CCK08

CCK08 “Paper” #3 – Opportunities and Resistance

Posted on by Jon K.

CCK08 – Why is change so difficult? The first thing that needs to be examined is the reasons why things change – usually there is a need that has gone unfulfilled that requires other things change. Change doesn’t occur when things are comfortable or safe. Look at the recent election in the United States; change happened not just because Obama was the better candidate, but because he offers hope of a better future, something that most people do not see from the same party as George W. Bush.  Change was a powerful word for Obama, summing up his campaign, becoming his slogan and certainly the focus of the election. Change. Hope. If people were more economically secure, safe if you will, this would have been a different election. There was a desire for change.

The same desire for change must happen for change to occur anywhere. In the classroom change occurs because an instructor realizes the instruction method does not convey the learning they wanted to, or they think of a better way to deliver and deploy material. If the impetus for change is not present, there will be no change. Of course, the more powerful the position, the easier to change other things. The instructor is rarely the person who can change curriculum, but can at least adapt that curriculum to be delivered in the framework that suits their personal beliefs.

I believe that instructors can take solace in the effort that they put into their planning they will receive back from the students. Students know when an instructor cares about their subject, has put care and time into crafting a lesson or activity. Every inch of lateral thought that is allowed will bring an opportunity to show that an alternative way can work, no matter how small. Every small battle won, and yet dismissed by administrators or the general public as irrelevant or even worse than that, can show that change can occur. Of course, that means that the instructor wants to change. For every progressive, thoughtful person interested in reaching students and attending to their needs, there are several professors and teachers that use their position as a position of power and authority. I would say that ignoring your student’s needs are a form of authority abuse – and a disservice to yourself.  At the least it is simply egotistical to think you know better than the students how they need to learn.

And not only how they need to learn, but what they need to learn as well. Prescribed learning is coming to an end. Maybe not in my lifetime, but that’s the course we’re charting. We’re seeing shorter time frames for graduation, accelerated learning, more on-line learning, more collaborative learning and more flexibility in the choices students have in their courses of study. Our world is much more complex that it ever has been before, with more choices and more ways to access information than before. We suffer from information gluttony (not just overload). Certainly, there are many people who have a cursory understanding of some subjects, but not a deep understanding of any one. Is this a problem? Not if there exists an easily accessible repository of deep understanding of a subject – all one has to know at that point is where to look for the deep understanding. Some may argue that deep understanding can only come from experience of the subject. Certainly historians might disagree with that perception; many were not born of the time that they study in detail. As we become more literate with technologies like the internet, we will become more adept at filtering (or having computers filter for us) data that is considered superfluous. We are seeing the rudimentary beginning of such activity through technologies like RSS feeds and XML (which allows you to write tags that describe the content of webpages or other information).

Where does one go from here? Well, one area is using the power of teaching for good and not evil. While that might seem so common sense, and a smidgen idealistic, it is time to take responsibility for the power that teachers have. Once the power is recognized, begin to understand how this classroom can be used to not only teach the curriculum that is required, but to do it in a way that reflects the ability to question and question intelligently. Critical thinking leads to critical thoughts. It is no longer good enough to teach the man to fish so that he can eat forever; it’s time to teach people to think about whether the fish is good to eat at all.

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Reflections on The Changing Role of The Teacher – Week 9

Posted on by Jon K.

CCK08 – Part of this concept is explained in my previous post, “Paper” #2 for the CCK08 course. I’ve read some others’ papers (Lisa’s, Maru’s) and probably realized that I went in a different direction than maybe I’d wished. The benefits of hindsight, no? There was a lot of discussion about how teachers are going to give up their instructional power (and I’m sure a lot of teachers will point out that they are not as powerful as maybe this course suggests and that the curriculum designers and administrators of the higher education institutions are really the power mongers…) and transform into any number of possible titles.

Oh, how beautiful that concept would be. The reality of the situation is that this isn’t going to be an overnight process. Which is unfortunate, because by the time we get around to it, the moment will have passed and there will be yet another theory to replace connectivism et al. Schools are mostly still in a didactic, lecture first, ask questions later mode. In fact, that phrase makes me think of “Kill ‘Em All, Let God Sort ‘Em Out” t-shirts hanging in the head shops of the 80’s. Maybe a t-shirt with a very suit-and-tie lecturer holding up a pointer stick with the tip smoking, with “Lecture First, Ask Questions Later” on the front and “Fail ‘Em All, Let Admissions Sort ‘Em Out” on the back. 

