A Call for a Dionysian Perspective in Education

I used to make a regular routine of watching at least one TED Talk, or related vodcast, every night. The past six months I have fallen out of this habit and so I now have some catching up to do. The other night I sat down for a little TED marathon and discovered some gems that I believe, while not directly related to the topic, express ideas that are certainly germain to education reform. They also provide a fresh way to express and describe what is wrong with our current industrial model and the policies that encourage it.

First, there is this great talk by Brene Brown about the power of vulnerability. Brown is a researcher by trade and in the talk she describes the nature of what research is all about as trying to take control of something via data to make predictions. She then goes on to describe the mindset of the researcher that sees the world as being comprised of data. She even quotes a professor she once had as saying, "If it cannot be measured, then it doesn't exist." This sounds like the mindscape that has had its grip on our education for quite some time. It describes the mindset that leads us to insist that what we do is done through "Data-driven decision making." And this need to view everything that occurs in the process of learning as being able to be reduced to a measurable set of numbers and scores clearly is rooted in this worldview. Brown describes in her video how her own research into the effects of shame on people led her into conflict with this mindset and presented a problem that for someone looking at the world through data lenses must have felt like a paradox. What she concludes is that it is not through control but through being vulnerable that one is more connected with the world and more content.



The second video that struck me as being related both to Brown's talk and what is going on in schools right now was a talk by Amber Case called "We are all cyborgs now." In this video Amber points out that this new rapidly changing technological landscape is starting to look more organic than technological. She describes our new connective technologies as worm holes for the mind, allowing us to transport our brains from one side of the globe to the other instantaneously. The implication is that our new technologies are really tools that help us be more organic and more human by breaking down physical barriers.

Applied to education this would support the idea of not teaching technology but using technology to connect people. Instead, what we see happening more and more in education is the technology being used as a tool to collect, measure, and process data. If, as in Brown's talk, the need to measure everything and turn it into data is rooted in our own insecurities and a need to grasp more control, then Case does a nice job of explaining what she proposes might cause such an insecurity in the first place. Case proposes that now we each have two selves (an idea I wrote about roughly this time last year), a physical self and a digital self which is comprised of our web presence. We have to manage the lives of both of these selves and just as our physical selves go through an adolescence so does our digital selves. The disconnect is that these two adolescence periods do not coincide. Therefore, a young person might have already passed into digital adulthood while their parents are just entering their digital adolescence.



To measure means we must construct controls and variables, even if they are arbitrary. We do this as Dan Phillips says in his talk, "Creative houses from reclaimed stuff" through standardization. Phillips talks about standardization in the building industry and how it generates massive amounts of industrial waste, waste that by other standards is perfectly good. He describes how human beings, as was proposed by Nietzsche, are always torn between two different perspectives, "On one hand we have the Apollonian perspective which is very crisp and premeditated and intellectualized and perfect on the other side of the spectrum we have a Dionysian perspective which is more given to the passions, intuitions, tolerant of organic patterns and human gesture." Phillips believes that for the survival of our planet we need to adopt a more Dionysian perspective. I believe we do in education as well. I would guess that Alfie Kohn, John Holt, Seymour Papert, Jean Piaget, Neil Postman, Gary Stager, Ira Socol, and so many others would agree.


So, what industrial waste is caused by standardization in the education industry? What could be built with it? In the building industry this waste refers to raw materials, in education this waste refers to at least three things:

1. Students
   
2. Content & Areas of Study
   
3. Forms of Motivation & Ways of Knowing
   

How do we bring back a Dionysian perspective in education? How do we convince education policy makers, administrators, and teachers that it is not only OK to be vulnerable but being vulnerable is necessary for our success and well being? How do we convince them that there is no need to exert so much artificial control? How do we convince them that for learning to happen we need to encourage the use of our resources for the purpose of exploration, connectivity, and dialog and not measurement and control? How do we get education leaders to learn for education the lessons learned by Brown, Case, and Phillips?

Weekly Tech Tips - Crowdsourcing & Participatory Cultures

Weekly Tech Tip:

This past 8 days have seen two interesting turn of events that have by coincidence converged in my own experience of them to produce this week's tech tip. First was the announcement last week that Ning was going to phase out the free version of their highly popular social networking tool and the subsequent collective action of the online communities I am a part of to work together to find alternatives. The other was the publication of the TEDxNYED talks on YouTube. While the topic TEDxNYED was education most of the talks seem to revolve around this idea of participatory culture and crowdsourcing.

Additionally, for our teachers at EMID we are going to offer a PD course (optionally for Hamline Grad Credit) on "Web 2.0 & Connectivism" where participants will through the course of a year build their own personal learning networks and explore the potential of these technologies both in their own learning and the learning of their students. This course will also be available to non-EMID staff members as an online open course beginning May 27th. (online participants will also have the option of taking it for credit). For this open course synchronous sessions with EMID staff will be streamed online and asynchronous engagement will be facilitated online through social tools. I will post more information about this opportunity in the upcoming weeks.




