I was reading this New York Times article about Pixable and it made me wonder if a similar trend will emerge in writing. Just as Pixable envisions getting images back off the web and into traditional photo albums, will technology provide the means by which we will get text back into tangible forms?
Educational Technology
Rachel Bronk (2009)
“We need new methods of education which will leave the child’s mind open longer… methods which teach him that safety lies not in knowledge but in knowing what could be but is not known.”
Dr. Margaret Mead[1]
As a teacher, I observe the interactions between learners, teachers, education and technology and the rethinking of these interactions as dictated by innovations in educational technology. The field of both education and technology are constantly changing and as such, so is my philosophy of educational technology. However, a fundamental component of my changing philosophy is the belief that educational technology has great potential for shaping the way we learn, think and communicate; without being limited to any particular demographics. Given the prevalence of mainstream, accessible, media based educational technologies, I believe that the purpose of educational technology is to facilitate greater understanding of the world and greater communication between its students, revolutionizing the traditional way we view teaching and learning.
For me, educational technology is best defined as comprising of the media based tools through which we teach and learn. Educational technology must be approached not as a novelty but rather as a tool possessing great potential; potential that must be needs to be realized in order to be effective. Educational technology is much more than a superficial tool; it can have biases, limitations and extensions that must be considered before using it in the classroom. I believe that educational technology should be woven into the “multiliteracies” of the classroom rather than being treated as a foreign object and paraded out from time to time. Educational technology reaches its potential in the classroom by being integrated into everyday teaching and learning. The manner in which educational technology is used is greater than the tools themselves, and I believe that as teachers gain more knowledge about how to use these tools, they will be able to enhance the classroom experience for all learners.
I believe that it is imperative for all teachers to learn how to implement educational technology beyond basic mechanics, by learning the pedagogical foundations that should guide its use. Educational technology has the potential to increase accessibility for students with disabilities as well as provide a greater variety of formats by which students can present and learn information. This enhanced accessibility and appeal is not only at the core of my philosophy of educational technology, but also a fundamental component of my teaching philosophy. In working with students with learning disabilities, I have seen firsthand how educational technology has been the great equalizer for these students and their ability to learn as integrated members of the classroom.
Educational technology represents a cultural shift in our society and its increasing presence is indicative of a shift in teaching and learning practices. For better or for worse, educational technology is presenting teachers and students alike with unique opportunities to transcend the boundaries of space and time in order to access knowledge and supplement their understandings. Similarly, educational technology affords increased forums in which to communicate and receive feedback as well as present information in multimodal ways that appeal to various senses. Like a supernova, the Internet caused an explosion of a myriad of technological opportunities and in turn, forced the definitions of teaching, learning, technology and education to be redefined within these new parameters. However, unlike a supernova, these technological opportunities did not fade with time, but rather have increased in prevalence and have proven to be flexible and dynamic, making “traditional” teaching methods appear rigid and inflexible in their offerings. Like a diamond[2], I believe that educational technology is multi-faceted, requiring those who teach with it and learn from it to explore beyond its commercial appeal to realize its full potential.
Figure 1 – Realizing the potential of educational technology.
[2] See Figure 1
Haraway says that “a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (p.65).
The phrase “social reality” is the one that resonates the most with me. It is our social reality that machines comprise a large part of what do, how we do it and (let’s face it) who we are. I suppose we are part machine because we are the ones manipulating the physical machines; acting through these vessels and using them to replace former ways of doing things (especially communication). We are the cyborgs forged from the social reality that that machines are among us, so deeply entrenched in our way of living that to remove the cybernetics would surely drastically alter the world we now know.
As educators, it is our job to not only recognize this but ensure that students utilize the organism as much as the machine and develop a positive co-dependence between the two rather than a complete reliance on the machine.
This was a really interesting article and has not lost relevance since it was authored in 1985. I remember reading this article in a second year English class and the point was sadly lost on me. At that time, I did not have the breadth of knowledge to see past images of The Terminator. I’m happy to say that this program, combined with years of educational clarity have caused a complete change of heart 🙂
A quick thought as I read through Module 3…. Bolter posits that “no technology, not even the apparently autonomous computer can ever function as a writing space in the absence of human writers and readers” (p.17). For me this sentence really brought some unity to the methods of writing cultures that we are exploring. From a generalized point of view, the writing tools and writing canvases change but the involvement of humans in the physical reading and writing has always remained constant. However, we remain as concerned with the foundations set in the past as we do of the pathway to future and in that regard, how will our definition of a writing space change in the absence of human readers and writers? If we can program computers to recognize words and read them and recognize voices and write (ie. Dragon Speak, Kurzweil 3000), then does Bolter’s statement still stand true when the computer is doing half of the work?
