On Using Technology Without Understanding It
Friday, 25 December 2009 Clay Burell 
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This editorial from our high school student newspaper is a must-read for its criticism of the school-wide technology integration initiative. It’s a must-read for other reasons too — and other readers — but read it first, and we’ll get to that very different party afterward.
The first thing I did when I read this was mentally applaud.
The second thing I did was wish I could reply to it and, better still, promote it for a wider audience than the guaranteed one in the schoolhouse (I’ve always thought school newspapers were a bit like busywork, since they were monopolies without real-world competition, and had no incentive to earn a bigger audience through superior quality — especially silly in the Information Digital Age).
I wanted to start a conversation with the writer, share ideas and viewpoints, extend the topic — you know, basically learn more from her,1 and ideally give such quality feedback in my comments that maybe the author would learn more too. Surely she knew that authors have far less authority in the Information Digital Age, that the nature of those things called texts and authors has been revolutionized by the ability of readers to write on the same page, to (in the language of AP exams) “challenge, qualify, and extend” the author’s ideas and words and worldview.
Surely she knew that the 21st Century writer learns as much from the 21st Century reader as the reader does from the writer. (Because 21st Century readers — the best ones, anyway — write with the writer. Just look at Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman’s blog, all the references he makes in his writing to what his readers are saying in comments. Look at Rolling Stones’ Matt Taibbi having conversations with his readers in the space beneath his articles — you know, those silly “forum”-like things. Just look.)
So yeah, I wanted to respond to it, and share to the world here on my (real) blog. I thought the writing and the critique of the rush to laptop use in the classroom were that good.
But the editorial was on that precious resource and traditional tool called — what was it? It’s been so long since I’ve written on it — oh yeah, paper, so no luck there (for me, or the forests, or the atmosphere, or the students’ future environmental situation).
The third thing I did was figure, since the student says her “generation is more than adept at using technology,” that she would surely know that journalism lives more and more online now, that print news is dying.2 Since she says, after all, that she’s a “member of the Information Age,” she would know that the Huffington Post — a newpaper that has never been in print — eclipsed the venerable old Washington Post (that traditional newspaper that actually still uses paper) to take the number 2 spot, after the New York Times, in total traffic last September. I figured she’d know that the, what shall we call it?, traditional NYTimes itself is taking out loans on its headquarters building, due to its almost nonexistent profit margins3 in this post-Gutenberg age. But surely this student knew all this stuff too, because I’m sure she uses an RSS reader, and reads links from the thousand smart people she’s built up in her Twitter network — surely Tweetdeck is one of the applications open at the bottom of her screen, and surely it’s populated not by people who share her blood or her table at the school cafeteria, like most of the silly Facebook crowd, but by like-minded peers (and unlike-minded ones) around the world.
Surely she uses these by-now old tools to stay more informed about the world than people who don’t use them.
I figured, in short, that I could find an online version of the editorial — since the student surely knew that that’s not only writing’s future, it’s its present — and be able to respond to it, and promote it to all of you readers dotting the six inhabited continents on my nifty Clustrmap at the bottom of the right sidebar. A simple select, copy, paste, and link to her site so my blog’s readers could follow the link, join the conversation, share their praise (and their experience). Maybe offer her an internship if they’re in the publishing biz, since I figured her blog would surely have a “Contact Me” page for just such possibilities. I mean, she’s technically adept, after all, and so used to troubleshooting Internet Explorer for her parents. (She surely dropped IE long ago with most geeks in favor of Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, or whatever. It’s a parent thing, surely.)
The fourth thing I did was search for the online version of the paper and, sure enough, I found it — in pdf. You know, the format where, as I saw Will Richardson put it, “good ideas go to die.”
