How to Drive Successful Early Learning

How to Drive Successful Early Learning

00:00.00

Dipesh Jain

Hi everyone welcome to another episode of Tech in EdTech where we talk about technology that powers and supports education. Today we have with us a very special and interesting guest. Um, this guest has studied like studied philosophy and has taught psychology, both of these are my favorite things. So, without further ado I would like to introduce Matt Bateman from Higher Ground Education. Matt welcome to the show. 

00:31.59

Matt Bateman

Thank you so much for having me happy to be here.

00:34.93

Dipesh Jain

Thanks Matt. So you know Matt we’ll go into details about what you do but would love to hear a bit about yourself and Higher Ground Education. We would like to talk to audience about what you do at Higher Ground Education and what Higher Ground Education does.

00:49.70

Matt Bateman

Yeah, sure. So so um, I am an educator. I'm a philosopher. I actually have a PHD in philosophy and was ah a psychology professor for for a little while um and I've always been very very interested in education. Um, even at the college level like I love teaching. I love teaching undergraduates. I love teaching 18 year olds. It's kind of still my sweet spot for teaching and even though I've taught much younger and much older students. Um, and partly because of I was looking for a career change for various reasons and partly because I've always been interested in education. About ten years ago, 8 or 10 years ago, I got sucked into the world of Montessori Education so some people that I know introduced me to it, gave me a wonderful tour of and a chance to observe a series of Montessori Classrooms and I was completely blown away with it. Um, I've worked quite a bit in um, in ah in ah pre-school settings as as well as higher education. Um I did a lot of that in college and and earlier in my life and the kind of concentration and joy and seriousness and benevolence that you see in a Montessori classroom is just it, it was new to me. It was like all the best elements of my childhood, all my best memories were all present in this fairly structured environment and children were doing the kinds of things that I I certainly want to see children doing. I think that many people want to see children doing, where they're they're really really engaged, a joyously engaged in serious, work and they were choosing it. It wasn't because there was a teacher waring over them and giving them assignments and cheerleading them. It was because of the way. Um, the environment was set up and because of the way the culture of the classroom was set up and because of the way the curriculum was set up and I mean I didn't even understand all of this at the time when I first saw on Montessori classroom. It was it was something that I I loved. I fell in love with very quickly and that I knew I wanted to understand. And um, I'm trained as a philosopher and as an intellectual historian so my way of understanding things is like I am going to talk to a million people and engage in debates and read all of Montessori's works and her letters and her epistolary and her critics and um I've been doing that for the last for the last ten years really um, and I'm still doing that and some of the people that I was talking to, when I was first getting into it, we really aligned around what makes Montessori unique. That it that it's this. I mean there's this question as to like okay like Montessori is clearly getting a lot right.

03:24.94

Matt Bateman

She has her own description of what's going on; but but how are we to understand what's driving the good things in a Montessori classroom? And um, my view and the view of my collaborators and colleagues was that um there are some really deep solutions in Montessori to really perennial problems in education. Things like how can you have both rigorous conceptual knowledge oriented learning where the child is getting the things that are the foundations of knowledge that that are really important to any kind of cognitive frame and into any kind of connection with reality and that we expect schools to give you things like literacy and mathematics and the the kind of disciplinary subjects, history,literature, science - how do we get those to children in a way that is wholly compatible with and doesn't at all compromise on the fact that learning is something that you choose to do that that it's a consensual and active process that the child the child's interests and the child's choices are at the center of a healthy learning process? And this is a problem that all educators face like I mean I face this as ah as a as a university educator. Um. And that typically you see people try to achieve some sort of balance or oscillate back and forth and Montessori just solves this issue in early childhood. It's like she she figured out wait that we can have our cake and eat it too and um, and once once I had identified that and the people that I was working with identified that like it was like this is it like this is this is this kind of pattern of solution is what we wanted to do with our lives. We. We think it is like a really deep solution to the problems in education and and that's what higher ground education is about. So, we found that Higher ground on the premise of taking this Montessori approach. This very specific and new kind of structure that's coupled with this reverence for the child's choice and agency and capacity for self-direction and really just building it building it out at scale building it out at other ages. Um, so pushing on Montessori into the older ages. Doing things to um. You know? So we have 100 schools now. It's taken us, you know 6 years to get there. But now we're now we're growing pretty quickly. Um also thinking about just modern ways that we can use technology which I think we'll talk about today in order to in order to kind of push push the boundaries on this kind of education. So yeah, higher ground. It's a Montessori startup. It's a Montessori organization. We do everything from. We run physical schools. We have virtual schools. We have teacher training and the main thing that I do is run a think tank. So higher ground has a think tank arm called Montessorium so montesori and then um at the end we've kind of given it a a latin suffix. Um, that.

