France Beauty
Selasa, 13 September 2011
0
komentar
Illich Revisited: Was the Personal Learning Environment a mistake?
Senin, 12 September 2011
0
komentar
The PLE is something which I have been involved with since near the beginning of its emergence in the e-learning world. In our work on the JISC PLE project, the words 'Personal', 'Learning' and 'Environment' were each questions that we asked. What did 'personal' mean? What did we mean by 'learning'? And what was an 'environment'? Our answers to these questions directed our thinking as we grappled with issues surrounding the 'locus of control' of learning and technology, the emergence of web services and the impact on the individual, and the burgeoning growth of technology within the institution. It lead to some thoughtful contributions about the PLE being a concept and not a thing (this despite the fact that we build a 'thing' (see http://www.reload.ac.uk/plex/ ) to explore the concept! - which possibly confused everyone...)
Later on the discourse took a different form from our initial investigations, turning into a "PLE rules! Down with the VLE!".. which seemed a bit silly to us, since the VLE was clearly gaining adoption within institutions.
More recently, as I look around at the various projects still trying to 'build' PLEs including the large-scale ROLE project http://www.role-project.eu/ , I'm wondering whether there was a wrong turning somewhere. Not that there's anything wrong with ROLE... but it is hard to see the technology being of practical use to teachers. This is for the reasons I wrote about regarding the ITEC project here: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com/2011/09/interactive-whiteboards-personal.html. The problem of 'powering-up' learners without significantly 'powering-up' teachers to cope with them seems doomed to failure.
This is leading me to go back to Ivan Illich, who was one of the principal inspirations behind the PLE idea (see http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10494820701772652). His concepts of 'deschooling' and 'learning webs' bore a strong similarity to the capabilities of the technology. Now learners could be provided with the tools to self-organise. But on seeing what actually happened when we tried it, I think Illich would be the first to refine his message.
The successor to Illich's book 'Deschooling society' was his 'Tools for Conviviality', where a more detailed analysis of technology and institutions and their rise in power, and the consequent loss of convivial existence is contained. When we started the PLE it looked like the web services of Google and Facebook (which hadn't really got going at that point) could present an opportunity for learners to do the things they needed to do away from the institution. But we didn't see the fact that we were replacing one institution with another even more powerful. We also thought the experiences of engaging with these services would be convivial in the way Illich describes.
But Illich's message in Tools for Conviviality is to manage the power of technology: not to usurp it, but in certain cases restrict it. This is partly because any usurping would inevitably be done by a more powerful technology, thus increasing the pathology of technological power, not managing it.
In our global world this challenge to manage powerful technologies has some resonance. Global services do not meet the needs of local conditions. Somehow we have to find ways in which the relationship between global services and local conditions can be managed. I think this is true of the internet (google, etc) and education. Local conditions in education are the conditions of the classroom. The teacher's job is to manage relationships with whatever tools they have to-hand. The tool that e-learning has given them that can most easily address the needs of the class is usually the VLE.
The interesting thing about this is that the VLE still embodies the power relationship between teacher and student: the teacher has the editing rights, and students don't. Maybe because of this, teachers use it, because they still maintain the ability to amplify themselves and attenuate their students. If they were to use social software (Web2.0), they lose some of this control: the power relationship become much flatter. Consequently, fewer teachers are likely to do this because of the risks of losing control of their classes.
In Illich's work on the relationship between technology and conviviality, I think he would now make some refinements in the light of the technology we have. Because it is not the power of the technology per se which does the damage to conviviality. It seems to be the flattening-out of power relations. In Illich's famous example of the spade vs. the JCB, the power relation between the boss and the workforce with spades was very marked: the boss was there to coordinate action. With the JCB, the technology enabled the worker to execute action autonomously, with the boss left to manage risks rather than coordinate action directly (and all the other workers who might once have used a shovel, to stand by and watch!). The JCB can be seen to have a flatter power differential between coordination and execution.
