wanted volunteers to twin digitally
Curious to learn more? I provide the enabling sensors and actuators to capture and integrate the data of your physical assets within your digital asset. Rest assured, I will authenticate, monitor, and manage your twin’s life cycle with my class.
Hi Elizabeth, I enjoyed listening to your presentation, but also found it helpful to be able to read the script. I like your idea of having a digital twin. Although I think that face-to-face interactions with other individuals are important, I do see how digital twins can solve some of the existing problems you mentioned such as having to depend on someone. It also offers some exciting possibilities for catered education, emotional support, and guidance as it would not have the drawbacks that we might have. Imagine, something with unlimited energy, no limitations, or distractions to get in the way of supporting students. One thing that does concern me is, this kind of makes all humans obsolete in the end. There’s the whole aspect of these digital creations replacing certain jobs, including teachers, but I’m thinking about friendships, relationships, etc. We already see some rare examples of people replacing significant others with objects, but if these objects can start to perfectly mimic facial expressions, respond to our emotions, and put us ahead of themselves every time, I can see how these rare instances will only continue to increase. Especially as we are already feeling more disconnected to each other. In some ways, I feel like this would push us further along that path, perhaps further away from each other?
Hi Elizabeth, what an interesting idea to have a digital ‘friend’ that can walk alongside us. I could see this idea somewhere overlapping with digital assistants, where Artificial Intelligence technology is heavily involved in the design process. Besides, I also see some resemblance to having a digital companion. I think it’s a vital question to ask for the purpose of having a digital twin. Could it be applied to kids with social difficulties, as to help them overcome their anxieties or difficulties in establishing social connections? Or is the purpose to enhance students’ mental wellness, as to ease off loneliness? I think the ideal digital twin would be wearing many hats if it could serve students in different ways, academically, mentally, physically, and in other aspects. So I think there is a brighter future with this idea that you proposed. My last question is, could you name one specific example you have in mind that could be very beneficial for involving a digital twin in the educational context?
Thanks for expanding the app’s potential use, Zheng. I work in ESL with adults, and a significant problem is getting them to engage in listening, speaking, and writing in an authentic, real-world setting. Typically, I use human volunteers as practicing partners. But a digital twin of the volunteer would allow the students to continue developing their productive skills outside class hours. In addition, mobile devices are the perfect delivering technology for the mediums of sound, recordings, and print. To illustrate, it would allow a parent waiting for their child outside the school or at soccer practice to carry on a conversation with the digital twin. It would seem natural to be engaged in a phone or texting conversation; nobody in close vicinity would give it a second thought.
Wow Elizabeth. What an awesome idea. Thanks for sharing. You confront the problem of not enough people and not enough time by having digital selves and people to help. I agree with Megan that subsets have to be programmed to make sure there is feedback given back to the teacher about what students are struggling or excelling at. Outside of the academic scope, I can even see this digital twin working well for counselling services as well. Many schools I know are stretched thin in terms of SEL support and this would be a great prospective alternative to counter that issue. If a digital twin provides information to students as well, I wonder what would happen to teachers? Would they have a role in this as the programmer?
You have asked the millionaire dollar question. What is the role of the teacher/educator in the future system? Of course, there will be fewer of us with the tremendous improvements in AGI and robotics. But don’t you think, Jackson, that a human touch adds value?
This is an interesting idea, Elizabeth! I immediately thought of a imagination friends coming to life! I appreciate your inclusion of importance of expression, as expression is such a key part of connecting to an individual. You are absolutely right when it comes to needing more volunteers in schools. As teachers, we are more than willing to use our lunch times to ensure students are getting the additional support they require, however, at times, there is too many students and not enough of you to go around. Not only would this provide support for students academically, but emotionally as well. All schools who have students who don’t feel included and are not appreciated by peers, therefore, a digital twin could provide a more life-like friend. As Sebastien mentions, there would need to be some type of dataset to ensure that student are learning the mandatory material in the right way. Sometimes volunteers are helpful, however, it is important to consider there are different teaching and learning styles. Although I liked the idea of a podcast, visuals could have brought more interactivity. However, wonderful presentation, Elizabeth. I believe you have a strong idea here.
Megan, I agree with your point that volunteers provide a valuable service. However, I think the volunteers are not there to ensure that the curriculum is met; that should be the role of trained paid employees. I think the value of volunteers comes from connecting on a human-to-human basis. I have worked for a decade with students coming from the world’s hotspots, and having someone actually listen, virtually or F2F, is a necessary component.
Do you think not having pictures allowed you to ignite your imagination?
Sebastien, I agree that the human volunteer brings more to the experience; they gift themselves. I usually get 5-6volunteers each academic year for small group interaction. But as I thought about it, I think I need to include some twinned human functions in the class so that the students can strengthen their skill sets in simulated activities at their convenience. But being a producer of one, it will be not a fully embodied digital volunteer twin but more of a hodgepodge affair.
As for the resources, I uploaded the transcripts. In addition, I have added hyperlinked the software companies and their products.
