The App Generation (21 page)

High time for an example. We turn here to
Scratch,
a wonderful application created over the past two decades by Mitch Resnick, a valued colleague at MIT, and his colleagues. Building on Seymour Papert's pioneering work with LOGO—a prototypical
example of constructivist education—Scratch is a simple programming language accessible even to youngsters who have just reached school age. By piecing together forms that resemble pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, users of Scratch can create their own messages, be these stories, works of art, games, musical compositions, dances, or animated cartoons—indeed, just about any form in any kind of format. Moreover, users of Scratch can and do post their creations. Others around the world can visit these creations, react to them, build on them, and perhaps even re-create them in their own favored symbolic system.

The genius of Scratch is twofold. First of all, it opens up a plethora of modes of expression, so that nearly every child can find an approach that is congenial with his or her own goals, strengths, and imaginations. Second, educational ends and priorities are not dictated from on high; rather, they can and do emerge from the child's own explorations of the Scratch universe. In that sense, Scratch brings pleasure and comfort to those who believe in the constructivist view of knowledge. Not only are users building their own forms of meaning and constructing knowledge that they personally value, but they are epitomizing the claim of cognitivists that one learns by taking the initiative, making one's own often instructive mistakes along the way, and then, on the basis of feedback from self and others, altering course and moving ahead.

Still, just as a hammer in the hands of a vandal can be used simply to strike every item in sight, it would be possible to misuse Scratch, to miss its genius and to convert it into yet another
behavioral tool. This less happy outcome occurs when adults—no doubt, well meaning in most cases—“hijack” Scratch in the exclusive service of traditional educational goals and means. For example, in an educational setting wedded to a behaviorist approach, it would be possible to use Scratch to model one specific way of drawing objects in the world or for providing the definitive model of how to represent fractions or write a sentence, a paragraph, or indeed an essay.

We see, then, that the app itself is never a foolproof avenue to one or another educational use or philosophy. Depending on the context in which it is used, and the priorities of the educators (which includes those present in the classroom, lurking at home, or at their drawing boards or computer screens at an educational publisher), one can skew the same application toward app-dependent or app-enabling ends.

Nonetheless, we have no intention of letting the app-creators off the hook. Those who design apps can skew them toward
dependence;
this is what happens when powerful instructions and constraints are built into the app. Recall our discussion in the previous chapter of Songwriter's Pad, an app for writing songs and poems on the iPad. Choose a mood from the list of available moods, and the app returns a corresponding list of words and phrases associated with that mood that you can then insert into your song or poem. We don't doubt that some people will use this app in creative, unexpected ways. However, the constraints built into Songwriter's Pad—in the form of packaged “bites” of poetic words and phrases—strike us as leaning toward app-dependence. Alternatively, app designers
can skew an app's constraints toward
enabling;
this is what happens when, à la Scratch, the apps are wide open, when they offer multiple forms of expression, and when the responses from adults and other users are not constrained.

Nor do we intend to leave adults—be they parents or teachers—off the hook. Depending on the milieu at home or at school, adults can either signal that apps are simply the latest and most efficient means to a given educational goal—typically, the traditional “mastery of prior knowledge” that has been the staple of education for many years. Or they can signal that apps represent a new avenue for individuals to explore different pathways, to record their own forms of understanding, and to solicit reactions from others, ranging from those with much knowledge to those who may themselves be edified by the product or project in question.

Take, for example, a new app released in the summer of 2013 by Sesame Workshop, famous for the innovative television series
Sesame Street
. According to its creators, the Big Bird's Words app lays the groundwork for learning new words. Using text recognition technology, the app prompts children to identify various words—grouped in categories—in their surrounding environment. The online demo shows a young boy of three or four working in the food category. He chooses the word
milk
from a list of food words (each item in the list has a picture next to the word), then holds up his smartphone to a milk carton. Big Bird says, “Milk,” and congratulates the child for finding the correct word.

Used in an enabling spirit, this app can encourage children to explore the words around them and connect these words to their daily activities. This might lead to exploration of other words in the children's environment but perhaps not in the app's lexical database. These explorations might even involve discussions with parents and siblings. Used in a dependent spirit, however, the app might engender an overreliance on it for word recognition and perhaps send the message to some children that the only words worth knowing are those that are included in the app's database. Seen in this light, the app-dependent use limits how children explore and learn from their world.

And so we look toward mindful adults—whether new young parents or wise elderly trustees—to furnish the settings within which apps will be encountered and used. It's in our hands to provide nudges in the direction of flexible use of apps; to offer initial scaffolds in the form or use of apps but then to remove these as soon as feasible; and to sanction the implementation of spaces and of times in which one puts aside the devices and the apps and fends for oneself. Seth Kugel, who writes the “Frugal Traveler” column for the
New York Times,
describes the freedom encountered when he renounces his dependence on travel apps: “I believe everyone should use the vast online database of the travel world with moderation. Save a day or two for spontaneity: seek advice from a stranger on the Seoul subway; take a day to explore an Italian town just because you stopped there for gas; trust your instinct to find a Parisian
bistro to call your own. Maybe you'll find out later that its croque-madame has been praised 717 times on TripAdvisor. Who cares? You discovered it yourself.”
³⁰

When we began to write this book, neither of us had in mind the educational writings of Alfred North Whitehead, to whom we owe the tantalizing epigraph at the head of this chapter. Yet as it happens, we find extremely useful Whitehead's own approach to education, as expressed in his little volume
The Aims of Education.
³¹
In surveying the steps involved in becoming an educated human being, Whitehead identified the recurring sequence of romance, precision, and generalization.

