INF537 Critical Reflection

It has taken three years to complete my masters. For the first 18 months, I worked full-time in one school. For the next 18 months, I went into six different schools, primary and secondary, state and private, all boys, all girls, and co-educational. The shortest was one day relief teaching and the longest was a six week library contract. While working through the INF537 materials, I have often considered these schools to connect the academic theory with the practical reality.

When learning analytics was introduced (Welsh, 2016), I was in a school starting to mine this field. It should have been on my mind because information professionals are encouraged to collect data to update and review our practices. Though it had slipped off my radar it was highlighted again by the convergence of study and work. The academic mentoring team reached out to classroom teachers, encouraging them to consider the depth of statistics from the LMS, but I observed teachers grapple with data retrieval, and wrote about it on my blog. Busy teachers must consider the pros and cons. Will investing time analysing numbers and percentages benefit their students and improve their classroom practices? Experts say yes (Selwyn, 2014), and clearly analytics is effective in higher learning institutions (Siemens & Long, 2011), but there is concern at the secondary and primary school levels, and we are just starting to ponder the potential for learning. Exciting times!

I also wrote about the participatory web in that blog post. During my three years, almost every course alluded to it, informing my practice. The benefits of joining virtual communities is well documented (Burkhardt, 2009,  Rheingold, 2012, Seimens & Long, 2011), and I have demonstrated better learning when I collaborate and share with my academic peers. In many schools where I worked, the LMS is finally being normalised, and with more reliable hardware and wider bandwidth, there is more opportunity to create safe, private virtual spaces. It is still difficult to get quality student participation. While they share much in personal networks, they treat educational ones with scepticism, or as a place to play (meaning they post ridiculous, irrelevant spam). Teachers aren’t particularly good at moderating these sites yet, tending to either give up too easily, or let the nuisances have too much leeway. I am sure there are teachers who have successfully nurtured productive online discussions, and I am hopeful this area will grow. Exciting times!

But for all that is exciting for schools in the future, it seems the role of teacher librarian is less secure. We are marginalised, or returned to classrooms. In one secondary school, my role primarily was to assist students with their printing requirements. In another school, I was expected to teach Maths to a Year 1 class, even though it was outside my comfort zone and my teaching expertise. In almost every school, I was required to supervise students in study classes. These students didn’t have expectations of me, but neither did they respect or welcome my attempts to assist them. Very few teachers return to study apart from those moving into leadership positions. Yet teacher librarians go back once, sometimes even twice, and become leaders in academic research, educational theory, and immerse themselves in digital environments. Even in situations where I used my knowledge to advise or support, I was often humoured rather than taken seriously. Although my attempts to initiate action based on my academic learning in the different schools has been a challenging, even sometimes demoralising experience, this masters degree has been worthwhile.

References

Burkhardt, A. (2009). Four reasons libraries should be on social media. Information Tyrannosaur. Retrieved from http://andyburkhardt.com/2009/08/25/four-reasons-libraries-should-be-on-social-media/

Rheingold, H. (2012). Toward peeragogy. DML Central, 23 [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://dmlcentral.net/blog/howard-rheingold/toward-peeragogy

Siemens, G., & Long, P. (2011). Penetrating the fog: Analytics in learning and education. EDUCAUSE Review, 46(5), 30.

Selwyn, N. (2010). Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of educational technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1), 65–73.doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00338.x

Welsh, S. (Producer). (2016, 24 July 2016). Learning Analytics: A Traveller’s Guide. [online colloquium]

 

Student responses to questions – an infographic by visme

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Digital Scholarship

While traditional higher education institutions and academic publishers are not prepared for the future, digital scholars have embraced the participatory web, and take risks and innovate to exert pressure on academia to transform, particularly to benefit teaching and learning.

Academic scholarship is the last bastion of the old world. While the rest of civilisation has embraced both the advantages and the disadvantages of digital technologies, elite tertiary institutions and the publishers of research have successfully defended their control over a small, but important aspect of culture—that of academic scholarly writing. The concept of digital scholarship has emerged to challenge the ‘restricted hierarchy of functions’ (Stewart, 2015), and while there are some commonalities, categorised best by Boyer’s functions (1990), there are significant differences. The differences can be attributed to the opposing foundations of each endeavour, and questions remain as to whether they can be reconciled. There is tension between the new modes of open and participatory practice, and the out-dated copyright-restricted traditions. Scholars who leverage the web to advance their academic pursuits embrace open, participatory, and free ideals, both personally and professionally (Pearce, Weller, Scanlon, & Ashleigh, 2010), while those who remain part of the establishment value promotion and tenure, and question the quality of output produced through digital participation (Esposito, 2013). Digital scholars are innovators, attempting to threaten the control of the higher learning institutes, and momentum is building. A digital scholarship renaissance would benefit students, who are suffering most from this lack of common ground. Further research is required to force more institutions to view Web 2.0 technologies as legitimate tools for scholarship, and to acknowledge change is inevitable.

