Funding issues for educational technology are not a teacher's problem, right? Many participants in a class I am teaching seem to believe that they must wait for someone else to solve this problem of finding adequate resources to insure every student has Internet access at home. It is not knowledge of the issues that these teachers lack, but it could be a time and/or leadership constraint. After all, what incentives are there for teachers to work individually or better yet in unison to get community members involved in supporting learning?
In this sense I feel teachers' complacency is part of the reason we have a digital divide--that is, it's not my problem that my kids cannot access the Internet from home. It's not my problem we only have 3 working computers in my classroom. It's not my problem the IT guy is overworked. It's not my problem. It's simply not my problem. Some one else will fix it.
While there are a number of tremendously complex factors associated with the cultural, social and economic conditions that prevent children and families from having access to computers and the World Wide Web, it is the responsibility of all of us with the creative brainpower, the social capital, and social networks to address and right this divide. (Or I guess, in this age of entitlement, we can wait for the government to cut us a check.)
Not all of the teachers I work with feel this way, but a surprising number seem oblivious to taking action themselves. Asking not what their country can do for them seems like a pipe dream. Perhaps given the economic crises currently surrounding us (remember the 1970s?), we should expect nothing less than another Me Generation.
But I'm not buying it. We elected a leader who says a sustainable, prosperous world will take all of us working together. The time to engage is now. If not us, then who? Who will chop the wood, who will carry the water? Who will work with community leaders to insure our kids who cannot afford computers and Internet access can get the assistance they need? It will take all of us, but if it is not us, then who?
I am working on a study that looks at how educators go about finding meaningful content in the digital age.
As part of the instrument development process, I want to start by polling my professional/personal learning network to see what they think. This poll helps me to define catagories and can be useful in developing a reliable survey instrument that I can disseminate across a wider audience.
The poll asks 3 questions and should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete. Please share it with anyone you think might be able to provide some input.
The World Wide Web is more than a collection of websites. "It is also what emerges out of the collection of and interconnections among the sites that constitute it, producing software or websites that re-imagine what is possible technologically and socially." (Thomas & Brown, 2009, p. 37) This emergence of interconnections has resulted in what we might refer to as the digital era.
However, there is a paradox associated with learning in the digital era: Learning may be at once more individual, shaped to one's own style, eccentricities, and interests, yet more social, involving networking, cooperation, and collaboration (Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009).
Unfortunately, in an environment of standardized testing linked to school funding, the implementation of new digital media in the classroom along with constructivist learning principles may be considered too risky, thus the innovative aspects of new digital media becomes shelved if not ignored altogether (i.e., the relevance gap).
As evidence grows concerning the knowledge, skills, and competencies gained through engaging new digital media, conventional notions of "school as the ideal locus of the full range of learning" are being overshadowed (Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009, p. 9).
"If schools do not take seriously the positive and negative potentials of digital media for learning, they risk becoming increasingly irrelevant to the lives students lead outside of school and to the future which they are being prepared" (Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009, p. 14).
What will change schools? If a successful learning practice depends upon "an independent, constructivistically oriented learner who can identify, locate, process, and synthesize the information he or she is lacking" (Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009, p. 10), then systemic change and widespread adoption requires
informed leadership (Fullan, 2007);
all stakeholders (teachers, principals, parents, community members) to be aware of and familiar with the innovations associated with digital learning (Ellsworth, 2004); and
schools must adopt digital learning wholesale today (not tomorrow) (Christensen, 2008).
To those who read about and engage in the new digital media, what, in your opinion needs to be added to this list? What steps are you taking? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or in your own Web space.
References:
Christensen, C. 2008. Disrupting class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns. New York: McGraw Hill.
Ellsworth, E. 2004. Places of learning: media, architecture, and pedagogy. New York: Routledge.
Fullan, M. 2007. The new meaning of educational change. New York: Teachers College Press.
Perkins, D. 2008. Making learning whole: How seven principles of teaching can transform education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Thomas, D. & Brown, J. S., (2009). Why virtual worlds can matter. International Journal of Learning and Media, 1(1), 37-49.
Weigel, M., James, C., & Gardner, H. (2009). Learning: Peering backward and looking forward in the digital era. International Journal of Learning and Media, 1(1), 1-18.
Here is a copy of my dissertation (.doc). I hope you will find it useful. In particular, Chapters 8 (Conclusions) is probably the richest in terms the study's assertions. If you want to cut straight to the chase, I suggest you begin there.
