Worker\’s Playtime!

So today was the day that the ATSC (academic technology steering committee) held an information forum on the college’s Academic Technology Vision that Mike Caulfield (http://mikecaulfield.com), Irene Herold, and I drafted last fall. The idea is that the document will help inform requests, initiatives, and plans involving academic technology so that they align with the mission and values of the college. What an idea, eh? But it goes beyond just alignment. At its core it’s about learning, teaching, and transparency. Period.

We posted our work on a public wiki and invited comments…from anyone. We received a few on the wiki, some via email, while others found it easier to talk face-to-face over coffee. All in all we probably had a dozen or so people who gave us input or asked for clarification. After the first flurry of feedback the document sat…and sat. 3 months later we (ATSC) held an open forum to discuss the document, how it would be used in the planning process, and how this vision might be pulled in and applied to classroom strategies. To be honest I think most of us were expecting 6, 8, 10 people at the most to show up. We had over 40 people attend! We were blown away by the number and encouraged by some of the questions and comments.

There was a lot of interchange about how the vision might or might not support the following: the desire to revisit funding structures for software, the exploration of a student laptop initiative and what that might mean for IT support, faculty pedagogy, financial aid, etc., and support for faculty to find ways in which technology could strengthen learning. I understand why there was focus on process and how to “get stuff” but I hope this leads to broader conversations and an exchange of ideas about pedagogy, learning and how technology can be used to support both.

Again, the conversation was interesting but the following two items resonated with me:

• There is a real need for people to be able to come together to share and talk about their experience using technology in their teaching/with student learning/in their professional development.
  • I think this could be done a number of ways including brown-bag luncheons, however, I think this limits the audience/participants and further tightens already-too-tight work schedules. So to model sound and innovative use of technology we should think about blogs or other social space that would encourage conversations and provide examples (Ning anyone?)

• There is an assumption that students are born tech-savvy and intrinsically “do technology”.
  • If ‘doing’ technology means surfing the web, packing an iPod, or setting up a gmail account then yes, students are probably tech savvy. But if students struggle with sending a coherent email or creating a Word document then we have a problem. But this has nothing to do with technology. It’s a communication, presentation and collaboration problem - skills needed in the 21st century work place. While I think some support can be offered to help address these deficiencies I think it would better serve the student if solving the skill gaps were core to their experience at KSC (service learning, community service - i.e. grappling with real problems and designing real solutions with technology as a backdrop). By doing this students are refining their skills in context of life after KSC.

It’ll be interesting to see where this vision ultimately lands and what academic technology plan(s) it breeds.

So I’ve been doing this for a number of years now (doing = working with technology in higher education and earning a Masters in Teaching with Technology) - and have come to the conclusion that I’ve been championing the wrong approach. I’ve been patient with the slow pace of technology adoption but frustrated that the masses haven’t even reached the peak of Everett Rogers bell curve. Part of the reason is that I, like many others in my profession, use terms that demonstrate our lack of a clear vision of what learning looks like. We use words like “integration” when in fact that’s exactly the wrong concept to be using and promoting! Integration implies that the curriculum is developed first and the technology is added later as an extra appendage. That’s not what we really are striving for is it?! Do we really want to nail it to the side of learning as an afterthought? Take for instance this comment left on Jeff Utecht’s blog “The Thinking Stick“:

“It’s a chicken and egg problem - if technology only supports existing practice or takes a background role, what you end up with is existing practice. If practice is transformed without understanding technology, you are still left playing catch-up. It has to be both/and - and that’s the tough part.”

So maybe David Warlick is on to something. Maybe it’s not integration or embedding that we need since this would still focus on the technology (thanks Jeff for pushing me to think hard about assumptions and the casual manner I bat about words). Maybe it should be on technology literacy and technology fluency which would put the emphasis where it should be - on student learning. With this approach technology would be a tool in the teacher’s chest which would also consist of a syllabus, goals and outcomes, rubrics, exams, etc.

So to paraphrase Warlick we have to stop focusing on technology integration and begin to understand technology literacy. This will result in the integration of literacy with the focus on literacy not technology. Technology will follow because students need to use, understand and manipulate it to navigate information landscape.

So from a pragmatist point of view what does this mean? I guess it means that we start small and start thinking hard about what we want our end result to be. Do we care about the # of faculty using PowerPoint to deliver lectures or should we instead focus on students and how they might use technology to better demonstrate their understanding of the course? Thinking about this is the fun part - the hard part comes when trying to implement change.

JENNY

I just finished reading an interesting blog post by David Warlick (check out 2 Cents Worth) who has taken a hit by some in the blogosphere for lauding the use of blogs in education. The comments against Warlick are revealing and an example of the road blocks that prevent meaningful integration of technology into the curriculum. His post was this simple observation: in an effort to attract technically savvy teachers school administrators might ask not only what journals they read but what blogs they read. What a great question! Ray Dewar posted a comment that took the conversation a step further. He says that to answer the question of a candidates technical fluency he asks each about the technology they use on a daily basis. Simple. Extraordinary.

Sacrilege.

There was a flurry of comments questioning the validity of blogs, their scholarly relevance, and their place in education.

Well if it’s validity that’s needed then read the 6/03 article in The Chronicle: “Scholars Who Blog“, or better yet get it right from the source and read 1 of the over 125 blogs on the site Professors Who Blog. Still not convinced that there is a place for blogging in education? Try Googling “using blogs in education site:edu” and you’ll get over 338,000 hits!

The point is that education needs students, staff, and faculty who are willing to try ‘new’ technologies to collaborate, share, inform, think and question. So then, why not ask candidates to assess their 21st century literacy skills? It might be the start of something big.

JENNY

There is a lot of buzz around campus these days about digital natives getting technology. We witnessed students texting, taking pictures with their cells, IM’ing, asking about online access to….X, the list goes on. If “getting it” means using it then it’s true. Natives see technology as a transparent means of communicating, finding information and hanging out.

The point is that we (anyone over the age of 35) assume that students don’t need support with any kind of technology, that somehow by some miracle they know how to configure their bluetooth access, create a blog, subscribe to syndicated content, create digital presentations, etc. It’s not a wrong assumption it’s just not entirely accurate. The 2007 Horizon Report confirms anecdotal evidence that students do need support with choosing a tool and creating meaningful academic content (caveat: the definition of “support” needs to be examined that might take on the flavor of a mentor/tutor model versus a “how-to” skill building model).

“There is a skills gap between understanding how to use tools for media creation and how to create meaningful content. Although new tools make it increasingly easy to produce multimedia works, students lack essential skills in composition, storytelling, and design. In addition, faculty need curricula that adapt to the pace of change and that teach the skills that will be needed—even though it is not clear what all those skills may be.

Students’ views of what is and what is not technology are increasingly different from those of faculty. From small, flexible software tools to ubiquitous portable devices and instant access, students today experience technology very differently than faculty do, and the gap between students’ view of technology and that of faculty is growing rapidly.”

So what does this tell us? Rather then continue down the beaten path of technology workshops that focus on skill building for faculty (still a valued means for introducing technology) why not develop new models for showing/sharing how technology might be used to engage students. Modeling technology use with and for students comes to mind and is another way to make technology transparent. The first step in making this happen is to open the door to students and invite them to help shape academic use of technology.

JENNY