Transformation and Autonomy with a twist: from information to learning - Critical Reflection INF530

It's been quite a ride this INF530, and as they say "it ain't over until it's over", I have yet to complete my digital essay and enter that huge time warp black hole of combining words with media and images in such a way that it enhances rather than distracts, compels rather than confuses.

Looking back on the topic headings I decided to make a wordle, to see things with a little visual perspective. What jumped out was “information” and “learning” and I had to think back to previous courses where the nuances of data, information, knowledge, wisdom were picked over in meticulous detail (Barrett, Cappleman, Shoib, & Walsham, 2004; Hecker, 2012; Pantzar, 2000; UNESCO, 2005) or the role of the teacher or school or librarian is discussed, particularly in the light of information literacy (Eisenberg, 2008; Mihailidis, 2012; O’Connell, 2008; Sheng & Sun, 2007; Wallis, 2003). Yes these are all part of the picture, but the words that I’d like to contribute and focus on are not there, because they are implicit and essential rather than explicit. Integral to information and learning are transformation and autonomy.

Firstly transformation, it’s synonyms (conversion, metamorphosis, renewal, revolution, shift, alteration) and its’ derivatives:

• the doing – to transform,
• the process – transformation,
• the subject and the state – transformed, and
• the agent - transformer.

And the twist, because in education we are simultaneously the agent and the subject, the initiator, the process and the end state. We cannot “do” without “being”. And that is the value of plunging into a distance-learning course that takes one beyond the mundane and everyday into personally being transformed and feeling the simultaneous discomfort and thrill of not always being in control of the process or the outcome. Sometimes the truth is found in the antonym – stagnation and sameness. The resistance to change that saps energy rather than re-energises as transformation does.

Conole (2013, p. 61) stated “We have to accept that it is impossible to keep up with all the changes, so we need to develop coping strategies which enable individuals to create their own personal digital environment of supporting tools and networks to facilitate access to and use of relevant information for their needs.” That is part of the solution, the other is finding one’s place in digital and physical learning ecologies (O’Connell, 2014; Vasiliou, Ioannou, & Zaphiris, 2014; Wang, Guo, Yang, Chen, & Zhang, 2015). Yes ecologies, because we are, and our students and children will be “shape shifting portfolio people” (Gee & Hayes, 2011) whether we want to acknowledge and embrace the fact or not.

Which brings me to the second of “my” take-away words. Autonomy. It is autonomy with a difference - autonomy within communities and networks of our own and others' making. As Downes (2012, bk. Connectivism and Connective Knowledge) puts it “knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, … learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks”.

However without the aforementioned transformation we can’t have the autonomy. It is an autonomy hard won, through dint of our own efforts, the pushing and pulling and attraction of our teachers, mentors, peers and heroes. Autonomy feeds off motivation and self-regulatory control (Kormos & Csizér, 2014). The latter including commitment, meta-cognitive, satiation, emotion and environmental control (Tseng, Dörnyei, & Schmitt, 2006). Ironically we need others to attain autonomy. Autonomy is not independence but interdependence, not being on your own, but being part of a larger community of learners all together on individual journeys. It’s the forums, blogs, comments, feedback and Facebook posts. The emojis, irrelevant and irreverent tweets; words of encouragement and critique, ideas and suggestions that propel us forward and backward and around in circles - but ever expanding circles and cycles of improvement and transformation.

Thank-you to my peers, my course co-ordinator Judy, those who went before us and those who will come after us may we transform and be transformed, gain autonomy and enable others do so too in this journey of life-long learning.

What you are speaks so loud I can not hear what you say - Original Quote by Emerson