Summary of the Study Advances in web-based technologies as a form of teacher professional development is an emerging area of study, with a base of published research that can be considered thin (Borko, Whitcomb, and Liston, 2009). This study examined community member interactions within an online learning community to determine the ways participation in an online learning community influenced participants' abilities to (1) deepen their understanding of teacher inquiry/action research, (2) deepen their understanding of coaching educators in the process of teacher inquiry/action research, and (3) deepen their understanding of their own evolving stance toward their coaching practice.
A review of recent and relevant literature associated with teacher professional development, professional learning communities, teacher inquiry/action research, and online teacher professional development was created to situate the study in the extant literature. To narrow the search for studies that offered representative empirical research, each of these constructs was selected as a way of framing this study. An analysis of the literature suggests that given the promise of teacher inquiry/action research to transform educators’ practices and improve schools, as well as advances in thinking about professional learning communities and online learning, it is reasonable to examine the role of a facilitated, online learning environment and how participation in such a focused community of practice can enhance educators’ professional knowledge and skills.
To better understand how an online learning community deepened participants’ understanding of teacher inquiry/action research, coaching teacher inquiry/action research, and a deepened participants' evolving stance toward their coaching practice, I conducted in-depth interviews with participants, thoroughly analyzed the content of participants' interview transcripts and published learning community posts, and triangulated these data sets with the administrative log files associated with the activity on the learning community site in an effort to see what types of patterns of evidence of participant understanding might emerge from these data sources.
The online community examined in this study emerged from ongoing work between the University of Florida and the North East Florida Educational Consortium. Chapter 4 described the history leading up to the online learning community, why this history was important, and how it led to the development of the online learning community that is the object of this study. An understanding of these events is essential to understanding the context within which the online learning community was framed. In addition, this chapter provided a brief introduction to each of the members of the online learning community, as well as an overview of activities and experiences that complimented their participation in the online learning community. An introduction to these participants and an overview of their experiences is essential to understanding the content of discussions that occurred within the online learning community.
The results of this study are reported in three chapters. Chapter 5 provided a detailed description of the online learning community site itself to include specific site elements and functions designed to support sustained interaction among participants. This overview of the site’s design and functionality is essential to understanding how participants were able to engage one another in the online learning community. Given the number of inquiry facilitators, their geographic spread, as well as the limited number of times these coaches were able to meet face-to-face, the need for a means to stay in touch while working with their teacher researchers was clearly warranted. The online learning community site provided key elements that enabled participants to view news and information, respond to site facilitator prompts, post documents and reflections on their blogs, as well as provide replies and comments on each others' posts and announcements. This functionality enabled by the site was the key means of participant engagement that make up the experiences essential to understanding the content of discussions that occurred within the online learning community introduced in Chapters 6 and 7.
In Chapter 6 I described and analyzed four distinct forms of site facilitator activity within the online learning community and these activities' relationship to the deepening of participating coaches' understanding of action research, the deepening of their understanding about facilitating action research, and the deepening of their own evolving stance toward their own coaching practice. These four forms of activity included: (1) Community Establishment, (2) Invitation to Post, (3) Modeling online learning community participation, and (3) Announcements. The site facilitator emerged as the driving force behind all activity in the online learning community, i.e., "the glue" that connected all participants and actions on the site. A tension was noted regarding the ways in which the site facilitator’s actions both sparked and inhibited coaches’ engagement in the learning community. Given that the role of the facilitator in online teacher professional development is "new and emerging" (Feger & Zibit, 2005, p. 10), more research is warranted to determine the ways in which a site facilitator can best address the different aspects of managing members’ engagement in an online learning community.
The distinct actions of coaches in the online learning community and these actions' relationship to the deepening of inquiry coaches' understanding of action research, the deepening of their understanding about coaching action research, and the deepening of their own evolving stance toward their own coaching practice was examined in Chapter 7. These three actions included: (1) Responding to site facilitator prompts, (2) Commenting, and (3) Peripheral Participation. The findings suggest that if participating coaches did not respond to the site facilitator's prompts, did not supply evidence of what techniques and strategies were working for them in either their own posts or in their comments to one another, then there was no benefit or no knowledge gained by the members of the online learning community. While contributing to the community via responding to prompts and commenting was critical to the value associated with the online learning community, coaches also derived value from observing each others' content on the site without directly adding anything to the conversation. This form of eavesdropping or peripheral participation was also critical to note in terms of how an online learning community can support online teacher professional development.
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I have several articles in the forthcoming that are spun out of the threads of this work. If you seem something you like, please feel free to use it as you see fit. All I ask is you give credit where credit is due. The official citation for this work is:
Sessums, C. D. (2009). The path from insight to action: The case of an online learning community in support of collaborative teacher inquiry. Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 2009. Retrieved from http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/687203.html.
