I've been in the process of migrating a Technology Enhanced Learning site to a more general Learning and Teaching enhancement site and wondered whether what's below should go on the new site?
It's designed to go against the fahionista element in learning technology, where learning technologists rush from one new technology to the next and where, if you are still using what they have just left, you are told, "Oh, that's so last year?"
"Facebook that's rubbish we all use Twitter now." "Twitter? We're all on Grunter darling!"
Something similar is raised in this interesting post from the Ed Techie Thanks to @MrSimonWood for the link.The same people who were shouting about ePortfolios have now moved elsewhere. Always promoting the next thing in the same way they promoted the last big thing they are now dismissing without pausing to examine what they are actually doing. Is is just self-promotion? Is it the result of a JISC project fueled culture? Is it insecurity, thinking that anyone can do this job so I'd better look busy?
Why are learning technologists always trying to sell something? The latest tool they have found or that a salesman has shown them. And why do they think that what works for them (or more often their son, daughter, niece, cat...) should work for everyone else too? Don't get me wrong I think technology can be really tremendously powerful in supporting and enhancing learning and teaching but perhaps learning technologists are the biggest barrier in it's successful adoption.
Anyway on to Learning Technologists Anonymous. The first step. My name is Chris and I'm a Learning Technologist.......
Many men and women have heard or read about the unique Fellowship called Learning Technologists Anonymous since its founding. People who once used learning technology to excess, finally acknowledged that they could not handle learning technology in its current form, and now live a new way of life.
Learning Technologists Anonymous use the following 12 step programme.
1. We admitted we were powerless over the latest learning technology -that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn developing our strategies over to the learning community as we understood it.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to the learning community and to ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked the learning community to work with us to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through Appreciative Inquiry to improve our conscious contact with the learning community, to understand their needs and find ways to work together to support those needs.
12. Having had a ‘spiritual awakening’ as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to learning technologists and to practice these principles in all our affairs
3 comments:
Which reminds me when iIS our next meeting of LTA Chris ? some of us have much to share with the group......
Just been looking at Asus tablets so I definitely need a meeting!
e-Learning had the promise of creating a bright new world - an environment that would augment education and offset its glaring delicacies. Teachers assumed it was their dominion and dominate it with their group-think, their conformity and their reactionary mindset. There are, of course, exceptions that have a genuine talent for this type of work. (‘For the sake of sanity, don't generalise’ - psychocybernetic axiom) For the main, they fail to see that e-learning is the polar opposite of teaching and they react to dissenters with hatred. Yes, I said hatred and I mean hatred. I've sat across the table from barely qualified 'teachers', faces twisted with a hatred that looks psychotic. Just look at the reception AC Grayling is getting from the establishment. I saw the same reaction when Ireland’s online teacher-training college, Hibernian College, launched. Drumcondra trainee teachers positively reeked of outrage.
I am a Learning Technologist, though I use the title Education Technologist for the purpose of finding work. I am a boffin, trained in research and non-parametric statistics, one who tests and observes, tests and observes. I came to that on a parallel path, an Honours Psychology degree, a graduate diploma in Computer Science and a Masters in e-Learning Design & Development. I am untainted by the rose-tinted group-think of the teachers' common room.
I share your frustration. On twitter ,everyone has a success story, usually based-on a one-off event. In three years of monitoring this environment, I have seen only a handful of teachers state that social networking is undermining everything they're trying to do with their students. Not one has said that 'Again, I had to waste an entire period explaining that Pluto is NOT a planet'. Nobody has said anything remotely like that. Nobody has said that a student has been caught up in a flame-war or online bullying (and the online environment removes bullies’ inhibitions). However, non-teachers, or certainly those I perceive as being of a non-academic background, share our frustration and scepticism. I'm talking of people like Danah Boyd, Patty Savage, Graham Atwell, Donald Clarke, David Hopkins, George Siemens, Harold Rheingold and Stephen Downes.
What's passing for Learning Technology now is the work of those who identify too closely with children. It IS NOT enough to say 'everyone worked really hard at this', 'we did our best', 'we meant well'. These are the words to sooth children's bruised self-confidence. It is not acceptable in this field.
My observations are for the managers of these invaders. They are wasted on the miscreants. Those people regard me as an ill-informed, heretical parvenu and dismiss my eight years of college education on this specific field as irrelevant because it is not the same as theirs. (Don’t get me started on the effrontery of these people in claiming domination over accessible education and widening opportunity.) I regard them as ill-trained dabblers, incapable of critically evaluating what’s going on.
I’ve spoken to seasoned and astute managers. They have initially been scornful when they hear I’m an e-learning designer but they quickly see that we are of one opinion on what passes for e-learning – trite text-books online, peppered with a few ‘click here’ interactions, followed by a dessert of a quiz for testing short-term memory.
This is because the field is becoming dominated by ignorant sheep who don’t know that they don’t know.
So, mon brave, do your ranting and grinding of teeth. We have work to do, our part in making a better world. The usurpers have screwed it up and they are screwing it up again. (AGAIN, to the genuinely dedicated and talented teacher, YOUR contributions are invaluable. These comments are addressed to the over-achievers who should never have been certified.)
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