As I sit down to write this asynchronous blog entry fairly late on a Thursday evening, I have just returned home from teaching one of my classes. It's a group of 8 "advanced" adult ESL learners. This was the end of the first week of classes, so we have not yet begun to delve into the meat of the course. I had them work in teams to label the provinces and territories of Canada and name the capital cities of the various jurisdictions. That part of the activity was fairly banal, although they had fun and learned something by doing it.
But the really interesting things happened after they were done. We started discussing what they know about various parts of the country. This quickly led to discussion about landscapes, which in turn veered into a discussion about urban and rural life. In discussing cities, we started talking about homelessness. This led to a discussion around substance abuse. And that led to a fascinating discussion of Vancouver's Insite safe injection clinic--initiated by one of the students. We also had a discussion about Canada's treatment of First Nations people, again initiated by a student. These were amazing discussions, with huge amounts of learning taking place, and none of the flow from topic to topic was initiated or directed by me, the ostensible teacher.
So a seemingly "simple" cartographic exercise led to numerous real, authentic, relevant, meaningful discussions about a range of subjects. The learners were able to use and extend their speaking and listening skills. They met new vocabulary. They used a variety of grammatical constructions. They became so engaged in what we were talking about that they became less self-conscious about making mistakes and simply talked--about things that mattered to them. For an ESL instructor, this is pure gold--and it's precisely the sort of thing that could never happen in online learning, be it synchronous or asynchronous.
Granted, the circumstances or context were quite specific--adults, advanced learners, a fairly small group of people who are comfortable with each other, and so on. But I have done this activity several times, with learners at various levels of English proficiency, in groups both larger and smaller, and the result is always the same. The activity leads to spontaneous conversations. The topics vary--but they are always meaningful. The students exchange ideas and opinions as best they can. They encounter things they didn't know--both subject matter and linguistic.
I was about to say that ESL may be a "special" circumstance, but I remembered that the paper by Ge (Ge, 2012) about asynchronous vs. blended cyber learning dealt with ESL students, so clearly ESL is not a special case. Online or distance learning simply cannot--as of yet--replicate the sort of spontaneous interpersonal exchanges I have just described. And more often than not, these kinds of exchanges have, through the magic of serendipity or synchronicity, been discussions I have been able to relate directly to the lesson/unit/topic we are "supposed to be" doing, according to the curriculum and syllabus.
The fact that I can do the work I need to for this course at 22:30 on a Thursday night is fantastic. It's an incredible convenience, and if not for asynchronous online delivery, I might well not be able to do this course or the program of which it is a component. That said, there is simply no way that, given current technology capabilities, any mode of online delivery could possibly reproduce the incredible, spontaneous dialogue that took place in my class tonight. Perhaps someday the technology will exist to allow such things, but at the moment it simply does not, and online learning is always frustratingly attenuated and mediated. Online learning is great in many ways, don't get me wrong; but as far as I am concerned, it is still a fairly pale shadow of the kinds of learning that can take place in a face-to-face environment.
Reference: Ge, Z.-G. (2012). Cyber Asynchronous versus Blended Cyber Approach in Distance English Learning. Educational Technology & Society, 15(2), 286-297.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Copyright, Copyleft, Copywrong
In one of those serendipitous moments, I happened to have a quick look at my Facebook page as I sat down to write this week's blog entry. Lo and behold, there was a post from Boing Boing about copyright in the EU.
The post leads to this article, written by Cory Doctorow, a founder of Boing Boing, among monay other things. Doctorow is a Toronto native who has become one of the leading voices of the Open Rights and Creative Commons movements. He recently published a book entitled "Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age", which examines the current state of global copyright laws, especially as they pertain to creative/artistic production and consumption.
The interesting thing about the Boing Boing article, of course, is the fact that the one and only currently elected member of the Pirate Party, Julia Reda of Germany, is leading the European Parliamentary review of copyright legislation in Europe! The Pirate Party was born in Sweden in response to government crackdowns and raids on the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. It has since spread internationally, including to Canada (disclosure: I have donated to the Pirate Party of Canada).
