain myself, because I know I’m already driving Type As nuts. I’ve had a lot of time to be on time and be late and a lot of time to think about why I’m very frequently late. As an example, I was once a regular attendee of an exercise class but I turned into the person that was always walking in the door just as the class was already starting. At one point, I was a helper-instructor and I’d still be late.

Why?

I thought about it at the time and the reason that just came to me was “Because I don’t respect the instructor enough to be one time.”

And that was the truth. I just didn’t care THAT MUCH about the instructor to be on time.

Now, now, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are plenty of folks that would say these kinds of things:

1. Oh, so you disrespect people, aye? You must be pleasant to work with.

2. Being late is being rude.

3. Being late means you miss important stuff. And no, we’re not going to update you on what happened when you weren’t here.

It’s that last one– the punishment one- that intrigues me but also, it’s SO FAR BACK in the rear view mirror, I can’t even see it.

You see, I look at this issue from the perspective of:

A. I was a student (this is relevant)

B. I was a college instructor

C. I’ve done presentations (gone places, done stuff).

And it was pretty shaping the day that I was LATE FOR CLASS in college because of a wicked bad winter snow storm. I barely made it in even remotely on time for my Chem 102 course. I remember at one point having some reason to explain to the prof why I was late (the roads, the snow, it was very slippery) and he quipped back about the advantage of carrying around a bag of cat litter in the trunk. You know, I did do that later in life!

But this same prof always started his classes the same way:

THIS DAY IN CHEMISTRY HISTORY

It was such a nice way to ease into the mental material. It was never on the exam (I’m looking at you, punishers) and you could miss it and live your life. It was also interesting– even for listening as he did organizational cartwheels to connect what happened on this day (any given Monday, Wednesday, or Friday) with something that we learned– not in ALL chemistry, which would have been easy– but in JUST Chemistry 102 (acids/bases, types of chemicals). Yes I had to look that up, b/c I’ve forgotten whats in 101 versus 102.

So the day I was late with the snow and the car, the THIS DAY IN CHEMISTRY HISTORY saved me.

When I became a boss for the first time and organized the agenda for weekly team meetings, we had a THIS DAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY thing at the beginning so that people could be late.

I loved that tip. Create meetings so that people can be late.

(Bonus points if you also create meetings so that people can leave early. Hey, hey!)

But once I became an instructor, I would also EASE IN to instruction for each online webinar. I never started my content on the dot (exactly on time). Why? Because students *could* always be late.

I’d remember my own Type A self in college. She was late, but it was not her fault. So…I guess there are situation where a person can be late and it is NOT their fault.

Said another way, if there is a chance that a person could be late and it is not their fault, why haul out the punishment wagon?

— Pause to think about that —

So I don’t go down for punishing folks that are late for my meetings or my presentations. I figure, life sucks enough. I don’t need to be going to make it more difficult for folks.

But I also want to point out that I was NEVER late for my own teaching lessons (my webinars) and I’d go out of my way to be early. I actually taught new online faculty that they should engage in what I called the Prechat Chat. That is, use an open mic and a chat pod to encourage engagement and ‘warm up’ the audience. For example:
- make sure that you can be heard.
- Ask everyone a question that their own unique answer is correct.
- Run an informal contest for who has the most…darkest night, coldest temperature, hottest temperature, whatever. Be careful with this one, tho. REFRAIN from judging what a person thinks of weather conditions. It’s really not fair (and is discriminatory) because people often live in places that they did NOT decide to live (but are there for reasons like a job, or family, or cost, or whatever) so judging the weather that a person has is like judging the person’s decisions. Just. Don’t. If someone says that Miami at 56 degree is hell, let them have it. Even better. Agree. (It really is, cold, sticky, ugh.)
So there are folks that I know that I’ve been late to meetings with them. I’ll say it point blank. I just don’t care that much about you. I’m not uncaring about our relationship. Actually, I’ll probably do some fall-all-over-myself excuses about how it was not my fault.

But the truth is, I just give very little value to being on time. If I’m teaching you, I’m there. I’m there early.

If not, I’ll get there when I get there. After all, a wizard arrives precisely when she means to.
December 27, 2022
Instructional Design Interview Nightmares

Photo by Jose Losada on Unsplash

I was walked to a windowed room that had a view out to the gently rolling green treed slopes of the campus. The ivy on the brick buildings was dying down in the November chill. Three panelists sat opposite me, with their backs to the view and the interview began.

I was interviewing for an educational technologist-type position at an Ivy League university. Even though I had a relative that worked there, our last names were different and I had done the application and interview prep entirely on my own. I didn’t want to get this position through any nepotism.

As per usual in the course of human events, you can prepare for one set of circumstances (standing on my own, separate from my relative in the hiring process) and then you experience another set of circumstances.

Sidebar: I remember when I took care of a cohort of student teachers-to-be and one of them was in Tennessee (READ BIBLE BELT) and was a youth pastor becoming a Biology teacher. He shared with our cohort group that he was frightened about teaching evolution to kids that he was simultaneously counseling as a youth pastor. Then the first day of student teaching arrived.

It went OK, according to the student teacher.

But it was what happened at the end of the day that threw him.

The football coach came to his classroom after all the kids had left. The coach put his arm around the student teacher and said to him that he ‘would pass every one of the football players in his classes’.

We all sat stunned for a moment and then started sputtering “That’s not right!” and “He can’t do that!” and “That’s intimidation!”