I think the flat power differential can also be seen in Illich's concerns about institutions. As monasteries gained power, so the coordinating authority of the church and its relation to the essential Biblical teachings became challenged - each 'unit' became more autonomous and pathological, with increasing pathology in the centre too. But this is tricky territory because Illich has a problem with 'professions' (doctors, lawyers, etc) disempowering the population by creating 'health systems', 'welfare systems', 'transport systems', etc. But what's the real problem here? Is it the professional judgement of an individual and their authority over a patient? Or is it the fact that the 'system' created around them restricts their capacity to act in a sensible way? Here again, maybe the health system hated by Illich actually flattens the power differential between doctor and patient.
The decline of power differentials seems to me to be entropic. Therefore, we might say that with increasing entropy in power, there is increasingly chaotic social form, or pathological morphogenetic processes. Seen this way, Illich's ideas about limiting the power of technology can be translated into a program of preserving certain types of power relations through technologies as technologies change. In my work, the power relation between teachers and learners is a key case.
However, there is one important caveat to add. When talking about maintaining power relations between teachers and learners, I do not mean that we should all start lecturing and setting exams. Maintaining power relations does not mean poor positioning. It means instead empowering the teacher to position their students as they see fit in their local situation, thus reviving the convivial spirit of education.
Later on the discourse took a different form from our initial investigations, turning into a "PLE rules! Down with the VLE!".. which seemed a bit silly to us, since the VLE was clearly gaining adoption within institutions.
More recently, as I look around at the various projects still trying to 'build' PLEs including the large-scale ROLE project http://www.role-project.eu/ , I'm wondering whether there was a wrong turning somewhere. Not that there's anything wrong with ROLE... but it is hard to see the technology being of practical use to teachers. This is for the reasons I wrote about regarding the ITEC project here: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com/2011/09/interactive-whiteboards-personal.html. The problem of 'powering-up' learners without significantly 'powering-up' teachers to cope with them seems doomed to failure.
This is leading me to go back to Ivan Illich, who was one of the principal inspirations behind the PLE idea (see http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10494820701772652). His concepts of 'deschooling' and 'learning webs' bore a strong similarity to the capabilities of the technology. Now learners could be provided with the tools to self-organise. But on seeing what actually happened when we tried it, I think Illich would be the first to refine his message.
The successor to Illich's book 'Deschooling society' was his 'Tools for Conviviality', where a more detailed analysis of technology and institutions and their rise in power, and the consequent loss of convivial existence is contained. When we started the PLE it looked like the web services of Google and Facebook (which hadn't really got going at that point) could present an opportunity for learners to do the things they needed to do away from the institution. But we didn't see the fact that we were replacing one institution with another even more powerful. We also thought the experiences of engaging with these services would be convivial in the way Illich describes.
But Illich's message in Tools for Conviviality is to manage the power of technology: not to usurp it, but in certain cases restrict it. This is partly because any usurping would inevitably be done by a more powerful technology, thus increasing the pathology of technological power, not managing it.
In our global world this challenge to manage powerful technologies has some resonance. Global services do not meet the needs of local conditions. Somehow we have to find ways in which the relationship between global services and local conditions can be managed. I think this is true of the internet (google, etc) and education. Local conditions in education are the conditions of the classroom. The teacher's job is to manage relationships with whatever tools they have to-hand. The tool that e-learning has given them that can most easily address the needs of the class is usually the VLE.
The interesting thing about this is that the VLE still embodies the power relationship between teacher and student: the teacher has the editing rights, and students don't. Maybe because of this, teachers use it, because they still maintain the ability to amplify themselves and attenuate their students. If they were to use social software (Web2.0), they lose some of this control: the power relationship become much flatter. Consequently, fewer teachers are likely to do this because of the risks of losing control of their classes.
In Illich's work on the relationship between technology and conviviality, I think he would now make some refinements in the light of the technology we have. Because it is not the power of the technology per se which does the damage to conviviality. It seems to be the flattening-out of power relations. In Illich's famous example of the spade vs. the JCB, the power relation between the boss and the workforce with spades was very marked: the boss was there to coordinate action. With the JCB, the technology enabled the worker to execute action autonomously, with the boss left to manage risks rather than coordinate action directly (and all the other workers who might once have used a shovel, to stand by and watch!). The JCB can be seen to have a flatter power differential between coordination and execution.
