Final reflections

Originally published to eBridge on Thursday 9 February 2012

It's essay time again, and I'm starting to get my ideas down, albeit very scattered! I have decided to draw out the reasons for the disjunct between my intentions in the planning phase and the actual activity that took place, with a view to making interventions more effective in the future, and perhaps know where they need to be targeted. In hindsight the project was thrown together a little hastily, and could have been much more appreciated. My focus will be making my writing and logic easier to follow, although I'm also conscious of not letting other aspects slip in the meantime!

Learning, computers, and the human mind

Originally published to eBridge on Saturday 28 January 2012

I've fallen behind with the discussions this week with being away, but I should be able to join in more fully from now on.  It's been an interesting week because I attended the Learning Technologies conference, with an incredible fusion of ideas floating around. Ray Kurzweil and Jaron Lanier presented flip sides of the technology aspect, with the ideas of technological singularity and a new form of humanism resonating particularly strongly.

But the most interesting talk had to be Dr Edward de Bono's. With more touch-screen and multimedia technology than you can shake a stick at floating around, the old master took us all back to school with nothing more than an OHP and pens. Learning to use our own minds more effectively is the single most important skill that we can master, because otherwise we will be dumbing ourselves down so much that even the most powerful supercomputers won't be able to bring meaning to our lives. More thoughts on this to come...

The Hot Seat (Part 2)

Originally published to eBridge on Saturday 21 January 2012

I'm really pleased with the way my hot seat discussion has been going, with a lot of contributions form everyone around the points I raised. I'm thinking it may be worth contacting Steve Wheeler to try and arrange a quick chat about the discussion, especially since he'll be presenting at the Learning Technologies conference that I'm attending next week.

The Hot Seat

Originally published to eBridge on Monday 9 January 2012

Well that's the Critical Commentary out of the way at last. Thanks to some helpful comments I've managed to pull together something I'm quite pleased with, and should hopefully redress the shortcomings of my last commentary. Now to think about the hot seat discussion...

There's an interesting line of thought that I came across back in November about behaviour in the online context, which would be a lot of fun to explore, and there is the potential to link it to some of my ideas for future expansion of the goals that I set out to achieve with my eTP, although I do worry that I might be getting carried away with my social reform impulses...

Initial reflections

Originally posted to eBridge on Sunday 11 December 2011

I'm coming towards the end of the eTutoring practice and I've started looking back over the ideas I had the start to see how well I've been able to implement them. The original emphasis I had tried to work into the program, namely the use of the asynchronous tools within the VLE, has not been taken up as much as I had hoped, but the synchronous sessions have been highly appreciated by the participants. Web conferencing has allowed the participants to engage in dialogue more actively than they would otherwise have been able to. Quite a few of the participants have seen the video clips that were uploaded to the VLE, but there have not been any direct comments yet.

The range of involvement in the different activities should give an interesting scope for evaluation, by asking people who used the different features how effective they have found them, and asking those who did not use them if they would consider using them in future.

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Comments:

Hi James,

It is good to see the start of your ruminations and evaluations of the eTP experience and the student responses to various elements of the course. The contrasting responses to asynchronous and synchronous elements may make a useful focus for your Hot Seat discussion in Workshop 3 - you may find yourself drawn to exploring the pros and cons offered by the affordances of each.... just an idea of course.  one of the issues, which may or may not be pertinent in your own case, is that it can be easier for people to 'ring-fence' a particular slot when a synchronous event will happen rather than trying to make time for something as slippery as asynchronous discussion. Other issues too will, I am sure, come through in the evaluation.

Time to breathe

Originally posted to eBridge on Sunday 27 November 2011

I've had a weekend of rest from thinking about the project, as it seems to have been consuming my whole life lately! There's been a positive aspect to this, because it's an indication of my line manager's trust in me that she is willing to let me pursue my project in work time without intervention, but I have been finding myself burning out a lot - both mentally and emotionally. I've learned to reflect on my emotions, and what is causing them, which is usually an 'automatic thought' that I haven't consciously registered, and I've come up with what has been bothering me....

