ADTED 531 Unit 2 - Reflections

This week our reading assignment was to read Chapter 3 from Delivering Digitally (Inglis, Ling, & Joosten, 2002). There were a few key ideas that struck me in this material, which I think are worth exploring further here:

The chapter starts out by explaining the "traditional" Transmission Model of Education: "What a teacher transmits is information. When learners receive that information they construct knowledge from it." This, to me, accurately describes the first two most pivotal goals which any educational curriculum, traditional or digital, must address--

• How does the teacher transmit the information?
• How does the teacher help students construct knowledge from the information?
  

We know that in traditional education curricula, the teacher uses various classroom media to transmit the information to students, then has the student complete exercises or similar to try and construct knowledge from the information. In digital education curricula, it's the same story -- the teacher uses some kind of media to transmit the information to students. Then, the digital education teacher would have the student engage in some sort of assignment, discussion board, web 2.0 tool exploration, etc. to try and construct knowledge from the information. Pretty much the same story as the traditional classroom, just delivered via slightly different means. Both types of curricula successfully accomplish goal #1 and goal #2. But, then what?

Today's learner must go one step beyond simply constructing theoretical knowledge and becoming an "expert" in this knowledge. Today's learner must then join their theoretical knowledge with their tacit (experiential) knowledge about the subject. They must learn to apply the knowledge they've gained and USE it towards functioning and practicing in the real world. This is pivotal education goal #3:

• How does the teacher help students convert theoretical knowledge to tacit knowledge?
  

In the traditional classroom, how is this accomplished? Quite frankly, I don't think it is accomplished at all. This is the #1 complaint of employers, about today's newly-minted college grads: They don't know how to do anything! They have all this theoretical knowledge, but have never used it in the real world and therefor have no experiential, tacit knowledge that would enable them to perform a job. They have never joined their theoretical knowledge to action.

Chapter 3 in Delivering Digitally goes on to describe the advent of distance education, and how it was formulated to suit a particular need in the education industry. However, I don't think the chapter really hits on the most important point about distance education: It's perfectly suited to accomplish goal #3, which is to help students convert theoretical knowledge into tacit knowledge.

Distance education is uniquely suited to build interaction into its materials. By the very nature of many of the tools commonly used in distance education (discussion threads, chats, etc), distance education evokes hands-on participation from students, most of whom are already field practitioners and have a great deal of experiential knowledge stowed away. In this participation and interaction within the distance education classroom, tacit knowledge is built within the individual who is forced to think about how the knowledge theory they're learning applies to real life. And, tacit knowledge is also shared between practitioners, which serves to further bolster the educational value of the course.

"Even when the technology is serving to transmit information, the information being transmitted is structured in particular ways to achieve educational purposes. It is the way the information is structured that is of greatest importance here, not the speed or accuracy with which the information is carried from point to point." I think the point here is that it doesn't matter which technology is being used in the distance education classroom, or how fast/cool/new that technology is. The point is that it is used to foster the joining of theoretical knowledge and tacit knowledge in the students, which is where traditional education lacks and digital education shines.

ADTED 531 Unit 1 - Reflections

Overall, Getting Started and Unit 1 were not terribly difficult for me, and were actually a bit of fun. I am already familiar with most of the tools that we're using -- I have authored and am admin of several blogs, I use GoogleDocs and GoogleMaps regularly, and I explored SecondLife a while back for a research project I did for a client. I've heard of Skype before and my younger sisters use it all the time, but I simply had not yet had time to explore it. And while I use other media download services, I have generally stayed away from iTunes because it's not the easiest interface to use; however, it was useful to explore it for the purposes of this class. Basically, the tools that I am already familiar with and use on a regular basis were simply reviewed and I figured out how to login to the maps/docs for this class. The tools with which I was only moderately familiar, I took the time to get to know better. And the tools which I knew of but didn't really yet use, I had fun exploring around and figuring out how to use them.

For me, it didn't take me that much time or that much wrangling to explore and figure out how to use each of these web tools. However, one thing that I think that Penn State needs to account for when planning these types of lessons, is that there is a HUGE generation gap (some call it a "digital divide") in the students who are using these tools. Some students may "figure out" a new tool in 10 minutes of clicking around it, and some would take 3 hours to accomplish the same result, with much frustration. Piling on 4 different new web tools in one intro week may be a lot for some students to handle, if they're not familiar with the basics of the technology.

I see this all the time at work -- people of my generation, Gen Y, who have been raised around menu and click-based technology all of our lives, seem have an inherent skill set to work with these types of technologies which was somehow instilled in us growing up. I don't know if it came from playing Nintendo, or navigating the DVR, or whatever -- somehow, most people in Gen Y have an intuitive sense of how to click around and "figure out" how to use a web tool. (Notice I did NOT say we have an inherent sense of how to use the 6 different TV remotes on my coffee table. That technology, alas, I still fail to "figure out"). By contrast, I see in my personal experiences that people of the generations before me, Gen X and Boomers, generally seem to need to take more time with a web tool in order to "figure it out." The skills are there, but they're not as intuitive (read: quick) for folks who didn't grow up as a young child in the computer generation. And then by even greater contrast, there are those who come after my generation, Gen Z, who have literally always been "connected." Their computer and web 2.0 skills are LIGHTNING fast, and they put most people in Gen Y to shame with the amount of technology tools they can learn and simultaneously use at one time.

For me, I try to adopt new web 2.0 tools only when they seem to make a productive difference in my life. I love trying and learning new things, and as a card-carrying member of Gen Y I can do so pretty intuitively, but I now have so many tools, RSS feeds, and social networks in my life that I'm starting to have to hone back to all but the most important. When it takes me 30 minutes each morning to read my "time-saving" RSS feeds, I start to realize that my web 2.0 tools aren't necessarily time savers anymore. But, by contrast, when I can spend 10 minutes to have a conversation with a classmate in Skype that would have taken me an hour via discussion boards to have, THAT is a web 2.0 tool that is worth my time. So, overall last week's activities get a thumbs up from me, but just tempered with the word of caution that not everyone is as web-savvy as the kids walking around University Park right now :) Who, incidentally, look younger and younger to me each year that I go back.