[Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?
Wendy Maples
wendy.maples@outlook.com
Thu May 21 08:51:26 PDT 2020
Hello from a sunny Lewes, England,
The location and weather is notable because this is the kind of rare (pre-Anthropocene) day when parents and teachers feel sympathy for children-at-school-when-they-should-be-enjoying-themselves-outside.
I'm joining this conversation to share two anecdotes, both about how learners, when exposed to a new learning environment may become better able to assess how learning works for them.
1. A friend (Philosophy Professor), asked my opinion on the potential for online teaching to be provided to her 14-year-old son by his conventional state school. I suggested a 'model' session, given likely limitations in terms of training, affordability, etc. She then asked her son which of his lessons he felt was worthwhile. Interestingly, her son immediately cited the teacher who ran Zoom sessions with breakout rooms -- which enabled him to socialise with friends in the context of a well-structured lesson, with an engaged teacher. Pretty much what I had described as a best-case in the circumstances.
2. Other friends have described with some wonderment how their teenaged children are organising peer support learning/ 'homework' sessions. Laptop open for homework; friends on Facetime on smartphone. The children are diligent -- sitting down to work at regular times, 'getting the work done' and helping each other -- and allowing themselves reasonable breaks. Such as taking advantage of a beautiful afternoon, by going on a bike ride.
It's not all rosy, of course, but the points of contrast with 'industrial learning' that enable learners to become reflective learners could be a positive outcome.
W
________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of robsub@ariadne.org.uk <robsub@ariadne.org.uk>
Sent: 20 May 2020 17:57
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?
My first thought when I read the OP was that this crisis is unlikely to
teach us anything about remote and online learning per se. There has
been a mass of research over the last thirty years and more about how it
is best done, what effects it has, how it can best be deployed in
different circumstances, including in the poorest places (Sugata Mitra
is particularly powerful on this), including the possibilities and the
effects in the developing world.*
My second thought was that I was perhaps being a bit unjust because I
suspect I had lost sight of how new online learning still is to a very
large proportion of professional educators who ought to know it by now.
I am basing that partly on a regular output of articles in the Guardian,
and also a few I have spotted in the liberal American press, about how
rushing to put everything online doesn't solve all your problems. As if
we needed to be told – but clearly some people do still need to be told
that teaching and learning online is an entirely different animal to
doing it face to face.
But then I reverted again to my original position – I doubt that we will
learn anything from this about online learning per se that we do not
already know. But it has struck me that a different lesson is waiting to
be learned if we are willing to learn it. That lesson is not about
remote learning or about inequality or about the uses of different
tools. It is about the reinsertion of the family into educational
practice, flying in the face of a hundred years or more of capitalist
industrialist educational policy.
To be honest, I doubt that it will stick, just as I doubt that much of
what we are doing and learning will stick. Together with colleagues, I
will be working my hardest to maintain the good things of this
situation, and to undo the bad things that we left behind. But we will
be up against very powerful forces in the capitalist industrial (and
technological) monolith which will be working equally hard and much more
powerfully to return us to the world pre-covid, because they benefitted
from it.
I will be happy if we can nudge the world a little bit in our direction,
particularly towards greener policies. But I am not holding my breath.
Rob
*The asterisk is for an anecdote. I was tangentially involved in a
project to start up internet based learning for midwives in the north of
Nigeria, where there is no infrastructure, no electricity, etc etc. They
equipped a school room with solar powered laptops and screens, and a
solar powered router to connect to online learning materials. We have a
photograph of the first few days of the class, which we cannot use. It
shows the room from the back with a midwife at every screen. The
instructor is standing at the back of the class with his head in his
hands. He looks as if he is crying. He told us that he had his head in
his hands because he could not believe the beauty of the scene in front
of him.
On 2020-05-20 14:31, Tom Richardson wrote:
> Hello Annalisa
> Thank you for your reactions to the Klein article. I agree with almost
> none of your opinions about the content nor the form. About the
> capacity of human nature for both heroic altruism and lethal
> self-interested behaviour acted out by the same person, I have no
> doubts.
>
> * What I really wanted an answer to was: 'What will the environment
> created for this new online learning actually consist of, in the
> widest sense of the situation for the learner and the context in which
> such learning takes place?'.
> * What can be confidently forecast about the nature of these changes
> for the _perezhivanie _of the learner, which shapes her social being
> and that which she perceives as being 'normal/abnormal',
> 'acceptable/unacceptable' and 'changeable/unchangeable' in her
> society?
>
> Since little practical detail is given in Klein's piece and I haven't
> yet listened to the complete video from the ECNY meeting, I cannot
> grasp what is intended/visualised by the AI/digital experts.
> I would welcome some approach to answers to those questions if that is
> within your area of expertise; if not, I am content to let it rest.
>
> Kind regards
> Tom
>
> On Tue, 19 May 2020 at 22:07, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello Tom,
>>
>> Thank you for posting the link.
