The Fog of the platform wars

In most wars, both sides think they are fighting for truth, justice and the ultimate success over the other side.

A lot can get lost in the “fog of war”. Collateral damage can result when the conflict spills into areas it was never meant to go. Innocent people get hurt, areas can be made uninhabitable for years, and the eventual truce can be an uneasy one.

I would put it to you that educational technology use is a battleground, where opposing forces trying to win hearts and minds quite often produce in its citizens the malaise and shell shock an armed conflict can bring.

Forgetting the debate on whether technology has a place in education for the moment – the warring parties crossed that frontier together and are now striking out behind enemy lines. What started as a united front has now taken on the appearance of two generals arguing over what move to make next, a’la Montgomery and Eisenhower in Sicily in WW2

It’s at this point that I’ll jump out of the war analogy and comment on what I see the danger facing many teachers and schools right now. Everyone has favourites. These favourites gained their status for  a number of important reasons –  for instance they were the best solution available at the time; it was the solution preferred by influential people; or that solution worked  for the early adopters, in their setting. And  in a diverse population like a school where skill and aptitude differences can be very wide, adopting  a common approach can be very important to apply a culture consistently.

Most early adopters become the advocates for technology and change in their school. Their opinion is based on their experiences and what they think their setting can accommodate. Usually a school plan is built around their recommendations, which includes training, infrastructure and most importantly a “culture of usage”. Then the rest of the school flows into the space that has been created. This process doesn’t happen overnight, in fact it can be very slow. I don’t know, but in some settings it may be easy to drop a school wide platform that doesn’t work, or start a new platform in parallel with existing platforms expecting staff to be confident users of both. I haven’t worked in a school like that, yet.

One interesting aspect of the process is platform dissent. I would bet that most early adopters would argue their case for a particular platform with a “glass half full” approach. They will ignore or smooth over the imperfections of their plan to make it sound more attractive. Glitches in general population adoption would be tackled, but not seen as the end of the plan because they know there is too much invested to say “lets find a new way”. And when conversing  with peers, not many will talk cons before pros. This lack of “self dissent” I feel adds to the parochialism that is seen when people spruik their favourite.

And this is where the fog of the platform wars drifts in. What concerns me most is when one side pooh-pooh’s the other, highlighting its weaknesses, what it can’t do. The breast beating can be a stimulating exercise in one-upmanship for the protagonists, but it can be a confusing and disengaging experience when it results in people start to doubt their judgement. I’ve been there before.

To me, the danger of a free for all  is potentially disastrous. Not for the early adopters. They are generally skilled enough to learn, adopt and implement new strategies and tools quite easily. It’s the collateral damage they leave behind in the schools – the digital immigrants that commit to the corporate plan that isn’t the plan any more. Not being as flexible in their adaption means many may just abandon and seek refuge in what they already know.

So I would suggest a couple of things for early adopter/advocates

Apple v Windows, iPhone v Android, Moodle v Edmodo, EduBlog v WordPress, ….the list goes on. All regional conflicts around gaining supremacy. There is a comparison to football team supporters, music fans and motor racing fans that can be made here. Either/OR doesn’t always successfully sell your platform. Each side has shortcomings that are rarely acknowledged in case it cripples their cause.

So I would suggest a couple of things for early adopter/advocates.

1. Understand that other early adopters appreciate your journey, because they have travelled that path too. But they don’t like hearing that their  journey wasn’t as productive as yours, as would you.
2.  Most people would like the perfect platform that ticks all the boxes. But there isn’t one. Nothing is perfect, most are pretty well suited to our current educational requirements (ie. our slowly evolving but mainly Industrial Revolution education platform)
3.  Acknowledge the limitations of your favourite, along with its blessings. Not just with the platform, but  the deployment of  it in school. People appreciate honesty.

I’d like to think that like Montgomery and Eisenhower, who were two different generals, with two different plans, but came together against a common foe, the real battle can be won together using a variety of weapons.

“..know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em..”

WARNING  - HONEST LANGUAGE

I made a self diagnosis this week.

I’m worn out. Jaded.

It started with a symptom that I like to call “a case of the non specific shits”. I felt listless and grumpy, prone to fits of blah, with no easily identifiable source.

I mean things shouldn’t have been that bad. Two weeks and the Spring vacations start, assessments for this term done and I’d just bought a new bike. But I still felt uneasy..shitty.

And then, after some decent reflection with colleagues at school, the real reason became clear. I didn’t think it were possible for a self confessed tech junkie, but it was true. I had Techlag.

Thinking back, it should have made sense before now. What I thought was helping me, was actually adding to the problem. Almost every waking minute in front of a screen (my choice), connected or thinking about connection. An unrelenting desire to add technology into my work. Being seduced by the “what could be” instead of living the “what actually is”. Advocating for the use of technology to anyone who would listen. Trying to lead by example. Sharing my “skills”.

I think, though, what finally caused the symptoms to manifest into the general malaise I now have is the frustrations, not achievements, that resulted from what I have been doing.

Students not willing to buy in to using technology. Technical issues with devices that stop lessons in their tracks, and make any hope of proving the positive worth of technology far less effective. My inability to persuade other staff that using technology was worthwhile. And most significantly, my suspicion that the current schooling system isn’t really ready for the use of laptops in classrooms. I mean, while formal external exams are still the baseline judgement tool on the success or otherwise of student achievement, then using laptops will continue to be a side show.

I made some decisions, too, on how to treat my condition. I’m walking away from things that aren’t helping. The things that I won’t miss. Yammer for one. It suddenly came to me that, as a PLN/PLE, whatever you want to call it, it sucks compared to Twitter. The rules of use are too institutionalised. The navel gazing produced too much fluff, not enough clarity. So as a informed digital citizen, I won’t use it again.

I’m cutting back on online lesson materials in my classes, and going old school, where I talk to kids and they talk back, and to each other. Maybe I got the balance wrong, maybe this is just finding equilibrium.

And my dream of paperlessness. Just a dream, at the moment.

Kenny’s right when he says ” you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em. know when to fold ‘em”. It might be time to go for a re -deal and see what the cards say.

My near (teaching) death experience

I’ve always prided myself on being prepared for lessons. This week though I found myself in a situation from which I was able to extricate myself relatively painlessly, with the help of an interactive white board (IWB), my DER laptop and some fast thinking.

For some reason I thought I had Year 9 Outdoor Recreation. I had a wizz bang lesson on golf ready to go as the kids walked in the room, but when one of them said “Golf…we’re doing that in Outdoor Recreation too..” I kinda knew something was off.

Quickly checking my timetable, I’d mistakenly prepared for Wednesday A, not Wednesday B (damn you, 2 week cycles!). No time to think about that now…how do I seamlessly transform from “Golf” to “Nutritional Analysis of Food Labels”.

First off, lets check the homework I set last week (Calculate your BMI, and critique the whole use of the BMI calculation and assessment process as a measure of obesity, as well as calculating Max Heart Rate (MHR) and Target Heart Rate zones for future PE lessons). While the kids that hadn’t finished this work were scrambling to get it done, I was scrambling to set up some work of my own.

In preparing a lesson on the energy balance and nutritional analysis earlier that week, I’d found this resource from the Heart Foundation. Once the kids had finished their homework and we had discussed and debriefed the issues (and some had some very interesting things to say about the validity of the BMI as a measurement tool!) I put the PDF up on the IWB and had the class focus on the energy balance information. They made some notes in their exercise books, which gave me time to set up the next bit.

Analysing food labels is a cool interactive way for kids to “get” what kilojoules and the energy balance is all about. Half the time kids don’t relate to the concept of energy intake  and then what it takes to expend that energy. Thus, a little bit of looking at food labels often crystallises their thoughts on food intake and the amount of activity they need to do to stay healthy.

“Who’s got a food packet in their bags?” I ask the class while they are note taking. “Something with nutritional information” I add when half a dozen sandwiches are offered. Eventually one kid gives me a 20g pack of rice crackers (those tasteless things that look like tiny shiny pillows), with the nutritional information table on the back.

I read the label out to the class, focussing on the kilojoule count (around 300kJ). I related this to the energy balance information that they  had just noted (“this is energy in”), and then posed the question “How long would it take to burn this off?”. Snorts of derision were heard with comments like “about 2 minutes sir”.

“OK” I said, “Let’s see”

I then pulled this website up on the IWB that calculates energy expenditure per hour  for a variety of physical activities. I said “Lets see how much work you have to do to burn these suckers off”. I selected “Computer Games” as the activity, put in my weight as the example, and used the duration of one hour. The calculator announced  that I would burn 13kJ/hour.

Simple maths (with a kids calculator!) told us that to burn off the 300kJ in the rice crackers playing computer games (300kJ divided by the 13kJ per hour ) would take about 23 hours. The looks on the kid’s faces were priceless!

Homework: Collect labels from food items that would make up a meal for you (McDonalds meals, for instance). Add up the kilojoules, visit the site, work out how long you’d have to do a particular activity to burn it off and then write an account of your investigation.

Bell rings, kids leave saying “What are you going to look at?”, “this will be cool” … thank you and good night!

Now, while I’m the first to admit that it might not tick all the boxes when it comes to deep knowledge and understanding, I was glad I had the technology around me to do something like this. In my old days pre tech, I could have had a perilous hour to negotiate, with not as much happening. Oh…and I’ll make sure I read my timetable a bit more closely from now on.

Jonesy 101

I’m going to use this place to document where I go with implementing technology at my school. I’ll try to keep what I write brief, but I can’t promise anything!

Just a bit of a profile first to set the scene. I’ve been teaching for 22 years now, initially as a casual (temporary) teacher, then as a full time PDHPE teacher in places like Wollongong (3 years), Katoomba ( 9 years) and then the Central Coast of NSW  – Tumbi Umbi (1 year) and then Erina (10 years). I’ve been Head Teacher for about 5 of those years at Erina.

I’va always been interested in gadgets, and I’ve always tried to find a use for them in teaching. With the explosion of Web 2.0 tools, laptops for students and faster access to the Web generally, I feel like I’m surfing a huge wave of change regarding getting technology to work at school.

Let’s get stuck in!