Karen Allnutt (allnutt@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu)
Wed, 2 Dec 1998 15:18:20 -0600
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 15:18:20 -0600 From: Karen Allnutt <allnutt@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> Subject: [ifets] Third (second to last) summar of Chris O'Hagan's topic
Once again the summarizer apologizes, I thought that Chris' topic concluded
last week and thought that continued discussion was 'informal'. Also I
fear I missed some postings along the way for a variety of reasons (blame
the delete key) and apologize to anyone who has inadvertantly been excluded
from the summary.
Carol Rice comments "Technology causes a release from lower brain
functioning - the rote, lower levels of learning, to the alpha, highly
focused use of
information. It allows freedom to associate and infer from past
understandings and stimuli, so that the learner is euphoric and reeling
in cyberspace. The information feeds into the hard-wired recesses of the
brain and allows transference of right brain and left brain functioning
at rapid speeds. Of course, if you are not a woman, you will not
understand this recovery of information. Storage and retrieval of
information is rapid because those presenting their great chunks of
information present them in vast arrays of stimulating and appropriate
visual forms. A greater presence of the information creator is
perceived, and that stimulating more of the senses, so that
the memory is emblazoned on the mind. The personal depths of transfer is
without the limitations of age, space, or bias, causing a fresh
uninhibited experience. Children have been so coralled into black boxes
of fragmented knowledge that real learning must be gleaned as
refuse. Technology clips the cords of fear, and self-censor, becoming
the great equalizer. If we don't use technology to prescribe "more of
the same", it should thrust us into adulthood. Goethe stated that life
is the childhood of eternity."
Martin Owen read the summary and clarified his input with "Humans differ,
however we are substantally biologically similar. If there is a difference
in the "knowing" and "unknowing" brain where did that difference
originate?....That is whyI find the seasrchlight and the bucket analogies
are both unhelpful. The changes can only happen because of that coupling of
action on the environment and action of the environment on us. We may share
learning with tools (either Samantha's book or Arun's AI tutor), however to
quote Maturana: "Everything that has been said, has to have been said by
someone". Human agency in these sturctures can not be omitted. They are
human actions objectified. Notwithstanding that, the video cassette and the
word processor have changed the environment.
I have every sympathy with teachers who avoid technology. For those of us
who have embraced technology, the social conditions to do it have been
right for us. For most teachers the social conditions to embrace (some)
technologies are not yet right.
However, in my teaching career I have seen one technology revolutionise
teaching in the UK. I was a school student in the early 60's. The only time
I saw teacher produced material was either at an examination time ( the
exam paper) ... or transient material on the blackboard. Xerography has
changed that out of all recognition. It made mixed ability and locally
produced teaching resources possible. This changed practice and
expectations completely. You may ask why has the photocopier been such a
success with teachers.
I sit in a corner of the world where our "silicon learning technology" is a
dying industry. Our major employment was in the extraction of slate ;-) "
Arun-Kumar Tripathi added the following "Whatever we are going to learn, we
must learn from the roots.
Be the Jack of All and Master of One, not Be the Jack of All and Master of
None.
Regards above proverbial saying, I want to write a short story, that
Once..
There was a professor, who was well equipped with the best of technologies
available in the World, the professor and the boatman were enjoying
sailing in a river. Professor was telling him about his great achievements
and records. Then, suddenly the storms came, and the boat was about to
turn upside down, at this moment, the boatman asked the Professor, "You
have told me about your greatness, then please let me know, Can you swim?"
Here the professor failed to answer, the boat drowned...
Therefore, Be the Jack of All and Master of One, not Be the Jack of All
and Master of None. We must learn some lessons from this. Even, you are
knowing all best of the technologies available, It is not quite enough,
you have to be the Master of One. Otherwise, what have you learned the
lifelong is in vain.
Thoughts?? "
Martin Owen responds to Arun with "I am interested in Arun's comments as
concepts of expertise and mastery form part of the language of
constructivist education, particulaly in Collins, Brown and Duguid's
formulation of cognitive apprenticeship.
However mastery and expertise are social constructions in their own right,
and the apprentice will live a different world to the world of his/her
teacher ( gender specific language appologised for).