>>
>> I did finally get around to reading the Klein article, and it is
>> fairly dismal the manner that she outlines the intentions of Mr.
>> Schmidt. That is not to say that she is far from the mark, but we
>> are not just unthinking pods in the matrix, powerless to articulate
>> the way technology is distended into our lives.
>>
>> I think what bothers me most about the Klein article is the tone.
>> It reinforces through negation a fallacy that technology is
>> inevitable (and resistance is futile). I say this because she
>> presumes this narrative has become the hegemony upon which she
>> reacts. It is far too doomsday.
>>
>> At the same time, a lot of her concerns are valid. The trawling for
>> power in Washington by Silicon Valley is not unknown to us.
>>
>> Yet, I also had a real hard time with her juxatposing Schmidt with
>> Bill Gates. Gates is working to do actual good in the world by
>> projects such as the humble toilet in geographic locations without
>> waste treatment facilities, or low water infrastructure (and we
>> might as well include Warren Buffet in that equation, because the
>> lionshare of the funding flowing into the Gates Foundation is from
>> him. Buffet did not make his billions through technology, unless you
>> want to include the telephone).
>>
>> I happen to know that the Gates Foundation is funding efforts to
>> encourage agricultural developments in places like Columbia to grow
>> coffee to replace illicit crops, in order to scale down the violence
>> that coincides with the drug wars. These efforts are working.
>>
>> Why does she leave this out of the discussion? That's the general
>> problem I find with Naomi Klein, is the
>> chicken-little-sky-is-falling perspective.
>>
>> She seems to be similar to those trumpsters who blame the genesis
>> of COVID (if not upon China) upon Gates, as some strange mastermind
>> move to control the world.
>>
>> Tom, I think it is right and human that you responded to the
>> bleakness of the tone, but that doesn't mean this worldview is
>> correct or accurate. Technology will always be a tool for use. It is
>> not monolithic. There is the off button. We do still have a
>> democracy and processes in place to deliberate the way forward.
>>
>> As long as humans desire freedom there will always be resistance to
>> control systems, generating a constant search for the chinks in the
>> armor, or other loopholes to squeeze through. People will always use
>> technology in ways that were not anticipated, but just as that can
>> be assertion can be construed as dismal, it can also mean good news,
>> that we always have agency to decide how to use our tools.
>>
>> Also, one stick in the spokes that was glaring for me is that Mr.
>> Schmidt will never be able to address the laws for mandatory
>> education for disabled children with his goals for flattening the
>> classroom into two-dimensional online learning screens. He will
>> never be able to walk around that law.
>>
>> So there are many ways this "technology is inevitable" narrative
>> simply does not hold water for me.
>>
>> I hope this might be a little encouraging.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Annalisa
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> FROM: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of mike cole
>> <mcole@ucsd.edu>
>> SENT: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 10:46 AM
>> TO: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> SUBJECT: [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?
>>
>> [EXTERNAL]
>>
>> Hello Tom Richardson
>> This topic has been the front and center in the "Re-generating
>> Chat Project" that has just finished its
>> planned two year efforts that focused on the challenges to human
>> development, and theories of "Development
>> in the Anthropcene. Two months ago, the word Anthropocene was
>> replaced by the code word, covid-19, a pandemic.
>> Both crises pose huge challenges to theories of development as well
>> as to actual development of huge numbers of people around the
>> world.
>> The MCA-linked website, CulturalPraxis currently has a number
>> of essays on the challenges of this historical moment, and the
>> opportunities.
>> In the United States, the crisis has deschooled society in
>> the most dramatic way one can imagine -- A way that literally forced
>>
>> a massive re-mediation of human life. Education, the wheel house
>> of most members of this discussion over the years,
>> is now a family affair big time. Simulaneously, home-worksite
>> relations have been disassembled, both modes and relations of
>> production are getting a shock that is crumbling institutions (home,
>> school, work,).
>>
>> We can really get the feel of Roy D'andrade's comment that doing
>> social science is like studying rocks in a rockslide. This
>> rockslide moves a warp speed and its invisible.
>>
>> Remediation of existing classroom structures is what we have been
>> about for 100 years.
>> Seems like there has never been a more appropriate time to start
>> providing working models of effective practices that do NOT
>> assume that things will return to Christmas, 2019.
>>
>> Thanks for asking.
>> mike
>>
>> On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 9:07 AM Tom Richardson
>> <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings Xmca-ers
>>> I would like to raise a question.
>>> In the article by Naomi Klein linked below, apart from all the
>>> major questions about our futures - personal freedom, health
>>> protection, democratic control and the power of Big Digital
>>> Tech_AI, international competition etc. that she raises, I
>>> wondered what from a Vygotskyan approach to child/human
>>> development/education can / should be a reply to these sentences
>>> on the 'home schooling' that has (or hasn't) been happening
>>> recently:
>>>
>>> "Indeed, Schmidt has been relentless in pursuing this vision. Two
>>> weeks after that article appeared, he described [1] the ad-hoc
>>> home schooling programming that teachers and families across the
>>> country had been forced to cobble together during this public
>>> health emergency as “a massive experiment in remote learning”.
>>>
>>> The goal of this experiment, he said, was “trying to find out:
>>> how do kids learn remotely? And with that data we should be able
>>> to build better remote and distance learning tools which, when
>>> combined with the teacher … will help kids learn better.” "
>>>
>>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2F*2Fwww.theguardian.com*2Fnews*2F2020*2Fmay*2F13*2Fnaomi-klein-how-big-tech-plans-to-profit-from-coronavirus-pandemic__*3B!!Mih3wA!S24LM1H7lowdPfDbMsEsQcUKNP8ezV7u2ZEpio1LRZEKkbPLR1GSaJgN9Ky9WaJNTPiOcg*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C9ee204f06b64476fe58208d7fcdf781b*7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa*7C1*7C0*7C637255909025630662&sdata=Hu0ZQFqxBWuUh6*2Fg3fS9xCAvLm6hxZ*2BGHmDrZncTW*2Fg*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!Mih3wA!TrysLCC35ebURQTg4buf3my3WmzGjSF6ivXQRg2gPUne9ZixAYLV-iy7isir0YjOLkFnAw$
>>> [2]
>>>
>>> Just asking
>>> Tom Richardson
>>> Middlesbrough UK
>>
>> --
>>
>> "How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what
>> fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?" Salman Rushdie
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> For archival resources relevant to the research of lchc.ucsd.edu
>> [3].
>> For narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu [4].
>> For new MCA-related website see: culturalpraxis.net [5].
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1]
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2F*2Fwww.youtube.com*2Fwatch*3Fv*3DXtAyGVuRQME__*3B!!Mih3wA!VRgkzssOuSyNvpVQWR2QH7dShhiXD5eWtYs2HahNwv_pKUU7G9GOQZMrzIpGsa_-KDBGFw*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C9ee204f06b64476fe58208d7fcdf781b*7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa*7C1*7C0*7C637255909025630662&sdata=0biAmhV55CrmoZvDhhUkCJ5*2BLireRWCk6SCDcv15T2w*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJQ!!Mih3wA!TrysLCC35ebURQTg4buf3my3WmzGjSF6ivXQRg2gPUne9ZixAYLV-iy7isir0Yjml3dzZg$
> [2]
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2F*2Fwww.theguardian.com*2Fnews*2F2020*2Fmay*2F13*2Fnaomi-klein-how-big-tech-plans-to-profit-from-coronavirus-pandemic__*3B!!Mih3wA!VRgkzssOuSyNvpVQWR2QH7dShhiXD5eWtYs2HahNwv_pKUU7G9GOQZMrzIpGsa-SnnFGDg*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C9ee204f06b64476fe58208d7fcdf781b*7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa*7C1*7C0*7C637255909025630662&sdata=ZofWlBlixVsGB31hquC9H6VT4AJMO9aazQwdQUxlwXQ*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!Mih3wA!TrysLCC35ebURQTg4buf3my3WmzGjSF6ivXQRg2gPUne9ZixAYLV-iy7isir0YgS17ZDgA$
> [3] https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http*3A*2F*2Flchc.ucsd.edu*2F&data=02*7C01*7C*7C9ee204f06b64476fe58208d7fcdf781b*7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa*7C1*7C0*7C637255909025640656&sdata=2P9rsYyOPCiEA1KU94EZgN2TqkbISzkFe8ZOXq49GAw*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUl!!Mih3wA!TrysLCC35ebURQTg4buf3my3WmzGjSF6ivXQRg2gPUne9ZixAYLV-iy7isir0YhG3duqrQ$
> [4] https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http*3A*2F*2Flchcautobio.ucsd.edu*2F&data=02*7C01*7C*7C9ee204f06b64476fe58208d7fcdf781b*7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa*7C1*7C0*7C637255909025640656&sdata=OeBELDeIYiMiylDFDYl2W0S*2Fvn1qBO33bcEdRJvrR3s*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJQ!!Mih3wA!TrysLCC35ebURQTg4buf3my3WmzGjSF6ivXQRg2gPUne9ZixAYLV-iy7isir0YjHqEzmeA$
> [5]
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__http*3A*2F*2Fculturalpraxis.net__*3B!!Mih3wA!V4rtgUKjjshdiOxbIML_kuerunhUbHYomcCKiRVA5FkPs1WJIJwbuavyFoG613bJeWFP-g*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C9ee204f06b64476fe58208d7fcdf781b*7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa*7C1*7C0*7C637255909025640656&sdata=6OS4kY9UQkoC82KPS7pR0XE8j3GFJrU4a5EqIbYjvUU*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUl!!Mih3wA!TrysLCC35ebURQTg4buf3my3WmzGjSF6ivXQRg2gPUne9ZixAYLV-iy7isir0YivngXtwA$
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