And that almost totally changed my view of the editorial. I couldn’t comment. I couldn’t read other students’, teachers’, administrators’, parents’, and purely authentic Readers-from-the-Brave-New-Web’s ideas about the text. I couldn’t copy and paste the most interesting ideas in the text for fine-grained commentary here, and link to the article to send you there. Instead, I had to take screenshots of it and upload it here. All of which suggested to me that, contrary to the claims of “adeptness” and expertise in the editorial, the editorial writer(s) have much more to learn than they realize.4
Parting shots: Last month I took three days off of school to fly to the beach in Australia, all expenses paid, in order to give a talk to an educational technology conference. I got the offer via the “Contact Me” page on this blog, from a reader of this blog I’d never met (because while she did read, I’m not aware of her ever commenting). She invited me to speak simply by virtue of the fact that she said she was a long-time reader who liked what she read here.
Here. On a simple blog.
That wouldn’t have happened if I thought pdf was good enough for the 21st Century writer.
A couple months before that, I got another “Contact Me” bite from a PBS TV documentary producer asking if I’d be available to be a talking head on a show they were doing about classic literature — for the first episode, to be exact, which was about none other than Gilgamesh, about which I’ve written about 20,000 words over the last year here, on this simple blog. She’d read my take, and said it was exactly the kind of approach and tone her team wanted for the show.5
That, too, wouldn’t have happened if I thought pdf was good enough for the 21st Century writer.
But at that Australia conference, much of what I said actually agreed with what the student editorial said: I agree that teachers can be excellent at what they do without technology. I agree that, worse still, pushing teachers to use technology before they’re trained, experienced, and ready can indeed lead to worse teaching and worse learning. I really do think the student writer’s criticisms along these lines should be taken very, very seriously. I’ve been in this world long enough to believe that we can’t push the reluctant to use it, and that that’s a fool’s errand. The best we can do is “pull,” I said in Australia. But even that word is wrong, since it still requires more energy than is sustainable for teachers. Now I believe the best we can do is simply attract. The sun isn’t getting muscle fatigue keeping the planets in orbit. It’s simply attracting them, effortlessly, because of its impressive mass. Teachers should be suns in this way, and students the planets worth keeping in orbit. Those with ears, let them hear.
But. What I hope I’ve given the writer pause to reflect on in all of the above is that having “six or seven apps” open on your computer, doing Facebook, and helping Mom with IE is nothing special. It’s about as impressive as publishing to pdf.
And: Here’s my pitch, and it’s to you, student editorial writer, whoever you are:
Our school is going 1:1 next year whether we like it or not. And I’m not sure I like it myself, since I’ve taught at a 1:1 laptop school before, and really wonder, as I wrote lately, if “the Web is too beautiful to waste on the young.”
Because just as you’re arguing that admin shouldn’t force teachers who don’t want to learn new ways to do their job, I’d much rather not force students to learn what I’ve learned after three or four years of self-publishing, podcasting, networking, and more. I’d much rather invite the “three out of a thousand” I see every year to come by after class so I can say, “You’re a great writer (or speaker, or artist, or photographer, or whatever), and if you want my support in sharing your uniqueness with more than the school hallway or your bedroom file cabinet, I’ll show you some things that have worked for me. They might lead places for you.”
Moreover, I’d much rather you use the laptops at home to watch podcasted lectures and whatnot, and come to school to discuss, write, plan, create in a workshop-style setting that applies what you learned on your laptop the night before.
And I have no interest in playing cop to your generation’s Facebook addiction in the classroom. Sometimes I wonder why I should have to. Students who choose to spend their school time writing graffiti on Facebook (and not, in the traditional way, on their schooldesk) instead of learning from the web activity that the teacher, after all, ideally has judged as worth their time — that’s their choice. It’s a choice not to rise. Maybe they shouldn’t rise, then, and they should go ahead and practice their spelling of “LOL,” “wtf?”, and “rotfl.” Meanwhile, the teacher can focus on the students in the room who want to learn, and to peacefully pursue future superiority over the Facebook scribblers sitting next to them. It’s a lesson in real-world responsibility. Sometimes we have to do things we’d rather not do, or suffer the consequences.
And while I’m not sure I believe that, this I do believe: It’s going to be messy for all of us.