06:15.24

Matt Bateman

That's about you know talking about some of these philosophical, psychological, controversial issues in education and just figuring out the truth there.

06:20.79

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, thank you so much Matt. I think that was very very helpful just so you know I have ah I have a three and a half year old now and you know he's in he's in daycare and there are these compositions that we are having at home. My wife has been telling me about Montessori Montessori and and how, what are the things that she's been seeing so I think when when you spoke about a Montessori Education, what are the things or the elements in the world I can relate to some of the things that she was talking to me about because she has been visiting some of those. Um, so yeah, thank you so much. So you are the VP of pedagogy at Higher Education. How does your background in philosophy and psychology and im assuming some of science child psychology help you in that? And what are the things that become a part of your role at Higher Ground Education?

07:10.76

Matt Bateman

Yeah so yeah I have this um, kind of interdisciplinary background in philosophy and psychology where I studied the history of philosophy pretty extensively. I went to a program that, my graduate program at at UPenn was kind of known for and and and just excellent at the history of ideas in particular but I also did a lot of work. I kind of switched focuses in the middle of my graduate program to be a little bit more about cognitive science and the empirical sciences and I was interested in philosophical questions that arose there. I talked my way into ah into a cog neuro lab and ended up writing a dissertation on philosophical issues issues in the methodology of um of cognitive neuroscience and and that's ah, that's a standing interest of mine too. So again going back to college and even before college I was always interested in um, psychology in particularly alternative approaches to psychology like ecological psychology of body cognition. I don’t even remember. I was trying to figure out the other day how I first got introduced to those ideas and it's like so much a part of my interests that I've actually lost the particular episodic memories where I where I first discovered them? Um, but um, philosophy and psychology come up all the time in education. All the time. Um, particularly philosophy and and this might be surprising to hear. I think I think when people think about kind of education as like a research field or or the kinds of um advances in the special sciences that we would that we would want to be able to push forward education, they often think of empirical research psychological research, cognitive science research and and that's true. I I do think that those areas can help but education is about, how I define education: It's the systematic support for human development. Um. So it's it encompasses parenting, it encompasses schooling and there's no way to do that if you have a young child. So I have a 2 year old you have ah you have a 3 year old um if you have a young child um absolutely part of what you have to be thinking about as a parent is: What kind of person am I helping them to grow up to be? And and not not not in a specific way where it's like I'm helping them to grow up to be a doctor or lawyer, actually that mean not some parents do think that way. I think that that's generally a mistake. Um, but um, what are the components of the good life?

09:37.62

Matt Bateman

Like do you need to like do you need to be hardworking? And why? And why is work important? and like what is the role of human relationships in life? And like what am I shooting for? Like what is the good life that I'm trying to help this child grow up into? Even given that I I don't know a million of the details. Like obviously every child is unique in every life is unique, but there is this there is this science there is this branch of inquiry of philosophy called ethics that is concerned with questions about what the good life is and what the right way to live is. Um and you can you can raise analogous issues for knowledge. So even if you just focus on the learning parts of education. What does it mean for a child to learn the things that they need to know to get these foundations of knowledge that we treasure? But I think we rightly treasure. Well what is knowledge? Um, and what is the knowledge acquisition process? Um, again, there's a branch of philosophy that deals with these questions that's called epistemology and it's not particularly developmental in nature but but it is super super relevant and and there is massive unclarity in the field about these issues. I think most of the time when people are confused about um education, it's because they don't know what it's for. They don't know what they're shooting at, and they they don't really know what understanding or knowledge are and so they kind of paper over it with talk about foundations or academics without having a clear sense of what they're shooting for and and philosophy is really helpful in, um, assessing that problem and in building up building up a kind of alternative solutions like it's really helpful to just be able to ask those questions and go to first principles and and get the right kind of confusion to to let you propel yourself forward and and figure out some of these some of these solutions. Get clarity on what the purpose of education is. Get clarity on what you're doing. Um in terms of psychology ah should I go about psychology or do you want to ask me another question? 

11:14.26

Dipesh Jain

You know, please go ahead. I'd love to hear that.

11:23.85

Matt Bateman

 Yeah I mean in psychology. So um, I mean Montessori was a developmental psychologist and and I think that that's key like you can't understand her approach without understanding her view of the stage of the development and her view of how arming is motivated and how the mind works and how the subconscious and conscious kind of interact in in development. Um. I would say and and so that's important and being able to assess and understand that is important and and that's a big part of why i've's done a deep dive into Montessori is to understand her psychology um, not Montessori Psychology but her psychological theories. Um I I feel like I've also done a deep dive into her personal psychology. I've just read so many of her biographies at this point. Um, but um. I mean how it often comes up in practice is that many well-motivated intelligent people really want education to be a research problem. Like that like that if you I mean you talk if you talk to a parent or an investor like they’ll: What does the research say? Like.

