I’m caught in this paradox. On the one hand, there is the promise of technological literacy and I understand the argument that without this alleged, abstract new language of technology, people will left behind in the job market. As evidence we have all the poor saps of my generation who are just flabbergasted by how to work a mouse. Humor intended.

I do believe that most of the basic computer skills are easy to pick up–turn it on, open a program, using mouse–even installing programs is easy now, compared to ten years ago.

However, I also can see that many available software applications are highly technical and require again basic computer skills and some procedural knowledge. AND they require knowledge from other skill sets. For example, video production. You can turn on the computer and open Adobe Premiere (if you are privileged enough to have access to it, which the kids in my study do) or i-Movie, but there are some principles of video and movie-making that would be helpful (visual literacy?), ability to craft a narrative (good ol’ fashioned literacy), understanding of constructing a powerful image (visual literacy), writing of a script (good ol’ fashioned literacy).

And let’s say you are a teenager, assigned a tutor to work with you on this, one-on-one. But your tutor has in his/her mind that this is about computer skills (ie, turn on the camera, shoot video, import video to computer, edit it) and you, the teenager, think you’re there to fiddle around with the computer too. You, the teenager, also don’t want to write anything or plan anything–this is the time where you play around with the computer. Could we possibly expect the resulting project to be a compelling video?

I realize this sounds really obvious, but if it were so obvious, I wouldn’t be banging my head against the desk as I review my data. At this point, I’m starting to feel like most of the kids in the study would have benefitted more from an hour of one-on-one writing mentoring than one-on-one computer mentoring. But who would financially back that, who would volunteer for that?

This is driving me absolutely crazy! Aside from pulling an swf file into Macromedia Flash, is there any way to see how long (time-wise) + a Macromedia Captivate movie is? I can see the totals on each individual slide, but I don’t want to have to add it up. I want to be able to know the total length of the movie and I want the viewer to be able to see this as well. Is that too much to ask?!?!?!?

Nate has posted a link to Learning goes underground . The premise of the post is that when content management systems fail to meet learner needs, learners take it outside, so to speak, and use technologies that better meet their needs. I fully concur that

The biggest impact is that the group of learners no longer has access to the thoughts of the entire group. Small communities form - but are not linked back solidly to the main group.

However, I would ask, what is so different about this situation from study groups and other fragmentation of larger class groups in face to face settings? I can think of a number of groups in graduate school that were formed as a requirement of the class and some that formed tangentially to the class. These small communities were not necessarily linked back to the main group in every case. I’m only suggesting that this has been as issue in education much longer than content management systems have existed and the difference is that learners now have a much wider arrays of tools to choose from to facilitate development of learning communities within a larger class. The onus, really, is on the instructor to help students in getting hooked up in these communities and getting access to the technologies that will enable them to do so, and to work at making connections back to the larger group…at which point we are back at Nate’s dilemma.

On page 2 of Literacy in the Digital Age by Frank B. Withrow, he throws out: ” Technology is second nature to our children” to summarize his great-grandaughers’ ease with using an Internet application. This gives me a horrible sense of foreboding of what lies ahead in the rest of the book.

I’m not going to say kids can’t be tech-savvy. They certainly have little apprehension about getting on a computer and clicking around aimlessly. If that is what is meant by second nature, I’ll concede that kids are often less risk-adverse than adults. The same applies to language learning and there is nothing I abhor more than the argument that kids learn languages better than adults because their brains are better at it. Certainly, kids have the advantages of having lower stakes in language learning or technology use as well as lower expectations on the part of others interacting with them. If you are five and you can open an Internet browser, you qualify as a young genius–if you 35 and you can’t open an Internet browser for whatever reason, people start looking at you condescendingly. And the funny thing is, in either case, when you’re 5 or 35, opening an Internet browser has absolutely nothing to do with your intelligence.

But I am getting away from the point. The point is that value-laden statements like the one above serve a very limited purpose. They simultaneously dismiss any children, who like the 35-year-old in my above example, have limited experiences with new technologies, and discourage adults who then think they’ve missed some mythical target age to be introduced to new technologies and they will just not be cut out for learning. While I agree that many new technologies are just part of the world of kids, I don’t think the fact that it’s second nature to them is necessarily positive—because the fact that something is second nature means you have not questioned its existence in your world.

To be fair, a little farther on he explains that we must “develop literacy skills that include critical analytical skills that enable citizens to use technology efficiently and ethically.”

We are tasked as a global society. For some people, computer technology is just part of the landscape, even while in the US, some people live without full indoor plumbing. Not relevant enough? Ok, how about explaining to the 1.6 billion people worldwide that live without electricity that computers are just part of the landscape. That could be a starting point for citizens concerned with ethical technology use.

