Lisa – Page 3 – Lisa's Blog

The Participation Quandary

*Please note – this is not an assigned activity. This is intended to be an informal exploration of how to capture student participation in my classroom context*

I’m in a unique situation currently, as both a student and an instructor. I’ve been struggling with an issue (as an instructor), one that was identified by another cohort member recently as being an issue in this space as a student, too:

How is student participation captured in a way that reflects actual participation?

I’m teaching a planning class this term, one that includes a large-scale assignment in which the class works in teams to put on a big event that the community is invited to, one that is themed around re-framing disability and celebrating diversity. A good part of the mark is based on participation.

Last year, at the end of the term, I was disappointed in the pieces that showed up as participation marks (mostly based on forum participation) – especially as I know that the students have such rich back-channels (Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, email etc.) and that they work together and support each other in those spaces without my knowledge, in ways that are beyond what shows up within the classroom.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a window into the back-channels. It’s important for the students to have spaces in which they feel like they can really, honestly sandbox things without any perception that I might see it. Regardless of how democratized our classroom gets, there is still a power imbalance that means I can’t look at what students are doing in those spaces without changing what they will do.

How do I move from a formulaic place in which I inadvertently encourage them to do the minimum (I’m referring here to the ‘post to the forum, reply to two of your colleagues posts by X date and time’ type criteria)? I’ve not been teaching a long time, but find that type of metric to be a race to the bottom, one that does not capture the ACTUAL interactions between the students in all of the informal ways that they support each other – the interactions on the back-channels. My observation is that, as the students feel somewhat constrained by this forum-measurement piece, they aren’t really able to express their true participatory experiences.

Switching to my student role for a moment, I’m finding that the most rewarding and interesting conversations are happening in the back-channels with my own cohort. This is where the real interactive, co-constructive learning is happening, learning that is invisible to our own instructors. I can’t help but wonder if my own students are feeling the same way. I intend to ask them about it after reading break.

What I’m exploring right now is the idea of having them self-assess their participation for the big event assignment, both giving themselves a mark and writing a short explanation as to why they think that mark is appropriate. I’m curious to see whether the back-channel pieces figure more strongly for them than the forum-style interactions, and what students identify as being the places and ways in which they participated most fruitfully (both for themselves, and in service of other students and the assignment). My wondering is whether this will be a more realistic measure of their participation in their teams, in the class as a whole, and the building of the event.

I’d love to hear from others who have come up against this in their own classrooms, and to hear your challenges and how (and if!) you’ve approached a solution.

Some of Sheninger’s Pillars in Action

In my experience, the most important attributes of a leader working in digital learning environments reflect the Seven Pillars listed in Sheninger’s Pillars of Digital Leadership (2019) primarily because of the emphasis put on communication. My workspaces have spanned private for-profit, public non-profit, and education spaces from kindergarten to post-secondary, each space having a different set of attitudes, expectations, and willingness to adopt and use technology for learning. In many cases those attitudes, etc., are based on personal biases and experiences or popular culture, not on factual study or evidence. Sheninger’s Pillars, with the inclusion of communication, public relations, branding and student engagement and learning, most comprehensively address the varying attitudes of potential users with strategies to assist stakeholders in understanding why implementation is necessary, what it can look like, and how it can positively affect users. When communication is done capably through implementation of these pillars, users are better able to connect the institutional adoption and development of digital learning spaces with their own growth and greater competency in their work or learning.

While there are two spaces in which leadership in digital learning environments is relevant for me personally, I’ve chosen to concentrate on one for the purposes of this blog post. I work for a large music festival in the summer, and last year implemented an online digital learning platform (Moodle).

The music festival was looking for a way to pre-train their 2000+ employees and volunteers before they arrive on site for the show. Everyone must undergo a mandatory safety orientation, done in previous years as workers arrive. Historically, this meant delivering the information to large groups in batches (the bulk of those 2000 people arrive over two days) and having the workers sign off on their participation. Workers participating in the safety orientation is non-negotiable as it part of the festival’s WorkSafe BC compliance. Human Resources (HR) staff was extremely stretched during the days that workers arrived, wanting to orient all employees quickly, and with less strain on HR.

As senior management, our solution was to create a Moodle shell and short Moodle course (the safety orientation) and short quiz. The link to the course was sent out with the employee or volunteer acceptance letter, with an explanation that their work at the festival was conditional on their completing and passing the online safety orientation quiz. Workers went to a link that showed a short (five minute) video, with a randomly generated five question quiz. Competency was set at mastery (all five questions answered correctly), and once completed, HR was notified that the person had completed their orientation and could be accepted to work on site.