The student teacher immediately reported the conversation to HIS teacher lead and we were informed that the situation was “taken care of.”

Whew. We laughed. We prepared for an evolution-creation debate and instead received football intimidation. See the detail of Tennessee meant something.

It’s classic that a teacher prepares for a big lesson. And then something breaks.

Surviving events like this is what makes you a good teacher. Experience. Not lessons.

(more…)

December 10, 2022
The Post-Writing Era of Online Education Commenceth!
Photo by Waypixel on Unsplash

This article, The College Essay Is Dead (December 6, 2022), circled around both my close instructional designer friends and our huge instructional designer Facebook group and it is garnering a lot of attention.

One overheard comment was that instructional designers will be out of job as AI can now write lesson plans aligned to learning objectives.

I’ll just sit over here eating popcorn if you think that instructional designers ONLY write lesson plans.

You can tell things get hot when I need to start writing my rebuttal before I’ve even finished reading the article! How very un-academic of me! Ha! That means that I’m writing from real life experience. Said another way, you will not find this in the manual.

One of my friends quipped that everything old is new again.

Said another way, here we go on an another design cycle.

Live long enough and the world will start to move in cycles, patterns. You see things new that you’ve seen before. It’s like the return of an old friend.

Some things you live long enough to see:
- The youth, with their energy, are going to do it right this time!
- The old, sit quietly with their eyes illuminated with the light of past glories won and lost.
- Children don’t have a clue.
The introduction of a new technology – in this case – AI writing papers for learners – and you see the same reactions.

History of writing in online education

No no, better title

The History of Online Education

OK, so I don’t have references in this section, but I’d like you to take my word for it, because I did get a degree in this. 😏 That is, a pre-AI degree.

So the article’s title is about the college essay, but really this issue impacts nearly every form of online education because online education’s history draws directly from writing-based learning.

Current online education has plentiful examples from every possible degree and discipline where it is being offered, at least in part, online and the online parts have written assessments. (The few exceptions might be things like dance where video-taped dancers have to be evaluated or perhaps teaching and nursing certifications where a learner MUST touch or impact another person as part of the learning and assessment process.) But in many, many, many, MAAANNNYYY other subjects, they can be taught online. Hence, the writing component. It might be discussion posts, ‘essays’, papers, reports, analysis, etc.

So today’s schools and universities of 2022 are the children of ‘parent’ online schools that were successful BEFORE the COVID-19 pandemic, like:
- University of Phoenix (100% online)
- Western Governors University (online except required license components for nursing and education)
- SNHU – a copy of WGU
- Small variants like Unity College which switched to all online DURING the pandemic but was already running their online course model large-scale previously.
Then the ‘grandparent’ generation is:
- Empire State College in New York (an entirely distance education school part of the SUNY system)
- Open University in Great Britain.
The ancestor generation is the exchange of written scrolls to disseminate and share knowledge and here we find monks with scrolls:

7th century Xuanzang, reported to have brought Buddhism to China (note his scrolls in the backpack and the little lantern to see by):

By Unknown author – https://colbase.nich.go.jp/collection_items/tnm/A-10600?locale=en, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=247641

Monks singing, obviously telling us with their upturned faces and raised hands that the written text is pretty high and mighty.

[Image from https://www.medievalists.net/2016/02/five-surprising-rules-for-medieval-monks/]

Patterns

So let me get back to the patterns and design cycles.

As each new technology is introduced (into education, but that clause is irrelevant) there is a hubbub of negative comments about what it could me and what might happen.
1. Initial expectations are high, even if those expectations are negative. (Amara’s Law in play: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”)
2. Proficiency is low because few people are experts and they have not had time or ability to teach what they know.
3. Results are high! Generally this is because results are contaminated with novelty effect or non-comparable methods.
[Image by me. No I don’t have references beyond “Life”]

Over time, this happens:
1. Expectations slowly wane until there are essentially are no expectations because the technology is ubiquitous. People cannot imagine life without it. (i.e. electricity).
2. Proficiency increases but then levels off. People learn how to best use the technology and a speed-limit is reached.
3. Results decrease as research efforts improve (dodging the fading novelty effect) and result flat line at a level that would be similar to previous technological improvements. But because interest and excitement is so low, the only people who notice this are the ones who signed the check.
Here is a great article on the transition from horses to cars for transportation.

There was the arrival of the Internet which was supposed to be the great equalizer. (snort!) Those quotes were said in 1996

and they are still being said in 2022!!

And I’ve already copied, word for word, the brief and brilliant words of Richard Mayer from the 2005 edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, a book I rank as *the most important book* to instructional design.

In summary, each new technological changes arrives with high promise and even with full incorporation, fails to change educational results.

So here we are, with learners that have at their fingertips AI that can write their school papers.

What do we do?

The Verbal Exam

One solution that I’d like to talk a little more about is the verbal exam (oral exam always sounded like what happened at a dentist). Here’s the backstory.

At a university that I worked at, we ran on assessments. They were our bread-and-butter. There was no way to get course credit WITHOUT passing assessments.

Think double-comprehensive final exam;
- double for the content; it was usually 2 semester’s worth,
- comprehensive because everything was on one test,
- final because the result of the one exam was the entire determination of course grade: Pass/Fail.
When students passed a ‘double comprehensive final exam’, they would get credit for passing the course.

We had learners who would show up, not want to do the required studies, and would shortcut their studies with some flashcards on the Internet and fail their exam.

