Tag: Edtech

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Demonizing Public Employment

An article by a conservative think tank, disseminated by a conservative media outlet:

http://m.torontosun.com/News/1304708716881

“Teachers have also seen very decent raises — 12.55% between 2008 and 2012 (10.4% for public elementary teachers) — while the rest of us have lost jobs or are just treading water.“

Facts by the government:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/cpi-ipc/cpi-ipc-eng.htm

“The largest increase occurred in the transportation component, where prices rose 6.6% in the 12 months to March.”
 
Here’s where the opinion starts:

So, according to StatsCan, we are in an inflationary spiral (a boom/bust cycle predicted by Jeff Rubin in Why Your World is About to Get a lot Smaller caused by increasing limitations on oil production and economies designed to work on nothing else).
 
If we’re averaging 2-3+% inflation every year since 2008, that ENORMOUS 12.55% teacher salary increase actually looks more like (2008 2%, 2009 2%, 2010 3%, 2011 3% 2012 3% = 13%) a net loss in standard of living. But we shouldn’t even try to keep up with the standard of living, should we?
 
Why is the economy in such a mess? Because the free market has swallowed itself with its own greed. Public employees didn’t crash the economy, private business did.
 
I first heard this a couple of years ago in the middle of the financial melt down, when an investment banker had the nerve (after his industry made a mockery of capitalism) to suggest that the local waste removal workers should take pay cuts to help pay for something they had nothing to do with. The people who orchestrated this market collapse have somehow convinced the dull, cow-eyed public that they should enjoy a less restricted marketplace and continue to serve themselves bail outs with taxpayers’ money.
 
In an unrestricted marketplace, private employees lose their jobs, take pay cuts and can do nothing. With no oversight they are indentured servants to the wealthy. They are then incited to riot against the public sector employees who work for the social collective (government), performing duties vital to the public good. In the process, there is some kind of odd flip that happens where the private wage earners actually feel that what they do is more inherently valuable (putting money in rich people’s pockets), than what a public employee does (earning a living while serving the public good).
 
I’m choking on this nonsense. Evidently business and the economy are vital to us, but we shouldn’t oversee and ensure its smooth operation. We should eviscerate government services and oversight and put all that money back into the pockets of a self serving marketplace that would destroy itself for short term gain that benefits a tiny percentage of people. They then seem to Jedi mind trick a weak willed public that they employ as minimally as possible to accept the lie that private sector salaries are somehow more honestly earned than public sector ones.
Don’t pay taxes and slash government oversight now so you can pay enormous bailouts later. It’s not a great deal you idiots, and in the meantime you’re fired and hired for less over and over again. Left to its own devices, an unrestricted marketplace would place the lowest possible value on human work as it can. There are more and more people in the world, where do you think that puts your value as a worker?
Democracy isn’t going to work when special interest groups make claims regardless of the truth, and are allowed to manipulate media to indoctrinate a dim, accepting public.
Don’t feel bad about working for the public good, it’s one hell of a lot better than working as disposable labour to make the rich a bit richer.
And if you work for a private company? It’s not a bad thing unless you give them the reigns, they’ll sell you for a short term gain in a second (if it hasn’t happened already to you, it will). Only intelligent public oversight will ensure a reasonable, sustainable, fair private sector. Left to itself private business would cannibalize society for short term gain.

 

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Public Teacher, Public Job

Originally published November, 2012 in Dusty World

I’ve been teaching now for eight years so this is my first time experiencing work action.  I’ve had union jobs before, union jobs that went to the wall with job action, but the teacher experience is very different.  When I was a warehouse worker for National Grocers we were fighting for our benefits and pay, but no one in the general public ever thought that they knew what my job was or demanded that I stay after my shift to volunteer to do extra work for no pay; I guess the private sector has it easy.

The public nature of this teacher job action has produced a startling realization – there is a portion of the population that hates teachers.  Around that small kernel of teacher-haters is a larger layer of people in the general public who think that teachers are lazy, overpaid and undeserving of even basic Charter rights.  I have noted that many of these people tend to be under-educated and have a  lasting hatred of what happened to them in school.

Listening to someone who couldn’t hack high school, let alone university (twice, once for undergrad, and again for teacher’s college) crying about how little teachers do is like listening to the guy who thinks he can play hockey but can barely skate going on about how he could have gone pro.  That doesn’t stop ignorant, lazy people from making noise though.

Then there is the management thing.  If you’ve ever tried to work out a deal with private business, they are cheap and relentless, but they are consistent.  If you can understand what their parameters are in negotiating, you can come to an agreement.  Also, if you do your job very efficiently and make money for them it makes more room for you in negotiation.  At no point in private bargaining situations did I see a deal stopped for political reasons.  You also have the benefit of working for bosses who are experts in the business (because they made it).  I never had to explain to National Grocers management what our job was because everyone at the table knew the business.

Ontario: top 3 in the world, midpack in cost –
best bang for the buck in education in the world!
If you don’t believe me, believe the freaking UN!