Our initial expectation for uptake in the first year was that 30 – 40% of workers would complete the orientation ahead of time, with many returning workers expecting to do the orientation on site as they had in previous years (we had the old version of the orientation available as a back up). We were delighted to find that 89% of workers did their orientation online ahead of time through the Moodle (numbers generated by HR as part of report-out after the festival).

The festival has a very active social media presence. While the bulk of people were accessing the Moodle course, social media threads included explanations and screenshots of how to create an account and log in for the course. Dialogue was lively and engaged between potential workers and the moderators of the social media platforms, and soon we saw that potential workers were troubleshooting for each other and offering help to get each other get into Moodle.

Sheninger’s (2019) pillar of communication explains some of why our initial roll-out was a success. The HR team was actively engaged in two-way communication through a variety of different digital channels, (email, online conferencing and social media) to help workers understand the benefits (shorter processing at arrival on site) completing the orientation online had, and working with them to ensure that the experience was as barrier-free as it could be. The pillars of public relations and branding help to explain success through our ability to control the narrative somewhat (through our social media presence), avoiding negative rhetoric through good customer service, in line with our overarching customer service philosophy and inclusive community philosophical underpinnings.

The initial roll-out of the safety orientation was successful enough that other departments of our festival (Harm Reduction, Medical, and Equipment Usage) have been developing their own courses to deliver to their workers before coming to site. I’ve been working with them to ensure that the pillar of student engagement and learning is explored and implemented effectively throughout the development phase with different methods of delivering information and assessing learning.

As an organization, we will take what we learned about effective communication and build on it for this year to push the reach of this program further in hopes that our workers come to experience a more streamlined arrival to site, and better prepared to do their work.

References:

Sheninger, E. (2019, December 19). Pillars of Digital Leadership. International Center for Leadership in Education. https://leadered.com/pillars-of-digital-leadership/

Musings on Innovation

I’ve spent the last three days reading and re-reading Dron’s (2014) chapter in Online Distance Education, thinking about innovation, technology and education. It’s so tremendously rich with ideas I’d not known about previously, or had only thought about in different contexts than education technology.

Some of what keeps me going back to this chapter is the myriad of ways that we, within Western culture, use the word innovation, and the multiplicity of ways that it is used in this chapter. Merriam Webster (n.d.) defines innovation as:

the introduction of something new
a new idea, method or device

While I’ve certainly used innovation in this way, it would seem that in our cultural context it means more – there’s an implication to the word that suggests technology, and useful technology.

Innovation is something we talk about regularly in my household, as my partner is a prototyper and inventor. Our conversations about innovation and innovating often center around the use of ideas or objects, their ability to simplify and make life better in one way or another.

The Dron (2014) chapter discusses the adoption of new technologies (innovations) through several models. I investigated each of them, from Roger’s innovation diffusion theory (Rogers, 1995 as cited in Dron, 2014, p. 243) to UTAUT (Venkatesh, Morrris, Davis, & Davis, 2003, as cited in Dron, 2014, p.244) and had several conversations with my partner as we looked at what fit with our own experiences and observations. Ultimately, looking to understand educators in particular, I found this metaphor (the image is hyperlinked to the original page):

The pencil metaphor echoes most closely my experience of working with school populations (from K to post-secondary) as to how educators respond to new introductions of technology in the pedagogical or andragogical space.

The ferrules being the corrolary to Roger’s laggards, the leaders parallel to Roger’s innovators. The piece that this (rather un-academic) model has that is missing from the other ones is the erasers and hangers-on, who, in my experience, are as big a barrier to adoption of new technology as the ferrules. They are the architects of or the believers in the hard system, the non-responsive context. It is no wonder that, as Dron points out, adoption of new technologies and change happens most expeditiously in contexts that are tolerant of and promote diversity (Seely Brown & Duguid, 2000, as cited in Dron, 2014), as change happens in places that can entertain a variety of viewpoints.

I’d love to wrap this post up into a tidy bow, but that’s not possible yet. I want to pause with this rich chapter – to not feel rushed to have a final understanding of the richness that is in it. I’ll continue exploring other pieces, as well as digging deeper into some of the technologies that Dron (2014) discusses – some that are already defunct, and others that look promising for possible classroom work.

References:

Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America’s most-trusted online dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2019, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/

Dron, J. (2014). Chapter 9: Innovation and Change: Changing how we Change. In Zawacki-Richter, O. & T. Anderson (Eds.), Online distance education: Towards a research agenda. Athabasca, AB: AU Press.

The Pencil Metaphor: How Teachers Respond To Education Technology. (2014, August 28). Retrieved December 17, 2019, from TeachThought website: https://www.teachthought.com/technology/pencil-metaphor-how-teachers-respond-to-education-technology/

Understanding and Preventing Stress

Blog post created by Lisa Gates and Caroline Monsell

In Activity Two we participated in the Stanford d.School design process (2016) in partners.This experience led us to the development of a prototype for a blended online course consisting of three modules, one of which we developed into a set of lessons. Our partnership, consisting of Caroline Monsell and Lisa Gates, worked through each of the steps, learning about the individual parts of the process and each other’s student groups.

