Quantified self. Habits like procrastination are maddening because everyone knows, at some level, that they’re irrational–especially the person currently procrastinating! (That it’s currently final exam season at many colleges almost serves as an object lesson of this principle.) And because it’s irrational, one wants to be able to persuade oneself to act differently. I *won’t* be irrational this time, I really won’t . . . or maybe I won’t be, tomorrow. The recent popularity, especially in nerd circles, of sel… In June of this year I wrote about using the Fitbit Flex, which was the first general-purpose fitness tracker I’d used. The Flex wristband by Fitbit, released in May, is the latest personal fitness tracker to bring some aspects of the quantified self movement to the general public.
Why I Chose the Fitbit Flex I’ve been interested in personal fitness trackers for some time and had looked at the available options. One area where it’s fairly easy to gather data is your e-mail inbox. Quantified Self : la passion de la mesure - par Emmanuel Gadenne. ParisTech Review – Chacun d’entre nous a déjà connu la tentation de « prendre des mesures », et d’en prendre la mesure : le 1er janvier, on se promet d’aller à la piscine une fois par semaine, ou de marcher 30 minutes par jour… et on sait aussi parfaitement ce qu’il advient de ces bonnes résolutions. Avec le quantified self, il semblerait qu’une innovation radicale se soit produite : ça marche ! Comment l’expliquez-vous ? Emmanuel Gadenne – Hier encore le découragement mettait vite un terme à ces bonnes résolutions.
Seule une motivation spéciale (comme de surveiller son diabète), ou une personnalité spéciale (avec un goût marqué pour les tableaux Excel), permettait de les tenir sur la durée. Le premier, ce sont les instruments de mesure, qui grâce à une série d’innovations techniques font une partie du travail à votre place. Le bracelet Fitbit La socialisation des données semble effectivement un saut qualitatif. Les deux dimensions existent. Peut-on repérer précisément cet essor ? The Quantified Self and Learning Analytics. A few thoughts from LAK12, the Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference. I’m at the event in Vancouver BC this week, and while many of the panels are addressing how institutions will prepare themselves for educational "big data," I was particularly interested in the presentation today by Verónica Rivera-Pelayo about the opportunities at the intersection of the quantified self movement and reflective learning -- learning analytics and the individual, not just the institution.
What is the Quantified Self Movement? Almost every time we search or click or buy or like or link online, there’s data collected about our transactions. As such companies know a lot about us. The quantified self movement is very much about learning about the self, although much of its emphasis (and adoption) has been focused on health or productivity, and less on what we traditionally associate with “education.” How Does This Relate to Learning? You could track what you read, for example. Questions… The Quantified Self and What it Means for Learning. The Quantified Self and What it Means for Learning In early April I presented (in Dutch) at the e-Learning Event about the quantified self and learning. I have now translated the slides into English as I think the topic is important enough. The presentation explains (in five parts) why the quantified self movement will have big consequences for how we will learn in the future.
You can download a full resolution PDF file, watch a video (with slides) in Dutch or watch it on SlideShare: Below an outline of the presentation and links to all the sources I used. Innovation A short explanation about what an innovation manager does and how an innovation funnel works. Scenarios The scenario process is explained and the four scenarios that were create at the Online Educa workshop are presented. Sources Quantified Self The history of the quantifying yourself (and the scientist and artists experimenting with it) is shown.
Learning Risks There are risks around measuring yourself. Like this: Like Loading... Quantified Self and Data driven Education - No more Excuses. In a not so distant future our lives will be much better thanks to data. To borrow the concept of a former US president, no child will be left behind in school because learning difficulties immediately show in the performance data and action can be taken by teachers and parents to make sure the children receive personalized learning experiences, tailored to their specific needs. Of course, this won’t stop in school but run through the entire career as we all eventually become lifelong learners, always making sure that our knowledge and skills are still adequate for the job we have today and the job we will be doing next year. Also, our overall health will improve as our smartphone or smart watch constantly monitor our vital functions, track our steps, our workouts, our calorie intake, the time we spend in the sun, how well we sleep, how much alcohol we drink and so on and so forth.
Sounds disturbing? You can be sure that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The quantified employee Backlash. Quantified self. This weekend I attended the Quantified Self conference in Amsterdam. The number of participants was just short of 300 of which 90(!) People were involved in some way in a session. They call this a “carefully curated unconference”: they started by checking out all the registrants and then connecting to them if they look interesting. Fast Moving Targets created some videos about the event.
I am always interested in the commercial parties who think they have enough affinity with the topic to sponsor an event. In this case the three major sponsors were BodyMedia, FrieslandCampina, Dreamboard. What did you do? Mood, Emotion, and Meaning Jon Cousins from Moodscope (with a funny Twitter pic) and Robin Barooah from Sublime.org talked about mood. A Moodscope Graph and can create Word clouds on the basis of your good and bad days: A Triggergram Robin then talked about the stress he experienced in 2008, the most painful year of his adult life. QS as a Catalyst for Learning? What about equality? Poikos. The Future of Education: Online and Quantified. If you haven’t checked out Khan Academy yet, now is the time.
Bill Gates calls it “the future of education,” and Salman Khan himself has a very inspiring perspective. Khan spoke at the most recent TED conference about his project to create a series of free online videos and detailed self-assessments to educate anyone in the world. The audience gave him a long standing ovation, and I got chills watching it at home. Here’s the video, and my own Khan Academy experience below it. Yes, I’ll admit it, I do math exercises for fun – sometimes hours a day. I can also track my daughter’s progress as she covers different math topics: It looks like she’s been spending a lot of time on subtracting decimals, and hasn’t mastered it yet. The Quantified Self in Education. A unique trend has begun to emerge in wearable technology. Most are referring to this as the “quantified self.” In short, it is the idea that daily, mundane activities, which we have previously paid no attention to have become interesting as technology has found a way to quantify them.
Thus, I use a fitbit to count my daily steps. This information can then be catalogued and preserved for future reference. I wonder, though, how this mentality can be adapted to education. In our current K-12 testing climate, regardless of where you philosophically stand on any given test, I think we can all agree that we should continue to strive to be better. Self-Tracking and the Quantified Self Movement. "Quantified Selfers" use phones, journals, gadgets, and apps to record things like sleep, air quality, stress levels, heart rate, and mood. The idea: gather data and learn from it. It’s not just about aggregating all sorts of numbers, but about using that info to achieve better health. Here, Greatist takes a look at what makes the Quantified Self Movement so alluring and the possible health benefits of tracking one's own health. Illustration by Bob Al-Greene What is a Quantified Self? Some quantified self enthusiasts are gung-ho about tracking everything from bowel movements to sex habits.
But most people do some simple self-tracking every day, whether it’s counting how many glasses of water we drink or stepping on the scale before bed. The next step, however, is using these records to improve our quality of life. How Did the Quantified Self Movement Begin? In 2008 Gary Wolf, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, created the Quantified Self site with colleague Kevin Kelly. QSM and U.