Henry Hon, CEO, Vyew

MM
Where they communicate, interact and collaborate–using shared objects–to produce some kind of agreed-upon results.

HH
You hit it right on the mark, there. To support your point, I’ll just give you some of our customers and people that gravitate toward this.

We have a company that does a lot of training work for the military. They are now–to date–our biggest customer. They have interactive training, but the military wanted some real people–groups of people–that can interact together, not just interact with the software.

By embedding their training into our environment, now they have the best of both worlds. They could be trained in a virtual environment, but at the same time, they could meet up and group together and give their opinions–and do a project together.

MM
Henry. If I just do a quick footnote on that–essentially, this particular company understands the power of a social network. And more specifically, understands the power of a community of practice.

HH
Right.

MM
Where there are specific ways of getting things done. They want to propagate those practices– if not best practices. The propagation of those best practices requires both a common vocabulary in a persistent state, to your point. And a way by which people can interact with that inventory of objects independent.

But they also come back and–as a group– interact and communicate. They collaborate around the meanings–the context– the actions implied by those particular pieces of content.

HH
Absolutely. You hit it right on.

Again, to this point–The CTO at the Stanford University School of Education, Dr. Paul Kim, has actually joined our team. He’s still the CTO there, but he’s now part of our team.

The reason is he’s been doing a lot of research in exactly what you’re saying, in the K-through-20 space, of how to improve learning among that group. One of the findings is exactly that.

It’s to have visual objects that students can think through independently, but yet be able to come back together in a group and discuss each others’ findings or learnings. A teacher can then jump in at any time and interact independently or with students.

There’s one very nice example that this professor is using in one of the elementary schools. He put up some visual objects–I think it was 10 or 15 pictures. This was an English writing class. He said, “Move those objects around to whatever sequence you want and write a caption and story around it.”MM
Great.

HH
Now you have 20 or 25 students all coming up with their stories based on these random objects that got thrown in. They all came up with all different stories but they could collaborate together and a teacher could go in and see exactly what they’re doing.

MM
That’s brilliant.

HH
Yes.

We have another high school teacher who says that through collaboration with Vyew, and this type of learning environment, it’s actually changed the social behavior inside a classroom. He noticed that some really shy students who normally would not speak up in class–after going through the environment of this web-based learning–really blossomed. They became active participants, starting from the internet world and now in the physical world.

MM
This gets to a broader social implication, in terms of the challenge of pixilated information. That is to say–again–from cognitive sciences–we’ve learned that information that’s on the screen does not have the same cognitive impact or cognitive effect of reading something intently from a book.

Part of it has to do with the DPI. Part of it has to do with the social contract associated with printed material versus screen material. Specifically, screen materials, you very rarely ever take co-ownership of what’s on the screen.

But if I give you a piece of paper–like my business card–it’s entirely encouraged for you to write something on the business card that I just gave you. Signifying a transfer of property.

HH
Right.

MM
Signifying that this business card–this piece of paper–is now yours, and you are free to do with it as you will. You don’t see that in any kind of transfer with electronic “stuff.”

However–what we have seen as an alternative way of taking ownership of digital stuff–pixilated material–is through communication, interaction, and collaboration of a group on this side of the scene.

The richest ones, of course, are peer-to-peer, face-to-face interactions. Right?

HH
Right.

MM
For all of the psychological and social reasons. But now what we’re beginning to do is to replicate that in a virtual world. Understanding that the real value is not in the object–nor is it in the presentation. But it’s in the communication, the interaction and the collaboration that those objects engender, facilitate and reinforce.

HH
Right. You’re making some really excellent points. Normally, people don’t feel attached to the digital content. They’re looking at it, but they don’t feel that they have any ownership.

MM
In fact, Henry, one of the tests that I give when I do workshops and seminars and stuff–I ask people, “Can you remember a single thing that you read online a month ago? Either an e-mail or a webpage.”

Room after room–executive after executive–manager after manager… I get maybe one hand raised in a thousand.

HH
Wow! That’s amazing!

MM
It is amazing! When I asked them if they were brought up in the American educational system… I asked them about Andrew Jackson and the Battle of 1812… And I asked them, “What kind of horse is he on?”

60 to 70 percent of the people said, “Oh, he’s on a white horse!”

“And is he facing left or right?”

They all say, “left.”

Well, it turns out that there’s a very famous portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Battle of 1812 down in New Orleans. He’s on a white horse, facing west. Right?

HH
Right. I remember that.

MM
But the point is, Henry–we recall things. Again, I’m over 50 years old. I remember things with acuity and precision of things that I read once in high school or junior high school. I’m now recalling a media consumption act of 30 or 40 years ago–where I can’t remember a single thing that I read online last week.

The underlying theory of that is that pixilation of information destroys long-term memory.

HH
Interesting.

So how do we correct that?

MM
You’ve already said it. Through communication, collaboration and interaction.