I digress. I also went for  a job interview yesterday, which was interesting because the position was for a tech support-like, e-learning position at a university. The support would be for a strictly problem based learning program. During the interview I was always mentally aware that “oh yeah, I have to remember to think of a program, not a distinct course…”. So there are places that are doing this decentralization of learning, shifting the teaching from the teacher to the learner. Was really a great interview from my perspective, I learned a ton about how things can work.

The changing role of the teacher will always be tied to the power issue, who has it, what are they willing to give up to others’ and are they set on keeping it.

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CCK08 “Paper” #2 – The Changing Roles of Educators

Posted on by Jon K.

Do you agree their roles are changing?

Whether or not I think educator’s roles are changing depends on the point of view of the educator. If you are a professor who believes that they “profess” the truth and ideas then it is up to the student to get what you say. If you are an instructor who teaches skills, maybe this change applies to you; maybe you investigate how to facilitate skill acquisition. Another factor in whether or not educators roles are changing is how responsive are educators to student needs?

Yes – clearly students today are not the same as students in previous generations. Several blogs and papers (Media Multitasking Among American Youth, Teens And Social Media, Defining “Creepy Treehouse”) have looked at how this generation functions on the internet. As an educator, I believe it should be your duty to use whatever format is necessary to enhance learning; a Hippocratic Oath for teachers. Similarly, part of the Hippocratic Oath that “acknowledg[es] that it is impossible for any single physician to maintain expertise in all areas. It also highlights the different historical origins of the surgeon and the physician“, an educator cannot maintain expertise in all areas of their field of study. As such, educators should go out of their way to find the knowledge experts in the field and bring them to the classroom, using educational technology and communication technology to do so. Much like how surgeons are specialists, guest speakers take those roles in our classrooms – guest lecturers. The physician’s role is played by the teacher/facilitator.

If so, what are appropriate responses?

Again, this all matters on your teaching philosophy. If the power of didactic lecturing is your preferred mode of knowledge dissemination then you won’t be affected by a paradigm shift as much as someone who thinks that the learner has a role in their own learning. One response that could occur and is not at all dependent on technology is to shift your personal role from teacher to facilitator – help students facilitate their own learning. Facilitated learning often leads to deeper understanding and comprehension of the subject matter. But, as Lisa states in her second paper for CCK08 “[a]ctive learning and facilitation creates a more participatory learning environment, but its basis is still in the learning of the individual via the method controlled by the instructor. It is ‘learner-centered’ but not ‘learner-directed’.” So really, two shifts need to occur for some educators. One change, from teacher-centered to learner-centered; then a second change from learner-centered to learner-directed.

Another shift that could occur is to recognize that students are generally more comfortable with new technologies – make sure that alternative options are available to a student who might not put the same effort into an essay as he or she would into a YouTube video, flash presentation or some alternative form of analysis. A Skype conversation with an industry or technological leader may bring greater learning that still matches pre-determined learning outcomes. This could provide more learning than a simple essay. This customization may not increase educator workload during the marking phase, but it does demand that the educator think in creative and complex ways that may be outside of their norms.

What are impediments to change?

The main impediment to change is the educators themselves. Many educators have a vested, personal interest in the power they command at the front of the classroom. For these educators, lecturing is a display of their power, their knowledge and their position in life. Just looking at the language of that sentence, the implied ownership of knowledge and even the arrogance that didactic educators own something like knowledge that is so nebulous and ever changing is to someone like me, a ridiculous statement.

The other major roadblock to change is the administrative power that cannot see how to capitalize on a new learning theory such as connectivism. People who administer in higher education institutions cannot figure out ways to keep money flowing in – even though current classroom deliveries are lacking in the methods those students want them in. Modern students require more flexible options – some want online delivery, some want different hours of instruction, some want credit for what they already know. The current models in most higher education settings are incapable of that level of flexibility.

Beyond that Bob Bell states in this Moodle discussion that K-12 learning is affected by safety issues. Brookfield talks about safety in the classroom in his book The Skillful Teacher (p. 94) and discusses how one way he deals with it is by letting students know what’s coming. I can’t describe a better way to help students discover new learning than by letting them know what might be out there. Certainly, that requires a maturity about others’ viewpoints and beliefs, which may be absent in the K-12 classroom.

References

Bell, B. (2008, November 9). Changing Role: Fast Forward To The Past. CCK08 Moodle Forums. Retrieved November 9, 2008, from http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1064#p6758

Brookfied, S. (2006). The skillful teacher. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Lane, L. (2008, November 6). Paper #2: Insurgence for Emergence. Lisa’s CCK08 WordPress Blog. Retrieved November 9, 2008, from http://lisahistory.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/paper-2-insurgence-for-emergence/.