And you, student, whoever you are, can help make it less messy. You took a good first step by articulating the problems you say students are talking about. Now take the next step: get those students to join you in generating solutions. (Read my “Recession Skills 101″ posts here, here, and here to get my take on how you should see yourself as a stakeholder in your education — as basically an employee who’s expected to contribute to the betterment of the company.)
Do it openly, do it professionally, do it maturely, and do it constructively. Don’t name names and if you’re going to stab something, stab a solution.
How can you do that? The simplest way would be to start a blog — or turn the newspaper into one.
And one last thing: as you’re helping the school try to launch this thing, as you’re suggesting your changes and communicating your point of view, don’t forget to be open to changing your mind and learning something new. Because there’s more to the web — to “blogs, wikis, and forums,” to quote your example (did you know the CIA and United Nations use wikis now?) — than you seem to understand.
And that’s true for all of us.
- Him? them? I’m going to assume it’s a her. [↩]
- Scroll left on the graphic and you’ll see the individual newspapers that have closed their doors over the past couple years. [↩]
- Kaplan Test Prep subsidiary excluded — there’s always money to be squeezed from parents obsessed with Junior going to Harvard [↩]
- Unless the school itself is prohibiting the use of blogs for the newspaper. I’ve seen that policy before at other schools, so it’s entirely possible. [↩]
- I couldn’t fly to the States in time for the recording, so it didn’t work out, but that’s beside the point, which is that it was all because I write on a blog. [↩]
- Boundaries Blurring, Writing Getting Real at School
- Natural Global Collaboration: Schwister and Helfant Visit Networked Learning Class
- Web 2.0 Club Students as Technology Trainers
- Podcast: With Dean Shareski on _Natural_ Global Collaboration and Networked Learning
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Tags: edtech, journalism, recession, students Print This Post
No. 1 — December 25th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Thanks for this, Clay.
The writer totally nailed the process problem to the floor. Rolling out technology for the sake of rolling out technology is exactly what educational technology is not supposed to be doing.
On the other hand, the reality is that, until you can find out for yourself where the technology can take you, then it’s hard to know where you might want to go. Putting out without training is actually a good thing, IMHO, because when you train somebody to use a tool a particular way, you predispose them to use the tool *only* that way.
How much more valuable it might be to put great tools in the hands of teachers and students and ask them to figure out ways they could be used to foster learning. Oh, sure, there’d be a period of “what the heck do we do with THIS?” but … as your writer points out, there’s a certain modicum of expertise in the wild that can help shape the exploration. Moreover, there are a lot of resources already available to help bootstrap the inquiry process. You don’t need to leave them floundering in the dark, but the excuse of “we didn’t get trained” is paper thin.
There’s another point that makes me a little twitchy and that’s the tendency to lump it all into “technology.” We use technology all the time, every day. The school building itself is technology. The lights, heat, paper, furniture — even the design and layout of the space — it’s all technology. I’m exaggerating to make a point but not by much.
What technology are we talking about that needs to be used more effectively? Display technology? Communications? Network? Information architecture? Collaboration? Feedback? Print? Spoken language?
Even just limiting it to Digital Technology encompasses such diverse items as mp3 player, digital camera, and wireless routers. We don’t make the “technology” any less homogeneous by saying “laptop computers.”
Furthur, we are doing nobody any favors by blaming the “technology” or even the process for failing in the implementation of “technology” if we’re not more precise about what we mean when we talk about it.
The term “technology” — and even “digital technology” — lacks sufficient granularity for meaningful conversation. I think we need to be talking less in generalities if we intend to actually make a difference.
.-= Nathan Lowell´s last blog ..The hidden curriculum… =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Good to hear from you, Nathan, and interesting thoughts.
Your point about the dangers of teacher-training “pre-disposing” them to use these multi-purpose tools for fewer purposes than possible is well-taken — to a degree. I put “experience” and “readiness” in that phrase about “training” for roughly that reason.
