From the “Why Technology is Important in Education Dept” this just in:

Racine Sophomores Discover Asteroid - Education News Story - WISN Milwaukee
RACINE, Wis. — Three Racine sophomore students were notified on Monday that a celestial body they discovered during a science project had been verified as an asteroid.

And from the perspective of the Digital Divide in Education, is this information a surprise to anybody?

There’s a lot that’s wrong with the Solomon book. I’m not going to give out spoilers on the Introduction just yet. I’ll give you a chance to read and think about it a little. One point — that the higher the SES, the more likely the student is to use the computer to learn instead of learning from the computer — may not have changed that much.

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At the beginning of any collaborative endeavor, it’s important to begin to understand what we mean by the terminology. It’s relatively common for specific terms to carry a multitude of meanings and so it behooves us to agree on what we mean when we use them in the context of our discussions.

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning “to cultivate,”) generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Different definitions of “culture” reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity.

Wikipedia: Culture

Ya, ya, fine … now stop and look at what’s up there. Look at it from the context of your own “culture” … What patterns of human activity and symbolic structures can we find in just the first few lines of this ridiculously small snippet of culture.

1. The educational convention of establishing an agreed upon meaning of terminology: Why do we do this? Since terms are placeholders for ideas, symbolic generalizations of larger constructs, are we not actually doing a disservice in educational exploration by establishing the meanings before we have the discussions? Shouldn’t our discussions actually *be* the definitions? Educators seem to want to decide what the outcome will be before the discussion begins. Is that a cultural issue? Philosphers seem to have a looser context. Technologists might just want to agree on a standardization that permits exchange to occur.
2. The technological ability to retrieve information on demand as represented by the reference to a definition that’s already written out for me at Wikipedia: What was your reaction to the definition? Did you see “wikipedia” and dismiss it as “unreliable”? Is your cultural bias (either way) toward the source coloring your perception of the value of the information? How can you tell?
3. Meaning is dependant on context and context is defined by culture: Some of you are reading this from the context of “students in my class.” Others are reading it from the context of “twitterpeeps who followed a tweet.” At least some of the people in the first context don’t even know what the second context is. Does what I’ve written, as an attempt at “agreement” actually engender different meanings based on those two contexts? If not — are the cultures too similar? Are there contexts that are sufficiently different that we might actually have created an apparent agreement that is actually an unnoticed difference?

Given all this, and the post from yesterday, how do we approach a “simple” directive like “Describe the effect on culture of the printing press/movies/air conditioning/automobile”? How do we get at even the simple things, like — what does “effect on culture of the printing press” mean? Which culture are we talking about? Which printing press? Which effect? Is it even possible to discuss it comprehensively? As in “all effects” or “all cultures” or “all printing presses”? Can one person — even a specialized scholar in the field of “effect on culture of the printing press” — actually learn this? How would you know if you had it all? What if there’s a piece you missed? Could you tell? Would you know?

Does it matter?

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My procrastination is bearing fruit. For a variety of reasons, my preparation of the new course outline has been postponed, delayed, and otherwise interfered with by circumstances that I will claim are out of my control. The result of which is that I’m trying to get a semester’s worth of outline down before Monday’s class start. (Yes, students, even teachers wait until the last minute.) While this is costing me sleep, it’s also allowing me to intersect with reality in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to do - say - two weeks ago.

The new course - Technology, Education, and Culture - has run smack into the “why aren’t teachers using technology?” meme. It’s neither surprising nor ironic that the question is being asked by a group of teachers who use technology and I think the answer to the question is the subject of the course.

The question itself has been around for — gosh — about 2500 years or so. I think Phaedrus asked it of Plato about Socrates. Socrates had the little run in with hemlock before he adopted the new technology (some teachers will do anything to avoid changing a syllabus), but luckily Plato was more receptive and so he adopted the new technology — writing — and we are able to learn about the controversy. Over the years, it’s been kind of a simmering-pot issue on the back of the educational technology stove, but somebody bumped the burner up and it’s starting to boil over.

The (flawed) assumption is that there is a culture of Education or of Technology. The fundamental notion is that the evolution of technology has changed culture. The commonest examples are “the printing press” and “the automobile.” You can throw in “radio,” “movies,” “the microscope,” and “the internet” if you like. Pick your favorite example. They all apply.

My not really expert opinion on this is that there never was *a* culture to change, and since the starting point isn’t a point but rather a collection of different starting points in terms of culture, the effect of a cascade of technologies — not just some arbitrary generic big-T Technology — is not an entree, but a smorgasbord.

Where do we start and why do we have such small plates?

First, we have this big table full of cultures to choose from. We have a lot of “Western culture” here on this end of the table, but not far down there’s a bit of “Eastern.” There’s “American” and a small constellation of stars, stripes, and bibles. And “Canadian” with a broader landscape of languages, tastes, and flavors. There’s cultures of color, and cultures of language, and cultures of ability. It’s not single culture offered — as Serling might say — “for your consideration.”

Second, we have this big table full of Educational philosophies and practices. It may be even larger than the first because each culture carries with it twists and variations on the subject. A jumbalaya of elementary philophies and a rich curry of secondary. There’s the eclectic palettes of higher education and the haute cuisine offerings of graduate school. It’s fanned across the continuum of behaviourism, constructivism, and connectivism until the table fairly groans under the load.

Last, we’ve got this steam table covered with hot dishes of technology. Way back there on the far side we have “spoken language” and, next to it, “written language.” There’s some “print” offerings back there and a whole host of offshoot technologies. There’s a swath of communications carafes and another of transportation trenchers. On this end of the table we’ve got the hottest new digital dishes that many are walking past in order to get to their long established favorites. No matter how we urge them, they continue to consume those dishes with which they are most familiar — a kind of comfort food level of adoption. In troubled times, we all tend to retreat to comfort food, so who can blame them?

So? What do we put on our plates? Why do we make the choices we make? Does a culture change a technology? Or does a technology change a culture? Is the purpose of Education to maintain Culture or define it? Does the twitterverse effect your education? Or just your learning? A single Ning doeth not a Culture make, and two Pownces don’t make a trend, but do those technologies each have a culture? Is there an IM culture?

Can teachers teach Shakespeare without learning first to read? Do we care about Shakespeare? Or only about reading? About teaching?

Or is the point to it all the learning?

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On Monday, Jan 14, 2008, I’m going to be leading the discussion on the subject of Technology, Culture, and Education with EDUC628. I can’t express how excited I am to be taking on this challenge. The following questions are some of the questions addressed in this course.

In addition, I’d like to address some fundamental issues like

• What is culture?
• What’s the role of Education?
• Is it a universal role acrosss cultures?
• What constitutes technology?
• Can culture exist without technology?
• What constitutes ethical behavior? Is there a universal ethos?
• Can you be ethical and be a teacher?

It should be an interesting semester with more questions than answers.

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