Related links:

• Alternatives to Ning - Google Doc
• Clay Shirky:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPQViN...

• Jay Rosen:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGHw9G...

• Mike Wesch:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwyCAt...

• Henry Jenkins:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCLKa...

• George Seimens:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BH-uLO6ovI

• TEDxNYED
• Social Media Reading List for School Leaders

• Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Seimens (2004)

Link Stew:

• I urge every math and science teacher to watch Dan Meyer's TEDxNYED talk:

• TEDxOntarioEd - Tim Ludwig - 04/09/10

• Chris Lehman's talk at the #140 Conference:

• That's Why I Chose Yale

• Cell Phones in the Classroom : Learning Tools for the 21st Century

• mobiles - the 7th mass media
• How future historians will use the Twitter archives.
• u.nu - the shortest URL shortener, period
• Pew Internet: Teens and Mobile Phones
• Kaywa QR Code Generator
• QuickMark - Mobile QR code reader for your PC
  
• Cultivated Play: Farmville
• Classroom teaching in 2030 by Daniel T. Willingham
• View the wonders of the Ancient world in 3d
• PBS looks at motivation (and candles)
• Educational Networking - Wiki directory of educational social networks
• IceRocket real-time search

Blog Carnival:

• 5 Questions to ask BEFORE buying IWBs byBill Ferriter on The Tempered Radical
  
• Does teacher tenure have a future? by Scott McLeod on Dangerously Irrelevant
• IWB’s Help or Hurt? by tomwhitby on My Island View
• Interesting ways to use Wallwisher in the classroom by Richard Byrne on Free Technology for Teachers

Belief to Behavior and the clash of Social Media

I have been giving myself migraines lately trying to figure out how traditional institutions of learning can be married with new emerging networked forms of learning such as those apparent in Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). On the surface this seems like it should not be an issue. Both largely serve the same objective. Both exist with the intent of trying to promote learning and improve the lives of their patrons. However, on closer inspection, a fundamental quality of these learning environemnts places them at odds with one another in a rather disruptive way.

The clash that exists at the core of both educational approaches, I believe, runs deeper than just the education world and embodies and infects all aspects of our world effected by a new world paradigm. This new world paradigm encapsulates what lies at the heart of what we have all come to identify as social media, web 2.0, wisdom of crowds, grass-roots endeavors, the "cult of the amateur," participatory politics, user-created content, etc. We are seeing the effects of this clash today most noticeably in two realms: media and religion. Church attendance and membership is at an all-time low and traditional media outlets are quickly going under. The pinch these groups feel is evident in how much they are lobbying congress to pass anti-net neutrality legislation and how in recent years right wing evangelical agenda has been on the front lines of politics. These are hot button issues because the status quo in both these fields has been upset. The same is true in education. For the past few years we have been fed a line about social media tools in school as being dangerous for kids. Schools were quick to ban or limit the use of these tools by students. Teachers have felt the pinch too. Louisiana recently enacted a new state law that moves teacher use of the social web within the jurisdiction of their k-12 employers.

What is the common denominator for these three great institutions (the church, traditional media, and schools)? What is the common denominator of endeavors that fall within this new world paradigm? Last week I saw a TED Talk by Devdutt Pattanaik called, East vs west -- the myths that mystify that I feel answers this question. In this talk Dr. Pattanaik discusses how the fundamental belief structures between east and west cultures clash. He illustrates this with a simple story about Alexander the Great meeting a gymnosophist, "When they met, the gymnosophist asked what Alexander the Great was doing. To which he replied, 'I am conquering the world. What are you doing?' 'I am experiencing nothingness,' replied the gymnosophist." Neither could see the point in the others endeavor because the denominator for Alexander's life was One and the denominator for the gymnosophist's life was Many. This fundamental element of belief informed everything about how both individuals interpreted these actions.




In this talk Dr. Pattanaik shows this slide that I think explains it all. It explains the clash between the world views of the gymnosophist and Alexander the Great, and it explains the clash between new and old world paradigms we are seeing played out right now.


Today, I read two posts by Ira Socol, Crossing America: An Education, and The Colonialism of Michelle Rhee or TFA v BoA that bring to our attention that this sort of clash is nothing new. Ira serves up some examples of how we have disastrously addressed this conflict in the past which should serve as a warning to reactionaries and policy makers to be careful how they deal with this new conflict. In these posts two distinct conflicts similar in their relationship to the "belief to behavior" equation are discussed: racial integration and the effect of environment on learner background. Here are some excerpts:

"When you leave Michigan and head west, first entering "The Prairie" in Illinois, the world begins to change, and thus, so do the ways in which people see, hear, think, and learn."

"And the inherent "truth" of that creates one of the great fallacies of our current educational debate. Yes, there is only one right way to add 2+2 or spell "tomorrow," but there are hundreds or thousands of ways to perceive both "2+2" and "tomorrow," and as many different ways to learn about both."