I have reservations, though, about the negative consequences of students having to suffer through their teachers’ floundering first steps, and the opportunity costs to learning of letting teachers muddle through that stage.
(That being said, in all honesty my students are surely still suffering those very costs every time I try something new. We’re all still in the pioneer stage, after all, aren’t we?)
Something along the lines of a “digital driving school” requiring teachers to spend a certain amount of time/energy behind the wheels of various tools before they can try them in class appeals to me, warts and all.
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Nathan Lowell Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
An excellent point and I agree to a point.
The opportunity cost of the initial floundering is a challenge, certainly, but I think it might go back to two ideas.
1. As a teacher you have to “cover” the material.
2. A teacher teaches the way they’re taught.
Does the challenge become one of changing the politics so that learning is more important than coverage? If you can take away the opportunity cost of floundering and instead *use* that floundering as the lesson, then this is no longer an obstacle but an advantage.
The second is more difficult. Getting teachers to understand that the *first* thing they need to learn about these tools – the ones we lump loosely into a box and label “technology” – is how to *learn* with them. Instead, my experience is that teachers only want to know how to *teach* with them.
It comes down to realizing that teaching is a communicative art and each teacher is an artist. How they use the tools will be – must be – unique to their particular practice. How many ways are there to use a paint brush? Are there fewer ways to use a digital camera? How many different media might an artist use to create a feeling, a mood? Does it make sense teachers would use a fixed subset?
How do we get this level of skill and awareness inculcated in teachers? An artist struggles with media and tools and tries and fails, again and again. While this might seem like a waste of time when held up agains the production model of factory-school, if we value learning and not just curriculum? Does that change our paradigm?
.-= Nathan Lowell´s last blog ..The hidden curriculum… =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Nathan,
When you write,
–you take me back to my roots, in a sense. Or maybe one of my finest flowerings/flounderings. It’s when I was letting students “fail” at being independent writers for weeks throughout a writing workshop course, so they could experience the hoped-for “finding their feet” in their first experience of classroom freedom to find themselves as writers (instead of, you know, writing whatever I told them to write).
You nail the challenge that the “coverage” imperative presents to this approach. In my last post before this one, the “think-aloud” about the Chinese history course I just ended, I think I found a way to cut a lot of the coverage for the next iteration, which will maybe make room for the type of learning you remind me is important.
As for
–it’s often true for students too. They only want to know how to do “traditional homework” with the tools, as the student editorial hints when it valorizes traditional learning at a certain point or two.
I used the “tools as paintbrushes” metaphor in my keynote in Australia (and threw in a “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” motif for good measure). You’re totally right: at its best, a teacher approaches his craft like an artist.
So I want to ask, anyway, how we get students to “value learning, and not just curriculum”?
I think Christian Long’s Alice Project (a recent and belated obsession of mine for the last few days) is very relevant to this.
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Nathan Lowell Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 1:35 am
You asked:
We have to stop rewarding them for chasing grades.
In my grad school courses I exhort my students (who are, for the most part, US K-12 teachers) to think like learners instead of students. If they’re worrying about the points of their grading, then they’re missing the points of the learning. I give them one task all semester. “Prove to me that you’re thinking.” I change the focus weekly, but their task each week remains the same. Of course, I have a lot more flexibility in grad school than most teachers who have to certify that they’ve covered X chapters of material … which brings us back around.
BTW, I don’t give “tests” in the traditional sense, but remind them that there *will* be a final exam. It’ll come long after the class is over and it’ll be graded by the learners they’re trying to reach.
.-= Nathan Lowell´s last blog ..The hidden curriculum… =-.
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monika hardy Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Great conversation. Thank you….
This is huge:
If you can take away the opportunity cost of floundering and instead *use* that floundering as the lesson, then this is no longer an obstacle but an advantage.
The second is more difficult. Getting teachers to understand that the *first* thing they need to learn about these tools – the ones we lump loosely into a box and label “technology” – is how to *learn* with them. Instead, my experience is that teachers only want to know how to *teach* with them.
