Techno Constructivist

Monday, July 12, 2010

Is Technology Blaspheme?

I came across this video about a month ago and since then it has been causing some interesting synaptic associations in my brain and I have reached a point where I need to air them out to make more sense of it all.

WARNING!!! IN THIS POST I COME TO NO CONCLUSIONS AND MANY IDEAS AND THOUGHTS MIGHT NOT BE FULLY DEVELOPED AND MAY BE DISCONNECTED

In this video Jaron Lanier frames the theory of the coming Singularity, a prediction by Ray Kurzweil, as a new religion made possible only by our own technological advances.

Click here for part 2

If you are not familiar with Kurzweil's Singularity prediction take a few minutes and let him explain it to you:

This notion of technology and religion has had me thinking of a few other parallels. First, lets consider some key attributes most western religions ascribe to God. Primarily, according to most monotheistic religions God is omnipresent and omnipotent. In other words, God knows all and can do anything. Consider the internet and how we have been increasingly giving it eyes to see and ears to hear. First it was motors, then it was transistors, later it was microchips, today it is sensors that are propagating through the technosphere giving what Kevin Kelly refers to as the One Machine the ability to have senses. Whats more, we have been deploying these sensors and feeding the data they collect through mobile technologies that most of us carry with us.

So, we have over a billion computers currently networked to create the Internet and now it has the ability to sense much of what is around it. It is predicted that soon we will have enough microchips networked as part of this "One Machine" to equal or surpass the number of neurons in the human brain. Already the number of links between websites surpasses the number of synapses in the human brain.

Kevin Kelly also presents technology as the seventh kingdom of life:

If I follow this line of thought, through building this "One Machine" and giving it the ability to sense it's surroundings we have essentially created a synthetic life form within this 7th Kingdom with god-like omnipresence. And, since "The Machine is Us" (to quote Mike Wesch) we draw closer through our use of the psudo-omnipresent machine to the ability as a species to be psudo-omnipotent.

Juxtapose this with the latest development by Craig Venter's research team where they were able to create actual synthetic life forms in the lab with their own programmed DNA and imagine the convergence of the technological with the biological:

It is usually explained that Apple Computers took their company name after Newton's Apple but perhaps it was really Eve's apple that was the inspiration. After all, in that Biblical story Eve's apple represented forbidden knowledge and by taking a bite Adam and Eve would be able to know what God knows. Or perhaps it was both. The bite out of the apple in Apple Computer's later logo suggests that this Biblical reference theory might hold water.

Of course, why limit the analogy and parallels to Judeo-Christian theology? The company Promethean is a little bit more explicit about their namesake naming their company after the Greek god Prometheus who is credited with bringing technology (fire) to people on Earth.

So, what does this all mean? I don't know. Is this a new religion? I don't know. What I do know is every day I pass an Amish farm on my way to work as a technology integration specialist and every time I do it causes me to ponder these kinds of thoughts. Perhaps we have constructed the most incredible golden calf.

Or maybe not.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

"Passions shift in young people. This defies programing."

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called The Real Disruptive Innovation where I toyed with the thought that the real reason online schools are a disruptive innovation in education is because they allow students to place priority on their own interests and passions and do their "school work" on their own time. In that post I shared this video done by a boy who was using YouTube to ask the world for help in building his bow-drill set.

The video and the comment stream it generated illustrate the power social media and web 2.0 have in amplifying the power and effectiveness of informal learning. I would like to highlight a great and thoughtful comment on that post that I think sums it all up nicely:

Jan said...

In reply to DC's comment: to give a bit of context to the boy in the video, he's my son, Nelson. The video was made on his own two years ago when he was 12. He did the editing himself on Windows Movie Maker. He got some instruction from me during past "projects" but also from YouTube videos he searched out on his own. I helped him upload it. The tagging part was about all I had to teach him.

He filmed it in our backyard, I believe it was on a school night after dinner. He had tried previous fires a bit closer to our back door which caused a bit of angst, but this one was attempted away from the building. We live a suburban setting but we are 15 minutes to wilderness so Nelson has done a fair amount of camping. The woods around his elementary school were a favourite hang-out; I think the green space has been essential to developing his interest in nature. Also important is our love of the outdoors and interest in natural history. Nelson also used (and still does use) YouTube as a primary learning source. He hunted for and found sites on bushcraft and survival. Then he begged his dad to go to the woods where he tried and failed to get a fire started.

