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On-Line Learning
Maya Taya Arie & Shlomo Maital
My granddaughter Maya asks: Is there significance to using a white board or Power Point in an on-line presentation.
My (Shlomo) answer: Let’s assume that you, online learning facilitator, are using Zoom. There is a free version that is very useful. It is widely used. ZOOM has zoomed in value – and it is now a unicorn, with market value of its shares exceeding $1 billion. And they deserve it.
Zoom was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, a lead engineer from Cisco Systems and its collaboration business unit WebEx.[1] Yuan graduated from the Stanford University executive program and was previously vice president of engineering at Cisco for collaboration software development. David Berman, from WebEx and Ring Central, became president in November 2015. The service started in January 2013 and by May 2013, it claimed one million participants.
If you can give a talk (note: try to keep it short!) without white board or Power Point – great! But generally there are data and facts and key points we need to put on the screen. Power Point can be used as a virtual white board – open it, and you can type on the slide as you speak…. Sometimes this is better than showing a pre-prepared slide, as it unfolds and evolves as the learner watches. (On Zoom: click on ‘share’ to open Power Point and share it with viewers).
If you have bandwidth problem (low capacity WiFi), you can just use “audio” on Zoom, and speak without video. This is not a bad option.
For Power Point: use 28 point or 32 point fonts. No smaller! Do not put too much stuff on the slide. Be ready to make your slides available to your viewers, if they request them by email.
Find ways to make your talk interactive, even if you have many viewers. There is a ‘chat’ button on Zoom. You can have your viewers ask questions by writing text through the “Chat” button, to avoid the chaos of many viewers asking questions at once.
Make time for this. After say 10 minutes, pause, and ask for chat questions….
In our next blog, we’ll talk about other ways to make online learning interactive.
My Apology to Technology: Sorry!
By Shlomo Maital
Dear Technology,
OK – I know. I’ve written many hard words about you, especially about social media, how they distribute fake news, ruin our trust in experts and in one another, waste our time, destroy face-to-face social contact…ruinous!
And then – the coronavirus. We have organized family Whatsapp gatherings, with our kids and grandkids in LA, NYC, and various sites in Israel…seeing those beautiful faces keeps us healthy.
Yesterday we had a regular class with our Rabbi Elisha, with 11 participants, including Q&A and lively discussion, on Zoom. A whole program of lectures has been organized by our Synagogue.
I’ve been videotaping (with Zoom) lectures on entrepreneurship and startups, and recycling old tapes, these have a new life as everyone is at home and often online.
My wife Sharona observes that we are not engaged in social isolation, or separation, but in spatial separation. Stay together, but stay apart, is the message. And the only way to do this safely is through technology. Thank heavens for Outlook, Zoom, Whatsapp, Facetime, Facebook…and, yes, hard to say it, but yes, for Twitter.
So – sorry, Technology. This is my Apology. We need you more than ever. You are coming through for us just when we need you. If we did not have you, it would be hard to bear the isolation, especially for us grandparents and seniors.
Yours truly, Shlomo Maital
European (Dis)Union: Shame on Them!
By Shlomo Maital
Italy is desperate. With more COVID-19 cases and deaths than China, it is now ‘triaging’ (selecting) those who get medical care and not treating those 60 years old and over. Don’t blame them – they have to, they lack medical equipment and doctors and hospital beds and ventilators.
Wait. Italy is part of the “European Union”, a union of 27 nations banding together to help one another and support one another.
Right?
Apparently, wrong. The nation coming to Italy’s rescue is not the other 26 EU nations, but Russia, which has sent medical supplies and personnel.
(And by the way, United States? Which used to help other nations? Not in the age of Trump… America First!)
Slovakia’s leader noted that his desperate requests for help from the EU were turned down cold. But China did come to the rescue, and it is China which is now sending medical aid to other nations. The press claims it is done to restore China’s image, badly damaged by the fact that COVID-19 originated in China. Maybe, too, it is done because China simply gets it.
European Union? It was not Brexit and Britain that has damaged European union, but the Europeans themselves. Whatever happens in this crisis, Europe will not be the same. If nations in a union do not help one another in time of need, then there is no union.
Shame on you, Europe. I can’t believe that none of the other 26 EU nations can spare any medical supplies or equipment, at all. Nor is there a single EU person in charge of EU overall policy.