The first steps of the design process asked us to focus on the problem, which took learning about each other’s student population and their needs through the process of empathetic design (Mattelmäki, Vaajakallio, & Koskinen, 2014). Caroline works in an Ontario municipality with a client group that spans working positions in a variety of locations, in disparate jobs (everything from public works workers to highly educated engineering staff). Her student base brought challenges in terms of use of technology; within that group are confident users and virtually non-users. Lisa’s students are all in Human Services Programs at a BC Community College. The courses that these students participate in are blended delivery or online delivery. Students come to college with different backgrounds, including students for whom English is an additional language. These students all have at least an emergent level of computer use.

Through the exercise, strong commonalities were discovered which led to the development of three separate problem statements in Step 4 (d.School, 2016):

1. Students are new to technology and sharing information with others for the purpose of learning or self benefit.
2. Students are feeling overwhelmed by workload and in need of both stress management and time management skills and strategies to feel positive about their workplace, ensure attendance and take fewer sick days.
3. Students are in need of strong interpersonal skills and conflict resolution for the purpose of collaboration and workplace competency.

We saw that each of the three problem statements could be its own module in a course, and settled on developing the second problem statement into a module to help our student groups to cope with work stress and time management.

Through Step 5, Ideate (d.School, 2016), we determined that students would need to understand time and stress management strategies before delving deeper into interpersonal communication skills. The lesson plan of the module is here: (Please click this link to view the CANVA). Activity sequencing in the module reflects the five design principles as discussed by Merrill (2002). Utilizing Crichton & Carter’s (2017) suggestions, meaningful play and exploration through time mapping and self assessment strategies were built in, encouraging intellectual risk taking while working autonomously and in a team to find and solve problems related to work life balance.

Through these activities, students were encouraged to take intellectual risks. Given the different student populations, our partnership added pieces to the earlier module to focus on peer-to-peer mentoring, fostering connection and the creation of a sense of safety so that students could take risks that create engagement . This reflects the early stages of Tuckman and Jensen’s model for group development, forming and norming (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977).

Our partnership is interested in learning ways that we can:

Ensure that our students are taking appropriate levels of intellectual risk and are engaged throughout the process.
Understand and apply other lenses/theories to the work we are developing so that we are sure to make the work relevant to the students.
Apply this course to understand and prevent burnout at work with other audiences, in other fields.

Our partnership is interested in your thoughts moving forward. We will respond to feedback until Tuesday, December 3, 2019. Thank you for your time. **edited** – We will respond to feedback until evening PST, Wednesday, December 4, 2019. Thank you!

References:

Crichton, S. & Carter, D. (2017). Taking Making into Classrooms Toolkit. Open School/ITA

Mattelmäki, T., Vaajakallio, K., & Koskinen, I. (2014). What Happened to Empathic Design? Design Issues, 30(1), 67–77. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI

Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02505024

Tuckman, B. W., & Jensen, M. A. C. (1977). Stages of Small-Group Development Revisited. Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 419–427. https://doi.org/10.1177/105960117700200404

Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). A Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking — Stanford d.school [Website]. Retrieved from https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources-collections/a-virtual-crash-course-in-design-thinking

I very much enjoyed reading Tony Bates draft chapter about Open Pedagogy as it is something I think about regularly in my work. His references to the need for a framework of maintenance and extension of existing Open Education Resources (OER) is something that comes up when looking at supporting people in the Human Services program I instruct in. My colleagues and I endeavour to keep textbook costs low and course materials widely accessible, and are familiar with the inherent challenges that this brings.

Bates (2019) discusses possible ideas for stewardship of OER in section 11.4.3 – which made me think about existing, working models, like those of the origins of the idea of ‘Open-source’ software. Though they didn’t start this way, today these are huge communities of people decentralized and distributed across the globe who contribute to the build, maintenance, development and learning commons around a single thing such as Moodle, GIMP, or Linux. People involved in these massive projects contribute their expertise in this distributed build framework, working singularly and in groups on debugging, building, tutorial creation and product support (among other things). While it may seem counter-intuitive to compare maintaining software with maintaining a set of OER, I believe that there are enough similarities to make the comparison relevant.

Both Open Software and Open Pedagogy have evolved organically within the framework of the Internet, somewhat entwined as the philosophy of ‘Open’ (freely sharing resources in keeping with academic principles of freely sharing information) grew into the movement that it has become today. As Open Pedagogy becomes better understood and more people are reaching for free distribution and dissemination of knowledge, the time is coming to shape the building of Open Pedagogy and with that, looking at existing working models is valuable.