References

• Barrett, M., Cappleman, S., Shoib, G., & Walsham, G. (2004). Learning in knowledge communities. European Management Journal, 22(1), 1–11. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2003.11.019
• Conole, G. (2013). Open, social and participatory media. In Designing for learning in an open world (pp. 47–63). New York ; Heidelberg: Springer.
• Downes, S. (2012). My eBooks [Web Log]. Retrieved April 19, 2015, from http://www.downes.ca/me/mybooks.htm
• Eisenberg, M. B. (2008). Information literacy: Essential skills for the information age. DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, 28(2), 39–47. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lih&AN=51198131&site=ehost-live
• Gee, J. P., & Hayes, E. (2011). Language and learning in the digital age (1st ed). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Hecker, A. (2012). Knowledge beyond the individual? Making sense of a notion of collective knowledge in organization theory. Organization Studies, 33(3), 423–445. http://doi.org/10.1177/0170840611433995
• Kormos, J., & Csizér, K. (2014). The interaction of motivation, self-regulatory strategies, and autonomous learning behavior in different learner groups. TESOL Quarterly, 48(2), 275–299. http://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.129
• Mihailidis, P. (2012). Media literacy and learning commons in the digital age: Toward a knowledge model for successful integration into the 21st century school library. The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults, 2. Retrieved from http://www.yalsa.ala.org/jrlya/2012/04/media-literacy-and-learning-commons-in-the-digital-age-toward-a-knowledge-model-for-successful-integration-into-the-21st-century-school-library/
• O’Connell, J. (2008). School library 2.0 : new skills, new knowledge, new futures. In P. Godwin & J. Parker (Eds.), Information literacy meets Library 2.0 (pp. 51–62). London: Facet.
• O’Connell, J. (2014, July 19). Information ecology at the heart of knowledge [Web Log]. Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://judyoconnell.com/2014/07/19/information-ecology-at-the-heart-of-knowledge/
• Pantzar, E. (2000). Knowledge and wisdom in the information society. Foresight, 2(2), 230–236.
• Sheng, X., & Sun, L. (2007). Developing knowledge innovation culture of libraries. Library Management, 28(1/2), 36–52. http://doi.org/10.1108/01435120710723536
• Tseng, W.-T., Dörnyei, Z., & Schmitt, N. (2006). A new approach to assessing strategic learning: The case of self-regulation in vocabulary acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 27(1), 78–102. http://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami046
• UNESCO. (2005). Towards knowledge societies. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001418/141843e.pdf
• Vasiliou, C., Ioannou, A., & Zaphiris, P. (2014). Understanding collaborative learning activities in an information ecology: A distributed cognition account. Computers in Human Behavior, 41(0), 544–553. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.09.057
• Wallis, J. (2003). Information-saturated yet ignorant: information mediation as social empowerment in the knowledge economy. Library Review, 52(8), 369–372. http://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310493770
• Wang, X., Guo, Y., Yang, M., Chen, Y., & Zhang, W. (2015). Information ecology research: past, present, and future. Information Technology and Management, 1–13. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-015-0219-3

Academic honesty should never be ambiguous

Ok, I know I have a somewhat ambivalent stance on what constitutes plagiarism and the value of collaborative and cooperative learning but one thing I'm clear on is academic honesty.  If you used something that someone else made just say that you did that. And depending on your age and level a simple copy and paste of the link is sufficient.

I recently went around our G5's exhibition project and was thoroughly impressed at their work. I did sneakily ask a few for their sources and most could point to at least a page of attribution as to where they'd got their numbers and facts.  Well done (here is a great video of it by the way).


G5 Exhibition Video 2015 from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Fast forward to early this morning. I'm putting the washing in the machine and the kids are getting ready for school and finally my daughter lets me see the video she's been working on for the last 4 days - one holidays and festivals in the middle ages. It's a great video with her narrating the festivals of the year with lovely pictures and music from the middle ages in the background.  And then at the end "Thank you for watching" and black screen.

I told her I thought it was great, but that she didn't have to thank anyone at the end, and instead a list of attribution for the images and music would be good. "Our teacher said we didn't have to do it" was her reply. I told her that she knew that I expected it of her, and she then showed me that she had in fact made a list of the URLs but hadn't put it into EasyBib to get into MLA format. I asked why not, and she came with some story about how citations / attribution hadn't been in the original assignment nor in the rubric and the teacher didn't want to add it on afterwards. I was a little annoyed at this. I said she could at least put it at the end of her video, but she didn't think that would be "fair" on the others who didn't. Fair? How about the fairness of the people to whom the images belonged? OK they're all long dead now, and perhaps most of the images are in common domain, but still, it's the principal.