 

To define digital scholarship, proponents (Scanlon, 2014; Veletsiano & Kimmons, 2012a; Weller, 2011; Costa, 2013; Borgman, 2007; Pearce, Weller, Scanlon, & Ashleigh, 2010) use Boyer’s four principles, aligning digital scholars directly with traditional scholars. Both groups engage in original research, integrate by connecting and making meaning from data, and apply findings to wider social contexts. They teach their specialised knowledge (Boyer, 1990). However, with the affordances of Web 2.0 tools, digital scholars have more scope (Weller, 2011), larger audiences (Scanlon, 2014), and more collegial connections (Veletsiano & Kimmons, 2012a). Stewart (2015) argues digital scholars extend Boyer’s framework by collaborating with cross‑discipline connections, by giving voice to minority groups, women, and junior scholars, and by allowing more ‘horizontal and hybrid connections’ thereby fostering integrated scholarship. Scholars who build online identities must still publish traditionally to develop their academic stature (Tӧtӧsy de Zepetnek & Jia, 2014). Beyond that unavoidable, narrow process, digital scholars choose to risk their scholarly reputation by using informal and publicly accessible platforms (Weller, 2011; Costa, 2013), constantly sharing, building, and connecting with other scholars and laypeople, fostering democratisation, and validating their endeavours (Greenhow & Gleason, 2015; Costa, 2015). The perception is that digital scholarship desires to ‘seek a wider consensus on what knowledge is valued and valuable’ (Goodfellow, 2013).  Higher education institutions, with their elitism, exclusivity, and preferential treatment (Goodfellow, 2013) react against this perception, and against the more inclusive approach to knowledge construction (Weller, 2011). So while the definitions of digital and traditional scholarship remain aligned, digital scholars move beyond the status quo to embrace a greater scholarly practice in an emerging virtual space of flexibility and adaptation.

 

The concept of ‘the greater good’ (Davidson, 2016) is another ideal that influences both modes of scholarship. Neither group is paid for their publications, either closed or open (Tӧtӧsy de Zepetnek & Jia, 2014), and both groups engage in discovery to better society and to educate the next generation of scholars (Davidson, 2016). Boyer (1990) insists that application of research is an essential element of scholarship and confirms the value of studious pursuit. He argues scholars uphold the ideal of contributing to society (Goodfellow, 2013). Notwithstanding these noble intents, scholars have other agendas which reflect in their practice. Traditional scholars caught up in a publish-or-perish mentality (Tӧtӧsy de Zepetnek & Jia, 2014), must balance the symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship between higher institutions and publishers to secure prestige and influence (Jamali, Nicholas, & Herman, 2016). In contrast, digital scholars inhabit a more inclusive community of collegiality and freedom (Costa, 2015). For example, Greenhow and Gleason (2015) reconceptualise the ‘social scholar’ as one who fully encapsulates the ideologies of social media and normalises these practices to give them legitimacy (Scanlon, 2014). While offering up research to scrutiny can risk an author’s control, and expose inaccuracies in methodology (Greenhow & Gleason, 2015), scholars recognise the transformative potential, and acknowledge that techno-cultural changes exert pressure on institutions and publishers (Veletsiano & Kimmons, 2012b). During the time of St Augustine, scholars readily forfeited intellectual rights to the scientific community (Borgman, 2007) for the benefit of everyone. Contemporary digital scholars exemplify this powerful paradigm by accepting criticism while research is ongoing (Costa, 2013; Goodfellow, 2013), and with the rapid dissemination of ideas drawing multi-discipline collaborations, recognise further innovation is possible. Yet, traditionalists continue to conceal their research and findings until their final document is published. They regard the Internet as ‘a shed rather than an open space’ (Esposito, 2013), and prefer reliable and trusted peer review. They question the quality of research from ‘non-specified readership’ (Friesen, Gourlay, & Oliver, 2013) through open channels. Ultimately, even with differing agendas, both types of scholar work, research, and teach for the betterment of society.