And fail it again.

And fail it again.

For 4th and further attempts, learners had to earn the approval of a faculty member to retake the exam.

It was incumbent upon us faculty to ascertain the readiness of the learner to retake the exam.

So by looking at our learning metrics, it was pretty easy to tell that learner had NOT engaged with the learning content. We’d explain the ‘study plan’ which was basically filling out a large workbook of questions that would help them get ready for the exam.

Now here’s where it would get interesting.

Learners would cheat on the workbook because cheating was working SO WELL for them up to this point. (sarcasm).

Very early on in the use of this workbook, I would do 2 behaviors:

You Know, Faculty Can Google Too

1. I myself, as faculty, would google the actual first 2 modules of study questions in the workbook on the topics of the scientific method, basic machines, and physics. It was a scary day when Google actually had received the exact same question so many times that it form-filled. No, I don’t think that Google was only learning me & my questions.

I looked up and read the first 20 hits of answers to each question.

Shockingly, I’d find some scientifically WRONG answers on the Internet! (I remember watching a video about the inverse square law that was just garbage. I’d say that line in front of my students and they’d be like “oh tell us which ones are the right ones to watch!” and I’d be like “Sure! Pass this course. Then you’ll know!” Burn. 🔥)

Once I familiarized myself with what was on the Internet, I became very adept at picking up when my students were answering the questions truthfully (authentically) or had only copied and pasted.

Whenever I received a section filled out, I would read it through for accurate answers (of course) but also any answers that just seemed ‘to good to be true” or even better “weren’t at all covered in the course”.
I would simply (it is AMAZING how fast one could do this) cut and paste the answer into Google and huh-ho! (as Seinfeld would say) I’d find where they copied it from.

After that, there was a neat little rehearsed email.

“Dear Learner,

Thank you for sending this! Some of the answers to these study questions look like material available on the Internet. Of course, you didn’t copy these but the actual answers I’m looking for are in this linked video from 2:34 until 4:13.”

The usual response?

“I didn’t know there were course videos.”

Just picture me over here in a corner rocking as the course videos took HOURS of faculty time to produce. They were good. They were accurate. And they lead directly to passing the exam. And we plastered them everywhere. Students not knowing they existed? Good Grief! 🤦

Verbal Exam Coming Up!

Behavior 2: Scenario, learner has failed multiple times, had insisted that they completed the workbook, they cheated on the preassessment, and they feel as though their faculty member is being mean to them not letting them attempt the exam again. So this learner lands on my lap as I’m the department head. They are angry. They have a set phone appointment with me. They’ve be rehearsing how they are going to give me a piece of their mind and now I’m there.

They let it fly.

I’ve heard it all. I really have. My favorite, tho, was when one of my most kindest faculty was called a…get this…despot. Bravo for $5 word choice! You passed your SATs. But I don’t buy it.

I would listen until they ran out of gas, taking notes, listening for patterns (I didn’t read the book because I don’t have time, I didn’t watch the videos because I don’t have time, didn’t study because my job keeps me really busy, I didn’t prepare for the exam because I had a sick baby…yada yada yada.)

Once they had calmed down, I would say,

“I can give you approval right now if you will take a verbal exam of 6 questions with me. The result will tell me if you are ready to attempt the exam.”

“OK,” they’d say, “yes, sure!”

So I’d start.

I won’t write those questions here because those are my trade secrets, but they were 6 questions: 4 conceptual and 2 detailed.

Most learners failed by the 3rd question. At that point, we’d have a “Come To Jesus” moment, which means, come to the truth. “We need to talk about the fact that you are not ready to attempt the exam.”

And really, that was what that little exercise was all about. Only a couple of my faculty clued into that method.

It wasn’t WHAT the answer was that they gave me, it was HOW they attacked the question; how they got there. Were they ready to face questions that do not have memorized answers?

If a learner was able to engage in reasoning for a question, then I could see that they were ready to face 70 more questions on the exam that were going to make them do the same thing.

It was all about being ready to dance with a thought, not regurgitating it.

And indeed, if you are a Star Trek fan, you will have notice the dance between humans trumping technology and technology trumping humans, as played out between the Kirk and Spock characters.

Spock could be stopped by “How do you feel?” and a computer could be stopped by “Calculate Pi” I’m not suggesting that AI can be stopped by Pi. I’m suggesting that there are just concerns that humans need to handle more than AI does.

So I’m not having any large fits of problems with AI arriving so fast here in 2022.

It’s just another cycle beginning again. We’ll adjust. It’s fine if AI writes a crappy paper anyway. People who think that good writing is the beginning and end of knowledge really have bigger problems.

(more…)
December 8, 2022
Long live the online chat!
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Response piece to:

The online meeting chat is dead: long live the online meeting chat!

I realize this is an opinion piece but, I so agree with this! I love chat functions and miss them, unlike in this piece that compares online chat to face-to-face classrooms, but in virtual reality platforms that do NOT have a group chat function (#AltspaceVR, I’m looking directly at you).