I was annoyed at myself being annoyed at her, when actually I should be annoyed at the school. How can they go from being citation semi-stars in primary school to not having it expected at middle school. This is not the first instance, it is one of many, many, many in both my children's grades across all subjects - academic honesty really does need to be institutionalised and inside every single assignment across the board! I'm at least glad my ranting has had an effect on my kids and they're at now keeping lists to show me - but if it's only for me for how long will my influence last?

Activity and paralysis

Reading, reading, reading. I know I should start trying to write, but I'm in a kind of simultaneous paralysis and activity. Each new reading I do, I discover a whole field of knowledge and information that I know way too little about. Today I discovered the LEA (language experience approach) to teaching reading and writing. And the relevant (for me) "cousin" D-LEA (i.e. with digital). I'm sure every single teacher in the world is totally familiar with this and today was the first time I'd encountered it - academically at least. I'm pretty sure it's what they do at school and that my kids experienced it, I just didn't know the name. Duh. So this has kicked off a new round of activity - frantically learning more about it and how it relates to my topic; and paralysis - not being able to start writing my assignment yet. 

Slow Progress is still Progress

I guess that will have to be my mantra for now. I spent from  Friday to Sunday at the UWCSEA Multilingual Conference (#mlconf2015 if you want to follow the tweets – although not many people tweeting besides yours truly and a few others). Besides the fact that I was giving two sharing sessions, as you know it’s both a topic close to my heart and close to my digital essay theme! .... see more

Does academic equity even exist?

I've just finished reading through Yvette Slaughter's PhD thesis: The study of Asian languages in two Australian states: considerations for language-in-education policy and planning and what an eye-opener it was. And not for the reasons I thought it would be.

I'm really interested in language-learning ecology/(ies) and since hers mentioned this, I decided to take the plunge and wade through the 372 pages. And what I found was rather interesting. Aside from all the detailed analysis, the most interesting chapter was on  "Is Asian Language Study Equitable" - she has written a paper on it, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be easily accessible (i). (Just tried to find her on twitter to see where I can get a copy...).

And that's where I met my enthusiastic educational idealism face to face.  I am so naive. Yes I know all about the digital divide. I know that having a higher socio-economic status (or at least your parents) give all kinds of benefits such as extra-curricular, extra tutoring etc. But never would I have expected the vitriol around the supposed benefits Asian students have in studying Asian Languages. Even though I've experienced it first hand... does that sound absurd? In our HKU Chinese class we were separated between heritage and non-heritage learners (with Korean & Japanese bundled in with heritage due to their writing advantage), in fact, I switched to their class because I'd had a few years of stop start chinese classes and the mono-lingual anglo-saxon class was going a bit too slowly for me. And yes it was easier for them, but never once did I think it was not equitable. It just was. And I had to cope with it. And I just had to work a bit harder. A lot harder. But they were a nice bunch of people, and I'm still good friends with a few of them 7 years later.

There is so much background noise in the learning ecology that a rational person just would love to discount - however, it can seriously derail higher ideals. Looking at the example of our school. I really am a passionate champion for mother tongue. I'm a passionate champion for learning of languages in general, for everyone. But there are a lot of structural, emotional, financial and particularly attitudinal variables getting in the way of this ideal.

I have two children learning language at a native level, and they're two different languages, one we speak at home (Dutch) and the other was acquired in a dual language immersion program (Chinese). The attitude of my daughter when 2 native speakers joined her class this year? "At last! They've made the standard go up considerably, and they're showing up the laziness of the heritage kids and the weaknesses in the curriculum".  My response - nothing. If that's the way she felt, then I was fine with it. If she'd moaned and said it was unfair, I guess my response would have been that those kids were probably struggling in the rest of the subjects, so it was just as well they had a little respite from academic stress all week.
Maybe I've just been living in Asia for too long and have become one of those tiger mums. Or maybe language is important enough for me that I make sure the necessary time and effort goes into it.