 

Even with the two similarities, the underlying philosophies have the inevitable effect of keeping emergent versus traditional in a tense, and some claim, untenable relationship (Goodfellow, 2013; Weller, 2011). The open, participatory nature of digital scholarship is a fundamental difference. The participatory web constructs knowledge using online platforms offering autonomous control and reciprocal opportunities (Weller, 2011; Costa, 2013). Scholars who inhabit these spaces embrace the values and philosophies of democratic practices (Veletsiano & Kimmons, 2012b; Costa, 2015), and continually challenge themselves and each other through conversations on microblogging sites, forum lists, and personal blogs. They claim this deepens their knowledge (Wolski & Richardson, 2014), improves their teaching (Brown, 2016), and increases their visibility (Scanlon, 2014). They also maintain it builds their professional credentials (Stewart, 2015). Ironically, articles about traditional scholars worrying that their findings will be stolen or plagiarised on the open web (Esposito, 2013) were accessed freely through a Google search, but the authenticated CSU library Primo search was necessary to locate articles about the transformative potential of the participatory web (Greenhow & Gleason, 2015; Scanlon, 2014). A recent study about how reputational sites, such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, contribute to a scholar’s academic standing shows that although the sites are growing, most members believe they make no significant difference to their reputation (Jamali, Nicholas, & Herman, 2016). Digital scholars know they are perceived as risk-takers and unconventional because they choose to publish and collaborate openly (Costa, 2015, He & Jeng, 2015), but they believe they can ‘be the change they wish to see in the world’ (Gandhi), and believe transformative practice being the norm is the natural and inevitable progression.

 

Another important ideal of digital scholarship is free, in both the monetary and personal-freedom senses. Ironically, traditional scholars also write for free, but that is framed around the notion that scarcity of knowledge equals value (Stewart, 2015). Digital scholars now have open access to journals and institutional repositories (Veletsiano & Kimmons, 2012a). Philanthropists, universities, and governments fund these online databases. These consortiums ensure the values and ideas of open and free proponents have a fully functional space in which to share their research (Davidson & Goldberg, HASTAC, 2016; ACER, 2016). Traditional scholars, on the other hand, bound by the confines of academic institutions, submit to journals that are controlled by a small number of publishing companies, which in turn, charge exorbitant fees for access (Tӧtӧsy de Zepetnek & Jia, 2014). Unsurprisingly, research shows that open access articles have greater readership and citation impact than those which are locked down (Veletsiano & Kimmons, 2012a), but while they have value amongst the scholars in the digital realm (Costa, 2015), they have little value to those who regulate copyright-restricted journal publishing (Jamali, Nicholas, & Herman, 2016). Even an article printed in mainstream media in which leading scientific journalist, George Monbiot (2011) decried the greed of the scholarly publishers didn’t make any difference to the control of these oligopolies (Tӧtӧsy de Zepetnek & Jia, 2014). There is a strong belief that peer-review maintains an author’s high regard (Harley, Earl-Novell, Arter, Shannon, & King, 2007), and the established reward system ensures high quality research (Jamali, Nicholas, & Herman, 2016). The desire to be credible amongst peers overrides the belief that digital technologies could make scholarship more efficient and more equitable, and subsequently those aligned closely with an open ideology are often forced to publish in both arenas (Tӧtӧsy de Zepetnek & Jia, 2014). Digital scholars also embrace the personal-freedom meaning of free. Many blog autonomously, and while blog content could go towards their scholarly reputation (Weller, 2011), traditional institutes find such online outputs difficult to measure, and subsequently ignore them in favour of more easily recognisable standards (Tӧtӧsy de Zepetnek & Jia, 2014). As more scholars choose to publish in open communities, pressure builds on universities to recognise the diversity of scholarship (Anderson, et al., 2013; Wolski & Richardson, 2014).

 

Boyer’s (1990) principle of teaching is integral to all areas of scholarship, and deserves to be discussed separately as it highlights much of the tension. Most scholars are lecturers, teachers, mentors, or tutors. Digital technologies have impacted teaching and learning. One impact is the development of LMSs and MOOCs, giving educators a choice about how to deliver classes and content, and a full spectrum of student connectivity options (Brown, 2016; Stewart, 2013). It’s possible for teachers to remain entirely distant, offer course materials online, provide discussion spaces for students, and rarely interact personally. Digital scholars employ a full range of social networking tools to connect directly and readily. Their confidence in virtual worlds and understanding that ‘blended instruction’ (Brown, 2016) is more engaging, more equitable, and more likely to prepare students for the future (Stewart, 2015) is reflected their inclusive pedagogy. It is messier, more complicated, and more democratic than traditional scholars like; however, the increase in research about how organisations and individuals offer blended learning in their curriculum and pedagogy (Harley, Earl-Novell, Arter, Shannon, & King, 2007; Scanlon, 2014; Brown, 2016) means that universities must seriously consider how their institutions can support diverse and sustainable approaches to scholarship, teaching, and learning (Katz, 2010; Yair, 2008; Wolski & Richardson, 2014). Unfortunately, there is little research about how technology impacts learning, although Selwyn (2016) has shown this area is both critical and lacking.