I think the flat power differential can also be seen in Illich's concerns about institutions. As monasteries gained power, so the coordinating authority of the church and its relation to the essential Biblical teachings became challenged - each 'unit' became more autonomous and pathological, with increasing pathology in the centre too. But this is tricky territory because Illich has a problem with 'professions' (doctors, lawyers, etc) disempowering the population by creating 'health systems', 'welfare systems', 'transport systems', etc. But what's the real problem here? Is it the professional judgement of an individual and their authority over a patient? Or is it the fact that the 'system' created around them restricts their capacity to act in a sensible way? Here again, maybe the health system hated by Illich actually flattens the power differential between doctor and patient.
The decline of power differentials seems to me to be entropic. Therefore, we might say that with increasing entropy in power, there is increasingly chaotic social form, or pathological morphogenetic processes. Seen this way, Illich's ideas about limiting the power of technology can be translated into a program of preserving certain types of power relations through technologies as technologies change. In my work, the power relation between teachers and learners is a key case.
However, there is one important caveat to add. When talking about maintaining power relations between teachers and learners, I do not mean that we should all start lecturing and setting exams. Maintaining power relations does not mean poor positioning. It means instead empowering the teacher to position their students as they see fit in their local situation, thus reviving the convivial spirit of education.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
Categories:
Modes of Being: a musical interpretation of Learning Technology
Sabtu, 10 September 2011
0
komentar
I've been asked to do a few sessions with some international students who are visiting Bolton from our overseas campus. I'd spent some time planning some cool (I thought) technological and cybernetic-related things to do related to their intellectual development and the need to improve their report-writing and research skills. It took a bit of setting-up servers, and jiggery-pokery in the computer lab to make things happen.
But then I thought again.
For all my enthusiasm about this (which is the enthusiasm that most learning technologists have about technology), I realised that as a teacher I was in a 'techie' space that my students might not immediately appreciate. They were, after all, an inter-disciplinary group, with a minority of technologists, and a good number of mature students.
So I stood back from my technological fever and asked myself "what do they need?"
At that moment I became aware of a distinct change of mood in myself. My technological grand-plan had the feeling of some frantic 'scherzo' - a bit like a Tom and Jerry cartoon! It was all logic and the logic leading inexorably to new logical and technical conclusions... my thinking was heightened and fast, and I was excited... but at the same time... I had forgotten what I was really trying to do!
Stepping back was the moment my mood changed. Suddenly, I was soulful and deep. Emotion was the key thing, and the need to connect with real problems and address them directly with a minimum of distraction. There are teaching and learning techniques I know for doing this (and have used many times before) - and this, I decided, was the best course of action.
My feeling on this whole experience is that, as with music, it is the variety of moods and movements which makes the piece. And each mood carries benefits, but can be too much on its own. The technological "scherzo" mood is exciting and energetic, but it distracts and risks blinding us to what really matters. The soulful mood is deep and engaged, but can get stuck in introspection and a lack of dynamism. Then there are other moods: for example, the playing of games may be partly technological, but is also joyful: maybe that's the 'rondo' movement! And finally, there is the mood to inspire and be visionary. That is different too - because it doesn't necessarily have to connect to reality, but it has to steer the emotions of those present.
What is the relationship between these things and forms of knowledge? What is the relationship between them and the different types of speech act involved, or the positioning involved? In what ways are they coercions? exhotations? or disruptions?
I suspect we do all of them all the time to some extent. But being aware of the different modes of being, and developing the skill to switch from one to the other seems to me a sensible thing to do... and possibly a way of looking at the world more musically.
But then I thought again.