Or maybe I don't care that much about grades. Ok, we're only in middle school in this household, and I'm not feeling the stress of university acceptance and IB results. I know for myself I do want to do well in my courses. But more importantly is how interesting, how relevant and how stimulating they are. Getting a good grade for largely arbitrary assignments (except the ones where I can choose the topic and have some lee-way to localise them - which so far at CSU has been most of them), is a side issue.   Ok, maybe I don't so much not care about grades as I'm ambivalent about the whole academic competition thing and putting a number on learning.  Except to indicate where you are in the learning / knowledge continuum for a particular subject.  I totally get homeschooling, and personalised learning, and entrepreneurial learning (except for the small but significant detail that I'm likely to commit infanticide should i ever have to educate my own brood). I hate putting kids of the same age in the same class - I love Seely Brown's Global one classroom thing -

For me the point of learning a language is to learn the language. Not to pass an exam. Not to get a diploma or certificate. To learn the language. To communicate. To access the culture. To pay homage to your own culture. To understand yourself and others. Anything else are pleasant externalities. I fear I may be in a small minority in this view.

I need to go and read some more. Leo van Lier's "Semiotics and ecology of language learning" awaits. Language is political. Who would have thought.

References:

Slaughter, Y. (2007). The study of Asian languages in two Australian states: considerations for language-in-education policy and planning. PhD thesis, School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne.

Van Lier, L. (2004). The semiotics and ecology of language learning. Utbildning & demokrati, 13(3), 79-103.



(i) Slaughter, Y. (2005). Public perceptions of Asian languages in Australia. In May, S., Franken, M., & Barnard, R. (eds.), LED2003: Refereed Conference Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Language, Education and Diversity. Hamilton: Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, University of Waikato.

Deep research diving

I'm going to either become very quiet or very noisy in the next few weeks as I dive into my next research topic for my last (yikes, how fast did that go) assignment for INF530.

This is my research proposal:

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1. Proposal Topic

Language learning and the new digital information ecology

2. Proposed digital tools and/or spaces to be used

iBooks

This is a tool I've wanted to experiment with for a while, and I think it can be used to encompass all the multi-media affordances required for this essay. Eventually I'd like to expand on it and turn it into a resource for our students, educators and families.

3. Rationale

Previous research has indicated that successful language acquisition is the result of the combination of optimising factors relating to the child (student), family, school and community. These can be considered to operate in inter-relationships in a knowledge ecology. 

The affordances of digital technology in education combined with global connectedness allow unprecendented opportunities to leverage the connected learning principles of 

• production centered
• openly networked 
• shared purpose

within language learning, however the current structures of education may ignore or limit these opportunities due to institutional (or familial) fear, ignorance or perceived loss of control. 

This essay will look at the work of Seely, Hatie, Bawden, Ng, Siemans, Downes, Ford, Perrault etal. to examine learning design and the information environment and discuss how the learning systems and constituents allow for zones of intervention within the language learning ecology to leverage learning - sychronous and asynchronous, local and global and allow students and their families a greater locus of control over language learning. 

A particular focus will be mother tongue learning, an area often neglected by schools, who state they unable to justify supporting a large number of minority languages formally. I will argue this may be the result a failure of imagination and the application of digital technology and collaborative learning rather than a lack of resources.

===================================

So far I've been collecting some research and readings into (search terms - yes I do start with google scholar and then the university federated search and then the bibliography/citations of the articles I read that are worth while). My quest right now is to find the expert(s):

• "language learning ecology"
• "digital learning ecology"
• "digital language learning"
• "online language learning"

to mention a few, and I've come up with a wealth of articles and research studies. Seems I'm not the first to join the party here! (duh, as if). 

My ultimate goal is to create an iBook (of which this digital essay will be but a small 1,800 word part) geared to all the stakeholders in the language learning ecology of an international school (specifically the one I'm working at). 

So, a call out to everyone and anyone with useful leads for me to follow up (besides the 30 odd articles and one book - "Social networking for language education" I'll be digging into in the next week)

Unfair Advantage

Following the release of the results of our first assignment, there has been some soul searching and discussion on how better results can be attained and what went wrong etc. I’ve seen this on various Facebook groups I’m a member of too. I’ve referred earlier to the whole privilege thing, and I’ll say it again.  No one mentioned it, but of course some of us (myself included) had an unfair advantage. When I write “the whole privilege thing” and then so easily reference the exact article, it’s because I’ve read it, and stored it on Evernote, and can easily access it.... read more

Last night's Sichuan dinner in Chengdu - picking through the peppers!