Having taught online for 14 years full time, I used to teach new faculty how to stir up the chat and get it going for online classes:
- I encourage the “Pre-Chat Chat”, that is, make ONLY NON-academic chat in the chat pod before class starts.
- Invite the learners to think of the chat pod as “theirs” and only interject in writing in the chat pod during lecture with links, spellings, things that must be seen in text to be understood (aka vocabulary)
- Questions where no one’s answer is wrong (I love these for “what’s your favorite…” or “what most….”—- and quasi-experts in assessment say that higher level thinking can’t happen online, p-ha! 😆 It so can!! )
- Saying a learner’s name out loud with their comment – that works GREAT for getting more and more chat, stirring the pot, aka anti crickets). People just LOVE hearing their own name said out loud. Bonus points, by NOT reading a comment out loud you can tamp down a nasty dissenter.
December 5, 2022
I’ve worked in an XR office: No matter what you’re imagining it’s like, you probably got it wrong.
I’m late getting this post out. This accompanies a video. The initial hubbub about virtual offices from Meta Connect 2022 is over.

However, I like to live out the phrase: The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets cheese.

I like to stand back and watch the first wave, like a Twitter trending word, pass over. It’s really often people rejecting something without having tried it.
Then I watch for the next, slower wave of reactions. Those people that
really gave something a try and then have something to say about it.

It’s like watching a Gartner Hype cycle wash over.

Source: https://www.wolfsheadonline.com/gartner-hype-cycle-virtual-worlds-in-the-trough-of-disillusionment/

I think that we are now going up the Slope of Enlightenment. It is not easy going and the Gartner Hype cycle has many problems.

This video is not about working in an XR office in game design or evaluation

or spending inordinate amounts of time in VR,

and it is not about working in a VR headset for a week.

It is about working remotely and having an XR office component to your life.

(Video credits to Meta Connect 2020, Shapes XR, and Immersed, Ben Fern at Variant )Professor Sylvia Pan crediting Brad Lynch)

In other words, adding XR to your life like you’ve added Zoom.

Yeah, I can hear you. You’ve added Zoom but you don’t like it. Join the crowd. I didn’t say work was something you liked either. Buckle up buttercup,
this post is not about what you will like. It’s about what you will normalize. If the Queen could get into Zoom, you can get into XR.

Remote Work

I’m going to dwell on “remote” for a moment because I like to draw analogies and I think the remote work phenomenon
is in such recent human memory that I can use it as a good example (and
indeed, just like XR, I’ve worked remotely for YEARS before others
warmed to it so I have a good view of the good and bad points of
adopting remote work.)

Before 2020, remote work had a poor reputation.

COVID changed that. Suddenly everyone had to work remote, if they could. And a new element was discovered: remote work does produce results. It’s not a cheat. It’s not worth less.

This stymied those so in love with working in the office. What? I can’t actually WATCH my workers work?

You
know, I’ll just sit over here and eat popcorn while you–in the
office–shot the shit for what adds up to HOURS EACH WEEK and you
claimed that was not only work, you claimed that got you ahead at work.
Yeah, that “if you talk with the boss at the water cooler, you get
ahead” thing. I’ve got news for you. If your boss promoted based on
that, your boss understands zero about diversity.

Many
feel so differently about remote work that it is no longer a negative
stigma attached to WANTING to work remote full time. That’s a huge,
huge change from even 2 years ago.

I
noted at a conference just 2 weeks ago that we don’t even use the word
“Skyping” anymore. It’s “Zooming”. Did you notice that? I’m going to
bring up Zoom again later. Pin that.

60% of workers now want remote options.

Meta Connect 2022 Grabs Attention

THIS scene showing a mix of avatars and Zoom caused quite a stir.

So Meta Connect 2022 raised the specter again of working in an XR-enabled office.

It isn’t just Meta talking about virtual offices in 2022 and new interfaces.

Apple’s forray is yet to come.

(I
am struggling to find the right keywords to describe ‘working in an XR
office’. Society please help and come up with something quippy.)

To get ready for a business conference where I was speaking
as an expert in the metaverse, I decided to study the enemy- those on
social that have disdain the coming metaverse.

People try to make
it all or nothing. They are eager to throw out the baby with the
bathwater. They say things like can’t wear the headset all day,
expensive, wrong bets from a company with a bad rep, etc. Only a few are
saying “maybe”

This AR Post article is has very
cool data. Spoiler alert: Boomers are not against XR.

I
predict that they will come around and come around to XR meetings SO
MUCH that they will be embarrassed someday to think that they didn’t want
it.

For real, as in, working every day in XR.

So I realized the time has come to share how I worked in XR. I bet it is NOT like what you are imagining

Here we go!

For 8 months last year, I was the Chief Operating Officer of an international research organization.

We hosted and rented XR real estate to educational organizations.

My job was to keep the organization moving forward and to put dreams into action.

“I’m a dreamer, I build worlds”- James Halliday, Ready Player One

I had a small office that could seat 6 avatars.

I had 3 Internet boards where I could display any image or web page.

I averaged 4 hours a day in-world.

For 2 hours I worked in my office and held 1:1 meetings.

The other 2 hours would be in larger meetings,

giving tours,

or checking on designs & creations.

It was all 2D XR so eye strain was less of a problem.

There
were times that I locked my VR office door and went heads down on
projects and could see other avatars outside my door.

Typing in world
is, right now, frustrating and I wouldn’t seriously attempt it (I’d go
for speech to text instead.) But my
stronger point is why would you improve on an interface that is already
working pretty well right now, which is a keyboard?

If you’d like to moan about it not being immersive enough, you belong in the finite game mindset.

Benefits of Working in an XR Office

1. No Zoom Fatigue.

You do not have to be seen on camera.

2. Choice of How To Work

Work part of your day in XR and part out of XR.

Attend meetings in cool spaces. Need focus time away from others? Easy.