12:19.97

Matt Bateman

You know like oh I'm like thinking about Montessori versus Waldorf versus like some sort of neoclassical education like what does the research say about what's best or even take a particular topic like homework or should I give my child stickers and during toilet training or something like that. What does the research say and um, most. I think most education research is pretty limited in what it can tell us and um, that I think it takes some expertise to be able to see that and to be able to understand that and to and to not be. I mean there's there's a negative or critical or skeptical project that's worth, if you're going to be a serious serious educator, that's worth kind of having at least as a hobby project which is you know, really being able to differentiate between good research and bad research and education and or or just even interesting and informative research and kind of research. That's more. Um, more kind of normal science or limited in scope or that doesn't actually tell us that much and and unfortunately um, just because of the way that and this is way beyond education. This is just the way that the social sciences have evolved over the last fifty years um there's just a lot of bad stuff out there that um, doesn't get us much mileage that doesn't replicate and if you have the right kind of training and lens it's not that hard to kind of sniff it out. But if you don't um, it's really easy to be misled and so just in my day-to-day that's that's the most often how it comes up though in the background, there's all these. I have a pretty substantive conception of what the human being is like what the human mind is like psychologically and biologically that come from Montessori and other thinkers thinkers like you know Gibson and Bernstein and some of these embodied cognition thinkers that that really informs my my view of children and that that's really important too.

14:06.24

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, and you mentioned about the research right? I think one of the other things that I find with research is it also kind of you have an ability, you have a tendency to have confirmation bias. If you mind things in a certain way, you will find some which is research that supports that you ah so I think. That point some of that you know research is important but sometimes it can also have those kind of connotations to it.

14:29.85

Matt Bateman

Yeah I mean what you see. I mean so what happens is that in fact, most of what we want to learn in education is not a matter of cognitive science research. Some of it is. Some of it Some of it definitely is but but um, but Science has a certain kind of premature.

14:46.53

Matt Bateman

And people trust Science and Science is a known way of discovering things and so so what you see is people who are really asking what they want is philosophical clarity about education. Um, and they turn to the research which isn't isn't equipped to give them that philosophical clarity. And then they kind of undergo a process of like you know well-motivated but still not great rationalization and and um and confirmation bias where they kind of um, find research findings that presuppose that kind of confirm their philosophical commitments about um, whatever they're most strong their maybe. Maybe they're conflicted but whatever your strongest philosophical commitment is about education or maybe it makes them lawful. Um, and yeah, it's I mean I mean this is an area where when you're kind of not sure when you in absence of good ways to get answers to questions confirmation Bias becomes a lot more powerful. Because it's not actually clear from the research like what would confirm or disconfirm um something like Montessori versus traditional education. That's very hard to get traction on.

15:46.59

Dipesh Jain

Right? So you know? Thank you for providing that I think that was very helpful. 1 of the things that you know what is very interesting to me is how you blend this approach or this pedagogical thought with technology and deliver with Higher ground education. I  would love to understand your modes of delivery in terms of you know how does this come into practice? What to teach? What do students see? What do, you know, how do you use technology to leverage and bring it at some scale?

16:17.46

Matt Bateman

Yeah, so um, I'm going to give you a mix of what we're doing and what we want to do and just try to try to present an overall vision and you can feel free feel free to interrupt me at any time and ask me to clarify or for more details because there's there's a lot to say on this topic. So so we are.

