Michael Bugeja’s opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Reduce the Technology, Rescue Your Job,” struck a nerve today.  He started by noting that for “most of this decade, professors embraced the pedagogy of engagement, wooing students via technology and ignoring the costs because traditional methods, from textbooks to lectures, purportedly bored students who multitasked in the wireless classroom.”  He then noted the massive cuts occurring across higher education, and suggested that these “facts alone merit an immediate technological and curricular assessment, or else hundreds more professors and staff members could lose their jobs in the coming weeks and months. You may lose your job.”

Bugeja raised the valid point that too often technology decisions are made without factoring in true costs, but he then suggests that teaching centers (like the one at which I work) are part of the problem for pushing the use of technology for teaching and learning.  His final paragraph reads:

• “I challenge anyone objecting to these arguments to look in the eye of secretaries, janitors, adjuncts, advisers, and professors of eliminated programs and say that avatars, clickers, social networks, and tweets—and the pedagogies, IT expenses, and teaching centers supporting them—are more important than feeding their families. To believe we can afford both indicates how incapable many of us are of making the difficult choices that the times require.”

It would be easy to dismiss this article if I did not think that his way of thinking was not reflective of many in mainstream faculty.  I have seen a number of faculty in higher education, as well as teachers in K-12, who see technology as an evil.  In many ways, they want to wall off their classes from the outside world.

That image of a wall is particularly relevant today, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  President Reagan has always been one of my favorites, and one cannot think of him without hearing his exhortation:

“Mr. Gorbachev…tear down this wall!”

That is the line most remember, but I like his comments later in the same speech, in which he stated “this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”

Bugeja’s comments to reduce technology in order to save jobs ignores the realities of a changing world…much as the Berlin Wall did.  Technology in and of itself is not evil, and technology integrated into education is opening minds, not closing them.  The participatory web and open access to information has created freedoms that never existed in the past.  Those freedoms directly and positively impact learning.  As Derek Bruff noted in a comment to Bugeja’s piece:

“…point out that Bugeja has focused here on the cost of instructional technology, but not on the benefits to student learning. There’s plenty of research that shows that student learning is positively affected by instructional methods that involve more active student engagement before, during, and after class. Technologies that support or facilitate such instructional methods are certainly worth exploring, if our goal is student learning. When conducting a cost-benefit analysis, it’s only appropriate to spend as much time thinking through the benefits as it is thinking through the costs.”

“…if our goal is student learning…”  Well said, Derek!  If one shifts the microscope from technology to student learning, one might find many traditional classrooms in trouble!  President Reagan made his speech in 1987, and during that same period, Chickering and Gamson developed a seminal work on teaching and learning, their Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Instruction.  They synthesized fifty years of research on teaching to develop these principles:

Good practice in undergraduate education:
1. Encourages contact between students and faculty
2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.
3. Encourages active learning.
4. Gives prompt feedback.
5. Emphasizes time on task.
6. Communicates high expectations.
7. Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

Rather than cast technology as an evil, I would suggest that technology is a powerful tool that encourages contact between students and faculty, provides avenues for reciprocity and cooperation among students, creates new venues for active learning, enables more timely and prompt feedback, and gives new opportunities to keep students on task.  High expectations can now be communicated in multiple ways across social media that students are using, and these diverse and multiple paths respect the talents and new ways our students are learning.

We certainly need to be fiscally prudent with taxpayer and tuition-funded monies, but now is not the time to build walls and isolate our students from a 24/7 wired world.  Instead, we need to actively help our students create the learning networks that they will need to thrive in the 21st Century.

So to Mr. Bugeja and others who agree with him, I say “Tear down this wall!”

We ended up having several students come in as well as several folks who joined from a Twitter link.  The conversation was lively, interesting, and marked with some fascinating points about the challenges we face with technology and instruction.  You can listen to an archived version here.  (Click Participant Join, put your first name in to enter, and then click Archive Start in the upper right to get the white board image to appear.)

If you do listen, one of the things you might find interesting is the backchannel conversation going on in the chat area while Jon and Ben were talking.  It was obvious that several people were engaged with the conversation, adding their “voice” without talking over the two presenters.