“Technology has given you a power of inquiry greater than thinking individuals have ever possessed. Not to use it would be like not breathing.” - Charles ‘52 and Helen Dolan-John Carroll University -Commencement Address 1996

Today’s piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, What Do Educators Want Students to Be and to Do? doesn’t pit liberal arts versus educational technology, it posits their combined advantages for educators and students, while warning that before we decide how to harness these approaches, we have to decide what we need education to accomplish. Clearly, we need to decide our priorities in education and in society in general, at all levels. What is it that we want people to be? Right now, it appears the answer is fat, dumb, and complacent and believing that luck will swoop down and bestow upon them a large, untaxed trust fund. But I digress.

I began this post with the quote above which is referenced in the article, because some days I feel like that. But air is far less complicated than technology. And for the moment, it’s completely free—though access to fresh air arguably comes at a higher cost of living than access to polluted air. The quote represents an extreme of thought and is rooted in technological determinism—as if technology is an element that exists outside of humans, just as air does. And just to be nitpicky, I’m not sure which technology is being referred to—does my dishwasher give the power of greater inquiry? What about my car? They must be referring to agricultural methods, one of the most powerful technologies in human history.

Obviously, the quote, at least in the context of the article is meant to insinuate that communication technologies have given access to a medium that provides access to more people across greater distances in less time. However, it doesn’t give the POWER of inquiry as the article suggests, but the MEANS of conducting that inquiry.

Says the author:

“Liberal learning is much more than a set of courses or even an entire curriculum. It includes service learning with reflection, international education and study abroad, and immersion experiences of various kinds. It is a life-long task requiring mentors and role models.”

In other words, at least in the context of the article, the methods of liberal arts education as described above prepares students with the power of inquiry. The enhanced communication technologies available today are merely a slicker vehicle through which to conduct the inquiry. So why don’t they change the quote to: “Liberal arts education has given you a tremendous power of inquiry. Not to use it would be like not breathing.”

The problem is if it doesn’t say technology, nobody wants to pay to etch it on a building.

John DoE posts about grade inflation and his frustration with administrative pressure over the issue. At the program where I am completing a doctorate, a “C” is not acceptable for graduate work. I believe that if I were to have a “C,” that I would not be able to count that course’s credits toward my degree. I could be incorrect, as I have not tried to push the issue.
In that type of system, a “C” is not satisfactory–it is an “F.” That in turn means a “B” is satisfactory, and I would say an “A-” is good, an “A” what you should be typically getting if you want a career afterwards, though maybe that applies more to an academic career than a practictioner career, such as an instructional designer. I would argue that with these type of expectations, you don’t have the full range of the A-F grading system, except within +/- additions to the grades. I would think carefully about the ramifications of giving out a C, and most faculty, in my experience did too. This played out in the student body as well, with graduate students receiving a B scheduling frantic meetings with professors or lashing out angrily for the slight (as if it was their character instead of their work that merited such a grade).
On the flip side of that, why can’t a classroom of capable students all receive an “A” if they are all sufficiently talented and given the proper tools, resources, and guidelines to succeed. If a grade is not normative, ie, not referenced against peers but against a set of expectations, as educators should be doing, is it grade inflation if all the students are meeting these expectations?

Are computer literacy and technological literacy the same thing…or are they different?

If I argue that computer literacy is the ability to find one’s way around a computer (very generally speaking)–Is computer literacy a real “literacy” —is there a distinctive language and semiotic system embedded here, really…or is it really computer skills, ie, the ability to turn on/off a computer, cut and paste text…all tasks being more or less series of actions that we can train people to do in a series of steps. Certainly, there can be more advanced levels of this skill set–that’s why we call tech support, but again for most people, isn’t the basic set of knowledge most people have about using a computer not really a “literacy” but a skill.

And then, if I define technological literacy as the ability to work collaboratively on computer-based projects, or to research information on the internet, or to create a presentation on the computer—aren’t these essentially higher order thinking literacies taking place on a computer. In other words, one would need the computer skills required to do these on a computer—skills that could either take place through endless boring training session [Instructor at front of room drones on, Go to File, Select Open. Please find the Happy.doc file we have already placed on your desktop] or through trial and error in an authentic task (which is more likely to result in successful computer skills because you have had to learn the hows and whys of what to do more or less by yourself). But the “work collaboratively” and “research” and “create” parts of the above tasks could be done and taught without computer per se. Hence how all of us poor souls who grew up writing our English homework out by hand aren’t completely at a loss on the Internet.

But why the persistent use of the term “technological literacy” …except as jargon harnessed to obtain funding for hardware and software. And frankly, having a working knowledge of computers is an important skill. But, carpentry is too, and we don’t call that “wood literacy” or “hardware literacy” and certainly it requires problem-solving and project management (and without an “undo” button!!!) as well as the ability to use the tools…