ETEC540: Text Technologies

People working in educational technology are inundated with latest tools all proclaiming to act as major disruptive forces in traditional education. It is easy to get swept up in the excitement of innovation and become marketers of various technology applications in our school settings. It is also easy to introduce and promote these tools as they become available without much thought to the long-term consequences. Neil Postman, in his article Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology articulates the “dangerous and disturbing” view of technology that should be addressed today. (Postman, n.d.)

Bill Gates often says that people tend to overestimate technology in the short term and underestimate it in the long term (Kirkpatrick, 2010). In my undergraduate classes in the 90s I learned of the coming impact of the Internet that would change education forever. That decade passed with little change. The educational impact of technology that was prophesized by some of my professors simply did not revolutionize the way we learn. Search technology such as Yahoo and later Google allowed us greater depth of research but there was no pressing reason to change teaching methodology.

It was during this time that Neil Postman was proposing his pessimistic view of technological capabilities. In his article, Tehnopoly: The surrender of culture to technology, Postman alerts us to the negative impact technology can have. He also proposes that humans have little control in this direction, “Once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand; it does what it is designed to do” (p.7). This is what Daniel Chandler (2002) refers to as “technological determinism” (Introduction section, para.2). From this perspective, we have no control in the development in technology. In fact, Postman suggests that the best we can do is be aware of it: “when we admit a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open” (p.7).

Contrary to this view, I believe those in the educational technology have the power to go much further than the awareness level. When technology is admitted, we should be judicious in its use and apply it in a way driven from instructional design that will captivate students and promote student learning to broad audiences. That is, the usefulness of educational technology should be evaluated in terms of its alignment to course outcomes and assessment rather than its function outside the context of pedagogy.

The other important issue that Postman raises concerns knowledge monopolies. It is true that in the past technology was often controlled and exploited by the few. In the past century, television, film, and telephone were industries completely controlled by a handful or collaborating competitors. The result was, and still is, an overpriced system with poor quality. This system fit well with modern marketing that supported a narrow spectrum of content and benefitted the producers far more than the consumers.

The development of web applications in the past few years, however, moves in a direction that may actually break up this knowledge monopoly. Schools such as MIT, which Postman says have been a part of the knowledge monopoly created by the invention of print, are now offering Open Courseware. The traditional consumers of information are now also producing content in wikis, blogs, and video. In this development stage, there is a democratizing of information where the powerless are empowered to collaborate in new ways; but how effectively and for how long? Popular writer Malcolm Gladwell argues that relationships built on social media platforms are weak and unable to create real social change such as the change that took place in the 60s (Gladwell, 2010). Do we as educators play a role in helping students to strengthen these relationships to enable positive social change? How long will these tools remain democratic? Can we trust Google to continue to “not be evil” by keeping content open, or will they become another example of what Postman describes, an elite company accumulating power to serve itself.

When we consider how social media has developed in recent years, we can see that Postman got a few things wrong. For example, the computer did, and will not, kill “communal speech” in the classroom; it in fact enables it though various web applications. Postman believes that technology changes fundamental concepts such as “knowing” and “truth”. For now, as we witness applications such as Twitter challenge political authority as it did last year in Iran, it would seem it is giving these concepts back to people. Moving forward, we may benefit from asking the balanced questions Postman raises in order to prevent the knowledge monopolies from appearing again in new forms.

References

Chandler, D. (2002). Technological or media determinism. Retrieved from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tdet01.html

Gladwell, M. (2010). Small change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

Kirkpatrick, M. (2010). Google TV will “change the way people live their lives”. Retrieved from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_tv_will_change_the_way_people_live_their_li.php

Postman, N. (n.d.). Technology: The surrender of culture to technology. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

In a world where nothing is written and words are not thought of in separate entities and people only speak, we, the typographical/chirographical people, cannot judge.