 

Calls are made (Stewart, 2015; Veletsiano & Kimmons, 2012b) for a more critical stance on open and participatory scholarship to promote its validity and sustainability. Until now most of the studies have been descriptive (Friesen, Gourlay, & Oliver, 2013), and lack empirical evidence that participatory technologies result in the same high quality of research, teaching, and learning. Poor coherence among the proponents of digital scholarship, and their ‘lack of conceptual clarity’ (Friesen, Gourlay, & Oliver, 2013) doesn’t help their cause. Many scholars writing in this field are interested in how digital technologies impact on knowledge construction, and more data that demonstrates participation of scholars from diverse disciplines would enhance the body of research. While some articles were located (Hirst & Treadwell, 2011; Miller, 2012; Proctor, et al., 2015), it required persistence. Digital scholars are fortunate to exist in both the establishing virtual and the traditional communities. While they seem unable to reconcile their differences, they co-exist. If nothing disrupts the control of the higher institutes of learning, and the profits of the oligarchies of publishing, students will be forced to navigate the two realms, which can be confusing, and often detrimental to effective learning.

 

The ideals of a digital scholar indicate a preference for open and participatory practice reflected in their professional research and teaching, and this blurs into their personal online identity. Digital scholars believe issues of equity and democratisation are important aspirations, while traditional scholars conform and maintain the status quo. Although at first glance the material appears separate and disjointed, a thorough analysis reveals a larger, more coherent picture. Visually, the world of higher education is a monolith—large, immobile and foreboding. Conceptually, it embodies prestige, exclusivity, and homogeneity. Its governance is bureaucratic, output-oriented, and profit-driven. It represents a system that is slow to change and closed to adaptation. Imagine now, students about to enter this world. They see inflexibility, limitations, and judgement. They arrive with their academic requirements on a mobile device that transports them anywhere, anytime. The two paradigms—imposing, out-dated tradition and connected digital newbies—struggle to fit together. It’s the digital scholar who will ensure young people engage and learn. They are the negotiators, the engineers who seek to bridge the irreconcilable ideologies. Digital scholars continue to subvert the traditions and break away from conventional practices to secure legitimacy for their participatory ideals. They believe the future of scholarship, of innovation, and teaching requires transformational change, and soon.

 

 

References:

Anderson, M. G., D’Alessandro, D., Quelle, D., Axelson, R., Geist, L. J., & Black, D. W. (2013). Recognizing diverse forms of scholarship in the modern medical college. Int J Med Educ, 4, 120-125. doi:10.5116/ijme.51b4.730c

Borgman, C. L. (2007). Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet. Cambridge, US: The MIT Press.

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Enlarging the Perspective Scholarship Redefined Priorities of the Professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Brown, M. G. (2016). Blended instructional practice: A review of the empirical literature on instructors’ adoption and use of online tools in face-to-face teaching. The Internet and Higher Education, 31, 1-10. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2016.05.001

Costa, C. (2013). The Habitus of Digital Scholars. Research in Learning Technology, 21. doi:10.3402/rlt.v21.21274

Costa, C. (2015). Outcasts on the inside: academics reinventing themselves online. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 34(2), 194-210. doi:10.1080/02601370.2014.985752

Davidson, C. (2016). Thinking BIG Inside the Box: Redesigning Higher Education for the World we want.  Retrieved from https://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2016/07/25/thinking-big-inside-box-redesigning-higher-education-world-we-want

Davidson, C., & Goldberg, D. T. (2003). HASTAC.   Retrieved from https://www.hastac.org/

Esposito, A. (2013). Neither digital or open. Just researchers: Views on digital/open scholarship practices in an Italian university. First Monday, 18(1). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3881/3404 doi:10.5210/fm.v18i1.3881

Friesen, N., Gourlay, L., & Oliver, M. (2013). Editorial: Scholarship and Literacies in the Digital Age. Research in Learning Technology, 21. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.3402/rlt.v21.23834

Gandhi, M. (n.d.) retrieved from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mahatma_gandhi.html

Goodfellow, R. (2013). Scholarly, Digital, Open: an impossible triangle. Research in Learning Technology, 21. doi:10.3402/rlt.v21.21366

