Murphy's visit

Today Murphy came to visit. We had one hour to do a video presentation.  As we came together the idea of a debate flew into my head and my teammates were willing to go with it.  After a 1/2 hour discussion we tried to pull it together to tape it within the time constraints I put on the group.  Our thoughts were all sripted, (see the link) and I think we had addressed the academic issue.  The issue then became one of language, first being sure the words precisely expresssed the intended thought, the dilemna of writers.  Then the problem became one of editing, being sure that the word on the page were grammatically correct, and then that there were no typos.  I found it difficult to step away from my English teacher self to say that this is a spoken project so the typos are irrelevant.  |Or that the meaning of the coherent thoughts is communicated despite accent and word order differences between language.  When there are time constraints it is so important to learn to be satisfied with good enough, or to recognize priorities. But these little problems we dealt with satisfactorily. 

The real problem was my own once I got home.  One teammember said he possessed the experise to cobble together a cohesive piece if we could just independently tape our respective lines.  Terrrific.  I thought I would just get back to my room, tape my lines, e-mail them by 8:00 and my part would be done.  But lo and behold my "bit" ws 254 mg.  Sure, just try e-mailing that.  You are over your, What!, your 25 mg limit for e-mail attachments.  Would you like to save as SkyDrive?  SkyDrive!  What is SkyDrive.  Ok. Sure, why not?  But where is it now?  Can't find it.  Must tape each line separately.  Then I found that some lines were over 25 mg too.  Send the ones that are less than 25 mg.  Let the cobbling begin.
At that point I sent an email and saying let's meet at 8:30 and tape the whole thing as one cohesive piece.  Finally, after midnight I was way too tired to care whether the background changed.  We'll call it a different camera angle.  My pajamas were hidden, the bed made.  By the time I was done, my attempts at humour sounded wooden.  I needed the human interaction to bring them off. 

In today's world we are always fighting the clock.  There is NOT the time we wish for.  We have to learn to accept good enough so that we can make progress.  Perfection does not exist, and striving to get at the first attempt can only fail.  That is why Murphy is such a dreaded visitor.  He plays with your head and humbles you.  We must realize that as close as we will ever come to perfection only comes from collaboration.  And collaboration sometimes takes more time than the deadlines permit.

Group Video Presentation

Can we Trust Wikipedia

Millie Welcome to a debate about the trustworthiness of Wikipedia entries, of the use Wikipedia has in the academic community.

Joe Simple believes that Wikipedia is a trustworthy academic source while Happy Haniy believes we must proceed cautiously, that Wikipedia is not a trustworthy source.

√727Let me begin by posing a fundamental question. What causes one to trust a source of information?

Joe Simple: I can tell in a face to face interaction I can generally tell from the body language, from eye contact with the claimant whether s/he is telling me the truth. There is something about the logic of the facts, if the matter is one without controversy and mistakes in the logic. I connect to other information that I possess. If the incoming information sits well with my prior knowledge, with my world view, then I am more likely to accept the source as trustworthy.

√728Millie: What causes you, Happy Haniy, to distrust a source?

Happy Haniy: I feel I have an obligation to teach my students the truth. When I do not feel comfortable with the integrity of a source, I could not, according to my own professional ethics, recommend its use to my students. When I want my elementary students to know about a topic, parrots for eg., I send them to a site called Clusty.com.

√729Millie: But Clusty.com is just one more website, just like the millions of others out there. How do you know it is trustworthy?

Happy: This is an educational source for student learning recommended to me by my School Division’s IT consultant. They trust her, therefore I trust her. I do not feel I need to put her credentials under scrutiny.

– personal view of truth factor, integrity,

-corrupt or deceitful intention

-personal agenda

For economic, political or simple mischief

√725Millie: How is the issue of trust different online from what it is in face to face environment, Simple Joe? Oh, dear, it’s Joe Simple. There’s a big difference, isn’t there. How perspective changes with the benefit of scrutiny, of a moment of monitoring. Yes, so please, the difference between trust face to face to face vs on line.

Joe Simple: You are right, of course, there is no lie detector for online sources. Online sources are anonymous. I am surprised that these anonymous writers have often given me reliable information. I rely on logic. I have knowledge in my field of expertise. When I have gone to sites on the internet, for eg, Wikipedia, I have been pleased to see that the writings there contain accurate information.

Truth for me does not depend on the prestige and status of the author, but rather on my perception of the facts according to how they jive with what I already know. The more I know, the more I can rely that the information I am accumulating integrates with my view.

√703Millie: What would you say in response to this issue, Happy?

Happy: I prefer to rely on traditional methods of establishing credibility of authorship. In a face to face environment I have cultural and contextual information that helps me establish credibility.

