Dusty World – Page 33 – Mechanical Sympathy

Digital House of Mirrors

The digital house of mirrors we all live in.

It’s early days, ECOO isn’t until next October, and I’m reticent to say what I’m going to present on months ahead of time. The digital learning landscape can change quite significantly in eight months.

My previous ECOO presentations have followed an interesting arc, from philosophy to specific action. My first go with Dancing in the Datasphere talked about fundamental changes happening to us as we transition to a data driven world. The mini-lab followed a year later, the idea there being that we diversify technology in order to develop true digital fluency in students. Last year the final step was to work toward a digital skills continuum. Only by integrating a developing skill set into curriculum will we begin producing students who have the technical skills necessary to survive and thrive in the digital age.

That trajectory, no doubt pushed by my transition to computer studies from English, had me looking at developing greater student familiarity with computing tools because I see a great deal of ignorance in the ‘digital natives‘ I’m teaching every day, but that focus was technically biased.

For those of us who have lived as adults through the last twenty years of technological revolution, we sometimes forget where we’ve come from because we’re so engrossed with where we are. For ECOO this time round I’m thinking about what technology is demanding of us as people. Our selves are being stretched and amplified in ways they never have before. Nick Carr’s The Shallows puts us on a pretty stark trajectory towards idiocy with what is happening to us. The digitization of the self stretches us flat, making continuity of thought impossible and turning us all into distracted, simplistic cogs in a consumerist machine designed to turn us all into the lowest common denominator; none of us any smarter than our smartphones.

With the advent of social media we suddenly find ourselves existing in multiple places at once. Our self is no longer geographically focused. Our influence spreads across the internet. We are able to affect change in people and places formerly unconnected to us. The people we communicate with (albeit in a minimalist way) are far flung and many. The people we spend deep, attentive time with are fewer and diminished.

Our digital selves are perceived in many different ways. The aforementioned digital native tends to not differentiate between online and real world action. They often consider social media as just another conversation they are having, and are then shocked when something said publicly is responded to by the public. The generation of kids (our students) growing up in this ongoing social experiment never look at privacy settings, have little idea of the differences between social networks and tend to broadcast online what is on their minds in much the same way they would while hanging out with friends. The veil between the physical and the digital, between public and private is all but non existent to them.

Digital Footprints & Always On Teacher Faces

A more professional approach to managing the online self is to adopt marketing theory and develop your online brand. Companies and celebrities approach social media in this manner, often using marketing firms to manage and run their social media presence. I can’t help but think that this lack of genuine presence games the system and ultimately fails. It’s exhausting to maintain if you can’t hire marketing monkeys to run it for you, and ultimately, it’s fake. I’d much rather read my favourite author’s tweets from his own fingers than follow what someone trying to sell me something thinks I should be seeing. Many teachers fall into this trap when tentatively stepping into online presences. Spending your weeknights and weekends being mister or missus Teacher is nothing more than working all the time, forever.

The Cult of Done

If there is a positive future to a digitally enhanced self I’d hope it is through a genuine sense of self expression. We should be aware of what the tools are and how they work, and then we should use them to empower our access to information, our ability to mine deeply into details, to collaborate and develop community, to share our own creativity, interests and sense of discovery. The technology should not only allow us to do these things, it should be pushing us to maximize our effectiveness as thinkers and doers. Any technology that produces distracted idiots will doom the people using it. Evolution should still be eliminating the irrelevant, even in the digital realm.

It’s early days in this sea change of how we deal with a digitally enhanced self. In the future the hybrid intelligence of a digitized human will evolve toward a higher order of effectiveness. Those made useless by digital tools will, much like those weakened by an inability to read, become marginalized. Those able to harness information literacy will enjoy those advantages. Those who ignore it will find themselves increasingly unable to compete.

What that effective digital self looks like in students, in teachers, in people in general is where I’m currently thinking about pushing my research this year. How we adapt to these changes now will establish effective habits as the technology rapidly spins out of its infancy and into maturity. There is no better time to consider what a digitally enhanced human being should look like than now, when we’re in the process of inventing the very idea.

The idea of Web3.0, or intelligent/self organizing information suggests that the future of digitized humanity will inherently push toward greater effectiveness. The opportunity to be passive or stupid in a digital context will actually work against what the data wants to do for you; you’ll learn in spite of yourself, you’ll know what you need to know when you need to know it – the data itself will ensure this. It would be interesting to show the evolution of digital humanity over the past three decades, and where it might be going in the next twenty years.