For all my enthusiasm about this (which is the enthusiasm that most learning technologists have about technology), I realised that as a teacher I was in a 'techie' space that my students might not immediately appreciate. They were, after all, an inter-disciplinary group, with a minority of technologists, and a good number of mature students.
So I stood back from my technological fever and asked myself "what do they need?"
At that moment I became aware of a distinct change of mood in myself. My technological grand-plan had the feeling of some frantic 'scherzo' - a bit like a Tom and Jerry cartoon! It was all logic and the logic leading inexorably to new logical and technical conclusions... my thinking was heightened and fast, and I was excited... but at the same time... I had forgotten what I was really trying to do!
Stepping back was the moment my mood changed. Suddenly, I was soulful and deep. Emotion was the key thing, and the need to connect with real problems and address them directly with a minimum of distraction. There are teaching and learning techniques I know for doing this (and have used many times before) - and this, I decided, was the best course of action.
My feeling on this whole experience is that, as with music, it is the variety of moods and movements which makes the piece. And each mood carries benefits, but can be too much on its own. The technological "scherzo" mood is exciting and energetic, but it distracts and risks blinding us to what really matters. The soulful mood is deep and engaged, but can get stuck in introspection and a lack of dynamism. Then there are other moods: for example, the playing of games may be partly technological, but is also joyful: maybe that's the 'rondo' movement! And finally, there is the mood to inspire and be visionary. That is different too - because it doesn't necessarily have to connect to reality, but it has to steer the emotions of those present.
What is the relationship between these things and forms of knowledge? What is the relationship between them and the different types of speech act involved, or the positioning involved? In what ways are they coercions? exhotations? or disruptions?
I suspect we do all of them all the time to some extent. But being aware of the different modes of being, and developing the skill to switch from one to the other seems to me a sensible thing to do... and possibly a way of looking at the world more musically.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
Categories:
Conviviality and Educational Technology
Kamis, 08 September 2011
0
komentar
The fact that online education is still a niche (albeit growing) market tells us something. Learners want to be together: in the lecture theatre, in the coffee bar, in the halls, 'down the pub'. But increasingly we see that the instinct to be together is counter-balanced by range of factors from the high costs of education and living away from home, to what appears to be an increasing individualisation and selfishness where individual financial investment in qualifications can be 'cashed-in' later on in terms of high wages. With rising costs of education, online education is likely to seem more attractive for these ends, and consequently the lecture theatre, coffee bar and especially the halls becomes something of a luxury. The common-sense instinct for conviviality is drowned out.
In 1971, Ivan Illich documented this process in his 'Tools for Conviviality'. Technologies and institutions (which he saw as a kind of human technology), have a pattern: from a wonderful flowering where individuals are empowered (imagine how people felt with the first cars), the technology grows in power to the point that it threatens the viability of the world and alienates or oppresses the people in it (the car becomes a machine for covering the planet with concrete). Illich's recommendation is to limit the power of technology. Only by doing this can we preserve the fundamental values of human life which are only revealed in convivial existence.
When I worked on the JISC Personal Learning Environment project a few years ago, I worried about Illich's argument. Technological personalisation, I thought, might be a route to conviviality because it counter-balanced what we saw as 'over-powerful' institutional technology. In the light of Facebook, Google and Twitter, I now think this is wrong. What personal and social technology has become is merely subservience to powerful institutions other than the university (i.e. multinational technology corporations). And more to the point, social technology is really a misnomer: it's personal technology for managing social connections strategically. It is rare (although not impossible) for people to have convivial engagements through the technology.
A campaign for conviviality stands against the increasing emphasis on the individual benefits of learning as a way of justifying personal financial investment in educational institutions. As this ethos of personal exchange has gained acceptance, so institutional processes have become more focused on meeting individual needs (in the best spirit of customer service!), helping the learner to manage their 'learning account'. The increasing emphasis on self has come at a price: 'learning journeys' take place individually. Pedagogical 'group working' does not change this: group work is as much about classroom management as it is about trying to nurture a collaborative and convivial spirit; achievements are ultimately individual. If individual targets are not met, the investment that the individual sees themselves making in education is lost. In such a climate of exchange, its perfectly reasonable for learners to develop strategies for success, and to equate greater success with higher marks. This is to the detriment not only of institutional life, but society in general.