As Whitehead saw it, genuine learning begins when one is excited, moved, inspired, or stimulated by an early encounter with a question, phenomenon, or mystery—this is the time of romance. But one remains stuck at this point, or becomes bored or alienated or anxious, unless one can begin to acquire tools that allow one to gain a firmer understanding of the initially seductive phenomenon. (Of course, the acquisition of precision can be done in many ways, ranging from the strict behaviorist regimen to the flexible, exploring constructivist tack.) Ultimately, the acquired knowledge and skills need to be put into a broader context; related to other forms of knowledge and understanding; and serving as a prod to further learning, with its initial romantic encounters.

Please note that by no means are we dismissing the importance of learning what prior generations have already established. We do
not
believe that individuals can or should
construct all of knowledge on their own. That would be absurd. Indeed, new knowledge must be built on what has already been consolidated by earlier thoughtful individuals and groups—in Matthew Arnold's well-turned phrase, “to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere.”
³²

Our point is different. Put directly, we are not unduly worried about avenues to precision: many exist. What we are here urging is that apps can and should facilitate the initial romance; present multiple ways of attaining precision; and, in the end, provide ample opportunities to make novel as well as expected use of what has been learned. This stance should occur both with respect to constrained educational goals—say, the understanding of multiplication—and with respect to the broadest educational goals—say, the appreciation of how scientific knowledge is created and used and misused. Indeed—and here is where we draw the line sharply between behaviorists and constructivists—precision should always be the
means
toward making knowledge one's own and using it ultimately to raise new questions and build additional knowledge.

You may well be saying, “You authors are certainly giving apps a hard time.” And we might even plead nolo contendere—that is, we wouldn't dispute your characterization in court. Time to say, loudly and clearly, that there are many wonderful apps, designed to do well, better than most of us could do on our own, what needs to be done. To paraphrase Whitehead,
they free us to focus on what we want to do or what remains to be done. Moreover, many apps have been created by ordinary citizens who have discerned a problem and have found a way to address it, to fix it. Two cheers for apps!

An impressive example of what apps can accomplish comes from the work of an organization called Code for America. As explained by founder Jennifer Pahlka, Code for America fellows are chosen to undertake a year's assignment.
³³
During that period they work closely with public officials in city governments to create apps that solve problems identified by administrators or citizens. These needs range from finding the optimal flow of traffic to the placing of children in appropriate schools and to helping people who use food stamps to locate high-quality, affordable foods. To give an example, an app developed in Boston to identify potholes is open source and can be used by any other municipality.
³⁴

What's striking about Code for America is that its fellows can often solve problems at a fraction of the estimated cost, and a fraction of the estimated time span, than anyone at city hall could have anticipated. A belief in the power of apps, coupled with a sense of important problems and how they might be addressed efficiently and effectively, yields a win all around. And of course, the existence of Code for America does not preclude the addressing of problems that are more
vexed and do not lend themselves to a neat application. Indeed, in the ideal, it can free officials to devote more time to larger, less tractable challenges.

For those of us in the social sciences, there is an “apt” analogy. Forty-five years ago, at the same time that Howard was restricted to a few media outlets, he also had to perform most statistical tests with pen and pencil or the aid of a handheld calculator. These were time-consuming tasks. But in carrying out these computations, Howard got to know his data very well. Nowadays, powerful computers (along with more sophisticated statistical techniques) allow one to arrive at findings at warp speed. If the time saved gets translated into closer scrutiny of the data and a deeper, more cogent analysis of what they mean, the apps have been invaluable. If, however, they create the illusion that the data (let alone the “big data”) speak for themselves or simply make the researcher impatient to collect and post the next trove of data, then the app has not been so helpful.

As an example from a very different realm, consider the creation by composer Tod Machover of a work called
A Toronto Symphony
. Dubbed “America's most wired composer,” Machover has pioneered the use of electronic and digital instrumentation in many compositions; he has also created new approaches to scoring and devised toylike instruments that can be played by individuals with no formal training in music.

A Toronto Symphony
breaks new ground. This massively collaborative composition (which goes beyond crowdsourcing) involves ordinary citizens—chiefly from Toronto, though
anyone can play—in the co-creation of a major symphonic work. For one section of the work, inhabitants are invited to record and submit sounds that they find expressive of the city. (This can be seen as a contemporary version of the street sounds in the opening section of George Gershwin's
An American in Paris
.) For other sections of the symphony, Machover and his team have created apps that, like paintbrushes, can be applied in different colors and with differing intensity. These apps allow users to shape a melody sketched by Machover, both in terms of its broad contour and its finer details, or to create their own collages and mashups of musical material from the piece. Sampling and studying these various contributions garnered over several months, Machover becomes the final creator of the work. But as he has put it, “If it feels in the end like basically my piece no matter what, or like a mash-up of other people's stuff that I facilitated, I think that would be less satisfying . . . but if it's something that couldn't have been made without each other, it will feel really good.”
³⁵

Machover's symphonic composition differs in its goals and methods from Pahlka's Code for America. Whereas Pahlka is trying to solve vexing urban problems, Machover is creating a tribute to an admired urban environment: engineering versus art. But note that creating a musical work in the digital landscape is also a feat of engineering, while creating an effective municipal app is also an artistic feat. Probing further, we see the contributions of ordinary, nonexperts (“what used to be called the audience,” as one pundit has put it): in the case of Code for America, suggesting problems that need to
be tackled and using the solutions created by the fellows. In parallel fashion, ordinary nonexperts evince their best efforts to orchestrate sections of a work, and once the work has been completed and performed, the audience members can assess the success of the piece. In the finest sense, we see at work joint efforts between citizens and experts, and a fine balance between algorithms (apps) and taste (app transcendence).