Forced constraints

The third interesting observation was during a cello class today.  The teacher was trying to get the students to reign in their youthful exhuberance during a piece, and she deliberately introduced a constraint in order to get them to "feel" what she was trying to teach.  She got them all to turn the bow around so they were playing it the wrong way around and then to put their grip really close to the end and only play on that part.  They were then allowed a little more space and then to play normally again - mission accomplished.

ePortfolio - a counterview

As part of my 'onboarding' I was watching this video and thinking about it as it relates to what I've been observing. 

I've been blogging for a long time and have used it to document my learning and understanding about a wide range of things, including my children's development, learning chinese, coming to grips with living in different cultures and most recently as I continue my tertiary education.

I think Dr. Barrett has some very valid points. BUT. It really all depends on who is initiating the creation of the portfolio.  If I look at my children for example. I have a child who is a serial obsessive and during an obsession will spend every waking moment learning everything he needs to know about his desired topic. This includes joining online chat groups, watching youtube videos, experimentation, talking to people, finding experts and grilling them.  However he's not a keen writer or documenter so this will never go beyond what we as a family observe and what teachers may notice and appreciate (or even document themselves). If I look back at his "compulsory" school learning portfolio I see little or no evidence of this learning. Does this mean it didn't happen? Or that it's not appreciated or meaningless? It's in fact one of the things that happen that allow me to have complete faith that regardless of school grades "he'll be ok".  Gee made the same point in his discussion on passionate affinity spaces.

A friend of mine recently confided that her son had decided to "drop out" of school just before his final year.  I know a couple of other highly intelligent very motivated high school students who are at risk. Their problem? Not that they're struggling with the subject matter but that they're struggling with the matter of subjects. Often they seem to be just the students who DO know what their calling is and everything else on offer (demand) is just so much noise.

Out of the school environment, with the assumption that individuals are studying a subject of interest and choice another issue seems to arise.  Fear / embarrassment. So many of my cohort - otherwise accomplished, intelligent and knowledgeable individuals struggle to the point of refusal to document their learning process. This belies the fact that the whole point is to document a process rather than an outcome. It's also a very flawed view. What parent would refuse to video their child learning to roll over, sit, crawl, stand up and finally walk but say "I'll wait until they walk because all the rest is just practise for that end goal"?  I think as adult learners we do everyone else coming after us a disservice by not showing our mistakes and errors in thinking and assumptions and unpolished learning - because if they can't see the steps the end-goal seems so much less attainable.

So I guess the thing is yes to ePortfolios but perhaps negotiation as to the content and topics.

Literacy is not enough: Why we need to teach information literacy

Some weeks are just like hitting the jackpot in terms of the news and media world shouting out "yes, this is necessary" - although of course they don't phrase it that way, and they certainly wouldn't invoke libraries, librarians and information literacy in their communal hand wringing. But they should.

The first was the retraction of an article in Science. (Retraction watch - who knew that it even existed? And now I know it's going to be on my reading list from time to time! They're on twitter @RetractionWatch so that makes it easier - makes me think of "This idea must die" which is also on my reading list after hearing this talk).

Jesse Singal has written an excellent article - "The Case of the Amazing Gay-Marriage Data" - it really is worth reading the whole thing because it covers so many aspects of the world of academic publishing, how it can go badly wrong, and just how unlikely it is that it is found out and even if it's found out, how hard it is to be a whistleblower.

The second, was about chocolate, and how unfortunately it doesn't help in weight loss and in fact we'd all just been had as it was a bunch of science writers playing with journalists and our gullibility and lack of information literacy.  Here is John Bohannon, the culprit (?) 'fessing up: "I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How" and Rachel Ehrenberg's indignant retort on behalf of journalists "Attempt to shame journalists with chocolate study is shameful"

Obviously (one hopes) this is going to have repercussions in tertiary education and in journalism. But what can we learn from it in the K-12 environment?

Well a good place to start would probably be to introduce students to the concept of cognitive bias (and to do it WAY before they're doing TOK at IB level).  Here is a great little article by George Dvorsky on the twelve most common cognitive biases. Let's get everyone thinking - a little assignment for my readers - post in the comments what cognitive biases were present in each case! Just as we teach our G4's about marketing tricks of the trade, I'm sure this can be presented in a way that is accessible and easy to understand and relate to their own lives. 

