Online synchronization and online storage are not the same thing

I  was listening to this episode of a podcast on iPhone photography dealing with iCloud storage that revealed information about iCloud that I had not understood or at least considered carefully. I have been using iCloud as a backup for several apps because the online service allows me to work on the same files from several devices. You have one iCloud account for all of the Apple devices you own. What I had failed to recognize was what synchronization actually means. The iPhone photography discussion concerned the issue serious iPhone photographers have with the capacity limit they encounter when keeping thousands of photographs on their phone. The auto-backup to iCloud is not really a solution because images are deleted from iCloud when deleted from the phone. This is what synchronization means. Yes, Apple does offer an approach that downgrades the quality of images on your phone while keeping full quality images in the cloud if you use this option, but just the idea of not considering when I delete something on a device, the synchronized file in the cloud is also deleted was a revaluation. Note – Apple does recognize this issue and provides a way to recover deleted iCloud files for thirty days. My concern was more general in that I could have deleted old files thinking there was a backup when this was not the case. 

Here is a kind of experiment you can perform. If you are an Apple user, visit iCloud.com and open iCloud Drive. Take a photo file copy it to the drive from your desktop and then copy the same file to the Documents folder on your computer. It will soon appear in the documents folder in iCloud. Now, on your computer, delete the photo from the documents folder. If you look in iCloud, you will find that the photo still exists on the iCloud drive, but not in the documents folder on the ICloud Drive.

This image shows iCloud (online) and the Cloud Drive as a subfolder.

Within Drive you have synchronized folders and other files

The file stored within the synched Documents folder. This is the file that would be removed when the file was remove from the computer.

Photos are not an issue for me because all my photos are automatically backed up to Google Photos and I also use a backup service for my desktop computer so I can probably recover any file whether it is in the iCloud service or not. However, coming to the understanding that I have does give me some concern about relying on iCloud storage. I use iCloud as a way to access certain files from different devices and this is probably not ideal. I have hundreds of highlighted and annotated PDFs I keep for use with Bookends and Highlights, the note-taking files I use with Obsidian, and the documents I have written with Scrivener are vulnerable in this way. All assume synchronization and are vulnerable to universal deletion.

What to do?

The typical recommendation for backup is to have a copy on a local computer, a local separate storage device, and online. I have decided it makes the most sense for my personal situation to periodically duplicate the synchronized document folders that I am concerned about and upload these folders to Google. Apple makes it very cumbersome to download content from the iCloud. You must download files one at a time rather than select all and then download or download a folder. This limitation is not practical when you have hundreds of files you might want to backup once downloaded from iCloud.I may need to purchase a little more Google Drive storage, but the security is worth it.

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Information worker skill development

Sometimes I can’t tell if a trend in an area I follow is emerging or a small shift in my interests reveals a new area that has long existed but now has entered my awareness. Such is the case with digital note-taking. There is some overlap with the note-taking of students, but my focus here is on note-taking for purposes other than getting through the next test. What is different about these activities is the focus on a longer term process that may feed into something other than exam performance. Such long-term goals may involve the easy rediscovery of specifics that were available at an earlier point in time and may now be a challenge to locate and perhaps the integration of such archived insights into a combination to be expressed as a written product or the solution to some information-based problem. Unlike or perhaps more accurately building on the benefits of hand-written notes, there are digital advantages that aid rediscovery (e.g. tags, searching). 

As an information worker, I have had a natural tendency to explore systems and tools purported to make the processing of information easier or more productive. As digital tools became available I have taken the time to explore. There is a risk in this tendency. You can spend so much time exploring new tools and translating artifacts created with an older system to a new system you risk using time that could have been used to get work done. It is kind of a “grass is greener” problem. I legitimate my time investment as partly a function of my professional interest in learning tools. I have come to personal decision about such activity. I have decided it is important to differentiate the capabilities of a tool and the activities that these capabilities enable (or not). When you study the work flows those who develop such tools imagine, you can identify a tactic you had not considered that could potentially be implemented with a tool you already use. If you get focused the combination of tool and tactic, you limit the flexibility that might be available.

If you are interested in this topic, you can explore by searching “note-taking” within the Apple or Google stores. Or, just try a general search for something like “best note-taking tools”. 