Nelson is in a regular public school and has benefit from all the good that the model offers. As a teacher myself I have never been under the illusion that the education of my son was only the school's responsibility. We share it, but it is primarily Nelson's job. If he has a passion we encourage him to follow it. This is why bowdrills are on the shelf for now and painting with water colours, proper playing technique on the tenor sax, making bows and arrows, and solving obstacles in video games has taken over. Passions shift in young people. This defies programing.

YouTube is often his first stop when he wants to know something. This includes "school" topics like how viaducts affected the development of Roman civilization and how digestion works. Sadly, YouTube is blocked in our district.

Nelson's school teachers do matter to him and they have more than once ignited his curiosity. However, most would be surprised to know that he learns so much online. For the most part his technology experiences have been fairly flat (go to this site and do x, or make a video that shows y), but this is slowly improving.

Thanks, Carl for your post. Nelson is ready to shut down comments to the video as "it is so last year", but I have encouraged him to keep it open as an experiment in the good of the network. So many comments on YouTube make me gag, but the comments are so generous and will be a great resource to him when he finally gets back to exploring bow drills and fire starting again.

*Thanks @bookminder for pointing me to this :)

Thank you Jan.

Monday, July 5, 2010

A Denominator of Many - Teacher Professional Partnerships

Cross-Post at Dangerously Irrelevant

By now it is an old story but still a pressing contemporary issue. Industries that have traditionally relied on a top-down hierarchy of power distribution are folding. We see it today most readily in the newspaper industry but it is painfully obvious that other industries, especially those who deal in information currency, are under siege as well. It is clear that the schools are a part of this list.

Traditionally, or for as long as anyone alive today can remember, most school systems have operated under a very clear top-down hierarchy. The Department of Education passes down edicts to states. State Departments of Education (headed by a commissioner) then pass funding & accreditation requirements and curriculum standards down to school districts. School districts are headed by superintendents operating with an authority given to them by school boards delegating responsibilities to principals and other building administrators. These administrators then delegate responsibilities to teachers and other school employees who then deliver the state mandated standards-driven curriculum to students. I realize this is a very simplistic picture of our school systems and there are great differences in the nuances between schools but for the most part this is the type of system most of us operate under.

This system was very efficient for many years and was necessary for a long time. However, when we hear criticisms of schools operating under an industrial model of education looking more like factories it is not just what goes on in the classroom that causes this comparison but also how they are structured. This structure looks like almost any corporate business hierarchy with the CEO and shareholders at the top and the workers and consumers at the bottom. Just as the corporate structure is designed to make as much profit for those at the top this system best ensures that the needs of those near the top of the pyramid are met. Today, in education, this hierarchy is most concerned with administering RTTT and NCLB measures like curriculum standards. Hence, the overly high concern with high stakes testing and "teach to the test" messages many of our teachers end up hearing. Who does this system serve? With whom lies agency in learning?

There is a new structure of learning emerging that is gaining momentum, one which appears to have no regard for edicts issued via a top-down hierarchy. Web 2.0 & social media technologies have given teachers and students agency in their own learning through the creation of what has been collectively referred to as "personal learning networks" (PLNs). Through PLNs learners choose their own learning agendas and self-select who they listen to and what curriculum (if any) they follow. Through the use of popular technologies like Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, and Facebook informal learning is quickly becoming a viable option. Teachers no longer have to look to their school system for support, they can find it through the networks they have created. This same kind of network structure and powerful informal learning is also what has made this latest phenomenon of unschooling actually seem like a viable option for some. The more our networks grow the more they challenge the authority of the traditional top-down hierarchy.

While unschooling is a little bit extreme and probably not right for most kids the fuel giving this movement momentum is something we need to address in education or our formal institutions of education will suffer the same fate as the newspaper industry. I am reminded of this slide from a TED Talk by Devdutt Pattanaik called, East vs west -- the myths that mystify..

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. The traditional hierarchy that has dominated our school systems has a denominator of one while PLNs, student-centered learning environments, and movements like unschooling operate with a denominator of many. If our industry is going to survive we need to find a way for both equations to find a common denominator. We have to look for ways to invert this hierarchy.

One potential method that our schools could use to help address this issue of one verses many is teacher professional partnerships (TPPs). TPPs are similar to law firms where the practitioners own their own practice. In TPP schools there is no administration but instead the teachers in the TPP work together to share the responsibilities normally delegated to building and district administrators.

This solves a few problems that teachers and schools face. First, it brings more decision making responsibility closer to those who are directly effected by those decisions. It places agency closer to those served by schooling and in so doing elevates the teaching profession. With agency comes responsibility and built-in accountability. If a teacher is held responsible for their own performance via a personal stake in ensuring that they offer a quality learning environment that students will want to participate in there will be no need for complex systems of teacher performance pay or other measures like those in RTTT. With a TPP a teacher's performance is shown in their enrollment and whether a school thrives or fails depends entirely on how well they manage their own practice. What's more, TPPs eliminate the need for teacher unions since the partnership is in itself a union of sorts.

Currently there are just ten TPP public schools in operation in the United States and so far they all appear to be doing well. This model of school organization holds a lot of potential addressing the problems and issues facing schools and education including the inevitable irrelevance of our traditional school hierarchy. Ted Kolderie from Education|Evolving will be Steve Hargaon's guest on his Future of Education series this Thursday, July 8, 2010 to discuss Teacher Professional Partnerships. For more information on TPPs I urge you to attend this free online discussion in Elluminate or at least listen to the recording afterwords.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Post #ISTE10 reflection

It has been two days since the ISTE 2010 Conference ended and the drive home gave me a lot of time to reflect. Especially since the majority of that time I was the only conscious person in the car driving across Eastern Colorado and Western Nebraska.

This was my first "in person" ISTE experience. While I have been following ISTE and finding ways to attend from home the past four years this was the first time I actually went myself. I left home on Saturday with no reservations (both about what to expect at the conference and for a hotel the first night). In one sense of the word this turned out to be a big mistake. We had hoped the first day to drive from Rochester, MN to Lincoln, NE and spend the night before making our way to Denver on Sunday. Unfortunately, the little one got car sick just before we hit Council Bluffs, IA and what do you know, we got the pleasure of spending the week enjoying the wonderful aroma of regurgitated apple juice and fruit snacks all over the back seat of the car. What we didn't plan on was that there would be no hotel rooms anywhere in Eastern Nebraska due to the College World Series. To make things worse, the gas station we managed to find in Council Bluffs to clean up after the disaster sold us expired milk which we didn't notice until after we gave it to the kids and the older one said, "Daddy, this milk smells yucky!" (Add regurgitated sour milk to the aroma bouquet). It wasn't until we reached Kearney, NE after 3:00 a.m. that we were able to find a hotel with vacancy. Ah, the prototypical family road trip.

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Sunday morning we woke up refreshed and ready to head out again. We arrived in Denver, checked into our hotel, ate dinner and I headed over to the conference to catch the opening keynote. The "no room at the inn" theme carried through to the conference since arriving late the auditorium was full. I ended up finding my way to the Blogger's Cafe where the reception of the opening keynote, piped in via closed circuit TV, was not unlike that of the aroma bouquet we experienced on the drive up. The speaker lost us at his first slide then proceeded to violate every single principle of effective presentation. I wish I could critique the speech but the overwhelming roar of disapproval from the audience in the Cafe drowned out nearly all of what the guy said.

Like my car on the ride in, the opening keynote stunk, and just like my car on the ride in I was in good company and experiencing it with people I very much like and respect. There were nearly 18,000 people attending this conference and in this one space it seemed like the majority of the people I follow on Twitter, Blogs, and YouTube were there. A measurable percentage of conference session presenters were here as well. It was an amazing crowd and amazing company to be with. By far the highlight of the night was hearing Gary Stager finally tell his John Taylor Gatto story that he would not convey over Twitter.

I grew up in Nebraska and often took road trips out to Colorado so I was very familiar with this stretch of I80 and I76. You might say that the experience of driving from Rochester to Denver provided nothing new for me. It was the same thing I saw numerous times taking this trip as a kid. I found a similar experience at the conference. I hoped to be blown away by amazing presentations but unfortunately I found myself walking out of a lot of great sessions, not because they were not good but because, much like my drive in, I had seen it before. I suspect this was true of a lot of people who follow edtech closely. Also, many of the sessions I was really excited to see were either scheduled for the same time I was presenting or just like there was no room in the inn on our drive out there was simply no room in the session by the time I got there.

The hotel we ended up staying in in Kearney was 1/2 the price we would have paid elsewhere, it put us very close to Denver, and had many more amenities and perks than we expected. This unexpected change of plans, while not easy, ended up being good for us. The same was true of not being able to attend all the sessions I wanted to. I ended up spending a lot of time in the Blogger's Cafe where arguably, for less cost I got more. This was the "hang out" place for most anyone who is anyone in the edubloggosphere and being there afforded me the opportunity to have lengthy one-on-one conversations about teaching, technology, and learning with the same people I otherwise would sit in a crowd of 200+ and listen to. This happy accident provided for me the opportunity to discuss informal vs formal/traditioanl vs online education in depth with Steve Hargadon, discuss school filtration policy and social media with Bud Hunt, meet with Chris Lehman, Scott McLeod, Richard Byrne, Dean Shareski, Will Richardson, Doug Johnson, and many others. It was as if not making it to the session in time I was given a backstage pass.

Photo by David Warlick

While I was attending the conference during the day my wife took the kids to attractions around Denver. In the evening I joined them. They went to the Children's Museum and the Aquarium by themselves then I joined them and took them one night to The Garden of the Gods and the other night to Casa Bonita. I am glad I took my family with me to the conference. Nothing will replace in my mind coming back to the hotel on Monday and hearing my two little girls yell out the hotel window, "Poopy Butt Cheeks!" to try and get funny responses from passers by or the look on their faces when we drove up into the mountains for the first time (both were asleep for the drive up and woke to an environment completely foreign to them).

While my ISTE experience is over the connections and relationships forged and/or strengthened at this conference I will carry with me. Just as I could take my family with me to ISTE I keep these people with me via social media and my web 2.0-enhanced personal learning network. I leave feeling a bit more connected.

While at the conference I posted this reflective Tweet that seemed to generate some argument:

Its been nice meeting so many ppl in person at #iste10 I normally only mt online but somehow f2f cd nvr replace depth of online interaction.less than a minute ago via Twitterrificanderscj
anderscj

I stand by that statement and would like to clarify what I meant a bit. What I was thinking was, if you had a choice to keep events like the ISTE Conference but do away with our online interactions (via Social Media) or do away with face to face conferences but keep the networks we have built, which would you choose? I choose an ongoing networked relationship.

Prior to the conference many bloggers were posting their irrational fears about meeting people from their PLNs in person for the first time. The fear was that somehow finally meeting people you have a strong online personal and professional relationship with would cause that relationship to sour. While I think for most of us the face to face meetings only strengthened this connection for many it was awkward. When we mediate our communications with digital tools we free ourselves of many of the barriers we put up in person. There is no body language that gets in the way, we don't have to worry about our appearances, our age, or any of the other physical baggage we carry with us. Our connection online is closer to a connection of thoughts which for many is more efficient, more comfortable, and somewhat more pure. I also think I have reached a point where I learn more in the digital space than the physical, at least as far as edtech is concerned.

Weekly Tech Tip - iTeach Mobile & Cellphones in the Classroom

For the majority of this week I have been in Denver at the ISTE Conference, therefore my normal routine of crawling the web for resources has been slightly modified as is evident in the apparent imbalance in this week's "link stew" section of my weekly tech tip post. Next week I am off but will still probably manage to eek out a few reflective posts, but no tech tip. I went to ISTE to both network with other educators and to present at four sessions. I feel like the sessions I was part of and the other educators I presented with hit a grand slam with the work we did. I couldn't be more pleased with how our sessions went and how we were received. Thank you to all who attended both in person and online.

One of the sessions I presented at the conference, both as a poster session and as part of a panel discussion, was on a project I was involved with this year at Goodhue Public Schools called iTeach Mobile. Regular readers of my blog should already be familiar with this project and the social networking site we created for it but it occurred to me while I was driving home that I had not yet shared our work with cellphones, iPods, and other mobile devices with the teachers I currently am working with at EMID 6067. I decided that for this week's tech tip I would run through my #ISTE10 poster session both for EMID teachers and for those who missed it at the conference.

Weekly Tech Tip: