Pragmatic technology

" The very techniques and technologies that disburden men and women of the backbreaking and mind-numbing work performed by previous generations - and still performed by men,women and children in developing countries - also present challenges that many perceive as threatening. The same techniques and technologies that bring the exhilaration of rapid change are perceived in some quarters as diminishing the quality of life. One of the most basic paradoxes of our technological milieu is that techniques and technologies ostensibly developed as means of control are now viewed by many individuals as spinning out of control, or at very least as operating beyond their personal control."

Hickman, L. 2001. Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Technology) Bloomington and Indianapolis. Indiana University Press.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philosophical-Tools-Technological-Culture-Pragmatism/dp/0253214440/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354697719&sr=1-1 

Interesting in the context of a class that I took yesterday where youth workers have been seemingly 'mourning' the passing of the age of face-to-face communication in the light of the digital age, but who then get really excited about using a free platform that transfers a pdf document into a magazine ( http://issuu.com/business?gclid=CKvxqLnzgrQCFerItAodQ3cATA )!

Interesting also are the issues of control and confidence for educators: the feeling that I must be all-knowing in terms of the transfer of knowledge rather than facilitating the acquisition of knowledge. Dewey's concepts of learning as related to  the reconstruction and reorganisation of knowledge and experience are relevant - how do we skill youth workers up to feel confident about asking the right questions of young people and their engagement with digital media? How do we recapture youth work process and principles within this landscape that is seemingly so alien and terrifying to some?

Emerging from the fog...?

I can't help thinking that I should be pleased with having made Stage 2 of my doctoral studies, but instead I've been thrown back into 'conscious incompetence' mode. Just when I thought I was starting to get the hang of this, I realise that there's still a long way to go, and that the direction is still uncertain.

I haven't blogged in a while and maybe that's also something to do with it? I got immersed into the practical research tasks, got some interesting data, but stopped thinking in the bigger picture or philosophical sense of what I was trying to do..

However, discovering a book by Larry Hickman on John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology has taken me full circle again to where I started  out - Dewey's instrumentalism and pragmatism - and I'm starting to reformat my original thoughts about the digital Dewey.

The doctoral thesis has got to be so much more than an evaluation of a piece of work, no matter no national or how extensive. Dewey has to be the link here, and his definition of technology - remember that he died in 1952, 30 years before the birth of the internet - is one that will be interesting to test against the 21st century.

In digital terms, Dewey viewed change and growth as a norm and he believed that social experimentation rather than absolute principles, was needed to assess the worth of an idea or practice. For him, learning occurs through the construction, reconstruction and reorganisation of experiences to find meaning, and to enable the individual to influence and direct future situations. Here, the role of the educator is to provide the  learner  with opportunities to learn ' the instruments of effective self-direction' - a sensibility to social issues and an ability to act on them. Yet another argument for the digital youth worker?

Digital researchers

Attending a conference for 'digital researchers' yesterday at the British Library and came away wondering why some people had attended at all. On one hand, the Twitter feed was going bonkers throughout and it was hard to keep up with the flow of thoughts, and on the other hand there were people seemingly reluctant to sign up for a Google or Twitter account.

Interesting part of the process was to group everyone even before the opening speech , in order that group members could spread themselves over the range of workshops and then communicate with each other through Tweets, wiki's etc as the conference progressed. Interesting way of capturing thoughts but didn't really work for us because of those who needed a social media induction course rather than an invitation to contribute as a digital researcher.

It did make me wonder how I ever researched anything before the internet. Even though my research focus is the digital world, how would I ever prepare lectures, workshops let alone tackle the writing that I'm trying to do currently? How would I ever have sourced the pile of second hand books that now sit on my shelves if it wasn't for Amazon, and come to think of it, how would I afford it as I do a pretty brisk trade in reselling books through Amazon as well?

I've got files upon file of links sent through to me on Twitter, and I hope that I've been able to do the same for others....PDF's, bookmarks, RSS feeds. How would I have booked the plane fare today for the August conference where I hope to deliver a paper about my research?

These are all things that are related to the digital researcher. I suppose part of my disappointment with yesterday was the focus on the negative, the what if's, rather than people just using common sense about how their information and data is stored. Huge discussion about whether journal articles should be put out there for reviewers to find them rather than the more traditional way of an article having to get past the gate-keepers like the editor and chosen reviewers.

At the heart of it is really the thought of collaboration or of open source material. In the last few weeks I've heard 3 'eminent' professors talking about how they put all their current materials online as open source material under a creative commons license. It did occur to me that maybe these are the people that have least to lose since they've already made their mark in some way. Perhaps of more interest is thinking about how those of us trying to carve out some kind of niche can use the digital world in that quest. How do we get our thoughts out there in a way that doesn't involve the gate-keepers but is still part of a robust process?

Ho hum...

Steve Wheeler's lecture was interesting but I found myself wondering why  his finishing statements seemed a bit obvious....

As an informal educator, this is where I have always started from with young people. The idea of a more equal starting point where the educator doesn't need to be the subject expert. My previous blog post posed a question from the lecture about whether peer learning challenges Vygotsky's idea of the educator supporting the learner in that 'zone of proximal development', and a colleague rightly responded with the comment that it does not need to be the 'knowing other' who provides that support, it can be anyone - they just need to listen and ask the right questions. The informal educator is very often in this position and will also facilitate a learner's peers to contribute to the overall learning.

So, if this is part of the pedagogy of the  informal educator, why do I still encounter youth workers who discount the significance of social media in young people's lives or discount the need for them to support young people in their acquisition of digital literacy or fluency skills?

The concepts of paragogy as a theory of peer learning, and then heutagogy as a theory of self-directed learning,  link very well with the pedagogy informal education, experiential education and the concepts of product, process and praxis. I'm not sure about the simplistic nature of the model below however. I don't think that peer learning is necessarily formal, it certainly isn't when in the learner's own time or when unexpected outcomes are achieved, for example, a rise in self-confidence through being involved in a set task such as presentation.

We also ask learners to blog in formal settings, sometimes even setting assessment criteria and guidance on what to blog, and my hunch is that this doesn't always work because it tries to mix pedagogy with heutagogy and doesn't take into account how the learner's wants and needs. Steve Wheeler is quite critical of learning styles, yet it seems to be that blogging as a form of reflective practice seems to suit some people but not others.

Enhancing and extending learning through technology: social media in education

In a seminar being run by Prof Steve Wheeler which is posing some interesting questions re blogging, collaboration and sharing ."In the act of writing ...we are written" (Chandler). Perhaps a reason why people don't or won't blog? There's a risk to putting it out there.. what might others think about what you've written? I'm even going back through this and correcting the punctuation...

Front stage and backstage roles - what persona do you present to your 'readers'? I certainly engage online 'in awareness' but that involves a level of digital fluency or literacy that perhaps young people haven't developed.

Lessig- "Blogging ..is the most important form of unchoreographed public discourse that we have" - it allows us to put our thoughts out there. It's not always unchoreographed though because in HE we often instruct students to blog or reflect on specific things. Perhaps this doesn't work sometimes because it's forced in some way?

Paragogy: peer support is  becoming an emergent property in HE - how does this challenge Vygotsky's ZPD and the role of knowledgeable others? Collaboration and sharing online enables peer and individual support in ways that haven't been seen before. However, what happens when it's not supportive and becomes destructive or oppressive?