16:35.00

Matt Bateman

Very pro-technology as an organization. Um, and Montessori starts youn. So, Montessori starts at three months old and and so there there are um, real questions about what that means. Like why are we so pro-technology? How can we use it to help? Um, and it does look different. It looks different at different ages. Like I I don't think I don't really think that technology like that children in an infant program should be should be doing anything with screens but that doesn't mean that technology doesn't play a role. Um, so um, ah just as a kind of framing point in terms of our overall approach and philosophical framework, Um I mentioned earlier how Montessori solved some of these perennial problems in education between you know how do you get the child to learn the things that it's good for the child to learn objectively, um, with reconciling that with the child's choice and motivation and the fact that learning and growth are voluntary. And it seems like there's a kind of tension or tradeoff between those 2 things and Montessori's core to Montessori solution is um, you design an environment. You design an environment that's very, um, very intentional and engineered. I even like using the word synthetic to describe the Montessori environment where it's it's full of materials that have been created and engineered to um to be accessible to the child um to be open to the child's choice and exploration. And in the child's choosing these materials and working with them and making choices and exploring them, they get the foundations of knowledge that they need. So, these are these are very very good learning materials like unreasonably effective learning materials. Um, that are sequenced in a certain way, that are introduced in a certain way by the teacher in brief presentations, that the child practices within a certain way, and that's really joyful and delightful to the child so that so that it is driven by the child's interests and consent and activity and the child is practicing with these materials but they're practicing with the materials and and the materials have a lot of kind of content and material built into them that is just exceptionally good for seating knowledge. Um, and forgiving a conceptual foundation. Um, so so what does any of that have to do with technology? Um technology. So what Montessori really worked out her approach for young children, especially the 3 to 6 age that that's where she spent the most time and of refining the implementation practice and and and the basic you know I mean there are there are kind of cultural things that you do in the classroom and things that the teacher does but the basic kind of core mechanism is learning materials and physical environmental design. Um, our technology thesis in essence is that um you can create ah, a digital prepared environment that serves a similar function in many other contexts. Um, so um, so so for older children um take take a teenager because that's an easy case, an elementary student. It's like somewhere in between a teenager and early childhood in terms of probably how much technology exposure you want them to be giving. How much do you want them to be kind of engaging with physical materials. But but but take a teenager and let's say that um you think that it's really important that a teenager like these are things that are part of our history curriculum. Ah, ah that a teenager come to understand recent history as well as older history. Um, in particular the history of the twentieth century that was dominated by the cold war and pax americana and horrors of the twentieth century. Um, so there's a lot of history content that you want them to learn and there's a certain kind of chronological way that you that you think that they should they should end up holding it but within that there's tremendous options. There's there's options in the order that they do it. There's options in the kinds of assignments and activities that they give that they get. Um there's options in like they could do they could have like three weeks where they're not studying history at all where they're studying mathematics instead. Um, um, how is all of that organized? How do they? How do they interface with this this this kind of like you could you could imagine like a map or a skill tree like ah I don't know how many of your.

20:40.80

Matt Bateman

Ah, audience members have like played roleplaying games where it's like like you level up your characters, you spend your skills and ah, you're kind of building a skillt tree but some skills are prerequisites for others like like there's a lot of optionality in the skill tree but there's still a structure to it and and exposing that structure to children. So so in children's house and and for the for the young students or the preschool students, that structure is exposed in the very physical design of the classroom.For older students, as knowledge gets more abstract, it's not that obvious how to design a physical environment to to expose that increasingly complicated structure and we think that the right kind of LMS, the right kind of learning environment, can serve. Can be like a digital Montessori so shelf can can kind of give give this student really really exciting and motivating content that they can see the structure of that they can navigate through in their own way. But that's still opinionated and um has the right kinds of constraints and guardrails to help the child, help the teenager in this case, get something that that. Something like help guarantee that the teenager gets something like mastery like real knowledge and understanding. They're not just checking boxes. Um, when they're moving through this curricular content and it's really motivating and engaging they can choose it and they can organize it and they can relate it to other ideas. Um, I Think that's a very hard problem to solve without technology um and and and in fact, um.

21:57.28

Matt Bateman

I mean in in kind of maybe this is contingent. Maybe this is just like who's been working on it. But in fact, the Montessori approach of the prepared environment at the level of curriculum um has not really been extended into the older ages and I think the part of the reason is just that it's just so insanely hard to have a systematic you know, 5 subject disciplinary curriculum that like I mean high school students can learn anything like high school students are like adults in a certain way cognitively and in other ways they're not but like it's just very hard to organize that without software and and that's what we're looking for information technology to do. Now that has other applications too. So we use information technology. We use that kind of. That kind of ethos of like prepare a digital environment and then turn the learner loose. That's also really important to our teacher training which is something that adults take so people you know people that are professionals and you know anywhere between 18 years old and like 50 years old I mean people of all stripes have taken our teacher training. Um, and and teacher training is education and so we use that process there. Um, we use it to support the teachers so in early childhood like there's not like an ipad in our toddler classrooms, but there is an ipad for the teacher. Um, and and it's really really valuable for the teacher to have a certain kind of systematic curricular support record keeping support and and it's it's logistical, but it's logistical in a way that really touches on pedagogy on what they're doing on the kinds of lesson planning that they're doing on how they're assessing um on how they're tracking students developmental progress. Um, it's a massive aid I mean if you want to really revolutionize education. You have to change teachers I mean that's one of the main bottlenecks is you have to really empower teachers on a very different approach and technology is invaluable in doing that so that I have more thoughts on what we want to do what we're aiming to do so so we bought a year a year and a half ago we bought um altitude, um, alt school the the company formerly known as alt school created an LMS altitude and we purchased it we we've been modifying it and adapting it for our uses ever since? Um, and and some of the changes that we we're making are pretty deep in structural that kind of reflect our pedagogy and that's an ongoing project.