Wikipedia (2008, November 7). Retrieved November 9, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

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E-Learning Is Not E-Teaching

Posted on by Jon K.

I woke up this morning with a start. It was about 6:30 AM, which meant it was early enough to be almost light out, but late enough that going back to sleep was an exercise in futility. I was having a dream that I was giving a speech in front of my colleagues, the faculty of the Language Studies department. After being introduced by the dean of the department, I gave my “farewell” speech. Or at least it felt like it. Here’s what I recall of it:

I hope that my absence will not be seen as a reason to abandon e-learning, but a platform for you to take the next step. I have shown you different tools to use, now you have to use them without my aid. The shift from e-teaching to e-learning has already happened. E-learning is not e-teaching. You are no longer in control of what happens in the classroom. The students are in control. You are a guide, not a director. Show people how to learn, don’t teach them.

Clearly, all this theory work in the CCK08 course and the facilitation course are starting to sink in. Even in my unconscious state. I think though my subconscious though brought forth an interesting idea. E-learning is not e-teaching. So many people use e-learning as an e-teaching place. They use the new technology with the old rules because they don’t see the distinction, even though it’s right there on the name. E-learning. Learning, not teaching. Subtle difference I suppose, but it’s there. It’s spelling out the paradigm shift that’s already shifted (and I’d say that we’re in the process of shifting again, beyond a learner centred focus).

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Reflections on Power, Control and Authority – Week 8

Posted on by Jon K.

CCK08 – In the Friday wrap up session I pointed out that lurkers in the course didn’t contribute anything to the group (the ones that do contribute to the class). I thought this was essentially a selfish stance, one that was taking and not giving. Lisa Lane responded in the backchannel that you can’t take what can be reproduced infinitely – it’s still there after you “take” it. My initial reaction was something like “oh, well my wording is imprecise”. And it was. After reflecting on it, maybe the wording is inadequate. In a connectivist classroom, giving and taking denotes a power structure that isn’t there. Plus the lurker “takes” from class and may do nothing with that information, or may share it with another set of people. Maybe everyone talks about it and comes up with great ideas. Do they connect back and push the idea further?  I’m sure Stephen would say “I don’t care” about what happens to the knowledge, and maybe that’s the sort of existential attitude one needs to take. Maybe I’m hung up on the ownership of knowledge, which is an exhibition of power?

So what happens if everyone is a lurker? For instance, if everyone taking the class made no comment in Moodle, on blogs, on Twitter, in the Google group, Second Life, Facebook and wherever else this course lives, would the course essentially cease to exist? Can Connectivism account for passive learners? Or because of the distributed nature of Connectivism, it is statistically impossible to have everyone passive in a network. Someone, somewhere, will be contributing something. We just may not see it. What does this mean for instructors? I think that’s a huge thing.

Back to power – if we follow this line of thinking, and only a small percentage (and the numbers bandied about on a couple of internet sites has been 20% and 10%) of people are comfortable posting, will they continue to post? Are they the new posting elite? Is there power from posting? This blog post, seems to think so. So does this article by Jakob Nielsen, who’s been pushing for a useable web since the beginning. One point that Nielsen makes is that blogs have worse participation percentages. Well duh… the nature of a blog is personal. To get a response on a blog one has to really throw a big hook out there. A blog is not a community (although it can be collaborative, which could lead to a community over time).

And in the spirit of this blog, considering the title and all, I contribute…

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Reflections on Instructional Design – Week 7

Posted on by Jon K.

CCK08 – I’ve been doing a lot of connecting this week – polished off Introducing Wittgenstein which was a nice light read that makes a lot of sense in regards to the Connectivism course. I also saw Religulous which is tied into the idea of self-determination and control (this time, the control that religion imposes on behaviour, something that education also does).

Instructional design for me has always meant the “stuff” you do in class. It strikes me that instructional design (which implies a power structure from the get-go) is not how one would want to approach the process of using a connectivist approach to teaching (again, another word filled with power implications). If connectivism is chaotic by nature (as nature is chaotic), if connectivism is distributed, if connectivism is reacting to student needs rather than proactively dictating then how can one design what happens in the classroom?

This thought originates from a comment by Guy Boulet in Harold Jarche’s blog that went:

“In my mind, this is the university of the future, and the future is now. It is time that faculty stop thinking that what they teach is gospel. The role of faculty staff must shift from teacher to tutor. Students must be guided, not taught in order to better prepare them for the reality of the workplace.”

Hmmm, tutors… is that the future of teachers(/facilitators/instructors…)? What an incredible jump for someone to make! If instructors are to move to the tutoring model, does that not assume that we have to be subject matter experts, able to deftly move from one aspect of a topic to another? Certainly there are people in education who are there because their intellect and ability to think grants them some power. Sometimes, this power is granted through the mere act of publication – but now that self-publication is de rigeur, we have all fallen into a popularity contest of sorts – whoever has the most hits and links, whoever publishes the most is the “expert”. Critical thinking will sort some of this out (trash is still trash whether it’s Chomsky’s or my trash). The implication of higher education moving towards making professors into tutors is idealism without any sort of grounding. Maybe I’m so cynical that I believe that the power strutures that exist are unmoveable.

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Reflections on Chaos and Complexity – Week 6

Posted on by Jon K.

CCK08 – This week was interesting in that the ideas put forth have been things I’ve been saying for a while. Life is complex. Nothing is simple. Chaos and complexity is illustrated  well by the everyday classroom, and the things that can occur in it. The same material taught the same (and it could be argued that it’s never exactly the same) way has different outcomes depending on the contextual.

Complexity. It’s funny how the two courses I’m currently taking and the myriad of stuff I’m doing outside of schoolwork has a way of intertwining. I’m applying some of the things that the Connectivism course is doing to my Distance Ed course I’m teaching. The stuff that the Brock facilitation course talked about this week was context-heavy: that’s a big piece of the Connectivism course. Serendipity? Maybe. I don’t want to believe that anything is that mystical. Might as well start believing in unicorns and pegasii too. It does, however, speak to the idea that things are interconnected in ways that we don’t always see. Could that be the real-world application of connectivism?

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Reflections on Networks and Groups – Week 5

Posted on by Jon K.

CCK08 – Well, I’ve taken a couple days off to rest my weary brain, and come back to work and still have a pile of things to do. One of the questions (that I haven’t ventured forth) that I have is that if groups behave as one cohesive body (much like an individual) can groups be networked? I suppose the easy answer is yes, that in both the real and virtual worlds that groups act together to leverage legislation, work together to complete game objectives and other acts. The devil’s advocate might say that they are just acting as a larger group – for a common goal. Then the question becomes more about when groups act together do they become a larger group or a network? And if the larger groups goal is accomplished, does this larger group then become splintered to be two smaller groups networked as each group reverts to their original (and different) purposes?

I don’t have neat answers for that. I guess that’s the nature of what we’re doing here.

The second point I’m going back and forth on is information overload – specifically connections overload. I’ve seen quite a few things surfacing (namely at Lisa Lane’s blog, the readings this week, a post from Fake Plastic Fish, a couple of blurbs on TV…) about basic information overload, and how it’s a bad thing. I don’t see it as a bad thing, but as  a good thing. What you take out of the information dump defines who you are, it says a lot about you. Now certainly, you could end up at the bottom of the heap burried under all those bits. More often than not, humans find a way to deal with it (some by going out into the woods and sending letter bombs to academics… not the best way to channel it). I think dealing with all this information you find a way to conceptually handle it and sort out the wheat from the chaff. You have to prioritize. I know, I know not eath shocking. I guess I’ll be able to better understand some of these concepts after the readings this week.

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Reflections on the History of Networked Learning – Week 4

Posted on by Jon K.

I discovered this week that the discussions that happen on Friday for this course are really what people should be tuning into. They’re great conversations and are the stuff of good discourse. As for the historical perspective on last week, well, meh. I didn’t get much out of it, and I suppose the point was that one should know how we got to where we are to know where we can go. Again, the Moodle forums were much more interesting than either of the readings and I did try to keep my toe in the water there, so to speak. I think things are settling in the course, with people finding their roles and hopefully I’ll be able to attend one of the two video sessions on Wednesday or actually chat at noon on Friday (coincidentally when we have a meeting here at the college regarding online courses).

So, to further a thought that I had while reading and commenting on one of the other participants statements that SARS was the most successful network, I responded that connectivism could be the virus that SARS contained. The meaning I was driving at was similar to the McLuhan quote I posted back in early September (that a couple people either coincidentally started using or read here and liked the analogy), was that networks are organic and created by humans, so in some essense they will be reflective of what we do, see and feel. The information carried by the network can be all sorts of things, so the way it is accessed is important because that’s what provides context (and to borrow from constructivists, that’s how we create meaning for ourselves, context).

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