Introit

Live Blog (5): ADVIS Technology Workshop

There's a need to link pedagogy (and its history) to recent technologies. Our current school modeling scenario is based on a more corporate view point, meaning that it comes down to measurement, tracking, etc. Analogy: android with wires on head:

Here's a question: what do our physical structures (schools) look like, in terms of allowing for these technologies?

And another: do we still have computer labs? What would be their purpose?

Steve: I think we're going to move toward "passing the buck" to students, meaning that we will allow their devices in our schools, rather than the school providing everything." The school, in that sense, would act as 'hub,' but would allow for individuality of device(s). The counter comes from parents, who wish to be in control of their student's device (filters, etc).

Steve's claim: social networking will become (is becoming) the framework for education.

Here's a site to visit in order to learn about the role of social networking in education: Educational Networking

We will benefit from the continuation of social networking, i.e. looking at it over time and seeing what works, doesn't work, etc., as it represents the aggregation of a set of participative Web 2.0 tools.

We need to reframe our sense of what a social network is.

Live Blog (3): ADVIS Technology Workshop

MIT Open Courseware -- why make it free? Something really dramatic is happening!

The argument: the best learning is still face-to-face: the "memorization piece" is important, but the "conversation piece" is valuable.

Flexbook -- open textbook initiative -- you can mix/match content to your heart's delight.

What Skype does for education, from hiring to the classroom, is amazing. It connects people on a global scale.

Internet is now facilitating how we get things done...there is an explosion of collaboration. Connectedness is leading to innovation.

The Long Tail -- why the future of business is selling less of more. The "long tail" is a plotted curve that shows publication of books that don't "make it" on major stores and such. About one year ago, Amazon began to sell more product in the "long tail," ie. more product that wasn't in book store versus what was in book stores.

What's interesting is that the technologies are now allowing us to "return to participation, pre-broadcast, pre-factory model." In other words, communication is super-important -- kids are getting feedback, sharing writing and ideas with others...and not in the Henry Ford-like model of education.

Redistribution of our cognitive surplus, says Clay Shirky. The internet has unleashed this cognitive surplus. It is unleashed energy.

Where do schools live? In structure or in freedom? Where does cognitive surplus thrive?

Live Blog (2): ADVIS Workshop

"The answer to content overload is to...create more content."

Hargadon has problem with Kahn Academy and TED. It's nice to have that info available, but the point of technology is to create content. "Finding the best lesson" doesn't make sense, if the web is about conversation and content creation. That info can be used for backup, but it doesn't replace teaching content to students 1:1.

Learning as memorization vs. Learning as creation > which do you want to espouse?

Learning as creation is hard work.

Live Blog (1): ADVIS Workshop on Technology in Education

I'm going to send out some information today "live" from a workshop I'm attending, sponsored by ADVIS (Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools). The speaker is Steve Hargadon, and the focus of the session is on how technology is now poised to change education fundamentally.

Interesting link:

Future of Education -- here you can join the conversation on technology in education, including listening to podcasts of great speakers.

Steve: "There's a crisis in meaning" in today's educational environment. We need new narratives to help us illustrate why we need to do what we need to do.

"We're about to go through the biggest change in education in a long time...perhaps ever."

The learning and creativity that is taking place on the internet is largely taking place outside our institutions. How do we make schools the place for this kind of learning, creativity, innovation?

Book: Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology

Realistic View of this change: image of tsunami hitting shore...look out!

Three large cultural shifts that are taking place, that will impact how we think about education:

1. How we find, create and consume information

2. How we connect with others

3. How we get things done

Technology: PD Approach?

How does your school address technology, from the angle of professional development?

Based on all the anecdotes one hears, it would seem that most schools offer the "Free Access Approach". In this approach, schools offer unfettered access to a dizzying array of tech tools for knowledge work, whether classroom work, academic reporting, or whatnot. "There you go," say the schools. "Enjoy. There's so much out there to learn and apply here. Good luck!" There is rarely substantive conversation about where to find the information, how it works, and how we might apply it in meaningful ways.

The obvious issue with this approach is that we, as schools, are counting on all faculty to define and integrate their own information environments. Let's be honest: how often does that actually occur? Which "knowledge workers" have the time, focus, or energy to do such in a thing, when faced with a fairly inflexible daily schedule and a life outside the school?

The Free Access Approach has no mission, and therefore, it is difficult to expect faculty to buy into it, let alone ensconce themselves in it and thrive. It will work, of course, for some individuals who are intense and driven, but they're in the minority. Otherwise, the greatest outcome of this approach is a further decrease in technology use (relative to the inclined growth curve of technology itself), just the opposite of what was desired in the first place.

If the Free Access Approach isn't working, what approaches might work? Does anyone have a good example of what has worked at a particular school? How did you address technology as a piece of the professional development puzzle, thereby leading to a better balance of learning/acquisition and productivity/utilization?

Mutualism and Education

Mutualism, as outlined by Kevin Kelly, is the concept that species depend on one another for their survival in at least one phase of their life (WTW, 311). He identifies three strands of "increasing mutualism" that comprise co-evolution:

(1) As life evolves, it becomes increasingly dependent on other life.

