robyn jay

I’ve been pondering Harriet’s post If you’re not present, you’re absent over at her Technology Twitter blog.

In the post she describes a period of creative reinvention – a ‘rich and a valuable time, productive and exciting, if challenging and complex’ ; one in which she shut off from her networks for personal reflection.
She says:

‘The creative process is wonderful – at the end.  In the middle I found it complex and contradictory.  My  online networks felt too public a place to expose such fragile thinking.  Do online spaces in their ephemeral nature provide pressure to present finished thought?  Is it really ok to be fragmented and indecisive?’

Perhaps with the exception of Twitter (which still can be archived and curated), I don’t think online spaces ARE ephemeral. That’s the problem. These are not fleeting remarks; they are there for good. They can expose mistakes, foolishness, naivety and raw emotions.

The public transparent nature of contributing online, which ever media it might be, scares most people. There’s a big difference between scribbling in a journal and posting to a blog. There’s a big difference in confiding semi-formulated ideas with a person you trust, or with yourself, and sharing them with the world or even an extended network. Gauging what to share online, when and with who is in itself a digital literacy skill I think. It will vary from person to person according to the issue, thickness of skin, and personal space needs but I’d certainly respect anyone’s right to withdraw at a time when intense personal reflection and introspection is needed.

Perhaps what we can share is metacognitive. Not the details as such, but an understanding of the strategies and processes. We DO need to encourage wacky creative thoughts, lateral thinking, risk-taking, and change. The final product often fails to illustrate the rich, turbulent and harried nature of the creative process but it is often after the process is complete and a result is evident that the significant moments along the way become evident. We do not, for example, see the working sketches of great artists before the final work is published.

From a personal perspective, whether I’m formulating creative projects or pondering life directions, I do most of it in private. When the change or project is substantial it will become all consuming. Shutting down to enable focused attention is a coping strategy and one to be acknowledged.

Best wishes with your new directions Harriet. I look forward to seeing the outcomes of your deliberations when and if you are ready to share them

[CC FlickR image by Invisible Lens]

[CC FlickR image by nyoin]

Next week we kick of our Career Clarity Camp with Michelle Martin and I’m really looking forward to some dedicated time to reflect and set a fresh path.

In preparation Michelle has asked us to journal some reflections on our current state but before posting on the past year I thought it might be interesting to look back on where I was at 5 + years ago. Towards the end of 2004 I was privileged with an Adult Learners Week NSW Innovation in Learning award. A week before the ceremony our contract positions with the Community Colleges were axed due to Government funding cuts to an already way under-funded sector, so my speech was seriously deliberated over!

Here’s an excerpt…

Its innovation that allows organisations to adapt to the constantly changing conditions.
Without innovation, an organisation stands still while ideas, technology and pedagogy move forward around it.
It’s about knowing how to make new ideas highly infectious;
It’s also about rocking the boat, and stretching the business as usual mentality and it requires passion, persistence and an open mind

However, innovation does not occur in a vacuum – it requires a dynamic healthy environment that is empowering and flexible, that honours new ideas, tolerates risk, identifies and celebrates champions, and encourages fun.
Innovation is a catalyst – but only one ingredient in a process that must be sustainable to be of value.
In education, the lasting value of any innovation is measured by its uptake by teachers and learners.
Teachers really are the key – unless they are given opportunities to critique, reflect, research and learn new skills; to feel encouraged, supported, and positive about their roles and skills, and are shown strong leadership we will not meet the changing needs of our communities.

In a climate of funding cuts it is tempting to slash easy targets such as Professional development and research
However…. It is at these times that we need skilled innovative staff most of all.
Difficult times are a spur to innovation…. It is the time when organisations must think analytically and creatively

I’m passionate about making that happen – about enabling passionate teachers, about designing innovative solutions. What drives me hasn’t changed and I’m glad.

”Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain

It’s been an unproductive year for me blogging-wise. I’m not really sure what caused my lack of inspiration. Perhaps time needed to rethink my position and direction after a couple of soul-destroying years career-wise. Michele Martin would perhaps tell me that my reflection could have more productive had it been shared so I’ll do my best to summarise my years thoughts in coming posts.

But first of all I’m biting the bullet and moving any worthwhile content from my wikispace over to this site. I’ve been talking about it for a year but being a long-term wikispace user have been hesitant to actually make the change. Essentially my wiki has been a personal portfolio space and while the wiki format has meant easy editing etc, it has never really been used as a collaborative space for multiple authors so there’s little point in using a wiki platform. Having everything together in one place has its appeal.

So once the move is complete my aim is a post a week (to be realistic). Michele has inspired me to undertake a more structured approach to my personal reflection and I’m looking forward to participating in one of her Career Clarity Camps in January 2012. I can’t think of a better way to kick the new year off.

[CC FlickR image by koshyk]

I’ve enjoyed revisiting Herbert Kohl’s ‘I won’t learn from you‘ today. If you haven’t read it it’s an oldie but goody. In particular his final chapter ‘Creative maladjustment and the struggle for public education’ is particularly relevant to our current work on the Bruce Declaration.

Here are a few extracts…

When it is impossible to remain in harmony with one’s environment without giving up deeply held moral values, creative maladjustment becomes a sane alternative to giving up altogether. Creative maladjustment consists of breaking social patterns that are morally reprehensible, taking conscious control of one’s place in the environment, and readjusting the world one lives in based on personal integrity and honesty……

Creative maladjustment is reflective. It implies adapting your own particular maladjustment to the nature of the social systems that you find repressive. It also implies learning how other people are affected by those systems, how personal discontent can be appropriately turned into moral and political action, and how to speak out about the violence that thoughtless adjustment can cause or perpetuate.

Unfortunately, the momentum of educational research and the attempt to turn education into a single, predictable and controllable system with national standards and national tests pulls in the opposite direction. Teaching well is a militant activity that requires a belief in children’s strengths and intelligence no matter how poorly they may function under the regimes imposed upon them.

The book was originally published in 1991, about the time I started working in adult literacy/numeracy. At least at that point in time in Australian education we worked within a system that (although not perfect) genuinely valued and funded education for ALL, personally directed learning, and student-centred engagement. It was a good time to be teaching. It’s been pretty much downhill from there. Grandmothers can no longer gain specific assistance to read to their grandchildren, adult learners are pumped through competencies they do not need or want, truly community based programs have been axed or drastically under-funded, and insufficient allowances mean that our learners must spend every spare hour working in low paid jobs rather than engaging in debate and critique with peers that might rock the system. It’s time for a change.

[CC FlickR image shared by Rose Latka]

The trouble with being a George is that the jacket can become WAY too comfortable

I’m doing some design and facilitation work at present on projects that essentially focus on equipping and inspiring teachers to rethink and redesign their practice. It has led me to reread a load of approaches to learning design but also to ponder why it is that we see so little in the way of exemplary contemporary practice.

I think that many (but not all) senior managers and Ministers are genuinely interested in providing ‘quality’ education services. Misguided often its true; outrageously bad decisions are made by incompetent incapable advisors, out of date practices continue or alternatively the latest ‘fad’ wastes inordinate amounts of public monies. But I’m going to be generous and say that its ignorance, and not evil (Mike) that is the cause.

And most teachers too have hearts in the right place. Unfortunately in post-compulsory settings most ‘teachers’ lack education training that allows time to read, revise, connect, deconstruct and reconstruct the models of being a teacher they carry in their minds from their own life experiences. (How some people end up in teaching roles I have no idea – good conditions and reasonable pay I suspect. I watched my sons suffer in the hands of a science teacher who spent each class writing notes on a blackboard for them to transcribe.)