The era of stupid/passive information is ending. The people that it has created will have to adapt to technology that demands more of them, or risk being made irrelevant by it.

Still Waiting…

The teacher PC in our school computer lab, like every other PC in the room, is a free-range machine. The whole lab runs on the newest Windows we can get (beta if it’s out) and are open to allow students to install and test various software in order to stay current with technology. We extensively use Microsoft’s Developer tools to test software and hardware.

On the teacher PC I purchased Windows 7. Then I purchased a Windows 8.1 Pro upgrade key a year later in order to keep up with student machines using Windows 8. The next year I was led into Windows 10 by Microsoft’s persistent upgrade messages. The lab was migrating to Windows 10 beta at that point so it made sense that I’d be seeing the same software as my students.

All was good until yesterday. My old motherboard only had 4 usb ports and couldn’t handle the number of peripherals I was needing plugged in. I installed a new motherboard, everything else stayed the same. The old motherboard got pressed into lab work and no longer had Windows on it.

Suddenly Windows 10 was plastered with activate warnings, so I contacted Microsoft. Here is the transcript.

I’m still waiting, they aren’t going to contact me.

After purchasing Windows 7, and purchasing 8.1 Pro, I’m told that they don’t hand out free Windows 10 keys? I’m not asking for a free key, I’m asking Microsoft to honour the multiple keys I’ve already purchased. I’m not purchasing another one, especially not at nearly $300 Canadian! It feels like extortion.

I’ve updated hardware before. It was a quick matter of the Microsoft admin updating the new hardware to match the old key. Apparently this is no longer possible. Windows 10 (a much needed improvement after getting me to buy the awkward Windows 8), will not let you migrate with hardware updates, something PC users do quite a lot. The PC that had Windows on it has been wiped and is no longer using it, so this isn’t a matter of getting ‘free’ Windows – it’s the same install on the same hard drive. Migration shouldn’t be difficult, but then why do it if you can force people into buying something they’ve already purchased (twice) over again?

If I’d purchased a Microsoft car and then had a new transmission installed, they’d tell me they no longer acknowledge the car and that I have to buy a new one. Were I running the old motherboard on the old hard drive with Windows and demanding a new key for a new machine, I’d agree that they shouldn’t give free licenses, but this isn’t that.

I’m a fan of Microsoft. I’ve been buying Windows since it was single digits and Microsoft OSes since they were DOS, but this whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. I expected better, especially from a company so committed to supporting education.

Unfortunately, this is turning into a teachable moment for the dozens of students I’m teaching I.T. to. That Microsoft’s support thinks the best solution is to simply walk away from a long time customer is pretty baffling too.

Followup: I’ve got Windows 10 reinstalled on that PC. I had to wipe the disk, reinstall Windows 7 (and download several gigs of downloads from Microsoft) before I updated to Windows 8.1 (followed by several more gigs of downloads), followed by the WIndows 10 update.

The Microsoft roadmap is this: we’ll give you Windows 10 ‘for free’, but we won’t let you reinstall it. If you make any hardware changes or need to reinstall, we’ll make it such a pain that we can then force you to re-buy Windows even though you already have.

The problem is that this process requires Microsoft to maintain drivers and support for two stale OSes (Win7, Win8+8.1), and pay for the bandwidth to allow owners of their software to reinstall and update what they own (even though they’ll never use it because they’re heading for 10). It’s like Microsoft is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

Anyone who has updated to Windows 10 should have a Windows 10 key that allows them to reinstall it. Their previous Windows keys should then go stale. Keeping everyone on the most current OS means better security for everyone and less overhead for Microsoft (who can then focus on making Windows 10 as bullet proof as possible).

I’m not sure which MBA wizard convinced them that their current approach is the best one. I can tell you that the engineers who have to make it happen wouldn’t be thrilled with it.

ECOO 2014

ECOO 2014 approaches this week. Once again I get to step away from the classroom for a couple of days and see the forest for the trees. Instead of day to day/trying to make things work, I get a couple of days of strategic space to consider how things might be.

The ECOO conference is all about possibilities for me. I know a lot of people go there to learn how technology works, and that’s great, but for me it has always been about possibilities.

In school we’re all in the trenches trying to make things work. For tech-savvy teachers this can be a very frustrating experience. We’re not only battling the complications of getting complex information technology to function in the rough and tumble world of the classroom, we’re also battling the negativity of colleagues who aren’t buying in to the possibilities offered by this technology.

