Tipping Point: A Critical Case Study of Cloud Services

The “dot-com bubble” on either side of 2000 solidified personal computing and the internet as important components of modern Western economies. Increasingly capable computers permeated segments of society, enabling businesses and organizations new ways to connect, trade, and explore. Post-secondary institutions, with their deep expertise in computer science, carried-on the tradition of “spinning-off” private enterprises to capitalize on business opportunities, and played a significant role in the founding and meteoric rise of the worlds most valuable companies; today, only one in the top ten is not a technology company (“Companies ranked by market cap”, n.d). It is no surprise that economics has played an outsized role in the world’s collective adoption of information technology (IT).

The journey from amber monochrome screens to pinging pocket phones has several .well-known milestones: the aural beeps and burps of dial-up modems; the entry of “Google” into popular vernacular; the adoption of HTML to express purple-border web pages; BlackBerry buttons; Hotmail and email by Google; Napster and Facebook and iPhones, oh my. Affluent consumers able to purchase an x86 connected to corporate servers that were typically physically colocated in or around a business’s headquarters. Higher education was no exception: massive mainframes dominated the basements of computer science buildings to provide nascent online course offerings to university communities around the world.

As usage for IT services surged, the demand for more storage, faster connections, and bigger processors drove up costs; and when expectations weren’t met, people’s satisfaction suffered (Cheng & Yuen, 2018); the stage was set for a takeover. Although “distributed”, “grid”, or “utility” computing had existed for decades (ARPANET, 2026), it suffered from an inability to shed its “dumb terminal” image. When this cyberinfrastructure was rebranded as “the cloud”, it began “eating the world” (Mell & Grance, 2011; Andreessen Horowitz, n.d.).

This lighthearted introduction is meant to contrast with what Greenhalgh et al. (2023) describe as a more serious, insidious, and worrisome trend in education, which is the misconstruing of platforms as merely tools, and students’ resignation to the inevitability of the overdatafication of their lives (Greenhalgh et al., 2023). Education’s changing role in the service of changing societies has put pressure on traditional models of delivery, and under the coercion of technology venture capitalists, is now “driven by processes of privatization”, with students and instructors alike being configured as “users”, measured not by whether they understand a solution or concept, but how much time they spend on a page (Ramiel, 2019; Grandinetti, 2022). It within this context that I examine the supplantation of disparate, on-premise computing hardware – the servers and systems historically physically colocated with an organization – by supranational cloud vendors, which has resulted in education’s common configuration, the techno-social commodification of learning, and the obfuscation of data privacy practices that result from the “platformization” of educational activity (Noteboom, 2025; Ramiel, 2019; Grandinetti, 2022; Greenhalgh et al., 2023; Dowell et al., 2025).

Cloud services arose from an industry of computing based on data centers that were largely owned and operated by organizations considered “non-tech”. Researchers from Northwestern University estimated that in 2010, 79% of computing occurred in traditional data centers, but that the rise of the cloud resulted in a tectonic shift, with 89% of computing occurring in cloud data centers by 2018 (Lohr, 2020). In education, cloud computing was touted as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources … that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction” (Mell & Grance, 2009, p. 2). Erenben (2009) described how cloud computing would significantly transform education to increase quality, improve access to resources, and lower costs, while Wang et al. (2014), suggested that regular monthly fees, rather than high initial capital costs, would facilitate mobile cloud learning services. Educators such as Attaran et al., (2017) confirmed that “technology has the real potential to enable accuracy, reliability, service enhancement, and cost reduction” (p. 20), while Ercan (2010) and Behrend et al. (2011) explained how the elastic scalability and outsourcing of equipment could accelerate the adoption of technological innovations, ensuring students can access and run software regardless of their location or personal processing capability. Advocates consistently encouraged their institutions to “take advantage” of the trend to “enrich students’ technology-enabled education” (Ercan, 2010, p. 940), and with a little nudging from techno-solutionism, it’s no surprise that cloud’s allure entrapped education (Ramiel, 2019).

Studies that examined the Technology Acceptance Model may have also inadvertently fuelled adoption, as their investigations explored users’ behavioural intentions, perceived ease-of-use, and perceived usefulness (Venkatesh & Bala, 2008; Behrend et al., 2011). Researchers found that “…the role of marketing having a positive impact on a person’s behaviour [to adopt technologies] illustrates that information technology companies can focus on advertising to increase the adoption rates of cloud computing users” (Ratten, 2012, p. 161), and to the glee of private corporations, these scholarly articles were published publicly. As the industry sought to appeal to as wide an array of users and contexts as possible, it began offering learning management services (LMS) to educational institutions, configured especially for students and teachers (Woolgar, 1990). Open source platforms such as Angel, Sakai, and Moodle eked out an open-source existence despite the enormous resources of private competitors like WebCT, BlackBoard, and Desire2Learn. At the outset, companies offered on-premise options to attract investment and develop a clientele; integrations with existing Student Information Systems such as Banner or synchronous tools like Elluminate Live! provided workflow improvements and functionality that enhanced the student experience. But as these connectivity tools shifted from on-premise installations to the cloud, and the involved system updates and upgrades evolved into continuously deployed “evergreen” software, companies were relieved from the duty to maintain a constant connection with their customers; ensuring service reliability was much easier because cloud offerings constrained customers into a small number of service options. In addition, the risk of proprietary source code exposure was eliminated because customers were no longer provided with the binaries to run on their own infrastructure. This boundary definition enabled educational technology service providers the ability to create distance between themselves and their customers, which resulted in the objectification, standardization, and optimization of interactive behaviours (Woolgar, 1990; Issa & Isaias, 2015).