Walter J. Ong’s book Orality and Literacy focuses the reader’s attention on those people who have lived or do live in an oral culture and what it would be like to live in an oral culture/society. His sentence “Try to imagine a culture where no one has ever ‘looked up’ anything” attempts to put the reader in the shoes of a person from an oral culture.  Ong specifically explains that oral cultures use mnemonic devices and formulas to remember important events and describes that the recitation of a story is rarely the exact same with each telling. He found that the story was not always accurate, but was told to the audience according to the way the teller wanted to tell it – literally becoming hisstory.  If a bard told a story according to the audience or according to the way he/she thought it should go, the history turned into his/her story.

Our western typographic/chirographic culture does not see the tendency to change a story as a legitimate way of remembering, but complete accuracy might not have been an important aspect of an oral culture.  It could be that, in our literate minds, we construct this idea that things must be presented exactly how they occurred when, in fact, these oral cultures had no need for this.  When Ong writes about imagining oral culture, he alludes to the fact that our brains may not understand their practices because we have been so immersed in a culture of writing and scribing.

This immersion of a writing culture is problematic for Ong as he is writing from the perspective of a person coming from an oral culture and also is writing about oral cultures.  It may be impossible for anyone who has lived in a writing society to fully understand and accurately convey what an oral culture was like.  This also leads to difficultly in accurately describing an oral culture as it appears that those members were not concerned with accuracy themselves due to the ever changing nature of the story.  The only way Ong could truly discover what an oral culture was like would be to interview a person in an oral culture and record the interview.  This method would be problematic as the person from the oral culture might not be able to reveal the differences between orality and typography/ chirography, as they have no knowledge of a literate culture.

This brings us to the study Luria did of illiterate people (pg. 50). While these people might know some aspects of oral culture and literate culture, they also would not be true oral cultures resulting in a catch -22.  Ong’s inclusion of these studies is enlightening, but problematic, as these people, to some degree, have been exposed to writing and may be completely different from the oral cultures before cuneiform.  Also, Ong includes resources from the Bible and Plato, but these resources are all written – not spoken therefore his resources should be called into question.  The only evidence that survives of truly oral people are all written down.  How much of the semi- admissible information that Ong presents is due to the difficulty of collecting authentic resources? Again, this leads us to the question the importance that we ‘correctly’ reveal these people as they might not even worry about themselves?

Ong’s chapter on the psychodynamics of orality does have some resources that should be questioned, but in the same token, they provide interesting insight into a culture we have little knowledge about because it is not written down.  While I read Ong’s book, I wondered two things: one is about the illiterate people in Canada and USA today and the second is how we can use this information in a classroom.

If illiterate cultures were studied by Luria and written about by Ong, what could their research mean to the study of illiterate people in Canada and USA today? Would they have similar qualities to the illiterate people that Luria studied? It seems as though technologies will eventually be incorporated by everyone, like writing, but to what extent are the illiterate people of today still trying to incorporate the technology of writing into their everyday lives?  Will this happen with the computer?  Will the computer last that long and will there still be illiterate computer users thousands of years from now? Does it take that long for a new technology to engulf the entire population? Will it ever?

I think that the illiteracy in the sense of merely reading and writing will always be there because of many different disorders, but as history has shown us, the trend is that the illiteracy rate will decline.  If the computer lasts as a technology as long as writing has, then I believe computers will go the same way as writing.  The rate of integrating learning the new language of the computer might be faster because of the computer. It connects to the world in a matter of seconds so this new technology could create a rate of learning that far exceeds that of writing.

While reading the chapter “Some Psychodynamics of Orality” I began to think about ways to include forms of memorization, utilized by oral cultures, into the classroom.  As I teach students how to speak English, I found learning with mnemonic devices, formulas, and other strategies mentioned in the book might be helpful.  I performed a little bit of research on my own (admittedly very small and not very scientific) asking my friends how they remembered information.  More often than not, those who did well in school used many of the devices that the oral cultures used.  So, as this world comes to a bottleneck of information overload, I wonder if we can use the information of our oral ancestors to learn the most important things  – the things that we need to know faster than a computer can load?

