no more band-aids
>Of course, the same society now said to be undergoing a computer revolution has long since gotten used to “revolutions” in laundry detergents, underarm deodorants, floor waxes, and other consumer products. Exhausted in Madison Avenue advertising slogans, the image had lost much of its punch.
– Langdon Winner. The Whale and the Reactor. 1986.
>”Appropriate technologists were unwilling to face squarely the facts of organized social and political power. Fascinated by dreams of a spontaneous, grass-roots revolution, they avoided any deep-seeking analysis of the institutions that control the direction of technological and economic development. In this happy self-confidence they did not bother to devise strategies that might have helped them overcome obvious sources of resistance. The same judgement that Marx and Engels passed on the utopians of the nineteenth century apply just as well to the appropriate technologists of the 1970s: they were lovely visionaries, naive about the forces that contained them.”
– Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor. 1986.
Edupunks are modern-day Appropriate Technologists.How do we prevent the edupunk movement from following the same fate as the Appropriate Technology movement of the 70’s and 80’s?
**update**: My initial note relating the AT movement with Edupunk wasn’t really thought through, and seems to have pissed offstruck a nerve with a few people. It definitely wasn’t meant as an insult or potshot or anything like that, but that phrase popped into my head as I read the passage. Maybe a better wording would have been as a question, as modified above…
In reading some of the fantastic posts coming out of the recent conferences in Barcelona (see [Scott Leslie’s work of art](http://www.edtechpost.ca/free-and-learning/) or [Jon Beasley-Murray’s](http://posthegemony.blogspot.com/2010/11/blase.html), or [Brian Lamb’s recap](http://blogs.ubc.ca/brian/2010/11/abierto-o-cerrado/) or the rest of the planet’s stuff [here](http://www.google.ca/search?q=opened2010&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=v&source=lnms&tbs=blg:1&ei=ib7eTLH5BIy2sAO9v9m-Cg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&ved=0CBIQ_AU&prmdo=1) and [here](http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmdo=1&tbs=blg%3A1&q=drumbeat+barcelona&aq=f&aqi=g1g-m1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=) ), I was struck by how much more impact the “non-educational” Drumbeat conference seems to have had, in comparison to the “educational” Open Education conference. Maybe it’s just that the people I follow are strongly in The Choir, so the OpenEd conference isn’t as revelatory for them, but it seems as though the more generally hackerish and cultural-focused Drumbeat conference caused more of a stir in thinking.
This is not a sleight against OpenEd, which by all accounts was a fantastic experience. It’s just that Drumbeat appears to have caused more of a profound, cultural(?) effect. I’m just interpreting based on the ephemeral tweets and more-rare blog posts posted by people who were lucky enough to be in Barcelona.
I’ve noticed a similar thing in conferences I’ve gone to. The “education” conferences had some interesting sessions, and provided a chance to meet some interesting people, but the “non-educational” conferences seem to really push me out of my comfort zone, and to more radically alter how I think about things (including, or especially, education).
It’s one of the reasons I love Northern Voice so much. It’s not an “education” conference. It’s a social/communication/sharing/culture conference, with an educational aspect. It’s the mix of people from various fields and walks of life, most of whom would never in a million years find themselves in an “education” conference, that makes it such a fascinating and compelling experience. One that has caused me to think (and rethink) each year I’ve gone.
So, while there’s still a chance I may be forced to attend an “education” conference for work, I don’t think I’ll be asking to go to any. I’m going to try to focus on the “non-education” events as much as possible (which, frankly, isn’t very often, given budgetary constraints on campus…)
[Unlimited Magazine](http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com) just [ran an article by Emily Senger on the massively open online course experience](http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/2010/09/the-wild-world-of-massively-open-online-courses/). It’s a good overview of open online learning, and is definitely worth reading – if only for the 6 paragraphs featuring yours truly… They also spent some of the article talking with people that actually taught the course.
> George Siemens, along with colleague Stephen Downes, tried out the open course concept in fall 2008 through the University of Manitoba in a course called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, or CCK08 for short. The course would allow 25 students to register, pay and receive credit for the course. All of the course content, including discussion boards, course readings, podcasts and any other teaching materials, was open to anyone who had an internet connection and created a user profile.
and the closer, by your humble narrator:
>”It comes down to the motivation,” Norman says. “Are you (an) intrinsically motivated person who does things because you’re interested? Or do you do things because you want the gold star. If you’re motivated by the gold star, then this probably isn’t interesting to you.”
The [September 2010 issue of Unlimited Magazine](http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/2010/09/) is dedicated to education and learning, and the changing natures of both.
A [physicist and a biochemist have a conversation about grades](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2010/08/and_just_suppose_you_had_no_gr.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss”), decide that grades are dumb.
>We were talking (and surprisingly agreeing) that grades were dumb. What would happen if we stopped grading? Wouldn’t that be awesome?