I admit, I have an ego. We all do. But most of the time I do a relatively good job of keeping it in check.
I am also a curious lot. I have been asking questions of others since I can remember.
I also recognize that when my curiosity gets the best of me, I tend to play hardball. I find being direct often cuts to chase where answers (or non-answers) tend to surface more quickly.
A good example of this type of hardball curiosity surfaced last week on Twitter with Don Tapscott. Mr. Tapscott pushed the following tweet over the line:
I'm writing a major article on the coming crisis of The University. Among other things the model of pedagogy is all wrong. Other sources?
Truth be told, such sweeping generalizations like "the coming crisis of The University" rub me the wrong way. Especially from respected business consultants like Mr. Dapscott. The issue of a "crisis" in the Ivory Tower is hardly a new. And the issue of pedagogy among research professor-heavy universities has always been the proverbial elephant in the room. Given this perspective I offered Mr. Tapscott the following response:
re: uni's- No offense, but what makes your opinion of the matter valuable? Are you going to add something new or just bitch?
Mr. Tapscott is not a known entity in the field and literature on high education. He has also not offered much evidence of legitimate knowledge of educational change, educational reform, or pedagogical change in his published writings. So I felt my question, while prickly, was legitimate.
His response:
Why is my opinion valuable? Google me. Don Tapscott. You may decide it isn't. Or...
Not quite the response I was expecting. Mr. Tapscott did not answer my question, but he did offer a snarky response to my prickly pique. "Google me" is an odd choice for a response to why one's opinion might be valued given the context of the question. This is a suprising case of fallacious reasoning known as an appeal to authority wherein Mr. Tapscott's claim to authority may be true, but since he does not provide any rational reason to accept his claim to authority as true, his argument is moot. Perhaps my "just bitch" remark set a bad tone and I should have anticipated such a response. But "Google me"? Wow.
Upon reflection, I feel I should have handled myself more professionally in my query to Dr. Tapscott's initial statement. The reality is, most every one I know has attended school. As such, this entitles each to an opinion of what schools should or should not be like. Does this make every one's opinion a valid or authoratative response? No. So my question to Mr. Tapscott seems just.
Perhaps 140 characters isn't the best place to raise such a question of one's authority. Perhaps serious engagement of significant consequence should be taken up in a forum that can allow for deeper discourse. Next time, I'll choose my words more carefully.
In the meantime, your thoughts are more than welcome.
We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. - Marshall McLuhan
While it sometimes feels a bit deterministic, I've always enjoyed reflecting on this quote by McLuhan.
As a teacher educator, I recently stumbled on a way of framing the idea of shaping our future that seemed more earnest:
We shape our students and thereafter our students shape us.
or, if you prefer,
We shape our learners and thereafter our learners shape us.
Not that I am offering anything revolutionary in this re-framing. Yet, I think it is important to consider the tremendous role teachers share in shaping our collective future.
Edupunk is about doing it yourself, about opening up educational technology to the users.
This belief has nothing to do with musical motifs, with new wave, no wave, no depression, techno, goth, emo, rockabilly, metal, or Mozart. Edupunk is not a musical moment in time. It is a sociohistorical reaction to an educational system that has allowed textbooks, tests, politicians, and schools of education to supervise teachers and create curricula that takes away educators' professional responsibilities to build their own.
Edupunkers are students and always will be. And being an edupunk means learning along with students. They are artists who think strategically about how learning works in their classroom, school, and community.
You can learn a lot from an expert. You can learn even more doing it yourself and/or with somebody else. Passion communities, as James Gee notes, engage in this type of mentorship. You get to watch other people learn and you get to try it yourself. There's no reason we can't put more educators in this domain.
Semantics are important here. Edupunk is not an end but, as Frances Bell notes, is a beginning. The term is valuable in conveying a sense of action, even aggression. But this aggression is not limited to psychological sense of hostility, but instead is meant as a spurring on or "approach to" our current industrial educational context.
And if you still don't get it, maybe a little dose of The Cramps might help:
So you want to earn a doctoral degree? I guess some people never learn....(tsk, tsk).
Here are some musings on the process for you to consider:
Process & Product Remember, the dissertation is a process. Aim to complete it. Be skeptical Your committee members' job is to push your thinking and to help you to become a credible scientist. They will ask hard questions not to frazzle you, but to help you build the strongest case you can. Be prepared for them to be skeptical. This will help you in the long run. Keep a journal Keep a journal of your reflections on your study. Call them field notes. This is your first level of analysis and something you can return to when you begin your formal writing.
