This has been a big week with commencing both the 'Effective On-line Facilitation' for Swinburne University, and MOOC E-Learning for Digital Cultures as part of Coursera.
I have felt overwhelmed initially adjusting to the e-environment as a place to connect with 'real' people. The experience of posting to strangers either linked through the 20 participants on the Swinburne discussion board; or by commenting on some of the posts I viewed from the 40,000 participants in the MOOC.
Overcoming my fear of posting was the first hurdle. Making written comments that made sense, that I hope would be responded to in a positive manner, or were of a standard worthy of being 'published'. The second big step was to allow myself to have a digital identity, providing a profile about me, or through providing my blogs available for all to see in the MOOC.
My main challenge has been to try to manage the shear volume of new information and create some order to retain what I need.
1. I started with using One Note to keep track of action items, assessment, and good ideas that were coming through from Blogs and Tweets.
2. I decided to focus on getting a handle on the features available through Google+ rather than Tweet and began to connect with various people through their Blogs.
3. I started to investigate a number of new e-tools including and how these may be useful to me.
- Synch Tube http://www.synchtube.com/
- Slideshare https://www.slideshare.net/login
- Storify http://storify.com/login?next=%2F
- Scoop.it https://www.scoop.it/login
4. I worked through the weekly activities for the course viewing the following videos.
Bendito Machine III:
The Inbox:
I responded to a number of blogs posting my comments and selecting various people to follow. I found this to be a big first step for me and a strange concept in making connections with strangers from across the world. I
5. Google Hangout
https://plus.google.com/104505101854214069712/posts/CWiFuN7FdBY.
I managed to get up early but miss calculated the time difference so only watched in asynchrony view but still posted my comments . I found it of value to see the lecturers and get to know them a little through the video rather than just written communication.
Core Reading:
Chandler, D. (2002). Technological determinism. Web essay, Media and Communications
Studies, University of Aberystwyth. Download as PDF.
Chandler’s web essay explores the concept and history of technological determinism, which he defines as ‘seek[ing] to explain social and historical phenomena in terms of one principal or determining factor’ - technology. Chandler calls this theory ‘reductive’, and points out that as a way of understanding social phenomena, reductionism is often criticised as being overly simplistic. This is especially the case when determinists become ‘technocentric’ - ‘trying to account for almost everything in terms of technology'. He introduces concepts such as ‘reification’; ‘autonomy’; and ‘universalism’, as elements of technological determinism. Importantly for our purposes, he also indicates how we can identify when a determinist position is being taken, even if an author or speaker doesn’t make it explicit:
The assumptions of technological determinism can usually be easily in spotted frequent references to the 'impact' of technological 'revolutions' which 'led to' or 'brought about', 'inevitable', 'far reaching', 'effects', or 'consequences' or assertions about what 'will be' happening 'sooner than we think' 'whether we like it or not'.The resources below contain some language like this, and you will probably start to notice it elsewhere. The relationship between technological determinism and utopian and dystopian accounts is one we’d like you to consider and discuss as you engage in the readings and films during the rest of this week and next week.
Perspectives on education
Daniel, J. (2002). Technology is the Answer: What was the Question? Speech from Higher Education in the Middle East and North Africa, Paris, Institut du Monde Arabe, 27-29 May 2002. http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=5909&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
In this decade-old speech, Professor Daniel, at the time the UNESCO Assistant Director for Education, offered the view that ‘in all parts of the world evolving technology is the main force that is changing society’ (a model technological determinist position, you’ll observe!). He argued that, despite popular opinion, education was not exempt from these changes, nor should it be. Indeed, technology could solve the three most pressing problems of education: access, quality and cost. His praise of open universities directly prefigures the current fascination with MOOCs, and you will recognise many of the same arguments about economies of scale at play. He asks his audience to be critical in assessing the claims that are made about educational technology and what it can accomplish. Using Daniel’s four “b”s - bias, bull, breadth and balance - what observations can you make about his utopian arguments about education? What currency do they continue to have in this field?
Noble. D. (1998). Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education. First Monday 3/1. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/569/490
Noble’s piece, still a classic 15 years on, shows just how long debates about the consequences of digital education have been circulating. In contrast to Daniel’s speech, the orientation here is clearly dystopic. Where Noble frames ‘administrators and commercial partners’ as being in favour of ‘teacherless’ digital education, and ‘teachers and students’ as being against it, these divisions have never been clear, and they certainly aren’t now. Why does Noble say that technology is a ‘vehicle’ and a ‘disguise’ for the commercialization of higher education? How can we relate this early concern with commercialism to current debates about MOOCs, for example? And how are concerns about ‘automation’ and ‘redundant faculty’ still being played out today?
And there’s more....
You may find it interesting to return to two very well-known pieces of work which have been, in their way, highly influential in the field of online education, and think about them again in terms of the perspectives we’ve been looking at. What kind of determinist position do they take? To what extent are they utopic or dystopic visions of the future? Why have the ideas they represent been so readily taken up and distributed within all educational sectors?
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9/5. http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf
Sparking extensive debate, while working its way into common usage, Prensky’s metaphor of the native and the immigrant is one of the best-known accounts of the effects of the digital upon education. Offering a narrative of ‘native’ young people’s seamless integration with technology, and the revolutionary changes that information technology has brought, Prensky warns ‘immigrant’ teachers that they face irrelevance unless they figure out how to adapt their methods and approaches to new generations of learners. When reading this paper, try to identify the strategies that Prensky uses to make his argument - how does the language he uses work to persuade the reader? Who are ‘we’ and who are ‘they’? What associations do you have with the idea of the ‘native’ and the ‘immigrant’, and how helpful are these in understanding teacher-student relationships?
Video:
The Machine is Us/ing Us
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=NLlGopyXT_g
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