Our technological developments can (and mostly do) proceed to satisfy this increasing individualisation which is the focus of most university business plans. But equally, we could focus our attention on counter-balancing the loss of conviviality through the technologies we develop. A campaign to do this would essentially run against the individualistic and deterministic ethos of current educational thinking. But an effort to identify the tools and activities that bring people together in convivial ways is a necessary corrective to some of the pathologies that are occurring the education system at the moment.
In 1971, Ivan Illich documented this process in his 'Tools for Conviviality'. Technologies and institutions (which he saw as a kind of human technology), have a pattern: from a wonderful flowering where individuals are empowered (imagine how people felt with the first cars), the technology grows in power to the point that it threatens the viability of the world and alienates or oppresses the people in it (the car becomes a machine for covering the planet with concrete). Illich's recommendation is to limit the power of technology. Only by doing this can we preserve the fundamental values of human life which are only revealed in convivial existence.
When I worked on the JISC Personal Learning Environment project a few years ago, I worried about Illich's argument. Technological personalisation, I thought, might be a route to conviviality because it counter-balanced what we saw as 'over-powerful' institutional technology. In the light of Facebook, Google and Twitter, I now think this is wrong. What personal and social technology has become is merely subservience to powerful institutions other than the university (i.e. multinational technology corporations). And more to the point, social technology is really a misnomer: it's personal technology for managing social connections strategically. It is rare (although not impossible) for people to have convivial engagements through the technology.
A campaign for conviviality stands against the increasing emphasis on the individual benefits of learning as a way of justifying personal financial investment in educational institutions. As this ethos of personal exchange has gained acceptance, so institutional processes have become more focused on meeting individual needs (in the best spirit of customer service!), helping the learner to manage their 'learning account'. The increasing emphasis on self has come at a price: 'learning journeys' take place individually. Pedagogical 'group working' does not change this: group work is as much about classroom management as it is about trying to nurture a collaborative and convivial spirit; achievements are ultimately individual. If individual targets are not met, the investment that the individual sees themselves making in education is lost. In such a climate of exchange, its perfectly reasonable for learners to develop strategies for success, and to equate greater success with higher marks. This is to the detriment not only of institutional life, but society in general.
Our technological developments can (and mostly do) proceed to satisfy this increasing individualisation which is the focus of most university business plans. But equally, we could focus our attention on counter-balancing the loss of conviviality through the technologies we develop. A campaign to do this would essentially run against the individualistic and deterministic ethos of current educational thinking. But an effort to identify the tools and activities that bring people together in convivial ways is a necessary corrective to some of the pathologies that are occurring the education system at the moment.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
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Global Localism and Conviviality in Educational Technology
Minggu, 04 September 2011
0
komentar
There's been a lot of talk recently about Global/Local with regard to a range of issues from public services to international finance. It's been less talked about in Education, but within Educational Technology the tension between global and local lies at the heart of some of the tensions and difficulties in using technology effectively in local situations. Basically, we have situation where there are powerful global services: Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc, but whilst they impress on an individual personalised basis, they don't always lend themselves easily to the convivial situation of the classroom: passwords must be set up, accounts created (with all their unpleasant legalese) before anything can happen.
Some institutions have recently made global decisions on behalf of their students and effectively acted as resellers of these global services (for example, the OU's deal with Google: http://blog.ouseful.info/2010/01/22/open-university-adopts-google-apps-for-education/). But this leaves the student (and teachers) in an awkward situation where they risk getting more than they bargained for when they sign up for a course. I think global deals of this kind are a cop-out of a difficult technical problem which somehow has to be grasped.
The central issue of localism is conviviality: at its essence is people looking after each other; of prioritising those individuals and places which/whom they have the deepest attachments. Localism in a global context is about behaving locally, maintaining attachments, and behaving convivially whilst being aware of the inter-connectedness of things and the opportunities and threats that emerge on a global basis, and how these might affect the local conditions. Fundamentally, it is about contextualised common-sense; about not being coerced by global conditions into behaving against ones better instincts and common sense.
