<\/p>
Hi everyone,<\/p>\n\n
First thing\u2019s first: I hope you have some wonderful long weekend plans\nand manage to take some time for yourselves as you transition formally to the\n\u201cback to school\u201d week for some next week and officially to September for all.<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s exciting to begin to see blog posts come through to my RSS\nfeed and to read your reflections. Two quick housekeeping items before I get\ninto the content of my note:<\/p>\n\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\nDon\u2019t\nforget that you can see all deadlines and synch session timings in our course Schedule<\/a> \u2013 all the activities are linked there as well with details\nunder each Unit heading, for example Unit 1<\/a> is here.<\/p>\n\n \u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\nIn\norder to make sure that your posts show up for peers who may have used the\nLRNT523-specific OPML file, please remember to add the\u00a0lrnt523<\/b>\u00a0category\nto your blog posts and make sure you set your blog reply settings to either no\nmoderation required or if you would prefer to moderate them, please do so in a\ntimely manner.<\/p>\n\n Now, onto histories \uf04a<\/p>\n\n Weller writes about higher education, but the history of the use\nof technology in education spans lifelong endeavors, from kindergarten to old\nage. When considering the use of technology in education more broadly, outside\nof a pandemic, it may be helpful to consider not just technological, but other\nfactors. In other words, the potential that a technology for enhancing\neducation is only one factor that explains why technologies are adopted\/ignored\nand why they might succeed\/fail. Take wikis in 1988 as an example \u2013 a topic\nwhich Weller covers in chapter 5. What may be some cultural or social tensions\nthat might have posed obstacles to adopting wikis at the time? Think of\nWikipedia in 1988.<\/p>\n\n A sociocultural tension might be reflected in the belief that\nbecause anyone can edit any Wikipedia page, the information posted on Wikipedia\ncan\u2019t be trusted - this belief might limit Wikipedia\u2019s use in educational\nsettings. Or, it might be that because computers in K-12 have generally been\nused in passive ways, a participatory technology like wikis that allows\nstudents to create content - not just read it - clashed with the culture of how\nK-12 is organized and didn't \"fit\" within the school environments. For\nthese reasons and others, even if wikis were powerful technologies, even if\nthey had pedagogical potential, even if they were free to use, even if they\nwere accessible, they weren't widely adopted. For more on the use of technology\nin k-12, see a classic - \u00a0Larry Cuban\u2019s study on the\u00a0use of computers in US\nK-12 classrooms\u00a0<\/a>which is a powerful report on the\nreasons that guide technology use..<\/p>\n\n Some of you have reflected on how things have changed and highlighted\nthe tension of promise\/expectation and the reality of implementation \u2013 and the\npower of a systems viewpoint. For those of you who may have not yet bumped up\nagainst systems thinking and complex systems, here are a few resources that\nmight be useful:<\/p>\n\n From the RRU Cascade Institute<\/a> (2021).<\/p>\n\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\nIntroduction\nto Complex Systems: https:\/\/cascadeinstitute.org\/complexity-curricula-video-1-introduction-to-complex-systems\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\nComplex\nSystems Behaviors: https:\/\/cascadeinstitute.org\/complexity-curricula-video-2-complex-system-behaviours\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n Another systems reading that might be useful include:<\/p>\n\n https:\/\/leeds-faculty.colorado.edu\/larsenk\/learnorg\/senge.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n In other blog posts some of you are beginning to grapple with the\nfact that the use and integration of technology in education is complicated and\nuneven as she explores Wikipedia.\u00a0Access<\/em>\u00a0to\ntechnology is uneven. But, also, the ways that that same technology is used may\nbe uneven.\u00a0Knowledge\u00a0<\/em>is\nuneven. For instance, while two institutions might have access to Wikis, one\nmight employ educational technology staff with the knowledge and abilities to\nsupport instructors to implement them in creative ways, while another might not\nhave such employees. Or, they might not have enough employees to support\neveryone who might want to use Wikis in their classrooms. These issues go\nbeyond particular technologies and speak to those broader factors Weller\nmentions including societal needs, pedagogical theories, and economic\ninfluences. Building this critical lens helps us as we consider the impact and\nimplications of the myriad of educational technologies available to us as we\nmake evidence based decisions related to learning. We can see a real life\nexample of this is happening right now in K-12 in several provinces where cell phones are being banned at school.<\/a> and tech companies are now having to reframe their safeguards.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n Some of your blog posts also dapple with showing how binaries are\nproblematic. We (instructors, learning designers, educational technology\nprofessionals) have choices other than open vs closed, constructivism vs\ninstructivism, in-person vs. online. So, it's not just that technologies are\n\"good\" and we should all use them. The important questions to ask\nare: For whom is technology (whatever form it is taking today \u2013 for example\nwikis) good, and why? In which situations might it work and why? What do we\nknow about how humans learn and what we need to achieve in the learning\nenvironment we are creating that can be supported by which technology? We could\nalso just as easily take out wiki from the above sentence and substitute in\nelearning or online learning. This touches on the history of DE which is more\nthan just what has happened in the past 25 years. I have put some resources in\nmy comment on her post that might be interesting to those of you who would like\nto dig deeper into alternative methods (TV, radio, print) methods of DE that\nare still being used effectively today. I have also put a resource in our companion Moodle shell<\/a> that speaks to the history of DE in\nK-12 in\u00a0 Canada. As Weller and others\nhave pointed out, there is a wealth of history in the field of ed tech to draw\nupon as we help organizations move forward, we just need to know it exists, and\nthen use it as needed to help plan a way forward. Part of this history is a\nrecognition of the \u201cfirst attempts in learning\u201d (FAILures) that have paved the\nway for the next iteration. <\/p>\n\n For those of you who have not yet had a chance to read or reply to\nsome of the blog posts for Activity 2, enjoy reading and responding this week. There\u2019s\na lot more to uncover as we keep exploring Weller\u2019s book. <\/p>\n\n This week (Aug 31 \u2013 Sept 7th) Activity 3<\/a> invites us to apply what we are reading to our current\ncontext and provides some prompts to consider. I mention this in the course but\nwanted to highlight it here too\u2026.<\/p>\n\n Don\u2019t forget to engage with the lessons learned\nthat your colleagues posted. Remember that the goal here is not merely to post\nyour own content and move on to the next activity. Engage with your colleagues\nand ask clarifying questions, suggest solutions, explore problems from a\ndifferent angle, propose alternative ways to view a \u201clesson or idea\u201d, and so on\n(LRNT\n523 Unit 1<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n If you\nare using moderating posts on your blog, please do check daily and respond in a\ntimely manner.<\/p>\n\n I\u2019m looking forward to reading the writing and comments that the\nrest of you share! Have a great weekend and I'm looking forward to discussing all things Weller et. al in our synch session Book Club #1 next Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n Ciao,<\/p>\n\n Elizabeth<\/p> <\/p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Elizabeth Childs. Hi everyone,<\/p>\n First thing\u2019s first: I hope you have some wonderful long weekend plans
\nand manage to take some time for yourselves as you transition formally to the
\n\u201cback to school\u201d week for some next week and officially to Sep…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-instructor-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6096,"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6095\/revisions\/6096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca\/lrnt523\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}