The war I am no longer fighting

[Laura Gibbs]

I just read Ed's blog post about the very human problems they have run into while implementing some technology-assisted learning at his school. I FEEL HIS PAIN. Although the experience I am going to write about here is in no way comparable in terms of scope to what Ed has written about, I do want to share this experience, because it really has convinced me that there are actually a lot of very intelligent teachers out there who are nevertheless clueless about online learning and who are going to continue to be clueless about it, willfully so, and whose cluelessness is going to be a serious obstacle to putting online learning at the forefront of educational reform (which is where I would hope it would be... but sadly, I am sure it will not).

So, here's my experience. The summer before last I was contacted by someone I've known for about 10 years, a university educator, now retired, who has been doing educational consulting for many years. He is committed to constructivist learning, student-centered learning, all kinds of good stuff. He contacted me because he had decided the time had finally come for him to learn something about the Internet, how it can be used for learning, and, in particular, how I use the Internet for my online courses. So, I prepared materials to help him see all the different tools I use in my classes and how each tool plays a particular role in helping the students to learn online and to interact with one another. We had a kind of "mini-bootcamp," spending a day going over all these tools and talking about the many possibilities they offered. All of this was new to him, since his only real experience with the Internet were some very limited websites that he had paid others to create, which were essentially advertising for his services, not anything of substance in terms of educational materials.

Since he had never taught an online course or even taken an online course, I urged him to get as much experience as he could by blogging, creating a wiki, experimenting with other forms of web publishing, uploading his bookmarks to some kind of shared bookmarking site, interacting with others at online social networking sites related to education, etc. etc. If his goal was to start offering his in-person workshops in an online format (as he said it was), he really needed to gain some direct, personal experience with the many different kinds of tools available so that he would be able to choose the tools that he liked best, and which were most suited to the types of content and sharing he wanted to promote with his workshop participants.

And what happened…?

Nothing. He didn't blog, didn't create a wiki, didn't share his bookmarks, and didn't participate in any online discussions related to education. Instead, he used the same tools he always had: he wanted to have telephone conversations with me, he sent me emails, he asked me to read Word documents that he attached to the emails, and finally - the straw that broke this camel's back - he requested instructions on how to build a website that would allow him to collect fees online for his in-person workshops. In the end, that turned out to be the only really pressing priority: running a business, not contributing to an educational effort online.

The whole experience left me deeply disillusioned. Here is someone who is a committed educator who flies around the world advising others on curriculum reform… yet he apparently is unwilling to even TRY to see what new modes of learning and sharing are made possible by online technologies.

So, I'll borrow some words from the beginning of Ed's blog post: There is a battle waging, one that we cannot possibly win. Ed was writing about the war to block the Internet… and the battle I have been fighting (but which I am not going to fight anymore) is the war to UN-BLOCK the minds of educators who simply cannot see beyond the world of classrooms and textbooks in order to grasp, even in a small way, what is happening to the world of learning and sharing online.

[Laura Gibbs]

Hi Erin, I am so sorry to hear that your online course experiences were bad. Although I am not surprised: most of the people at my school who teach online courses do not seem to know anything about the Internet really, so they just put documents online and give tests, and maybe a little discussion, but nothing more than that. They are teaching online not because they think it makes them better teachers but simply because it is more convenient for their schedule.

For me, though, online courses are WAY BETTER than regular classroom-based classes, because when you use social networking sites (like Ning), blogging, web publishing, and so on, all of a sudden the class takes on a different life of its own than you could ever have in a classroom. I've been teaching online for eight years now and I would never be able to go back into a classroom: although if you had told me when I got started that I would love teaching online, I would have been very doubtful! I began it as an experiment more than anything else... but it is an experiment that worked out better than I ever expected. Probably that should be one of the mantras of teaching: expect the unexpected! :-)

So, since this online experience is still something very new for both teachers and students alike, when students take one of my classes, they are often very surprised that there is more interaction between students, and and more interaction between me and each student one-on-one, than ever happens in a classroom. Luckily, this is a NICE suprise for them to experience.

[Erin Ogden]

I really like the social media that have cropped up in the last few years, and they've really enabled me to stay in touch with people I otherwise would never see or hear from again because of distance and circumstances. It baffles me that so many of my teachers over the years have had nothing but negativity for the internet, and the interesting and new things that are happening with it.

Now, I've taken quite a few online classes (and all were horrible), and even a few classroom-based classes that used internet-based technologies. As a student, I tend to avoid these classes whenever possible, though, because I find them to be extremely ineffective and I end up feeling disconnected from everyone else in the class by the imposed formality that necessarily goes along with the teacher giving you a grade for the comments you leave on others' posts.

Despite recognizing many of the issues that students experience with classes that use online technologies, and knowing that teachers also faced problems that prevented them using them effectively or at all, it hadn't really occurred to me that social media could be used quite this effectively for teaching/learning. It's one of the things that drew me in to this community.

I say all this only with the hope that it encourages you and gives you hope--many of those already in leadership positions in the education world may not be listening, but some of us coming into this profession behind you ARE listening.

[Ed Hitchcock]

Yup: http://bipedalia.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/thought-of-the-day-2/
I find that I have a tendency to "default" to old habits. In teaching, surfing, cooking, anything. I have to actively choose to experiment with new things. I presume this is normal human behaviour (it is certainly normal animal behaviour). But I am curious, so I *do* experiment, and learn. Some people just don't.
When I was younger, I had a philosophy of sorts that it can only rain on you if you let it. In other words, by not acknowledging the rain (so long as it wasn't a downpour), the dampness thus imparted would not be bothersome, and I could go about my business as cheerfully as if it wasn't raining at all. It only bothers you if you let it bother you.
Though I am perhaps more bothered by rain now than I used to be, I have adapted this philosophy to people. They can only bother me if I let them.
Unfortunately, completely blocking the internet for me and my students (including Fireside!) is closer to a downpour than a drizzle...

[Laura Gibbs]

Thank you, Ian! The crazy-making thing for me is that it is getting easier and easier, literally with each passing day, to join in online. When I first got into this business ten years ago, it took some real effort and ingenuity to publish a website, and it was impossible for the average person to create a dynamic website, where others could leave comments or collaborate with you. It was all about static websites, and even that was a bit of a challenge. So, ten years ago,eEmail really was equally viable as a means of communication; email offered interaction, while most websites did not.

But NOW, with web2.0, there is a whole dynamic world available to everyone. PBWiki gives educators their own collaborative web publishing space, Blogger.com lets people read what you write as a webpage or in a feed or via email, and sites like YouTube and Flickr make multimedia publishing so simple.

I'm sure I could come up with some nifty mathematical formula that would express the way in which my sympathy for non-technology-users diminishes exactly in proportion to the availability and variety and ease-of-use of the web2.0 breed of online tools.

My students have no trouble grasping this at all - they love experimenting with all the online tools, and they understand that it is like dining out: some people like one restaurant, other people like other restaurants... but until you at least taste something, how will you know what you like best...???

:-)

[Ian Carmichael]

Oh YES! If you don't use it you can't use it! Change involves being different - and if I don't use the tools I can't see their applicability or use their strengths. If I hadn't got hooked into Fireside - I'd have NO clues about educational uses of social computing - but having found a way to voice myself in this context I can see how others can be voiced.
And it's true everywhere - even in the mundania - I can't help people with spreadsheets if I don't use them. [I won't even know if they've just copied cells full of numbers and not used formulae!] Nor presentation media, nor video, nor word processors...
If I'm not immersed, won't even dip a toe in the water, it's nonsense to expect any advantages from digital possibilities.