I think that small educational institutional settings (like the one I instruct in) have specific challenges when it comes to the development and use of Open resources. Individual subjects have smaller and smaller numbers of subject matter experts (SMEs) as the subject becomes more specialized, and many traditional SMEs don’t have computer skills or the types of Instructional Design (ID) skills needed to build and maintain a commons of information in any coherent, helpful or distributable way.

Bates talks about consortiums, that “a consortium of teachers or institutions creating common learning materials within a broader program context, that can be shared both within and outside the consortium.” (Bates 2019, Section 11.4.5). I wonder about the ability of smaller institutions to survive and grow in this context. My own institution is small, with small class sizes – the idea of our 8 member Human Services Staff taking on the build and maintenance (even with strong student involvement) of an open knowledge repository and project/portfolio space is not realistic. Even if we were part of a larger, distributed network, this would be a challenge. Looking to central resources such as BCCampus to support us in builds of these kinds of projects is possible, but an additional time commitment for instructors who are already teaching very full course loads.

I’m curious as to whether there are specific subjects for which it is easier to build and maintain OER that are relevant, useful and fully accessible without cost (there are always hidden costs in web hosting, domain names, and web maintenance)? What could be ways for small Colleges to partner with Universities to network in the creation of centralized Open resources for the benefit of our students and instructor edification? I’d love to hear from you as to what might work moving forward. Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Reference:

Bates, A. W. (2019).Chapter 11.4 Open Pedagogy. In Teaching in a Digital World. 2nd ed. BC Campus.

The Screen Time Conundrum

The multi- author open letter to The Guardian in January of 2017 illuminates one of the biggest current questions in parenting in our culture: how much screen time is too much?

The authors main arguments are that policy discussions should be had based on an understanding of the topic from an empirical standpoint – informed by research and experience rather than pseudo-science and opinion. Policy development around screen time should take into consideration context of screen use and content. An understanding of children’s health and wellbeing is complex, “affected by many other factors, such as socioeconomic status, relational poverty, and family environment” (Etchelles et al. 2017). Policy makers need to have an awareness of the difference between correlative and causal data – that time spent in outdoor play and time spent on screens is not necessarily a directly connected set of points, but rather more complex. Really, ultimately that guidelines for parents should be built on evidence.

The authors are putting forth these arguments out of concern that parents will not understand the nuances of what defines ‘screen time’ and that there will be an implementation of unnecessary, ineffective or even potentially harmful policies. Recognizing that screens are a part of life for children, policies affecting families should be guided by evidence.

Initially, I felt that this article supports my beliefs, but through more deliberation, reading it helped me recognize that I do hold a certain amount of bias. The advent of possible unrestricted screen use came about when my oldest was 11, with an iPod Touch. As a parent, I always worked to ensure that things were balanced for my children, and that I was aware of what they were consuming through screens. For our household it was always about balance in all things, including time playing video games, watching TV/other programming, playing sports, time with family and friends, and schoolwork. I hadn’t looked at empirical evidence around screen use in those parenting years but did what I usually did in the absence of evidence: look for moderation.

As I’ve been involved in the K – 12 school system, I’ve been witness to families that do not restrict screen time or content and seen that those children do not necessarily form healthy friendships or good relationships with the adults in their world. Being in the school context, it was clear that screen time was not the only factor in those situations but was a contributing factor children’s struggles in the school community.

This work leads me to pay attention to the reasons why I might think what I do, and to re-evaluate how I think about this topic. Projecting into possibility the idea that someone might present me with pro- unrestricted screen time evidence makes me uncomfortable. The article allowed me to recognize that I have a certain amount of bias in this, and that I’ve thought of screens as a bit of a ‘necessary evil’ in many ways, one that our children will have to navigate and find balanced and healthy relationships with.

Reference

Etchells et al. (2017, January 6). Screen time guidelines need to be built on evidence, not hype. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2017/jan/06/screen-time-guidelines-need-to-be-built-on-evidence-not-hype

Rise of Cartoon Use in Education

This synthesis paper looks at the origins and rise of instructional cartoons with a concentration on early 20^th Century and expansion of use through WWII. This paper is limited to animated films in North America, exploring the chronology, military and non-military studio involvement.

Winsor McCay is attributed with releasing the first commercial, non-fiction, animated film, The Sinking of the Lusitania in 1918 (Roe, 2009, p. 42). It is a “passionate and journalistically convincing re-telling of an event that had never been photographed” (DelGaudio, 1997, p. 190). Shown in theatres, it is the earliest known animated documentary intended to teach about a historical event.

Max Fleischer, inventor of the rotoscope in 1915, became involved with Bray while looking to distribute his first film. He remained with Bray until opening Out of the Inkwell Films Inc. in 1921 with his brother, Dave (Langer, 1975, p.48).

