Technology in Education

I'd like to start with a quick video to open a dialog with you. I'd like to bring you closer to the question: "Why are we Using Technology in Education?"

After watching this video I was puzzled by the prediction made at the beginning that "mental health is going to be the number one health challenge in the future". Are Web 2.0 Tools Dumbing Us Down? The author of this post, Paul Barsch, starts it with a question?

"Neoroscientists have shown in study after study, that multi-tasking isn’t helping us be more productive, but in fact, is making us dumber. Are some Web 2.0 tools, with their promise of instant
connectivity, notification, and collaboration adding fuel to the fire?"

In his post, Paul pointed out to the statement from the article titled,"The Autumn of the Multi-Taskers" and published in The Atlantic magazine:

“Certain studies find that multi-tasking boosts the level of stress related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction—prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term they cause (our brain) to atrophy.”

It is hard to do a professional judgement of these studies, but I must agree with Paul Barsch that as "we’re staying more connected with our communities and world, we are seems to forget more and more the stuff (perhaps purposefully) pushed to us via these technologies". What I find worrying is the words in brackets: "perhaps purposefully".

Another post, Is web 2.0 dumbing us down? raises even more intriguing question:

"If we allow ourselves to be exposed only to those views and people that we have sympathy with, something the web increasingly allows us to do, are we really depriving ourselves of the tools for
a balanced and effective mental development?"

René Meijer, the manager of the Educational Development Unit at the University of Derby and the author of this post, shares his insights on Republic 2.0, presentation by Mr. Sunstein explaining the risks of web 2.0 to democracy.

"While the increased access to the expression and consumption of information and opinion seems like a wonderful thing, there are downsides to how we engage with blogs, wiki's and social networks. Due to the vast amount of information out there, but also because of the nature of these new social artifacts, we tend to expose ourselves only to information and opinions from those that we are close to (ideologically or otherwise). Research has shown that in homogeneous groups like these, polarization takes place: views and opinions become more singular and extreme."

Until now, I was engaged into discussions posted by other people in the same fashion. I see similar trend in the way people reply to my own posts. As I see students in our school become socially engage more and more through technology, I wonder, what views and whose opinions they would be exposed to. Should I purposefully pushed them into the social roller coaster ride or let them think for themselves.

I want you to watch a series of video presentations, titled "Outcome Based Education or Social Engineering".

Click To Play

After watching this discussion it became clear to me that technology can be a powerful social engineering tool in the hand of the teacher and before I start incorcopate technology to my instructions I'd better understand why I want to use it. I admit that technology can boost emotianal and social learning, but I'd like to see my students as a creative and reflective thinkers.

So, what is the right way of using Technology in Education? I believe, teachers have to decide it for themselves. They need to trust their own feelings and not to follow any guidelines that they feel is just wouldn't work in the classroom. The school should have a vision supported by its learning community. In my school, it seems, we do not see the potential of technology in our school setting, but here is an example of what can be done in my school and who knows, maybe in your as well.

Click to play

Open-source Learning

After a short introduction to the idea of sharing by Dean Shareski (Share Everything) I ask myself: What would it take to share your deepest secret?

For me, sharing is a quality which is more personal that public. When I share or help others, I want to build a trustful relationship. I find that it is hard to build relationships with people without sharing common experience. Perhaps, that's the reason of my frustration publishing thoughts in this blog. I use a nick name, as the majority of people who replied to my posts, and the relationships that I build with them are virtual, not personal.

I support the idea of sharing resources in my learning community, but often find that such sharing, even in a small school, is out of touch. When it goes public I am always confronted by the questions: "What ideas are worth sharing?" and "Does the quantity always produce quality?"

If you believe that any "ideas are worth spreading", I would recommend to watch a presentation on open-source learning by Richard Baraniuk.

This topic is gaining considerable traction in the educational community. To see open-source learning in action, go to Connections. I can't really fit my classroom with their environment, but if you share their philosophy (Create, Rip, Mix, Burn), perhaps "the idea is worth spreading".

Social Networking

As a follow up for today session I'd like to share these two views of technology that sparkled on-line debate last year about pros and cons of Social Networking in the Classroom.

The key debaters were:

Michael Bugeja, Director of Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, Iowa State University of Science and Technology.

“I have seen it [technology] used as a delivery system, then as content in the classroom and finally as a classroom, building and campus itself, and in every case pedagogy changed to accommodate the interface. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Unless we impose that logic on social networks, they will align educational methods with corporate motives…”

Ewan McIntosh, National Adviser on Learning and Technology Futures for Learning and Teaching Scotland, the education agency responsible for curriculum development.

"Social networking has arrived in hundreds of thousands of classrooms and is attempting to show that technology in education is less about anonymous chips and bytes filling up our children with knowledge, less about teachers reinforcing a ‘chalk and talk’ style with an interactive whiteboard, and less about death by PowerPoint bullets. It’s more about helping learners become more world-aware, more communicative, learning from each other and understanding first-hand what makes the world go round.”

As I start to explore and to play with the new technology behind online social networking, I am not convinced that I should actively promote it to my student.