3. The impossible experience becomes possible.

I regularly hosted global meetings.

Because you can move through spaces in XR, there is space to move closer to those you do want to talk about and further from the topics that you don’t care for.

4. Embrace inclusive workers

How and what we work on is about the people we work with.

It is not about the technology; it is about the people.

I beg you, if you think the metaverse is even only 1% cool, you should be bringing in other people to discover it, yes! But that’s the point. It says that after all, how and what we work on is about the people we
work with. It’s not about the technology. Think about that for a
moment:

It’s about the people, not about the technology.

You should be fighting to bring everyone in. That’s fighting for accessibility.
- Employees who are blind and vision-impaired can work in XR.
- Employees who deaf or hard of hearing can work in XR.
- Employees with mobility disabilities can work in XR.
- Neurodivergent employees can work in XR.
- All of your employees can work in XR.
The metaverse IS coming. You either will join or you won’t.

The metaverse is not just for the privileged if I have anything to say about it.

It will be part of all of our lives and the lives of our children. We have WAY more fun that you think. I would always end tours of our Virbela island with boat rides starting
at the beach (and to make it really fun, I would have my guest take the
driver’s seat and then I would not tell them how to drive.) Mind you,
I’d usually just spent 1 hour literally directing them verbally on every
action in VR so they knew they could trust me and that I wasn’t trying
to embarrass them with not giving them instructions.

I’m saying that the metaverse will be PART of your life, not your whole life.

The metaverse is just a new player in the infinite game. Your invitation is waiting.

Why don’t you come on in?
November 30, 2022
Forced Fun Isn’t
LinkedIn is headlining “Enforced fun is never fun“.

I’ve attracted some undesired attention from a former employer because I voiced public support for the establishment of a union. I always said that if there was a union formed there, I’d be first in line. But let’s be real. I left there 4 years ago. My opinion means nothing on that issue!

But I’ll tell you a story (my way of saying some bits have been altered just to make it a better story) about enforced fun.

This place used to have 2x a year academic meetings. They’d start ~Tuesday (Monday for mid-level management) and finish Saturday after commencement. I still cringe to think that I was involved in that. You want your team to have a good time but there is just no escaping that the culture placed an emphasis on:
- Be in the right place,
- At the right time,
- Wearing the right clothes,
- Saying the right thing.
^ Enforced fun that I’m sorry to say I planned. But 3 thoughts on this:

1. Legos are SO expensive. Who decided that?
2. I went OUT OF MY WAY to make sure that a diverse set of lego people choices was available. In the end, that was a waste of all of my time and money.
3. I’ve learned my lesson. I no longer think that “fun” should be combined with work as the LinkedIn article suggests.

I’m also a veteran of how much teams don’t understand the word “optional” even when you over, over, over emphasize it.

I watched a team member limp through an “optional” excursion to Epcot as her strong pain meds wore off and she kept saying “I’m fine!” I’ve seen my team members apologize that they could not have “optional” dinner with me but wanted to go back to their hotel rooms for the evening.

Lesson: If employees think that their job gets a “bump up” for doing it, they will.

Indeed, mid-level managers were instructed to, if needed, walk the halls of the meeting space to MAKE SURE that all of our team members were in the right rooms all of the time (nevermind that that behavior puts these managers NOT in the rooms to hear what is being presented).

It was well known that a good way to get fired was to be SEEN in the wrong place at the wrong time at these academic meetings. I remember when 3 good mentors were spotted in the daytime in the hotel elevator smelling of alcohol. The fact that they were GOOD mentors is what barely kept them employed after that. Don’t get me started on the he said/she said rumors of who was seen in who’s hotel room.

But on the traditional Friday night, when I became a mid-level manager,

my mentor manager said “You wanna get outta here?” and I was like “YAAAAS!”

We started a tradition. The employer always offered a mexican-themed meal. But we hiked out as unseen as we could and would eat, on our own dimes/not putting in for reimbursement, some other place in town just to get away from the work culture. A drink or two might have been consumed.

Then we’d hustle back because we had to:
- Be in the right place,
- At the right time,
- Wearing the right clothes,
- Saying the right thing
for a mixer for 2 hours. That became an act of circulating just enough to be seen by one’s boss and then finding the right moment to leave. Believe me, employees did get in trouble if they were not in the room at the start of that mixer and if the room emptied out by 2 hours later, the employees NOT there had to have a good reason (like illness) to leave. The management was always clear that employees were required to be at certain events–no getting out of it. That created a bit of consternation because, for the 7 years I was in liberal arts/general education, we didn’t have ‘assigned’ student that were graduating but we still have to be in the room, standing around awkwardly hoping that a student would remember us from a few years prior and even though we had never met in person, come over and introduce themselves.
This all shows the trend to bleed non-work (fun) into work and vice versa isn’t the right place for it. (I have a 6 part article on Keeping Work In Its Place). As some are saying on LinkedIn, it’s fine to have fun at work or to be fun to work with. But when you force it, you’ve crossed a line.

I recently went to a business conference that started in the afternoon. At 4 p.m. the cash bar opened (which in 2022, I believe no longer accepts cash at all, it’s all a credit card thing). There were further sessions starting at 6:15 that ran until 8 p.m. and then a late dinner.

By 8:30 p.m. when I was scarfing down dinner because I was so hungry, I realized that I was very uncomfortable. Looking around, it was hard to find 1 or 2 others that weren’t drinking. (I had to drive that night, plus I was in another country facing border patrol coming back in the US. Ain’t nobody got time to mess with that.)