-criteria for trust- Consistent with personal value and belief system

Entrants are accountable

-academic credentials of entrant are searchable referenced to their blog, their Facebook and Twitter

Referenced to credible refereed sources

Entries are community moderated

√723Millie: So, given these issues of on line vs face to face trust, let me ask youthis. What role does Wikipedia serve in today's information environments? How are you willing to use this source in your professional or personal quest for knowledge? Mr. Simple, please, you may respond first.

Simple Jo: My experience has been very good. When I have a discussion with my family, we check it on Wikipedia. It is the first place we go for information. When I prepare something new, I start my investigation on Wikipedia. Then I go to other sources, a Google search, books, refereed articles, the dictionary.

√709Millie: But Hanyi, you do not trust Wikipedia. What role do you see for this source of information in todays information environment? Afterall, your students to there despite what you will say. It is so often the first information source to come up on any search for information. As they say, it’s just out there – everywhere you look it just wiki wiki, wiki ...

Hanyi: Certainly, I have to admit its existence. I will use it, but I would require my students to use caution.

√710Millie. What does that mean? Afterall, you are dealing with elementary students. What can they know of caution?

Hanyi: I would tell them that when they find one answer on Wikipedia, they have to cross refere3nce Wikipedia to at least three other sources in order to establish Wikipedia’s validity and reliability.

√712Millie: How can we begin to trust user-created information? Joe Simple, what has your experience been?

Joe: Wikipedia seldom lies to me. In almost every case where I have checked their information, I have found the source to be reliable and valid.

√715Millie: What would you say in this regard. When are you prepared to trust user created information like that contributed to Wikipedia by volunteers?

Hanyi: I now realize that what stays on Wikipedia has been scrutinized by community monitors. What has been placed there is cross referenced to refereed and reliable resources. I have to expose the kids to information sources that are there for them now and in the future. I am prepared to trust Wikipedia.

√730Millie: I want to thank you both for participating in this debate today. It seems that Wikipedia has come a long way, from being a questionable resource for beginning researchers to being a source of first resource for academic thinkers.

√731I myself know a professor who checks his own references against Wikipedia to ensure that he hasn’t left anything out of his own thinking that is significant. There we go again the problem of word order. It happens even to the fluent. I mean, he goes to Wikipedia to ensure that he has not neglected a significant issue from his thinking. Yes, Wikipedia, or an online info source for all, is here to stay . The community of volunteers ensures validity and reliability, from spelling, punctuation and syntax, to content. Because of the community, because of collaboration and time, it has gained a level of respect as one research tool for all levels of education.

Elaine's Day 3 Reflection

Although the source we have examined today claims that lifelong learning is a concept explored in depth by corporations, it is a concept I learned about in the mid eighties, perhaps even the late seventies.  I was somewhat relieved to see a 1996 date on the paper, because I would have been so disappointed had I been told this was a new idea.  Perhaps, in the big picture, it is really, considering that it takes they say 5-7 generations for paradigmatic change to occur.  There was so much I wanted to do, and so much I wanted to be, to know about, so many places to look and to find knowledge for the purpose of transforming society, to make the world a better place for all of us.  I knew this was me, a life long learner.  In my teaching practice, I portrayed myself, even in junior high classrooms, as one who had different, but no more valuable knowledge than those I was teaching.  I bought wholeheartedly into the idea of communities of practice and communities of learners, the idea that each of us has value and is special and unique with something to contribute to the greater good, and later the idea of action research, a metacognitive approach to professional practice. 

Today was a day of considerable depth, and it was interesting to participate in and watch the dynamic of the class jel.  This is something that I have never seen happen in an online course to date though I believe a really effective online instructor could, with the “right” dynamics, facilitate a class that would jel.  But seeing it happen today was special.  Our discussions this morning centered around the idea of life long learning.  There can be little doubt that the folks in this class, ranging in age as we do from mid thirties to sixty, are lifelong learners.  We are there for our own personal and professional development, to be better at what we do, to expand what we can do, to go deeper into our own awarenesses of who we are and what our capacities can become, but from a broad range of professional practice, engineers, trainers in the financial sector and retail, a physicist, and learning facilitators.  Until today I think we recognized a broad disparity of opinion and we had not yet committed to a wholehearted respect for each other.  Some bring droppings, some bring coal, some bring gems.  The class needs it all.  Today, one of our class, a mid lurker, helped the class to jel.  Our physicist, believing he deals only with scientific fact, brought the gems.  I really think he, with our prof’s probing facilitation, brought about a level of interpersonal respect that crosses any boundaries that may have existed among us.  While there are 6 ways of knowing Siemens and Tittenberger cite Chickering and Ehrmann who  advocate for seven key “good practice” elements in online instruction:

1. encourages contact between students and faculty

2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students

3. encourages active learning

4. gives prompt feedback

5. emphasizes time on task

6. communicates high expectations

7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning

We are, as of this afternoon, a “class”.  Would this have happened in an on-line class?  I do not think it would have, not with this class, this group, these people.  Could it happen in the future with Gen X or Gen Y? Absolutely, it could with the right facilitator, a person who can deliver on #1-7 above. Their comfort zone online will be what ours is f2f. 