Some people had issues with the word “integration” as sort of an add-on to an already full plate.  Jon used a graphic here developed with one of his research students that suggested that there was quite a bit of literature regarding technology integration into curriculum, instruction, and assessment, but that little had been written about integration into school management.  I and several others saw this as a cultural issue, with leadership driving the culture in a school.

One aspect of the talk where I disagreed with Jon was in his work in West Virginia, where they have taken a systematic but slow approach to technology, limiting schools to a few vendors and standardizing technology across all schools.  While that makes sense for big-ticket items, I would suggest that in an age of ubiquitous web resources, a constrained approach continues a top-down and potentially teacher-centered approach to teaching and learning.  Still thinking this part through.

At the least, the conversation last night was interesting, fun, and engaging.  I am looking forward to being part of more conversations like this in the future.

These were our presentations slides:

The final slide had embedded this video:

As one can see from the presentation, we asked a series of questions around communication:

1.  Who had sent a hand written letter recently?

Around 20% had done so in the past week – two-thirds had in the last year.

2.  Emails?

Everyone used email.

3.  Instant messages?

About 60% did not IM – we did have a couple of power users.

4.  Text messages on cellphones?

Again, about 60% did not text, a couple of heavy text users.  (…and some misunderstanding of the differences between IM and SMS)

5.  Updates to Facebook or MySpace?

Around 80% did not have social network accounts.

We then had them all stand up and slowly revealed a slide with 18 different web application logos on it.  We asked them to remain standing if they recognized and used at least 3 – and all remained standing.  We then asked about five, and half the room sat down.  As we progressed through 7, 9, and 12, we still had two people standing.  Jeff then revealed the dates at which each of these applications went live, and noted that – given the short lifespan of these applications – the notion that K-12 students are digital natives and we are immigrants is a bit of a leap.  We are all trying to figure out the uses at the same time.  What is different is that the kids are less fearful of attempting apps – and they tend to look to them for socialization and entertainment, not learning.  Jeff suggested that it is the role of skilled teachers to lead them through this web world, just as skilled teachers have always led.

I then gave a quick tour through six families of applications – emphasizing not the tool but the practices associated with the tools (communication, connections, shared knowledge creation, etc.).  Our handout wiki has more details on each:

-  Blogs

- Wikis

- Social Bookmarking

- SlideShare

- Social Networks like MySpace, Facebook and Ning

- Picture and Video Sharing websites

The attendees were interested in our message and acknowledged their lack of background in this area.  One went so far as to basically say – Tell me how I should vote when questions about the use of the internet come up in school board meetings! It was evident to me that K-12 student use of the internet remains an area of fear, and I am not sure we successfully demystified it for them.  They recognized that Jeff and I were advocates and they wanted more info on the downsides.  One member noted a case at his school where a student had emailed in a Columbine warning hoax which shut the school down.  I countered that kids had been doing that for generations – in my day it was notes in the bathrooms instead of electronic notes.  We tried to suggest that the tool (the web) was not the issue – the issue was the practice…as it has always been.

We closed our presentation with the above video A Vision of K-12 Student Today by B. J. Nesbitt, IT Coordinator for Pickens County, South Carolina.  His younger take of the Michael Wesch video certainly sent a powerful message to these school board members.

Now one wonders, will the seeds we planted yesterday have any impact?  Time will tell.

However, it was a side comment one of the panelists made that got me reflecting back on my own learning journey. She said “Computer years are faster than dog years…”

I no longer own a dog, but my buddy for years as my twin girls were growing up was a Springer Spaniel named Mickey. Of all the dogs I have owned, Mickey was my favorite. If I was ever down, he could cheer me up with one look. As the only two males in the house, we of course bonded! However, as my wife could attest, he could also find more mud puddles to waddle through than the law allows!

If one goes with the classic definition of one dog year is seven human years, then it is mind boggling to look back at where we were instructionally with technology 7 years ago. I had been teaching online for 5 years by that point, but I had just used Blackboard for the first time…and we faculty were debating whether to standardize on one LMS or continue our piecemeal approach using Blackboard, Jenzibar, and Lotus Notes Domino. Desire2Learn, Angel, and Moodle were still far in the future! I had just shifted from Windows 95 to Windows 2000 on my new Pentium III. The web was all one-way and only beginning to show us the possibilities. Student research was still library-driven, with the web used more to email and transfer files than for collaboration or knowledge creation. Few students had internet connections at home (and those were primarily dial-up) – most came on campus to do their “online” coursework.