Good teachers are genuinely interested in how people learn. The really dedicated stay in touch with the latest trends, opportunities and theoretical approaches in their own times and by their own means. They are what George Siemens describes as master learners; not only reflecting on what works as a learner in a metacognitive sense, but continually looking at how they can do it better.

“Good teaching may overcome a poor choice of teaching, but technology will never save bad teaching.”

(Tony Bates, 2005)

Good teachers are an inspiration no matter what approach they take;  good teachers armed with effective educational technologies are mighty. Bad teachers are simply a drudge no matter what medium. Tragically education largely reflects the model of 100 years ago. It IS still predominantly something that by and large is DONE to people in courses that run over X weeks…. transmission of ideas happens via hideously bad lectures, readings etc.

So let’s focus on those with potential. A window of opportunity exists if we can capture the good teachers and support them to grow and re-establish momentum. We’ve dangled tools and strategies as carrots until we’re blue in the face but that’s not enough.  What we get in reply is ‘but now what, how do I use these in my teaching?’ For some, models and a kick start are all that’s needed but if your teaching approach is instructivist in nature the best we can achieve is to adjust PDFs to video or the inclusion of quizzes. We give them the tools but not the inspiration and scaffolds to rethink practice. It’s no wonder people cannot see beyond the walls of the LMS – why would you if your world as a teacher is to instruct?

Good friend and mentor Robby Weatherley suggested last week that the pendulum has swung back to a focus on learning design. But we need to think very carefully what that looks like before we turn the clocks back. Too often what WE ourselves provide is instructivist in nature. I’ve seen leading thinkers in contemporary educational thought stand and lecture.

We need to model contemporary learning design in our staff development programs.

We need to acknowledge and what learners (teachers) bring to the environment – their strengths and experiences and passions.

We need to provide the scaffolds for teachers to become independent networked learners beyond their time in staff development programs and under our gaze.
We need to acknowledge their lives and interests and identify areas as launching pads for experimentation and risk taking.

As George Siemens suggests ‘our learning institutions have been created in the spirit of research and openness, yet they have acquired their own neurotic tendencies. Yes we need a dynamic alternative to address our ambiguous, tumultuous personal learning needs and that scares the heck out of most educators.

No it’s not really about resourcing Mike . Some of the very best learning happens in small, community based, lowly resourced programs. It’s about WILL not dollars. And while I agree that stagnant dinosaurs of institutions will and DO lose the innovators its not necessarily to an emerging educational counter-culture -  That has always been present. We are lured to job security and better pay that institutions offer but that’s not where satisfaction lies.

Relationships grow in communities – thats where uniqueness and individuality are valued, cherished and encouraged – within communities of shared values and goals.  Don’t fear the reactive policy measures – they will come and go – thankfully most of us at least in Australia live with freedom and choice. We can opt-out.And we should if it becomes soul destroying.

So in the coming weeks I’ll be working with some excellent minds to play with new designs, and hopefully to give inspirational teachers room to grow and embrace the complex and chaotic beauty of contemporary learning possibilities. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by radiobrain_

I’d been pondering the skills and capabilities and attributes I think the contemporary education system needs to support in young people today when I came across the following video thanks to a post from Rod Lucier in his The Clever Sheep blog. I first saw it a couple of years ago but it was good to revisit ….

So what do young people need to effectively operate, and be the change agents, in a world that will see substantial change in their lifetimes ….

In his post – Empathy: An Overlooked 21st Century Skill – Christopher D. Sessums reflects on the same.

He refers to the work of Henry Jenkins et al who in 2006 list …
•    Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
•    Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
•    Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
•    Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
•    Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
•    Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
•    Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
•    Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
•    Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
•    Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
•    Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

and to Tony Wagner’s seven survival skills:
•    Critical thinking and problem solving
•    Collaboration and leading by influence
•    Agility and adaptability
•    Initiative and entrepreneurial-ism
•    Effective oral and written communication
•    Accessing and analyzing information
•    Curiosity and imagination

To these Christopher himself adds empathy.