I admit, however, that this phenomenon exist in my classroom. I see more and more students chatting, blogging or just talking about it when computers and cell-phones are not available for immediate use. Like my students, I became a part of Social Netwoking myself, so I can learn more about it and share my point of view with the students.

I must say that I am excited as a child playing with new "toys".

Is Social Networking is the right thing for me? I see both negative and positive trends associated with Social Networking. I really like reflective side of it, sharing your thoughts and ideas. What concerns me is the time I spent doing it. Here is another quote from the blog, whose author discusses

The Pros and Cons of Social Networking:

"Many of my friends say they want to be less connected via the Internet, not more. They say they can't spend their days responding to Twitter direct messages and Facebook messages. Sometimes that is because they say they are too busy. Sometimes it is because they say such interactions are superficial."

What are your thoughts about Social Networking? Personally, I am having trouble to do it in a traditional way. So, I stick around and keep my eyes open. As technology evolves I believe it would be the right tool for me or I would be ready for it.

POSTSCRIPT

I want to express my joy and appreciation towards those that have or had a part in this post. Initially, I did not intend to facilitate open dialog of my post. As some of you has commented, I treat my posts as nothing more than a reflective journal. Yet, after reading some of your comments I decided to keep the conversation, now a dialog, open and let it grow on its own.

Stephen Fry, an English actor ones said:

"Is it part of some deep human instinct that we take an organism as open and wild and free as the internet, and wish then to divide it into citadels, into closed-border republics and independent city states? The systole and diastole of history has us opening and closing like a flower: escaping our fortresses and enclosures into the open fields, and then building hedges, villages and cities in which to imprison ourselves again before repeating the process once more. The internet seems to be following this pattern."

Perhaps, you have me opening again. In my next post, I want to spin the topic of Social Networking in another direction and to ask a question: "Why do we need Social Networking in the Classroom?"

Deconstructing Connectivism

After listening Siemens' lecture on Connectivism I could barely grasp this new "learning theory" at first. Some aspect of Connectivism sound familiar (neurological part), but I could'n find a clear connection his theory with teaching. Clearly, there was a disconnect between me and the guest speaker. I could hear his voice. What was missing is a picture. It didn't take a lot to reconnect to George Siemens throught his interview at the Rick's Cafe Canadien.

A similar concept (with a similar name "Connective") has been developed in 1999 by Eyal Sivan, Business Analyst & Integration Architect working in Toronto, Canada (Origin of the Connective).

In his blog, Connectivism-as-learning-theory, Sivan compares and contracts these two ideas. Reading this blog, help me deconstruct Connectivism. It features several other topics, Scale-Free Thinking, Fearing Digital Literacy, where Eyal explores several articles about technology and education.

Interestingly, the second post quotes Kevin Kelly, whose idea on "Evolution of Technology" discussed on my first post. Kevin Kelly's Prediction on the Next 5000 days of the web is also mention in the interview with George Simens. So, after this I wasn't really surprised to find Sivan's comments on Kevin Kelly's blog The Technium where Wikipedia phenomenon is discused.

In my opinnion there is no such thing as Educational Theory per se (Why Do We Need A Theory). When it comes to education it is simply a matter of your personal beliefs. In fact, I think Connectivism is simpler that you think. It is about a game with a set of simple rules, the game called emergence.

The emergence phenomenon is so profound that it opens a new look for the discovery of the origins of life itself.

"The World Wide Web (WWW) is a popular example of a decentralized system exhibiting emergent properties. There is no central organization rationing the number of links, yet the number of links pointing to each page follows a power law in which a few pages are linked to many times and most pages are seldom linked to. A related property of the network of links in the World Wide Web is that almost any pair of pages can be connected to each other through a relatively short chain of links. Although relatively well known now, this property was initially unexpected in an unregulated network. It is shared with many other types of networks called small-world networks.(Barabasi, Jeong, & Albert 1999, pp. 130-131)"

But, here is a question: If each of us a part of this complex system, how many connections each of us can hold? Microchip transistor can hold at most ten connections. How many interaction can you handle? Would it be enough for emergence (learning) occur within yourself? Is there a limit to how smart you can get through these connections?

In fact, maybe, just maybe we have been always connected. A new paradigm has emerged from quantum mechanics that may holds a key to understanding our universal connection.

Evolution of Technology

Before I even start exploring the topic of Educational Technology, I would like to take a close look on technology itself.

In doing so I watched a presentation on TED (Evolution of Technology by Kevin Kelly).
Kelly argues that there is a remarkable similarities between the evolution of biology and technology. He declares technology to be the "7th kingdom of life."

Although I like similarity he draws in this presentation, I do not see Technology as a biological organism. I don't believe that it can evolve on its own. What I do believe is that as we lean forward, evolving increasingly complex machines, it will affect our humanity and our own evolution tremendously.

Watch this video about Biotechnology Revolution, the possibilities and questions it raises to our and future generation.

And, here is another look to the future, the future that may give us a freedom of opportunities or leave us no choice.

So, it is clear to me that technology evolves as the result of choices we, humans, make. Right now, these choices are in favour of technology. The question is how far we should push technology into our life. Personally, I reached a point when I'd like to slow things down a bit and find a new balance in my life. I can always turn off my personal computer, but it is getting harder and harder to do so. Will we be giving this choice later on, or it is late already?