INTRODUCTION:

The agency being discussed in this paper is a Municipal Police Service employing approximately 1800 police officers, serving a diverse and rapidly growing community of over one million people. Its mission is to strive to protect life and property under the law, with full respect for human dignity, and according to the highest standards of professional skill, integrity and accountability. For the purposes of this paper, the Service will not be identified to protect the privacy of it’s’ employees.

The Service is trying to improve its technology in the areas of communications, crime reduction, and crime prevention. One area where technology could serve the organization better is its applications in educating the Service’s employees. A recent development, which is being heavily criticized, is the use of online learning for certain officers taking Suspect Apprehension Pursuit (SAP) training.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theories of Neil Postman in providing a commentary in support of the application of online SAP training for members of the Service.

ANALYSIS:

Training police officers in relation to high speed pursuits is vital. If not managed properly, high speed pursuits can and have resulted in the injury and death of citizens and police officers. The basic dilemma associated with police pursuit of fleeing suspects is deciding whether the benefits of potential apprehension outweigh the risks of endangering police officers, the public, and suspects in the chase. From a liability perspective, there is also the possibility of civil litigation and Workplace Safety Insurance Board claims and subsequent financial implications to the organization.

Training in this area is mandated by the Provincial Government, with good reason. The impact of an officer’s decisions and actions on the community when faced with a high speed pursuit scenario is extreme. To a large degree, the training is based on decisions, such as when and where it is appropriate to engage in a pursuit; under what circumstances a pursuit should be terminated; and what information should officers be communicating to their dispatcher and other affected officers.

In an effort to streamline the training, the Service developed an online training program to be delivered to officers not on the front line. This includes plain clothes officers and specialty units. Front line personnel must complete this training in a face to face format, as a driving test is also included. The chief criticism is based on the belief that all officers should qualify on the driving test, as driving is a fundamental skill for SAP training.

As Postman asserts, there are winners and losers in every technology. Postman states that “it is not always clear, at least in the early stages of a technology’s intrusion into a culture, who will gain most by it and who will lose most by it.” (Postman, pp. 12)

The Service wins with online SAP training in the sense that they satisfy the Provincially mandated training. Furthermore, the training bureau can train more officers using an asynchronous system, in less time and with far less manpower. The training is traceable, fair and objective, and the data is manageable. There is also the potential to interface a virtual reality driving simulator into the training program.

So, who loses? The critics would suggest that the public does by virtue of less thorough training throughout the ranks. Officers are often transferred or promoted to and from front line positions, and as the training is only required every two years – a pursuit scenario may confront an officer who has returned to a front line function prior to the expiration of their training.

It would appear that the benefits of using online training outweigh the costs – however, the debate continues – with great fervour. This supports Postman’s assertion that “new technologies compete with old ones – for time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of their world-view.” (Postman, pp. 16) In this regard, the “traditional” technique for SAP training can be viewed as the old technology. This technology utilized the police cruiser, roof lights and siren, radio communications, spike belts, etc. to provide practical training for suspect apprehension. The new technology utilizes instructional videos with pursuit ending techniques and several “decision-based” scenarios, coupled with an interactive online examination. The shift from one form of training to the other contains ideological biases. Proponents for both argue that their technology is better than the other, causing a collision in viewpoints.
Postman further states “what we need to consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how, in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school.” (Postman, pp. 19) The unfortunate bottom line here is that police officers can stubbornly resist change. Online SAP training represents a changing educational paradigm for the police service and a shift away from traditional (or old school) teaching techniques. The critics, or “one-eyed prophets” need to look at the benefits of online SAP training objectively and weigh out the costs against the benefits. For, as Postman posits, “every culture must negotiate with technology” and the police culture must accept that “a bargain is struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away.” (Postman pp. 5)
In conclusion, online SAP training has permitted flexibility in the delivery of mandated training to a large and continually evolving Police Service. Although all sworn police officers require this training – the way that they are trained should reflect the nature of their duties. Not all officers truly benefit from the practical component of the training. Online training technologies have allowed the Service to redeploy training personnel, who would otherwise be occupied delivering SAP training in the traditional way – to other courses and programs which benefit the organization. As Postman states, “once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand; it does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what that design is – that is to say, when we admit that a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open.” (Postman, pp.7)
That says it all, doesn’t it?