What has this got to do with teaching? Well, when we think about the local contexts in education, where the meaningful attachments exist, it is always in the convivial environment of the classroom. Indeed, the push for social software and online communities has precisely been a push to try to establish this sort of conviviality online. On the whole (with very few exceptions) it fails. Why? Because the conviviality of the classroom doesn't just emerge from people being together. It emerges from them being together in a way where they form attachments to each other and the situation they are in. For some reason the online networks still seem very cold - whilst students will (sometimes) converse, the conversation can seem inauthentic in comparison to the visceral experience of being in a place together. Much the same experience can happen in the theatre or at concerts, but the classroom is special because of the particular power relationships and agendas that play out there. Indeed, might it be the reduced level of power relationships online that contribute to their reduced level of conviviality?
In the classroom, out of the power relationships emerge activities. In essence this is where the teacher exploits their position of power by attenuating the communication of their students. And good teachers will find all sorts of imaginative ways of doing this, but its net result is to create a viable situation for teachers and students to be together for the duration of the course. But the weird and magical thing about learning activities is that the attenuation of communication (the rules of the game) produces increased levels of attachment - not just between the students, the students and the teachers, but between the students and the subjects of study. And as that happens, the patterns of communication (the 'positionings') change.
In the classroom 'enhanced' by social software promoted by the big global players in the computer industry, the natural thing to think is that this technology can be exploited to support the sort of activities that foster increased conviviality and deepening attachment. But the global players' software is on the whole not well-suited for doing this. It tends to be aimed at the individual who will exclaim 'cool!' when they see it, and be 'sold' on the product (like any other commodity), thus increasing the reach of the particular brand, but not necessarily serving the needs of the local community.
I think the answer to the issue of conviviality in the classroom is to use the technology to increase the power of teachers to coordinate and manage their learning activities. I think it is these activities and the power relationships that sit behind them that are the key to the formation of deep attachments and conviviality - not just with each other, but with the subject knowledge that underpins the enterprise. This goes somewhat against the grain with regard to the recent trend for teachers to be 'facilitators' - but frankly, I'm fairly convinced this is a shallow interpretation of what teachers really do. Technologically, I think it means that the hurdle to be overcome is to find a way where global services can be properly 'served' locally by individual teachers for their students: the client-server relationship needs to be reinforced through the establishment of local servers which are ready-to-hand for teachers to coordinate the activities that they and their students care about.
Some institutions have recently made global decisions on behalf of their students and effectively acted as resellers of these global services (for example, the OU's deal with Google: http://blog.ouseful.info/2010/01/22/open-university-adopts-google-apps-for-education/). But this leaves the student (and teachers) in an awkward situation where they risk getting more than they bargained for when they sign up for a course. I think global deals of this kind are a cop-out of a difficult technical problem which somehow has to be grasped.
The central issue of localism is conviviality: at its essence is people looking after each other; of prioritising those individuals and places which/whom they have the deepest attachments. Localism in a global context is about behaving locally, maintaining attachments, and behaving convivially whilst being aware of the inter-connectedness of things and the opportunities and threats that emerge on a global basis, and how these might affect the local conditions. Fundamentally, it is about contextualised common-sense; about not being coerced by global conditions into behaving against ones better instincts and common sense.
What has this got to do with teaching? Well, when we think about the local contexts in education, where the meaningful attachments exist, it is always in the convivial environment of the classroom. Indeed, the push for social software and online communities has precisely been a push to try to establish this sort of conviviality online. On the whole (with very few exceptions) it fails. Why? Because the conviviality of the classroom doesn't just emerge from people being together. It emerges from them being together in a way where they form attachments to each other and the situation they are in. For some reason the online networks still seem very cold - whilst students will (sometimes) converse, the conversation can seem inauthentic in comparison to the visceral experience of being in a place together. Much the same experience can happen in the theatre or at concerts, but the classroom is special because of the particular power relationships and agendas that play out there. Indeed, might it be the reduced level of power relationships online that contribute to their reduced level of conviviality?