If you’re a teacher in Ontario these days your boss has no background whatsoever in what you do, and even though you produce some of the best results in your field in the world it isn’t acknowledged at all; you still get to hear an unrelenting carcophany in media and the public about how easy your job is and how lazy you are.  Even your boss, a lawyer who hasn’t taught a day in her life, likes to point out that you just took the whole summer off (which you hadn’t).

Ontario’s education system is truly world class, to the point where it is copied around the world.  If you go to an international school there is a very good chance that it will be running the Ontario K to 12 curriculum.  Private schools copy our public school system, it’s that awesome.  If we were building cars, they would be the best in the world, they’d be selling like hotcakes, no one would think to question what we were doing.

So here we are, dealing with a Minister of Education who has never actually worked in Education – ever, a government that is more interested in poll numbers than in resolving serious issues and getting everyone back to work, and it’s all happening while Ontario Education is the envy of the world.  Trying to negotiate in this environment makes very little sense.  It makes me long for the private sector where things made sense.

We threw money at GM so they could stop making crappy cars and become solvent.  We threw money at banks that had purchased bad loans.  If private businesses make bad choices, we cripple ourselves financially to support them.

However, if we create excellence we bitterly attack it, demean it and then use it for shabby political ends.  It’s not hard to see why Ontario is going down the toilet.  We don’t even recognize and protect excellence any more.  And when we’ve let ignorant (dare I say stupid?) loud mouths vent their frustrations at their own failures by blaming teachers for their own short comings while at school, we’re left with a demoralized education system… hardly the kind of place that can compete successfully on the global stage.

Other Notes:
The poor right winger: what you get when laziness and greed replace industry and reward
All Hands on Deck: when politics dictate economics
Death of Vision: where our leadership went
Educational Maelstroms: what it’s like to hear the negativity
Surfed PISA lately?: How fantastic our Ed system is!

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Virtual Possibilities

I was asked the other day what virtual reality could do beyond the obvious entertainment it provides. A bit of online research shows VR moving in a number of directions beneficial to education.  


Below is a list that covers everything from currently available software to academic research and emerging uses.  It isn’t even remotely complete.


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VR for physio therapy



Phantom Limb Pain Recovery
http://ift.tt/2gZdE69

When I worked in Japan I did a lot of work with a local doctor who was researching therapeutic muscle stimulation in patients recovering from paralysis.  A lot of that physiotherapy was very hard work for both the patients and the people working with them.  VR would offer a way to produce more natural, targeted and full range interaction without the tedium and limitation of repetitive exercise.

The CBC piece above is talking about how amputees with phantom limb syndrome use VR to reconnect the neural pathways that used to operate the missing part.  Body confusion over the missing part appears to be the cause of phantom pains in missing limbs.  The immersive nature of VR allows patients to exercise those neurons and reduce instances of false pain responses.


Physical Therapy VR Research
http://ift.tt/2i3rUbH
If you’ve ever immersed yourself in VR you quickly become aware of how elsewhere you feel.  I’ve felt vertigo while standing on a cliff in Google Earth.  As a tool for balance and movement it has obvious immediate applications.


A Home-made VR Motion Sensor and Data Collection Tool
Currently, my senior computer engineering students are designing an Arduino based virtual reality movement sensor that will collect data on a user’s movements while immersed.  They are programming a Java based back end in computer science to collect the data streaming from the ultrasonic sensor in order to create data-sets of movement while immersed.  This data could be used to measure the depth of immersion the user is experiencing.  More immersed people tend to physically interact more with the virtual environment – that physical interaction can be used to collect data.

Analysis of the data means they might be able to produce accurate information on how well a user is playing a game, how effectively an athlete is following a VR training regimen or perhaps if a patient recovering from an injury is making the right motions in physio.  It should be able to isolate and describe the physical limitations of a user in VR.  Unlike previous digital experiences through the window of a monitor, VR offers immediate physical feedback that we’re going to record.

Digital interaction is going to be much less sedentary in the future.

VR and Autism



Floreo Autism Therapy

http://ift.tt/2i3pdqV
Founded by two dads of kids with autism, Floreo explores VR as a therapy.  I like their approach: autism isn’t seen as a defect but a difference that we can support with therapies designed to allow these different thinking kids to survive and thrive with everyone else.

Austism Speaks on Virtual Reality
http://ift.tt/2i3oKoj 

Autism Speaks is a science focused advocacy group that is encouraging a seed change in how society views the spectrum of atypical autism related thinking.  


In this article they are funding research into a VR based social cognition training in order for autistic people to function more effectively with others.  The complexities of autism means they need to proceed carefully with data collection.  VR’s unique sense of immersion means they can simulate social situations (and the anxiety that arises from them) more accurately and produce responses that reflect it.  The data collected from this specifically targeted research is vital to creating tools to help people with autism practice social skills more effectively.


Having kids who are already comfortable with VR means that when this therapy is ready they won’t have to get familiar with the technology before they benefit from the therapeutic value of the program.



Sensitivity Training for Neurotypicals
http://ift.tt/1PM1nPM
We’re currently using a 360 camera to create a VR based tour of our school.  In it students get to move around the building looking where they want in order to begin to get a sense of where everything is.  Editing 4k 360° video is a challenge – I have to use the best VR PC we have to do it (when it isn’t running VR), but we’ll get there.


In the meantime, I came across this immersive video made by the UK’s National Autistic Society.  Designed in collaboration with autistic people, it gives you some idea of how overwhelming the world can be when an autistic child has a panic attack.  It’s overwhelming watching it on the screen.  Watching it in VR I was in tears…


If you’re not in VR and haven’t done 360° video before, you can move the point of view around with your mouse as you watch.  As a way of trying to explain to others how it feels to have a panic attack when you’re autistic, it’s a powerful tool.


Using VR to Teach Autistic Teens How to Drive
http://ift.tt/2i3toTC
Another ready-now application for VR is in vehicle operation.  High performance operators such as racers use it to learn tracks.  Heavy equipment operators are using it to train people on expensive industrial machines before they ever get into the cab for the first time.  Pilots have to log flight time in a simulator as part of becoming qualified on a new plane.  As a way to get people familiar with a complex machine it’s cheap and effective.


In this case VR is being used to ease the anxiety of learning to drive in teens with autism.  Every high school in our board has driving instruction starting in their parking lots.  They should all be adopting this first step in order to ease anxiety before putting any kid behind the wheel for the first time.

General education links

The Virtual Reality Society
http://ift.tt/2gZexMj
Based out of the UK, this group offers a great resource site to get your feet wet in VR.  They are also very interested in how VR can be used in teaching and learning and a lot of their links will take you emerging uses of this technology.

That Tim King Guy
http://ift.tt/2i3piLf

There’s this guy in Canada who jumped into this early and has his students building VR kits for other schools.  He’s out and about often demonstrating the technology in his school, his board and his province to anyone who will listen.  He and his students have put hundreds of people through their first experience with VR.


His interest is in the engineering that creates the immersive VR experience.  It takes astonishing amounts of computing power to produce 3d immersive simulations.  Astonishing amounts of computing power are what got his attention in the first place.

Education isn’t  usually responsive to emerging technologies but this guy’s MO is to explore new technologies, and this one is going take immersive simulation (something he’s always been interested in) to unforeseen levels.

VR and Mathematics
http://ift.tt/2i3tkDe
Experiential algebra in VR.  The benefits of visualizing mathematics in 3d are obvious.  This is one of many academic papers on the subject.

http://ift.tt/29awe9z
Geometry is another obvious use for 3d data visualization.  This is another academic paper on using VR in teaching geometry.

VR and Chemistry
https://devposhttp://ift.tt/2gZ7seo
Chemistry is one of those hands on teaching environments that have a lot of safety oversight.  Using VR to familiarize students with the safety needs of the lab could drastically reduce damage costs.  The safety training applications school-wide in technology and science are obvious.


These guys used Unity just like my software engineering course does – this is something that capable high school students could render.  Perhaps we will next semester.

http://ift.tt/2i3rUsp
Drop into a chemistry lab and explore.

http://ift.tt/2gZ7cMG
Data visualization is a huge part of VR.  Chemistry researchers are already envisioning how it could be used to better understand advanced chemical interactions.

http://ift.tt/2i3tmuQ
An academic paper on how immersive simulation can advance the learning of chemistry.


A trip through the body.  You can observe infections happening at a microscopic level.  It has my twelve year old talking about viral nucleocapsids – I have no idea what he’s talking about.


Gender and Virtual Reality
There has been a lot of talk about gender in schools this year.  The immersive nature of VR means empathy can go from difficult to access to something approaching a lived experience.  Having a red neck experience the looks of distrust aimed at a black man or a misogynist spend an hour as a woman would go a long way toward addressing inequity.  It’s hard to hate or belittle someone when you’ve spent some time in their shoes.

***

Does VR have any value beyond entertainment?  It’s an explosive new area of technological growth and we’ve barely begun to explore what it can do.  Even so, there are already hundreds of immediately useful educationally focused VR apps, and more come on line every day.

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The Diversifying Consumer VR Landscape

One of our student built PCs immersing a UGDSB
educator in To The Beat: a student built VR game.

We started exploring virtual reality almost two years ago in my senior computer technology classes.  In that time we’ve completed a Ministry of Education research grant, presented at several conferences and built over a dozen VR sets for other schools in our board.  VR checks a lot of boxes for me:

  • it’s technically demanding in both hardware and software so it challenges my students with real world problems they wouldn’t otherwise get to see
  • it’s a new medium that has yet to be defined, so there are no established rules or right ways to do things. You can’t ask for much more as a media creator and teacher.
  • it’s rapidly evolving and because we early adopted we are playing a part in that evolution
With all that going for it, I’ve enjoyed the past could of years working out how best to get it to work, and we’re not remotely done.

In October Microsoft blundered into VR with their fall Creator’s Update.  Up until that point Microsoft had been quietly developing its very expensive Hololens (we tried it last year at the 2016 ECOO conference) while others went to market.  We settled on the HTC Vive as the best of the first wave of classroom ready fully immersive VR systems.  I’ve since put hundreds of people through their first experience with it and 99.9% of them come out of it amazed.  It never gets old watching someone experience VR for the first time.

Last year building our Vive VR kits meant building a reasonably strong spec desktop computer (a fairly simple ask for my seniors) and then installing the SteamVR drivers and updating all the firmware on the Vive before installing software.  After that we had stable, ready to roll systems that knocked out astonishing VR experiences.  Headaches were few and once up and running the systems have performed flawlessly, which isn’t always the way with emerging technology.

This year Microsoft added all sorts of VR ready software to this Creators Update which has made our fall roll-out of seven VR sets for other schools a massive headache.  What once took ten minutes of installing mature, stable SteamVR drivers is now an hours long odyssey of trying to untangle immature Windows 10 VR kits that try and run the Vive as a Microsoft Mixed Reality headset (which it isn’t).  I’m sure this is no accident.  If Microsoft can destabilize HTC’s market dominance with the Vive by making the running of it a misery on Windows, then they would (and did).

My frustrated seniors and I were doing multiple re-installs and trying all sorts of driver voodoo to get things working.  Microsoft’s sudden interest has borked our VR installs on non-Microsoft gear, but guess what works?  Microsoft’s new Mixed Reality headsets.  Coincidence?  Probably not.


Having a dedicated VR pilot
at home lets me test all sorts
of software and systems!

We got a Lenovo Explorer last week when it was on sale at the suggestion of a very VR experienced teacher in our board.  It’s pretty lousy using the Microsoft mixed reality software (there is barely anything there and the drivers are immature), but running it on STEAM has been reasonably problem free (the odd tracking issue with the handsets but otherwise OK).


Today I tried out Space Pirate Trainer, probably the most demanding interactive title we’ve tried, on the Lenovo Explorer using Windows Mixed Reality and it works a treat.  That’s a $400 kit doing what an $800 HTC Vive kit with external sensors does almost as well with much less set up.  It’ll only get better as those Microsoft drivers mature.


As it stands now we build a VR ready desktop for about $1400 and then get the enterprise version of the Vive for another $1500.  For three hundred bucks less we could buy the equivalent Samsung Microsoft Mixed Reality Headset and compatible laptop.  That’d be a kit that is mobile (laptop and no external sensors means easy transport and setup), and similar in resolution.


It bothers me that Microsoft has used its operating system monopoly to elbow out an existing system, but it’s also a step down the evolutionary chain by not having the external sensors of the older Vive system.  That’s what you get for not being first in with an emerging technology, you get to edge them out with an evolved product.


With all the driver headaches some of my students (and myself) had moments when we wondered why we’re doing this to ourselves.  I finally said, “hey, if you wanted it easy you’d stick to the established technology that everyone else uses.  If we want to work with emerging tech, we’ve got to be ready for a fight.”


The fight continues, and Microsoft’s one-two punch of a simpler but effective platform and aggressive monopolistic software has got me thinking about moving on to a better solution.  Sometimes doing what the Sith Lord wants is the best way forward.


LINKS:


Lenovo’s Explorer Microsoft Mixed Reality Headset.HTC’s Vive: up until recently our go-to VR headset.


Microsoft Mixed Reality.  
And for Canada.

It’s already gotten more diverse than it was when we presented this at ECOO last month.



Microsoft is pretty cagey about the specs for Mixed Reality.  They say any typical laptop or desktop can do the business, but our school’s Dell i5 laptop wasn’t sufficient.  If your ‘typical’ desktop costs north of $1500 and your ‘typical’ laptop costs beyond two grand, then yeah, you’re ready to experience mixed reality.  They also require Bluetooth which most desktops don’t have, so add that in there too… and the controllers need AA batteries, which the Vive doesn’t.  


Curious to see if your typical PC can do it?  Here’s the link to check your hardware.



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ECOO16: the DIY approach protects you from the tyranny of technology

The perils of presenting last; you’ve got other things on
your mind instead of what you planned to present,
but it helped!

By the time I got to my presentation in the last slot on Friday I was brain full, exhausted and not entirely sure I would be coherent.  After a rambling review of what got me to the DIY lab concept I finally got rolling on the building and operation of your own classroom computer lab.  I hadn’t intended to, but a moment from my time as a high school dropout was on my mind as I began the presentation.  Vocalizing the story helped connect several ideas that explained where the DIY technology idea came from.


Being handy I ended up working at a Canadian Tire for a couple of months as the tire change guy before I started apprenticing as a millwright.  One day early on I was watching one of the mechanics diagnosing a Renault Fuego.  As he moved around under this unfamiliar car he burned his arm on the exhaust pipe.  In a fit of rage he threw his spanner across the shop and then stormed off, shouting that he was going to make the customer buy a new exhaust system (the car was in with carburetor issues).  The customer, having no idea what happens under the hood of her car, reluctantly accepted the ‘fact’ that she needed a very expensive exhaust system replacement.  This moment stayed with me because it not only taught me what ignorance can cost you, but also made me question the veracity of ‘professionals’.


My father is an industrial heavy machinery mechanic and told me, even as my technology got increasingly complicated (bicycle to car, Meccano to early computers), that if something was built by people he could figure out how it worked.  I’d internalized that idea from an early age.  My second bicycle was home made, after buying early software I started writing my own.  We spent cold hours on the driveway replacing head gaskets and tuning carburetors.  I came to the point where I’d never shrug off the complexity of technology and trust it to someone else.


This doesn’t mean I’m an expert at everything, but I always have a look under the hood and grasp the basics before I use a technology, whether it’s smartphones, the internet or a motorcycle.  Since cars became dependable enough the vast majority of the public have lost any interest in their inner workings, but that wasn’t always the case.  Early adopters of automobiles were their own mechanics.  The maker movement is a step back towards that kind of technical familiarity, but it takes a special breed to maintain that level of curiosity and ownership of knowledge.


The difference between digital technology and automotive technology is that the digital stuff insinuates itself into your relationships and becomes a 24/7 part of your life.  It affects your thinking rather than your muscles.  Not knowing how a car works might occasionally inconvenience you and cost some money, but not understanding digital technology when you spend hours a day socializing through it or (worse) teaching with it, is a disaster waiting to happen.  It isn’t a disaster for tech driven multinationals who live off your data though.  They will happily convert your and your students’ ignorance into profit.


This growing ignorance is what prompted the do-it-yourself classroom computer lab.  Handing students turnkey digital tools like Chromebooks might suit Google’s market penetration strategy, but it doesn’t teach students about the tools they are using.  Some teachers have said that they are teaching their curriculum and not technology but if you’re going to use it you should, as a teacher, understand it, otherwise it will make decisions for you.  That is neither professional nor desirable.  If you can’t be bothered to understand it, don’t use it – but you risk quickly becoming irrelevant.


I’m in the strange situation of teaching the technology that the vast majority of Canadians use but no one wants to understand.  A general understanding of how digital technology works is vital if you’re going to have it participating in your life all day every day, and especially if you’re going to teach and learn with it.  You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to have some conception of how this potentially invasive thing works.

ICTC posts Canadian statistics in digital technology
jobs each month.  Yet Geography is a mandatory course
while computer technology is an afterthought.

I look at Ontario curriculum and fail to understand how digital technological literacy isn’t a fundamental requirement.  The vast majority of Canada’s population uses personal, digital technology and in many cases that use is almost continuous, yet very few people understand how it works.


We’re graduating students into a millennial unemployment rate of over 14%, but it drops to 6% if they are information-communication technology focused.  Even if they aren’t specializing in technology, every graduate we produce is going to use ICT/computers in their job in some capacity or another.

The DIY lab I presented might be a bridge too far for many teachers, but for digital technology teachers or anyone whose curriculum depends implicitly on digital technologies (business tech, media arts) I think it should be a requirement.  The teachers presenting this technology to their students owe it to them to develop a deeper understanding of the tools they are using.  For everyone else (teachers and students), an understanding of what’s under the hood should be an essential requirement otherwise they are teaching and learning in ignorance, which isn’t helping anyone.


It turns out that walking in to the presentation unfocused allowed me to laterally connect a lot of the foundational ideas around this do-it-yourself philosophy of educational technology use.

 

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In 2017 not much has changed:  The Digital Divide is Deep & Wide…

 

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

 

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Enhanced Self Awareness

At ECOO last year, digital footprints were the focus of many sessions.  The concern revolved around students (and teachers) showing anything of themselves online.  The fear was clear and present, as was the suggestion that we MUST craft a meaningful online presence.  Many were surprised at this year’s conference when our keynote speaker talked about how digitization has gone beyond self presentation and become interactive as a means of self improvement.  Tech doesn’t want to be passive, it wants to interact with us, become a part of us!

At the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario’s conference this week we had Nora Young from CBC Spark talking about how digitization and the proliferation of data is creating a kind of self awareness that is entirely new.  She used examples of bio-metric tools and productivity time assessment software to present examples of this digital mirror.

This is a world that our students are immersed in 18 out of every 24 hours (when school is in session) – and it leaks into classrooms constantly on smartphones.  Trying to address that tide by telliing students to bring their own devices, or go on generic, years behind the times school computers is one of the many places you can see education failing.

Words like relevance and engagement are thrown around in panic.  People start flipping class rooms and attempting to engage students by offering the same un-directed over empowerment that kids receive through digital devices; that’s an arms race that no one wins.  The resulting habitual usage at best offers minimum educational gains, at worst it actually impedes student abilities in other areas.  If you’ve ever watched a digital serf mindlessly copy an essay from the internet to submit, you’re watching undirected digital empowerment in action.

Where Nora was talking about a kind of enhanced self awareness through digital tools, many ‘digital natives’ are blissfully unaware of how public their digital presence is, or where their data goes.  It’s merely a part of their lives, and they don’t think twice about posting material that makes them unemployable because in their minds it is the equivalent of talking to friends.  They haven’t thought twice about publicity settings, it doesn’t occur to them.

On top of that, the data that they might use to become more efficient, or digitally empower their learning, or self-organize are often out of reach because students, as digital natives, are unaware of anything but their self-taught habitual usage.  We certainly aren’t doing much to address habitual usage in schools (a digital continuum would be a start), even going to far as to encourage it with BYO-device BYO-technology initiatives.

It’s a nice idea to imagine digital tools offering us data that helps to make us better people (Wired did a cool article on this a while back).  The digerati will do this to great effect, once again empowering themselves in ways that Luddites will lack.  As a teacher my concern is that the digital native is as incapable of grasping these tools as the tech-hater.  It takes technological fluency to grasp these kinds of digital self-awareness opportunities.  Unless we’re developing those fluencies, this is just another 21st Century opportunity lost to on our students.

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Surviving First Contact With The Enemy


The wise, Jedi-like Colin Jagoe posted a link about how the COVID19 pandemic is very much like being at war.  This got me thinking about how our behind-closed-doors / business-as-usual approach to managing this crisis has been… minimalist.  This shouldn’t be about maintaining the organizational status quo, it should be about building a resilient, transparent and responsive approach to dealing with an unprecedented social engineering challenge.


The following reflection highlights how a transparent, communicative, engaged leadership approach helps mitigate one of the truths of fighting a war:  “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”     In the fluid and rapidly changing situation we find ourselves in, it might be wise to lean on some military wisdom in our response.


***


I was an air cadet in the 1980s in Mississauga.  One of the major pillars of that program is teaching leadership.  I took summer courses on it and spent at least dozen hours over and above school each week working through cadet syllabus on it.  It’s safe to say air cadets was a seminal experience for me in that it not only showed me how I can best fit into an operational structure, but also how to run one effectively in a changeable environment.


When I was halfway through my cadet career we went up to Base Borden for a March Break training exercise.  Pete Rudin was my flight sergeant and as experienced as a cadet can get being only a couple of months away from retiring.  I was a very keen new corporal.  Our flight consisted of about 35 kids ranging in age from brand new 13 year old recruits up to savvy 18 year old veterans like Pete.  We got put into a capture the flag game against other flights, but Pete did something no one else did.


While all the other flight sergeants split their groups up into the standard squads (one experienced NCO leading 4-5 very excited and inexperienced younger cadets) and ran things top down, Pete differentiated his leadership approach based on the human resources he had at hand.  His plan was to create a massive group of all the new recruits who were anxious and a bit freaked out and move into the exercise with this slow moving but unstoppable unit.  He knew he had a few experienced and gung-ho junior NCOs who wanted to run, so rather than hold them back in the big group he told us to recon where the other teams were and report back.


You can imagine how that felt.  When your flight sergeant acknowledges your esprit de corps and gifts you with a special assignment, your already gung-ho approach steps up another gear.  Things went as you might imagine.  The other junior NCOs and I ran off into the woods full of adrenaline and immediately began finding those little homogeneous squads.  As soon as we made contact we’d run back to the hive, usually with that squad chasing us thinking we were an easy kill… then they’d come over a hill and find dozens of excited youngsters swarming around our flight sergeant, and get retired from the game.

We began hoovering up squads and about an hour in I stumbled across the other team’s flag – the one we had to capture that would end the game.  I barely got out of there alive (if they pulled the flag off your arm you’re considered retired), they had two of their most experienced squads on defence.  I managed to get away and ran back breathless to tell Rudin where the flag was.  Ten minutes later it was all over as our hive swarmed over the hill into the dell where their flag was hidden.  The two squads they’d put on defence couldn’t believe what was coming at them.  Our youngest, tiniest new cadet took the flag and ended the game (I think Pete made a point of that).


Afterwards, I asked Flight Sergeant Rudin how he came up with this bizarre approach.  He said something I’ve never forgotten: “I figured if I tried to keep you guys back with the big group you’d be hard to manage and it wouldn’t help things.  We’d perform better if I didn’t have to micromanage when you wanted to be doing something else that would produce better results for all of us anyway.  The little ones looked terrified, so I wanted to keep them with me and build their confidence.”


We were the  younger team in that capture the flag, with less experienced NCOs – the other team was cocky and confident because they had many ringers.  Rather than open up the rule-book and follow homogeneous protocols designed around top-down control that would have ended up with us losing, Pete differentiated his leadership approach and gave each of his people just what they needed to succeed.  He also arranged things so that everyone was in contact with everyone else and made communication easier by giving us a clear focus to return to, it really was a brilliant piece of planning beautifully executed.


I never forgot that lesson.  In retrospect, it was the centralization of resources, clarity of the planning (it was all done out loud with us all standing around Pete as he elicited ideas and worked out what we were going to do), and the focus on communication that allowed it to succeed like it did.  Everyone knew what we were doing, why we were doing it and how to let the group know if it was or wasn’t working.  When we caught the fourth squad who had no idea that three others had been caught by our big hive, I began to realize what that lack of communication was doing to the other teams.  No battle plan may survive first contact with the enemy, but designing a plan transparently and reflexively with clear communications channels allows your organization to respond to surprises quickly and effectively.



I ended up retiring a sergeant in cadets.  Others have suggested that only making it half way up the command structure is somehow a failure, but I don’t see it that way.  I finished my career as Rifle Guard Commander and Colour Party Commander and occupied a specialist role in our large organization.  The metacognitive awareness of how I can operate most effectively in a large organizational structure was another invaluable result of my time in cadets.  I’m very much a sergeant – good at dealing with tangible, immediate issues in small groups collaboratively and imaginatively (handy classroom teacher skills, eh?).  Given latitude I liked to exercise initiative and move quickly – did this sometimes get me into trouble?  Yep, but the leaders I had recognized those skills and made a point of leveraging them.  That made me feel like a valued member of the organization, rank wasn’t the only thing that defined me.

I was good friends with many of the younger cadets who ended up in charge of our squadron – many of them attended my 50th birthday party last year (we’re all old now, so those year or two differences don’t matter any more – but then they didn’t back then either).  They didn’t make rank about exclusion, privilege and control and they acknowledged their cadets’ expertise and experience by making productive use of them by differentiating the roles they assigned.


This collegial and transparent approach to leadership allowed us to execute the cadet syllabus with precision and flair.  It also allowed us to revise and respond to the unknown quickly and effectively when on exercises, contact with the enemy be damned.  I’m really proud of the things we learned and work we did.  This experience has aided us all in our professional lives as adults.  This transparent, communicative approach has informed much of my teaching practice.  If you asked my students what they find most compelling about my classes, I think many would say that sense of agency – I acknowledge their strengths and honour them by differentiating their work.


I’m missing that transparency, clarity of purpose and engagement now, even though not one of the teens I just described had a post graduate degree in leadership.  If we are indeed at war as Colin suggests, then we need to quickly engage and develop effective communications and a clarity of common purpose, or all of those secret plans being developed behind closed doors won’t survive first contact with an enemy we’ve too often underestimated.  Initiative is lost, but it’s never too late to try and get it back.

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Exceptional Times

Thoughts from the depths of the COVID19 pandemic: Rather than give in to the digital divide in times of crisis, why not leverage this moment and make moves to resolve it?


***


It has been suggested that due to the inequity of access to technology and internet, our education system should shut down during the COVID19 pandemic.  Rather than surrender to this inequity, why not attempt to address it directly?  We could leverage educational technology manufacturers and create one to one technology access for our student populations on the wrong side of the digital divide.


At the same time we could offer limited access to our public school library learning commons where students would have access to internet.  With appropriate safety precautions (limited numbers allowed, strict hygiene practices, solo seating arrangements), we could take immediate steps to bridge the digital divide and allow some form of education to continue for students across Canada.  Simply turning off the education system for months at a time will cause lasting damage for millions of students.


This is a measured and logical approach to resolving the digital divide (a lack of educational technology access to all students)  that has long plagued education.  Rather than having this pandemic make it worse, why not leverage it to make it better?

Handing out one to one technology for students in need so we can keep moving everyone forward educationally wouldn’t be as expensive as you might think and the alternative is significantly more costly.  Our public schools have developed the network infrastructure necessary to provide internet, so limited access to that infrastructure could still address the needs of social distancing while providing connectivity.

If this pandemic has shown anything, it’s that our ICT infrastructure is more vital than ever if we’re going to move against this crisis in a unified manner; communication is key.  There are existing technologies we could apply to extend school and municipal wireless networking out into the communities that surround them.  With fundamental networking infrastructure in place, some innovative final mile solutions (like Blimpernet – an idea that my students and I came up with last year) could make the internet available to many more Canadians just when we need it.


Wouldn’t it be something if one of the lasting results of this pandemic was that it helped us close the digital divide and improve equity through access to technology in our schools?  That it would also allow our education systems to continue in a limited capacity instead of shutting down is a consequence that would benefit all Canadians.


***


I sent this to a number of MPs as well as the PM.  I only hope a measured, reasonable response is still in the cards.

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Gamer culture, the alt right and online sexism

That link above takes you to a vetted story by our national broadcaster about a PhD student’s academically researched work on gamer culture.  If you can find an academically vetted refutation of these facts (not some dude’s YouTube video) then I’m all ears.  I doubt such a thing exists.  Merely implying that this isn’t true isn’t an effective response either.

 

It’s a salty but accurate explanation
of how the early internet evolved
toward what we have today.

This idea that online gaming culture may act a petri dish for alt-right thinking doesn’t surprise me.  Every year I have grade 9 boys begin my program, find out I game, and immediately begin testing the waters with shockingly racist and sexist language to see if I speak the lingo.  I don’t.  I come from an earlier internet where trolling and trash talk were used to instruct and support the kind of radical egalitarianism the early web was promising, not to protect the diminishing historical privilege of white males.  I used to think their offensive language was a function of living in a rural, conservative community but now I’m thinking that a pervasive, new online culture might be the cause.