(2) As life evolves, nature creates more opportunities for dependencies between species.

(3) As life evolves, possibilities for cooperation between members of the same species increase.

Human life, as Kelly points out, "is immersed in all three mutualisms" (WTW, 312), and he goes on to compare what he terms "the technium", or the whole adaptive system of technology and culture, with human life. He sees it as a planetary-scale organism, whose "life" can be divided into stages of development, mirroring the development of biological organisms.

As such, the technium operates within the realm of mutualism as well, and, what is most important to understand, is that the third level of mutualism pointed out above represents the level of mutualism that humans have entered...and the activity associated with this level is accelerating, due to the interplay of two "organisms": man and technology.

"We are just starting our journey of increasing mutualism between the technium and ourselves. Mastering this commensalism, like adding with pen and paper, will take some education. The most visible aspect of the exotropic trend toward mutualism is the way in which the technium increases the sociability between humans. [...] For the next 10 to 20 years, the socializing aspects of the technium will be one of its major traits and a major event for our culture" (WTW, 314).

"Collaboration, which is not new, was once hard to do en masse. Cooperation, not new, was hard to scale into the millions. Sharing, as old as humans, is difficult to maintain among strangers. The extension of increasing mutualism from biology into the technium points to yet more sociability and mutualism to come" (WTW, 316).

If Kelly is right (not many folks doubt him, based on past predictions), then a major event for our culture--the culture of independent schools--over the next 10 to 20 years will be the socializing aspects of the technium; in other words, mutualism. That time frame may seem rather brief to many, yet it represents one generation of students following our curricula from PK through 12th grade, then a handful of years in post-secondary education (in most cases).

SOME QUESTIONS FOR SCHOOLS

• How might schools leverage this mutualism between man and machine?
• How might we better emphasize the importance of collaboration within our curricula?
• Would we need to rewrite vast sections of those curricula?
• How do we maintain human:human socialization, with the technium's rapid growth?
• How do schools handle these kinds of questions within extant frameworks? For example, is there a committee at your school that would charge itself with these questions? If not, what would such a group of thinkers look like, in terms of structure? Should there be structure?
• Will the ostrich approach (head in the sand) work, at this stage in the game? Could schools simply ignore the technium? Would such schools survive in the long run?
• Do we believe that "how we do school" (how we "teach" classes), as they exist today, is responding adequately to the degree of mutualism that Kelly describes? If not, how might we alter "how we do school"?
• Is anyone in your school even thinking about these things? Where would you start such conversations?

For more on the technium, I recommend What Technology Wants, Kelly's recently-released tome:

Review of The Shallows

"Our focus on a medium's content can blind us [...]. We're too busy being dazzled or disturbed by the programming to notice what's going on inside our heads" (3)

Nicholas Carr has written a thoughtful and sometimes provocative book about our use of the Internet, suggesting that not only is it our servant, "it is also our master" (4). His point is well-taken, yet it is difficult to believe that such statements could come from Carr, who is just as "connected" as so many of us (perhaps not so ironically, I'm writing about this book on a blog...). He has written for Wired, The Atlantic, and other magazines, and writes elsewhere about technology.

His thesis is that the Internet, where we consume so much information, serves not just as our information center, but is, in a sense, beginning to redefine how our brains process information and think about things, generally. In other words, it affects our higher-order thinking skills: how we analyze and synthesize, contemplate and reflect. It's as if the Internet is rewiring our brains, meaning that our ability to imagine is being altered.

Carr delves into the history of some well-known thinkers as well as the history of technological innovations (such as the movable print press or the typewriter) and how they altered history. He strives to show the human elements that remained resilient during those periods. What is important in these vignettes, though, is how he ends up relating historical research on brain development to larger, technological developments. He makes the reader consider what might be at stake for the human brain when a new technology becomes quite ubiquitous. His major assertion relates to the malleable brain; that the brain has a tremendous plasticity that allows it to be re-organized (re-wired, if you will). That, he points out, has consequences. Happily, though, he also underscores that, "That doesn't mean that we can't, with concerted effort, once again redirect our neural signals and rebuild the skills we've lost" (35).

Carr is concerned about the distraction of our minds. "The constant distractedness that the Net encourages [...] is very different from the kind of temporary, purposeful diversion of our mind that refreshes our thinking when we're weighing a decision. The Net's cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively" (119). What is more, the Net disrupts our brain's long-term memory because we don't deal with information in our working memory; the Net encourages the use of short-term memory, meaning that most information doesn't arrive at the working memory center, let alone in our long-term memory.

Although I agree with him on the notion of the Net disrupting long-term memory and working memory, I don't think that we've got a lost cause on our hands. Instead, from an educator's point of view, I think we have an opportunity to harness the power of the Internet and bend it to our human will, if that makes sense. As adults, we may be a "crunch generation" in regards to technology (the Internet in particular): we're crunched because the Internet took us by storm, we are continuing to deal with it -- and be overwhelmed by it, and we're trying to figure out how to master it. Therein lies the opportunity. Can we take control of the medium, and re-orient it to allow us to continue to benefit from those higher-order thinking skills that characterize us as human beings? It is imperative that we do so. Otherwise, we may devolve into having "the mental life of a sea slug" (187).