Here is one final observation. Note-taking and note collection have become a personal productivity theme and productivity experts have recognized the opportunity. I have no idea if this is an example of following the money or promoting the details of a unique insight that most do not recognize. I will give two examples. The first is Sonke Ahrens promotion of digital applications of the Zettelkasten. My recent posts have offered several comments on both the process Ahrens promotes and the tools that might be applied. Ahrens work and the benefits he has received as a consequence come from his writing and insights rather than the promoting of any specific tools which he describes. My second example is the Forte Lab’s (Tiago Forte) promotion of the “Second Brain”. Forte offers seminars/courses (very expensive and beyond the budget of most academics) and a book (not released yet). The concept of a second brain taps into some of the ideas as the Zettlekasten and the core ideas can be implemented with multiple apps. 

To this point, my personal insight has resulted in a change in my own behavior derived from investigating these ideas and tools. This insight can be described as write earlier in my information processing work flow. This idea comes from Ahrens (Smart Notes) and I would translate the tactic as take notes that capture an idea in enough detail (context) that the note still offers useful information when reviewed after a significant delay. Increase the rediscovery of these notes with tags and links to notes offering related concepts/ideas.

I think it time to move on focusing so much of my time on this topic. Unlike the research that informs learner classroom note-taking, there does not seem to be a research literature to consider when it comes to personal productivity. It is worth an investment of attention for anyone reading and applying (writing), but once basic issues have been understood exploring logical application to personal tasks is where effort should be focused.

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Teaching and authoring to learn

I have long been interested in the instructional strategies of teaching and what I call authoring (e.g., writing) to learn. These are concepts that seem to resonate with educators and that have a substantial research base arguing for effectiveness in applied settings. Both teaching and authoring seem excellent culminating activities for project-based learning activities which is another approach that many educators find appealing. Some of my existing resources on these topics are available here and here.

From time to time I review the research literature to catch up on new developments related to the topics I write about. This has recently been the case with what is formally called “noninteractive teaching”. This is a variant of teaching to learn in which the student as educator writes or generates a video intended to explain something to learners (e.g. Book Creator, Explain Everything, Screencastify). As a classroom strategy this approach is argued to be more practical as the task does not require the arrangement of the interactive component of teaching. It is in some ways similar to writing to learn, but it now frequently involves the creation of multimedia content or the use of video. Students can create these products as an assignment.

Applied research in education can be very frustrating. Findings often do not replicate for many reasons – the content to be learned, the background knowledge of the learner, the outcome variable used, and so on. This is what I seemed to encounter when reviewing recent research on “noninteractive teaching”. I had hoped to write a review of research, but decided to reference a recent review instead.

Several authors (Lachner & colleageus) who have investigated non-interactive teaching generated an article to speculate about about the inconsistencies in their own and related research (see reference at conclusion of this post). They generated a review paper that first differentiates interactive teaching from non-interactive teaching and then attempts to address the inconsistencies in findings of the second category of studies. The review is thorough and I recommend it for academics interested in this topic. While urging researchers to continue to refine their understanding of this activity, the authors concluded with the observation that the following recommendations seemed to have emerged – verbal (video) rather than text-based, from memory rather than while accessing a source, and restudy after presentation rather than presentation being the final experience.

I disagree to some extent with the authors’ conclusion regarding the generation of text (text integrated with other media) as multiple studies support the learning that results from summarization and writing to learn. Why the expectation that writing to teach would generate a different outcome for the author makes no sense to me. My effort here is to report the recommendation of the group summarizing the recent research focused on the generation of content intended to teach.

Lachner, A., Hoogerheide, V., van Gog, T., & Renkl, A. (2021). Learning-by-Teaching Without Audience Presence or Interaction: When and Why Does it Work?. Educational Psychology Review, 1-33.

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Teaching to learn – 1

Teaching to learn is one of the generative activities that intrigues me. This may partly be a function of personal experiences as a teacher. Being put in the position of having to stand in front of others and explain requires something different from the study of a topic. Just what is different though. I intend to offer a couple of posts based on research to answer this question. 

The first explanation is based on research claiming the preparation to teach amounts is a variant of the retrieval practice effect. Retrieval practice involves attempts to recall the content to be studied. This is best done with recall that does not involve prompts such as would be the case with multiple choice questions. Something like flash cards with general requests for recall/explanation would be an example. 

A study by Koh and colleagues (reference at the end of the post) was designed to test this hypothesis. 

The study involved four groups – a control group that studied the assigned content; the teaching group that studied the material and taped a 5 minute presentation without notes; a group that studied and then delivered a 5 minute presentation using a prepared script; a group that studied and then completed free recall questions about the material.

Consider what is required in each treatment. The teaching group not allowed to use a script had to rely on what they knew when making their presentations. The group allowed to use a script could rely on the external source of information. The free recall group used an established method of retrieval practice.

Both the teaching group and the retrieval practice group performed better on a later test than the control condition which involved traditional study behavior. The group that taught with the use of the script did not. The authors argued this pattern supports the retrieval practice explanation.

This study was designed to test the value of retrieval practice and showed the two retrieval practice treatments were most effective. For classroom application, consider what was actually involved. Making a video is only part of what one does when teaching. It demonstrates a value in the requirement of using what you know to create a representation. This sounds like writing to learn or in this case multimedia content creation to learn. 

Teaching involves other potentially important activities not testing in this research. What about interacting with students? Interaction is even more demanding than presentation as it is not totally under the control of the educator and involves more cognitive flexibility. There are other aspects of teaching that may also contribute to personal learning. 

Koh, A. W. L., Lee, S. C., & Lim, S. W. H. (2018). The learning benefits of teaching: A retrieval practice hypothesis. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 32(3), 401-410.

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Linking notes to recorded audio

One advantage I see in using a technology device instead of a paper notebook is the opportunity comes from added capabilities of technology. When it comes to taking notes, I would propose that the simultaneous recording of audio linked to personal notes is a great advantage over taking notes on paper. The addition of the linked audio allows the note taker to revisit the audio in a precise way when notes are confusing or incomplete. A more complete and personalized representation of key information can then be generated after the presentation.

There are several different applications for doing this. The demonstration that follows makes use of Notability on a tablet.

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External tasks to influence internal tasks

My way of exploring what I know of cognitive psychology to the selection of effective learning tasks is captured in the phrase – external tasks to influence internal tasks. Learners must accomplish learners themselves, but educators can provide experiences to learn from (exposure to information) and propose activities that potentially influence how learners process these experiences. The word potential is important here because the educator is assuming that the learner will apply the external task in a way that engages important cognitive tasks and the external task does not complete more effective cognitive activity learners might have applied on their own (i.e. busy work). When applied to a group which is most commonly how assignments are made, these caveats are probably both violated for certain individual students.

This analysis may sound obvious but as is usually the case the devil is in the details. There must be some understanding of what cognitive behaviors produce learning and which of these cognitive behaviors might be engaged by the assignment of an external task. Both requirements have been addressed by great numbers of research studies.

Many cognitive psychologists use the phrase generative learning to refer to the approach I have described in my own way. To move this presentation toward application it would be useful to read a 2016 paper by Fiorella and Mayer. These authors identify general categories of activities that have shown to have effective generative capabilities. The paper references multiple studies that evaluate examples of the application of each type of task.

This specific article identified eight learning strategies that promote generative learning and provides a review of research relevant to each strategy.

Summarizing
Mapping
Drawing
Imagining
Self-Testing
Self-Explaining
Teaching
Enacting

As a way of simplifying what these generative tasks ask of learners consider the following two ways of simplifying what the tasks require.

The first four strategies (summarizing, mapping, drawing, and imagining) involve changing the input into a different form of representation.

The final four strategies (self-testing, self-explaining, teaching, and answering practice questions) require additional elaboration.

Just example of how this type of consolidation of research might be applied consider how the list might be applied to note-taking another of the topics I have been addressing lately. The Cornell note template is popular with educators. The template asks that learners use two items from this list in the full application of the Cornell method. The template includes an area for summarization and encourages the use of the column that normally appears to the left of the area for taking notes for questions.

Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). Eight ways to promote generative learning. Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), 717-741.

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Reality of Learning Tactics

Folks like me and many I follow get all excited about the latest learning tactics and the research that investigates if and why the tactics work. Every once in a while I think back to some observations I made while lecturing to large groups of undergraduates who took Introductory and Educational Psychology.

After an introduction to the Cornell Note-Taking system, I asked if anyone recognized what I was describing from middle-school or high school. Typically, a third-or so of the students would raise their hands. I then would ask how many were using the Cornell system to take notes on my presentation. In doing this for many years, I think I may have found one or two students who were using the system. For the occasional ed psych prof who reads my posts, give these questions a try and see what you discover.

I often ask about this experience in my grad courses seeking an explanation. Nothing much ever emerges from this request, but I would often observe that more research should be focused on the barriers to the adoption of proven study tactics. The Cornell system is simple enough. It can’t be exposure since the Cornell system is introduced in K12 and college study skill programs. Maybe the younger students were required to show that they were using the system.

The one exception I can think of to my observation regarding college student application of study tactics is the use of flash cards. At least some students in fields that require the memory for lots of specifics (I tend to think of PT and OT students) I noticed breaking out their decks of cards while waiting for my classes to begin. So there is this interesting exception to investigate. Why flash cards and note Cornell notes?

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