How do we cope with all the extra tech?
Do you have to apply the tech? student expectations? fact to face teaching
prior/post class rather than synchonously?
have to use the tech with care, don't just plonk it down
what do I change from my currect practice and what routes are there to change? more variety? or just more...?
skills needed many and changing
- is it worth it?
- does the institution have the correct mix of labour? experts lecturing vs other means
tempting to just use it because it's there; but can't ignore the changes happening outside
now: don't need people to tell you facts - the information is all out there.
social and logistical concerns?
schools have changed, universities less so.
Main question addressed: Does education have to change because of technology push?
Example where new technology fails: SAT tests
Technology requires new skills, e.g. touchtyping
Also offers new challenges for education: how can it be effectively embedded and managed.
Need to take account of resistance to new technology.
People lose skills because of new technology (e.g. spelling) but also learn new skills.
Face-to-face lecturing will always remain important, but to be effective it will have to account for new technology.
With regard to new technology we are currently in a transitionary phase: current pupils/students are much more familiar with it.
Questions for panel:
Don't we need to rethink education as a whole? Before that we can't really decide how technology is best going to support it.
Does the role of the academic change? E.g. authoring content. Need to train academic in this.
Questions for the Plenary Session:
1. How does education prepare for the information society?
2. Online technologies provide ‘live’ interaction, the need for moderation appears. How do we accommodate for different styles of learning?
3. Awareness of the potential and dangers of abundance of information. How do we teach that to children? How do we empower them to participate in Democracy?
Some other issues discussed: Teaching and avoiding plagiarism. Developing critical thinking. Interdisciplinary character of design. Rating online materials and resources.
How do we cope with all the extra tech?
Do you have to apply the tech? student expectations? fact to face teaching
prior/post class rather than synchonously?
have to use the tech with care, don't just plonk it down
what do I change from my currect practice and what routes are there to change? more variety? or just more...?
skills needed many and changing
- is it worth it?
- does the institution have the correct mix of labour? experts lecturing vs other means
tempting to just use it because it's there; but can't ignore the changes happening outside
now: don't need people to tell you facts - the information is all out there.
social and logistical concerns?
schools have changed, universities less so.
1. Is there an inverse relationship between learning & the extent of teacher and knowledge control ?
2. How does technology change this relationship?
How to control…how to engage
Loss of control…versus ‘safety’
Personal autonomy..versus authenticity of knowledge
Paradox of managed discussions – we want to capture the informal spontaneous discussions that emerge. But what is happening in informal situations…? Not enough research. Few people capturing that. (Patrick)
‘Our’ view…context & time dependent…that things should be orderly. No longer appropriate. Can we tolerate multitasking by students & continuous feedback into teaching. Is it rude to be doing things during a lecture? …the problem is the opposite..getting them to engage (if you can keep under control)
The technologies have the potential to ‘destabilize’ traditional ways. “Don’t have a problem with technology...but do have a problem with what we DO with it’ (Ian). Answers country/culturally dependent
However the technologies can help us adapt our teaching e.g. Work out from bulletin board discussions in order to explore what they’ve failed to grasp. Demonstrate active and problem based learning. What they get out of this varies.
Example of students continuing to type against guest lecturer (when he’s already said that ppt slides were on a web site). (Colin) Students critiqued ..lecturer was shocked.
Ann asked why didn’t the lecturer ask what they were doing…he was a guest?
Another question:
What should children know? Do and don’ts of online relationships (Ann)...and personal safety. Also criticality & intelligent thinking (example given of Holocaust denial) (loss of control again!). Access to information in families & in society- very serious issues. Freedom to search provides very high price. Fast typing.
Comment on the technology itself
The ways tools e.g. bulletin board are presented, impacts on the ease of use and interaction. Whether to buy in or write tools (e.g. assessment) - ‘tone’ has to be right
Can we have a url for these?
1. Roger Shank positioning is that teacher/lecturer will disappear completely. I’m not very afraid…’(schools in
2. IMPACT study
Massive distance still to go in school & lesson time. At home much higher. But the students are doing it (less so teacher).
This picked up David May's question around what skills we will all need (and should therefore be teaching now) to handle all the technologies we're likely to encounter in the Web of 2010.
There is a paradox in that with the current National curriculum: we encourage critical thinking, self expression etc in children til they're 8, then again when postgrads, but in between the educational system explicitly rejects this in some cases (regurgitating material for assessment rather than thinking for themselves).
Maybe it is wrong to talk about is this technology useful or not? More about how you learn to use it and about learning to use the appropriate medium for the type of communication (this being a recurring theme to our discussion).
It's noted that online workloads for students and tutors is growing.
There are, and need to be, different motivations for people to participate in online interactions.
We are seeing something of a changing nature of the educational experience - online notes available beforehand, but the discussion in the classroom is different. irc/blogging has to be used very thoughtfully.
Many of the e-skills are transient and easy to acquire, what we need to do is focus more on teaching children how to think, and how to acquire these skills rather than training them in any specific technology. There seems to be a growing need to teach logic, critical thinking, evaluative processes and the broader view of communicating information, what's the appropriate way of communicating?
From Paul’s session:
1. Is it rude to engage with available technologies during ‘traditional forms’ of teaching and learning activity?
Possibility of missed opportunities if not paying attention. However, chance of accessing that information at any time (i.e. later). Difference between education and information retrieval though. Important to think about that information and take opportunities to question it. Students like the security of having something being presented.
Important to ask questions about purpose of activity. Accessing and retrieving information and using the technologies is an essential part of learning process but is more complementary to the traditional forms rather than an integral part of it. (Good) lectures can become performances rather like an opera and you don’t let someone use a mobile phone while the fat lady sings.
Technology can help towards offering options with assessment.
Blogs can be helpful in creating a space for thinking and understanding but how do you effectively close the loop back to the teacher/educator? Especially where you have large classes? Need tools to navigate student blogs to make sense of them, find themes and patterns, separate wheat from chaff. Blogs are probably more useful in building social processes rather than generating important and relevant information that can be easily assessed.
2. What are implications of an ‘always on’ environment?
Didn’t get this far. Which is a shame.
Question for panel?
Vision of the web in 2010 implies that info will be paid for on access of it rather than up front as is currently case with say payment for a broadband connection. Who pays and how?
Group G: Facilitator Paul Bason, Notes Lesly Huxley
We started with the question Paul Shabajee raised: is it rude and detrimental to learning to be discussing a tutor'\s presentation wirelessly with ones' peers live during the lecture or lesson?
In some ways we've always been in a state of 'partial concentration' - how many of us remember being students and doodling or reading surreptitiously during lectures?
Technology offers more ways for people to be elsewhere, but might also bring people back into the fold if used appropriately.
=key is how integrated it is to the session / lesson taking place?
=if this is happening in an unrelated way, in parallel tracks, you might end up with "subversive conversations in the bushes", but if facilitated/mediated, interactive participation can be very valuable.
=does this need a redefinition of what someone standing up in front of a class/conference is actually there for?
This was our longest discussion, and it ended with turning the question back on itself:
Is it rude for the lecturer/speaker to expect students/delegates to make notes on his/her lecture?!
Is it rude and detrimental to be discussing/looking things up during lectures?
It is evolving e.g. mobile phones turned off during lectures
Social and cultural norms will develop and depend on nature of conference
Roles will evolve – e.g. lecturers
Reflecting and evaluating while in the process of doing it very difficult
You are reacting – giving speaker richer feedback
Need to manage people’s attention when teaching
At conference trading in people’s attentions
2 issues:
If it is going to work the lecturer would need to have control of how people use it (constructively)
Role of education?
2 issues – how knowledge and knowledge development is changing
-ubiquity of technologies
increasing network enables education to change role --- more participative role, less transmissional; knowledge widely distributed, co-creation
Technology aids and abets
If completely networked world – these networks are owned – educationalist not involved in the development of standards etc Need to be involved.
Educationalists are involved – students bring the technologies brought in – so educationalists are being led.
Young people exploit comm. Channels – social support – as opposed to the content/knowledge – go to social network.
Technolgy offering opportunities to structure events in different ways e.g. choosing text over phone.
Blogging – can it be imported into classroom?
Controlling space to define identity – personal freedoms.
Can you design events?
Things we mistake we can design are things that evolve.
Reflective logs – needs to suit the way people want to do it.
Do they need to post to a blog, discussion board to learn?
Medium for expression or a medium for communication?
If a feedback channel needed– would manage this in a different way.
Audience important.
What is the imagined audience – what is the real audience?
Implication for school age classrooms?
This would trickle down.
Very motivating to children to publish on web.
How will we learn?
It will evolve.
Do we educate students to be users of technologies or designers, creators of these technologies? (critical co-creator people)
Should children learn to programme? Can teach everyone everything or teach programmers how to think like layperson.
If you don’t have a sense of programming…..can’t create…another tool for creativity.
Can education take back Intellectual ownership from commercial ownership of information? Infrastructure owners own information (e.g satellite tv) What we teach is controlled by what people are prepared to transmit.
Group G: Facilitator Paul Bason. Notes Lesly Huxley.
There are some big issues for in-service training; barrier may be with the teachers and the support and training they have (or have not)
Need to have service providers that focus on infrastructure, dba, etc., so that teachers can focus on teaching. So often the resource and culture aren't there to allow specialists to focus on what they're good at (service provision, network etc management; teaching)
Support for teachers need to be there, and they also and need motivation for them to learn to use some of these technologies in a really meaningful way in the classroom - again, goes back to educational objectives and appropriate media.
But there are examples of using technology to support peer-to-peer assessment where students can comment on each others' work, participate, assess each other.
Group G: Facilitator Paul Bason. Notes Lesly Huxley.
We ranged widely around the role of technology in the classroom and not so much about assessment, but the main thrust of the discussion was the need always to return to the educational objective. What are we trying to assess? What's the most appropriate medium for that? And not to forget that, it may not be the use of the technhology nor the subject matter that's important, but skills such as team-work or critical thinking that are being demostrated through use of the technology.
Notes as taken, presented unedited. Perhaps the participants might like to follow-up with an explanation?
PaulShab's questiounbs: what is going to be different with always-on networks?
Noise / Taking it all in
Implications for education, distraction, what about school-age curriculum
How do the roles of your peers change?
Is it rude/detrimental to learning to have multiple activities going on?
And the group said:
(After an introduction, thatwe wouldn't have to remember everyone else's names?)
It's an attention thing. You're training people to pay attention for a small space of time.
It's short and quick.
Is it helping education? Not necessarily rude.
There's always something better waiting for you (eg, call waiting).
Society could benefit, increasingly people will choose private space. People will have
to learn when to switch off. Teaching people to take responsibility.
Response to being unavailable with mobile can be positive.
Social inclusion aspect: implies a world where kids have technology available to them.
"The digital divide". One argument was that it'll get cheaper.
Cheaper doesn't mean more equitable.
Children will still have access to mobiles, TV, playstation, etc. But may not use it for
an educational perspective.
In the past you had a limited set of tools to teach people, with a range of digital devices
then there's evidence a wider range of kids can respond positively, compared to books.
A personalised learning agenda.
Many teenagers can do three things happily at once. Is that to the detriment of other
styles that are less superficial? Eg: detailed discussion. Loss of reflection.
Loss of coordination with mobile phones whilst walking as an example for cognitive overload.
How does blogging etc differ from older forms of note-taking? etc.
You're more likely to be distracted because you have greater opportunity to shift attention outside the immediate environment.
Are multitasking critical skills accellerating at the same rate? If their skills are keeping
pace then there's proortionately no loss.
(Psychological: there's a limit to the number of tasks that the "central executive" can
manage at once. But who knows? Maybe there's accelerated evolutionary development here)
You always have to fight for attention in a teaching environment. I could live with
a little note-passing. But that they might be alking about what I'm saying, I'd feel
very exposed. Eg: IRC challenge to speaker at a conference.
... but that's great as a student.
Why would you lecture if it's a condoned practice that people will be commenting on what you're saying ("more likely what you're wearing") as you lecture.
Teaching has to change. ("I'm not people should just stand up and talk")
How can you monitor other's disattention?
... I like the voting idea. This could be subverted by "gaming" a voting opinion.
A teacher uses the group to decide how they're doing, if material needs going over.
It's building in disengagement between a teacher and a group.
Industrially group work is more and more important. Is this training you to work as
an individual?...
... not sure. If you're communicating with the rest of the group collectively then
you _are_ being taught in a group environment. The lecturer takes on more of a facilitator role.
Teachers need a new set of skills for this. Also, you could modify style. "There are times when I will need your attention."
How are primary school children going to gain these skills?
And how are they going to employ them even when they have them?
(On history for conference) We debated putting all content available beforehand.
But how do you deal with the situation where everyone turns up without doing the prep?
I've experienced the situation where a class was well-prepared, and we immediately went deeper - it was no longer about transmission.
Anecdote: Looking at a primary school making presentations, ppts, etc about Shrewsbury.
Searching the web for bits and pieces. Half the kids had a New Hampshire one.
...but you can learn more by mistakes...
Blogging: there's been a lot of discussion about computer-mediated discussion,
VLEs. Many have small-community appeal. I was interested in the fact that the reason people were writing was emotional. Could you tap that emotional power, use it, apply it?
...Maybe you can encourage people by allowing them to add comments during lectures?
It would be handy not just for future lectures but also for the students.
Related anecdote: I've been working on software for "e-learning" recently. How do you engage gifted kids? We might encourage kids to use blogs. The gifted kid is encouraged to share his knowledge, he becomes a publisher. Then next year, a year seven student has _two_ views. The material is added to the reference.
...but how far can you get through reading other people's versions of stuff?
Plagarism: you develop an academic rigor for referencing. In this more fluid environment, where does the line of what is your work end? Some universities don't like online discussion for assessed material because of plagarism issues(!)
Some of educational oucome is simply: knowing stuff, knowing who to ask.
...but the educational system [currently in the UK] is individual assessment and exams.
There is a system of immediate and pressing deadlines: the next exam.
If people _want_ that information they'll find it. The school problem is getting kids to want it.
Distractions include: other folk being distracted near you.
Examples already:
CNN's out-of-band ticker tape. I read the tape when the item is less interesting.
Or kid's programs with SMS->ticker.
On another topic:
The thought of a shop shouting at me as I pass is horrendous. Unless I can opt out.
Eg: my parent's generation - cannot stand music playing when they go into a shop. I don't notice.
Question for the panel
What do people think about the role of learning technologists? How do teachers use
this technology to engage directly with the students? What about if specialists
performed that facilitation role to enable teachers to teach, students to study.
What's the role of face-to-face interactions going to be?
Is the electronic distraction mode so very different from whispering, passing notes,
and the traditional distractions? Is it a difference of scale or some other difference?