ECOO is a chance to get away from all that static and consider possibilities in a positive light. The trick for me has always been not to get mired down in how-to sessions. I like the big thinking/strategic talks. The keynotes usually do this well, but it isn’t always possible to find that kind of opportunity in the breakout sessions because a big part of ECOO is assisting new edtech aficionados into the fold. When I can’t find an edtech-philosophy or future-tech session I’m just as happy to bump into someone and have an unscripted chat. You won’t find a greater edtech braintrust anywhere than you will at ECOO.

What will I get out of ECOO this week? Inspiration, I hope, and some idea of what’s coming, so I can be ready for it before it gets here.

ECOO15 1: Making Frustrations

Back from ECOO15 and, as usually, my head is full. After a rough year of politics around Ontario Education it’s nice to attend a conference made by teachers for teachers about… teaching! Not a politician in sight, though attendance was wounded at this volunteer run conference by them.

ECOO may have been the site
of the first ever 3d photobomb!

I spent Wednesday with my robotics teacher showing people how to make 3d models using a Structure Sensor – a 3d laser scanner that is cheaper than the ipad it connects to. It’s one of those game changing bits of engineering that suddenly opens up the complex world of 3d modelling to pretty much anyone.

We put the scanner into hundreds of hands and Katy was on there to show them how our 3d printers took those models and made them tangible. For many who have heard of the maker movement, 3d modelling and printing but had never seen it in action, it was a seminal moment. I’m hoping it also means people start considering how we can move toward a maker mentality, because it’s about as far removed from what we do in formal education as you can get.

Buddha Tim by tking on Sketchfab – @banana29‘s first 3d model, nicely done!

The next day, the opening keynote by Silvia Martinez was an overview of makerspaces and how they create a genuine learning environment. Unfortunately, and like so many other educational books capitalizing on a trend, the keynote sold the concept of Making based on the fantastic contraptions shown at world class Maker Faires. This is akin to saying everyone should play soccer like this, and then showing them the World Cup.

Education teaches students to expect success if they do what
they’re told. Engineering demands mastery, creativity and
resilience; reality is a demanding teacher.

As I said in the conference, making involves frustration and failure. More often than not it results in a prototype that doesn’t work. I find that the grade nine students I am introducing this process to are greatly aggravated by the inflexible demands of reality. They are quick to blame and even quicker to give up. The most common comment is, “just tell me how to do it.” The sub-text is, ‘I’ve learned to do what I’m told in order to show I’m learning. Why aren’t you doing that?’

Students are used to the education system jigging things to ensure success. The process of invention doesn’t do this and reality has no interest in modifying how it works so that students can feel good about their effort. I don’t teach ‘I tried real hard’ or ‘guaranteed success’. What I do teach is how computers and electronics work, and I expect students to develop skills sufficient to be able to work this these inflexible devices. Once the mastery is managed, play can begin. Shakespeare wasn’t writing plays while he was still learning to write.

This was posted by Bre Pettis way back in 2009.
This kind of radical engagement isn’t the managed
and directed engagement teachers are looking for.

If you want to build with electronics and digital technology (which are what are empowering much of the maker movement), you need to have something more than boundless enthusiasm. Using digital technology isn’t effortless despite the marketing. There is mastery learning required before you are cranking out 3d prints of gears and building your own robot out of garbage. Many of the people creating the things you see at a maker faire are trained engineers. I’ll bet that the kids shown at these Maker Faires are relying on some engineering expertise at home as well. It’s nice to see their creativity, but it isn’t the only thing, or even the main thing, that is enabling these builds. It’s like watching the child of a scientist presenting a surprisingly fantastic science fair project.

My concern is that Ontario Education will rush into this exciting and trendy fad, buying stacks of Arduinos, Raspberry Pis and 3d printers which will then gather dust when teachers realize that this equipment isn’t Lego, it doesn’t build itself with enthusiasm. Your code has to be flawless and your wiring exact for even basic things to happen, and even when you’ve done everything right it might not work anyway because the LED you used happens to be defective. You can’t simply lower expectations and then see results. These are complex systems being created.

I struggle each year to get high school students to develop resiliency and master skills in electronics and digital technology so I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to see the maker movement and its attendant philosophies infect Ontario’s classrooms. The kids are more than capable of developing this resiliency and expertise, but I suspect that the vast majority of educators (many of which I help to plug in their desktops each day) aren’t.

The maker movement pushes back against vapid consumerism. I’m a big fan of intimately knowing the machines I use. The motorcycle I ride I restored after finding it in a field, the computers I use I build from scratch, but it took me years to build my mechanical and digital skills to this level. Most people aren’t that patient, or curious. Most people want immediate satisfaction, which is why they drive their cookie cutter SUVs to shopping malls.

Most teachers are no different. If it isn’t their curriculum, it’s of no interest. Trying to push maker tools into that kind of classroom is a disaster waiting to happen. If you’ve never used Linux, let alone installed an OS onto an SD card, what makes you think you will make magical use of Raspberry Pis?

Straddling the Divide

I usually blog here to work out my thinking on a variety of education and technology situations I come across. This one is no different. I just read a series of suggestions for dismantling computer studies at our school. I’m honestly curious as to the intention behind these suggestions, but in the meantime I’m trying to get the bees out of my head on this subject…

My school is odd in that it has a computer studies department. This department is a combination of technology focused computer engineering credits (ICE/TEJ) and theoretical/math focused computer science (ICS) credits. That our school combined these two very different disciplines into a single department has been both challenging and very forward thinking.

There is a push on now to align our headships with those of other schools. Since the idea of a department that combines all aspects of computer technology under a single headship hasn’t happened anywhere else, the urge is to dismantle computer studies. The thinking behind this doesn’t show a great understanding of what the computer subjects are (it was suggested the whole department just get put into business studies – a department that neither side of computer studies has anything to do with). WIth so few people understanding what the fundamental computer subjects are, it makes it challenging to explain how things might evolve. Ignorance drives many management decisions around digital technology education.

Trying to run computer studies has been a tricky ride. Our computer science teacher only comes to our school for a semester, so the courses only run in the second half of the year. On top of that other teachers aren’t lining up to teach comp-sci. Computer science would be better served in our school by being placed in our mathematics department and being taught by a variety of teachers, but then those teachers qualified in it should want to teach it and I get the sense that very few do.

Computer science has been held captive by some strange teacher scheduling. Attaching it to a larger department would be healthy for it. I’ve tried to make moves in how and who teaches it, but nothing seems to have worked. I’m frustrated and ready to hand it off.

Computer engineering is a hands-on technology course, much like auto-shop or manufacturing programs. This course of study focuses on electronics and information technology. Compared to computer science it’s much more of a hands-on building and experimentally focused subject; it would logically belong with other technology credits.

The argument that we should re-align our headships with other schools feels like a step backwards to me though. In five or ten years would our students be better served by a strong, comprehensive computer department, or by a traditional and arbitrary split in the subject? Unfortunately, combining abstract mathematically focused computer programming with real-world engineering isn’t easy, especially with how Ontario has handled teacher qualification in the subject.

Up until the past decade, computer science was the only computer qualification. Like the guys in Big Bang Theory, the vast majority of computer science teachers have very strong theoretical backgrounds in the mathematics behind programming, but little experience in actually making computers work. When computer studies was established as a technology course those theoretical computer science teachers were grand-fathered in as computer engineering teachers, though many of them had never installed a CPU in their lives and would have no idea where to even begin. Asking them to provide onsite information technology support would be an impossibility for many of them.

That tech-ed certification took a mountain-load of paperwork
including industry certifications and proof of years of industry
experience. If you were comp-sci when they brought it in, you
just got the certification…

So here we are in 2014 with many computer studies teachers who actually have little or no experience with the mechanical side of computing, though they have been given the OK to teach it. This will eventually go away as those grand-fathered comp-sci teachers retire and future teachers will be expected to actually have an industry technology background in computers if they want to teach engineering. In the meantime we’ve further muddied an emergent subject area that holds the key to producing technologically fluent students who can function in the modern workplace.

What I suspect will happen with our forward thinking computer studies department is that it will be split and sent to math (comp-sci) and technology (comp-eng), and the onsite fix-it teacher role will not be considered a headship even though it manages just as much budget and far more equipment than any single department head. This might be better for comp-sci, which has been dead-ended in our school as far as scheduling goes. I don’t think comp-eng will be hurt by moving to the tech department, so the splitting of the subjects into other areas doesn’t really bother me, though it does make me wonder if we’re moving in a direction opposite to social expectation.

I’ve been thinking about computer studies in terms of a specialization as well as a general fluency. Perhaps future computer studies streams will include general technology fluency credits as well as specializations in engineering and coding, but I doubt it. With computer fluency being a school (society?) wide expectation as well as the traditional fracture between computer science and computer mechanics, I fear that management energy will be spent on dividing and diminishing a subject that should instead be taking a central place as an integrated, adaptive department that produces 21st Century fluent graduates.

A Media Comparison: Hactivism Then & Now

In 2012 I saw We Are Legion – The Story of the Hactivists at the Toronto Hot Docs film festival. It’s a full length film so it’ll take a while to get through, but it’s worth it. It’s an inside look at the birth of hactivism from its early roots in 4Chan to the birth of Anonymous. It’s edgy, funny and surprisingly gripping…

There is a kind of poetry in the chaos of those early moments of online activism, it makes me hopeful. Technology used to overcome tyrannous governments, churches and corporations? Technology used to bypass media control and free information? I’m a fan.

Fast forward six years and we seem to be on the other side of this revolution. Instead of technically skilled mischief makers fighting against systemic inequality, we have Nazis using that same technology to self-organize, tech-corporations removing net-neutrality and making advertising revenue from fake news and foreign governments disrupting elections. The technology that once promised to set us free is being used to craft even thicker chains.

You can always count on WIRED
graphics to back up a powerful story

WIRED has hit this from a lot of different angles, all of which prompt some hard questions about how the technology we thought would free us has turned into a means of disenfranchisement and control. Here are a couple of articles that highlight this change:

It’s a difficult thing to see such a promising revolution end up serving the moneyed interests it claimed to stand against.

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Individual Education Plan

Many moons ago as I was finishing up my B.Ed. at Nippissing U. we got invited to an educational technology symposium for special needs students. We were shown the (then) cutting edge Kurzweil speech to text software, fantastic education tools to use with Palm Pilots and other PDAs (!) and even early online access to text books. I thought it was all wonderful, but I couldn’t help but wonder why this technology was reserved for special education students, wouldn’t everyone’s learning have less friction with these tools?

Except you’re not, are you? Some of you get individual
education plans, the rest get the system.

Today I’m going to the latest IEP meeting for my son. As a teacher I’ve never understood the individual education plan in Ontario education. Like that technology all those years ago, wouldn’t every student benefit from an IEP? Doesn’t every student deserve one? Aren’t they all individuals?

I’m gong to argue for my child’s special needs again today and wonder why I have to do that. Is it so the school can do well on standardized testing? Is it so my child isn’t run over by a teacher who is determined to get him to conform to bench marks decided by the Ministry? Is it so he can conform and be more easily manageable? My son is not rude, or nasty, or dangerous, he is a delightful fellow who thinks laterally the way most people think linearly. His problem isn’t that he can’t do things, it’s that he does them differently from how most people do them. Watching the education system try to force his circle into a square hole isn’t easy.

As a parent I’m even more baffled by education than I am as a teacher.

A number of years ago my fearless wife demanded an IEP review. It was grudgingly given, and after some expensive private psychological review (that many families would not be able to afford) a formal IEP was prepared. At first I was against the idea, but as I continued teaching and saw the number of times a student is held academically accountable by teachers for circumstances beyond their control, I started to realize that an IEP is nothing more than a shield against a system intent on enforcing conformity; protection against teachers who think they are producing widgets instead of people. Our nineteenth century school system is still building human cogs designed for production lines. The fact that there aren’t a lot of people working on production lines any more seems to have slipped their minds.

In these IEP meetings my son’s educators are facing off against two parents with all sorts of familiarity with the system and credentials that help them deal with it. What happens to the child who should have an IEP but doesn’t because their parents are intimidated by the panel of ‘experts’ in front of them? What happens to the student who doesn’t have a parent who can get to those interviews? Who wouldn’t even think to ask for one because they are a single parent working sixty hours a week?

What about the student who is going through a nasty divorce at home? The student being abused? The student who has to work a full time job outside of school to support themselves? The student who has fallen into drugs? No IEP for them, though they need individual education plans every bit as much.

If every student in Ontario had an IEP what would it look like? How would that change the process of teaching? Instead of trying to catch students out or stream them for post secondary, what if every student was using an IEP to reach their maximum potential? What if there were no standardized tests but individualized education was put at the forefront of everything we do? What if there were no streams? We’re not in the factory business any more, almost no one is. Robots do a lot of that work now.

The nail that stands up gets the hammer.

Years ago in Japan a student told me about a Japanese saying when I asked about conformity and how it’s viewed there. They told me, “the nail that stands up gets the hammer.” That kind of brick in the wall thinking might have served Western education in the last millennium, but it’s a foreign way of thinking in a post-industrial world.

I’m going to walk into the education factory today and ask them to not hammer my son into a slot that he doesn’t fit into. Fortunately the IEP shield is in effect, so he’s protected from the worst of the hammering (he just has to suffer the small day to day whacks).

I wonder what happens to all those kids who aren’t individual enough to be entitled to an individual education plan.

Followup: posted by a very forward thinking Ontario Educator this morning:

“The most effective way to provide enrichment to every student at a school is already in front of us. All children, in all schools, should have an IEP. Grade levels in classes should be eliminated. High stakes testing should be dropped. Lockstep schooling should be eliminated [to end comparison thinking] There would no longer be “third grade” or “tenth grade”. All students should work toward mastery learning. When they have mastered a skill they move on to the next one. When they finish the required and elective curriculum, they graduate. Slower learners are never “held back” . . . There is no grade to be in. . . . They learn at their own pace, moving through the learning at the pace at which they can show they have mastered the curriculum.” (189).
Jensen, Eric. (2006). Enriching the brain: How to maximize every learners potential.
San Francisco, USA: Jossey-Bass

Cheaper Teachers for a Cheaper World

I’m reading The World Beyond Your Head, the latest from Shopclass As Soulcraft writer Matt Crawford. In this chapter he’s been working out how experts manipulate their environment in order to expedite their mastery.

How an expert arranges the space around them in order to perform allows non-experts a window into skills that might otherwise be beyond them; you can comprehend mastery indirectly by observing how an expert arranges the space around them. The difference between an amateur and professional chef becomes obvious from this assessment.

This is an interesting observation that goes to the core of much of the friction in teaching nowadays. Most of the lay public has no idea how teaching works yet they feel capable of criticizing the profession. ‘I was once in school, so I know how to teach’ makes as much sense as, ‘I once had surgery so now I’m a surgeon’. By looking at how teachers ‘jig‘ learning spaces someone who has never taught might get a glimpse into the complexity of the craft.

The idea that experts manipulate the space around them is something that many people might intuitively understand without thinking through the why. With few exceptions a master will create an organized system around them that allows them to efficiently operate; the space around them becomes an extension of their mind used to organize and expedite their activity. The process of learning how to jig your environment to support your expertise is one of the most obvious indicators of mastery. Disorganization, clutter and lost tools are an apprentice’s battle. This sheds some light on my mechanic father’s constant frustration at the state in which I left his work bench.

The generic workspace is even worse. This space is designed for you by the thinking class and you are reduced to a simplistic component with limited expectations. You don’t need professionalism or mastery in an environment like that. This is the world most teacher critics inhabit. Their limited education has made them ideal simplistic components.

What a jig is and how it’s vital to the expert. Do you jig your
classroom, or do you rock the assembly line? Via Google Books.

You can often see expertise in teaching through how a teacher arranges their classroom. The learning environment that is jigged by the teacher to enable them to educate more effectively also reflects a deeper understanding of the art of instruction. This teacher’s classroom contains nothing extraneous. The teacher knows where everything in there is and how to use it. There are no dusty, unused text books on shelves or out of date posters on the wall. You can see intent in how the classroom is designed.

Not only is the equipment at hand, but how its arranged can also facilitate how a lesson is presented; structured meaning is hidden in everything from floor plans to decorations to seating arrangements. By contrast the classroom that looks like an assembly line indicates a teacher of the McDonalds variety. It’s hard to argue for professional dignity in teaching when so many teachers are more than happy to follow fast food methods. Take a walk around any school. Do all the rooms look the same? Are they expected to?

A great example of how an expert creates and uses their own jigs to
enable them to produce results well beyond the layman.

The idea that a job can be done more efficiently (read: more cheaply) using a tightly controlled, top down system is the way of things in our increasingly computerized world. We have machines making life and death decisions for us now instead of demanding human expertise. Machines are only going to get better at making these decisions as humans only become more atrophied at them.

The comparison between the McDonald’s assembly line with its rigid, dictated jig and the cook who controls her own space is stark. Both environments are designed to aid the person inhabiting them create a better product, but one is authored by the person themselves while the other is instituted (and enforced) by unseen management. One is designed for cogs, the other demands expertise. One demands respect for the worker’s mind, the other makes them disposable hands.