The focus needs to be on the connections web access allows – to knowledge via people. People aren’t buying in because we’re missing the point. Learning how to learn.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
I’ve tried to respond to your comment a couple times, Monika, but couldn’t nail what I wanted to say. Still can’t, so I guess I’m still not ready.
But I’ll start with saying I’m still uncomfortable with the opportunity cost notion. As a history teacher — which to me means “preparation for informed citizenship” teacher — I’m not sure I want to sacrifice time that could be used learning and drawing conclusions from human history on the altar of failed web 2.0 experimentation.
I see the value of both, though. I’m thinking a separate course — a sort of “Intro to Web 2.0″ — might be more useful than teachers across the curriculum failing and flailing about with the tools when their primary job is teaching content.
And I’m still traditional in thinking content is more important. Without it, we risk churning out what I’ve recently been calling, in my internal monologues, “barbarians with laptops.”
Teachers and philosophers across the centuries have taught successfully without the new tools (to whatever degree we can certainly debate, and could also debate whether the percentage of students who learn well under traditional methods would learn any better via digital means).
And the new tools also enable “connections to knowledge via people” that can be unreliable, which opens a new can of worms.
But I’m still hazy.
Thanks for the comment.
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monika hardy Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
I totally agree – this: sacrificing time that could be used learning and drawing conclusions from human history on the altar of failed web 2.0 experimentation – has been to our demise.
I’m thinking more along the lines of Erica McWilliams term, being “usefully ignorant.” Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do.
Not – gosh I blundered the tech again – what can we learn from that?…
But, dang, the questions you’re asking are beyond my knowledge,… let’s google it, or tweet about it, ..etc… to find out. And then obviously research the people, things, etc, we find for accuracy.
I think we have to break away..and do the Clay Christensen disrupting class thing. Kids teaching themselves in a sense, because their journey is their journey. They have created (or their teachers have created) their own network of experts to guide them to knowledge/information.
Currently, in my brain, learning how to use new tools isn’t what ed needs. If the need for a tool is there, anyone can learn how to use it. So a separate class for it… hmmm.. I don’t know. What we’re missing is why we need the tools.
Some reasons I think are good:
I don’t want to process static content anymore… I want to follow my passion… I don’t want my end project to end up in the recycle bin… I want an authentic audience… I want what I do to matter…..
Voicethread is an example of a great tool…. because it lives on.. It can be tweaked anytime. But I’ve also seen it used in static mode… it lost it’s use.
Gosh I was I was smarter…
.-= monika hardy´s last blog ..let’s not keep processing static content =-.
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No. 2 — December 25th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Interesting. It seems like this student has fallen into the “digital native/digital immigrant” binary that sounded good a few years ago, but now from what I see is largely discredited. But the twist is that it’s coming from a putative digital native and they’re using it as a claim to authority.
.-= Patrick Murray-john´s last blog ..VoCamp To The Rescue! =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Interesting point. I think I’ve read that the fastest-growing demographic on FB is middle-aged and older women.
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No. 3 — December 25th, 2009 at 7:08 am
This reminds me of a student panel I listened to at an ed-tech conference. The students had very little technology in their schools and strict filters. Their opinions echoed those of adults who do not know how to use technology to support learning. If they would have had at least one student from a 1:1 school with a successful implementation then the panel would have been more interesting.
Unless students have experienced an effective integration of technology then they often parrot the fears of teachers and administrators who see no reason to change teaching and learning from the past 100 years. We can’t blame the students anymore than we blame a toddler for imitating poor behavior of his parents.
.-= Concretekax´s last blog ..The Purpose of Grades =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
–word, word, word. Outstanding points. I think I’ll suggest to my admin (and the student newspaper) a call-out for input from students at a good 1:1 school.
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No. 4 — December 25th, 2009 at 8:35 am
I think the student nailed the problem. If teachers use blogs, wikis, etc. just to use them then they are going to simply be more busy work.