24:00.42

Matt Bateman

But you know we're using it in and all sorts of contexts in our in our adolescent programs and our virtual programs and our teacher training and um and the goal is to get it to be what I just described. To get it to be this like premiere really thoughtfully, pedagogically structured LMS that is that has this map like or skilltree-like structure. Um, such that you can give the people using it a tremendous amount of freedom.

24:21.76

Dipesh Jain

Great and and kind you touched on multiple aspects there I would like to go you know I'd like to understand a bit more. See one of the one of the things one of the problem or the dilemma um, a lot of early people in early education space face is the problem of screen time right? Um, you know how much screen time is important is screen time like I'm ah I mean we are parents right? We like when I have a Tv on I'll keep questioning myself like you know is this the right is this the right amount? Is it helping him learn because there are things about okay is watching Let's say Zootopia, which he loves these days, is watching Zootopia, it is helping him learn about some elements? So how do you think at a very conceptual level about things like this like at a basic root level on screen time and technology and what is it balance? What should what exposure what exposure is good? What is not?

25:19.22

Matt Bateman

So I don't think that screen time is a legitimate concept and and part of the reason why I don't like to use it and I don't think I I'm sure that there are places that we use it at Higher Ground and our in our writing. Um, but um. I don't think that having a facetime call with Grandma and watching Carl Sagan's cosmos documentary and playing minecraft and playing candy crush and watching sponge prob square pants and um. Um I don't think that all these things they're not I mean they all take place on screens but they're not they're too dissimilar to categorize together and say there is screen time. How do we think about this phenomenon of screen time? Um, so so I think that I mean this isn't. This this is just to kind of like get underneath the question I I think that the question gets at something gets at something really legitimate which is I mean my daughter has this to my daughter's two years old. We're pretty I mean compared to other parents that I know were pretty liberal with screen time with her so she she usually watches somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour and a half of um of Tv a day and um and the whole question is um, what is she watching? um like how is she engaging when she's watching? is she just kind of like. Meaning back on the couch and zoning out and waiting for the next kind of overstimulating Youtube video to come up and we're planning it on repeat and and that's that's kind of what's doing I mean I mean that's what I'm nervous about so I'm not nervous about her watching screens. I'm I'm nervous about what she's doing when she watches screens. Um how she engages with it. And then in terms of especially in terms of younger children. But I think this is true across the spectrum of ages. Even even for adults I mean part of the question with with with interfacing with technology is just that I mean time is a tradeoff so insofar as you're spending time on 1 thing. You're not spending time on another thing and um. Early childhood is a time and and and schools in general are are a context where we want to be very very thoughtful about okay like if the child is doing x. That means its effect. They're not doing y and you know even like really valuable. You know quote on quote screen time even like really engaged learning intensive valued on screen time. Like it trades off against like time running around outside and exploring outside and children absolutely need that like they they need the the contact with the messy physical social world. They need to play. They need to explore and and there are cases that are unfortunately common of young children. Um kind of getting getting so sucked into you know.

27:56.98

Matt Bateman

Technological ways of spending their time that that it starts to really cut into the minimum required time that they need in order to get those other things and by the way I think that that can happen with other media too. So there is absolutely such a thing as a child who is too Bookish or like there like if a child child can be like can.

28:11.40

Dipesh Jain

Yeah.

28:15.58

Matt Bateman

Like there's there's like a kind of like let's say elementary age child who if left to their own devices will do nothing but read Harry Potter all day and then do nothing but pick up you know, whatever the next whenever the the earth sea series are like they're super into fantasy and they would just do it all the time if they wanted to and like that part of what that child needs the the adults around them to do. Help motivate them to choose some of the other things that are really really important for their development that aren't books. I mean it sounds weird to say like this child is reading too much but that that can happen and something similar is true of screens. Do you want me to say a little bit about how I how I think about screen time with my daughter. Yeah.

28:47.61

Dipesh Jain

Yes. Absolutely I mean if we love to.