We’re offloading the value of skilled labour onto organizational structures. The initial idea is that this saves money, but I suspect the long term implications are lowered expectations, workers made powerless and ultimately a less democratic division of knowledge. If mastery is dying thanks to a neoliberal drive to lowest cost production (experts are more expensive and difficult to manage than easily exchangeable and cheaper unskilled labour, especially when we can oversee them with continually improving surveillance technology), we can expect some of the last bastions of professionalism to eventually dry up and take on the minionized labour processes that have infected private business.

“Cheap men need expensive jigs; expensive men need only their tools” rings true in the direction many people seem to want education to go. A centrally controlled system with ‘facilitators’ instead of ‘teachers’ that lean on the burgeoning might of educational technology not only satisfies the possibility of selling technology to education systems (perhaps even monopolizing them!), but it also scratches the itch of the moneyed class to centralize both profits and knowledge. We can expect less from facilitators in pre-jigged classrooms with assembly line learning couched in centralized cloud based computing with ready made lessons aimed at standardized tests. You need only show up, start the video and let Khan at ’em on their clearly branded corporate learning devices. You could probably hire three facilitators in that environment for the price of one teacher: cost savings!

It’s much cheaper to watch sanitized media and sit in rows preparing
for standardized tests than it is to actually do things. Fortunately, people
who actually do things aren’t really needed in our efficiently designed future.

Since going mainstream digital technology is intent on market share rather than serving the user. Getting machines into as many hands as possible is the mandate now and that mandate is served by simplistic, closed ecosystems designed to create consumers. I’m not sure if neoliberalism has incorporated digital technology or it’s the other way around, but no matter how you look at it the two social influences work hand in glove.

The expectation of mere competence, let alone mastery, is dying. You can observe this by watching how fewer and fewer employees are expected to jig their own environments to serve their process (the process™ isn’t theirs any more). Workplaces are now assembly lines of the mind with dictated jigs. Employees are assessed on their willingness to adjust to these systems, the less free thought the better.

We are centralizing expertise on a massive scale (just follow the money) and creating a future where everything will look similar and pre-decided, but ever so efficient. The classroom is one of the last bastions of professionalism where an expert can apply their own jig but the days of reasonable class sizes and hands on learning that allow for this kind of jigging are drawing to a close. Teachers should enjoy the final days of self determination in their workplace, the future is designed for cheap, disposable people. Fortunately the world is full of them.

Once in the top five, Canada is beginning to follow the US down the education rankings as de-professionalization reduces teachers (and the students they teach) into low paid, disposable labour.

Learned Helplessness

Reading often creates strange resonances. Most recently the latest edition of WIRED struck a chord with Paul Theroux’s 1975 classic, The Great Railway Bazaar. What could a travel book from the seventies have to do with a Twenty-first Century technology magazine?

Theroux was on a train trip across Asia. In India he came across a taxi driver who did a brilliant job of looking after him. After weeks on the road he found himself becoming desperately dependant upon this support. I’ve read a lot of Theroux and he circles this theme again and again; the idea of how the ease that accompanies wealth leads to a kind of learned helplessness.

Way back in 1974 Theroux suddenly found his confidence eroded by an assistant too good for his own good. Sahib is one of those words loaded with colonial weight. In India it was used as a title of respect toward European men. Theroux takes that supposed superiority and dismantles it with American anti-classist zeal, describing the wealthy people who came to depend on their servants as childlike in their helpless. It’s an interesting twist.

In The Happy Isles of Oceania, Theroux lives the high life for a week in a luxury hotel cottage used by the PGA. He becomes frustrated at how isolated, unproductive and paranoid he felt by the end of it, even though his every need was taken care of. The next week he tried to live on one thousandth the money, or four bucks a day. By the end of that week spent living rough on an empty beach and kayaking about, he felt empowered, productive and alive. What most people do with money (having other people serve their needs) often leads them to a state of childlike dependence. Theroux is often tempted by it and then hates himself for doing it.