Greenhow, C., & Gleason, B. (2015). The Social Scholar: re-interpreting scholarship in the shifting university. On the Horizon, 23(4), 277-284. doi:10.1108/OTH-10-2014-0035

Harley, D., Earl-Novell, S., Arter, J., Lawrence, S., & King, C. J. (2007). The Influence of Academic Values on Scholarly Publication and Communication Practices. The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 10(2). http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0010.204?view=text;rgn=main doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0010.204

He, D., & Jeng, W. (2015). Scholarship in Networked Participatory Environment Scholarly Collaboration on the Academic Social Web: Morgan & Claypool Publishers.

Hirst, M., & Treadwell, G. (2011). Blogs Bother Me. Journalism Practice, 5(4), 446-461. doi:10.1080/17512786.2011.555367

Jamali, H. R., Nicholas, D., & Herman, E. (2016). Scholarly reputation in the digital age and the role of emerging platforms and mechanisms. Research Evaluation, 25(1), 37-49. doi:10.1093/reseval/rvv032

Katz, R. N. (2010). Scholars, Scholarship, and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age. EducauseREVIEW, 45(2), 44-56.  Retrieved from http://er.educause.edu/articles/2010/4/scholars-scholarship-and-the-scholarly-enterprise-in-the-digital-age

Miller, D. (2012). Open access, scholarship, and digital anthropology. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2(1), 385-411. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau2.1.016

Monbiot, G. (2011, 30 August 2011). Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

Pearce, N., Weller, M., Scanlon, E., & Ashleigh, M. (2010). Digital Scholarship Considered: How Technologies could Transform Academic Work. in education, 16(1). http://ineducation.ca/ineducation/article/view/44/508

Proctor, J. D., Eshleman, K., Chartier, T., Taub-Pervizpour, L., Bott, K., Fry, J. L., . . . Moreno, T. (2015). Digital field scholarship and the liberal arts: results from a 2012–13 sandbox. International Journal on Digital Libraries, 16(1), 5-13. doi:10.1007/s00799-014-0126-y

Scanlon, E. (2014). Scholarship in the digital age: Open educational resources, publication, and public engagement. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(1), 12-23. doi:10.1111/bjet.12010

Selwyn, N. (2016). Digital Downsides: exploring university students’ negative engagements with digital technology. Teaching in Higher Education. doi:10.1080/13562517.2016.1213229

Stewart, B. (2013). Massiveness + Openness = New Literacies of Participation? MERLOT Journal of Online Teaching and Learning, 9(2).

Stewart, B. E. (2015). In Abundance: Networked Participatory Practices as Scholarship. The INternational Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(3). http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2158/3343

Totosy de Zepetnek, S., & Jia, J. (2014). Electronic Journals, Prestige, and the Economics of Academic Journal Publishing. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 16(1).  Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0003.308

Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (2012a). Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(4), 166-189. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1313/2304

Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (2012b). Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent techno-cultural pressures toward open and digital scholarship in online networks. Computers & Education, 58(2), 766-774. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.10.001

Weller, M. (2011). The Nature of Scholarship, in The digital scholar: How technology is transforming scholarly practice (pp. 41-51). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Weller, M. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance, in The digital scholar: How technology is transforming scholarly practice (pp. 85 – 96). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Wolski, M., & Richardson, J. (2014). A Model for Institutional Infrastructure to Support Digital Scholarship. Publications, 2(4), 83.  Retrieved from http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/2/4/83

Yair, G. (2008). Can we administer the scholarship of teaching? Lessons from outstanding professors in higher education. Higher Education, 55(4), 447-459. doi:10.1007/s10734-007-9066-4

 

 

Brisbane Writers Festival

I spent last Saturday at the Brisbane Writers Festival, and while I spent two of those sessions with YA authors, (Melina Marchetta and Kirsty Eager), I spent the other two listening to people talk about educational topics.

One session was a bloke called Damon Young. He is a philosopher and a writer. This session was about a book he had published called The Art of Reading. I haven’t read the book, nor did I purchase it, but it did sound as though it would be a useful addition to a collection. In it, he talks about the idea of ‘excellent reading’, and muses on why it is never discussed, or considered valuable.

He breaks the book into literary virtues, such as the virtue of curiosity, and the virtue of temperance, and so on, and it was mostly about the virtue of patience to which he addressed us (with intelligence and an incredible vocabulary). The literary virtue of patience, in Damon’s mind, means the need to realise that sometimes we can try to read a book, and that we’re not in the right head space, or at the right age, or even in the right geographical place to appreciate a particular text. He went on in detail about this fact, and I could see a way it would fit into our libraries. Not all kids are at the same level of maturity or reading ability to take on the same books at the same chronological age. As librarians, we are fully aware of this, but to have it confirmed and written down, is a validation we sometimes need.