It is during his time with Bray that Max Fleischer animated what are thought to be the first fully animated instructional films, How to Read an Army Map, and How to Fire a Lewis Gun (1917) (Langer 1975, p.49). Fleischer made animated training films at Bray covering hundreds of different subjects training American soldiers on their way to Europe (Roe, 2009, p.43) prior to Armistice.

Once their own studio was established and following in the tradition of The Sinking of the Lusitania, the Fleischer brothers started exploring other themes. They created their first feature-length film using animation interspersed with title cards, The Einstein Theory of Relativity (1923). Following this success, they made Evolution in 1925 (Langer, 1975, p. 49). It is serious films like these that showed the scope of animation for illustrating events no camera can see (DeGaudio, p. 190)

Instructional animation became widely used during WWII due to US government investment. The Office of War Information established a film branch, the Bureau of Motion Pictures, intended for training films and propaganda to be produced by the Signal Corps’ Army Pictorial Service. The Signal Corps had studios in New York, New Jersey and Ohio (Birdwell, 2005, p. 204), and on the old Fox studio (Fort Fox) in Hollywood, California (Nel, 2007, para. 3). While non-military instructional animations were being made in civilian studios, many of those same studios were commissioned to make films for the US military.

In 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the US government gave Walt Disney his first American commission: to make 20 training films for the Navy on identifying aircraft and warships. Thousands of men were enrolling in the army and the US government needed a way to train large numbers of men efficiently and quickly to act as a unit. (Birdwell, 2005, p.203). Troops were not well educated; many were not literate. Use of simple language and entertaining films got their messages across (Nel 2007). By 1943, 94% of Disney’s output was making films for the government and military (Roe, 2009, p. 44)

Victory through Air Power, based on Major Alexander P. Seversky’s book and self-funded by Disney, demonstrated the ability of an animation to influence. Created in 1943, it was intended to persuade the US Military that they should be using long-range bombers to gain strategic advantage in the war. The film was a huge critical success, gaining the attention of Winston Churchill who recommended it to Roosevelt, who then subsequently adopted long-range bombing. With this, the US government realized the power of animation to sway audience opinion (Roe, 2009, p.52).

In 1943 Major Frank Capra (director of the Why We Fight films) proposed the Army-Navy Screen Magazine, a 20-minute variety piece to be produced twice a month consisting of training, newsreels, propaganda and entertainment (Birdwell, 2005). Because the variety shows were only going to be shown to soldiers (without civilian distribution), the films avoided the Motion Picture Industry’s censorship arm, the Production Code Administration (PCA), allowing the Army-Navy Screen Magazine to appeal broadly to the primarily male, Christian, generally white audience of soldiers with racy, rude, political films (Birdwell, 2005).

Training films of the time (non-animated) were purported to be boring (Birdwell, 2005). Capra approached Warner Brothers to ask about making short cartoon training films. Leon Schlesinger, producer of Merrie Melodies and Loony Tunes put together five units. Each had their own style and feel, and each led by one of Fred ‘Tex’ Avery, Isodore ‘Fritz’ Freleng, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones. Voice acting Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny), and music was scored by Carl Stalling. P.D. Eastman and later Munro Leaf (at that time both emerging children’s book authors) were employed as writers at Fort Fox (1943), specifically working on what became known as the Private SNAFU films (Birdwell, 2005; Nel, 2007; Roe, 2009). Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was placed in charge of the output of the units, as well as being general scenarist. (Birdwell, 2005 p. 206; Nel, 2007, para. 3).

With Geisel at the head and the knowledge that the PCA would not censor the cartoons, the team drew on the Army, its bureaucracy and language to create an Elmer Fudd like character: ‘Private SNAFU’. He was designed to be a model of the worst soldier in the army, his name an Army acronym for Situation Normal All Fouled [sic] Up. (Birdwell, 2005).

SNAFU films used simple language, humour and moral tales to educate troops about what their attitude should be towards the enemy, and skills that would keep them alive while out on the lines. For example, the film Private SNAFU vs. Malaria Mike was part of an ongoing campaign to educate recruits that mosquitos cause Malaria, and what they could do to avoid infection (Nel, 2007). They reflected the experience of the non-career soldier while teaching cautionary tales in Seussian rhyme (Birdwell, 2008).

Factors that made the SNAFU films effective are generalizable to other settings. Use of animation demonstrates Edward Tufte’s notion that envisioned information is easier to understand and retain (Roe, 2007, p.49). Animation has the ability to show events no camera can see (DeGaudio, p. 190) such as in The Sinking of the Lusitania, and Stop That Tank (1942) where the animation segues from a caricature of Hitler being cast into hell to a realistic animated depiction of the inner workings and care of the gun that sent him there (Roe, 2009, p.45). Cartoons capacity to show the as-yet unknown, like scientific theories (DeGaudio, p, 193), made the Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Evolution effective in communicating ideas, especially through the use of metamorphosis to help the audience make mental connections (Roe, 2007, p. 47).

