The sun rises and the sun sets,\u00a0and hurries back to where it rises.\u00a0The wind blows to the south\u00a0and turns to the north;\u00a0round and round it goes,\u00a0ever returning on its course.\u00a0All streams flow into the sea,\u00a0yet the sea is never full.\u00a0To the place the streams come from,\u00a0there they return again.\u00a0All things are wearisome,\u00a0more than one can say.\u00a0The eye never has enough of seeing,\u00a0nor the ear its fill of hearing.\u00a0What has been will be again,\u00a0what has been done will be done again;\u00a0there is nothing new under the sun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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CC – tidefan http:\/\/goo.gl\/LE4Jl<\/p><\/div>\n
Certainly my recent experience online \u00a0has felt like being trapped in a loop. I have been on\/in Twitter<\/a> for about five years now and most of what I see sailing past about education and\/or technology appears to me to be a rehash of ideas I heard in previous years. Similarly in the land of shiny-tech there seems to have been very little of interest. It\u2019s all higher rez, faster and thinner but in essence it\u2019s not moving on. Witness the bored response to the latest iPhone. It\u2019s as if we greedily consumed technology, are now feeling queasy and couldn\u2019t possibly consume another Smartphone. We talk of elegant consumption but it feels bloated to me. Where has the dynamic, frontier-like web gone? Am I suddenly too old to \u2018see\u2019 the leading edge or is a large part of what happens online just the passive reception of main-stream media?<\/p>\n I worked on digital projects for the BBC at the turn of the century. Back then us young-guns felt as if we were on the verge of something genuinely new – outside of the loop (we were\u00a0enthusiastic\u00a0and a little\u00a0naive). Looking back now it appears that the moment the iPlayer started to work smoothly the BBC stepped away from Social Media engagement and many there heaved a huge sigh of relief when they realised that ‘online’ could be used to distribute TV and Radio. Despite the promise of the web are we trapped in our classic\u00a0producer-consumer cycle?\u00a0Perhaps advertising a hash-tag at the start of a programme is all that is needed, maybe that\u2019s what taking-part was always going to mean? The truth is that there are very few people out there with something to say and the skills to express it, those that do are quickly assimilated into a broadcast mindset. Beyond 150 people it\u2019s all celebrity\u00a0and performance?<\/p>\n A surface view only sees the loop<\/p><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n This is all surface though and the reality, as ever, is far more complex than my rant. There are fascinating and disruptive things happing out there in the unpredictable currents of the tide fight where society and tech wrestle. Our immediate perspective is often of a Solomon\u2019s recursive loop but if we know how to \u2018see\u2019 rather than to just look we gain a much more\u00a0interesting\u00a0view.<\/p>\n A different perspective shows the slow forward movement of the helix<\/p><\/div>\n I think of socio-technical phenomenon as a helix. Viewed with an end-on limited perspective everything appears to be travelling repetitively around the same loop, it appears to be a closed circle but if we put more effort into seeing beyond the surface, into new methods of data collection and analysis, we can gain a side view, revealing a helix. \u00a0This\u00a0perspective\u00a0shows us a \u00a0slow but powerful movement forward. Often though, we are so trapped in the loop of the ever-new present that this progression is only seen in hindsight. Getting past the upgrade-now, 10 tips for teaching with iPads, HD, 3D, faster, better, stronger noise of the loop \u2013 sidestepping it if you like and seeing the real morphing\/evolution of science and society is, for me, what higher education should be all about.<\/p>\n The single biggest factor that can give us the side-on perspective is the ability to critique and to ask pertinent questions. It\u2019s the role of education to equip students with this ability to ask questions rather than to only seek the answers to questions posed by others. Historically the effort required to seek-out answers encouraged students to ask additional questions of their own but now we can find answers online so efficiently we don\u2019t have to engage in critical thinking. Generally these answers are correct and appropriate – this is an issue which is more fundamental than \u2018quality\u2019 or \u2018validity\u2019, it\u2019s part of a paradigm shift in what in means to \u2018know\u2019.<\/p>\n I joked that Google\u2019s strap-line should be \u201cThink Less – Find More\u201d<\/strong>. I\u2019m finding that idea less and less amusing, especially after seeing Google Now<\/a> which is the current apex of not-thinking tech. I\u2019m not against instant access to answers or technology that makes our lives \u2018easier\u2019, what I do want though is pedagogy that equips students from an early age with the ability to question the answers\u00a0thrown\u00a0back by this kind of tech. The huge cognitive offsetting the web offers us creates a space in which we should be able to ask more and better questions and yet our pedagogy and our assessment is still focused largely on answers until around second year of university (if you are lucky).<\/p>\n ‘Bring Your Own Device’ or ‘Smuggle-in Your Own Device’ ensures that students are taking advantage of the cognitive\u00a0offsetting\u00a0of the web, it\u2019s time to accept this and take-up the slack. Our Visitors and Residents project<\/a> is finding that the digital literacies students develop at Secondary\/High school are taken through well into university. We haven\u2019t interviewed students younger than 17 years-old but I suspect that the digital literacies (and in some cases the\u00a0critical\u00a0literacies) of a 9 year-old are similar to those of a first-year undergraduate. As educators we have to teach critical thinking at a much earlier age otherwise students will be trapped in the highly pervasive info-factory of the web. Yes they will be able to find correct answers but will they be capable of questioning the loop\u00a0conveniently designed around them (whether\u00a0well meaning or not)\u00a0from about the age of 8 by Google, Facebook and the like?<\/p>\n This brings me to the knotty problem of serendipity which as been bothering me for some time. It\u2019s not possible to capture it\u2019s essence without it slipping through your fingers. It is in this regard nicely Truth and Beauty in a romantic, dreaming-spires kind of a way and generally a bit of a headache for those outside of the social sciences and humanities. Proponents of the importance of serendipity such as Aleks Krotoski<\/a>\u00a0make the crucial point that the individual has to have the ability to be able to recognise the moment it happens (or the moment of potential). In other words they need to be able to bridge two apparently unrelated pieces of information and “…have the creativity to do something new with them” (Here I am talking about the individuals role in taking advantage of\u00a0putative\u00a0serendipity\u00a0rather than technologies possible role in\u00a0increasing\u00a0the potential for serendipity to take place) . I now think of the moment of serendipity as jumping sections of the helix. It’s a transverse movement across the traditional corrals of understanding.<\/p>\n The transverse leap of serendipity<\/p><\/div>\n If the helix is imagined as a spiral staircase then those that can \u2018see\u2019 serendipitous moments have the ability to jump beyond their floor and leap multiple storeys in a single bound. Not only can they make this leap but they have the perspective to see the distance they have travelled. I would argue that this is unlikely to happen if the individual has been educated to only find answers to questions set by others.<\/p>\n In this era of instant answers where technology (or the\u00a0business model of those providing the technology) is winding the loop around us ever tighter I\u2019m pro equipping our students with the ability to make serendipitous leaps. I\u2019m for stretching the helix so that each turn pushes us further. We need to promote critical pedagogies which put pressure on students to ask questions. Questions that gain perspectives beyond recursive consumption. Instead of falling into \u201cThink Less – Find More\u201d<\/strong> we should be encouraging our students to be suspicious of the loop, to be anxious to make leaps, and hopefully to \u201cQuestion More \u2013 See Further\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The helix model of socio-tech-ed Continue reading ![\"The](\"http:\/\/tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/helixCircle1.jpg\" "\\"The")
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