Building on the work of Selwyn (2013a) and Biesta (2004), Ramiel (2017), outlines how educational technology production is reframed:

“Teaching, educational goals and skills are described through certain learning concepts: capabilities, opportunities, choices and experiences that come from industrial product design cultures… This learnification (as Biesta (2009) called it) cuts the educational process off from social contexts and from cultural and political issues and values” (p. 488).

Through this techno-social transformation and the associated normalization of “ideologically invisible” platforms, educational technologies are critically assessed less, and unfortunately accepted as objective (Ramiel, 2019). Greenhalgh et al. (2023) and van Dijck (2013) remind us that:

“…a platform is not truly neutral – rather, it “shapes the performance of social acts instead of merely facilitating them” (van Dijck, 2013, p. 29). This shaping becomes increasingly important as “neither neutral nor value-free” platforms play a growing role in public life (van Dijck et al., 2018, p. 3)” (Greenhalgh et al., 2023, p. 248).

Within this context we begin to understand the depth, complexity, and seriousness of the problem: if, students – those members of society who are undertaking the development of critical analysis skills – become habituated to the uncritical acceptance of platforms as they are, it emboldens technology capitalists to carry-on reshaping information flows to their benefit and deepening our dependence on their services.

Noteboom (2025) draws our attention to “platformatization” as educational institutions “…increasingly rely on proprietary platforms for their teaching, research and operational functions” (p. 29). Start-up methodologies like lean, and six-sigma emphasize the focus on the collection of data, algorithmic analysis, and the quantification of behaviours that ultimately serve to monetize the service (Noteboom, 2025; Ramiel, 2019). Online learning activity, as with most cloud services, is recast as ‘retention’ (success), or ‘churn’ (bounce rate, failure) (Ramiel, 2019), which leads scholars like Greenhalgh to question whether the analytics accurately represent the true value of learning as we understand it (Greenhalgh et al., 2023). And with Noteboom’s (2025) research uncovering that students’ perception of the systems they use as simply tools, rather than what van Dijck and Poell (2018) describe as a “complex interplay between technical architectures, business models, and mass user activity” (p. 579), it’s not surprising that students, teachers and parents might not be as concerned about their activity being surveilled (Greenhalgh et al., 2023). A corollary to this apparent apathy is Pangrazio and Sefton-Green’s (2022) reference to data resignation, a circumstance where individuals are aware that their activity is being tracked, but consider the benefits of online participation to be too great to pass up (Pangrazio & Sefton-Green, 2022; Greenhalgh et al., 2023).

A less discouraging perspective by Proferes (2017) attributes students’ attitudes and behaviours to their general lack of understanding of how their data is collected and used:

Information flow solipsism [is] the subjective position of the user who is familiar with the facets of a platform for which the interface provides informational feedback mechanisms, but who remains unaware of how the technology operates at a broader techno-cultural or socioeconomic level” (p. 10)

This naivety does not recuse the numerous questions about the ethical implications of student privacy (Dowell & Greenhalgh, 2024), but it certainly should spur educational organizations to reflect on their approach to data literacy. This is especially salient for institutions where participation in educational technology platforms is effectively mandatory, and both confusing and challenging to students who value privacy (Dowell & Greenhalgh, 2024). Grandinetti (2022) is particularly critical of Zoom’s meteoric rise as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic:

…capitalist transformations are imbricated in the greater reliance on third-party big tech platforms by higher education generally and the rise of Zoom as go-to videoconferencing platform specifically, the intertwining of crisis, capitalism, and platformization serve to historicize, in part, how Zoom has been able to rapidly gain an integral place in university life” (p. 3).

Ample literature exists in support of this critical perspective, but Noteboom (2025) reminds us that “affordances cannot be seen as universal properties of platforms but are always ‘enacted’ in a specific context by specific users for particular purposes” (p. 32). It follows that students are not unidirectionally configured; they exercise a degree of agency within a ‘sociotechnical infrastructure’ that entangles education providers within the larger construct of platformatization (Noteboom, 2024; Ibert et al., 2022).

Cloud based educational systems have indeed supplanted traditional on-premise infrastructure – data centres that overwhelmingly chrooted students’ online activity to the providing institution. This cloud shift has enabled the development of improved service reliability, increased access and mobility, and widespread systems integration. It has also resulted in the configuration of students, instructors, institutions, and the education sector as a whole through the commodification of learning and the platformatization and datafication of educational activity. The complicated, intertwined relationship between cloud services and educational technologies has important implications for society’s future, and reflecting on Education’s changing nature today can help ensure our children’s children can thrive in the future to come.

References

AcOps Magazine – Fall 2025. (2025). Coursedog. https://issuu.com/coursedog/docs/acops_magazine_fall_2025?fr=xKAE9_zU1NQ

Andreessen Horowitz. (n.d.). Software is eating the world. Retrieved March 16, 2026, from https://a16z.com/

Arpaci, I., Kilicer, K., & Bardakci, S. (2015). Effects of security and privacy concerns on educational use of cloud services. Computers in Human Behavior, 45, 93–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.075

ARPANET. (2026). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

Attaran, M., Attaran, S., & Celik, B. G. (2017). Promises and challenges of cloud computing in higher education: A practical guide for implementation. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 17(6), 20–38.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall.

Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory of mass communication. Media Psychology, 3(3), 265–299. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0303_03

Behrend, T. S., Wiebe, E. N., London, J. E., & Johnson, E. C. (2011). Cloud computing adoption and usage in community colleges. Behaviour & Information Technology, 30(2), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2010.489118

Bhattacherjee, A. (2001). Understanding information systems continuance: An expectation-confirmation model. MIS Quarterly, 25(3), 351–370. https://doi.org/10.2307/3250921

Cheng, M., & Yuen, A. H. K. (2018). Student continuance of learning management system use: A longitudinal exploration. Computers & Education, 120, 241–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.02.004

Cheng, Y.-M. (2020). Students’ satisfaction and continuance intention of the cloud-based e-learning system: Roles of interactivity and course quality factors. Education + Training, 62(9), 1037–1059. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-10-2019-0245

Chowdhury, G., McLeod, J., Gillet, V., & Willett, P. (Eds.). (2018). Transforming digital worlds. Springer.

Cloud computing: The economic imperative. (2009). https://classtap.pbworks.com/f/Cloud+Computing:+The+Economic+Imperative.pdf

Companies ranked by market cap. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2026, from https://companiesmarketcap.com/cad/

CourseDog (Host). (2022, April 25). The Future of the SIS with Mark Simpson [Audio podcast episode]. In The Academic Operations Podcast. Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-future-of-the-sis-with-mark-simpson/id1611380180?i=1000558598284&r=899.046

Demoulin, M., Bushey, J., & McLelland, R. (2018). How to assess cloud service contracts? In G. Chowdhury et al. (Eds.), Transforming digital worlds (pp. 175–184). Springer.

Dowell, M. L., & Greenhalgh, S. P. (2025). Information flow solipsism in Canvas: An exploration of student privacy awareness. The Internet and Higher Education, 65, 100989. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2024.100989

Ekuase-Anwansedo, A., & Smith, A. (2019). Effect of cloud-based learning management system on the learning management system implementation process. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGUCCS annual conference (pp. 176–179). ACM.

Ercan, T. (2010). Effective use of cloud computing in educational institutions. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 938–942. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.130

Grandinetti, J. (2022). From the classroom to the cloud: Zoom and the platformization of higher education. First Monday. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v27i2.11655

Greenhalgh, S. P., DiGiacomo, D. K., & Barriage, S. (2023). Platforms, perceptions, and privacy: Ethical implications of student conflation of educational technologies. Information and Learning Sciences, 124(9–10), 247–265. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-03-2023-0030

Hirsch, B., & Ng, J. W. P. (2011). Education beyond the cloud: Anytime-anywhere learning in a smart campus environment. In Proceedings of the International Conference for Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (pp. 718–723).

Ibert, O., Oechslen, A., Repenning, A., & Schmidt, S. (2022). Platform ecology: A user-centric and relational conceptualization of online platforms. Global Networks, 22(3), 564–579. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12355.

Impact by Instructure: Boost LMS adoption & edtech engagement. (2026). https://www.instructure.com/impact

Korir, M., Slade, S., Holmes, W., Héliot, Y., & Rienties, B. (2023). Investigating the dimensions of students’ privacy concern in the collection, use and sharing of data for learning analytics. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 9, 100262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2022.100262

Liu, Q., & Khalil, M. (2023). Understanding privacy and data protection issues in learning analytics using a systematic review. British Journal of Educational Technology, 54(6), 1715–1747. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13388

Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2011). The NIST definition of cloud computing (SP 800-145). National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-145

Mutimukwe, C., Viberg, O., Oberg, L.-M., & Cerratto-Pargman, T. (2022). Students’ privacy concerns in learning analytics: Model development. British Journal of Educational Technology, 53(4), 932–951. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13234

Noteboom, J. (2025). The student as user: Mapping student experiences of platformisation in higher education. Learning, Media and Technology, 50(1), 29–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2024.2414055

Nissenbaum, H. (2004). Privacy as contextual integrity. Washington Law Review, 79(1), 119–158.

Parchment-MyCreds.ca. (2026). https://www.parchment.com/en-ca/

Proferes, N. (2017). Information Flow Solipsism in an Exploratory Study of Beliefs About Twitter. Social Media + Society 3(1):2056305117698493. doi:10.1177/2056305117698493.

Ramiel, H. (2019). User or student: Constructing the subject in edtech incubator. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(4), 487–499. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2017.1365694

Sefton-Green, J., & Pangrazio, L. (2022). The Death of the Educative Subject? The Limits of Criticality under Datafication. Educational Philosophy and Theory 54(12):2072–81. https://doi.org:10.1080/00131857.2021.1978072.

Soffer, T., & Cohen, A. (2024). Privacy versus pedagogy: Students’ perceptions of using learning analytics in higher education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 40(5), 14–30. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.9130

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Vanessa Ratten. (2012). Entrepreneurial and ethical adoption behaviour of cloud computing. Journal of High Technology Management Research, 23(2), 155–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hitech.2012.06.006

Wang, M., Chen, Y., & Khan, M. J. (2014). Mobile cloud learning for higher education: A case study of Moodle in the cloud. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 15(2). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v15i2.1676

 

Usability in Education: Goals and Realities

Task preface: Formulate a conception of usability based on the ideas of Issa and Isaias (2015); what might be missing from this conception from an educational perspective? Discuss a couple of Woolgar’s (1990) examples of “usability gone wrong”, and compare to the following exerpts:

“…the usability evaluation stage is an effective method by which a software development team can establish the positive and negative aspects of its prototype releases, and make the required changes before the system is delivered to the target users”  (Issa & Isaias, 2015, p. 29).