Post war Disney continued to make educational films for corporations, including Dow Chemical, Texaco and General Motors (DelGaudio, 1997, p.190). Warner Brothers Studio moved back to entertainment-focused cartoons, but their involvement in the Private SNAFU films helped ensure that the US government would continue to make cartoon civil defense educational films, such as Duck and Cover (1951). Other companies began making civilian educational cartoons, including Bell Telephone, the Jam Handy Organization with Bray Studios. Topics included everything from on-the-job training films to “mental hygiene” and health films for school settings (DelGaudio, 1997).

The flexibility of cartoons allows for envisioning events and concepts never before seen. Use of humour, simple language, and metamorphosis holds our attention while making the unknown knowable. Had it not been for the early contributions of McCay, Bray and Fleischer and the later investment of the US military, educational cartoons would have taken a very different path through development and implementation.

References

Birdwell, M. (2005). Technical fairy first class? Is this any way to Run an Army?: Private SNAFU and World War II. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 25(2), 203–212.

DelGaudio, S. (1997). If truth be told, can toons tell it? Documentary and animation. Film History; New York, 9(2), 189–199.

Langer, M. (1975). Max and Dave Fleischer. Film Comment; New York, 11(1), 48–56.

Nel, P. (2007). Children’s Literature Goes to War: Dr. Seuss, P. D. Eastman, Munro Leaf, and the Private SNAFU Films (1943–46). The Journal of Popular Culture, 40(3), 468–487. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2007.00404.x

Roe, A. H. (2009). Animating documentary (Doctoral dissertation) Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/304996693/abstract/809DFEAA46964F2EPQ/12

The Influence of Technology in the Education Industry – Group Activity

The claim of no-learning benefit has been made and substantiated by Clark (1986). He acknowledges that media has economic benefits but not learning benefits. His theory on research and data is collected throughout many different research projects. He analyzed research that started in the 1960s and was tracked all the way up to the 1980s, but the data did not indicate how different teachers instructed.Clark (1986) also mentioned that authentic problems or tasks seem to be the most effective influence on learning. Since he believed that the media had no learning benefits, he stressed that a moratorium on further research dealing with media’s influence on learning was necessary (Clark, 1983).

Contrary to Clark’s (1986) research, the article “The Influence of Technology in the Education Industry” Dr Eliatamby (2018) says use of technology is, at its very core, blended learning. At its simplest, blended learning is “the integration of classroom face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences” (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004, p. 96). The use of blended learning creates space for students to actively participate in the interplay between their learning environment and their own cognitive processes (Kozma, 1994). Use of technology also allows for learning on the job or real-world learning to take place, or better generalization of student learning to real-world contexts (Kozma, 1994). This is supercritical in the age of industry 4.0.

In her article for Campus Technology, Reynard (2019) states the importance of understanding that how students’ think and learn has changed due to ongoing use of technology and talks about the integration of technology into design for learning. She falls firmly on the side of Kozma (1994) in advocating that course design should be done interdisciplinarily, setting out contextual problem-solving tasks for students, with an emphasis on the process of learning as opposed to the product (p.21). Use of technology in design for learning is not just about a method of delivering the information to the students, but also building utility with technology. Learning has to leave students equipped for the workplace, with skills that “involve thinking and processing information, including possible diversions of thought, redirection of focus and the integration of new ideas and trends,” and the ability to function within the technological world that they will be working in (Reynard, 2019).

In line with Eliatamby’s take on Technology and its role in learning Dalto (2018) adds that incorporating technology into a blended learning environment boosts learner retention. Dalto touches on technological applications such a mobile learning, AR, VR and 3D simulated environments. Clark (1994) argued that “. . . the usual uses of a medium do not limit the methods or content it is capable of presenting”, but his argument does not consider immersive environments that did not exist at the time of his writing. These new technologies also allow for freedom of instruction did not Clark did not take into account, these technologies “. . . provide[s] the ability to train in situations that would otherwise be too dangerous or expensive in real life.” (Dalto, 2018. p.5)

As Hastings and Tracey suggested in 2005 and even more applicable now media capabilities have changed dramatically over the last generation and the focus of the conversation should not be if, but how media affect learning. “Computers have unique, non replicable capabilities and therefore can support instructional methods that other media cannot” (Hastings and Tracey, 2005). The most important thing about the debate is to acknowledge that the instructional methods and the delivery medium must be aligned to facilitate learning.