He also talked about the way that although reading can increase our empathy, our compassion, particularly for people who are completely unlike us, it doesn’t necessarily make us better people. He said there a lot of prolific readers who aren’t nice people. This really threw me. I guess I have a sense of moral superiority about my reading, and I do believe I am a better person for having read 108 books already this year. But that’s probably not the case. His comments were challenging and provocative. Audience members tried to politicise the situation, asking what Damon thought might be on the bookshelves of Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison, and Damon was wise and witty, and careful.

The art of, and love for reading, seems to be strong, but I am not sure we are asking enough of our young readers, and maybe a book like this could be something aspirational.

The last session of the day that I attended was a conversation with Lucy Clark. I know very little about this author, or her book, Beautiful Failures, but Megan regards it highly, so we went to listen. It turns out Lucy is a journalist and struggled for years with their daughter as a school-refuser. She talked passionately about the high levels of stress to which our children are exposed, and as part of her journey to figure out why that is the case, she traveled all over the world to speak to parents, educators and young people about school systems, and why education still predominately functions under a (clearly outdated) 19th century industrial model.

See, I have been part of this struggle for my entire teaching career. It amazes me when people come to this fresh and proclaim, something needs to be done. Hello! We have been trying! Don’t blame the teachers! Look, bless her, she’s articulate and passionate and informed, so yeah, maybe she can reach policy makers. Maybe she can make a difference. One good thing she did say to parents: Don’t ask your kids about their marks, ask about what they’re learning, what they’re loving in school. Talk about ways to learn. That was nice.

A lot of her scorn lies with high level testing–The PISA tests, NAPLAN, external exams for Year 12 students aiming for university. She also had a lot of anger towards elite private secondary schools who, she says, pressures children from the minute they walk through the hallowed halls in Grade 7 (6? 5? even earlier?). There was praise for the Finnish system, where private education was outlawed 50 years ago. Clark says equality of resources and allowing students some autonomy with their learning are steps in the right direction to bring joy back to learning.

In an an article, she examines the myths of education which is short and interesting. In the session, she spoke against streaming, and was quite scathing of gifted and talented programs, and yet in this article, she condones ‘stage not age’, which is a concept linked to streaming. You can’t put kids in a stage appropriate for them requiring some vertical groupings, without it being a type of streaming. I could feel her anger about the global situation of education, and while she tried not to generalise too much, she was always in danger of stereotyping and contradicting herself (which she did).

All of her proposed changes to education aligned with 21st century teaching and learning practices. It’s funny that we want students to be playful, to be curious and delight in learning and follow their passions, and yet once they express an interest in tertiary learning, it becomes a completely different playground. Not so playful, not so joyous, and dependent on rules, outputs, and confined pathways.

So, while I agreed with many of her points, I was also frustrated and to be honest, left depressed.

 

 

 

 

One more survey

For me, one of the interesting aspects of Megan and Jackie’s forays into the Maker spaces world is the recognition they have been granted in the teacher librarian community. Or is it in fact, only because I follow their exploits on many of their social media outlets that I know so much about about their achievements.

So I have created one more survey that I would like our colleagues to complete. This will identify whether their fame has extended out beyond friend networks into broader professional ones.

Sharing and teaching others is a considerable criteria of digital scholarship (Boyer, 1990). Megan and Jackie qualify for this label because their journey has involved all of the foundations of scholarship. They set out to discover how best to promote 21st century teaching and learning practices, and when they researched the components of the Digital Technologies Curriculum, the engagement offered through maker spaces experiences, and applied it to their core work of research and literary lessons to build an integrated program, they demonstrated vital criteria of scholars. But to also take the one step further to not only share their learning, and their journey, but to also agree to teach it to others, is an indicator of what’s best about being a digital scholar (Weller, 2011; Pearce, et.al. 2010).

 

References:

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Enlarging the Perspective Scholarship Redefined Priorities of the Professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Pearce, N., Weller, M., Scanlon, E., & Ashleigh, M. (2010). Digital Scholarship Considered: How Technologies could Transform Academic Work. in education, 16(1). Retrieved from http://ineducation.ca/ineducation/article/view/44/508

Weller, M. (2011). The Nature of Scholarship The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice (pp. 41-51). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Surveys (in draft form)

My case study is quite different from many others, in that I am completing it on behalf of others. This causes me some angst because I am not receiving feedback from the invested parties (Megan & Jackie) as quickly as I would like. I created three surveys that will be used with the parents, the teachers, and the students of the school, and either Megan and Jackie say ‘oh it looks good’, and don’t reply at all.