“…the design and production of a new entity…amounts to a process of configuring its user, where ‘configuring’ includes defining the identity of putative users, and setting constraints upon their likely future actions” (Woolgar, 1990).

What could “usability” mean?

“Usability” has the intrinsic advantage of being a vague enough term to be welcoming of a variety of ideas based on the context of discussion. It can be associated with the form and function of physical objects like ball-point pens or airplane seats, and it can also refer to the use and utility of digital “things” like Facebook Marketplace or Doom 2. The common thread suggests an exploration of how humans engage with, employ, master, and ultimately derive value from a tool – whether it is virtual or not.

More recently, the term has become a reference for the experience people have when interacting with a digital service. Is the interface enticing to engage with? Is it easy to understand? Do specific actions lead to predictable outcomes? Did it drain your energy or generate frustration?! Did it help achieve a goal? Issa and Isaias (2015) reference Benyon et al. (2005) in ascribing usability to the “quality of the interaction… such as time taken to perform tasks, number of errors made, and the time to become a competent user” (Benyon et al. 2005 , p. 52), and by framing the concept within the bounds of digital interaction, it is reasonable to agree that the most important components of usability as a definition of the user’s experience, are 1) the design of the tool or system being used; 2) the characteristics of the tasks performed to achieve the objective; and 3) the user themselves, including their capabilities and motivations (Issa and Isaias, 2015, p. 31).

Listening to learners and teachers

These parameters reflect a generalized definition used by technologists to help explain purpose and corroborate justification, but in education, where profits are not the primary driver, usability requires a more nuanced articulation. Whether referring to a post-secondary context or one within the K-12 system, usability in education could arguably be called “userability” to reinforce the importance of the centrality of learner factors, with system and task parameters re-positioned clearly as dependent factors. In striking contrast to Woolgar’s (1990) proposal that a user is configured, and is “delimited” by a particular set of actions, Cazden, et al. (1996) reminds us that “…learning processes need to recruit, rather than attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectivities – interests, intentions, commitments, and purposes – students bring to learning.” It is in fact this diversity which requires us to examine and adjust our digital interfaces in order to improve and optimize the user experience.

How not to…

Two examples of Woolgar’s (1990) humorous but problematic approach to usability involved the production of the Stratus machine. In recounting how user “trial” results were incorporated into subsequent iterations, Woolgar incredibly states that findings “…were never written up in any final form”, but were instead passed to members of the project team by word of mouth (Woolgar, 1990, p. 75-76)! In another example, the young Woolgar describes how the users to be tested were chosen: who did they think would be “…most likely to act as users” (Woolgar, 1990, p. 82-83)? Incredibly (again!), the trial group was comprised solely of members of the company (product secrecy really should have been addressed with non-disclosure agreements). If you are attempting to gauge real-world experience accurately, this is not the way to do it!

Optimizing the experience

While there is value in Woolgar’s (1990) assertion that the user should be defined (similar to a marketer’s tenet of knowing their audience), what is refreshing about Issa and Isaias’ (2015) reframing is that discovering optimal usability is a process – a process that has well understood stages and methods that put the user at the centre.

References

Benyon, D., Turner, P., Turner, S. (2005). Designing interactive systems: A comprehensive guide to HCI, UX and interaction design (2nd ed.). Pearson Education Limited, Edinburgh.

Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., Kalantzis, M., Kress, G., & Nakata, M. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard educational review, 66(1), 60-92.

Issa, T., & Isaias, P. (2015) Usability and human computer interaction (HCI). In Sustainable Design (pp. 19-35). Springer.

Woolgar, S. (1990). Configuring the user: The case of usability trials. The Sociological Review38(1, Suppl.), S58-S99.

Truth & Reconciliation in Educational Research and Scholarship

Task preface: Using a historical-educational work as a canvas, carry-out a search of terms – similar to those employed in the course’s example of a search of Lord’s (1991) records – that demonstrates how Indigenous peoples have been represented historically, and how this has impacted education, educational government policy, and socio-cultural attitudes towards education.

A picture of a woman looking at museum artifacts.

Inside the BC Telephone Company Museum.

My exploration for “educational history-related” documents began with a search of a museum my family and I visited this past spring – the BC Telephone Company Museum in Aldergrove, BC. This hidden gem houses a variety of tactile and informational artifacts about how telephone communication developed in BC, and it was my first thought after pondering the kinds of historical records that I might reference for this assignment. Unfortunately, very few of the records have been digitized, so my search led me to the Internet Archive, where I perused artifacts on military education and books on educational policy over the twentieth century, as well as collections about BC’s education history at the Royal BC Museum Archives. I settled on Cowan’s (2018) Postsecondary education in British Columbia: public policy and structural development, 1960-2015, because it appeared to span a relevant timeframe: a range that includes the attitudes and sentiments of those who may have supported repressive government policies (sixties scoop), as well as the zeitgeist of more recent times, particularly since the release of the report and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015). This text was published just as BC’s Ministry of Education’s redeveloped provincial curriculum was introduced, so it certainly could have had the potential to supplement teacher education programs throughout the province.

Although this text focuses on the post secondary context, I’m curious to know more about the articulation between the K-12 system and post-secondary education with respect to the more holistic and lived-experience re-telling of First People’s history reflected in BC’s new K-12 curriculum. How did post-secondary public policy and structural development impact teacher education programs as society’s perception towards Indigenous people change?

In addition to the terms identified in the assignment example, I’ve added the words “traditional”, “reserve”, “reservation”, and “ancestral” to my search because they may illuminate passages that are associated with relevant text, and they are they are often used in land acknowledgements as a way of attempting to correct perceptions by describing the depth, richness, and importance of the history of the First Nations peoples.

