Some B I G ideas were discussed today around The Connected Self. There are 3 dimensions to the Connected Self and this is my take away from my research and the discussion:
1) The cognitive dimension – the ways we’re processing our experiences and making sense and meaning of them. From this, we then develop beliefs and attitudes, and these lead to practices.
2) The cultural dimension – what’s going on amongst entities – e.g. in our classroom we’re developing a culture around technology & education.
3) The technological dimension – this is constantly changing. It also changes because of the cultural and cognitive dimensions. When we change the technological dimension, we also change the cultural and cognitive.
Each dimension is I N T E R D E P E N D E N T on each other. They are constantly influencing each other and what we’re capable of thinking, doing, how we use. I’m picturing circles, cycles, arrows… overlapping, joining.
Now, bringing in the WHY SCHOOL? book, Richardson says: technology isn’t about delivery, it is about discovery. To me, discovery implies creation, movement, perseverance, convergence, exploration, take journeys and take risks. All of these are have implications within the cognitive, cultural and technological dimensions of the Connected Self. Some people’s cultural and cognitive dimensions are ‘stuck’ at the ‘delivery’ stage of using technology, e.g. a fun game, a word document. As teacher-librarians, we can facilitate their ‘uncovering’ of technology as a tool for DISCOVERY– but not just discovering knowledge. Discovering ways to use it to create, move, persevere, converge, explore, take journeys and take risks.
So, what does this mean on a day to day basis in a school? For a library? Since there is such a wide range of influences on the 3 dimensions, every person is coming at the connected self from a massive range of experiences. In a way, it’s chaos, much like my feeling of panic and dissonance sitting in the class trying to make sense of the many sources of information (discussions! blogs! forums! modules! google docs! pinterest! presentations! summatives! rubrics!)
So, per Jenny, I am going to try and embrace this feeling of ‘not getting the point of this’… take a deep breath and hope that it will gel/crystallize/metamorphose into something more tangible for my way of thinking.
In the meantime, something more tangible! A friend on my twitter PLN (@christinebodt) posted something interesting today: Hoadley’s 3 Laws of Technology: http://www.edudemic.com/2013/06/hoadleys-3-laws-of-education-technology/
In a nutshell:
Law #1: It’s not the technology. It’s what you do with it.
Law #2: It’s not what the technology makes possible. It’s what technology makes easy.
Law #3: Pay attention to the trends in learning, not in technology.
I love these Laws. They are so important, as schools get caught up in “we need more _______s”. These would be worth discussing further and they could be used to apply to anything. E.g. Should we buy another electronic database for the library, eg. CultureGrams? Apply that question to the the 3 laws, based on some investigation of the database first.
So that’s where I am at… I don’t really understand what I’m doing, how to do it well, or where this course is going — and I guess that’s ok! I’m trying to embrace the chaos of information coming at me, the big ideas and the cultural dissonance I feel in class so far.
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your three laws remind me of a colleagues classroom. he is really working with the BYOD idea and says that he often gives the students a task that they have to complete and then the student has to figure out how they can use their device with what they know or can figure to solve that task. It is not up to the teacher to instruct in the use of a particular hardware or software. Students work that out in the process of solving the problem given to them.
He has a blog: http://seanrtech.blogspot.ca/
Grasping the cognitive, cultural and technological dimensions of life is a huge conceptual development. Rather than thinking of these things as somehow separable and disconnected, realizing they are inseparable and influencing possible future formations. I really like this broadening of the idea of ‘discovery’ in education. I can see how hard you are working in class, Christine, and I really appreciate it! Believe it or not, there is a method to the madness, but it can be difficult to discern when we are at the beginning stages. Creative processes often have messy beginnings. As another student said in her blog, teachers are resourceful and resilient. Thanks for your contribution to the work! I would add, though, that although our uses of technology amplify our human abilities and capacities, I don’t think it necessarily makes things easy.