But I want to paint that canvas all the way out to the edges. There were ~400 attendees and I didn’t see:
- Any pregnant women not drinking. That is, no visibly pregnant women…and thus no women selecting non-alcohol drinks because of a medical condition.
- No one with a walker, cane, or wheelchair. That is no visibly disabled persons.
- VERY few with non-alcohol, as I said earlier. Picking a non-alcoholic drink, therefore, was difficult and had to be sought out.
The lack of diversity told me that I was in a homogeneous group. That made me very nervous. Heterogeneous groups are stronger and better in emergencies because of the multiple, diverse strengths (aka a hero might be among them). Haven’t you ever heard of “strength in diversity”? It is an interesting biological and Christian concept.

And thinking about it, it was a business conference. For all their propping of how great the conference is,
“Few volunteer-run business organizations have this type of impact.
Supporting entrepreneurs, assisting with funding, and highlighting
up-and-coming entrepreneurs … this is a group worth celebrating.”

they are remarkably un-diverse for accepting accessibility, diversity, and stumbling at inclusion. My post-conference comments about being uncomfortable there were received as just a moment where I needed to come out of my shell- absolutely no acknowledgment that crowds, noise, and lack of acceptance of diversity could actually be problems that an attendee CANNOT just “come out of”.

Blind people cannot just apply themselves harder to see.

Deaf people cannot just apply themselves harder to hear.
People with unseen and different abilities cannot just apply themselves harder to not feel their lack of inclusion.

In summary, the LinkedIn article and comments point out that this lack of respect leads to many other problems (rape, sexual harassment, etc.) And hey, NY State is opening a law that sexual attackers can now be sued far past previous statues of limitations. Hmm… there might be something good to that!
November 30, 2022
Encanto Review

Last night I watched Encanto for the second time. I cried my eyes out the first time. I cried my eyes out MORE the second time. I’m not liking this trend line.

I want to like this movie and I do like this movie. At least surviving it twice, I have a chance to think more about it. And true disclosure, I’ve NOT watched or read any reviews for it beyond one article from early in 2022 about how Lin-Manuel Miranda went away for his Christmas holiday and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” was not a hit and when it came back, it was. That was a surprise because really the two caterpillars song was much more emotionally enticing. But the word on the street was that everyone had a family with at least on member that they don’t talk about. That’s why that song hit a familiar nerve and shot to popularity.

We’ll come back to Bruno soon.

So this time, the closed captioning was working very well and I was able to understand quite a bit more that was previously only in Spanish (i.e. biggest example, I just called it the two caterpillars song and indeed, I’m not sure I knew THAT last time.)

You should know that if the world was separated into people who love to watch the same movies over and over and people who love to watch new movies, I’m in the former group. For 2 unfortunate reasons I think:

1. I honestly forget what happens. I have an “idear” but the details elude me. So I when I started watching Encanto, I could NOT remember how Mirabel helped her family. So it’s fun…but like going to a theme park a second time. Even if you know the ride, you’re not quite sure how this trip will go. And if it’s a little different, all the better. For me, different would just be me noticing new things.

2. I think I’m trapped in some sort of 7th grade English “You will be doomed to wonder what the theme is” ever since I enjoyed reading “The Thread That Runs So True” but FOR THE LIFE OF ME I COULD NOT PICK OUT THAT THE THEME WAS EDUCATION. Damn, that was a tough moment for me. So I’m trapped there, stuck wondering ‘what is the theme’ for every experience I have. Oh well.

So what is the theme for Encanto? This time I was wondering “OK, how bad really is the granny?” I don’t get why her and Mirabel are at logger heads.

So I watched the ending and the scene at the river near the end VERY closely this time (and didn’t shy away from the prophecy scene–I did the first time b/c it was set up too much like a seance.) Where does the butterfly come in? What does it mean? How does everything get “healed” with, at first, the hug with the sister?

OK. It’s the next morning and I think I got it. I will be going to read reviews to see if I guessed correctly.

Mirabel emphasizes that it was/is the grandmother that is the strength of the family. Abuela is the candle. Every time we see the candle flame good and strong, that is the grandmother as strong. But when Abuela says she’s never been back to the river–that’s a very telling sign. It says that she does NOT return to the moment when she lost her husband in his act of sacrifice. By not acknowledging it, she shuts it out of her life. Then take that and emphasize it. The grandmother suppresses and puts out of the family any “gift” that reminds her of negativity or… as she says so frequently early in the film, anything that does not strengthen the community and the family (poorly put….and importantly put…in that order: community BEFORE family). So she puts the order wrong (it is family BEFORE community) and she ignores anything negative.

Let’s go back and see how by looking at the children and their gifts.

Who answers this call of Abeula the strongest? To put community first and foremost?

Luisa! She even gets a song about how draining it is to be under so much pressure to take care of EVERYTHING.

Next up: Isabella gets a song/revelation about how she is EXPECTED to be perfect, so she can’t step a toe out of line and that, eventually frustrates her.

We have their mother Julieta, who is healer via food which helps the community but she seems to be unable to both help her own daughter Mirabel in confrontations with her mother, Abuela.

She’s shown as having “lost” her brother Bruno and they mutually feel it the most with Bruno’s heartbreaking “seat” at the table just off the kitchen. He misses her in his reality.

So in this branch of the family, we have:

1 strong

1 perfect

1 healer

1 no gift/mistake/suppressed to stay “in the nursery”

In the next daughter of Abuela, Pepa, we seen more cracks develop. It’s an emotional daughter but in EVERY case, she’s chastised for having negative moments.

She’s NEVER thanked for good weather. Her frustration comes through in the movie in that you almost never find her without a storm cloud. Her husband is her balm…but that’s very telling. If you have to go to another family to get help, something was really wrong with your original family.

She has a daughter, Delores, who can hear well.

But this only portrayed as a positive gift at the very end of the movie in that she knows her soon-to-be-betrothed writes poetry and loves his mother. All through the movie this gift is not a gift, she’s a troublemaker.

See the trend line we are on here.

Next we have her brother, Camilo, and you can clearly SEE us getting to Bruno soon because this son is so suppressed for his shapeshifting gift, he’s the embodiment of not being allowed to be who he is.

Abeula only uses his gift when it suits her. Very telling…

We’ll skip Mirabel because she’s the plot of the entire movie.

And we get to Bruno, who is so shunned and hated for his gift, that he leaves.

And the stunning thing about this 2nd watching for me was…why was no one bothered by that? I mean, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is a great song, yes. But it’s the largest red flag in the world. A mother that does not care where her son is? Sisters that don’t mention his name? Cousins that wonder but have NO story about him other than his tower is off limits? Husbands that are close to useless in this story –although, hat tip that they try.

So…back to Abuela, Alma Madrigal. What was her problem? She suppresses any gift that does not seem positive as a response to the agony she felt at the river.

Mirabel figures it out when she says “you were the strength all along” and the song implies that via the death of the grandfather (his gift, his early conversion to a butterfly into a new dimension) –via that change, the grandfather embodied negative circumstances that STILL support the family. He saved them. The grandmother became the strength (that’s why a woman, not a man, portrays strength as Luisa 2 generations later) and she escaped with the family and built the family.

But in the act of escaping and protecting, her strength, her gift shut out the corresponding gift—

That good things can come from negative circumstances.

.

Bruno is reconciled at the end. And he’s a charming character after all. He sees his own faults and we can come to love him for them.

All this week before watching the movie, I’ve been emboding the line, “I’m Jorge, I make the spackle.”

Per typical Disney, there are enough side jokes to keep the movie moving. The color and the sounds and the vibrancy of Columbia just astound me…even in this animated form. I guess I should say something about the house, casita. She’s enchanted (thank you closed captioning for telling me what Encanto means) but I think we are left to realize that the house IS the family and the family IS the house. When the community comes to rebuild it…I think there are a tons of stories that could be spin offs right there.

OK, I gotta stop this or I’ll cry for the third time. I’m off to find some reviews.

November 14, 2022
Mystery Vegetable
In our last episode, I debated on what the mystery vegetable was growing in my cosmic onion patch, so named for the glow-in-the-dark Saturn 🪐 sculpture I stuck in the ground when the onion sets went in.

Here’s the Sitch

I dug a new patch of garden this year and trucked over some compost. Last year, I had chucked some old seeds into the compost pile in an act of “I’ll never use you” petulance.

Sometime early summer, I spied something leafy growing among the onions and thought they were radishes. Even though I love radishes, I have determined that I cannot grow them here as my soil is too rich; they grow all leaves and no radish roots. So I yanked out 2 of the things.

Immediately, I realized that they looked like parsnips so I plunged them back into nearby spots in the garden and watered and apologized profusely for the next week.

What are they?

Since then, I’ve wondered just what these vegetables are. There are 4. Leafy. Something underground. 4 different sizes. Some purple streaks in the leaves.

Turnips?

Rutabagas?

Daikon Radishes? (that would explain my seed tossing)

I harvested the onions and I’m sad to say I had a poorly sized crop. Very small. Actually some of them could be “sets” for next year, if they survive the winter. They were crowded out by these ‘thing’ leaves and leaves from my butternut squash.

TODAY IS THE DAY

Fast forward an UNBELIEVABLE 6 months to mid-November when we’ve been having a long, late, and warm autumn. It’s 55 degrees Fahrenheit as I type. The almanac says today’s high should be 41. Snow is in the forecast (again) for the coming week. Oklahoma had snow yesterday. We’ve yet to have any. But as a general rule, I like to garden when I can feel my fingers so I decided…

TODAY IS THE DAY.

And here our story picks up.

So I head out to the garden. Garden fork in hand for strength. Two dogs for moral support. Also, they’ll eat anything.

Rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga

OK, digging them up now. I go for the biggest one 1st. I’m really hoping these are rutabagas.

I pull it out. It’s roundish. It looks like a rutabaga. Still very leafy. But some worms have been having snacks on the root. No worries, they fall off with a good shake. It’s still lighter than I expected and when my trowel hits it, it sounds weirdly like a light tap.

I dig the 2nd one. Uh oh. This one is tapered. It looks like a parsnip.

Is it possible that all 4 plants are not the same thing?

I dig the 3rd one. It’s a hybrid: tapered but with a purple top.

I leave the 4th one in the ground on purpose. If I like these, I want one to overwinter and possibly go to seed so that I can collect the seeds for future gardening.

So here is the motley crew laid out (left to right, 3, 2, and 1):

And close ups:

1.

2.

3.

I still do NOT know what these are.

So decide to next conduct a smell test. What do they smell like?

1st: Ugh. Smells gross. Like dirt. Bad dirt.

2nd one: Smells like Rutabaga.

3rd one: Smells like Parsnip.

Frack. Still no idea what these are.

I decide that I’ll clean them up and get them inside to see what they really are. So I proceed to cut off the leafy tops and all those hairy roots. The dogs are suspiciously not interested in any of this. Uh-oh. Why?

They eat anything and I mean, A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

Tap Tap

Now I tap on the biggest one. It’s much lighter than I’d expect for a rutabaga of this size. I keep cutting off the roots. Then I see ….

Instead of where the root should be, there’s a bunch of small hairy roots. So I trim some more.

<cue horror music>

Then I see…inside the thing.

It’s hollow.

Empty.

OMG, it’s empty.

Something could be in there. I’m picturing a mouse having a munch. So I give it a really hard shake hoping that said mouse will fall out and not run up my coat arm.

No mouse. Nothing shook free.

Whew. I can breath a little more. But now I’m icked out majorly.

I proceed to dissect some more, cutting directly into it from multiple sides. All those years of Biology labs weren’t for nothing, you know.

I talk to it while I take it apart. “What are you?” “Why are you like this?” “Eww, that part is worse than the other.” “I’m cutting you into small pieces so my dogs can eat you.” Would I make a good super villain?

The two other things stand by like “We’ve got nothing to do with that.”

So that 1st biggest one never made it inside my house. It went into the compost pile. Which is a positive and a negative.
- A positive because it is a large green leafy donation to the compost pile and if there is one thing….OK…two things…my compost pile doesn’t much get, it’s heat and green things.
- A negative because I sacrificed the prosperity of my onions for this.
So I definitely had a Sally in the pumpkin patch outcry moment.

Resolution…?

I dug up the 4th one. No use letting it grow since I don’t really like this outcome.

I brought the 2nd and 3rd one inside for a wash and trim to see if they could be salvaged.

Here they are cleaned up.

And they look and smell much more like parsnips.

I think the mystery vegetables are parsnips.

They are…I’m sorry to type…on the woody side. Even the dogs are giving me an “I don’t know about this” look for the scraps.😕

The parsnip that was #1 was just a parsnip gone bad. A parsnip that turned the evil. A parsnip that sided with the Emperor.

Yikes, I watch too much Star Wars.

But who’s going to eat these? I don’t know. That next adventure will wait for the next episode.
November 12, 2022
Getting Started in WebXR

Mozilla Hubs put out their social media this week for the article I wrote “Bringing Learners into the Immersive Web: How to Begin” where I described the new user orientation space built by NYU Langone Medical School.

It was a great example of helping users get started on the basics of entering and moving in WebXR. Their users were in VR headsets but the instructions also apply to WebXR users for the most part.

The first draft of the article, however, had another focus that doesn’t show up in the final version: the tour that Greg and Kristen took us on and how that tour fit into the Friday Community Meetups hosted by Mozilla Hubs. Matt Cool and I decided that that focus could go into another future article.

Looking back on the article now since it’s been a couple of weeks since the experience and writing the article, I find the topic very dry.

I’ve engaged in a short conversation – that I’m writing up – about the use of virtual reality offices and what those will be in the future. A Facebook community member bemoaned that Meta showed work meetings happening in work meeting offices.

She wanted meetings to be held in volcanoes– which brings up a regular decry when something in VR looks new– there will be those who say it’s NOT cool enough. So I went on to explain to her that starting in VR in known spaces like rooms with floors, ceilings, doors, and windows is, IMO, a better idea as it keeps apprehensive (or READ BUSINESS) users comfortable. With the ‘replication of reality’ of those spaces, users just behave better, then tend to NOT walk into walls, etc. Believe me, that is very important – proper real world behaviors are expected in virtual reality- because trying to go back in time and remind men that they should not speak openly and derogatorily about women’s avatar bodies is a really hard Pandora’s box to close.

Then this week, Ford Motor Company just opened their IMG DEI Museum in FrameVR and I took a quick tour. Here are some photos from the space:

Video of the first few seconds being in the Ford IMG DEI space (no sound, 25 seconds)

Right off the bat, I liked how they were taking care of what could be first-time-ever XR users.

They had VERY simple instructions:

1. Click this link.

2. An image of the buttons and mouse to use.

3. A first-person (first-avatar) point of view video of what looking at and entering the Museum looked like, including the ‘floating feeling’ of movement.

*Note: there is NO acknowledgement or use of avatars in this experience. So it’s a great example of #MetaverseWithNoAvatars. You don’t (and can’t) look down at your avatar body.

So two different WebXR experiences with two different orientations or Getting Started experiences.

Technically, I prefer the video approach from Ford over the how-to from NYU. Even though NYU did have this very cute Alice in Wonderland-style of instructions that SHOULD be emulated, (Click me, Watch me),

the show ’em what you’ll show ’em style of a quick video (it was 21seconds and could have been shorter!) of Ford’s experience nails the quick intro experience WHILE still taking advantage of the XR space. (READ: YOU SEE AND THEN YOU DO, there are no other choices.)

It was nice to compare 2 entry experiences so closely together in time. I’m reminded of a recent quote:

“Design as if it [the technology] were something speaking to the learner.”
~Donald Clark with John Helmer, The Learning Hack podcast, S1E5 Online Educators.

The video – especially from the eye-viewpoint of the entering avatar nails the intro. Perfect.

October 25, 2022