When I was in a school on Wednesday to video one of my participants. I got talking with a colleague who is convinced that there will quite simply be less teachers in future. Now while I'm very enthusiastic about the possibilities for online learning, the idea that funding for schools is coming under pressure in this way is quite disturbing to me, because for all the possible benefits that could be realised by going online, there is a huge void of uncertainty between policy making and successful implementation. Not least of of my concerns is the removal of human contact from the process, because this devalues the worth of people's experiences in the equation. There is a wealth of information available on the internet, and no end of tools for aggregating it in convenient and saleable 'apps' for whatever technology base you happen to be using - indeed many companies have been predicting this and situated themselves accordingly - but without the very human element of contextualisation I fear that we will be digging ourselves further into a trap of our own conceit.

We tend to assume that everything we find online is necessarily correct and sacrosanct, but often it's either so impersonal as to be useless, or put out there to  win us over to buying someone's product. I found myself initially balking at the low marks I was given for my last assignment, but on reflection I realise that I had been single mindedly pursuing a train of thought that seemed beneficial without considering all the angles. My ideas stemmed from reading the works of some influential people in the field after stirring presentations at conferences, but I now realise that I had taken them straight from blogs and websites, without balancing them against any kind of rational feedback, criticism or peer review. Although the ideas may have benefited my practice in the short term (I'm still convinced they have), I am losing some objectivity by not balancing them out in this way. If I can lead myself astray in this manner, with some supposedly useful experience in the field, what chance does the average school pupil have if they are completely reliant on whatever content gets pushed their way?!

That's a load off my chest, now for a bit of sleep before I plunge back into video editing....

Online identity

Originally published to eBridge on Sunday 13 November 2011

Just realised it's been a while since my last blog entry. Been very busy with setting up details for my eTP, worrying that everything is going to fall apart at the last minute and such! There is apparently quite a strong technophobe component amongst the people I'm meant to be working with, so this might not all go according to plan, but then I suppose that's where the reflection comes in... On the bright side, I've finally got PebblePad to work, so I can now set up my portfolio on there.

Been reading some interesting points about online presence and behaviour lately, first of all was Steve Wheeler's set of blog posts about his 'dual identity' (Steve Wheeler / Tim Buckteeth), which highlighted how people can behave, and perceive themselves and others, in different contexts. Then I read Baggio's article (2011) about online identity, and the possible benefits of anonymity online.

There are some interesting possibilities that stem from the vicarious interactions that are possible when people can act anonymously online, including behavioural outcomes, which are of benefit in an industrial setting, and so will inevitably be adopted in such a context. This does go against the principles we aim towards within the bounds of this course, where we strive to have open discourse and active participation. Is this preference for acting anonymously online indicative of a poor culture within companies, where people are afraid to be seen to make a mistake?

Positive benefits of vicarious interaction do exist within our context - for instance our observation of one anothers tutoring practice is a vicarious interaction, which can allow for enhancement of future practice. This doesn't actually require anonymity, in fact it's more a kind of lurking, albeit a constructive one. So is a lurker always an inactive learner? Probably not, although I do always seek to engage them with the activities, or find out why they don't want to engage, after all this might reveal how I could do things better myself.

References:

• Steve Wheeler blog posts: He's only me, Double agent, Double or quits
• Baggio, B., 2011. You, you online, you when nobody knows it's you online. In Allen, M. (ed) Michael Allen's e-Learning Annual 2012, Pfeiffer, San Francisco

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Comments:

Hi James,

Those are some interesting reflections about vicarious experience and lurking etc, and the issues of anonymity in contexts of collaboration. This may be an area you might like to focus on in your Hot Seat discussion in workshop 3, but meantime I look forward to seeing your reflections evolve.