However, if the student would have had Mr. Burell as a teacher then they would have realized all the benefits of taking their paper/lesson online. They would have realized how they could be creating, controlling and leveraging their digital footprint.
This is why we will always need teachers. Students may understand the technology but they do not always realize that it is only a tool to accomplishing their goals.
Technology just amplifies the teacher and the lesson. It’s not about the technology, it’s about the pedagogy!
.-= Jason Kern´s last blog ..Google Teacher Academy for Admins – Why I’ll apply =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 25th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
I agree with everything you said, Jason, except the “if the students had had Mr. Burell as a teacher” part.
In the past, this may have been true. But at the end of my first semester at my new school, in which the plate was just too full to do anything well, it wasn’t.
But that won’t stop me from trying to change that next semester
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No. 5 — December 26th, 2009 at 1:30 am
Clay,
As a start, I’m going to share this posting via my Google Reader and on Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk . It deserves a wide readership and many thoughtful responses.
Your title is beautifully ironic: it applies equally to the “adept” generation and us older folk.
.-= diane´s last blog ..Old Friends =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Diane, one reason I love librarians (at least ones like you) (and you) is that they know how to read. Thanks for noticing the irony.
And know, in return, that I see the subtlety of the first part of your comment. I hope the intended audience does too (unless I’m projecting, which I doubt).
Happy Holidays, D.
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No. 6 — December 26th, 2009 at 1:58 am
Clay,
With a terribly broad brush, this is partially “our” fault (ed tech enthusiasts). I’ll step up and take this rap too. Enthusiasts promote anything with the barest whiff of technology, talking about “low hanging fruit”, “gateway drugs”, and “baby steps”. We should not be accepting bad educational practice as some sort of entry to good practice. That’s just nonsense.
We have to be braver and point out areas where technology does not make things better. We have to be braver and not buy inferior products from large companies who simply co-opt the language of education for their marketing campaigns. And we have to be louder and more critical when we see these things happening.
The students certainly aren’t fooled. We often hear how “engaged” students are when using technology, but if it’s just busywork, the initial thrill will soon disappear. We hear about how teachers are reluctant to adopt technology, but what if they are actually making good judgements about bad implementations?
There has to be student ownership of the technology, in a way that allows them to make choices both good and bad. That’s what teachers do – help students make the better choice. By allowing corporations and publishers to control the technology, rather than the teacher and the student, we remove that agency and create powerless students and worse, powerless teachers.
All technology is not created equal.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Sylvia,
is the money question, for me.
But if you read my response to the student editorial, it makes clear to me that many students think adults can’t teach them anything about tech, when they clearly have much to learn (from some, at least).
And for the sake of argument, since “bad choices” by teachers and students result in the same waste of learning time — though your point that students learn from those bad choices is well-taken, probably moreso if they made those choices themselves — I still wonder if it’s worth the opportunity cost in terms of more valuable learning of, yes, content, that could have taken place otherwise.
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sylvia martinez Reply:
December 28th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Well, all of these generalizations are being built on a pretty flimsy base — all we have is one editorial with no real knowledge of the situation at the school, who wrote the article, or anything about the technology at the school.
School curriculum around the world is permanently stuck in the pre-Internet world. To expect students to rebel against a newspaper assignment would be the same as expecting them to revolt against logarithms. Instead we give them a song and dance about how learning these things that they’ll never use is good for them. Some passively revolt by not showing up in mind and/or body. Some chant along with the party line (usually the ones who are winning the game.)
.-= sylvia martinez´s last blog ..Free guide – How to keep your teen safe on the Internet =-.
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No. 7 — December 27th, 2009 at 12:33 am
[...] On Using Technology Without Understanding It at Beyond School. [...]
No. 8 — December 27th, 2009 at 6:16 am
An interesting post. The whole article really made me think and I was enjoying the by-play of the comments until I got to all the Twitter links which added nothing (in fact detracted) from the whole conversation. Sometimes I feel Twitter could be renamed Chatter.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Ian,
I’m playing with a Twitter plugin that has various settings for displaying tweets as comments (it was much worse when they were mixed in with real comments, rather than put after them as now).