Another consideration is raised by Watters in a recent blog post. Commenting on the function of computers in education, Watters quotes Weizenbaum (1995), “It is much nicer, it is much more comfortable, to have some device, say the computer, with which to flood the schools, and then to sit back and say, “You see, we are doing something about it, we are helping,” than to confront ugly social realities” (2019, para. 10). Indeed, based on Watter’s blog about Sesame Street moving from PBS to HBO in 2015 and then in October, 2019 to HPO Max echoes Weizenbaum’s observation in 1995 as this move results in restricting access due to socio-economic barriers. It could be argued that Sesame Street has moved so far from their original goal which was to, “…create a show for public (not commercial) television that would develop school readiness of viewers age 3 to 5, with particular emphasis on the needs of low-income children and children of color” (2019, para. 11) that it would appear Sesame Street has ‘sold out’. The implication being that they sold out in favour of higher profit rather than remaining accessible to its original, marginalised audience. Instead, the programming is available to only those who have the means to pay for it.

It is possible that Clark would agree that Weisenbaum is correct in his observation that computers could be used as a superficial solution to a much deeper problem. Whereas, Kozma might suggest that educators must consider media’s impact on educational outcomes while also exploring the far-reaching impacts as technology continues to advance. Regardless, the question of whether media will, or will not, influence learning is also about the accessibility of media.

References

Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), 21-29. Retrieved from Potential_in_Higher_Education

Eliatamby, M. (2018, July 02).The Influence of Technology in the Education Industry [blog post] (2018, July 02). Retrieved from https://theknowledgereview.com/the-influence-of-technology-in-the-education-industry

Garrison & Kanuka (2004). The Internet and Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222863721_Blended_Learning_Uncovering_Its_Transformative_

Hastings, N.B. & Tracey, M.W. Does media affect learning: Where are we now? TECHTRENDS TECH TRENDS (2005) 49: 28. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02773968

Kozma, R. B. (1994). Will media influence learning: Reframing the debate. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), 7-19.

Reynard, Ruth (2019) Why Integrated Instruction is a Must For Today’s Tech Enabled Learning [blog post]. Retrieved from https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/05/29/why-integrated-instruction-is-a-must-for-todays-tech-enabled-learning.aspx

The Influence of Technology in the Education Industry [blog post]. Retrieved from https://theknowledgereview.com/the-influence-of-technology-in-the-education-industry

Dalto, J. (2018). Ar, vr and 3-d can make workers better. Ise ; Industrial and Systems Engineering at Work, 50(9), 42-47. Retrieved from https://royalroads.on.worldcat.org/oclc/7862472750

Watters, A. (2019, October 04). Hewn, no. 324. [blog post]. Retrieved from https://hewn.substack.com/p/hewn-no-324

Explorations of the early history of animation as educational material

Lisa Gates — early history of animation in ed tech

I found this exercise to be really valuable. We had the opportunity to explore academic and other literature around our chosen topic, then to populate an Excel sheet with our findings. Reading the papers with these topics in mind helped to crystallize the information and organize it mentally. It was a good grounding in the material, and will shape the way that I prepare for the writing of future papers.

Now, on to writing the synthesis paper…

Explorations in Paneer and a web of life-long learning

By Lisa Gates and Sandra Kuipers

At first blush, looking up a recipe for paneer (a soft cottage cheese) seems like a simple task, yielding straightforward results. While finding a good paneer recipe is easy, the task is more complex and involving than simply learning how it is made. The internet is abundantly full of information: recipes, regionality, commonality with other cuisines’ soft cheeses, and the history and etymology of paneer, making it a great example of a topic for life-long learning.

To explore the idea of abundant content online, we picked the topic of “how to make paneer”. We’re both passionate cooks, and paneer is something neither of us had made before and were both interested to learn more about. I (Sandra) love to make curries, but living in Asia it’s difficult to buy dairy products. Paneer is a “rich source of high quality animal protein, fat, minerals and vitamins” (Khan & Pal, 2011), so learning to make paneer would be a great way to add a healthy source of protein to my vegetarian curries. Paneer is delicious on its own and is often used as an ingredient in other dishes. Many of the initial recipes revealed have similar ingredients and methods, and a quick look at Wikipedia (“Paneer,” 2019) will show that there are many kinds of fresh cheeses that would be similar, if not the same as, paneer but from different places throughout the world.

Inspired by the availability of recipes, I (Lisa) decided to gather the ingredients and make a batch of paneer for dinner. Making paneer ended up taking much less time than looking for information about it did. Exploring paneer had me looking at a map of India to better understand parts of the country that my students are from, to find regionally specific recipes. I chose a recipe from Punjab that I may bring to a class potluck. Taking the learning and making it relevant to my life, with real world application and emphasis on learner construction (taking information and making one’s own meaning), including the shift from theoretical to practical experience (Ertmer & Newby, 1993) plants this exercise firmly as Constructivist in nature.