Tangentially, The Pirate Bay was again raided and shut down just last month, but as a countdown timer on The Pirate Bay homepage hints, it might be back in operation again soon. In any event, to have a member of parliament representing a party founded by so-called "pirates" who have been hounded and prosecuted for years leading the review of copyright legislation is truly remarkable.
Just this week, the organization Copyright for Creativity issued a manifesto calling for comprehensive copyright reform to "support creativity and innovation". This and all of the above are just some examples of recent developments in the world of copyright.
The point of all this is that copyright and "intellectual property" are incredibly hotly-contested concepts at the moment. There are a great many other voices in the discussions, including politicians, academics, cultural creators, and so on. The people, articles, ideas, and debates I have referenced in this post may seem far removed from the world of an individual teacher in Alberta. But I would propose that they are not at all distant. These discussions will shape the flow of ideas in the world we inhabit. As far as I'm concerned, these are profoundly important ideas, and--if we are to call ourselves informed citizens, let alone educators--it is our responsibility to at least become informed about these debates. At appropriate grade levels, we should also be introducing these debates to our students. They must be aware of, and understand at some level, these sorts of discussions if they are to be informed, engaged, critical "digital citizens".
References:
Copyright for Creativity. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://copyright4creativity.eu/
Doctorow, C. (2015.01.22). They put a Pirate Party MEP in charge of EU copyright reform: you won't believe the awesomesauce that followed. Retrieved 2015.01.22 from http://boingboing.net/2015/01/22/they-put-a-pirate-party-mep-in.html
Gibbs, S. (2015-01-21). Countdown Timers Hints at Pirate Bay Return. Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://thepiratebay.se/
Gibbs, S. (2014-12-10). Swedish Police Raid Sinks The Pirate Bay. Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/10/swedish-police-raid-pirate-bay
Information Doesn't Want to Be Free. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015.01.22 from http://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/information-doesn-t-want-to-be-free
Pirate Party of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015-01-22 from https://www.pirateparty.ca/
The Copyright Manifesto. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://copyright4creativity.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/C4C-Copyright-Manifesto-20150119.pdf
The Pirate Bay. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://thepiratebay.se/
Post by Boing Boing.
The post leads to this article, written by Cory Doctorow, a founder of Boing Boing, among monay other things. Doctorow is a Toronto native who has become one of the leading voices of the Open Rights and Creative Commons movements. He recently published a book entitled "Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age", which examines the current state of global copyright laws, especially as they pertain to creative/artistic production and consumption.
The interesting thing about the Boing Boing article, of course, is the fact that the one and only currently elected member of the Pirate Party, Julia Reda of Germany, is leading the European Parliamentary review of copyright legislation in Europe! The Pirate Party was born in Sweden in response to government crackdowns and raids on the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. It has since spread internationally, including to Canada (disclosure: I have donated to the Pirate Party of Canada).
Tangentially, The Pirate Bay was again raided and shut down just last month, but as a countdown timer on The Pirate Bay homepage hints, it might be back in operation again soon. In any event, to have a member of parliament representing a party founded by so-called "pirates" who have been hounded and prosecuted for years leading the review of copyright legislation is truly remarkable.
Just this week, the organization Copyright for Creativity issued a manifesto calling for comprehensive copyright reform to "support creativity and innovation". This and all of the above are just some examples of recent developments in the world of copyright.
The point of all this is that copyright and "intellectual property" are incredibly hotly-contested concepts at the moment. There are a great many other voices in the discussions, including politicians, academics, cultural creators, and so on. The people, articles, ideas, and debates I have referenced in this post may seem far removed from the world of an individual teacher in Alberta. But I would propose that they are not at all distant. These discussions will shape the flow of ideas in the world we inhabit. As far as I'm concerned, these are profoundly important ideas, and--if we are to call ourselves informed citizens, let alone educators--it is our responsibility to at least become informed about these debates. At appropriate grade levels, we should also be introducing these debates to our students. They must be aware of, and understand at some level, these sorts of discussions if they are to be informed, engaged, critical "digital citizens".