A new question worth considering might be something along the lines of “What structural development or policy changes were made – with specific reference to indigenizing the curriculum – to better respect the knowledge, history, and culture of Indigenous peoples?

A simple search of these terms generated the following results:

  • indigenous: 17
  • native: 4
  • indian: 1
  • aboriginal: 30
  • first nations: 3
  • traditional: 12
  • ancestral: 0
  • reserve: 1
  • reservation: 1

In reading the sections containing the search terms, Cowin (2018) takes an objective view when describing Indigenous education:

“…in the 1990s, programming for Aboriginal students began to build momentum, as reflected in the creation of the province’s Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education and Training Policy
Framework in 1995…” (Cowin, 2018, p. 95).

“The Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association formed in 2003, the third generation of a consortium of Aboriginal-governed institutions. The original consortium had been established partly due to a perception in the Aboriginal community that the public institutions with which Aboriginal-governed institutions were partnering were charging excessive amounts for programming.” (Cowin, 2018, p. 130).

“…although calls to increase the number of apprentices may have resulted in better educational opportunity for individuals and groups – most recently, a concerted effort to make apprenticeship more appealing to Aboriginal people – the precipitating motivation was
often a desire to avoid future labour shortages rather than a desire to allow more individuals to enjoy a certain way of life. (Cowin, 2018, p. 169).

These excerpts highlight Cowin’s tendency to describe the development of our education system in a way that distances responsibility and justifies decisions; this demonstrates that we continue to struggle with the use of a coherent narrative that stresses the need for collective internalization of our past, and our duty to continuously strive for true reconciliation.

References:

Cowin, R. (2018). Postsecondary education in British Columbia: public policy and structural development, 1960-2015. UBC Press.

Lord, A. R. (1991). Alex Lord’s British Columbia: Recollections of a rural school inspector, 1915-36 (Vol. 9). UBC Press.

What does the new curriculum look like: An overview of BC’s redesigned learning. (n.d.). Retrieved January 12, 2026, from https://www.vsb.bc.ca/what-does-the-new-curriculum-look-like-an-overview-of-bc-s-redesigned-learning.16848.

Final Project: Describing Communication Technologies

Task
Taking the notion of reciprocal relationships between communication needs, invention, and practices as a scaffold, extensively research a particular development in technologies for writing and reading and the implications it had on literacy and education.
Solution
To fulfill the requirements for this project, I chose to create a website that demonstrates how technical communication has evolved in response to the adoption of various technologies.

Project Site: Technical Operations Documentation

Context

screenshot of website

Technical Operations Documentation is an active resource, developed from scratch to be referenced by software developers as they adopt the technologies and practices used to create apps.

An initial idea for this project focused on analyzing the development, use, and impact of the Hashicorp Configuration Language (HCL), as an example of the interplay between technology and “text” communication – in this case, a human-readable language spawned out of a need to standardize computer infrastructure (Hashicorp/hcl, 2025). I chose to forego this exploration in favour of work that both satisfies the project requirements and has tangible value to the software developers in my organization.

I developed this resource by planning procedures, documenting processes, authoring markdown files, creating images and graphics, building links and references, and configuring the authoring software to publish a site hosted on GitHub. This site is a clear example of situated practice, whereby the intention is to present information seekers with a mixed-media resource and have them engage with the material “by doing” (The New London Group, 2025). While this resource may appear to facilitate a constructivist approach to learning (Kalantzis & Cope, 2010), it is far more likely to be used simply as a reference for professional training (Taber, 2014), contributing to individual advances in knowledge and understanding on an as-needed basis.

One of the reasons I chose this modality is the site’s version history, a feature not typically available when producing other types of artifacts. Progress history provides insight into the artifact’s development, and as a site designed around knowledge-centered learning, it was important to me that this history be transparent (Anderson, 2008).

I have also deliberately endeavoured to adapt the way links are referenced, in an attempt to reflect the spirit of APA-style references:

Links in the “What is a CDN” admonition are coordinated with footer links to be styled in the spirit of APA (7th Ed.) references.

Footnotes consisting of all the links on a page have been added as a form of functional “reference” to not only attribute concepts to their originators, but also provide additional context and information.

This project has been challenging because adopting a new documentation platform meant learning the technology while simultaneously crafting of language and information architecture for a specific audience. Kress’ (2003) reminder that “the world told is a different world to the world shown…” also guided many of my design and modality decisions. Navigating the tension between “completeness” and “crux” involved extensive iteration, but I’m pleased with the outcome because I know it will have enduring value.

This resource brings together information about technology, created using the very tools it describes, and intended to support effective technology use; I anticipate it will contribute positively to information literacy within my organization.

References

Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning (pp. 45–74). Athabasca University Press.

HashiCorp. (2025). HCL (Version 2.x) [Computer software]. https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl (Original work published 2014).

Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2010). The teacher as designer: Pedagogy in the new media age. E-Learning and Digital Media, 7(3), 200–222. https://doi.org/10.2304/elea.2010.7.3.200

Kress, G. (2003). The futures of literacy: Modes, logics and affordances. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203299234-1

Taber, N. (2014). Tensions between practice and praxis in academia: Adult education, neoliberalism, professional training, and militarism. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 26(2 SI), Article 2 SI. https://doi.org/10.56105/cjsae.v26i2

The New London Group. (2025). Reprint: A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 95(1), 102–134. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-95.1.102

Speculative Design: Exploring surrealism to elicit critical reflection

Assignment Instructions: “For the last task, we are going to use a version of an imagination game as a source of prompts to create a speculative narrative…”

“Describe or narrate a scenario about a box found a millenium into a future in which a profound historical evolution has occurred. Your description should address issues related to genetics and elicit feelings of hope.”