28:53.54

Matt Bateman

Um, so um, so um the main thing that we that she watches are um what I what I consider to be high quality movies. Um Disney Movies, Pixar movies not not just I mean we're not limited to those 2 brands the land before time like that. There's other kinds of children's content that I but I think is it's well produced. It's narratively rich and compelling. The characters are interesting enough and human enough and substantiated enough. Um, so that that you're learning something by watching it that the quality, the quality. The aesthetic quality is good. The quality of the music if there's music is good. Um, there's there's some emotional drama to it. Um, so that that they're really kind of engaging in an emotional arc as they go through it and they're long. They're a little bit long and complicated like like ah like an hour and a half movie like really following. It is it at the very edge of what a 2 year old could do my daughter just turned two a couple of months ago so so so she's so pretty young for this and we've done this for a while and I watch them with her. Um, not every time but often um, you know in 30 minute chunks or 90 minute chunk chunks. We try to avoid skipping around like she might want to watch a particular scene I'm like it's coming like I you know I try to build her patience like get her into the narrative I ask her questions about it. And she herself is really engaging in it even if I'm not there to ask her questions about it. She'll kind of like get up from her seat and describe what's happening and want to talk about it and want to understand like she'll ask like Daddy What's happening? and we might pause and I might explain it to her. Um, that following a 90 minute narrative in a Disney or Pixar movie is really good for her I think um and and there are other kinds of screen time that I think are good so when she was younger. We watched a lot of I curated her a little mini list of a middle little mini Youtube playlist of videos like nature videos where where it was like 10 a 10 minute fixed fixed camera shot. So the camera doesn't move at all. Um, and it's just and and there's no narrator anything and and you're just watching penguins in the wild. They're waddling around. They're interacting with one another they're sliding down hills. They're kind of socializing. They're pushing one another they're they're being. They're making noises. They're being their penguinself. And it's it's not fast cut like she has to choose where to direct her attention. Um, there's a chance that she might get bored with it and walk away if she wants to sustain her interest that takes some effort. It's like 10 minutes or watching the same thing. It's kind of like the video equivalent of being at a zoo and I did this for construction sites. There's there's these wonderful Youtube channels of um. Like walks especially in Japan for some reason this is big in Japan like Tokyo walks is a good one where it's like a guy who wears like a head mounted or chest mounted stable steadicam and he just quietly walks through Tokyo and that's it. That's the video and and you get to see what he sees and she would she would just stare at them and be fascinated and ask questions about them. Um.

31:41.66

Matt Bateman

These are the kinds of things that build interest they expose her to things like it's really good that if a child is interested in Penguins or or even if they're not interested in Penguins Even if you just show them Penguins Then they're interested in them. Um, there's no prior interest. Um, they can we live in a time when they can see them. Do you know how crazy that is.

31:57.71

Dipesh Jain

Yeah.

31:59.37

Matt Bateman

And how unique that is to the twenty first century where like you don't have to go to A zoo. You don't have to travel. Um, it's not this rare thing like children can see everything in the universe. There's videos of it. They can see other cities. They can see people in different cultures. Um I like that I can expose her to that. Um, and and the only the only issue is like derisking the kind of oversimulation factor like you don't want to put the child in a position where they can get a lot of entertainment and value by being passive. You want you want it to be active and so the key the fundamental principle is like how do you ensure that it's an active process and that it's some work for them? How do you kind of. Make it in the zone of their proximal development? or make it make it something that just doesn't have that kind of extra stimulating factor? Um, so that's how I think about screen time with her on on the margins. We also like take lots of photos of her and show her those photos and she she's like pretty good at using our phones to  like Flip through with her thumb and find photos. She's been since she was one years old. She's been like manipulating our technology pretty expertly and she'll like change settings and we don't know how to change them back and I also consider that to be a good thing like I want her to grow up in a world where she feels at home with digital technology. This is like. Part of her world is not something that the adults around her are cynical about even if we set some boundaries around it and um and it's it's value dense for her and she loves it and she's looking forward to interacting with it more. I think that that that's just a net positive so that's just that's a shotgun of things that I do with my own daughter.

33:18.15

Dipesh Jain

Well, that's very helpful. I love the answer. I mean not just great parenting advice for me. But also there are a lot of principles in there that you spoke about that I think are very valuable, right? like screen time we we keep harboring on the word screen time but it's not the screen time. It's. Type of content. The duration. There is so much that goes into that. Um that you know when you're designing that kind of technology for early learning, those are the things that you need to keep in mind because it's not It's not a clear cut like okay 1 thing one and done okay screen time of 1 hour is good or screen time of 1 hour and 1 minute is a bad. There are no clear answers to that. So I think I think that was very helpful. so thank you so much um you know coming to that question of technology. We spoke about what you're doing right now. What? What? what? do you emphasize the future to be? what do you do? How do you see the play between technology and pedagogy as you go forward in the next one 5 years or 10 years from now?