Commentary #1 – In response to: Ong-Orality and Literacy Chapter 3 “Some Psychodynamics of Orality”
Chapter 3 of Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy addresses the characteristics of primary oral cultures in relation to residual oral, chirographic and typographic cultures. The crux of Ong’s argument in this chapter is that it is extremely difficult for literate people to truly understand the nature of a primary oral culture because understanding demands the complete suspension of knowledge regarding literacy. One of the most profound explorations within the chapter is the nature of traditional stories and characters and their relevance today, not only as immortal components of the storytelling culture but also as historical landmarks indicative of the orality or literacy of a time. Many of the classic stories modern literate cultures grew up with could be seen as lasting because of their abundance in print, but in actuality it is their ability to survive the test of orality that has solidified their place in history.
Ong explains that memory and the ability to repeat information without visual aids was crucial in primary oral cultures. Since “colorless personalities cannot survive oral mnemonics”, the description of people and events must contain bizarre figures, formulary number groupings and/or epithets in order to be memorable (p.69). These colorful elements that served as memory tools in oral cultures act as devices of fantasy for literate cultures; the same words play out differently as a result of levels of orality and literacy within a culture. Whereas such colorful descriptions would be part of oral rhetoric, they invoke the spirit of fantastical fiction, of fairy tales, myths and legends in modern literate cultures. Ong describes the nature of oral world as “highly polarized, agonistic… [defined by] good and evil, virtue and vice, villains and heroes” which supports the notion that these characteristics serve as mnemonic aids first and story elements only as residual effect (p.45). By invoking the likes of Mark Antony, Odysseus, Cyclops, Little Red Riding Hood and more, Ong draws upon characters that have withstood the test of time and forces the reader to examine them within the oral context.
If the opposite of agonistic name-calling in oral cultures is praise, then Mark Antony’s funerary oration confirms Ong’s assertions about the use of polarities as mnemonic devices. The lines directly following “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” are “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” (III,ii). To a listener in oral cultures, these polarities have a sort of musical quality that commits the tune to memory, while to the reader, these lines are simply Shakespeare. Within the same short passage of Shakespeare comes multiple references to “honourable Brutus” and “ambitious Caesar”. In the true spirit of the oral world of both ancient Rome and 16th century Shakespeare, these mnemonic aids are indicative of the true content of an oration. In pointing out the origin of these subtle stylings, Ong lays the framework for a cognizant analysis of texts born from primary oral or residual oral cultures.
The importance of epithets is evident in the polarized oral world of heroes and villains. Ong refers to the presence of epithets as “formularly baggage which high literacy rejects as cumbersome and tiresomely redundant because of its aggregative weight”(Ong, 1977 as found in Ong, p.38). Modern conventions of English are weary of the kind of repetition that would suite an oral culture. However, it is an interesting feature of oral cultures that epithets were required in order to establish the foremost characteristic of an individual in order to make them memorable. Ong asserts that “once a formulary expression has crystallized, it had best be kept intact” although today, we might refer to this as oral typecasting (p.39). It is interesting that once an epithet or memorable expression is built up in an oral culture, it is almost impossible to escape. The nature of how oral communication dispenses means that it would be impossible to track everyone down who had heard something and correct their memory. However, literacy allows for the spread of the written word and while information is not erased in literate cultures, the dissemination of current information is much easier. A newspaper could proclaim a man guilty one day and then retract the next day and while a record would exist of both occurrences, the existence of a paper trail is the authority in changing appearances and opinion. Ong suggests that oral cultures kept oral epithets and formulary expressions intact because it would be very difficult to undo them under the authority of orality.
In literate cultures, Ong muses “you do not need a hero in the old sense to mobilize knowledge in story form” which is likely why stories that originated in a primary oral or residual oral cultures have a magical and fantastical quality about them (p.68). On the surface, texts and transcripts of facts and stories that emerged from oral cultures appear to have their own style, but Ong points out that the conventions of writing we abide by today were not in existence in oral cultures. Polarities provided structure in the oral world and Ong does an excellent job of unpacking the nature of communication in the absence of literacy.