In the classroom, out of the power relationships emerge activities. In essence this is where the teacher exploits their position of power by attenuating the communication of their students. And good teachers will find all sorts of imaginative ways of doing this, but its net result is to create a viable situation for teachers and students to be together for the duration of the course. But the weird and magical thing about learning activities is that the attenuation of communication (the rules of the game) produces increased levels of attachment - not just between the students, the students and the teachers, but between the students and the subjects of study. And as that happens, the patterns of communication (the 'positionings') change.
In the classroom 'enhanced' by social software promoted by the big global players in the computer industry, the natural thing to think is that this technology can be exploited to support the sort of activities that foster increased conviviality and deepening attachment. But the global players' software is on the whole not well-suited for doing this. It tends to be aimed at the individual who will exclaim 'cool!' when they see it, and be 'sold' on the product (like any other commodity), thus increasing the reach of the particular brand, but not necessarily serving the needs of the local community.
I think the answer to the issue of conviviality in the classroom is to use the technology to increase the power of teachers to coordinate and manage their learning activities. I think it is these activities and the power relationships that sit behind them that are the key to the formation of deep attachments and conviviality - not just with each other, but with the subject knowledge that underpins the enterprise. This goes somewhat against the grain with regard to the recent trend for teachers to be 'facilitators' - but frankly, I'm fairly convinced this is a shallow interpretation of what teachers really do. Technologically, I think it means that the hurdle to be overcome is to find a way where global services can be properly 'served' locally by individual teachers for their students: the client-server relationship needs to be reinforced through the establishment of local servers which are ready-to-hand for teachers to coordinate the activities that they and their students care about.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
Categories:
Interactive Whiteboards, Personal Technologies and the Cybernetics of Classroom Engagement
Jumat, 02 September 2011
0
komentar
One of the biggest challenges we have in the iTEC project is thinking why teachers would adopt new technological practices with widgets, mobile phones, etc. The problem is quite simple and can be expressed in cybernetic terms (this is one of Oleg's slides which does the job very well!)
Learners are curious, want access to employment, personal development and empowerment. Teachers have knowledge, expertise, experience and understanding. The VARIETY (i.e. the collective complexity of something, or the number of possible states it can exist in) of the learners is greater than the VARIETY of a teacher. According to Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics)) the only way a relationship between teachers and learners can be managed is if the two sides of the VARIETY equation match. That means amplification of the teacher's VARIETY (maybe through technologies like the blackboard or indeed the classroom itself) and attenuation of the learners' VARIETY (through rules of the class, assignments, lectures, timetables, etc). To manage a viable relationship in the classroom, teachers must manage the variety (i.e. the collective complexity) of learners through coordinating activities, upholding rules of engagement, ensuring the provision of adequate resources, continually monitoring the state of the learners and adapting their approaches as necessary.
The problem iTEC has is that it wants to encourage teachers to attenuate learners less in 'traditional ways' (i.e. boring the pants off them, sitting them in rows, etc). Instead iTEC wants teachers to allow learners to empower themselves with cool technologies, using widgets and other tools for learning journeys which are more learner-driven. But the problem is this unbalances the VARIETY equation.
The viable relationship in the class cannot be maintained because with personal technologies the learners' VARIETY has increased even further, but the teacher has nothing to amplify their VARIETY to match it, and in giving pupils personal technologies they have surrendered some of their powers to attenuate the VARIETY of learners (and any school IT teacher will tell you how difficult it is to keep kids on task in a traditional computer room with PCs, let alone phones!). I think the ultimate consequence of this is that only a brave teacher who is prepared to take the risk of surrendering control in the hope of finding new ways to organise classrooms will allow new technologies into their teaching.