REFERENCES:

Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York, NY: New York

James O’Donnell’s 1994 article, “The Virtual Library: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed” was written quite some time before the advent of widely available consumer access to large digital storage devices, and certainly quite a great deal of technological development has occurred since his article was written. Indeed, O’Donnell himself notes that many leaps in technology have taken place since the idea of a ‘virtual library’ was first mentioned, and these types of technological changes will likely continue indefinitely. Still though, many of O’Donnell’s arguments can be seen to transcend this divide in technology, as they focus on the larger idea of the collective memory, and the storage and transference of knowledge across a society.

O’Donnell’s central argument is that we have long sought to centralize and catalogue all of our knowledge and collective memory, and that the idea of a virtual library is one that has existed for many centuries. By tracing the development of libraries and the transfer of knowledge from its early years in written form, O’Donnell relates the idea that virtual libraries and libraries in general can often be seen to be interchangeable terms. Throughout his article, O’Donnell cites examples from both recent and ancient history of the idea of libraries as central power bases.

O’Donnell also warns though that recent pushes to abandon the storage of knowledge in its long accepted book form could have serious repercussions, as it could mean that knowledge may only be selectively transferred. Further, he feels that physical libraries are an attempt to encapsulate an entire culture, and while O’Donnell feels that they have realistically failed at doing so, that even the illusion of this attempt at encapsulating all knowledge is valuable. It’s implied in his article that O’Donnell sees a virtual library as something that attempts to transcend cultures, and therefore this idea of a library as a centre that helps to define a culture’s identity will be lost in a larger amalgam.

The idea of a library as an important centre of power is not new, as O’Donnell makes quite clear in his article, where he notes that the creation of early libraries “…could only have been done in a world now ready to accept the notion that power depended on defining texts and a world that could expect to have access to such texts.” The idea of a virtual library then is simply an extension of this centralized power-base. With knowledge comes power, and the library has long served as an icon in many civilizations as the keeper of all knowledge, even if reality may have proven otherwise.

Where O’Donnell’s discussion looses traction is when the author discusses the idea of a virtual library containing such a huge wealth of information that it becomes inaccessible. What O’Donnell fails to acknowledge is that much like traditional libraries developed highly complex systems for organizing their holdings, so too do virtual spaces develop sophisticated organizational structures. O’Donnell himself states that “…one of the most valuable functions of the traditional library has been not its inclusivity but its exclusivity, its discerning judgement that keeps out as many things as it keeps in.” Why the author believes that this will also not be the case in a virtual environment is unclear, but the reality is that as information has been increasingly digitized, it has also been thoroughly tagged, labeled, and otherwise categorized, and information that is irrelevant, flawed, or simply unpopular falls to the bottom of search rankings or is altered, corrected, or eventually excluded.

Knowledge is fluid though, and hence, it would be virtually impossible to thoroughly catalogue and categorize it all in one central digitally accessible space. This is even assuming that an attempt would be made to record all of this knowledge; it is incredibly easy to erase materials in a digital environment. Further, O’Donnell implies that much of our knowledge and history occurs outside of the written form that libraries have traditionally sought to preserve, and while digital media is now blurring traditional lines between written works and other forms, there are still other formats of communicating knowledge that are not recordable. Libraries, virtual or otherwise, are incredibly valuable resources, but their place in our cultures will always remain in context with a larger human experience.

References

O’Donnell, James J. (1994) “The Virtual Library; An Idea Whose Time Has
Passed.” Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20070204034556/http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/virtual.html

Orality and Learning Theories

I continue to be amazed at how the courses in MET weave together a broader picture for a larger understanding between courses. The more you begin to understand, the more you understand how much you have to learn. In this particular context I have been pondering the Applications of Learning Styles to Orality and Literacy. As I read Ong’s text I continually reflecting on the various learning styles and whether theorists like Skinner and Ausubel took into consideration strictly oral cultures when developing their theories. Ong is clear that literate people can only endeavour to stretch to imagine what a primary oral culture is like, but I wonder if these theorists contemplated the assimilation of knowledge without the possibility of writing (Ong, 1982). With this question in mind I read Ong’s Chapter 3, considering the various learning theories and how learning might occur in oral cultures.
It would be easy to assume a behaviourist approach to orality where verbatim memorization is the key. When Ong refers to the theorem ‘You know what you can recall’ as applying to an oral culture one might infer rote memorization (Ong, 1982). Rote learning would be the easy answer but rote learning is really only useful when it is important that the information be recalled exactly as it was in its original form (Novak, 1998). Rote learning is also only effective for short term recall, which would not suite most of the needs of oral cultures. With this in mind I feel a behaviourist learning theory approach would underestimate the complexity of learning in an oral culture. In order to effectively retain and retrieve information oral cultures require more than just memorization. In fact they employ multiple devices to assist in the internalization and anchoring of information. Their thoughts are complex formulas based in mnemonic patterns, rhythm, repetition, antitheses, alliteration, assonances and many other tools (Ong, 1982).
So if not Behaviourists, which learning theory might apply? To be honest I don’t think any of the text based learning theorists of our time can accurately capture the learning processes of a primary oral culture; However, I draw the closest comparison with Ausubel. Perhaps this is because Ausubel’s theory ‘allows integration of many observations on learning into a single, coherent theory’ (Novak 1998, p51) and I do see elements of many theorists present. Ausubel’s theory has 6 basic principles. I see parallels to many of these principles present in Ong’s description of primary oral cultures. Below I have listed some of Ausubel’s principles and the parallels I have drawn with Ong’s statements.

Subsumption
The subsuming concept role is interactive; it provides the link between new concepts introduced and existing knowledge. During the process of this new linkage the subsuming concept becomes slightly modified. This interaction between the old (subsumer) and new concepts is core to Ausubel’s Assimilation Theory (Novak, 1998). I see a direct parallel between Ausubel’s subsumer principle and Ong’s statement that oral cultures need to conceptualize and verbalize their knowledge with close reference to the human life world that they know, assimilating a new object to a familiar object in order to remember the new object.

Integrative Reconciliation
According to Ausubel, integrative reconciliation is when new interrelationships can be drawn between concepts in our internal concept map (knowledge structure) and cross linkages can be made (Novak, 1998). These types of interrelationships and imaging of the concept mapping that is core to Ausubel’s Assimilation Theory are clear when Ong writes about oral cultures producing ‘amazingly complex and intelligent and beautiful organizations of thought and experience’ (Ong 1982, p.57).

Obliterative Subsumption
Another parallel was between Ausubel’s principle of Obliterative Subsumption. Ausubel felt that the majority of information learned cannot be recalled in the future-variation in recall depends on the degree of meaningful learning during the learning process (Novak, 1998). This too seems similar to Ong’s statement that “in a primary oral culture conceptualized knowledge that is not repeated aloud soon vanishes, oral societies must invest great energy in saying over again what has been learned arduously over the ages” (Ong 1982, p41)

Oral culture does not need to fit neatly into any one theory; however, the acquisition of knowledge by a primarily oral culture remains fascinating in its necessary complexity. As Ong says, the memory feats for the oral bards are remarkable (Ong 1982). The process of their memorization is indeed impressive and deserving of closer study. It would also be interesting to be able to contrast the learning processes or oral and text based cultures. One last thought to ponder, Ong states ‘the residual orality of a given chirographic culture can be calculated to a degree from the mnemonic load it leaves on the mind, that is, from the amount of memorization the culture’s educational procedure’s require.’(Ong 1982, p.41). Consider this statement when you think about all those poems you had to memorize for English class or formulas for math class. How much information did you simply memorize to get through university? As an educator how much memorization do you ask your class to rely upon? How much residual orality is still within our culture?

References:

Novak, J. D. (1998). Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: Concept Maps as Facilitative Tools in Schools and Corporations (pp. 49-78; ch 5 – Ausubel’s Assimilation Learning Theory). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.