Understanding

Just looking through the papers for the 10th European Conference on E-Learning which starts tomorrow here in Brighton...

A maze of workshops to be attended, half of them with titles that I don't understand! Just when I think I'm getting a handle on what I'm trying to do with all this, I'm thrown back into conscious incompetence mode and feel like I've learned nothing.

Gave an input to my fellow Ed D students on Saturday: forced myself to go for it because it made me clarify where I'd got to in terms of learning in this last year. Muddled through some difficult questions from the group  in terms of my epistemology but it has confirmed that my views are firmly tied up with my professional identity, and has given me some direction in terms of where I need to develop my thinking now. 

 Conscious incompetence hit here too - the impression that my learned colleagues know a lot more than I do or that they perhaps spend more time thinking it all through? I like the fact that Dewey rejected the term 'epistemology' in favour of "the theory of inquiry or experimental logic": sort of takes the sting out of all this talk of post-modernism, positivism, constructivism etc. For me the following is what is important: that no matter where we come at a problem or dilemma from, the abstract is just that, abstract, until it is applied in some way and learning is gained from that experience. 

In terms of Honey & Mumford learning styles, I come out as pragmatist/activist which fits Dewey's quotation below, that of having to apply in order to be convinced or to believe. The terminology is interesting, must do some research into their basis for using 'pragmatist' as a style....

John Dewey. Experience and Education (1938)

Twitterverse and political education

Been an interesting few weeks in terms of finishing off my Assignment 2 on research methodology and starting to think about where the Assignment 3 research project might take me.

I've been right in the thick of current campaigning about the cuts in young people's services and a lot of communication has taken place through Twitter. I've been amazed by the immediacy and power of the Twitterverse, including getting direct messages from Tim Loughton's Blackberry in answer to my challenges to him. 

ChooseYouth held a lobby of Parliament last week and asked everyone to tweet the minister at 2.30pm with a message about whether he would ring-fence budgets for youth services. Using the hashtag #p4youth, this message also successfully infiltrated the counter event being held by the government at the O2 and where Tim Loughton was speaking.

Reviewing the tweets later that evening, I was struck by the power and accessibility of this digital medium, hundreds of versions of the same message sent direct to Tim Loughton's Twitter account, delegates at the Positive for Youth event also getting on board, and then others who weren't involved in either event getting involved through re-tweeting.

So where does this take me in terms of my research. Would love to do some serious research about using Twitter for supporting campaigning and networking amongst young people but maybe this is premature or perhaps I need to find an organisation predisposed to doing this?

In Deweyian terms, this is about educators engaging with both the digital agenda and the outrage that many young people feel powerless to express in relation to cuts in services,   to  support them to get their voice heard and to see the power of their actions. 

"I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he

finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a 

member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and toconceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. 

The value which they have is reflected back into them" 

 

Dewey, J. My Pedagogic Creed School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80

 

Youth workers have always used tools to promote learning, growth and development in young people. The world of digital media is no different but perhaps here we have an even better opportunity to get catch the attention of those who need to hear?