>
>So, what would happen if there were no grades? Here are some thoughts.
Read [the post for some of their thoughts](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2010/08/and_just_suppose_you_had_no_gr.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss”). What’s interesting to me is that these aren’t long-haired lefty liberal hippies calling for The End of Education. They are scientists and educators, realizing that grades don’t do what we think they do, and how that negatively effects the education experience.
[Bill pulls responses to 3 recent articles](http://funnymonkey.com/consumption-and-brand) (and I’d argue a fourth – the [Bill Gates “education is the web” thing](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gatesfoundation.org%2Fannual-letter%2F2010%2FPages%2Feducation-learning-online.aspx&ei=629lTKvpLYScnwfxr9WuDA&usg=AFQjCNGJ9lROOodaYWEh4-NAvdRt3qYqeA) ) together with a single sentence:
> Just to emphasize, whenever anyone talks about “delivering” education, the implication is that learning is a passive activity that can be brought to people – in other words, getting us back into “consuming” mode.
Learning is active. There’s no getting around that. Therefore, an effective education involves **much** more than simple content distribution. Framing education as being a series of exercises in content consumption (no matter how great the content may be) doesn’t serve anyone well. It’s also not as simple as grafting on a layer of social networking on top of content. Education and learning are so much more than that.
a cold, gloomy, foggy day in calgary, with giant killer attack crows swooping down on unsuspecting civilians.
Jaymie Koroluk asked the twitterverse about the proper spelling of “eLearning”.
I responded back, a bit snarkily:
@jaymiek learning. There is no e.
It’s too much to describe in 140 characters. But I can’t stand the “e” in eLearning. (I can’t stand the “m” in mLearning, either.)
It’s just learning. The “e” is counter-productive. It forces people to focus on the technology. To see it as separate. As an isolated thing that must somehow be fit into the regular flow of teaching and learning.
Bullshit.
It’s all just learning. Technology can provide some pretty amazing affordances – the ability to handle larger scale open discussions, the ability to have every participant in a class to be content producers/consumers/collaborators, etc… Technology is important.
But it is not separate. Viewing it as a separate thing – eLearning/mLearning/whateverLearning – leaves it disjointed and fractured. A class has to shift gears to somehow begin dealing with the “technology section” of a lesson, before returning to the “real” learning. Focusing on “eLearning” pushes the incredible stuff that technology can do into some form of electronic/abstract ghetto.
My team at the Teaching & Learning Centre is often called in to various teaching programmes to provide a “technology session” – we do it grudgingly, knowing that the hour (or two) we’re given out of a week-long programme is likely the only real non-superficial integration of technology and discussion of pedagogy and implications. The “technology session” underscores the “e” in eLearning. The “e” as a separate thing that can be bolted on. A separate thing that is less important than the “real” learning that happens without the “e”.
I understand that “eLearning” is used as a shorthand, much like “Web 2.0” is a shorthand for a constellation of properties and attributes rather than anything concrete. But, we need to stop treating technology as a separate thing, as something in addition to conventional teaching and learning.
Effective learning requires seamless application of appropriate technologies – or the lack thereof – and when this is done, the distinctions and segregation disappear. It’s just learning.
I’m in the first orientation session for the GDER program, rebooting my MSc after a several year hiatus.
This article is making the rounds, and the comments on the Globe and Mail page are pretty entertaining. Professor Denis Rancourt gave everyone in his fourth year physics class an automatic A+ so they wouldn’t be stressed out over grades and could get into some interesting and meaningful stuff in the class.
I’ll be clear – I think that’s a fantastic idea. I’d maybe pull back a bit and make the course pass/fail rather than automatic A+, but I love the idea of nuking grades and focusing on learning instead.
The problem isn’t with Rancourt’s actions – with academic freedom, he should be able to do what he wants with his class (and of course students are also free to appeal the grades and actions). The problem is that his is likely the only course in that institution, and probably the continent, that has thrown out grades in such a way. The fact that he got fired for it, and subsequently arrested for trespassing, shows how rare this action is.
Isolated professors willing to risk their tenure by experimenting with gradeless classes will be perceived by the public as being “lesser” classes, not up to “the standards” of measurement. When a society only understands assessment of learning in terms of letter grades and curves, anything else is perceived as meaningless liberal garbage. Even if it is actually a profoundly powerful experiment in meaningful teaching and learning.
What is needed is a larger shift away from grades and numerical metrics of assessment. And that kind of change just isn’t possible with a lone professor tilting at that particular windmill. But, maybe, the concept has now gained a bit of public awareness, and subsequent experiments may meet slightly less resistance.
As we continue moving toward a more individual and portfolio-driven assessment of a person’s abilities, philosophies, and educational contexts, grades become less meaningful anyway. What may have been lacking in Rancourt’s class was some concrete means for students to document and describe their learning, once their A+ grade had been essentially rendered meaningless as an assessment metric.