Today, we had some looking for deep truth from mouse droppings, others searching for metaphors to give meaning, the droppers among us searching for existentialist meaning in the 21^st century. We were all teachers and all learners in our little community of learners.   May we all go in peace and acceptance of the value of the other. 

CCK11:: Paper 2: Changing roles of educators A Learning Facilitator’s Reflection in Three Stages.

CCK11  has demanded of me an unusual level of personal reflection.  This paper is a personal reflection on my professional career; I trust you will indulge my rant.  It seems  fated.  Even after receiving my usual request for extension, my brain never kicking  in until the original deadline, my note taking program failed and I cannot access my notes, save one paper.  I used to think my grandfather saw a lot of change that made his life both difficult and remarkable.  But perhaps, anyone who’s lived four score years since the Industrial Revolution has seen similar degrees of change.  My meager research supports my frustrations and beliefs, both pragmatic and ideological, about my professional career.   I took a break from teaching for 5 years and when I returned to studies in 1994, the internet had been invented; communication and the world was changing at a pace never before imagined,  irrevocably and unpredictably.   

Frustrations I felt throughout my teaching career, which began in 1981, would not decrease but intensify, as technological advancements made the practice of education facilitation both more complex and more chaotic.  The days of schools as simple organizations was past, as even those  "systems evolve to ever-more complex and sophisticated forms” (Boulton). The introspection, reflection and permission to look forward,  afforded by this course, have consumed much time and mental energy.  It is only with understanding that I was not alone in my efforts  to cope amid age-old struggles for power and control that I realized, yet again, that I had been leading without being able to effectively influence others.  What I have learned allows me to evaluate my career in three stages, that, not coincidentally, correspond to my education.

I obtained my Bachelor’s Degree in 1979 at the end of an era of traditional education.  Computers were becoming common for administrative functions.  Education thinkers were toying with their application as I began my teaching career.  Students commonly sat in rows and working together was usually considered cheating.  A classroom of students at work was silent, with a teacher strolling up and down the rows quietly offering individual aid.  Teachers were expected to know, if not all there was to know in a content field, at least all their students were likely to want to know.  It was all pretty simple and straight-forward.   Everyone, teachers, students and parents knew what was expected because it was the same as what we’d been doing for quite some time.   That scene, thankfully, is, at least, no longer commonplace.

I was learning what it was to be a teacher while I worked half time with special needs junior high students, and the other half as a teacher-librarian.  Both parts of my job, at opposite ends of the spectrum, were interesting.  As a special needs teacher, my success depended upon allowing myself to let students show me what they were capable of.   As librarian, I used literature to open minds to possibility, and encouraged my colleagues to team-teach integrated and cross-curricular units of research study.  More academic students came in search of greater independent learning.  Helping students learn what they wanted to know was fascinating, unpredictable.  Only later did I realize that teacher librarians are trained to be at the forefront of education “delivery”.

I was not half-way through my Grad. Diploma in school libraries in the ‘80’s when I started to make waves in my suburban/rural Alberta school.   I thought then that what I was reading about collaborative, cooperative, self-disciplined, self-directed learning and peer assessment was a much better  fit with my philosophy of teaching and learning than the trough and shovel method common at the time.  I was, even then, a learning facilitator, feeling that the degree of my success was the degree to which I could facilitate access to resources for students and my colleagues.   Virtually all administrative work was computer based.  I alone saw the computers as one of those resources, a result in part, of being steeped in critical thinking at the university but part of a teaching staff with at least 10 years’  experience.  The science guy ran the computer lab, the principal and vice-principal guys with their phys ed. guy buddies saw no need for computers in the library.  Librarians were demanding classroom and library computers, on-line book cataloguing and catalogues.  Student had computers at home, and correctly felt it regressive not to have broader use of them in school.  Classroom teachers were content to wait.  Issues of power and control in education had never been more keenly felt by all stakeholders.

I took a long break, returning to the classroom in 1998.  While in China, I learned that too much of what we here in the West call cheating, others called collegial learning, team work and simply helping each other.  Vastly different perspectives exist for the same phenomenon.  Perception is, indeed, reality and  acceptance for diversity of thought is key to progress (Boulton).

