Topic 6: Prescriptive vs Holistic Technologies

“It is my view that today’s real world of technology is planned and run on the basis of a production model that is no longer appropriate for the tasks we want to undertake. Any critique or assessment of the real world of technology should therefore involve serious questioning of the underlying structures of our models, and through them, of our thoughts”.(Franklin,p.26)

Prescriptive and Holistic Educational Technologies
and the Magic of Audio
by Christopher Spanis

Based on:

Ursula Franklin (1989) The Real World of Technology, part 1

Ursula Franklin (1989) The Real World of Technology. House of Anansi Press

Illich, ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind, ch 2

What is it like listening in to this lecture from 30 years ago in this elite educational setting? Describe the kind of “media ecology” this lecture created. In what ways is the formal lecture an “educational technology”?

Franklin delivered her lecture in what was then still a male dominated world. Her arguments of inherent maleness of technologies and professions and gender inaccessibility necessitated by it reverberate through the room. Thinking of the lecture itself as an educational technology, Franklin’s definition of technology as practice and system (more than artifacts), and her insistence that we ask not “what” but “how,” Franklin’s Massey lecture is a powerful unpacking of assumptions and structures we (and the audience) take for granted. In this way it reminded me of McLuhan’s “the media is the message.”

The lecture opened up, for me at least, media ecology to the point that everything is in play; “technology has built the house in which we all live,” as Franklin states in her opening. We shape and inescapably are shaped by the world, and the near infinite complexity and inter-and-intra-connectedness of its components and its inhabitants make up this whole media ecosystem. It’s an intimidating thought. It explodes the concept of context – that nothing can be understood in a vacuum, but as a science-minded individual I have to think that it doesn’t mean we can’t still try to understand everything.

Lecture, as a method of the conveyance of ideas, can be thought of as an educational technology. It is different from conversation, obviously, in that the communication is unidirectional. Ideas are not being co-constructed. The audience does have a role in the lecture, I hypothesize, in a similar way as the phenomenon of social laughter: people laugh more often and more heartily when with others than when alone. The shared experience of watching and listening to a lecture may have a unique effect on the brain compared to other media. Lecture is subtly different from an essay or writing in that the presence of the author or speaker changes the dynamic of criticism, as de Castell and Luke (1983) say of Olson: that students don’t have, or don’t feel they have, the right to criticize text until they belong as members of “the club” at a certain level of authorship. So too lecture audiences may take more care in formulating their criticisms due to social pressures, and the additional option of access to the speaker/author after the lecture is unique to the modality.

How do Franklin’s categories of “prescriptive” and “holistic” technologies from The Real World of Technology apply to educational technologies?

Holistic technologies, in an educational context, would include the practice of teachers with autonomy to “control the process of their own work [and] make situational decisions as the work proceeds,” as Franklin says. The interpretation of curriculum, activities, instructional and assessment methods, and all of the media forms utilized would be under the umbrella of holistic technologies. Prescriptive educational technologies would include, as “designs for compliance” or “specialization by process,” the curriculum itself, institutionally mandated texts, and trainers (as opposed to teachers).

Illich and Sanders’ ABC: How is the ‘memory palace’ a peculiarly “oral” technology?

As a student of biopsychology in my undergraduate studies, I have been aware of the memory palace for some time. I like the idea of the mind palace as a technology, as in a thing that is useful to a purpose, a tool. It is a way of remembering that I’ve never managed to get to work, though to be fair my past efforts were not particularly strong. It is peculiarly oral because it is unnecessary to use with writing, as, especially with computer word processing technology, writing can be paused, checked, and edited. Its effectiveness (and impressiveness) is most apparent in the oral context. I’m aware of people with uncanny mental mathematical calculating abilities who claim to use the memory palace technique; these “stunts” are impressive because they are done without writing, typing, or mechanised calculation – any representation of data or thought process outside of one’s self.

Indeed, Illich’s thesis is upheld by modern neuroscience. Functional magnetic resonance imaging gives us a window into the functioning of the brain, and it seems that memory is reconstructed each time it is recalled. This is why eyewitness testimony is to be distrusted in court. The success of the algorithms by which we reconstruct events give us the illusion of recall, of “bringing that past into the present.”

What differences did you see as you switched from listening to skimming to close reading? Were you able to experience the recorded lecture in any ways differently than when reading the text? Listening takes more “real world” time, so where did spending that extra time get you in terms of understanding?  What things did you notice?

Skimming is a technique I find often used in a particular context – that of confirmation. I find I tend to skim only when I already have made my mind up about what the writing is about, and my eyes flick across the page hunting for some useful nugget to pull out as an exemplar to support my confirmation bias.

I absolutely experienced the oral format differently than reading – As a fan of CBC Ideas, the Massey Lectures, podcasts, and a lover of audiobooks myself, I find special value in the format. With no hard evidence to support my claim beyond my own subjective experience and introspective reporting, I can tell you some things about listening:

1. I can listen while doing other menial things, like highway driving, household chores (e.g. dish washing, lawn mowing, laundry folding). This makes listening preferable to reading.
2. I can allow my mind to wander while listening, often visualizing, daydreaming, or I daresay hallucinating the content of the audio as a movie in my head or stare blankly into space as schemata in my schema filing cabinet are re-filed and shuffled about. My listening takes place in the theatre of my own mind palace. There is a risk that I may be distracted by something external or internal and I will miss something, but often it is no trouble to replay the audio from a known point.
3. The speaker gives an inimitable human touch that provides verbal context and assists comprehension and meaning making through intonational relevance-tagging. Everyone has experienced the phenomenon of reading to the end of a passage and having not the faintest idea what was read and having to go back and read it again. When listening, I have the benefit of the tone of the speaker’s voice rising and falling, conveying the relevant terms or anchoring each sentence.
4. I find I am less likely to misunderstand a sentence when listening as opposed to reading. I have less time to formulate an argument or criticism while the audio continues, but the human connection (voice) seems to spur that part of my brain on, where with reading I may have as much time as I like to stop and think of arguments, only to find upon continuing the passage or rereading that my argument is either misguided or null due to a misreading.
5. Sometimes I can get impatient with listening, as it is occurring in real time. Technology allows us to change the playback speed on some platforms, and indeed I have often played nonfiction videos at 1.5x speed to expedite the information transfer.

Conclusion

Suzanne, I want to thank you for a thought-provoking journey. COVID notwithstanding, I found this course the most challenging yet, and I believe I underestimated the investment required to do well and to learn as much as possible. This course really was so interesting and deserved a better version of me at a better time. Most of all, I really feel the absence of the live interaction of a face-to-face class. The content so much to chew on and it would have been so much better in person with colleagues and you.

When I started this MET journey I did so with the intention of learning and developing my abilities to use technology effectively in my f2f teaching practice, while much of the MET course content has been thematic on distance/online learning. If COVID has taught me anything, it is that for all the innovations in online learning thus far, it still does not hold a candle to in-person INTRAaction. I wish that I had dived more deeply and chew on more of the materials you prepared and plan to do so when other things settle down a bit. I sincerely hope to have a chance to work with you face-to-face. Thanks for your patience and support. The final project presentations made for an impressive and fun evening.

Regards,

Chris Spanis

image credit: https://www.lemoyeu.fr/massey-lectures-the-real-world-of-technology-cbc/

This is my 10th and final intellectual production for ETEC 565B Metatheory and for it I’ve chosen to revisit my second production, originally an analysis of a desk as an educational tool or thing using McLuhan’s tetrad and Latour’s things. Now I revisit, reflect, and diffract on my work with a developing understanding of the new materialist perspective. 

Dewey was without doubt a progressive. That much is painfully obvious. But I don’t think he was necessarily anti-technocratic; his firm belief in democracy as the highest ideal and public education as the pillar of democracy leads one necessarily to the conclusion that Dewey operated in a technocratic paradigm of literacy as not only self-expression and social interaction but also as requisite set of functional skills and knowledge for the success and survival of each individual/citizen and the greater society. Each individual must meet a minimum level of competence to be a participant. Where Dewey really departs from technocratic educational philosophy is in the curriculum aspect, as in decontextualization of skills; Dewey was antithetical to this through his revolutionary insistence on socially relevant, personalized contextual curriculum with value in the injection of the individual.

I think that, in terms of educational knowledge or curriculum, to be an adept (as I keep using the term) member and participant in society, civics literacy is not enough. Our world has changed so much technologically since Dewey’s time, and the technological change has permeated and infiltrated so much of our lives, consciousness, and identities that digital literacy and arguably STEM in general deserve to share that top spot on the curricular podium. Few imagined, (unless you were a reader of Asimov, Sagan, Orwell, etc.) that unlimited access to an interconnected network would lead to a commoditization of attention and would be used as a tool for mass disinformation. As a science teacher, while my colleagues and I find ourselves in an educational landscape more and more favouring social and pragmatic competencies over content, my thinking is that scientific knowledge, and knowledge of the history of scientific discovery up to now have instrumental value; I like to think of it as “catching students up” on “stuff they should know,” as in, “what does humanity know about how the universe and everything in it work and how have we come to know?” This by extension leads students to imagine – and strive to build the skills (and support others in society to build the skills through social and political processes) for – “how will we figure the rest out?”

For the Final Project I worked with Scott Richmond. We produced a video with research-backed tips to help parents help their own children with math homework. We realized that this was an activity that many educational institutions are asking of parents, and that may cause conflict for many parents and students, especially with homeschooling during the COVID-19 lockdown. Here is the video and our reflection on its production:

1. In terms of design, the primary desire was something more than a “talking head” video in addition to being more engaging than text or audio alone. We also strongly followed a design principle of being accessible and easily digestible by non-academic audiences, or a non-educators, so a citation-laden paper was out of the question, and even our original design idea of a “tip sheet” for parents seemed inadequate for our primary goal in these regards.
   As for motivation informed by educational researchers of the past, we propose that part of the anxiety surrounding parents’ lack of mathematics confidence and/or competence (for which we found strong evidence in the literature) may be rooted, ultimately, in a deficit of literacy; one operates in society as an adult and parent with the assumption (possibly false, but necessary as a defence mechanism) that one is operating as a literate member of their culture, which includes a functional mathematical ability. This, paired with an unconscious fear that one’s child may also lack this literacy facet and requisite, would naturally cause radical insecurity. In this regard, we took this to be a bigger issue than simply the concerns over children and their math grades as the research may suggest, and this was informed by our reading of DeCastell and Luke (1983) in terms of, not only academics, but also societal values and power. 
2. In terms of assets, the sound effects and titles were taken from the catalogue of available options in iMovie, but all of the illustrations and voiceover work was one hundred percent generated by the two of us. Scott and Chris collaborated on the idea and script over the phone. Chris brought in the initial papers which supported the starting idea, Scott did a larger portion of the supporting research. Scott also did a majority of the illustrations and some of the voiceover, and Chris did a majority of the voiceover and video editing. This paper was co-written. 
3. While Chris had some experience with video editing, he had never attempted stop-motion or RSA style videos involving sped-up footage to match the length of the audio for the particular effect. Scott had to develop the skills of camera setup and framing, requiring multiple takes to accomplish his vision for each segment. Of note, we both also built this video project from the research forward, as opposed to setting out to do a video with a particular agenda and finding research to support pre-conceived arguments. This was new to both of us, as often in undergraduate and other studies, students may start with a thesis and select research to fit. In this case, we examined the literature, filtered with theoretical perspectives and pragmatism, and build the video guide on what we determined to be most helpful. 
4. The purpose of our tool was to help parents and the medium had to be equally as accessible as the message. The use of whiteboards was partly based on the format itself being a popular fad for informational videos, and on its ease of production for the two of us; no complicated animations or programming were required. 
5. While we did not place particular emphasis on identity representation… nor did we explicitly target any particular group for engagement, we attempted, with our limited time and resources (and talent) to not reference any particular ethnicities or genders with our illustrations, nor, in fact, did we ever represent more than one parent at a time with a child, thereby avoiding unintentional viewer interpretations of family structure or makeup. We definitely fall short in accessibility for non-English speakers or the hearing impaired – Chris intended to supply subtitles for the video but did not have time (also, to be fair, the video is a proof-of-concept and not a polished market-ready product). 

Both of us are actually somewhat surprised to have created something that we would share with our students’ families. Our final product has a sincerity, pragmatism, authenticity, and lack of agenda that neither of us expected to come out of this project. As for an “aha! moment,” we both agree that it was in the moment when we realized the conflict that existed and is created by the educational institutions and structures asking parents to be involved and the chaotic possibilities and realities of what that actually looks like at home. We realized this juxtaposition created a niche in which our tool could exist, be a viable solution, and could be produced in a simple and interesting way.

An Introduction to the Concept of “Media Ecology”

Strate and Lum’s (2000) article was a biography of a founding media ecologist, but they don’t make clear their definition without looking at the authors’ other works. Reading Lum (2000), it seems that media ecology has to do with communications technologies, how they – and their use – have evolved over time, and how they tend to serve larger constructs like the capitalist political and war “machines.” Different interpretations seem to exist and their validity an ongoing argument, but my main takeaway is that communications technologies (CTs) do not and can not exist outside of culture, and the interaction between CTs and culture is bidirectional. 

As I see media ecology, we are looking at a system of at least four components: humans, tools, the physical and virtual structures we create (with those tools), and communication. Viewing the interactions between these four from a biological paradigm we can talk about them as an ecosystem because the parts don’t interact with one another independently of their context – there is an interaction with the context as well: We develop and have these technologies; we use them, they interact, evolve, are changed, fail or persist; and they influence us.

Now, in terms of what I think an educational media ecology would have to involve, I should start with my attempt at a distillation of what Education is and should be:

1. “Stuff you should know”
2. “Learning how to think” 

By “stuff you should know,” I mean a critical role of education in the life of the individual (student) is essentially to get everyone “up to speed” as a human in society; how did we get here, why are things the way they are, and what do we know?

By “learning how to think,” I mean  the other key role of education in a liberal democratic society is to afford every individual with the competencies and skills to be successfully adaptable in the future; ought things be the way they are, what is the role of inquiry and criticism, and what are the open, unanswered questions?

<<Updated 04 Oct. 2020>> Finally, I’ll attempt to address what facets and complexities an educational media ecology  has to encompass, but I feel like I won’t be able to adequately address the question until the end of this course. Here is a beginning of an attempt based on what I know now:

First, a clarification: “media ecology” is the study of media analogous to an ecosystem, just as “ecology” is itself the branch of biology which studies “the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings” (Apple Dictionary). An educational media ecology (EME) would therefor specialize in the examination and study of the media, user interactions, and context (environment) of educational settings. EME would, for example, investigate (and potentially attempt to prove hypotheses surrounding) the presence of, and/or influence of hegemony, inequity, echo chambers, or the intrusion of intolerance in educational media ecosystems. EME would also look at whether a media ecosystem is growing in a progressive or maladaptive direction (for users); as another example, the reconciliation movement in Canada doesn’t have the “answers” to right wrongs, it exists to encourage acknowledgement and dialogue, which are steps in the direction of progress. EME would examine this dialogue AND the infrastructure facilitating the dialogue, and their influence on one another. EME evaluates whether there is equity of access, freedom of expression, and moderation to protect the infringement of the rights of others.

In the field of EME, as with any scientific field of study, it is important to be aware of, and prevent, bias. Therefore peer-review and self-criticism are crucial. However, there is validity to different perspectives within EME as a field of study, just as there are two schools of thought within media ecology itself (i.e. the North American and European “schools”). As an example: it can be viewed in media ecology that there is always a struggle or tension between “man versus the machine” (Strate & Lum, 2000). EME would study educational ecosystems from a perspective of teaching and raising children/students/users as critical consumers and thoughtful producers with strong digital literacy – are the students mastering technology to improve the benefits of a useful tool, or are they learning to become masters because they must, because technology is insidious and unavoidable?

References:

Lum, C. M. K. (2000). Introduction: The intellectual roots of media ecology. New Jersey Journal of Communication: The Intellectual Roots of Media Ecology, 8(1), 1-7. doi:10.1080/15456870009367375

Strate, L., & Lum, C. M. K. (2000). Lewis mumford and the ecology of technics. New Jersey Journal of Communication: The Intellectual Roots of Media Ecology, 8(1), 56-78. doi:10.1080/15456870009367379