Luc P. Beaudoin

To boost productivity and cognition in the Knowledge Age, prioritize Deep work, avoid the Shallows, and Self-Quantify

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cognitive_performance—————

In 2009, Winifred Gal­lagher pub­lished his excel­lent Rapt: Atten­tion and the Focused Life, per­sua­sive­ly argu­ing that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, enjoy­ment and human devel­op­ment require extend­ed peri­ods of focusing.

The next year, Nicholas Carr pub­lished his fas­ci­nat­ing The Shal­lows: What the Inter­net Is Doing to Our Brains in which he argued that the Inter­net is ‘rewiring’ our brains. While his claim was exag­ger­at­ed, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and the Inter­net cer­tain­ly pro­vide chal­lenges to [Read more…] about To boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and cog­ni­tion in the Knowl­edge Age, pri­or­i­tize Deep work, avoid the Shal­lows, and Self-Quantify

5 ideas to help knowledge workers increase lifelong learning and productivity

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worker-brains—–

Some apps aim to help you train spe­cif­ic brain func­tions, such as work­ing mem­o­ry. Oth­ers are meant to help you main­tain spe­cif­ic skills, such as use­ful field of view for safe dri­ving. But sup­pose you are read­ing a very insight­ful book and need to mas­ter some of its knowl­edge gems.

What kind of app might you use? [Read more…] about 5 ideas to help knowl­edge work­ers increase life­long learn­ing and productivity

For a good night’s rest, combine general sleep hygiene with mindful and cognitive techniques

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sleep——-

Most Sharp­Brains read­ers under­stand the ben­e­fits of stress reg­u­la­tion, and also the ben­e­fits of sleep. Rec­om­men­da­tions for sleep hygiene are well pub­li­cized. They include avoid­ing alco­hol and stim­u­lants like caf­feine; stick­ing to reg­u­lar bed and wake times (even if you don’t get enough sleep); expos­ing [Read more…] about For a good night’s rest, com­bine gen­er­al sleep hygiene with mind­ful and cog­ni­tive techniques

7 Key Lessons from the 2011 SharpBrains Summit: Retooling Brain Health for the 21st Century

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Sharp­Brains served a high­ly thought-pro­vok­ing and infor­ma­tive 2011 Vir­tu­al Sum­mit on Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tu­ry over 3 days, March 30th — April 1st. Here is a brief dis­til­la­tion of the large num­ber (40+) of presentations.

1.The range and vari­ety of pre­sen­ta­tions left no room for doubt that the dig­i­tal brain health mar­ket is con­cerned with much more than improv­ing cog­ni­tive per­for­mance and preventing/treating dis­ease. There is a need for many tools in each of the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: [Read more…] about 7 Key Lessons from the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Century

Apple iPad Thumbs-Up: Brain Fitness Value, and Limitations

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In a pre­vi­ous arti­cle for iPad2Sharp­Brains, I asked whether the Apple tablet (the iPad) would hin­der or sup­port cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Here, I assess the iPad against the cri­te­ria I laid out pre­vi­ous­ly. I then assess its poten­tial for brain fit­ness in gen­er­al. I am rely­ing on Apple’s infor­ma­tion; I have not yet used the iPad.

The iPad has been cov­ered all over the net, and Apple has much infor­ma­tion on its web­site, so I will not repeat that here, except to say that the iPad looks like a 9.7 inch iPod with a mul­ti-touch LED-back­lit IPS screen. It can run all iPod appli­ca­tions and more. It is a rather spec­tac­u­lar, attrac­tive plat­form for doing all of what you can do with an iPod but with com­pelling pos­si­bil­i­ties that a larg­er screen presents. It is also an eBook read­er and an extreme­ly impres­sive gam­ing machine. It is priced very com­pet­i­tive­ly ($500 and up). I imag­ine that many peo­ple will for­go pur­chas­ing an iPod, a game sta­tion, a net­book and an e‑reader and apply their sav­ings to this device.

The iPad itself, and as part of a tech­no­log­i­cal ecosys­tem of prod­ucts that work togeth­er, is some­thing which has major impli­ca­tions for the brain fit­ness market.

The fol­low­ing table sum­ma­rizes the check-list from my pre­vi­ous article.

Table 1 iPad Eval­u­a­tion Check-List

Cri­te­ria Assess­ment
Appli­ca­tions
Pow­er­ful per­son­al task-manager Yes (Third-par­ty)
Graph­ic Organizer Yes (third-par­ty)
Pow­er­ful outliner Yes (third-par­ty)
User-activ­i­ty monitor No (but with­in reach of Apple)
Inte­grat­ed self-test­ing system No (third-par­ty can do part of this).
Major Cog­ni­tive Features
Sys­tem inte­gra­tion and syncing Yes (for what is pro­vid­ed, anno­ta­tions not yet supported)
Rich anno­ta­tion framework No (but it is with­in reach of Apple)
Col­lab­o­ra­tion Some (anno­ta­tions not supported)
Mute func­tion (Atten­tion Protection) Close (iPad is attention-friendly)
Afford­able, rat­ed content Major pub­lish­ers are on board; book prices cur­rent­ly high; intel­li­gent qual­i­ty rat­ing sys­tem not announced

1. Appli­ca­tions Checklist

Apple has enabled much of whatchecklist is need­ed for the iPad to meet the appli­ca­tion cri­te­ria I laid out. The iPad is not just an e‑reader, it is an appli­ca­tion plat­form for cog­ni­tive pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, brain fit­ness and learn­ing. It will run all exist­ing (140,000 and count­ing) iPod appli­ca­tions. Some of the appli­ca­tions I called for are already on the Apple App Store, though they will require (forth­com­ing) enhancements.

I pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed the need for a task man­ag­er, a graph­ic orga­niz­er, an out­lin­er, and a spaced learn­ing sys­tem. These appli­ca­tions will not be pre-installed on the iPad. How­ev­er, many ven­dors have already announced that their Mac OS X cog­ni­tive pro­duc­tiv­i­ty appli­ca­tions (includ­ing graph­ic orga­niz­ers, out­lin­ers and task man­agers) are being port­ed to the iPad. So, we can tick those cri­te­ria off.

Apple has devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly for the iPad inex­pen­sive iWorks pro­duc­tiv­i­ty appli­ca­tions for com­pos­ing doc­u­ments, spread­sheets and pre­sen­ta­tions. This is implic­it sup­port for active learn­ing on the iPad. In addi­tion, Apple’s exist­ing iPod appli­ca­tions are also avail­able for the iPad.

I was puz­zled by the absence of a dic­tio­nary on the iPad home page. Users should not have to research and down­load dic­tio­nar­ies them­selves, par­tic­u­lar­ly since a use­ful dic­tio­nary is avail­able on OS X (its ecosys­tem rel­a­tive).

2. User Monitoring

I expressed the need for a user activ­i­ty mon­i­tor, which was not pro­vid­ed. What I mean here is that the Apple should include oper­at­ing sys­tem, MobileMe and appli­ca­tion sup­port for mon­i­tor­ing and report­ing on how the user is spend­ing their time across the Apple ecosys­tem. This sup­port [Read more…] about Apple iPad Thumbs-Up: Brain Fit­ness Val­ue, and Limitations

Will the Apple Tablet Support or Hinder Users Cognitive Fitness?

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Rumor has it that Apple is going to announce a tablet com­put­er, which may well become a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new way for users to read and expe­ri­ence all kinds of edu­ca­tion­al content.

Will it sup­port or hin­der our Cog­ni­tive  Fitness?

In this arti­cle, I describe the cri­te­riachecklist that a tablet com­put­er and its tech­no­log­i­cal ecosys­tem must meet in order for the solu­tion to make users more knowl­edge­able and smarter. To achieve these lofty goals, the tablet must be much more than an read­er. The offer­ing must be an inte­grat­ed learn­ing envi­ron­ment with which users trans­form the infor­ma­tion that they read, hear and view on the tablet into their own knowledge.

The key con­sid­er­a­tion in design­ing such a sys­tem is that pro­duc­tive read­ing is active read­ing. In oth­er words, learn­ing involves a lot of think­ing, writ­ing, draw­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing. Learn­ing involves antic­i­pat­ing what the author will say, set­ting learn­ing objec­tives, detect­ing knowl­edge gaps, writ­ing com­ments on the doc­u­ment, draw­ing diagrams.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, today’s com­put­ers do not make this an easy task. Most browsers, for exam­ple, do not inher­ent­ly allow you to anno­tate text (e.g., to make a note of what is impor­tant or you don’t under­stand). Anno­tat­ing requires an add-on, and the anno­ta­tions are usu­al­ly just text or high­lights that are trapped in soft­ware; they can­not be linked to oth­er doc­u­ments, email or diagrams.

In order to be a suc­cess­ful learn­ing envi­ron­ment, the Apple tablet must match the incum­bent (paper) and also address the cri­te­ria list­ed below.

Beat The Incum­bent Com­peti­tor — Paper

First, Apple must take into account the major strengths of a tablet’s main com­peti­tor: paper. Despite its many draw­backs com­pared to com­put­ers, paper cur­rent­ly has many advan­tages. Spencer (2006), for exam­ple, has found that her dis­tance edu­ca­tion stu­dents find paper to be more depend­able, flex­i­ble, and ergonom­ic. Spencer’s stu­dents pre­ferred to print com­plex arti­cles than to read them online.

Paper has a pre­dictable struc­ture and lay­out. It is easy to use and it has a def­i­nite start and end point. Most read­ers can very rapid­ly access any page of a book, use the table of con­tents, index to quick­ly nav­i­gate. Read­ers don’t have to wait for a page to load, they can turn it. Also, paper is less busy and less dis­tract­ing: it does not beep while you are concentrating.

More­over, users can write on their own paper to their heart’s content.

These fea­tures present chal­lenges to read­ing and learn­ing technology.

Check­list for a Tablet Com­put­er to Make us Smarter

In this sec­tion I focus on some of the fea­tures that can make a tablet a use­ful learn­ing envi­ron­ment. This goes beyond hard­ware, and deals with cog­ni­tive soft­ware and ser­vices. [Read more…] about Will the Apple Tablet Sup­port or Hin­der Users Cog­ni­tive Fitness?