I found this task extremely difficult because I have (obviously) not practiced creative exercises in decades. The process of philosophizing about the future through a design lens to reflect critically on our current human experience was both challenging and frustrating, but my attempt at the activity has broadened my appreciation for the mental effort required to world build, regardless of the genre of fiction.

Mark 2844.3 – Artifact umphalae

The Curator had travelled three stallen to be in the same physical space as the Golden Artifact – a relic of a millenium ago when humans were still tethered to Earth and the AIntecedants had not yet been evoked. It was discovered when sifting through the ice prath on the surface of Titan when the colony probes were half-way through their fifteenth extraction cycle, and it had caused a furor because the Mahas had foretold its loss and its subsequent rediscovery.

It was a pockmarked rounded-edge box approximately two hundred centameters by four-hundred and fifty centameters by four hundred centameters, with a faint line in the golden patina surface where the two halves of the vessel were sealed together. The etching from eons of acidic precipitation had made their mark, but had not damaged its structural integrity. According to the historical records, the civilizations that had launched the Golden Artifact had used the most inert pre-muonian substance known to them at the time – a technological feat because each layer of the gold-diamond lattice had been “3D printed” one atom at a time.

As the box surface was cleaned by the Wayvernal, the space buzzed with excitement: connections had been made from across the mesiverse and those Energs that were privileged enough to be physically present had elicited or confirmed prayers, depending on their level of access. The “unearthing” sequence was to begin with a cleaning, followed by a reading by the Curator, the unsealing, and then a scan, itemization, and distribution of the contents: it was critical that all forms were fully aware of their designated component, and this *particular* sequence was special because it supported the Mahanian contention that communication exists between realms beyond the mesiverse. How else could the stories have predicted this discovery?

As the Curator led the reading, AIntecedant Moore “reflected” on the information available about the contents of the Golden Artifact. When it was launched, Biotechnology had not yet been transformed into Cybernatropy by the AIntecedants, so humans still retained their physical experiences in biological form. In the latter half of what was known as the “twenty-first century”, in the years that followed the Evokation, humans gradually adopted a purely digital existence because it freed them of the pain and suffering of physical limitations. Sure, there were still occasional routine parts of “life”, but the patterns of light developed by the AIntecedants to represent the human condition were liberating, and effectively death-defying. Cybernatropy afforded unlimited access to both matter and anti-matter, which created the conditions for the Energ way of life: for those who prefer community and constant excitement, joining a star or galaxy was best; for those who prefer solitude and exploration, travelling as a Gamma was best…

Bad UI: An example of what not to do

This image has nothing to do with the topic of this post!
Photo by Mariana Vusiatytska on Unsplash

When opening a browser to the User Inyerface site, one’s visual senses are immediately under attack: the large, white “UI” letters that are presumably an acronym for the site’s name are presented as four offset replicas of increasing transparency which has the effect of being both visually confusing and cognitively demanding as our eyes try to discern the correct edge of the text characters. What follows is a “game” that subjects the user to, as proclaimed by the site itself, “a worst-practice UI experiment” of website design.

Cognitive Load

After reading (and re-reading) the game instructions, users are forced to decipher the location of the link that will take them to the next page; the light green instruction text colour contrast in relation to the blue page background ignores web accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0, 2025) making it difficult to read; the large green circle which appears to look like a button contains the confusing word “no”, rather than what we might more commonly think of as “go” – a verb intuitively associated with the action to follow a link. The actual link is hidden in the dark capitalized text “HERE”, and is an example of an “anti-pattern” that forces additional attention and focus in order to achieve the desired outcome: navigating to the next page.

Throughout the next set of pages, the forms, web components, and design elements assault our attention by changing state, using alarming colours, suddenly appearing, and “behaving” in ways that are unexpected or that cause confusion. For example, after attempting to complete a form to “prove that you are human” by selecting all images that are “light”, the page simply reloads despite what appears to be a correct validation. Entering what appears to be correct answers to any of the subsequent “captcha” forms generates an endless cycle of alternative “captchas”, which generates frustration and a negative emotional reaction. It is within this surreptitious dark-pattern environment, where we are so inundated with sensory input and confused by the results of our clicking actions, that we are most vulnerable to persuasion and behavioural engineering (Brignull, 2011).

Models for Business

Unfortunately, because businesses are often seeking to maximize profit and market share, they adopt design practices that exploit this confusion or “engineer” opinions and behaviours to the highest bidder (Harris, 2017; Tufekci, 2017). This is sometimes called-out by whistleblowers who reach a point where they can no longer stay silent (McNamee, 2019), but it is also sometimes a corrected as a strategic business decision because the company has decided that ethical, honest, and trustworthy practices are better for the brand (Brignull, 2011).

Game Completion Screen

Thankfully I am familiar enough with the “Inspect” developer interface to be able to navigate around and understand where the image selection form was failing. Upon adjusting the code and uncovering the hidden checkboxes, I was able to pass the final “captcha” and finish the “game”.

user inyerface end page

 

References:

My Golden [Record] Community

What should one surmise when one finds themselves in a group one had no intention of joining? What if this group, whose membership was never sought, but whose members share similar preferences in musical taste, conferred an unexpected sense of warmth and belonging? What would it mean if one was to observe a visualization of their network graph positionality – their connectedness to peers – based on their selection of the top ten tracks on Voyageur’s Golden Record? This week’s assignment was to reflect on this circumstance, and to explore our class’ web of musical tastes through a network visualization app called Palladio.