I need to impress on Megan and Jackie the need to study the wording, the multiple choices, and the range of questions carefully to ensure we are tapping into the heart of our goals. But they are busy, I get that. Maybe you can help. Here  are the three surveys. What do you think? I don’t want to ask too many questions of parents. I do not want to put the words ‘digital technologies’ into the mouths of teachers. I want them to come up with them. As for students, I want to give them words, but also let them have a chance to choose their own as well.

The Parent Survey

The Teacher Survey

The Student Survey

It’s a start. I think I am on the right track.

I have also added another comment to the VoiceThread – a very short summary of my meeting with Megan and Jackie.

Case study proposal

Impact of a collaborative planned K-6 Library Program

Proposal Topic: To what extent has the introduction of a K-6 library program in the St Aidan’s Junior Library impacted on formal teaching and learning, on the profile of the library, and on the students themselves? What unexpected positive results have occurred?

Description: Teacher Librarians Megan Daley and Jackie Child are colleagues at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School. Two years ago, they designed a physical space in their junior library to incorporate a K‑6 program which combines literature, digital technologies, and makerspace activities. Over that time, the program has developed and grown through review and collaboration. This case study plans to examine the goals of the program, and measure the level of success. These goals include:

• Incorporating elements of the Digital Technologies Curriculum (DTC)
• Developing lifelong learners and readers
• Promoting Computer Science and Engineering careers to girls
• Raising the profile of the junior school library, and promoting it as a community hub

As well, the study will examine the impact on formal teaching and learning by surveying teachers, the perception of the program and the library in the school community by surveying parents, and the impact on students by surveying them. It will also reflect on any unexpected outcomes.

 Expected outcomes:

• To articulate the vision and the goals of the K-6 program over the last two years, and analyse changes in the light of review
• To identify skills and processes the students have developed that align with the DTC
• To measure the impact of a library program on formal teaching and learning
• To examine the perception of libraries and their role in the wider school community
• To survey invested parties to gather feedback on explicit and informal learning.
• To evaluate the impact on students
• To reflect upon unexpected consequences and how this impacts on the program in the future
• To use the gathered and analysed data to put forward recommendations

Case Study Plan:

August 29 – September 2

• Meet with Megan and Jackie to articulate their vision.
• Conduct a literature review on the growth of makerspaces and the way libraries change to remain relevant, and to support teaching and learning.
• Design surveys appropriate for each group

September 5 – 16

• Conduct surveys and interviews
• Continue with Literature review

September 19 – October 10

• Collate and analyse survey findings
• Write up findings and recommendations
• Write up critical reflection

Case Study Proposal

Just found out it’s been approved. Yay!

Proposal Topic: How and to what extent does the House Project initiative at Lourdes Hill College achieve its goals?

Description: The House Project, instigated last year to introduce the new curriculum-strand subject, Digital Technologies is a two lesson a week all year commitment. Run as a project based classroom experience, students are required to work in groups to create a digital artefact offering information about and solutions to problems in the digital citizenship area. Each year level use different skills to produce different outcomes (year 7 create a stock animation, Year 8 produce a video, and Year 9 develop an app), but they all collaborate and problem-solve, using inquiry learning. There is also a competitive component, leading to winning house points, and a pizza lunch. The case study plans to examine the aims and goals of the project, and to analyse them in the light of feedback from invested parties. Conclusions about the extent to which the House Project achieves its aims will be reached and recommendations presented.

Expected outcomes:

• To articulate the vision and the goals of the House Project, both at a big picture and a classroom level
• To identify the specific skills and processes the students develop
• To compare the perception of learning with actual learning
• To examine the initial goals of the House Project and how (if) they have changed or sharpened over the course of the two years it’s been running.
• To survey invested parties to gather feedback on explicit and informal learning.
• To use the gathered and analysed data to put forward a number of recommendations.

Case Study Plan:

Initially (weeks one and two)

Meet with the Head of Middle School to discuss the big picture vision. What did the school leadership hope to achieve with the introduction of this project?

Access the relevant documents for analysis.

Interview the main developers of the project’s curriculum and establish the main curriculum strategies. In what ways have these evolved organically?