"This lack of appreciation of cultural and physical environment on the process of education makes our teachers and our political leaders look like fools. And it results in diplomatic and schoolroom disaster."

-----------------------------------------

"Impoverished minority kids need to learn "to be white" as Rhee insists. They must learn how to speak the English, and behave in the way, that will get them hired...'Wait,' I said, 'still colonialism, still the powdered wigs for Nigerians and Indians so they could become Brits.' And, I added, there's a counter-narrative, an anti-colonial narrative.'"

"This counter-narrative suggests that we need not force minority students to learn to march and chant (KIPP), we need not "just" give them white role models to copy (Teach for America), we need not deny them the creative education all children deserve (Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Paul Vallas, Arne Duncan). Rather, we can help them take control of their communities and their lives within the context of their own culture."

The belief system that governs the institutions effected by current change and the systems of the west Ira describes all have one thing in common. They all are built upon a belief system that requires a top-down hierarchy, a denominator of One. When that system clashed with antithetical structures in the past it was usually disastrous. Can we find a way to marry the new world paradigm with the old or are we doomed to repeat this kind of battle? Can systems rooted in bottom-up hierarchies meet those with top-down hierarchies half way? Can they coexist? Is there a way to lend credit to networked learning learning experiences without causing the demise of traditional institutions of learning? Is school doomed to suffer the same fate as the newspaper or will PLN's always aspire to be "school-like" only to fall short of ever being able to reach that goal? I still have no answers, just more informed questions.

What is Technology?

A couple years ago, in one of my graduate school classes, I was assigned a paper where we were supposed to find and explain a metaphor for technology. In that paper I said that, "Technology is a Stick." I had in mind the opening scene to 2001 A Space Odyssey where the primitive man touches the monolith then begins using tools. My thinking at the time was that technology was a tool. However, I have been rethinking this lately and have come to a different conclusion.

Alan Kay says that technology is anything that was invented after you were born. This definition plays right into the same concept I held two years ago when I wrote that technology is a stick. Both of these definitions narrow the definition to objects (i.e. Computer, Cell Phone, Particle Collider, etc.). This definition is very practical and is easy to identify with. Shifting the onus of the term to the object removes individuals of necessary ownership of what truly lies within the term. It is empowering to say that you, your school, your town, your interest group, your professional organization, your country, etc. "has the technology." But does possessing tools constitute the possession of technology?

My dogs spend most of their time in my garage. In my garage I have numerous power tools, hand tools, an old computer, and a few machines (lawn mower, snow blower, etc.). According to the stick metaphor my dogs possess the technology to build pretty much anything. Do my dogs really possess this technology? I think not.

I have to admit that my summer indulgence were the TED Talks and taking my dogs on long evenings. Every week I would upload a new batch of talks to my iPod Nano and watch them on the go while exercising my dogs. Thus the way I have framed this idea. From these talks my mind has contracted quite a variety of memes and I think I finally have a definitive understanding of what technology really is.

When a foreign country says they possess the technology to build a nuclear weapon I don't think they mean that they have the materials. What they have is the knowledge and understanding needed to build one. And with this example I think I have solved the definition/metaphor problem. Technology is a meme, an idea, an understanding.

If technology is a meme then it can never really die or be destroyed. The only way we can loose our technology is if we forget how it works or how to use it. I think this notion helps explain a lot of behavior we see in schools. Try as we will, if a our students find a technology real useful they will find a way to use it even if it is banned or there are rules excluding its use. It also gets at the heart of a lot of tensions that can be observed between teachers and their students or one generation vs. another. It explains what is really missing from the digital native/digital immigrant depictions.

Technophobia is not the fear of new tools but rather the fear of not understanding. There is a nervousness that exists when those in a learning environment who are supposed to be subordinates are empowered with knowledge and understanding that those in authority positions lack. What it boils down to is technophobia is fear of loosing authority. It is not the tools that make the digital immigrant different from the digital native, it is the understanding of how they work and how they can be applied or the eagerness to learn new ways of understanding that makes this distinction. When we define technology as a tool we can say we have it but not know how it works or how to use it and we can easily just put it aside. If we see not the tool but the knowledge and understanding as the technology then for us to say we possess it means we must understand it. This is especially troubling in the field of education because educators are supposed to be inquisitive and celebrate knowledge, ideas, and understanding.

My job title at my full-time job is, "Technology Integration Curriculum Specialist." I am starting to see this as a bit of a misnomer given my new concept of what technology is. What I sense is expected of me by the educators I work with is that I am here to help them to bring new tools into their classroom and that is currently an accurate portrayal of what I do. However, am I integrating technology or am I integrating tools? If I were really to help teachers integrate technology my role should go beyond the tools and address understanding both of ideas and how they can be applied. This kind of integration transcends the tools and is much more about pedagogy than technical knowledge. That said, I still like playing around with new tools.




The following are some of the TED Talks that have influenced my thoughts recently on this matter: