crito's reflections on technology in education

I have always Moodled under pressure, but that pressure was time/content related as opposed to the design/development related pressure experienced here.  That said, the outcome (which is still a work in progress – but then again, most things are) has been a positive one.  It has been a challenging and exciting 3 & a half months.  New tools, new toys, new insights, all culminating textually on my Synthesis page, and mashed up in my Course Site.  I have seen all of the remarkable work of my classmates and have picked up countless ideas and information about site design and, well, even more tools & toys to play with going forward.  One of the biggest leaps for me in this course has been into the world behind the window – not the actual coding, mind you, but the comfort in visiting and tinkering around.  In fact, my comfort level with technological tools has really been elevated across the board as a result of this course (and its participants) and I hope it continues to do so as I move forward.

Its been quite a journey.  I started this course as, for the most part, a non-purveyor of (technology driven ) bells and whistles in my educational development and design.  Now,  I (cue: 2010 Winter Olympics Theme Song) believe.  I’ve picked up a lot of great memories and an unbelievable stash of  souvenirs that I can’t wait to share them with my colleagues and friends.  And with that, I bid my classmates and instructor adieu.  Grazie mille…..a todos!

I spend very little time with children, save for holidays, birthdays and random visits to my sister’s place where I get to ‘hang’ with my niece & nephew who are both 16.  Very little time, that is, if you don’t count the almost daily exchanges of IMs on messenger and updates on facebook they send, so I don’t feel particularly qualified to comment on how to deal with internet safety for kids.  I can, therefore, only speak of my own experiences, for the moment, as a student and a teacher who is/has undertaken an educational adventure into the wild, wild world (www….) of cyberspace (though admittedly I’m not entirely certain whether this www was thrust upon me or whether I thrust myself into it), a space where I practice privacy in my presence and am ceaselessly cautious about what I see and who I trust, using many of the same rules drilled into me by my parents as a child, including: don’t take candy from strangers (in fact, don’t talk to strangers), if its too good to be true, it probably is, and, yes, even, don’t run with scissors.  I believe that I am more cautious now then I was in my late teens and early twenties, but perhaps that comes from knowledge gained through life and learning experiences and not because I am an old ‘fuddy duddy’ (as my 20 year old niece exclaimed the other day using, ‘an expression you might understand’) but that remains to be seen.

After doing a quick Google search on ‘teaching internet safety to children’ I came across the article Kids the Internet and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock ‘n Roll.  I’ll hit the highlights here, the comments that struck a chord – and in some cases, dischord – with me.  For example, while I have heard myself speak similarly to these comments about kids and online presence, which would suggest that I tend to agree with them:

Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another. (Nussbaum, 2007. P2)

“When it is more important to be seen than to be talented, it is hardly surprising that the less gifted among us are willing to fart our way into the spotlight,” sneers Lakshmi Chaudhry in the current issue of The Nation. “Without any meaningful standard by which to measure our worth, we turn to the public eye for affirmation.” (Ibid)

the one that followed,

Clay Shirky, a 42-year-old professor of new media at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, who has studied these phenomena since 1993, has a theory about that response. “Whenever young people are allowed to indulge in something old people are not allowed to, it makes us bitter. What did we have? The mall and the parking lot of the 7-Eleven? It sucked to grow up when we did! And we’re mad about it now.” People are always eager to believe that their behavior is a matter of morality, not chronology, Shirky argues. “You didn’t behave like that because nobody gave you the option.”

well, that one struck a nerve.  And, it got worse.

More young people are putting more personal information out in public than any older person ever would—and yet they seem mysteriously healthy and normal, save for an entirely different definition of privacy… Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion…. So it may be time to consider the possibility that young people who behave as if privacy doesn’t exist are actually the sane people, not the insane ones. (Ibid)

So, maybe I am a fuddy duddy.

The author continues, discussing some of the (possibly neurological) changes the internet has affected on its citizens (as opposed to an immigrant like myself) as follows:

CHANGE 1: THEY THINK OF THEMSELVES AS HAVING AN AUDIENCE

CHANGE 2: THEY HAVE ARCHIVED THEIR ADOLESCENCE

CHANGE 3: THEIR SKIN IS THICKER THAN YOURS

The conclusion?  Well, the privacy/safety issue was pretty much sidestepped.  ‘Think of the potential’: as with all new technologies, there are going to be gains and losses.   My conclusion?  I find scissors very useful but I am quite happy just walking with them.  As for parents and educators of the net generation, I am glad to see that there is good help out there, or should I say, when it comes to ‘net’ safety and to help ‘bridge the gap’.

Nussbaum, E. (2007) “Say Everything – Kids the Internet and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since

Rock ‘n Roll.” New York 12 Feb. 2007

Retrieved on 13 March 2010 from: http://nymag.com/news/features/27341/

One of the big differences for me between the Wiki and forum in an LMS was actually visual.  Being able to see the whole ‘discussion’ on one page really helped me follow the train of thought.  That said, I didn’t think that there was a tremendous amount of discussing going on.  The class kind of skipped Step 2 and jumped right into step 3, composing a page as a group.  I’m not entirely certain why this happened, but I’m finding it really challenging figuring out where to jump in as I feel pressured to come up with a well formulated strategy or challenge rather than, say, a more random ‘blue, white, or green hat’ brainstorm type post.  In my LMS experiences, each student, for whatever reason, feels compelled to contribute or start his/her own discussion thread when a forum is set up.  While this can lead to all sorts of great discussion tangents, there can also be a lot of crossover between threads which can be really tough (for me) to keep track of.

For group collaborations (of any size), Wiki’s are definitely a good option.  In addition to my earlier comment about following the train of thought, the ability for participants to jump in wherever they want with ideas, to move ideas around, to track the history of the project, amongst other things, allows for a lot of flexibility and both independent and inspired creativity.  Wiki’s remind me of Google Docs, which I’ve used very successfully both on MET course projects and with my colleagues at work.  In fact, using a Wiki or Google Docs in a business course for students to do a collaborative project would be a great way for an instructor to see the process of planning the students engage in as well as the progress of their project.  I think it would give the instructor a good sense of their project management skills.  Hmmm….

The challenge I found with this particular wiki activity, and, oddly enough, in previous experiences (in other courses) with wiki activities was in the project management, or lack thereof.  Perhaps it is because I have a background in business but I am lost without some kind of project planning (“Plans are of little importance but planning is essential” Winston Churchill) whether I’m in a group or working on my own.  In smaller groups (3 to 6 people), this planning process can be a little looser, but in larger groups it really has to be tight (explicit – e.g. roles assigned, detailed – e.g. timelines).  How might I explain why this planning (i.e. discussion) did not occur?  Too many modest/polite Canadians in the mix, perhaps….

With the knowledge that I am being assessed I begin to second guess myself.  Then I think of what Gibbs & Simpson said about designing assessment which was “first to support worthwhile learning, and worry about reliability later.”  Still I  have to wonder if the assessment I am designing driven by the meeting the requirements of this assignment so that I can get a decent grade or by my wanting to both push my boundaries – both technical and personal – and create a worthwhile assessment tool.

As I sat in the waiting room at the hospital on Thursday evening waiting for my nephew to get a cast for his broken wrist, I watched the Grey’s Anatomy episode, ‘Perfect Little Accident’ wherein…

Avery brought in a patient who he seemed to know. Turned out the man was his grandfather, and a legendary doctor. Cristina had come over to help and misdiagnosed Dr. Harper Avery (as in “the Harper Avery Award”). She was mortified.

Teddy and Arizona’s lung transplant patient was told that he was too high-risk to get a lung. Lexie remembered a program in which the hospital was taking lungs that would otherwise be discarded and repairing them on bypass. Cristina wanted to get on the case. She thought it would be awesome for winning awards if the procedure could be done while Harper Avery was in the hospital.

Teddy was upset and yelled at Cristina for going rogue and stealing the lungs. They argued about Cristina’s motivation (winning awards) and Cristina tried to convince Teddy that she could pull off the surgery.

Teddy and Cristina were working on the patient and the lung tissue was falling apart. Teddy was upset, saying that awards only motivate doctors to be competitive, rather than make good decisions. edited from IMDB

I couldn’t help but see parallels with some of the comments Martin Jenkins made and quoted on the first page of Unfulfilled Promise: formative assessment using computer-aided assessment.  I have no problem with the idea that assessment is a motivator in education, but can’t help questionning what kind of education is it motivating.

As much as the courses I have designed and teach presents them with tools to analyse business, the goal is for them to apply the tools to their own experience and to compare these to their own preconceptions and previous experience in and knowledge of business practice in their own culture.  While they may learn business concepts, it is the application of these that is key.  I am not concerned about their ability to tell me about the tools or even about how they apply them.  I am interested in what goes through their minds when they think about the similarities and differences in culture and how they apply to certain aspects of business, about whether or not they think different business practices affect the success of a business, whether these practices are transferable or culture specific.  Assessing this is challenging.  I do give feedback, but it is quite often more in the form (and formative) of questions as most of this occurs during asynchronous discussion forums.  The students have 2 assignments to complete – both written.  One is a creative assignment where they must find an idea from an outside source that is unrelated to their host company that they think will financially improve their company (a coffee company selling music; a bookstore selling tea; an insurance company cross marketing gas masks) and explain why they chose it, how it can be used, and the steps it would take to bring it in and make it profitable) I give them examples and guidelines as to how they should frame their report.  I remember a student asking me once, ‘what do you want’?  I told him that it was not about what I want, but about what he thinks is good, creative, interesting, to which he responded, so what do I need to do to get a good score?’  I just smiled and told him, ‘the further outside the box you go, the better your mark will be.’

The final assignment is a summary of their company, its operations, suggestions they might have for the company and a reflection on their experience and where this experience might take them.  What I am attempting to achieve with these students is much in line Saljo’s 5^th conception of learning as stated in Gibbs & Simpson: ‘Learning as a change in personal reality: seeing the world differently.”  For most of what I ‘measure’ is the ‘difference’ from where they started in this program to where they are when they ended.  But how?  I had one student who hated everything about being here.  One of his (many) bones of contention was that he perceived the operations of his host company as being completely disorganized, primarily because he could never get the information he needed to complete his ISO project when he required it.  At the end of the program, he discovered that he needed to be more flexible and, well, that he was not the centre of the universe.  Trust me that was huge.  But, is there a tool to measure that?

Setting up the initial framework for Moodle was relatively simple as I’ve run about 10 versions of the same course through the LMS.  The biggest challenge was coming up with the number of weeks for the course I’m thinking of teaching as well as how I might be able to fit in the elements mentioned in my flight path without the thing looking like a document written by someone who had discovered the font menu.  That said, I tried adding a Wiki and a glossary.  I’ve always wanted to add a glossary and I thought a Wiki would be a great way to get the students involved.  I’m still a bit ‘up in the air’ as to how to ‘run’ the Wiki.  Its objective is to allow students to play with the definitions of both business as well industry specific vocabulary that they will need to know in English for their interviews.  I thought of allowing the students to be able to post vocabulary in their own language and get assistance from their classmates, but that would require that I can check the definitions of the words they put and I’m just not that multilingual.  The other challenge is that I have students from a variety of language backgrounds and academic fields and if I have only one student from, say, one language background, s/he is kind of hooped.  Thinking as I write, perhaps I can get them to throw vocabulary up there that they are not familiar with and ask their classmates to help them as well as define the terms I have placed in the glossaries.  Oh, and perhaps I can break the students up into groups and have them work on a glossary as a group.  Hmmm…. I’ve never used group work with my students.

Probably because I work in the private sector, estimating the time, time-line (and rate per hour) for a project is a necessary evil.  That said, it’s a difficult balance – well more like trying to balance (if not spin) a plate on your finger.  Because you are usually bidding for a contract, you need to be conservative with you time but promise the moon (not the sun & certainly not the stars: never over-promise!) while being realistic as to what you can actually deliver and still be profitable.  Often this is done with very little concrete knowledge or information about the resources available, stakeholders or expected outcomes.  I’ve consulted on more than a few educational projects (with an animation company) – some for the public sector and some for the private sector – where I have had to define the project for or educate the client after the contract is signed as to what is and is not possible given the agreed upon timeframe and budget, particularly with regards to the development of ‘bells and whistles’.  As much as developing an online course (well, any course, for that matter) should be about the learner’s needs – particularly with respect to content and objectives – more often then not, and while it may begin with the learner, it eventually comes down to a question of time and money.
That aside, and I think especially when working with technology, having a timeline is a good thing for any course developer as it helps keeps you focused and efficient for IT is rife with distractions – from allowing you to be niggly about aesthetics to providing far too many paths to finding that ‘perfect’ piece (article, video, audio) to just plain enticing you to go off on a tangent all your own.