In the context of this post, though, I wonder if you miss the significance of those tweets to the entire topic of the post. I see it there in spades, and hope students do too.
Finally, besides telling us in your comment that you enjoyed the post — which is pretty much what the tweets suggest via a simple retweet — and that you don’t like twitter, do you care to add anything about the ideas you say you enjoyed?
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Morgante Pell Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I just wanted to note I find the separation of tweets out from comments at the bottom extremely confusing.
From the comment form, I was trying to scroll up to find my comment yet was seeing dates from before it was published. Since there’s an expectation that everything is ordered chronologically, I was mystified as to where my comment had gone.
I’d say either abandon the tweets or integrate them into the chronology, maybe with a filter to remove simple “retweets.”
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Hm. Ian, Your complaint about Twitter did make me think about how that plugin affects reading my blog in an RSS reader (I have another plugin that includes comments to posts with the post itself in the feed).
Thanks for making me see that using the “display tweets as comments” setting, while being a negligible inconvenience if read on the blog itself, is surely a pain in the rear when scrolling through a feed reader. I’m thinking of changing the settings.
What I like about keeping them is simply their display of Twitter as the new Google Search, in terms of bringing readers to a text. Since installing the Tweetmeme plugin, the proportion of my readers coming from Twitter instead of from Google has risen dramatically. That seems significant for students to understand — or at least any who want their writing to be read in the real world.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 28th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Ian, this post by a new blogger who just discovered the depths of Twitter made me think of your comment.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I agree with you about the chatter. But if you haven’t experienced it beyond that, the above-linked is a good read.
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No. 9 — December 27th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I’m late to the show, so most of the pertinent points have already been covered, but I just wanted to address this: the editorial author really doesn’t have much control over the format of the newspaper. She might very well have a blog elsewhere, but most newspapers require exclusivity, so you wouldn’t be able to find it. Furthermore, since this is likely a one-off editorial, she wouldn’t have the influence to get the newspaper moved online. Don’t fault the message, fault the messenger.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Points well-taken, Morgante (and a concession to that hinted at in one of the footnotes), but there’s an irony to note too, maybe.
The editorial suggests it’s a collective one by “The Eye Editorial Staff,” first of all (not exact wording, but I’m too lazy to scroll up right now).
If that’s the case, a) they’re presumably the power-clique of the paper this year; b) they’re the ones implying they know more about tech than their teachers, while also c) claiming their teachers and traditional educational methods should be respected.
So since the post-pdf digital revolution has passed them by, who better to make the real Reformation happen in the newspaper now, if not them?
I wonder how many of the staff do have quasi-professional blogs, by the way. And how far they’ve gone in learning the ropes.
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Morgante Pell Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I noticed your footnote, but completely missed the “Eye Staff” headline. Clearly, my reading skills need some improvement.
In that case, if it really is a staff editorial (which it likely is), you’re absolutely right: they shouldn’t have such a high opinion of technical skills if their paper is still published on dead trees and their technological equivalent.
I’d be pushing for my school’s newspaper to go online, but at this point the internet is better off without it.
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No. 10 — December 29th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
The point that resonated with me the most in your post was the frustration of processing static content – whether it’s ‘electronic’, printed, scribbled with a biro or painted in illuminated letters on parchment.
I downloaded Curtis Bonk’s new book – The World is Open – last week. In true Digital Age style, I purchased it through Amazon on my iPhone and it was sent directly into the Kindle app. It was the first e-book I’d bought in this way and the feeling of ‘connectedness’ I felt as the words appeared on the touchscreen was very satisfying.
Such a strange feeling, then, to be turning the pages, annotating and adding notes, and for none of this activity to be accessible to anyone else. I had no idea who else was reading this material, whether they were responding in the same way or had a different perspective to offer. I couldn’t even grab and tweet a link.