We live in a world of major changes and old mastery rapidly becomes a skill
to view in a theme park. We live in a world where it is beneficial to be
flexible, multi-skilled and skilled in learning new skills rather than
having narrow strengths. This is as true for the modern equivalent of the
agricultural labourer as it is for the neuro surgeon.
Therefore is is ever more important to situate learning in its social
context rather than reifying it to some abstract structure (like "the
roots",or, dare I say it "schools"). For it is in the real world where
changes and new knowledge and understanding is being created.
This is what makes the new technology so compulsive for me... it helps me
connect with big forces.
To continue our debate on teacher's reluctance to embrace changing
technology... a major problem teachers face is that they are probabaly the
most disconnected group of professionals in the world. They work in secret
worlds of classrooms where other teachers rarely see them work. They have
often been denied the most basic of communication systems. I think teachers
are probably the last professional group to have access to telephones.
"Teachers talking with teachers" is not a well structured aspect of the
profession. Why should we expect new ideas to get through?
Chris Jones responds to Martin Owen with "I have some problems with the
version of situation they use similar to those noted by Macbeth. That is
that all learning is situated in one way or another rather than some
learning being more situated than
another. ..... What exactly makes schools 'abstract'. The ones I have been
into are all too real ;-{).
I have also got some doubts about the whole flexible, multi-skilled,
change approach. This seems like less a description than a 'moral'
invocation. We must do these things because the world makes us.
I would want to advocate first of all making an adequate description.
How is the world changing and in just what ways? In education what are
the situations as understood by the participants rather than
educational analysts?
Too often when we discuss educational technology there is an implicit
idea that the technology is driving us.
Jarvis Kerr" interjects the following "This debate is skirting the subject
of power.
As you know, in the past, the Proffessor was
a powerful dispenser of wisdom and students
absorbed it then regurgitated it on the final exam.
There are still many disciplines in the US that
cling to that scenario. Training doctors is an example.
Others have embraced the learning environment that
makes the learning experience more of a problem
solving team rather than an adversarial relationship.
Enter the computer and online education. Now there
needs to be ever more sharing of "power". All of hate
change ( the only thing one can depend on ) so many of
us are resisting change. This is an opportunoty to offer
students more choices and for teachers to enjoy reading some
of their innovative works. There need to be standards and
those dreaded deadlines. But we need to grasp this technology
( like the old slide projector and VCR ) and provide more opportunity
to more students that is high quality. A quick question: If a student can
pass
your final exam on the first day, will you award a passing grade ? "
Bill Braun shared his experience "...... I learned a
lot about the beauty of the region and a lot about myself. I just thought
in whatever direction my thoughts went. I think it's doubtful I could have
planned this and stuck to a compass heading.
Carol Rice contributes "Every age offers a new rubric, or model.
Thankfully, the teacher is the ultimate model, as is the parent, for
certain purposes. ... Technology is a toy, or a tool, in the hands of a
throbbing mass of neurons and cells expanding exponentially by the
millisecond. ....How true that learning has been directed by great power
and control of those in guidance and leadership positions. Returning the
power to the individual does empower him/her to step up to the present, and
the future and be the great one that
he or she is in this age. Our past has been object-oriented because of the
influence of industry and necessity. Today, we have the luxury of taking the
newer tool - the internet, the personal computer, and using it to expand and
extend learning across another expanse - cyberspace, which may represent the
great crevasse of the mind. The student is the learner, whether it is a 70
year old grandmother, or, a 7 year old. Each can use the tool if the trust
is there. May we weld the generations!!!
Could exposure to sights and sounds, words and graphics, enlarge our
experience to the unknowing or "hard-wired" brain, then we suddenly release
these words, graphics, and experiences in a communication to great minds we
can neither see nor hear, across the gap of the knowing brain connections? "
Carol Rice in response to Martin "those with vision do expect, and quietly
sometimes, though sometimes loudly, and rudely, demand change of their
colleagues. Those who have routinely been the pillars of the temple for all
time find their purposes
neither enhanced nor more palatable by using small devices such as the
telephone. The molder of small minds has always used touch, and sound, and
visual images - even political ones through nursery tales, to plant a vision
for the future."
Carol Rice responds to Barbara's comparison of the gender-biased reactions to
computor-technology "There are 30+ instructors at my elementary school.