The pressing question for ITEC then is "what can we do for teachers?" Either giving them new ways of attenuating the variety of learners who are using new tools, or amplifying the teacher more to give them more VARIETY"
I wonder if technology itself suggests a possible approach. Over the last 20 years there has been a tussle between server-based systems and client-based systems. More power to the client gives control problems at the centre; more power to the server creates blocks on creativity with clients. But this can be seen as a fluctuating pattern of variety management where Ashby's law is seen in all its glory.
The Interactive Whiteboard is generally seen as a 'client with a big screen'. Consequently it doesn't really have any more power than any of the other 'clients' in the class (i.e. laptops, tablets, phones, etc). But this needn't be the case. If the Interactive Whiteboard was a server, and the clients in the classroom clients of the server, how would that change things? Technically it would amplify the teacher's variety allowing them to control the clients from a central point. That would of course have the converse effect of some attenuation of the client, but it would be a compromise that might work.
Thinking through this idea, I've been exploring the possibility that Wookie Widget technology might provide a way where ready-to-hand widgets might act as classroom 'servers', with student widgets connecting to those servers. As Wookie develops inter-widget communication functionality, this seems to be a clear possibility. It would overcome some of the major technical hurdles to establishing local client-server networks. Currently local client-server networks are tricky: UDP messsaging might work within the classroom - but only if the Whiteboard machine was set up as a server, and the clients all connected to that server. But there would be no way of 'packaging' such a solution so that it could be made to work easily in any context.
Inter-widget communication with server widgets would get around this problem - and I've been experimenting with some simple local client-server widget based solutions to test it out.. watch this space!
The problem iTEC has is that it wants to encourage teachers to attenuate learners less in 'traditional ways' (i.e. boring the pants off them, sitting them in rows, etc). Instead iTEC wants teachers to allow learners to empower themselves with cool technologies, using widgets and other tools for learning journeys which are more learner-driven. But the problem is this unbalances the VARIETY equation.
The viable relationship in the class cannot be maintained because with personal technologies the learners' VARIETY has increased even further, but the teacher has nothing to amplify their VARIETY to match it, and in giving pupils personal technologies they have surrendered some of their powers to attenuate the VARIETY of learners (and any school IT teacher will tell you how difficult it is to keep kids on task in a traditional computer room with PCs, let alone phones!). I think the ultimate consequence of this is that only a brave teacher who is prepared to take the risk of surrendering control in the hope of finding new ways to organise classrooms will allow new technologies into their teaching.
The pressing question for ITEC then is "what can we do for teachers?" Either giving them new ways of attenuating the variety of learners who are using new tools, or amplifying the teacher more to give them more VARIETY"
I wonder if technology itself suggests a possible approach. Over the last 20 years there has been a tussle between server-based systems and client-based systems. More power to the client gives control problems at the centre; more power to the server creates blocks on creativity with clients. But this can be seen as a fluctuating pattern of variety management where Ashby's law is seen in all its glory.
The Interactive Whiteboard is generally seen as a 'client with a big screen'. Consequently it doesn't really have any more power than any of the other 'clients' in the class (i.e. laptops, tablets, phones, etc). But this needn't be the case. If the Interactive Whiteboard was a server, and the clients in the classroom clients of the server, how would that change things? Technically it would amplify the teacher's variety allowing them to control the clients from a central point. That would of course have the converse effect of some attenuation of the client, but it would be a compromise that might work.
Thinking through this idea, I've been exploring the possibility that Wookie Widget technology might provide a way where ready-to-hand widgets might act as classroom 'servers', with student widgets connecting to those servers. As Wookie develops inter-widget communication functionality, this seems to be a clear possibility. It would overcome some of the major technical hurdles to establishing local client-server networks. Currently local client-server networks are tricky: UDP messsaging might work within the classroom - but only if the Whiteboard machine was set up as a server, and the clients all connected to that server. But there would be no way of 'packaging' such a solution so that it could be made to work easily in any context.
Inter-widget communication with server widgets would get around this problem - and I've been experimenting with some simple local client-server widget based solutions to test it out.. watch this space!
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