References:
Copyright for Creativity. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://copyright4creativity.eu/
Doctorow, C. (2015.01.22). They put a Pirate Party MEP in charge of EU copyright reform: you won't believe the awesomesauce that followed. Retrieved 2015.01.22 from http://boingboing.net/2015/01/22/they-put-a-pirate-party-mep-in.html
Gibbs, S. (2015-01-21). Countdown Timers Hints at Pirate Bay Return. Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://thepiratebay.se/
Gibbs, S. (2014-12-10). Swedish Police Raid Sinks The Pirate Bay. Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/10/swedish-police-raid-pirate-bay
Information Doesn't Want to Be Free. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015.01.22 from http://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/information-doesn-t-want-to-be-free
Pirate Party of Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015-01-22 from https://www.pirateparty.ca/
The Copyright Manifesto. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://copyright4creativity.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/C4C-Copyright-Manifesto-20150119.pdf
The Pirate Bay. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015-01-22 from http://thepiratebay.se/
Thursday, January 15, 2015
One life, Two Lives, Three Lives, Four...
Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.
Of this week's readings and viewing material (PLEASE don't get me started on what I thought of the Cyberwise YouTube clip!), I found Ohler's brief paper the most substantive, meaningful, and thought provoking (Ohler, 2011). (There's something to be said for brevity--a lesson I need to learn!) His notion that students lead multiple digital lives and his argument for "character education" is quite cogent--even though some may find the idea of "character education" rather reactionary.
He is perhaps somewhat unfair to teachers, administrators, specialists, and school boards. Most by now certainly understand that "studying issues related to the personal, social, and environmental effects of a technological lifestyle" do indeed have a place in school. But I'm not sure that many would (yet) agree with his assertion that "the most important job before us as a society is to help our students understand issues of digital responsibility, and to do so at school as part of a digital health initiative."
Personally, I'm inclined to agree with Ohler. As most of you know, my epiphany from our last course was that we have been thinking about the relationship between "school" and "technology" the wrong way around. It's now beating a dead horse to say that "school" as a social institution is still mired in 19th (let alone 20th) century ideas and values, while "technology" is a revolutionary paradigm which is fundamentally changing every aspect of civilization, of which "school" is just one small part.
As such, rather than thinking about how to "integrate" (and often bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate in our dogged efforts) technology into a broken paradigm of "school", we should be thinking in precisely the opposite way--how do we completely reconceptualize school and integrate it within the new technological paradigm?
In such a different approach, studying issues related to the personal, social, and environmental effects of a technological lifestyle, and "helping our digital kids balance the individual empowerment of digital technology with a sense of personal, community, and global responsibility" do indeed come to occupy a central position.
It seems to me that Ohler is quite correct when he suggests that (many) educators (still) tend to respond to sexting, cyberbullying, and other technology-related issues--both good and bad--in a piecemeal, ad hoc fashion, as if they are unrelated. I see evidence of the same sort of thing when I see how educators are trying (with the best possible intentions) to "integrate" technology into whatever part of education with which they are involved.
The problem is precisely a failure to think about technology holistically and systemically. To use a building analogy, it's like making a building airtight (in a valiant attempt to conserve energy), without realizing the impacts this has on air quality, moisture, mold, and other unintended consequences. It's a failure to understand the building holistically and systemically.
My final thought has to do with the notion of multiple lives or identities. Even if/when schools do see the importance of studying a technological lifestyle, students still lead multiple lives and create multiple identities. We all do. Our "digital selves" are constructs. We--all of us--carefully construct, manage, mediate, and curate our online identities. My own children were already well versed in this by age 7 or 8 as they created "identities" and "avatars" for Minecraft and other online games and interactions. In some cases, they created multiple personas for the same platform, using them interchangeably to manifest different "personalities" online.
So when we speak of "digital citizenship", it seems to me that we must always be aware of the fact that--unlike "being ourselves", so much of which we cannot control or change, in "real" life--our online "selves" are always deliberately constructed, artificial, mediated presences. "Michael Ireton" on Twitter or (shudder!) Facebook is not the same as "Michael Ireton" in this online world, and not the same again as "Michael Ireton" in real life. (Not to mention alternate online personalities I may or may not have created.)
As one of the participants in Burnett's study (Burnett, 2011) said of her online persona, "It's like it's me but it's a bit more of me."
It is deeply naive to think there is a direct one-to-one relationship between who we are offline and "who we are" (possibly plural) online.
References:
Ohler, J. (2011). Digital Citizenship Means Character Education for the Digital Age. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 48(1), 25-27
Burnett, C. (2011). Pre-service teachers' digital literacy practices: exploring contingency in identity and digital literacy in and out of educational contexts. Language and Education, 25(5), 433-449.
Of this week's readings and viewing material (PLEASE don't get me started on what I thought of the Cyberwise YouTube clip!), I found Ohler's brief paper the most substantive, meaningful, and thought provoking (Ohler, 2011). (There's something to be said for brevity--a lesson I need to learn!) His notion that students lead multiple digital lives and his argument for "character education" is quite cogent--even though some may find the idea of "character education" rather reactionary.
He is perhaps somewhat unfair to teachers, administrators, specialists, and school boards. Most by now certainly understand that "studying issues related to the personal, social, and environmental effects of a technological lifestyle" do indeed have a place in school. But I'm not sure that many would (yet) agree with his assertion that "the most important job before us as a society is to help our students understand issues of digital responsibility, and to do so at school as part of a digital health initiative."
Personally, I'm inclined to agree with Ohler. As most of you know, my epiphany from our last course was that we have been thinking about the relationship between "school" and "technology" the wrong way around. It's now beating a dead horse to say that "school" as a social institution is still mired in 19th (let alone 20th) century ideas and values, while "technology" is a revolutionary paradigm which is fundamentally changing every aspect of civilization, of which "school" is just one small part.
As such, rather than thinking about how to "integrate" (and often bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate in our dogged efforts) technology into a broken paradigm of "school", we should be thinking in precisely the opposite way--how do we completely reconceptualize school and integrate it within the new technological paradigm?
In such a different approach, studying issues related to the personal, social, and environmental effects of a technological lifestyle, and "helping our digital kids balance the individual empowerment of digital technology with a sense of personal, community, and global responsibility" do indeed come to occupy a central position.
It seems to me that Ohler is quite correct when he suggests that (many) educators (still) tend to respond to sexting, cyberbullying, and other technology-related issues--both good and bad--in a piecemeal, ad hoc fashion, as if they are unrelated. I see evidence of the same sort of thing when I see how educators are trying (with the best possible intentions) to "integrate" technology into whatever part of education with which they are involved.
The problem is precisely a failure to think about technology holistically and systemically. To use a building analogy, it's like making a building airtight (in a valiant attempt to conserve energy), without realizing the impacts this has on air quality, moisture, mold, and other unintended consequences. It's a failure to understand the building holistically and systemically.
My final thought has to do with the notion of multiple lives or identities. Even if/when schools do see the importance of studying a technological lifestyle, students still lead multiple lives and create multiple identities. We all do. Our "digital selves" are constructs. We--all of us--carefully construct, manage, mediate, and curate our online identities. My own children were already well versed in this by age 7 or 8 as they created "identities" and "avatars" for Minecraft and other online games and interactions. In some cases, they created multiple personas for the same platform, using them interchangeably to manifest different "personalities" online.
So when we speak of "digital citizenship", it seems to me that we must always be aware of the fact that--unlike "being ourselves", so much of which we cannot control or change, in "real" life--our online "selves" are always deliberately constructed, artificial, mediated presences. "Michael Ireton" on Twitter or (shudder!) Facebook is not the same as "Michael Ireton" in this online world, and not the same again as "Michael Ireton" in real life. (Not to mention alternate online personalities I may or may not have created.)
As one of the participants in Burnett's study (Burnett, 2011) said of her online persona, "It's like it's me but it's a bit more of me."
It is deeply naive to think there is a direct one-to-one relationship between who we are offline and "who we are" (possibly plural) online.
References:
Ohler, J. (2011). Digital Citizenship Means Character Education for the Digital Age. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 48(1), 25-27
Burnett, C. (2011). Pre-service teachers' digital literacy practices: exploring contingency in identity and digital literacy in and out of educational contexts. Language and Education, 25(5), 433-449.
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