References:
Ong, W. J. (2002). Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge.
I’m going to admit that the concrete thinker in me has always been terrified of philosophy and I have successfully avoided having to address it until now! I found Heidegger’s article difficult to digest and I had to really go outside of my normal thinking patterns to begin to understand what he was saying. I thought I would address the question “Is there a connection between points in Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology and Baudrillard’s notions of simulacra?”…. not because I think I have any definitive answers, but because I can start to see some connections and I thought perhaps others would be able to expand upon them. My disclaimer is that anything I know about Baudrillard, I learned from Wikipedia 😉 The immediate (superficial) connection I made between Baudrillard’s notions of simulacra and Heideggers thoughts is the existence of a fourfold:
Heidegger – 1) causa materialis 2) causa formulis 3) causa finalis 4) causa efficiens
Baudrillard – 1) basic reflection of reality 2) perversion of reality 3) pretence of reality 4) simulacrum (no relation to reality)
There are parallels between each corresponding stage of the fourfold , in particular, the fourth stage. Heidegger stages that causa efficiens is the catalyst that brings about the effect that is the finished product – in the case of a chalice, the causa efficiens is the silversmith. However, in the case of a concept (not an inanimate concept) what then is the causa efficiens? Is it created by the collective users/knowers of the concept? Baudrillard says that simulacra is not a copy of what is real but rather becomes a truth in its own right. So maybe this is the connection to Heidegger’s causa efficiens… I’m a little over my head here… any other thoughts?
Chapter 4 (“Writing Restructures Consciousness”) of Ong got me thinking about the role that distance plays in committing thoughts or spoken words to writing. Ong describes this process, almost like a burden by exclaiming that “you have to foresee circumspectly all possible meanings a statement may have for any possible reader in any possible situation” (p.103). The very fact that we are in the MET program means that we have put some thought into this – personally, I have compared this LMS contained learning environment to my face to face learning experiences and reflected upon the pros and cons of communication using both formats. While there is definitely something to be said for being able to engage verbally in an “immediate” setting, the writing environment that we engage in is no less calculated for the reasons that Ong mentions. Engaging in this digital setting (hopefully) means that writing will not disappear into archives but rather will be addressed because the web affords a “reply” button or comment box.
Earlier in the chapter, Ong says something about how writing was/is criticized because it “cannot respond” in the same way that oral environments afford (I believe Plato was a reference here). Now that we are moving from orality to literacy to digital literacy, I can see that a balance can be found in these critiques. This course has us committing our thoughts to writing but the environment in which we do so affords and encourages questioning and response. Not only can questions be asked, but conversing is recording and able to be referenced. The constraints of time and space that hindered oral cultures and the isolation and “silence” that is a part of the literate culture can seemingly be reconciled in a digital middle ground. Or perhaps this is too optimistic?
Japanse karakters / Japanese characters, originally uploaded by Nationaal Archief.
This image of Japanese characters caught my attention by mirroring my keyboard… in the past. These carefully crafted characters represent the painstaking process by which raw materials were transformed into symbolic characters which were in turn arranged to form meaningful text. Looking at the neat rows of letters on my own keyboard, I can see how technology has transformed not just the final product of texts, but also the mechanics by which we create text. The sophisticated technologies that have been developed since 1938 (when this image was taken) have removed the ink from the process of mass producing writing and have allowed the push of a button to summon and banish the components of text.
Sir Arthur Clarke, co-author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, was a science fiction and otherwise “speculative fiction” author, inventor and “futurist”. He coined the three laws of prediction as follows:
The last two laws in particular represent a commentary on technology from my perspective. The notion of the impossible becoming possible; the notion of having to reach beyond what is currently afforded in order to truly see what we are capable of achieving; the notion that present innovations would have been considered magical in the past. Technology is anything that furthers our current capabilities into the future, by keeping the lessons of the present and the foundations from the past in mind.
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
Oscar Wilde
Much like the intentions within this quote, text can be meaningful in brevity while subtle nuances can make significant adjustments. The beauty of text is that is can be manipulated in so many ways and infinite possibilities are afforded to any who choose to play with letters and words. Text is the vehicle by which authors assign meaning; the artifact in which we immortalize thoughts and facts; the unspoken representation by which we speak. Text is our tangible fingerprint crafted in written language.