34:17.92

Matt Bateman

So I think it's a really really exciting time especially on on the five or ten year horizon. I think and then I think if you look out at that at the 20 or 30 year horizon it's even more exciting. Um, and there's there are a lot of unknowns. so so I'm just going to give you a couple of things that I think are really really low hanging fruit. Um. Um, that that I that I that I think we could see more of now and that and that I expect to see more of and then maybe I'll lisy 1 or 2 things that are a little bit more speculative. So the the lowest hanging fruit is um, have you ever seen the video powers of 10 you know what? that is okay.

34:50.65

Dipesh Jain

I I may have but I'm but I'm not sure if you don't mind elaborating.

34:56.52

Matt Bateman

So so I'll just I'll just describe it for your for your for your audience members. So a lot of people like have seen this and remember it from like elementary school. Maybe it's maybe it's of my generation but I've talked to younger people who have seen it too. So it's old that was produced in like the 70 s or eighty s I think it's a it's like a short video. I think it's about 10 minutes um you can probably Google at powers of 10 on Youtube. Um, so it starts by I believe it starts but with a kind of overhead shot of somebody sitting outside on ah on a picnic blanket like it's a person who's having a picnic and there's a narrator and every few seconds it zooms out. Um, 1 power of 10 so it zooms out 10 x and then it zooms out 100 x then zooms at a thousand x and then it zooms at ten thousand x and it just keeps doing that at a steady rate and so you go from kind of seeing this person and and there's a kind of square around the screen to give you a sense of scale you go from seeing this person sitting on a picnic blanket to seeing like an overhead satellite shot to seeing the whole country to seeing the whole earth to seeing the earth and the moon to seeing the whole solar system and so on and so forth. And then at the end it kind of zooms all the way back in and then it goes micro so it zooms into the person and into their cells and into their DNA and into their molecules and into their atoms like the same thing 10 x in the other direction and and what the narration is about the narration is about explaining to you like powers of 10 like what like what each power of 10 means what each level of scale means how an order of magnitude is this very specific thing that expands your mind and allows you to relate different levels of scale to 1 another. It's and it's a short bit of content that is so good it is so good like I mean it is just eternally. The best are among the very best introductions to the idea of powers of town or orders of magnitude. It gives it visually. The narration is really good. Yeah yeah, so so so I mean and and and and so just just think of like what is the best pedagogical just video content that you've seen.

36:33.22

Dipesh Jain

I mean just just listening to you just listening to you I can imagine So I'm sure the video? Yeah yeah.

36:47.81

Matt Bateman

So so for some people it's powers of time other people. It's like other people remember like Carl Sagan's cosmos like this this kind of old video series that was produced by Carl Sagan that that is an introduction to different aspects of science. Um, the the natural world around us and how we scientifically study it um, there should be It's very rare to find educational content. That's that's that good very very rare. Why is that so.

37:08.50

Dipesh Jain

And you know what was the what was the 1 revealing thing for me just on continuing on the same line is human anatomy. Ah when I saw the human anatomy the first time and I saw kidneys were actually to more serious side not on the it's it was kind of revealing to me. Okay, you know this is how it is I mean it's.

37:13.62

Matt Bateman

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

37:27.00

Dipesh Jain

Um, it was all in my head but now that I saw that just on the power of video sorry to add that.

37:27.26

Matt Bateman

Yeah, yeah, I mean the power the power video and the power of the right kind of video. So if so if you just Google like I don't know like the history. The recent history of Russia like a lot of people are interested in Russia right now you'll find some videos that are pretty good. Like for sure like you could find good content out there and it's amazing that you can find good content out there if you're interested in it like like it's like crazy that we live in a time in history where there's like the equivalent 1 of 50000 encyclopedia entries that you can find on on the same topic and some of them are pretty good. Um, none of them are as good as powers of 10 none of them are as good as cosmos and and. I I mean why there isn't like why? why why why? there isn't like powers of tunnel level cosmos level game of thrones level kind of production quality investment and thought put into like like what are like there should be like amazing curricular content that that are just. Again, eternally the best or amongst the best ways of introducing really key ideas that everybody loves that are motivating and that are memorable in them are structured the right way that have the right narration and the right visuals. It's hard to get this content I know I've worked on some of this content. It's not that easy to do but like it. It should be there should be like 100 x or a thousand x or 10000 x more investment in this area than there is I think that what's out there is in general like you know somewhere between like a c or optimistically a b and it's very hard to find a plus examples and a plus examples are really really valuable like you could, but you could base a whole curriculum around them and it is technology enables. It. I mean it's it's kind of dumb technology like you could do powers of 10 in the 80 s but like it's easier now. It's better now like you could do more with computer animation. It's easier. It's easier and cheaper to do it like like the fact that you could put it on Youtube and make it searchable is is relevant like there should just be way more amazing curricular content out there. Um, in mixed media digital format and and I think that that and people just aren't working on it to be honest I mean that some some people are but like not at the level that I'm talking about it where it's like how do we create the eternal like real ambition about it. Um, that's that's 1 thing. I.