The podcast above describes astonishingly sexist online situations and suggests that these aren’t rare.  I’ve run into similar problems teaching computer technology. Trying to keep girls in these courses is an ongoing frustration.  Back in 2014 I called this poisonous environment “nerd machismo” and had a great deal of trouble redirecting how many tech focused boys treated these classes like their own private domain.  In retrospect, if they were immersed onlline in the kind of sexism shown in the podcast above, it’s little wonder they were acting this way.  The odd girl who did appear in senior computer classes tended to drop out after a couple of days of listening to this bluster.  I could hardly blame them.

Girls are being chased out of ICT courses by an online culture that can
be best described as incredibly misogynistic.  In the process they are
missing a job sector with great prospects.

In managing my own online presence I’ve removed any online discussion functionality.  I’m happy to talk to people about what I write and thrilled if they share it but I’m not in the business of vetting comments and weeding out the increasing toxicity I was experiencing.  It became tedious and depressing trying to manage these idiots.  Online flaming has decreased in intelligence and increased in misdirected usage to the point where I don’t read (especially anonymous) online comments any more.  By default now my blogs and other online media do not allow for comments.  I don’t want to spend my time reading and erasing offensive material.  If people want to discuss it intelligently they can leverage their own social media presence to do it.  In some small way this mitigates the savage idiocy of the anonymous online flamer by assigning at least a minimal kind of ownership.  If I’m cutting and running from online engagement (a white, male, early adopter), I can’t imagine what kind of negativity has chased out others.


***


Last month at the ECOO Conference Andrew Campbell did a great presentation on how computer science was stolen from the pioneering women who did much of the coding in the early days:

 

 

When you consider how misogyny has directed the field of computer science in the past forty years it’s little wonder that the online culture arising from all that coding tends toward the same thinking.  The medium delivering the message is being made by the same special interests.  This is the worst kind of systemic sexism.


Between this podcast, my own experiences and Andrew’s presentation I seem to be at a confluence of ideas all pointing to a kind of misogyny that I thought was going extinct.  It’s 2016 but we seem to be wrestling with ideas that would look more comfortable in pre-suffragette days a century ago.


I’m a firm believer in developing technical prowess in everyone.  Democratizing technical know-how is the best defence we have against being manipulated by increasingly invasive digital systems continually rolled out by billionaires.  Excluding half the population from technical literacy simply because of their gender plays right into their hands.  No wonder political movements like the alt-right find such a comfortable home online where the powers that be don’t want you thinking about how it works.  In that place ignorance is power.  In the meantime I get to go to school and interact with children who think this is how you should talk to women:

Screen grabs of what women experience online.
In addition to experiencing harassment much more regularly, young women also experience a much wider
variety and intensity of harassment online.  If you experience this online how must you
look at the people you meet in real life?  I’d be constantly wondering what they really think.

 

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Master/Journeyman/Apprentice

 I’m once again in the additional qualification classroom in order to gain another teachable.  This one was a bit tricky.  I’d been working in information technology since I graduated with an honours BA in English in the mid ’90s.  When I went into teaching, I looked into getting my technical qualifications (I’d spent a fair amount of money on getting IT qualified and wanted to keep a finger in the pie, so to speak).  It didn’t happen.  The Byzantine rules around what I needed and how I qualified were taking so long to get through, it was easier to just plug in my degree (to a very degree friendly teacher qualification system) and start there.

I did computer clubs and delved into #edtech relentlessly, but didn’t get my computer engineering qualification until now because I needed it for a headship, and they’d recently made changes that cleared up some of the labyrinthine rules around getting the qualification.

So here I am, a qualified IT technician in a computer engineering class.  If we’re doing networking, or computer repair, I’m aces, but soldering?  Circuit boards?  Not so much.  The funny thing is we have electrical engineers that don’t know what a registry is or how to reset an IP address, but they are brilliant on a circuit board.  I’m starting to realize that computer engineering is another one of those subjects that collects expertise from various disciplines and files it all under the same heading.  I’m also beginning to see why some comp-eng teachers’ courses look so different from other comp-eng teachers’ courses.

Other than cutting networking cables, running them and installing hardware, I’m not really a nuts and bolts of electronics kind of guy, but after taking this AQ, I will be.  When I was a kid I got into cars and stereos and did some wiring then, it’s nice to get hands on with components again.  My experience has all be around making it (IT) work for business, after taking this AQ, I get the sense that I’m going to end up delving more deeply into maker culture, something I’ve wanted to do for too long.

Getting my head back into wiring diagrams felt impossible in the first few days.  I’m finding the tools available, especially Arduino and Fritzing to be invaluable in bridging gaps in knowledge.  I know I won’t be a Jedi knight at circuitry by the end of the course, but the 1-2-3 system our instructor has been using has recognized the varieties of skills in the room and allowed people to focus on what they want to improve in, and improve I have.

I’m looking forward to hitting my tech-class in the fall and getting my hands dirty.  In the meantime, I just started Shop Class As Soulcraft, suggested by our instructor on the last day of class.  Some mechanic’s philosophy will help fill in the gap I’m feeling between my academic background, and my urge to work with my hands again.