Tag: technology

#edcmooc A reflection on artefacts

Published on by robeanne3 Comments
Lily pads on a lake with three leaves which are not real superimposed
What is real and what is not? Getting to the heart of the matter..

So, I have finished evaluating my artefacts and am now awaiting my marks. After looking at the three artefacts I was allocated, I have to admit to feeling a little disappointed in a couple which was why I opted to look at some more. Two of the five I looked at didn’t seem to address the themes at all.  One was a great selection of external websites, videos and quotations but there was no narrative to link them all together.  The other two, I thought were pretty good and clearly showed a good understanding of the concepts although they too lacked personal reflection.  I had thought that the criteria were relatively clear about what we had to do.  Having said that, I suppose that the guidelines were also sufficiently open to allow for a great deal of subjectivity in the interpretation of them. I guess that can be both an adavantage and a disadvantage.

I think that being involved in the Tweetchats and browsing the forums reasonably regularly gave me some insights into the way that other people were thinking and interpreting the resources.  I didn’t contribute as much as some because many people were saying what I was thinking so didn’t feel the need to repeat.  However, I did use the voting buttons when I though that a post was particularly helpful or interesting to me.

I wasn’t sure whether looking at the many artefacts that people posted early was going to be helpful or confusing to me as I grappled with decisons around the focus for my artefact.  I did look at a couple of early ones and they seemed so well-polished and cleverly written that I felt a little bit out of my depth, so decided not to look at any more!  Never having had to do anything like this before I decided to launch myself into the unknown and just go for it.  I don’t know how my artefact will be viewed, I hope that I managed to fulfil the criteria …

I have been a teacher for a long time now and I know how difficult it is to assess creative work against criteria however specific they may or may not be.  Creative interpretation is very personal and it evokes responses in people that are very personal too, so judgements are often subjective.  Getting past the “pretty”, the gizmos and gadgets and uncovering the real content is not easy. And creative people are often drawn towards the effects they can create and get caught up in them which means they forget where they are going with the content.

I know that I have been guilty frequently in the past of seeing a bright, shiny new application and being determined to use it, I incorporate it into a lesson withot it having any real pedagogical purpose.  Who is in control?  The technology or me?  I am still drawn to those sorts of things but I think that my experience has taught me that I need to be circumspect about the tools I introduce.  I have seen it with my students especially when I asked them in the past to create a presentation or a poster – they are filled with whizzbang features, pictures swirling in and flashing before exploding, sound effects and bright, glaring colour schemes.  They are slickly presented but absolutely no content worth marking!

But we are all on a learning journey and we are all at different points along the way and if even only a small percentage of the 43,000 people who started edcmooc submitted artefacts, that is still going to be thousands.  So, I guess that the range of media, interpretations, quality and understanding within the artefacts is going to be very wide.  Some of the comments on the Facebook page have suggested that there may be “mooc spammers” who have no interest in following the course but who submit artefacts as a way of advertising their products.  I don’t know if that is true or not.

However, I hope that my comments during the evaluation process have been “both supportive and critical” and “provide valuable guidance and stimulus to further thought” (edcmooc feedback guidelines).  I know that evaluating the artefacts made me think more critically about my own and I am sure I could go back and improve it if I had the time.

I wonder if, given the complex nature of evaluation – I believe it is a skill that many of us do not practise very often – it may have been worth us having to evaluate a smaller artefact earlier in the course?  The flickr photo challenge for example, could have been a more formal activity that required some feedback.  Having to critically evaluate someone else’s work helps you in the working of your own and a greater understanding of that process may have led to a higher standard of final artefacts across the board.

 

Photo by Easegill (Nigel Robertson) Taken at Hamilton Sculpture Park

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Metaphorically #edcmooc

Published on by robeanneLeave a comment

I have been reading “Metaphors of the Internet; salvation or destruction” and several thoughts came to mind. I am a linguist and I am constantly amazed at the evolution of language. Even in the few decades that I have been consciously aware of language development, vocabulary has changed. Words that my contemporaries and I used as school kids are no longer common parlance. As a teacher I have heard “wicked” “cool” “boom” “brill” used to express pleasure at something.

New words and phrases enter the language with each generation, with each technological change, with each new decade. The way we communicate reflects the world we live in and so, of course the metaphors we use will incorporate the vocabulary of the internet and computers.