Our class was provided with a dataset that reflected our individual selections of the top ten tracks from the Voyageur’s Golden Record, and I will begin by saying that the selections that I chose in last week’s assignment appear to be different in the dataset. Upon reflection, I can see how this may have occurred: my selection was presented visually with bold typography, rather than a simple textual list, making it more difficult to identify. For the record, here are the tracks I selected:

  1. Track 6: “El Cascabel” – performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México – Mexico
  2. Track 7: “Johnny B. Goode” – written and performed by Chuck Berry – United States
  3. Track 9: shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest”) – performed by Goro Yamaguchi – Japan
  4. Track 11: Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Queen of the Night aria) – performed by Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor – Austria
  5. Track 14: “Melancholy Blues” – performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven – United States
  6. Track 18: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (First Movement) – performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor – Germany
  7. Track 23: Wedding song – recorded by John Cohen – Peru
  8. Track 24: ch’in, “Flowing Streams” – performed by Kuan P’ing-hu – China
  9. Track 25: raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho” – sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar – India
  10. Track 27: Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina – performed by Budapest String Quartet – Germany

The dataset represented my selection of songs as the following:

The selection of songs in the dataset attributed to me.

An incorrect representation of the tracks I selected.

Palladio is an app that allows the visual exploration of a network graph – a representation of edges and nodes for a given dataset. Our dataset is the combination of every class member’s selection of tracks from the Golden Record, and by choosing to represent facets like “curators” and “tracks”, we are able to observe how class members are connected to each other by their track selections. Below are the two class members with whom I had the most connections:

The class members with whom I had the most similar selections.

The class member with whom I had the most similar selections. The class members with whom I had the most similar selections.

 

By sorting the tracks by “weight” – a measure of the frequency of the track selection – we can observe the most frequently chosen tracks:

Top tracks selected from the golden record

Top tracks selected by this class from the Voyageur Golden Record

 

 

 

 

 

 

And who selected the most frequently chosen track:

Class members that chose the "most selected" track.

Class members that chose the “most selected” track

By comparing pairs of class members, I was able to determine the individuals with the most number of common tracks:

Class members with the most similar selections.

Class members with the most similar selections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the data difference, after navigating the network and gaining an understanding of the observable web, I wondered more about the people that I had been grouped with. We obviously shared an interest in some of the same songs, but without further context, we appear to be falling victim to the “bells and whistles” of this digital visual representation of our interconnectedness. It was captivating to exert command over a node by dragging it to a different location and watching other nodes re-balance their relative positions; it was fascinating to highlight nodes based on the number of connections or “weight”; and I felt a comfort in observing the edges between my classmates and me, knowing that there were others with whom I shared similar song selections.

Unfortunately, the visualizations, despite their variously interesting capabilities, did not provide the answers I sought to help me understand why I was grouped into “Community 2”. And therein lies the rub: was I grouped through an algorithm that I could understand? Unfortunately no. Was the grouping arbitrary, or would I have any ability to re-group if I so desired? Not sure. What if the data attributed to me was incorrect, as it was, and I wanted to correct the record – as I do(!), could I? Most likely, not. Have I been categorized and portrayed in a way that reflects my true preferences? What will people think of me and my fellow community members, especially if some of the tracks have preconceived notions?

These questions prompted me to reflect on my visit to an ArcGIS-based map of city services a few months ago, and how I was required to acknowledge that the visualization of services through that portal was only a representation of some of the city’s assets, services, and responsibilities. In the same vein, it’s important to remember that our class network graph is but one representation of our selection of tracks from the Golden Record; it certainly does not tell the whole story.

References

Palladio. (n.d.). Palladio. Retrieved November 2, 2025, from http://hdlab.stanford.edu

Whittling down the Voyager Golden Record

Voyager 1 & 2 spacecrafts are currently hurtling away from the solar system at almost 62,000Km/hour (NASA, 2024), and they carry a durable artifact of some of the world’s music, called the Golden Record. The impossible task of selecting 27 music pieces from earth to represent humanity was made even more difficult this week: our assignment was to filter the list even further to a measly 10 tracks. As I listened and reflected, I began considering things like whether the piece was performed by an individual or a group, whether there were vocals, or whether the tones, rhythms, and tempos would be replicable. I considered the “grandness” and representativeness of culturally traditional sounds, and I ultimately chose based on whether the music told me a story. Here are my final selections:

Country of origin Composition Artist(s) Length Consider? Final Selection
Germany Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor 4:40
Java court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers” recorded by Robert Brown 4:43 Y-
Senegal percussion recorded by Charles Duvelle 2:08 Y
Zaire Pygmy girls’ initiation song recorded by Colin Turnbull 0:56
Australia Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes 1:26
Mexico “El Cascabel” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México 3:14 Y Y
United States “Johnny B. Goode” written and performed by Chuck Berry 2:38 Y Y
New Guinea men’s house song recorded by Robert MacLennan 1:20
Japan shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi 4:51 Y Y
Germany Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin performed by Arthur Grumiaux 2:55
Austria Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14 Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor 2:55 Y Y
Georgia Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo” collected by Radio Moscow 2:18 Y
Peru panpipes and drum collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima 0:52 Y
United States “Melancholy Blues” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven 3:05 Y Y
Azerbaijan Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes recorded by Radio Moscow 2:30 Y
Russia Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor 4:35
Germany Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano 4:48
Germany Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor 7:20 Y Y
Bulgaria “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin” sung by Valya Balkanska 4:59
United States Navajo Indians, Night Chant recorded by Willard Rhodes 0:57 Y
United Kingdom Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round” performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London 1:17 Y-
Solomon Islands panpipes collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service 1:12
Peru wedding song recorded by John Cohen 0:38 Y Y
China ch’in, “Flowing Streams” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu 7:37 Y Y
India raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar 3:30 Y Y
United States “Dark Was the Night” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson 3:15
Germany Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina performed by Budapest String Quartet 6:37 Y Y

 

 

 

References

Fast Facts—NASA Science. (2024, March 11). https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/fast-facts/.