39:27.17

Dipesh Jain

I yeah yeah was listening to a podcast on the use of Meta in education right. I know you know it sounds it is but can we if you're learning Greek philosophy or or let's say we're learning greek history or we're learning Russian history for that matter. Can we actually be in that place?

39:47.20

Dipesh Jain

Can we be you know that and again this is all right now. It's all, but but you never know what happens next morning.

39:50.47

Matt Bateman

Yeah I think I think I think AR and VR I think are definitely going to be really really important to education over the next twenty or thirty years there's a question as to kind of what the timetable is like I'm a little bit more optimistic on the timetable but it won't surprise me if it was slower. Um and also also kind of video game like structures where it's like you know you're a traveler to. You know, but the um you're a traveler to ancient Greece like do you go to? do you go to you. You have invitations to go to Sparta or Athens which one do you go? to first if you talk to like like you could imagine a kind of like rpg structure in which a lot of this was embedded that people really love. That people use and explored and kind of were excited about and that help motivate choices and so on um, I'm bullish on that sort of thing as well. I don't think there are that many good examples of it. Um out there to point to but um, um, yeah, like choices video game-like structures. Um for for content. But synthesis is doing is interesting if if you guys haven't heard of them I think probably we must understand your podcast will have but but they're worth looking up in terms of creating um, kind of embedding real lessons and in a video collaborative video gamelike structure. Um ar and vr like the the idea that you could go out into the world. And like turn on on off labels for things. Um some people it sounds dystopian to me, it sounds like amazing like I think that it could be like a 10 x one hundred x multiplier on um, every child's kind of like an a budding naturalist and and the idea that you could. Um, foster that with something like a smart contact lens is is like really really game-changing to um to you know making developmentally accessible a certain kind of conceptual attitude and interested and motivated attitude towards the natural world. So yeah, you.

41:32.55

Dipesh Jain

And yeah, and for audience will definitely put link to the the tens power of tens videos just spoke about the cosmos videos so that they can take a look at at Butto. That's I think that's you're right about? How can you get that kind of content like that really really good and it's not just good Content. It's also good pedagogically thought through kind of content um to education I think that is going to be very crucial in my opinion as well. Yeah.

42:01.75

Matt Bateman

Yeah, yeah, and I think it's and I think there's no obstacles to just like I mean I'm I'm hopeful that like we'll be able to do a lot of that or that. Like you know, somebody like Disney or Netflix will get clued into this and like you know one of these streaming platforms will be like wait wait a second like why aren't we the go-to platform for like content oriented curriculum. Um, and and start to think about that and and then it starts to get you know start to attract the best mind they get billions of dollars of investment and um. Because it's possible now. There's no limitation on doing it now other than just nobody's doing it.

42:35.73

Dipesh Jain

Great. Matt this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much anything that you would like to add as we wrap up this conversation. We've spoken about multiple issues multiple areas, um anything that you would like to add or summarize this with.

42:39.79

Matt Bateman

Yeah.

42:50.17

Matt Bateman

Yeah, a couple a couple of things so and this is just I'm just gonna show what we do so um, so we I mean we do run virtual school programs. So we are very thoughtful about how technology technology interacts with the physical world. So so if you have especially if you have an elementary student or an adolescent at Home and you want our virtual programs go to http://guidepostmonessori.com and check out our virtual school programs for middle school and high school. It's thoughtandindustry.com and then for this kind of thing we have I mean our think tank does do work on thinking about technology. So um. Um, you can head to http://montesorium.com to return more there or or just follow me on Twitter I'm always blasting out opinions. Um @mattbateman. So yeah, check us out.

43:35.47

Dipesh Jain

Yep and we'll post all the links and that show notes so Matt thank you so much for joining. It has been an absolute pleasure to host you and yeah, let's hope that we see more power of tensvideos coming in the coming future. Thank you so much.

43:47.98

Matt Bateman

Yeah, and if you're interested if you're interested in doing this kind of thing definitely reach out to me on on Twitter or whatever. So thanks, yeah, all right? Thank you? Yep, bye-bye. Thanks.

43:55.31

Dipesh Jain

Absolutely will do thanks Matt have a good one. Thanks.