Jessica Courtney explores some of the vocabulary that entered our lexicon during the Industrial Revolution. The word Mackintosh ( not the computer) came into being in the 1820s when Charles Macintosh developed a waterproof cloth and the first “Macs” as they are now known were made. Neither the process nor the word “pasteurisation” was known or used until Louis Louis Pasteur discovered a way of treating milk and wine to prevent it from causing sickness.

Latin and Greek had an influence when it came to inventing words during the Industrial Revolution; thus streptococcus, stethoscope, ambulance, diptheria all entered the English language. But European languages and culture also had an effect on English especially when it came to food and fashion; salami, toffee, pasta, peignoir and lingerie to name but a few.

A whole range of new words came with the goldrush in Australia, California and NZ; the phrases “to pan out”, “to stake a claim”, a “long tom”, even “denim”, “jeans” and “Levis” are purported to have come into the language around this time.

The French have been characteristically protective of their language and the Academie Francaise has staunchly resisted the natural, popular urge to assimilate English/American vocabulary into French. They still persist in pushing the long winded “courrier electronique” despite most of the poplulation using “le email”. The lingua franca no longer resides in Middle Europe and whereas, in the past European words found their way into English, now it is English which is bulldozing its way through languages of all nations.

Metaphors are coined according to experiences and the cultural context is significant. Other linguistic features also develop in the same way. Why is it, for example, that in English to express the unlikelihood of something happening we say “and pigs might fly”, yet the French say “quand les poules auront des dents” (when hens get teeth”)?

How we describe things depends on our experiences. How we interpret events is contingent on where we have lived, who we have come in contact with, the jobs we do, the tools we use. Our experiences influence the way we evaluate situations, they influence our thoughts, our beliefs and our philosophies and the way we act. An individual’s attraction or aversion to new technologies may well be a result of prior experience, although personality and disposition also has a large part to play.

The language that is used to sell new technologies is crucial. In the Corning ad and the Microsoft ad we can see that the language which is suggested by the images is just as important as the images themselves. Utopia, dreams coming true, perfect world, clean and green, healthy, successful, family; these are words evoked by the images and they aim to seduce.

A lot of the language around technology and the internet revolves around communication, sharing, collaboration,, networking, building communities. “Kent determines that current metaphors shaping the internet keeps us from using it in educational and political venues”. Why? I wonder…. Education was (and possibly still is in many places) the bastion of the rich and powerful, from the church, to the landowners, to the politicians. Not to be shared with the masses lest they get ideas above their station. Information was kept with those in power to keep them in power. The idea of sharing knowledge was an anathema, divide and rule, information on a need to know basis.

Then the printing press came along and changed everything. It has been said that the Internet is the next biggest thing to effect change after the printing press. Now anyone can read, learn, write, publish, share their ideas, disseminate information. In schools “copying” is frowned upon. It is still difficult to get teachers to accept that collaboration is not cheating, that it offers learners of all levels the opportunity to develop their skills and work within Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. Most countries still have an examination system that advantages the “haves” and disadvantages the “have-nots”.

Somebody asked me the other day how I envisaged MOOCS affecting universities and schools in the future. How do we authenticate the work that a student produces in an online collaborative environment? As an educator, and it has taken me almost 28 years of teaching for me to have the confidence to express this view, I believe in lifelong learning, in learning just to learn and not to pass exams. I believe that my role is to enthuse a love of learning in my students, not just my own subject but all areas. Don’t get me wrong, lots if teachers also believe in lifelong learning. But learning has been hijacked by qualifications, by the need to standardise, quantify, assess, prove competency. I see MOOCS as being able to redress the balance a little especially now that employers cannot distinguish between Student X with grade As or Excellence in every subject and Student Y with the same grades. There has to be some way of finding the best candidate. Anybody can sign up to a Mooc, engage in it at whatever level is appropriate for them, explore ideas, expand their knowledge, learn, for the simple pleasure of learning. Too many students nowadays are “credit hunters” ; their primary motive for learning is to gain credits towards their exams; their parents too, push their children to work for their exams but don’t necessarily instil a desire to learn.

So.. Learn because you want to.

Learn because you can.

Learn because you are curious.

Learn for fun.

Learn.