It will be very hard for the Europeans to put Humpty together again, after pushing him off the wall and not even offering a bandage.
The coronavirus crisis – a unique opportunity for reflection
Manuel Trajtenberg
[Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, an economist, is a Harvard graduate, former student of the late Zvi Griliches, and served as Member of Knesset, Israel’s Parliament. This is his ‘take’ on how we can use the COVID-19 crisis to reshape our own perspectives].
At most once in a lifetime we are called upon to confront a dramatic event such as this one, forced upon each of us and upon the entire world. Sure, we are threatened by a rapidly spreading and nasty disease, but there is a good chance that we will be able to avoid contracting it, and if not, that we will be able to recover from it hopefully unharmed. The threat to our health is just part of the story, and not necessarily the major one: the coronavirus has managed to bring to a halt life as we know it, as if we were entering a prolonged “Yom Kippur” regime, just without the prayers and the fasting…
I am convinced that this same menace offers us a sort of respite and thus a tremendous opportunity to gain perspective on our lives, to pause the never-ending rate-race in which we are caught: to succeed in school, to earn a living and build a meaningful career, to find a spouse, build a family and raise children, to care for our relatives, and, oh yes! from time to time also to have a life…
What is this “Perpetuum mobile” for? What are we aiming at? What is truly important and what is superfluous? Do we really need the avalanche of goods and services that we relentlessly strive to acquire and consume, and for which we toil and sacrifice invaluable time, instead of devoting it to ourselves, to our families and friends?
We are about to venture unwittingly into a very different routine, unfamiliar, disconcerting; suddenly we will have much more time on our hands, and probably we will not know what to do with it, lest we “miss out” on something, lest we “waste” it. But then we shall gradually discover that, repressed by the brutal pressures of daily life, there are whole layers and capabilities in our brains that were never given the chance to manifest themselves. In an ironic twist of fate, the coronavirus is about to set these dormant capacities free, and offer them a unique opportunity to act up: the capacity for contemplation, for self-reflection, for meditation, and the ability to take delight in them; the capacity to ponder social interactions and appreciate our surrounding, particularly in observing human nature, so close to us and yet often so remote.
Shame on us if we keep suppressing these dormant capabilities, shame on us if we relate to their surfacing as a “waste of time.” There are those who need to journey to remote Ashrams in India to “find themselves”, far from the madding crowd. Now we have a unique opportunity to go on with our lives, and at the same time open a window on our own inner worlds, only to discover hidden treasures of feelings and insights, that laid there all along hidden from sight by the daily, all devouring routine.
This is not say that it will be not be difficult to deal with the formidable challenges posed by corona, more so at first, let alone if significant hardships arise: economic difficulties, shortages of supplies, uncertainty about disease-like symptoms that may appear,keeping children safely and productively occupied, and so on. All these and further difficulties that we cannot yet envision will surely demand from us a great deal of resourcefulness, creativity, and mental fortitude, and test the limits of our wherewithal.
This crisis is very different from others that we have known in the past, such as the first Gulf War: at that time, we were in daily danger from the threat of missiles and even from a chemical attack for six long weeks, which entailed a total disruption of our daily lives, including rushing often to “safe rooms” and wearing gas masks. But back then it was just us in Israel, not the entire world, and nobody would suggest attaching any positive significance, any silver lining, to a remote war that unfortunately spilled-over to us. Then we simply had to hang-on, to survive, and pray that it would end quickly.
This time 7.5 billion people in virtually every corner on Earth are sharing the same fears, the same disruption of daily life, the same existential questions. This might have been the case as well during the two World Wars of the 20th century, but then again, it is hard to ascribe anything positive to wars, certainly wars of such magnitude of destruction and horror.
Now it is radically different – what looms upon us is not a massive loss of lives and of their material envelop, but a shake-up of the key components of the rat-race that has kept as going for too long: globalization, narrowly defined economic growth and urban crowding. Tough questions and deep doubts hoover about them, and the answers are not bound to come from our political leaders or from the Davos elite. New, fresh answers can spring only from us, provided that we wisely grasp this opportunity, and refrain from treating it as a passing disturbance. It is eminently clear now: the coronavirus is not a “flight by night” occurrence, the disruption of our lives is bound to continue for a long time – as the length of the disruption, so is the magnitude of the opportunity, so is the breadth of the new horizons that may open up to us.
Life Imitates Art: Camus’ The Plague
by Shlomo Maital
Life imitates Art, so goes the saying. It is true. Novelists often anticipate events and describe them in detail, before they unfold. Take for instance the novel by the French-Algerian author Albert Camus, The Plague, published in French in 1947.
Camus began working on the novel in 1941. He did painstaking research, studying plagues and epidemics through history. His novel is set in the Algerian coastal city Oran, where a cholera plague killed a large fraction of the population in 1849.
Camus describes the initial denial, widespread in the early stages of COVID-19. “It’s impossible it should be the plague, everyone knows it has vanished from the West”, says a Camus character. Camus adds, sardonically, Yes, everyone knew that, except the dead.
When 500 people a day die in the Oran plague, Camus’ character, a Catholic priest, explains the plague as God’s punishment for sin. The main character, a medical doctor, knows better. He believes suffering is randomly distributed, makes no sense, it is absurd.
Camus concludes his novel, with these words:
“Everyone has it [the plague] inside himself, this plague, because no one in the world, no one, is immune.” Dr. Roux says, the plague never dies; it “waits patiently in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs and old papers” for the day when it will “rouse its rats and send them to die in some well-contented city”.
We humans know everything, control everything, decide everything – except when a tiny virus, not even technically a living thing, learns how to insert its RNA inside a cell, hijack the cell’s DNA, replicate itself, and kill the human body. And we instantly become much more humble.
Based on: Camus on the coronavirus, Alain de Botton, New York Times, March 22.
On-Line Learning
Maya Taya Arie & Shlomo Maital
As millions of children and college students are learning on-line, as schools and universities close, this blog will address key issues related to online education.
Our first key point: This is not about online teaching, it is about online learning. That is, a client-centered approach that focuses on the learning and the learner, not on the teacher. With wide access to search technology, children and students are increasingly able to learn and discover facts on their own. The role of educators has changed greatly – from teaching, to facilitating learning. That should be the focus of online education.
Shlomo Maital is a retired Technion professor, specializing in innovation and creativity; Maya Taya Arie is his grand-daughter and a student studying social studies with a focus on management, sociology and political science at Bar Ilan University.
Maya asks: How can a teacher teach an entire class online, and still retain the students’ attention?
Response (Maital): I taught my first distance-learning class at MIT in 1995. My students were Argentinean engineers, in three cities, La Plata, Buenos Ares and Mendoza.
The technology was: a broadcast studio at MIT, with video signal sent by Internet to Argentina. The connection was often broken, restored, broken again – but the Argentinean engineers were very patient, and the session was quite interactive, with students raising their hand, acknowledged by the lecturer, asked a question, and received an answer.
I had a wonderful producer named Elizabeth Derienzo. This is very important – MIT realized from the earliest days of distance teaching that this was a production, not a lecture. Elizabeth stood behind the TV camera, and constantly motioned to me, “high energy, high energy”. Because – when you teach in a classroom, you have at least some of the students who are ‘with you’, who respond with facial expressions, who interrupt, ask questions, engage..and this brings energy to the classroom. In a sterile studio, there is none of that. So — I constantly raised my own energy level, in my voice and body language, at Elizabeth’s request, because if the lecturer is bored and asleep, the students will be, too. And let’s face it, many lecturers, sitting in front of a boring screen, think to themselves that they would rather be doing something else – and lack the enormous nuclear energy that a classroom can provide.
Conclusion: Online instructors — remind yourself constantly, high energy. Modulate your voice, dynamics, up, down, project interest and passion. Passion! And above all, even when (especially when) you do not feel much like teaching online — Act! Pretend. Put on a show. Because online education is indeed a show, and like actors who perform even when ill, or tired, at a high level, so must we educators.
This is Rule #1. High Energy. Passion. And convey it to your students. Genuine, great. If not – Pretend.
Learning From Taiwan: A Deeper Look [Clue: Democracy & Transparency]
By Shlomo Maital
In previous blogs, I wrote tersely about how Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong have excelled in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
An article in Wired.com gives more details about Taiwan’s success. A brief summary: Democracy and Transparency.
Andrew Leonard writes: “Taiwan Is Beating the Coronavirus. Can the US Do the Same? The island nation’s government is staying ahead of the virus, but don’t ascribe it to “Confucian values.” Credit democracy and transparency. And preparedness (a detailed plan put in place after SARS in 2003).
“AS OF WEDNESDAY, the nation of Taiwan had recorded 100 cases of Covid-19, a remarkably low number given the island’s proximity to China. Some 2.71 million mainland Chinese visited Taiwan in 2019, and as recently as January there were a dozen round trip flights between Wuhan and Taipei every week. But despite its obvious vulnerabilities, Taiwan has managed, so far, to keep well ahead of the infectious curve through a combination of early response, pervasive screening, contact tracing, comprehensive testing, and the adroit use of technology.”
“Taiwan’s self-confidence and collective solidarity trace back to its triumphal self-liberation from its own authoritarian past, its ability to thrive in the shadow of a massive, hostile neighbor that refuses to recognize its right to chart its own path, and its track record of learning from existential threats.”
A BBC report this morning recounts that Taiwan was hit hard by SARS in 2003. In its wake, Taiwan set up stockpiles of medical equipment and detailed contingency plans. The moment China announced the case of a strange type of pneumonia, Taiwan was ready. Incoming flights had passengers tested for fever before they left the plane.
For political reasons, mainland China has vetoed Taiwan’s membership in the World Health Organization. As a result Taiwan has had to prepare for pandemics on its own, without WHO help. That has proved a major boon.
Andrew Leonard continues: “The threat of SARS put Taiwan on high alert for future outbreaks, while the past record of success at meeting such challenges seems to have encouraged the public to accept socially intrusive technological interventions. (Jason Wang, a Stanford clinician who coauthored a report on Taiwan’s containment strategy, also told me via email that the government’s “special powers to integrate data and track people were only allowed during a crisis,” under the provisions of the Communicable Disease Control Act.)”
Leonard continues to describe Taiwan’s transparency: “Taiwan’s commitment to transparency has also been critical. In the United States, the Trump administration ordered federal health authorities to treat high-level discussions on the coronavirus as classified material. In Taiwan, the government has gone to great lengths to keep citizens well informed on every aspect of the outbreak, including daily press conferences and an active presence on social media. Just one example: On March 15, Vice President Chen posted a lengthy analysis of international coronavirus “incidence and mortality rates” on Facebook that racked up 19,000 likes and 3,000 shares in just two days.”
Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong are now battling the ‘second wave’ – COVID-19 cases of citizens who contracted it abroad and are now returning home. (Of course nations have to allow their own citizens to re-enter the country). If only Europe and the US would open their windows, much can be learned from how Taiwan handles this ‘second wave’….because, chances are, there will also be a second wave in Europe and the US.
Thanks WIRED for making this freely available!…
https://www.wired.com/story/taiwan-is-beating-the-coronavirus-can-the-us-do-the-same/
COVID-19: Lessons from Three Smart Small Asian Nations Part 3. Taiwan
By Shlomo Maital
Taiwan, officially calling itself the Republic of China, is an island nation of some 23.7 million people, with GDP per capita of some $55,000 (using the adjusted exchange rate, known as Purchasing Power Parity), which reflects Taiwan’s undervalued currency.
Taiwan responded very very quickly to the COVID-19 threat, perhaps faster than anywhere:
“Taiwan acted even faster. Like Hong Kong and Singapore, Taiwan was linked by direct flights to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus is believed to have originated. Taiwan’s national health command center, which was set up after SARS killed 37 people, began ordering screenings of passengers from Wuhan in late December even before Beijing admitted that the coronavirus was spreading between humans.”
“Having learned our lesson before from SARS, as soon as the outbreak began, we adopted a whole-of-government approach,” said Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister. By the end of January, Taiwan had suspended flights from China, despite the World Health Organization’s advising against it. The government also embraced big data, integrating its national health insurance database with its immigration and customs information to trace potential cases, said Jason Wang, the director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention at Stanford University. When coronavirus cases were discovered on the Diamond Princess cruise ship after a stop in Taiwan, text messages were sent to every mobile phone on the island, listing each restaurant, tourist site and destination that the ship’s passengers had visited during their shore leave.”
As of Tuesday, Taiwan had recorded 77 cases of the coronavirus, although critics worry that testing is not widespread enough. Students returned to school in late February.