Even going back one year is interesting. In March of ‘07, I had yet to begin social bookmarking, blogging, or Twittering…though in fairness, I have only been Twittering this week!). I had seen tag clouds but not paid much attention to them. I had not Jott-ed myself or my colleagues! I still use Blackboard (our institutional standard), but I now see it only as a gateway device. The past year has seen a huge upswing in collaborative tools in my online classes, such as Google Docs and wikis. This past year has seen my personal movement from “I” and “me” to “we” and “us”. It has been a movement from talking about life-long learning to living life-long learning, and it has made me a better teacher.

Shakespeare said:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…

Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28

Shakespeare never used Google Reader!

An artist’s eye, patience, and skill…

There have been some interesting blog posts this past week on tools. I was reading Geeky Mom last night and she noted:

“Most of the faculty that reach out to me are really just asking for tech support. They want to know how to perform certain tasks in Blackboard. They want to know how to edit a web site. They don’t tend to ask the bigger questions: what is appropriate technology for me to use to achieve my goals, how should I use x to help my students learn.”

She articulated an irritant I have felt in the past. The majority of faculty that do seek my help come to me to find out how to use some tool or fix some problem. They rarely ask if the particular tool they are interested in makes a difference in student learning. Yet Alan Levine raised an interesting point when he commented on the above blog posting:

“IMHO, the variances in cultures and organizations are going to make for a normal spectrum of roles for Instructional Technologists, but a lot ultimately rests on our shoulders for taking the long hard path to craft the changes from within the boxes of limiting job descriptions- to locally build up our own reputations inside our organization.”

I like what Alan suggests. It is in line with that artist’s eye, patience, and skill idea.

Jane Hart continued her work this week on identifying the top tools those who work in e-learning use for learning. She has invited learning professionals (e.g. consultant, developer, practitioner, analyst, academic, teacher, etc) who are active in the field of e-learning to contribute their Top 10 Tools for Learning. As she receives contributions, she will compile, and then refine, the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 list. For the past two years, I have contributed my list, and it is always interesting to see the commonalities and differences with others in this field.

Jane blogged about her first look at the results, with 63 of us contributing so far. Her resulting Top 85 to date shows some interesting trends. Jane noted:

“So what is different from the list 6 months ago? Here are a few notable changes

• Firefox has been knocked off its No 1 position – just! {Note: del.icio.us moved from second to first}
  
• Only 7 of the Top 10 are the same as last year – 3 different tools make it onto the list (in 8th, 9th and 10 positions)
• A number of tools have significantly improved their position from last year
• Many tools from last year have not yet made it onto the list
• There are 20 new entrants on the list (in the shaded rows)

One thing has, however, struck me about the Top 10 Tools lists this year, and that is that although practically all contributors mention the value of free, Web 2.0 tools for their own personal learning, it is educators (in schools, colleges and universities) who seem to be leading the way by making far more use of a wide range of free, Web 2.0 tools for creating learning experiences for their students – corporate training professionals seem to be focusing on the use of commercial, Web 1.0 (albeit rapid) tools for creating learning content.

This is clearly a significant point which requires fuller consideration and discussion...”

As one reviews this list of tools, one sees many of the tools about which faculty approach us. During January and February, we are doing brown-bag lunches in our Center for Teaching Excellence to introduce faculty to three of the tools that made the top ten: Google Reader (RSS), Google Docs, and SlideShare. Faculty are becoming aware of these new web tools and are interested in the tools. Our role is to take that long view that Alan Levine noted – use our artist’s eye, patience, and skill to help faculty see the learning implications of these tools – the compelling reasons for using them in the first place.

There are good pedagogical reasons for using these web tools. Tom Peters said it best in a 2004 blog post:

“We’re all in sales! That’s one of my recurrent themes. Or, to make it more personal: IF YOU CARE, YOU’RE IN SALES.”

We instructional technologists know how to use these tools, and we have the artist’s eye, patience, and skill to use them effectively to promote learning. Our job is to sell the reasons WHY as we are being approached by faculty as a glorified tech support! Pulling off this sell would be glory indeed!