Carry a notebook Call it an analog storage device if you prefer. You never know when an idea will hit you.
Set a timeline Give yourself goals for each month or week.
Set a regular writing schedule Set a side specific time each week for writing. Stick to it. Or else you'll regret it.
Know Your Stress Stress is natural and you should feel a certain level throughout this process. Find ways to manage your stress that don't involve getting shit faced on a regular basis. Exercise. Sleep. Eat well. Take up yoga. learn how to meditate.
Revise Writing is really about revising. Don't be afraid to read over your work and edit yourself regularly.
Formatting Don't wait to put your work in the templates required by the Graduate School. Use the template for formatting your proposal. Get used to it early.
Headers as organizational units As you write and revise your study, develop topical headers to frame and organize your writing.
Cite Cite Cite Make sure you cite ideas, no matter how general. Your dissertation isn't about an original idea until you get to your findings. And even there, you might even be borrowing other people's terminology to describe what you're finding. Is your proposed research an answer in search of a problem? Is there evidence in the literature that says the field needs research in this area?
The literature review The lit review is not a complete compendium of everything ever written on the topics associated with your research. The lit review builds the case for your study. Your research questions should flow from the literature and your review makes the case for your research. Manage your committee Remember you are in charge of your study. No one else is. This process is about becoming a member of the academy.
Listen to your adviser Even though you know a lot about your topic and have an idea of how to accomplish your study, listen to your adviser. Your dissertation is not about being right. That comes later. To finish a dissertation, just this once, practice blind faith. If you think your dissertation is about being right, you'll never finish it.
Tap your network You belong to a community of scholars and budding scholars. Use them. Ask them for feedback. Most have your best interest in mind and are more than happy to help when they can.
Dissertation as seminal document Have you ever read a dissertation cover to cover? Who reads dissertations? They are documented research studies. They are all about producing and following a form. How many dissertations are on your book shelf?
Main point:
Dissertations are about a process. You probably won't win a Nobel prize for it, so treat it as a learning process. What you do with your findings after you complete your study are what most people are interested in.
Remember: Kenny Rogers, country music star, restauranteur, said it best in his song "The Gambler:" You've got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run.
Finally, bell hooks offers this bit of wisdom to consider:
The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom. (hooks 1994: 207)
“Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story, one so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole, one that even shines some light into our future so that we can take the next step…If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story.”
Every media channel - regardless of buzz or the market cap of the technology provider - should undergo the same scrutiny:
* How does this further our business goals? * How do we measure the results? * Does our target audience (or existing customer base) use this channel? * Do our customers want us to communicate this way? * Do we have the internal capacity to fill this channel with content? * What will we have to cut to make budget for this new channel?
These same questions could be asked by educators and educational technologists interested in adopting or integrating social media into the classroom or staff development networks.
I highly encourage experimentation in scales that can afford it. Clearly, the answers will come with time and use.
What I like most about Chandler's metrics is their candor. For example, a question like "How does this application further our goal?" begs the question: "What is our goal?" -- a great place to start!
Questions such as "How do we measure the results?" and "Do our customers [nee users] want to communicate this way?" are so fundamental that it strikes many as odd when we do not start with these. However, having worked on several advisory committees considering large scale adoption of learning management systems and social networking tools, I'm taken aback when these questions are taken for granted or not open for discussion. Chandler's simple questions are not only necessary in tough economic times, they should always be discussed and considered before integrating any application across a wide user base.
As Chandler points out:
"It’s clear that social media are here to stay, and that they provide powerful engagement opportunities for the right businesses. But should companies commit hundreds of thousands without some hope of a result?"
The cross-your-fingers approach to adopting and integrating social media can and should be avoided. Unless, of course, the results are of no consequence. And that's what they pay you the big bucks for, right?
While there are a number of tremendously complex factors associated with the cultural, social and economic conditions that prevent children and families from having access to computers and the World Wide Web, it is the responsibility of all of us with the creative brainpower, the social capital, and social networks to address and right this divide. (Or I guess, in this age of entitlement, we can wait for the government to cut us a check.)
The World Wide Web is more than a collection of websites. "It is also what emerges out of the collection of and interconnections among the sites that constitute it, producing software or websites that re-imagine what is possible technologically and socially." (Thomas & Brown, 2009, p. 37) This emergence of interconnections has resulted in what we might refer to as the digital era. 
We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. - 
To quote 
So you want to earn a doctoral degree? I guess some people never learn....(tsk, tsk).
Know Your Stress
Manage your committee
In an article titled 