Speed. Agility. Discipline among the population. Preparedness. Anticipation. “Reading the world map correctly”.
This is what we learn from smart, rich, agile, disciplined small Asian nations.
COVID-19: Lessons from Three Smart Small Asian Nations
Part 2. Hong Kong
By Shlomo Maital
Hong Kong is officially known as “the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China”. It has 7.4 million people and GDP per capita of some $46,000 – higher than that of Israel.
Here, according to the New York Times, is how Hong Kong dealt with the COVID-19 crisis, influenced strongly from its traumatic experience with SARS in 2003:
“ Hong Kong’s heavy death toll from SARS, nearly 300 people, has spurred residents in the semiautonomous Chinese territory to exercise vestigial muscles of disease prevention this time around, even as the local authorities initially dithered on whether to close the border with mainland China. Nearly everyone, it seemed, began squirting hand sanitizer. Malls and offices set up thermal scanners.”
“The most important thing is that Hong Kong people have deep memories of the SARS outbreak,” said Kwok Ka-ki, a lawmaker in Hong Kong who is also a doctor. “Every citizen did their part, including wearing masks and washing their hands and taking necessary precautions, such as avoiding crowded places and gatherings.”
“The Hong Kong government eventually caught up to the public’s caution. Borders were tightened. Civil servants were ordered to work from home, prompting more companies to follow suit. Schools were closed in January, until at least the end of April.”
“On Tuesday, the government of Hong Kong, where only 157 cases have been confirmed, announced a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all travelers from abroad beginning later this week.”
SARS outbreak occurred nearly 17 years ago, in 2003. Despite this, the memory of SARS and the measures adopted at that time are fresh in the minds of Hong Kong citizens. It was the people of Hong Kong who acted, even before the government and administrative officials took action, in the COVID-19 outbreak.
I am certain the same will be true of COVID-19. We will remain this for generations. And hopefully, in the next pandemic, we will act promptly, as Hong Kong did.
COVID-19: Lessons from Three Smart Small Asian Nations Part 1. Singapore
By Shlomo Maital
We can learn a great deal from three small Asian nations or semi-autonomous areas (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan) about how to deal with COVID-19. These lessons are summed up in today’s New York Times, by Hannah Beech:*
Here, Part 1, is how Singapore acted.
I taught MBA students in Singapore, at Nanyang Technological Institute, for many years, and came to know Singapore and its people well.
I can sum up Singapore’s cultural DNA, in place from Day One, in large part thanks to its brilliant founding leader Lee Kwan Yew: We are a small nation, disliked by our huge neighbors. To survive, we must be the very best at everything, and accept no excuses for incompetence.
“Singapore’s strategy of moving rapidly to track down and test suspected cases, provides a model for keeping the epidemic at bay, even if it can’t completely be stamped out completely.
“With detailed detective work, the government’s contact tracers found, among others, a group of avid singers who warbled and expelled respiratory droplets together, spreading the virus…. If you chase the virus, a Ministry of Health official said, you will always be behind the curve.”
Singapore has had a relatively few cases and few deaths, even though the Chinese New Year brought a lot of arrivals from China initially.
The author writes: “Early intervention is the key. So are painstaking tracking, enforced quarantines and meticulous social distancing – all coordinated by a leadership willing to act fast and be transparent.”
Singapore’s key benchmark: To trackers seeking where the COVID-19 was contracted, for those testing positive — you have two hours to bring us concrete answers. Two hours. No excuses.
In Singapore, “details of where patients live, work and play are released quickly online, allowing others to protect themselves.”
Violation of privacy? Embarrassing? Of course. But public health comes first. And a disciplined population accepts this.
[Important correction: My friend Bilahari Kausikan, former senior Foreign Ministry official in Singapore, writes: NYT story was misleading in one detail: it gives the impression that we release the names of the infected. We don’t do that but refer to them by case number. The details are of date, time and places they have visited so that you can be alerted and if you have been there at the material time and date, get yourself checked.”]
Western nations seem to be chasing the virus, after it has arrived, rather than acting pre-emptively well before it unpacks its bags and settles in.
Perhaps next time, we will follow Singapore’s lead?
- “Asian hubs offer model for tackling an epidemic”. New York Times March 19/2020
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