Many people have proposed that we are losing the capacity to focus on one thing for sustained periods. Maybe they have a point, but this is not the most accurate or helpful way of describing how the way we engage with ideas is changing. We are social animals who benefit intellectually and emotionally from talking over these ideas together. In a beautifully choreographed collaborative movement, we have created the tools we need to bring people together from all over the world to talk about the ideas that interest them. Now we have this, what is the value of static, non-interactive content? Does it have a place?
Given its title, it’s ironic that Bonk’s book isn’t at all, in any sense of the word, open. There *is* an interactive accompanying website though – which is a positive step, and perhaps an appropriate compromise in a world that is still largely working with a traditional publishing infrastructure. The next time I pay $20 for an e-book though – Amazon take note – I would want to be able to communicate with the other readers.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Lindsay, you’re further along the digital curve than I am. I still read paper books, and like them. Do you prefer the Kindle?
I’m also behind the learning curve in Evernote. I’ve heard of people taking photos of pages from books they’re reading and adding annotations there, which seems horribly clunky for manic annotators like me. I’m also unclear on whether Evernote allows open access to files.
Although most days I’m so satisfied with the fullness of my life to this point that I could easily die tomorrow, the evolution of literacy — and we know we’re in the clunkiest of early stages of this revolution — does make me hope for a few more decades. It’s all so fascinating.
Thanks for the very thoughtful post, and see you on Twitter! (By the way, what do you teach, and where? I see you’re in the UK, yes?)
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Lindsay Jordan Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I definitely prefer digital to paper books… I like to lie on my side while reading and it gets too fiddly holding the book open. And with Kindle you can annotate with the same hand you’re holding the iPhone with – very good if you’re reading while standing on the train and you need to other hand to hold on with!
I’d agree that everything is still at the clunky stage – converting a pdf into a format that you can read on the iPhone in Kindle or Stanza is a rather complex operation (it gets easier after the first time and if you’re doing lots of files in bulk).
I teach Arts educators on the PG Cert in Learning & Teaching at the University of the Arts London. I also support teachers across our colleges in using technology for teaching & learning – this involves some community development work as well as supporting individual projects.
.-= Lindsay Jordan´s last blog ..lindsayjordan: @Psythor Me too! I assumed Flash Gordon, or Colin Firth or someone, was going to fly in at the last minute and save the day… :-/ =-.
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monika hardy Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Lindsay – thank you for your comment. The whole idea that the masses just keep changing up … “processing static content” seems so invisible to others, maybe because it’s so ingrained, esp in ed. And dang – what is the value of it now that we have created the means to do better….?
Clay – this bit:
Now I believe the best we can do is simply attract. The sun isn’t getting muscle fatigue keeping the planets in orbit. It’s simply attracting them, effortlessly, because of its impressive mass. Teachers should be suns in this way, and students the planets worth keeping in orbit.
…reminds me of Seth Godin. He’s taught me what remarkable means. Something has to have enough value that it’s worth talking about…by others. We’re not pushing or pulling – we are your impressive, attractive sun.
I think devalue, unattractiveness, the need to remark on our own activity, doing things only for a grade… comes when we think we have to have the masses buy in. As much as I want everyone to get it.. to have all ears hear it (those who have ears let them hear)…I am continually saddened by the cheapening of this beautifully choreographed collaborative movement.
I love the ideas of podcasting as homework.. experts connecting with the few that do get it.
Maybe this is where I need more patience. It makes so much sense… to be attractive and remarkable, because I want the learning to be geniune… but when I get in “school,” waiting is hard. I want them (teachers and students) to get it now. I don’t want them missing out on the beauty of it all. How long does/will it take to debunk? You’d think in it’s true form, networking would/could debunk overnight.
I just want to make sure that those moments when ears do open up to the possibility that this really is different… they aren’t barraged with talk of new tech tools…. that just glorify the processing of static content.
.-= monika hardy´s last blog ..the science of motivation via dpink =-.
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