One of the ways of occupying my time during the journey to Oamaru was loading my iPod with the recordings of Konrad Glogowski and Nancy White. I enjoyed the parallels between the two presentations and how they support my belief that there is a significant need for investment in technological understanding.
If I was honest most of my technological understanding has come from looking over the shoulder or learning from mistakes. If I was even more honest I would say my knowledge is sorely lacking and I often get quite defensive about it, and I'm sure I am not alone. This is an issue I think that is becoming more evident as the boundary between teacher, mentor, leader and learner is becoming significantly blurred in a digital environment.
I love the idea that the third place Konrad talked about is a place of learning and that the learning is not limited to the classroom / lecture theatre. I love the idea that learning is not limited by course prescriptions but only by imagination and enthusiasm.
What I don't enjoy is the lack of control or direction which I think is a reflection of my learning style and therefore part of what has become my teaching style. I think the responsibility of setting up the place of learning is automatically accepted by any who take on a teaching role but are we expecting all teachers to accept the responsibility of becoming technically savvy enough to facilitate a quality online learning environment? Are the technical whizzes able to direct all this wonderful knowledge to producing quality teaching opportunities? It all seems easy when the two entities are the same person like Konrad or Nancy but I'm not either...
Anyway, is there actually anything wrong with being mildly technophobic anyway?
Friday, August 31, 2007
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6 comments:
Nice reflections - thanks for sharing them. I wonder if technophobic is what you are experiencing, or, turned another way, you are playing the role of guardian against over techno-optimism combined with your preference for a more ordered approach. In both networked and community settings, I think it is ESSENTIAL to have people in these rolls. We are diverse - in our styles, values, wants, approaches. If we only designed based on the early-techno-adopter model I think we'd be setting ourselves up for failure.
The place in between, both the Third Space that Konrad talks about and the practice of learning both over each others' shoulders and from mistakes, is where I think we should devote time and attention. Understand what this means in our different contexts.
For me, working mostly remotely, it means structuring some time in my disordered life to focus on learning a new tool WITH someone. Last night a colleague on a project patiently walked me through "views" in MS Sharepoint. I had been struggling both because I really don't like the platform (but must use it for this project) and because I was not understanding her written instructions which were missing quite a bit of detail and context for me.
What she did was first walk me technically through the steps, then we looked at a few sites and discerned how they USED those steps to set their sites up.
At the end of a 45 minute web meeting with desktop sharing, I was miles ahead of where I started and where I was struggling, feeling VERY STUPID all by myself.
My coach, I think, also gained a better understanding of why this task was easy for her as a techie, and challenging for others of us who learn tools in other manners.
So STRUCTURING the conditions for this type of learning is something I'm going to try and do more of. Does that make ANY sense? (Sorry, rambly Friday)
PS. Love the blog post title!
Thanks Nancy - yes it does make sense. I guess I now need to be a little more proactive at finding shoulders to look over to help me develop the skills to struture this kind of learning better.
BTW thanks for the compliment.
Hi Mark, I really enjoyed your comments, also. I am new to the online learning 'thing' but love the whole concept. My use of the technology is coming about by 'looking over a shoulder' (just love that concept of Nancy's) and playing by myself, so to speak. For me, it is really important to allow myself to make mistakes and not be afraid to do so - and then get that across to the people I am trying to 'teach'. Cheers Sarah
http://sarah-stewart.blogspot.com/
Hi Mark. Nice post, and great to see such in depth comments coming in!
Is there anything wrong with technophobia? Well, in my role of showing people things about social media I have to deal with technophobia every day. Actually, I don't deal with it too well at all :( I have technophobe phobia!!
According to the wiktionary.org
-phobia, plural -phobias
1. Used to form nouns meaning fear of a specific thing.
claustrophobia
2. Used to form nouns meaning hate, born out of fear, directed towards a particular type of person.
homophobia
3. Controversially used to form nouns meaning political or religious organizations or viewpoints concerned with limiting or restraining a specific thing or idea.
... So, fear, hate, limiting, and restraining... yep, that's what I have to face a lot of, and it infects me too :(
So I gotta say, from the perspective of someone that teaches teachers about technology, technophobia is a very bad thing.
But you don't strike me as technophobic at all! :)
I have been looking around a few blogs and wikis and some of them look so very professional I just can't imagine how to do that. I feel I can waste an awful lot of time just bumbling and struggling to work things out. It would be good to have some shoulders to peak over.
cheers Carolyn
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