Meanwhile, the internet had been invented.  The pace of change was no longer quic, but frenetic, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon, change as could never have been anticipated.  Between 1991 and 1998, many classrooms got at least one or two student use computers; every self-respecting library had a small bank of computers; cataloguing was downloaded and hard copy encyclopedias were completely obsolete.  Rows of students were replaced by study group tables.  It was official.  Team-work was not just for phys. ed. and not necessarily cheating.   Even the provinces discovered ways of making curriculum affordable as they opted for the Western Canada Protocols for curriculum development.  Progressive teachers began to look to our students for help on occasion.  We talked with great anticipation about how the internet would make research easier and more plentiful with easier and greater access to resources.  Little could we know!

The advent of the internet has changed everything.  Because information travels the world in seconds, much more information is available to many more people so much sooner than ever before.  My son uses “reddit” and tells me the news 2-3 days before it hits the headlines!  Research bibliographies are automatically generated by software linked to on-line data base subscriptions, eliminating the time-consuming job of formatting bibliographic entries.  Because of it, news has travelled so fast it has actually enabled much of the Middle East grass roots to topple long standing regimes like falling dominoes, demanding democratic elections and governance.  Students in the most geographically isolated parts of the world can interact electronically with others, using video, audio and animation, synchronous or asynchronous chat rooms, social networking,  etc. 

 And now, at Stage Three, I see that my colleague of my early teaching years was right.  I have been a passionate teacher, in some ways 30 years ahead of my time.   This course is pushing me to stay current, to “not go gently into that good night” (Dylan Thomas).   Today’s teachers are not teachers in the traditional definition, but instead learning facilitators.  Our work is to break down barriers to learning and replace them with paving stones so that the our students’ learning journeys are eased and  the process made more convenient so that they strive to be life-long learners.  Whereas teachers have too often been a conservative lot steeped in tradition, today’s effective education facilitators are flexible, innovative, adaptable problem-solvers who respect their students.  “In complex systems predictability is the exception rather than the norm, flexibility and adaptability are key components” to success (Boulton).  We need to be actively involved in an ongoing process of personal critical research to that we see what is needed by the explicit as well as the implicit responses of students to their needs, and adapt.  We are on a never-ending quest of inquiry, brainstorming and hypothesizing, postulating solutions, evaluating them and starting afresh. 

                This look back at my career has given me hope to look toward to the future with optimism, knowing that I can, if not keep up with the pace of change, at least actively pursue it.  I know how difficult it is for one trained to work in an inflexible system to impose diversity on that system. I have learned how difficult it is for workers who remove themselves from a technological workforce for just five years, to re-enter it without extensive training. I am a life-long learner and I recognize that my pace of learning is not fast.   I know that “adherence to ideas about stability and simplicity prevent us from being successful in a dynamic and complex system (Boulton).  Because I am a critical and creative thinker, I can decide what I need in order to guide my students forward through labyrinthine choices.  I don’t need to have the answers; I need to be ”asking probing questions that promote elaborate responses and provide experiences to make this possible” (Navarro, 2008) so that they can find the answers they need to move forward.   

                School division and administrators have an important and parallel role to play.  Given the pace of change, a greater dedication of resources is required for facilitators’ professional development.  Teachers must be funded to participate in activities that keep them current with educational applications of technology, software, and tools.  How can cell phones and texting be used for educational gain? How can student blogs and school websites be used as communication tools?  How can students post their work to the net?  How will students evaluate the credibility and value of what they find and use on the net?  As well, academics too, need to be respectful of their students, the teachers/learning facilitators.  Though not all will be equally successful at efforts to understand and cope with the pace of change, surely we deserve respect for our efforts, no matter how seemingly feeble to those blessed with the capacity, ability or resources for greater technical expertise.  Face it, somebody taught you to read this.  Teachers or other caregivers do not deserve to be denigrated with superior or snobbish attitudes.

 Lest I digress, let me tell you about a painting I have.  This painting is a First Nations depiction of life.  The feather lies in the forest, beaten and trampled by the rain and the storm.  But it carries us through life.  We all start at its base, alike.  We climb the centre shaft of the feather on life’s journey.  We take side paths where the barbules have separated, one barb from another (http://globalflyfisher.com/staff/luallen/feather3.htm).   If we return to the shaft along the path of the barbules, we travel to the next juncture.  However, we can only climb the shaft if we help those who go before us, and those who come behind.  So is the journey of students, teacher/facilitator, school administrator and academic professor.  Professionals enrolled in this course are dedicated education facilitators (formerly called teachers) struggling valiantly in a fast paced, stressful, changing environment.  We possess the qualities and are pursuing the skills that will lead the profession forward, and we deserve to be encouraged for our efforts.  This course, your thoughts and ours, will be further validated when we can apply what we learn here to help those coming behind, following you leading us on.

References

Boulton "Managing in an Age of Complexity."

               

Navarro, Ann M.  Building Schema for English Language learners.  Online submission, ERIC Ed514335,   2008-05-07

Tie Better: the nature of a feather: feather anatomy 101.                  http://globalflyfisher.com/staff/luallen/feather3.htm).