“Education!” said Eeyore bitterly, jumping on his six sticks. “What is Learning?” asked Eeyore as he kicked his twelve sticks in the air. “A thing Rabbit knows. Ha!”
A A Milne

#edcmooc Determining factors for societal change

Published on by robeanne2 Comments

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681272/a-mobile-device-that-diagnoses-stds-on-the-spot-with-a-simple-finger-prick

Now this is the sort of technology that helps to create a more utopian vision of the future. A “simple” tool that can help detect illnesses in the field so that people can be cured or at least treated. As I said before, I think, practical applications for real context solutions. A tool that can help the people who need it and not just those with the money to afford shiny, pretty things!

Finding this article has got me thinking though about the inequality of access to medical care in the world. Well actually I started to think about if everybody was treated and cured then the world would be vastly overpopulated. The natural order of things; birth, life, death would be upset and where would that lead. But that brought me to the thought that not everyone in the world has cheap and ready access to medical care so the natural order would not be evenly spread around the world. And hasn’t that always been the case? Even in wealthy countries there are those who can afford access to health care, education, legal advice and those who can’t.

Going back to the videos “A day made of glass” and the Microsoft advert, I ask myself who the target audience is. Clearly the “haves” and not the “have nots” of this world. A utopian vision of my world would be where the “have nots” have equal access to education, healthcare, housing, clean water. The technologies that can provide those sorts of things are those that can change the social order, determine how society will be in the future.

Sugata Mitra’ “Hole in the Wall” experiments that provide children with the ability to access education have proved revolutionary.

Malala Yousafzai, the young girl shot in the head by the Taliban has a vision for girls in Pakistan to have access to education without fear of being killed.

It is the desire of people, the soul of people that impels them to create the circumstances, to invent the technology that changes society. The technology alone is not the determining factor.

#edcmooc Sleek and white – a utopian vision of the future

Published on by robeanne1 Comment

I just watched the first two videos for Week 2 and am struck by the sterility of the environments that are portrayed. Where is the reality of a world of busy people rushing her there and everywhere, living, playing, eating, making a mess for heaven’s sake?!  Is the message somehow that the arrival of these amazing products will make our lives serene, stressfree, and successful? I guess that is the utopian model that is promoted but maybe I am unusual in enjoying a bit of colour, dirt, feeling and real life.

Yes, I would welcome less stress and for centuries man has striven to make our working and home lives easier by developing machines to do jobs for us. I would not do without my washing machine, car, tumble drier, dishwasher now that I have them. I reckon that there is no way that women would be able to work full time and manage a house without those machines because, at the risk of upsetting a minority of good men (my husband included), the housework and cooking does, more often than not, still get done by women!  That these machines have had an impact society and the way that we live is incontrovertible. However, there is a long way between making my life easier and the anodyne, emptiness of feeling that is suggested in these films. I think there also comes a point when a machine can’t do a job better than a human. I think that the idea of soul, feeling, emotions has been touched on in many posts and we haven’t quite managed to invent something that can replace the human touch.

But what of education? What is being learned and taught? I like the way that the computers used by the family in the second film are used to connect the family even though they are apart. The child could research on the computer for a recipe but also involve her Mum and tap into her experience and knowledge. They connected in a real way – what is more basic than cooking? There was the opportunity for emotional connection, to nurture relationships. Much has been made of the social impact of absent parents, the effect absences have on a child’s emotional and social development. Maybe that is the difference these tools can make? Maybe that is the impact the will have to change society? I think it is important that in both these films the children are seen using computers in a supported environment, they are guided by their parents. And because the whole environment appears to be connected the idea of being raised as a digital citizen, learning to interact and react within a virtual as well as a real world, is evident. Will this technology help shape and hone the social nature man? Will it change the way we think, act, interact, learn, work, live and die?

The ability to collaborate, share information, talk, communicate, connect – all key skills. But I don’t really see how the hardware they were using does that any differently to the way we can do those things now. Yes the gadgets are prettier and shinier, they have more potential but unless we change the way that we do things and not just the gadgets we do them with, what is the point?  I like the practical applications of the tools in the second film especially at the beginning when the two people communicate about accommodation and travel arangements.  Communication is clear, concise, effective; real communication in a real life contexts.

I go back to the sterility of the environment though because it was striking to me. The work environments had white walls, white or glass benches and tables, there were no pictures, no external stimulus. Even in the house which had some warmth, everything was in its place, it was a house and not a home. The only break in the whiteness was the “living” wall; a wall made of foliage. A connection to the outside worlds, to nature. This motif apears again and again in the course videos; the connection or disconnect between technology and nature.  How can we maintain our humanity, our soul if we don’t connect with nature? Surely a dystopian vision?