I'm also thinking about how we could expand the math curriculum to replace a fear of numbers and statistics with a healthy dose of scepticism and what questions to ask and how to dig behind the "headline" numbers. I sometimes wonder why it is that we don't challenge our students more about their own data.  Thinking back to the exhibition presentations of our Grade 5's - yes they did a great job, and it was amazing what they pulled together and the confidence with which they could present. But who was looking at the data? Each group had a mentor, who could (should?) challenge when things don't add up, when what they're saying and what they can back it up with doesn't match. When things just don't make common logical sense.   Now this is a tricky thing. A very tricky thing. We don't like confrontation, and we're not really good at it either.  Now look back at the first article.  If the co-author had applied a little common sense and said "hey, if you've sampled 100,000 people, how did you get the $1m budget? (simple multiplication / extrapolation)" 

... how about Brookman? Things don't make sense to him, and what's everyone saying? "don't rock the boat"  And our students. Yes we want to created a safe learning environment where mistakes can be made.  BUT and this is a big BUT, we also want to be able to call them on their mistakes, give them a chance to correct them and build the resilience of being able to cope appropriately with (constructive) criticism AND the idea that this research thing is serious, and can and will be up to challenge, AND make them think more critically about how they interpret and use other's research.  I was not a part of the whole process and I know our digital literacy coaches and librarian were involved, I'm wondering if the math coach was also involved or not?  And in a school without a math coach - who would be doing this?  How many teachers at any level feel comfortable and confident enough around numbers and the "math" side of research to assume this role?  I'd argue all should be, and if not that's some PD that needs to be done as a priority. Because in the future and in the now, numbers are being used all around us, and the big big thing is "big data" and if we don't know how to look at numbers and to ask the right kinds of questions we are going to be manipulated into making the wrong assumptions, making the wrong choices. This stuff is important. (See my favourite math blogger Mathbabe on this).

All of us are literate in the sense of reading and writing. And some of us are critical readers of literature, we can analyse and comment and dissect. And then we get into the realm of being information literate, on the basic level, the whole model thing of finding a question, finding information, interpreting and using it, reflecting etc.  And then only can we get to the point of understanding who is writing something and why and then really understanding the socio-cultural / political and meta-cognitive things that are going on behind information. And if we don't start with the basics and make sure it's embedded in everything we do, how will we ever get there?

Articles and Publications

iBook: Digital Language Learning Ecology - June 2015

IASL Conference 2015:

Boelens, H., Cherek, J., Tilke, A., & Bailey, N. (2015). Communicating across cultures: cultural identity issues and the role of the multicultural, multilingual school library within the school community. In Manuscript submitted for presentation IASL2015. Maastricht, Netherlands.

INCITE magazine: 

Bailey, N. (2014). Getting Organised Digitally. INCITE, 35(10), 24. Retrieved from https://www.alia.org.au/sites/default/files/Incite%20October%202014_EEI.pdf

Livin' and Learnin'

Now that I’ve started breathing again I can start to think about the iBooks experience and what I’ve learnt from it. (Here it is .... my little baby: Digital Language Learning Ecology)

I found out today that there are no iBooks in Singapore where I’m living and where I wrote / produced / cobbled together my first iBook. Nope, none. Something I didn’t really actually realise. I mean I’d tried to buy Dave Caleb’s excellent photography iBook and couldn’t do it here, but I didn’t twig that I couldn’t buy ANY iBook here…   read more ....

Mad Rush to the finish line

Well it’s done! Well it’s kind of done. The digital essay part is done and I’ve got all the little interactive bits and pieces and I hope they work in real life and not just in preview.

Thanks to Sharon who has also been experimenting with iBooks author and was the crucial hour or so ahead of me to warn me of the pitfalls (only published within 24 hours of submission – YIKES) and the work-arounds – export to pdf.

Of course I was overly ambitious – this is not just a digital essay but I want it to be so much more. I want to expand it as a guide to the implementation of a digital language learning ecology at a school. So I do have blank chapters and LOTS of ideas. Of course this can be added to over time.

INF530 Digital Essay

This is the pdf which will have to do for now, because the iBooks file is WAY to big for what thinkspace will allow me …Read more ....

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