Three of these instructors, including the principal use technology as a
magic wand. Out of the remaining 27 teachers, which are female, 14 use the
computor for everything that pleases them, from elaborate parent letters,
curriculum logs, student pages, memos, and web pages. The administration has
pushed for exposure to technology with their own modelling of best
practices. Our school is in a very rural setting, yet television has
equalized the exposure of allto new ideas through the decades. If our
neighbors can use technology, we believe that we can also. Those who allow
fear to chain them in or lock them out of this information age will pay the
price for their students. There is no longer a choice. When students are
more knowledgable as five-year-olds in computor graphics and symbols, the
fear of slipping behind must overtake the fear of new ideas. "
Carol Rice response to Chris' bucket and search light theories to knowledge
accessing "The teacher can lead and model learning, but, until someone
sparks a real lust for an idea or a topic some students will never be
stimulated to reflect on anything, or to express those reflections.
Launching into cyberspace to see another group or class trying stimulating
things may be the exercize that wakes up the sleeping giants of the future.
Students are bodily in the classroom but are mentally in the family room
clicking through Sega Genesis and Nintendo play stations. Adults take little
time to reflect either. What great poets or inventors communicate their
discoveries today? We have moved backwards into the recesses of
insecurities, and failures-to-thrive in a modern world that offers no
identity for passing here. We need to know ourselves well, old and young, so
that thriving will be no option for anyone, but a joy. Technology enhances
the experience on this planet because it, or they, are the crown jewels of
that experience. Having been positioned in time to experience the 60's, I
was never stimulated except in music, literature, or art, yet, math and
science now intrigue me because I have been better exposed to them. Adults
must take these new paths to learning so that students will follow. "
PA Gantt, offers "Gender... hmmmm...
Might want to read a snippet out of my thesis...
http://user.icx.net/~pgantt/collaborative/research/linkages/articles/scgender.ht
m
Gender Variables and Computers
Dateline: 05/26/97
Excerpts from Antecedent Conditions and Their
Affective Outcomes on Ratings of Personal
Beliefs and Computer Self-Efficacy of
Undergraduate Humanities Students "
Joe Beckmann accepts Jarvis Kerr's challenge and responds "If I make the
exam the criterion of passage, they should be able to pass out of the
course as soon as - or before - they register. That's what's so incredibly
stupid about all the standards vocabulary in American Education these days,
incidentally, since the boobs who are pushing a single-test measure are
surely not ready to accommodate those who meet that measure
ahead of schedule: they all want more hours in schools, rather than REALLY
mean what they say about standards.
It would be interesting to find out how many students graduated early
through the New York State Regents' exams, since they were once a standard
in the State of New York, which was once the largest and most progressive
state in education. Times change. "
Martin Owen is grateful for Carol's prose...
"however I am reminded of Blake's Schoolboy :
"But to go to school on a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay."
or Henry Read's "Easing of the Spring" .
http://calvin.cse.psu.edu/~gargi/poems/NamingOfParts.html
... it tells us a lot about education. ....... An apparent technological
determinist's tale ( based on an expample of Yrji
Engestrom)
I am a forgetful soul, I have on more than one ocassion left hotels with my
room key in the pocket. No doubt this has meant that there would need to be
duplicates in the manger's office (securely kept, to guard guests'
privacy), and there would be a good trade for the local locksmith. However
I do break those house rules.
In some hotels, I have noticed that they have added mighty weights that
strongly discourage carrying the key about with you (it does disrupt the
line of one's Armani suit). I leave such keys at reception. This obliges
the division of labour around the hotel to change. There is also less work
for locksmiths, however there does need to be a receptionist around at the
times when guests are likely to come and go.
Lately I have been given programmed pieces of plastic with a magnetic
strip. Such things are of less cost to the hotel, they do not mind losing
so many of them, and they can be reprogrammed ensuring their future guests'
security. The people at reception can now do other work (rehearsing "have
a nice day"), and presumably the locksmith is retraining as an electronic
engineer.
Simple technological changes which in turn change my behaviour, change the
division of labour within a hotel and change the system of rules and
regulations of hotel life.
I argue that this is not technological determinism. It is a recognition
that action of subjects on objects change the subject as well as the
object. The social context changes because of the tools and other factor in
the environment about us. The computer genie is out of the box. Old
technology, new technology... it is a factor in the environment.
