The Era of Siri and “Google Effects”
My apologies to my learning blog friends, I’ve been cheating on your with my lifestyle blog. I hope to make it up to you with this post.
The other week I received the latest and greatest gadget from Apple – the iPhone 4S. For me this was a big upgrade as I was still operating on the iPhone 3. While many of the features are still the same from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S one major addition was the Siri functionality. I couldn’t help but think about how this personal assistant ties into Betsey Sparrow’s research on “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips”.
Today, we are able to take the space where we used to remember/store information and events and now we are using that space to remember how to find that information. Betsey Sparrow says, instead of internally storing information we are becoming more adaptive and storing that information externally. We are prioritizing where to store things, rather than retaining the actual information. Now, when people don’t know something they think about where to find that information (they automatically think about the computer).
It’s interesting because to some extent we are no longer able to remember as much as we used to (or should). A Forbes article on this topic found that college students remembered less information when they knew they would have access to it later. This is very true and I can remember personal experiences in college where this happened. When a professor told us an exam would be open-book, fewer hours were spent on rote memorization and more on indexing books and being able to access the information quickly. To some extent I find this to be a hindrance because we are using the Internet (and in some cases “open-books”) as a crutch to our own brain. But other education professionals might view this as a positive because all of the information one might need is at our fingertips thanks to the Internet and smart phone.
Since getting the new iPhone, I’ve been asking Siri and array of questions – from “call mom”, to who is the president of whatever country, to “remind me to pick up milk at the store”. Siri has become (as marketed) my own personal assistant for reminders, to-do’s, note-taking, and information repository. The entrance of Siri into our lives is an unprecedented next-step for our memory store all types of information. As learning professionals, how do these technologies and ways of storing information affect the way we design, develop and deliver training? I myself have noticed a change in the courses I develop for self-paced online. My narration scripts are becoming shorter and more information is turning into direct links to online community spaces and downloadable cheat sheets.
In many regards, I find this a positive and aids learning “at the moment of need”. Rather than bogging learners down with information in the classroom or online, why not help them file the information they will need when that “moment of need” occurs? How are you noticing changes in the way you design, develop and deliver training in your organization?
