Friends and colleagues using social media sometimes ask for advice, and if there’s one point out of many points that I really emphasis to them regarding building their social media profile, is something that I had picked up from Jakob Neilson (web usability guru):
Every time you are ready to post an article, share, comment, like etc. Say to yourself:
“What will my future boss think of this?”
I have created a seperate page now to link to my recent work.
Someone wrote the above question on a list recently – another day and another technology condemned to the virtual graveyard I thought. Didn’t they say that about radio when television became vogue in households some decades ago? However, currently, 88% of the UK population tune into radio at least once a week.
For some time now, I’ve been chewing the fat with colleagues and friends (Richard Hall, Geoff Hughes and Dionne Barton) about blogging, its benefits and challenges, with the aim of rekindling the habit of writing again. With a bit of discipline, blogging can be cathartic, as it helps to form, strengthen, express and test ideas that would otherwise bounce around in the mind and eventually purge away from memory.
To (re)start somehow, I thought I’d use a heading from the title of a staff training session I had written and delivered some years back. The title of the session actually came from (or shamelessly ripped-off from) a greeting card that someone had given to me for something or the other. I didn’t write much before or after the session about blogging, and alas, the idea got waylaid, until today.
The relationship of technology and education
When people learn, their behaviour changes as a result of acquiring knowledge and performing actions based upon that knowledge, previous experiences, conversations with others, and whilst reflecting on observations (Knowles, Holton et al. 2005). For centuries, a lot of these instances of learning, especially the formalised type, had been encouraged and furthered by dedicated spaces and educational establishments where pupils would gather for scholarly addresses; you simply would not be educated if you were living at distance from the institution or could not find the means to get there (Marrou 1982). As societies began to industrialise, travel became easier, transporting goods over distances became quicker and cheaper, and people from disparate locations were able to study through correspondence and make contact with tutors who were hundreds of miles away (Anderson & Dron 2011). Then in the last several decades came the rampant telecommunication advancements that made communication over long distances common place, and today we converse amongst each other as if we are sitting in one room. Technology’s position in the world today is that it is intrinsically intertwined with the cultural, social, political, and economical aspects of society (Selwyn 2010). Educational establishments are not spared either; it’s evident after taking a glance at educational environments that computers are pieces of furniture as washing machines and microwaves are the norm in kitchens. Basically, technology is so commonplace that nobody even questions the assumptions anymore of whether the use of technology in classrooms is essentially a good thing (Selwyn 2010).
Online Identities have been on the news again. The most recent has been where the cover blew for the US military when commissioning software to create ‘sock puppets’ or artificial online identities, in order to manipulate social media, increase surveillance, and influence online opinions to further US propaganda. Some weeks prior to this the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange publicly declared that the Internet was a threat to freedom of speech and could be used by states to throttle dissenting views. Suddenly, the Orwellian notions of the future are not that far-fetched, where totalitarian states control and watch over everything, including our online identities.
For centuries, thinkers have been intrigued and fascinated with the issue of how humans learn, only to realise that humans are complex creatures and that they learn in a variety of ways, situations, and circumstances (Merriam and Brockett 2007). Perhaps to further simplify this large area of study, some theorists had segmented human learners into categories by age, namely Pedagogy and Andragogy, however not without causing a dispute; a large body of educators maintained that the cluster of theories that Pedagogy covers was sufficient for all human learning regardless of age (Smith 1996).
Today a letter was sent from the current Business Secratery and the Minister of State for Universities and Science to the Chairman of HE Funding Council. In a nutshell, it formally notified the addressee the beginning of a series of cuts to the Higher Education teaching grant. I began mulling over this along with a recently listened podcast regarding Online Distance Learning (ODL) and wondered whether the use of ODL could one day soon be a viable option for Higher Education (or any education for that matter).
The podcast covered some compelling evidences to suggest that Online Distance Learning can be “engaging, enriching, and effective”. However, students (I suppose staff undertaking prof. dev could be included here) generally refrain from engagement when they feel “palmed off with an ill-considered, unstructured, and poorly moderated courses”. Students will be increasingly akin to consumers as the recommendations of the Browne Report become a reality and no doubt they will be snuffing out under-developed, undervalued, and badly supported online courses. Could there be yet more work on the horizon for academics? Do they need to spend more time polishing their courses (and their tech skills)?
I stumbled across a short YouTube clip of an interview with Gilly Salmon (Professor of e-Learning, Uni of Leicester), and found some points that resonated with me. I’m using this post just to highlight them:
“It’s always important to drive from a learning challenge rather than from a technology perspective. The learning challenge is to teach people that are used to face-to-face teaching, how to do it online, there are alot of differences. You have to actually design for student activity rather then delivery of content.”
This is my first post on this blog – LearnViaTech. Although my intentions is to use it as a space for reflection, introspection, and assist with comprehension. I’ll still say hello to you, the world, as it is always easier to write when you feel that you have someone to write for.
LearnViaTech 