Carr seems to recognize the same thing in his epilogue, where he points out the outstanding problem with computers (in general): they don't make judgments; they follow unyielding rules. They will miss a moment of brilliance because they lack human adaptability and reaction; instead, they would identify a moment of (potential) brilliance as a deviation from the formulas that make their programs run.

In other words, we need to be purposeful about our humanity, even though we co-exist with rapidly-changing technology that is altering our human experience.

To thine own self be true!

Deal...Or No Deal?

No matter how you feel about him personally, Mark Zuckerberg is getting a lot of press lately, the most recent being Time magazine's naming of him as Person of the Year (2010).

The Financial Times ran a lengthy article on him last weekend (Dec 4-5, 2010), detailing his evolution into 'serious' chief executive, one who is out to change how business is done all across the globe. The article's author focused on a new feature at Facebook, called Facebook Deal, whereby the user "checks in" to his/her favorite haunt (local shop), and that shop provides a discount to the Facebook user, in the hope that the discount will entice the person to buy more. For example, The Gap gave away 10,000 pairs of jeans to the first 10,000 Facebook users who "checked in" at Gap stores. Think of the possibilities: stores now have direct access to the customer while the customer is actually IN the store! Coupons, promotions, individualized attention, etc. As one consultant said to the FT author, "He just changed how local commerce works." And that was before lunch!

I have to wonder how and when Facebook will truly impact education. To be sure, our students use Facebook with ever-increasing regularity, and there can be instances of cyber-bullying and the like. What I'm talking about, though, is the delivery of educational content, educational choice, and the like. What if Zuckerberg were to take Facebook Deal to the level of impacting education? Same concept: "check in" as part of an admission tour at an independent school you might consider attending. By checking in, the school can "give" the student some promotional material, and determine what kinds of courses the student might be interested in, etc. I'm sure that admission departments could find myriad uses for a Facebook Deal.

Parallels: Cloud Computing and Change in Schools

Philip Delves Broughton had an insightful article, "Clouds are no longer blue-sky thinking" in today's edition of the Financial Times (Dec 7, 2010).

Broughton highlights the veritable explosion in cloud computing and the concomitant generational disagreements regarding its utility and safety. Generational disagreement plays a significant role; as he says, "One way you can be sure a revolution is under way is when generations fundamentally disagree. [...] For managers trying to weigh up whether this is a fad or here to stay, where you stand may just be a function of your age." To further flesh out what he means by "a function of your age," he provides the following: "For digital natives, the cloud is as natural to computing as the keyboard. The cloud is Facebook, Zynga, and Gmail. To an older generation, the cloud is WikiLeaks and data breaches."

The same sort of generational discomfort is evident in independent schools. Technology is causing great shifts to occur, and those shifts can happen outside the locus of control of the faculty or administration. Yet, technology aside, as one generation begins to hand off leadership to a younger generation, the same kind of seismic shift occurs: a new administrator, a new program, a new way of looking at daily operations in a division. Just as cloud computing is forcing companies (and schools, for that matter) to no longer "own" their data by means of possessing a server within school walls, handing over leadership responsibility is tremendously difficult for many in schools.

Leaders will need to pick and choose which leadership positions it makes sense to fill now, and which ones can be filled soon, just as schools and businesses will need to determine which data can live "in the cloud" now and which can be migrated later.

Lastly, just as cloud computing allows smaller companies (and schools) to mine their data more effectively in ways known heretofore to large corporations only, so too will leadership changes benefit schools in more ways that most can see currently. There are silver linings here, after all!

Brains and Technology

Has it occurred to us that independent school students use so much technology--and use it well--because the technologies that now surround us are more in tune with how we are wired as humans? I would posit that there is a synergy to be marked between the human brain and the latest technologies, specifically social networking technologies (and similar) in the Web 2.0 world.

Consider, for example, how often we hear or use the word "intuitive" when we are talking about technology. Smart phones are increasingly "intuitive"; such-and-such a website is "intuitive"; program X is "intuitive." Something that is intuitive is something that is directly apprehended, or something that is readily learned or understood.

We shouldn't use the term "intuitive" lightly. If these technologies are truly intuitive, then, in a sense, we are utilizing technologies that are somewhat (perhaps only superficially, at this point) analagous to our own brains. What are the implications of that connection? That is the question, I believe, that lies at the heart of the discussions schools are having around technology and what to do with it. That very connection is why we sometimes feel so burned out by technology; we're increasing our own brain interface, in a way. It's exhausting because it's so hard to keep up with! Our brains, after all, continue to function quite industriously while we sleep; they're always creating and connecting. Now that technology appears to be doing the same (even if it's being manipulated to do, rather than doing it by itself), nothing appears to ever sleep, to ever take a rest.

How do we harness that connection in order to make the most of it, yet give it shape and definition?