Research resources that support the use of project based learning, the inquiry process, and collaborative learning

Then (weeks two through five)

Design and send out a range of surveys to a number of different participants, both staff and students to measure how they perceive the project. One-to-one interviews would be used to ask higher order questioning to allow participants to offer more detail, and more scope.

Some questions to be asked (including but not limited to):

• What were the participants’ initial understanding of project, and how (if at all) that has changed?
• What is their opinion of this type of learning?
• What were the significant failures and successes?
• Why do they like it/ not like it?
• What ideas do they have to improve the experience?
• Did they learn what they thought they would?
• Did they engage? Did they enjoy?
• What were the major differences between last year and this one?

Questions specifically for the teachers might also be:

• What support was available to level up your skills to teach this course?
• What extra support would you have liked?
• How confident were you initially? How did that change over the course of the year?
• Would you be prepared to teach it again?
• What changes would need to be put in place for you to teach it again?
• What are the main benefits for students?
• What concerns do you have?

Collate the data and compare findings with initial assessment of the goals. Use support materials to back up the use of project based learning. Review the conclusions and develop a list of recommendations

Finally (weeks five through eight):

Write up case study based on research and data gathering.

Include list of pertinent recommendations.

Complete critical reflection.

 

 

 

 

ABC Splash – Annabel Astbury Colloquium #4, week 5

Helen Stower, Cameron Innes and I moderated the week 5 colloquium with Annabel Astbury from ABC Splash.

This type of resource is exactly what teachers claim they want. Easy to access, short, snappy sections of content, on the mark, and visual, interactive and Australian. So it ticks all the boxes. It’s reassuring to know that it is being organised and delivered by someone like Annabel with a background in teaching. They should perhaps make a bigger deal about the team, and show users these amazing workers and their credentials.

So, it was interesting to hear that among a group of 200 strong educators that there seemed to be a significant number who didn’t know about it. It’s probably something they’ve heard about, but never bothered to check out. How many times do we hear about teachers who are too busy to give quality time to check out programs or apps, or websites? In the end, giving up some preparation or correction time to ‘play explore learn’, can prove to save time and ultimately be beneficial. This has increasingly become one of the tasks of the Teacher Librarian – to actively seek out resources of all kinds, and share those with teachers who are overwhelmed with many other tasks.

Once again, analytics proved to be used in crucial aspects of design and delivery. The more data is gathered, the more insight is collected and used to produce even more relevant and valuable resources. We, now at the end of our studies, realise how crucial it is, not only in scholarly practice, but also our practical world. In our libraries, organisations or classrooms, it appears to be growing both in terms of reference, and necessity.

Each colloquium has offered something unique, but they have also contributed to our growing understanding of the extent to which education can and has been impacted by digital technologies.

 

Leading Learning and Computer Science

The last two weeks of colloquia have been on vastly different content, but both sell the same message. We need to change the way we manage our classrooms, and the syllabus documents are finally starting to reflect that need – and move classrooms from a point of choosing to be more inquiry based, to demanding that they are. ‘Laggards’ (Rogers and Shoemaker, 1971) are really on their last chance.

Pip Cleeves is the best example of her own philosophy (Cleeves, 2016). Her classes are full of 21^st century learning, and her passion and enthusiasm for this type of practice means her colleagues are very lucky to have her on board. She does what she says. She does it well. She does it passionately.

We are all at different stages of that 21^st century teaching and learning journey. Having only recently returned to a school after 12 months of relief work, it’s been both comforting and challenging. I can see a strong change in teaching methods, and at this school at least, it’s coming from the top. Great to see a leadership team that seems to recognise the value in the concepts of blended, flipped and cross curriculum classrooms. I am only just starting to integrate myself into these discussions, and my confidence is growing.

Last week’s contribution by Rebecca Vivian honestly left me lost. I have managed to become reasonably tech savvy without learning code or delving into other technical aspects. Which suits me. My focus too, has always been on boys (my own sons and 10 years in a boy’s school), so this shift to girls is sharp and swift. Robotics at my new school is being given much attention, and the person in charge is taking on the leadership over their conservative views on YouTube and social media. I will watch with interest.

What has surprised a lot of us has been the continual discussion around analytics. Even last night, Annabel from ABC Splash had her version of data collection. It’s becoming a constant in this subject.

References:

Cleaves, P. (2016, July 28). Leading learning in a Web 2 world [online meeting]. In INF537 Colloquium week 3. Retrieved from CSU LMS Interact2.csu.edu.au 

Rogers, E.M. & Shoemaker, F.F. (1971). Communication of innovations : a cross-cultural approach,  2nd ed. New York : Free Press.