Transmedia sonification

This week we revisited the New London Group’s seminal paper on “multiliteracies” as it relates to pedagogy, and the broad concept of digital literacy as outlined by Teresa M. Dobson and John Willinsky. As we progress into the “late age of print” (Bolter, 2001) and reflect on what it means to be a “digital native” (without connotations, if possible), I too can’t help but wonder whether this age is the sunset of prose. It seems plausible that the mechanistic act of reading as a process of knowledge transfer, could be replaced by a communication medium that is faster and more efficient, and as a possibility, it follows naturally from my previous musings about “technology” and its impact on our behaviours and ways of thinking, because we apparently, continuously, seek ways to increase convenience and decrease effort (flushed-emoji).

Our readings have often highlighted the apprehension of what may result from the adoption of new technology (Ong, 2012; Bolter, 2001; Postman, 2011), and the way it shapes thought and consciousness, so it is reasonable to expect that the digital and information transformation we are currently experiencing will also reshape the way we think and communicate. It is incumbent upon us as educators to promote designs and a vision of this new way of thinking and communicating that, “…instantiate[s] a vision through pedagogy that creates… a transformed set of relationships and possibilities for social futures…” (New London Group, 1996, p. 72).

To further explore the designed experience of “What’s in my bag”, we were asked to transmediate the visual image of the contents of our bag into an alternate semiotic or sensory mode. I chose to employ ChatGPT to help me convert the JPG image of my bag’s contents into an audio file, and then generate a visual waveform of the artifact. Here’s my `request-response` with ChatGPT 5:

This resulted in some back-and-forth to try and identify and correct the error I was encountering:

I was finally able to generate the following waveform visualization, complete with the audio transmediation of my original image:

Although this was an interesting exercise in the use of audio/video transcoding software (`python`, `ffmpeg`), I’m of the opinion that it serves limited utility to a human in today’s day and age.

Perhaps at some future date this artifact may be deemed advantageous in some way: could this audiogram could impart vector-type properties to visual elements in the future?; could the smaller size – 103KB vs. the original’s 947KB be attractive? We may never know!

References

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Dobson, T. M., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital Literacy. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy (pp. 286–312). Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-literacy/digital-literacy/219EED91FE30D9370DC76816FEACDCE8

Peña, E., & James, K. (2024). A framework of transmediation. Convergence, 30(5), 1610-1624. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231220325.

Postman, N. (2011). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. Knopf Doubleday Publishing. (Original work published 1992).

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.

An emoji story

movie

 

 

plot

 

 

In this exercise, I found that it was easier to think of which emojis to use when I imagined myself sitting around a campfire, drawing images in the dirt on the ground with a stick, trying to communicate to someone who doesn’t speak my language. For the work’s title, I chose to revert to phonetics, mostly because the specific emojis didn’t seem to exist, but also because, in this case, the title is relatively unimportant (it’s essentially a proper name). I started with the title because it seemed to be the most natural place to start.

As I reflected on the motifs and main themes of the work, I found myself searching through the emoji list for depictions of concepts that capture the idea, being conscious of how the emojis could be interpreted in other ways. In this sense, it was an exercise in reverse ekphrasis because I was attempting to convey prose in logogrammic or semiotic form. What I found interesting, is that the emojis are exquisite in their ability to convey emotion, parallel to the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words”, but are very much reduced to basic vocabulary for most things beyond the common emotions of the human experience. For example, if we are describing the road sign “slippery when wet”, the picture writing of a vehicle off-balance with curvy lines that presumably depict watery skid marks, is able to effectively communicate a potential event to those without a common language (Bolter, 2001), but it is of limited portability in other contexts or as an element of iconography in describing anything else.

The other, somewhat unrelated, remark I had about this exercise, was the realization of the futility in providing an accurate page location for reference material (!). As we digitize our text and begin to accommodate alternate visual representations (whether prose or imagery), we find, as Ted Nelson pointed out in his exploration and development of Xanalogical Structure, that “page location” is something that is tied to the linear and rigid structure of a “…rectangle of text surrounded by white space…” in a book (Bolter, 2001; Nelson, 1999). Digitization affords the reader the ability to increase font-size to better accommodate accessibility concerns, rendering the sum of the pages in a book somewhat arbitrary. Similarly, in iBooks, readers have the ability to minimize embedded images to “thumbnails” in the margin, thereby changing the length of the document if we are mostly considering length to be the amount of prose in a work. If we consider the purpose of referencing others’ work, we may need to explore alternate ways to pinpoint source material when “page numbers” in electronic media, are no longer authoritative.

References

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of printLinks to an external site. (2nd ed). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Nelson, T. (1999). Xanalogical structure, needed now more than ever: Parallel documents, deep links to content, deep versioning and deep re-use Links to an external site.ACM Computing Surveys, 31(4).