However, many of the ideas come from:
Mobile World Congress, https://www.mwcbarcelona.com/
IBM, Matching the Future https://youtu.be/ky32162U06M
Huwai’s Intelligent world 2030 https://www.huawei.com/en/giv
Kurzweil, The Future of Humanity, https://youtu.be/DjqX5mKDyPU
Great job creating a very mobile friendly podcast. It was interesting to listen to because we share a similar learning context. Among the different language skills, speaking/listening and developing real conversation skills usually requires a partner (that may or may not be available). Also a digital partner removes any potential judgement or causes for anxiety. I think it’s a great idea. Similar to Jennifer, I wondered how this concept would effectively incorporate mobile technology? Separately, how might you see a teacher utilize the digital volunteer(s) within their curriculum?
That is an excellent question, Aaron. Perhaps like most of the class, I rely heavily on computers to produce my content for my class. However, this is not the norm for my clientele in LINC. When I worked on the A1, I came across reliable statistics showing that 87% of Canadian newcomers use the mobile devices they come with from their homeland for several years. And for most, this is their only device.
Doing this course mainly on the phone has made me realize mobile learning is more about seamlessly integrating the content, phone functionality, and connectivity. I ran into a few issues navigating or accessing content via the phone. I assume this was also the case for my students, so for A3, I attended many congresses, conventions, and forums to learn about functionality and connectivity beyond bandwidth problems. It was interesting, like Mobile World Congress 2022. I came across many presentations from world leaders about architecture, mobile ecosystems, and cloud and edge solutions that will move us beyond simply connecting to an era of meaningful connectivity.
This is where I crossed paths with the mirror world. Digital twins provide realistic representation, next-phase computing, semantic analysis, voice recognition, and a powered metaverse for practical, real-world applications. Industry and engineering have started to use the technique; it will increase with the connections of IoT.
I wondered what it would be like in education. But unfortunately, most of the software is proprietary. While I do not have the budget to create a total human biological twin, I can use some twinned capabilities with my class in mid-August. I plan to use OpenAI’s open source version of GPT-3 for interacting with others as it mimics texting, chats, and emails. I have done this with other classes, but it is an absolute nightmare to carry off. The AI voices also allow students to listen to multi-versions of accented English for real-time processing. And most likely, I will clone my voice so that when I need to give instructions on the learning management system, I simply need to do a text-to-voice transformation. I will also have the students practise pronunciation with AI for speaking and pronunciation. Perhaps we will make use of Google’s assistants.
Do you plan to incorporate any AI capabilities in your learning space?
Elizabeth, what an interesting concept. Your podcast style of delivery was full of great information and succinct in how you addressed the main issues, and established why it was important. A transcript would have supported me in reviewing some of the words, and details you had that were unfamiliar to me. The personal experience you had with students interacting with avatars would be great. It would be a virtual ‘human library’ like this one https://www.digitalhumanlibrary.com/. The algorithms to respond appropriately to a students questions, and comments are an interesting thought and you are correct that this would be a huge data set. How do you see this working on a mobile tech device? Is this a subsection of transhumanity with a digital twin that can interact, respond and share life experiences with students? Can the digital twin only reflect on what the participant shares or will this technology start to make predictions about behaviour? Who will own the rights to this ‘twin’ and who will own the future content? I recognize some of my questions are not in the scope of this project or course. Great information.
Thanks, Jennifer, for calling me on the transcripts. I have updated the blog to include them and added a hyperlink to the discussed software.
The idea came when I thought about moving beyond lectures, notes, and exams to make my responsive classroom more personalized for each student.
As I work already in a virtual classroom, the dream of the digital twin would deploy like a chat, form, dictation, and the other current AI capabilities. Another way I could embed it as I can do with Kahoot! or Quizlet. I want to maintain the LMS as the hub for all the class learning content since all my students are on mobile devices.
You have raised many thought-provoking ethical questions. Privacy and copyright legislation would apply for some. I am curious about your take on those questions.
I love your idea that meets a need in education: volunteers to support personalized student learning. You are right, it is more and more difficult to find volunteers who are available at certain times of the day and on a regular basis. The specific needs of pupils are increasingly high and an individualized approach is often necessary. When I listened to your podcast, I thought of those retired adults who come to help young people at school. This collaboration is wonderful, because there is a difference between the generations. Seeing a 70-year-old grandfather helping a 16-year-old student, laughing together and developing a unique relationship sounds wonderful to me! With their experience, the older volunteer shares unique stories, narratives, and the student, on the other hand, offers a technological update to this person from a time when the Internet did not yet exist. I find that this collaboration allows an enriching human contact on both sides and I do not think that the “digital twin” would be able to really build this relationship based on unique life experiences. Even if the twin is able to generate emotions and remember the personal details of the student, I believe that it remains less natural. However, for learning, I must admit that these volunteers are not always the best to teach the subject of the course, because they are less familiar with the new grammar for example. On this side, the digital twin would have a big advantage with an ability to update, adapt to the subject automatically. I like the end of your podcast which explains the future implications such as the possible replacement of teachers. It was really interesting to listen to, congratulations! I would have liked to have a list of references to be able to continue my reflection on the subject, it would be an interesting addition. Once again, great job Elizabeth!