So, what’s missing?
Here’s my own additions. I’d like to hear what you would add….

• creativity and lateral thinking
• compassion and civility
• perseverance and persistence
• the ability to critique and validate
• the ability to filter and synthesize large amounts of information
• cultural awareness
• resilience
• balance
• risk-taking
• the ability to self-promote and manage a virtual identity/ presence and content

The big question is of course, how well does the current education system acknowledge and focus on these?

The 2010 question for the Edge World Question Centre is “How is the Internet changing the way YOU think?”

With over 167 responses, it is clearly designed for a long day curled up by a cosy wood fire in the snow bound Northern Hemisphere!
I haven’t had a chance to read them all yet but am inspired to respond and hope you will add your personal response too…

I’m not sure that the way I ‘think’ is as significant as the way I live, respond, learn, engage and create. Kai Krause aptly describes this as a redefining of ‘ how we perceive the world and ourselves in it, new models of how we work and research, entertain ourselves, communicate with our family and friends, how we learn about the past and preserve our memories, what we expect of the future and how we plan for it, what we watch, read, listen to: all greatly influenced by technology in general and the Net in particular.’

I mustn’t be ‘normal’ for one my age in this regard. Quite frankly I am sick and tired of people using their age as an excuse for non-engagement. It’s not about age. Being at the tail end of the ‘boomers’ I spent the first half of my life with pen in hand and nose in a book; all my undergraduate degrees were hand written, so I have as much excuse for non-engagement as anyone (excluding those who are truly disadvantaged through poverty or lack of connectivity).

Of course there’s good and bad, but I couldn’t imagine a life unconnected. The internet overlays my life; work and relaxation.

I engage with the lives, ideas and creativity of people who live in places I’ll never see in real life.

I can independently create content and share it with the world

I can collaborate with wide-spread teams and communities.

I feel closer to people on the other side of the world than I do to the couple in the apartment next door.

I can converse with people with interests as obscure as mine

I can send a few words of kindness across the globe right when they are most needed

I see the images of great photographers the day they are taken, and share my own with like-minded people globally.

I share ideas and work with a global audience.

I am equipped and empowered.

I have knowledge and skills at my finger tips -  to grout a mosaic, play the guitar, heal a wound

I can trade and operate a business without jumping on a plane

I can ask for and receive help and access my support network [almost] anywhere anytime

What frightens me is that after all these years the education system still fails to engage. Still fails to support the development of skills to enable critical, effective, creative users. Of course young people learn from their peers, they are comfortable connecting within walled gardens and private chat. But in my experience very few are equipped to use the internet as a learner and eventually, professional.

In his contribution Howard Rheingold – says

“Those people who do not gain fundamental literacies of attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, and network awareness are in danger of all the pitfalls critics point out — shallowness, credulity, distraction, alienation, addiction. I worry about the billions of people who are gaining access to the Net without the slightest clue about how to find knowledge and verify it for accuracy, how to advocate and participate rather than passively consume, how to discipline and deploy attention in an always-on milieu, how and why to use those privacy protections that remain available in an increasingly intrusive environment.”

and Evgeny Morozov adds…

“Today we are facing the emergence of the “cyber-lumpenprolitariat”, of people who are being sucked into the digital whirlwind of gossip sites, trashy video games, populist and xenophobic blogs, and endless poking on social networking sites. The intellectual elites, on the other hand, continue thriving in the new digital environment, exploiting superb online tools for scientific research and collaboration, streaming art house films via Netflix, swapping their favorite books via e-readers, reconnecting with musical treasures of the bygone eras via iTunes, and, above all, perusing materials in the giant online libraries like the one that Google could soon unveil. ”

The cause and solution sit squarely on the shoulders of an schooling system that not only ignores the issues, but actively blocks access to the spaces that require explicit engagement and critical discussion. As I have mooted many time, it is a breach of their duty of care.

[CC FlickR image: Lee Carson]