In WIRED this week the Angry Nerd goes on a rant about Google’s gmail predictive text technology that keeps jumping in front of you as you’re trying to write an email. No, I’m not a fan of this use of AI, I can type quickly and it breaks my flow. There is a function for AI in writing, but leaping in front of composition, or worse yet, replacing the writer entirely, isn’t it. The Angry Nerd is especially worried about the inflationary nature of this interference:

“Once we embrace the personalized simulacrum, we start letting AI speak for us. Soon we let it speak as us. It’s … almost soothing. Frees up time. I’m nearing inbox zero! Ah, Grandma just checked in. She’s not feeling well. I’ll select “Oh no!” Yes. She’ll care that I care. And she’ll reply, so kindly, so expediently: “Thanks so much!””

Before we know it the ever so helpful, never resting artificial intelligence is speaking for us, replacing our voice in our most intimate relationships. This echoes Theroux’s eroded competence, but the way AI is doing it is much more insidious than the old fashioned human servant. The AI never rests, is always there and is always looking for ways to step in front of you and help until you become so atrophied that it assumes your voice. Worse still, the companies peddling these virtual assistants aren’t interested in small scale adoption, they want everyone to have the luxury of a virtual servant.

Between the industrial scale of adoption and the dissemination of personal electronics into all aspects of our lives, it’s only a matter of time before we’re all as atrophied and helpless as Theroux feared. If we don’t start setting limits on AI to prevent it replacing human being, we’re in for a rough ride. Don’t expect the Silicon Valley giants to do what’s best for humanity. They’ve already proven that profit comes first. They’ll happily create a society of illiterate social idiots as long as the money keeps pouring in.

Now, more than ever, we need some Asimovian laws in place to moderate the introduction of artificial intelligence. We’ve already run into problems with digital technologies in terms of news and politics. If we leave artificial intelligence to develop without ensuring it isn’t atrophying human potential, it will relentlessly drive us into a dystopia we’ll all be too helpless to recognize, let alone escape.

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You Say You Want A Revolution?

… well you know, we all wanna save the world.

Thoughts from ECOO 2011:

You say you want a digital revolution in education? Is your perfect classroom a one screen per child? Do you rage against the bureaucracy and hate that this isn’t happening fast enough?

There is a lot of excitement and optimism around this, much of it centered on the idea that technology will somehow make our jobs as teachers easier. If you honestly believe that then your optimism is blind.

Technology will give you access to information, and offer you opportunities to differentiate learning and even assess student abilities in much more minute and specific ways, but it won’t make your job easier, it will make it much more challenging, especially if teaching for you is a matter of working out a lesson and then repeating it for twenty years until you retire.

If you knew how to direct a plough team of horses in the field, did you really think that a modern machine makes things simpler? Easier to operate? Do you have to know less to operate the machine than you did the horse?

At the Ecoo Conference this year, many people focused on specific apps that would replace a specific classroom related paper based piece of work. This is the equivalent of creating a steam powered horse, rather than designing a train that more appropriately uses the new technology. Using google docs to replace individual writing is this kind of thinking. Using prezi to replace a poster presentation is this kind of thinking. Using Diigo to replace making notes out of an encyclopedia is this kind of thinking. The real power of these tools lies in how they are different, not in how the replace an existing process, and especially in how they create collaborative opportunities.

We are trapped by our preconceptions…

Those preconceptions also feed into fears.

The collaborative nature of online tools freaked out many people at ECOO. The heel digging around using social media (twitter and others) to expand personal learning networks was consistent across many of the seminars I attended. Many educators still accept group work in class, but believe online collaboration is a form of plagiarism and cheating, or even worse, it somehow causes children to be preyed on by making them public.

If the classroom is really going to bleed out of the factory inspired buildings we call schools and infect a student’s life in a more permanent way (ultimately creating curious life long learners), then we need to continue to develop access to collaborative online tools that don’t frighten people, and act assertively to clarify new media and calm down the analogue population.

I had a knee jerk response from an invite I sent out on school email this weekend asking if anyone who hadn’t PLN built before might be interested. The teacher (a self described dinosaur) said, “I don’t want to be tweeting or any of that other social media stuff. If I want PD, I’ll read a book.” I pointed out to her that most of the discussion online revolves around books we’ve read. The key difference between her enriching her own teaching and the PLN doing it online is that more than one person benefits; collaboration is what super charges it.

The foundation of all this anxiety is the spectacular example our digital native students make of social media, which is usually displayed as the most asinine waste of time ever devised. Older teachers who are techno-phobic find the idea of using digital tools for productivity as foreign as clueless fourteen year olds do. The blind leading the blind.

I keep trying to shed some light on this, but people get very cranky about it.