Chris O'Hagan reminds us that "We are coming to the closing days of this
conference, which I think has been very lively. ..... I am going to try
to identify the various threads to ease us into focusing down on some
conclusions.
On the theme of old v new, or as I would rather put it - are new
technologies hindering best use of the old, often more reliable
methods? George Free, Barbara Ross, Peter Kandlbinder found
resonances in this argument. Mike Collett spoke of 'a balance'
between new and old, though I would argue that such a balance
seems hard to establish. Bob Leamnson asked if new technologies work
better at educating students and thought it might have something to
do with familiarity and need - if books could get addictive for
some, would the same be true for the new methods? He also suggested
that no technology has ever lived up to its promise - to which I
would reply, precisely because new technologies distract from
enabling older technologies to achieve their full potential. In
fact, Dale Havill saw a level of pedagogical incompetence in the use
of conventional technologies like printed media, and implied that
this could cause equal problems as the new media drew upon these
methods - I agree, a lousy multiple choice question on paper is
equally lousy on screen. Bernard Harris pointed to the need for
appropriate teacher training - I would ask if this would include
better training in the use of the older media as an enabler to
understanding mixed media and multimedia?
If one way or another this group tended to a bit of pessimism about
the ease with which new technologies can be adopted in education,
there are also the optimists. Ken Kahn, Arun Tripathi, Richard Jones,
P Gantt, James Carr, Joe Beckmann offered various degrees of optimism
from computers completely replacing teachers, to stimulating students
who take to it like ducks to water, to enhancing the old processes,
to increasing teachers feelings of 'self worth'. But my original
question was about the people who intellectually author resources in
educational technology - teachers - and suggested that the bulk of
these are still close to the bottom of the learning curve, and
may have been deterred by poor initial forays caused by lack of
understanding of how to the use audiovisual media. We know that the
experienced and motivated teachers can make good use of old and new
technologies, and stimulate student use. We have always had pockets
of expertise. How do we get ubiquity?
Samantha Hobbs challenged Arun that teachers could be replaced by the
new technology - she argued for interaction with peers and teachers,
though she, perhaps with an ironical jab, was happy for loads of
research money to be spent on AI in education! Chris Eliot replied
to argue that although such interaction may be desirable, it may not
always be possible, and that support of the solitary student using
new technologies was a positive feature - and I would tend to agree.
The possibility to expand access to the geographically or physically
isolated has to be a plus. And a number of others pointed out that
the C in ICT (including Samantha!) enabled very positive interaction
over distance.
There was some discussion, set in motion by Ruth Crawley and followed
up by Martin Owen that addressed a philosophical/sociological level
of debate - pointing out learning is situated in social activity and
suggesting that technology can hide 'layers of management and
control', or that it can impose unintended changes on users and the
social world. I suggested that these views represented a kind of
technological determinism - was it avoidable or unavoidable, was it
inherent in technology itself? I think Martin's responses argued that
he was a soft determinist ie that although the subject is transformed
through interaction with the technology -the tool - he seemed
to imply that there is the possibility of control over this. Quite
a few interesting references were thrown up by this side of the
conference. Martin concluded with an excellent quote from one of
these "When we create new tools we create new conversation", but I
wonder if this maybe conflicts with another view he expressed, that
educational technologies do not greatly change the modalities of
learning, which I would tend to agree with. Are we talking about 'New
Learning Environments' or ' but old environments writ new'?
(apologies to John Milton).
Bob, maybe inadvertently, set up a new thread by asserting that 'No
technology has ever caused learning'. Bang! This was an
enthusiastically followed thread, and full of interest. Does the
cause of learning reside within the learner, or can technology cause
learning? The ball shot backwards and forwards. Mike Collett, Chris
Eliot, J Ure, Martin Owen, Samantha Hobbs, Bill Braun, Carol Rice and
Bob again and again, and me all had some fun. Feedback loops were
introduced, cognitive psychology, synapses, chemical changes in the
brain, reductionism and expansionism, buckets and searchlights. But
I think we teased out some very interesting points, and I hope these
will be 'converged' in the next day or so.
I hope I have not misrepresented anyone, and apologies if your
contribution has not been mentioned - it's nearly 19.00 and I want to
get home for a glass of whisky, so I may have taken a few liberties!
.... I hope an absorbing last few days. If you haven't joined in, it's still
not too late.
Best wishes.
Chris O'Hagan
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