#EdBlogNZ Challenge WK 2
2. Find a blog post you have written in the past. Consider whether your thinking on the topic is the same or different and blog about why your thinking has changed or expand on your original ideas.
At Ulearn15 David Seymour talking about the importance of #MooresLaw and the vital role of teachers as disrupters. During David's talk I started thinking about a past blog post on Moores Law
I wrote this blog post (see below) almost two years to the day.
I am struck by how relevant this is - right now in regard to the things I’m thinking about.
It is from my thinking around Moore’s Law that propels my sense of “slow cooked - urgency” I”m writing my reflections in green.
Conflict, Change, Ideology, Innovation
A Perennial Question:
Q: What is going to disrupt us enough to interrupt the cyclic recapitulation, of linguistically dressing up, old ideas in a new way? (It hast' happened yet - buzz word bingo is alive)
A: Understanding the critically astounding relevance of Moores Law and ideas presented by Brynjolfsson and McAfee?
Two weeks ago (two years ago!)I was with a group of classroom teachers discussing the book
“Race Against the Machine is a portrait of the digital world – a world where competition, labor and leadership are less important than collaboration, creativity and networks.”
Suggests that with exponential growth and development of digital technologies sits alongside, in fact has caused, the increase in unemployment.
In Brynjolfsson and McAfee's words, "The root of our problems is not that we’re in a Great Recession, or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring."
Moores Law maintains that computing power doubles every two years. The exponential growth looking like an enourmous J curve!
To grasp the full picture of exponential growth Jane Gilbert talked us through a story which illustrates this outrageous growth. (This activity is really powerful and well worth doing)
"In one version of the story, the inventor of the game of chess shows his creation to his country’s ruler. The emperor is so delighted by the game that he allows the inventor to name his own reward. The clever man asks for a quantity of rice, to be determined as follows: one grain of rice is placed on the first square of the chessboard, two grains on the second, four on the third, and so on, with each square receiving twice as many grains as the previous square.
“The emperor agrees, thinking that this reward is too small. He soon sees, however, that the constant doubling results in tremendously large numbers. The inventor winds up with 264-1 grains of rice, or a pile bigger than Mount Everest. In some versions of the story, the emperor is so displeased at being outsmarted that he beheads the inventor.”
That tale is bracing enough, but there’s a kicker: The most profound effects of the doubling phenomenon aren’t felt until you reach the second half of the chessboard."
Brynjolfsson and McAfee, believe that we are only just entering the second half of the chess board!
Jane gave us a chess board and rice to really see this idea play out.
I awoke the following morning:
My first thought was Really?
Then I realised I was seriously unsettled.
So unsettled that it has taken me two weeks to write this post. (And 6 days to reflect on it!)
I think about the students in my classroom and then I know I have the dreaded question...
Q: Am I teaching for unemployment?
I'm teaching for my students to have the capacity and skills to create and be ready to engage with an ubiquitous future. I continue to find the idea of teaching for unemployment difficult to accept.
Following this question...
Q: Are we teaching for employment or citizenship?
I completely agree we are teaching for citizenship.
Thanks to @catherinecronin (Who's work and research interests are online and open education, digital literacies and social media in education.)
I tweeted and tumbled over,
The chapter I read suggests that it is time we looked at technology and education in a very different way. In doing so it is possible to race not against but with the Machine!
" .. instead of being distracted by our own (often privileged) personal experiences of digital technology, this book starts from the premise that we need to work instead towards understanding and acting on educational technology in terms of its complicated and often unjust connections to the larger society." Selwyn and Facer pg 4
Selwyn and Facer suggest we need to engage with a critical study of Educational Technology
1. Move away from technology being a means to an end as this does not ask us to question or understand the 'full nature and value of education'.
2. "..disrupt the deterministic assumption that technologies possess inherent qualities and are capable of having particular predetermined and predictable 'impacts' or 'effects' on learners, teachers, wider society." pg 8
Selwyn and Facer are able to show that the relationship between education and technology is a historical and present day narrative about Conflict, Change, Ideology, Innovation.
At present , in schools, I do not think we have even touched the edges on these ideas.
A few days ago @FDHarrington (A Secondary School Physics teacher) asked the question in his blog:
How do we convince others about the need for change?
Facer tweeted a suggestion, plain and simple.
"Start acting where you can."
Q: What does acting look like?
A: It is the process of doing. Be the change you want to see, include as many others networks as possible as diverse as possible. Have an open hand. Engage in activities that motivate creativity, change and foster strong collaboration towards idea improvement and the building of knowledge. Since writing this blog post I have read Jim Daytor’s work.
Daytor suggests.
"Any useful statement about the futures should appear to be ridiculous."
- Jim Dator
Q: What does acting sound like?
A: It is the process of speaking up. If opportunities arise where assumptions can be questioned step in, up and out! Be reflective, speaking ethically and critically. Know your research, be the research and share! It is possible that acting different needs to be so different that we feel unsettled. When our puse beats faster. That feeling when perhaps we are not ready. That may be the time to act.