In the case of making paneer, online instructional content appears particularly well suited for short procedural tasks, such as a cooking recipe. Paneer can be made in 30 mins to 1 hour, something we didn’t know before starting this activity. The short duration of the learning process, as well as relatively few steps involved, suggests that using an online source of instruction would likely have a high degree of success. We wondered if longer more involved learning process may not see the same level of success, given the possibility of missing a step, or misunderstanding an instruction.

Our research into how to make paneer suggests that the availability of content online is a boon for life-long learning. Weller (2011) emphasizes that “learners need to be able to learn throughout their lives and to be able to learn about very niche subjects” (p. 228). In the case of learning how to make paneer, the abundance of content online makes it easy for someone interested in expanding their culinary repertoire to learn a new cooking process. They could be a professional looking to continuously improve their craft, or an individual interested in replicating their favourite dish. In each case, the availability of content outside of a formal learning setting enables individuals to engage in “innovative explorations, experimentations, and purposeful tinkerings” (Seely-Brown & Adler, 2008, as cited in Weller, 2011). These opportunities for informal exploration support the pursuit of life-long learning by providing just-in-time instructional content.

The knowledge of how to make paneer could be thought of as human knowledge, rather than academic knowledge or corporate knowledge. It is thought to originate in the Kusana and Saka Satavahana periods AD 75-300 (Khan & Pal, 2011), and may have begun as an oral body of knowledge, passed from family to family. The wide availability of recipes for how to make paneer online reflect this human origin: there is no copyright or patent that could be applied to this knowledge. We would confidently label this as “abundant content” based on Weller’s (2011) characteristics of a “pedagogy of abundance” (p. 229): content is free, abundant, and varied; sharing is easy and socially based; and content is user-generated. However, and abundance of content doesn’t guarantee success in learning.

Abundant content online can also be overwhelming. Weller (2011) expresses that an “excessive abundance constitutes a challenge” (p. 234), and requires different teaching and learning strategies. Learners facing an abundance of content need the skills to search and evaluate the material they find, such as general digital literacy skills and the ability to gauge the relevance of information found in searches. Basic digital literacy skills involve navigating the online environment, including the generation of relevant keywords for searches. Information evaluation, while not particularly challenging in the search of paneer recipes, can prove extremely important in other realms such as learning about science, geopolitical issues, or other life-long learning topics. The ability to discern real, well researched, peer-reviewed information can be paramount to one’s ability to navigate and understand the real world recognizing and avoiding the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and junk science. Anderson and Dron (2014) emphasize that “there is a concern that ‘popular’ is not necessarily equal to ‘useful’”. They state:

Content is often curated, mashed-up, re-presented, and constructed or assembled by those in the network. This is a wonderful resource when seen as a co-constructed and emergent pattern of knowledge-building, but without the editorial control that a teacher or guide in a group provides, it can lead to network-think, a filter bubble in which social capital rather than pedagogy becomes the guiding principle. (p.140)

In our exploration of abundant content, we were easily able to find recipes for how to make paneer, and were even successful in creating a batch of paneer from scratch. However, throughout this exploration, we remain conscious of the different types of knowledge available online, and the possible pitfalls of abundant content. Some learning, such as short recipes and step-by-step instructions, may be better suited to online instruction than other types of learning. Our findings in this activity suggest that it’s important to understand Weller’s (2011) “pedagogy of abundance” (p. 229) when approaching learning online, and not make the assumption that abundant content automatically leads to successful learning.

References:

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2014). Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781927356807.01

Ertmer, P., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.

Khan, S. U., & Pal, M. A. (2011). Paneer production: A review. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 48(6), 645–660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-011-0247-x

Weller, M. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance. Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, 249, 223–236.

Additional Information Sources:

Step-by-step Videos

How To Make Paneer At Home – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbYRKRZIVV8

Personal recipes

How to Make Paneer (Easy Step-By-Step Guide) | Healthy Nibbles – https://healthynibblesandbits.com/how-to-make-paneer/

Professional recipes

How to make and use paneer | Jamie Oliver – https://www.jamieoliver.com/features/how-to-make-and-use-paneer/

Discussion forums

Indian paneer – English Forum Switzerland – https://www.englishforum.ch/food-drink/114063-indian-paneer.html

Social media hashtags

#paneer hashtag on Twitter – https://twitter.com/hashtag/paneer?lang=en

#paneer hashtag on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/paneer/?hl=en

Peer-reviewed Articles

Khan, S. U., & Pal, M. A. (2011). Paneer production: A review. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 48(6), 645–660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-011-0247-x

Paneer Wikibook

Cookbook:Paneer – Wikibooks, open books for an open world – https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Paneer

Historical articles

Paneer and the origin of cheese in India – The Hindu – https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/Paneer-and-the-origin-of-cheese-in-India/article14516958.ece