[Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

[Tom Richardson]

Hi Annalisa

Thank you for providing the details of your deep and committed background
in distance / online learning. Mine is obviously shallow, which must have
triggered you and 'Robsub' somewhat.

But my questioning is in the newer context of the Covid19 threats to global
society and the solutions being sought to extricate us from them.

Governor Cuomo's conversation with Schmidt to examine solutions to the
problems of present coping and future emergence from the pandemic is
understandable. Two persons with power and a need to act, discuss what
technology (in its widest hard- and software aspects) has to offer.

In a democracy we can assess the solutions they propose and shape them to
what we know to be as near to optimal for our society as possible. Your
assertion of the efficacy of our agency which Klein seems to deny,
with her politico-economic caveats.

Schmidt has an evangelism for the potential of technology, but expressed
with such restraint - he's no zealot. He also, in the video of the ECNY
conversation with Marie-Josee Kravis, sees the lack of 'simplicity' in the
three-tier democratic system of the US. He is a CEO with an organisation
geared to problem-analysis, solution choices, and operational capability
which can be put into action without delaying debate. He expressed no
hostility to 'democracy' but as he said, it does not work simply.

Klein reminds us to be wary if not alarmed, not because she is despairing
(I believe), but because that direct entrepreneurial drive has profit
making as its unavoidable aim. Whatever Schmidt's humanistic feelings, if
profit doesn't result from his and his companies actions, they will not
survive. That competitive drive is also present in his aspirations for
international dominance (see his remarks on the rise of China's technology).

So far, the sort of distance / online learning you have worked on, has been
nested in the context of family and (normal) school life. That
normality had implicit in it human values, customs and structures, whatever
differences of class, race, gender and culture were present. The melding of
state and enterprise in a newly-developing novel (5G?)high-tech 'solution'
to mediating education presents a situation which need to be examined I
believe. And my query, in that 'Kleinian' context was looking for answers
from those, like yourself, with wide experience of previous technological
'answers' and their implications for the results within the learner.

I affirm, along with you, the irrepressible resistance and sheer
cantankerousness we humans bring to unjust situations. But such fighting
back will often be unsuccessful in its aims, when the need to reduce labour
time with new technology is driving events - Luddism and machine looms? Our
human drive to change and adapt, our use of our agency to create or alter
our lives must not be suppressed. But what Klein is reminding us of is just
how tilted is the balance of power - the power of the state and behind it,
the drive from the vast corporate world, for profit. Our agency is so often
undone by the arbitrary intervention of those forces.

Those are the forces which have destroyed what you name the 'sanctity' of
teaching and learning. I would name it the basic need for those goals, but
we share it. With the need to re-invigorate just such a precious resource,
we will continue to fight like hell. Despite their mere humanness,
corporations and states at present have greater knowledge and power than
'mere' citizens. My intervention in xmca discussion was really to say
"They're looking to take even more control of daily life.
Within academia, you can analyse how they are making such changes happen
and continue to alert the rest of us, if you fear the consequences of
their changes."

Best  wishes
Tom

On Wed, 20 May 2020 at 22:29, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:

> Hi Tom,
>
> May I, in turn, thank you for your civil disagreement? 🙂
>
> Online learning is one area of study in my educational background. We
> looked at Second Life (SL) and tried to create a learning space there,
> once. I think that there is always room for innovation, but there is always
> a transaction of what one forfeits for what one gains. I was underwhelmed
> by SL's prospects.
>
> In the heyday of SL, which as a platform is barely in a coma right now,
> I'd once heard that a medical school created a giant kidney sculpture, that
> students' avatars could walk around to investigate and discuss with one
> another how various kidney processes worked.  It was a virtual biological
> fountain in the town square. I'm not sure that this learning context would
> ever beat out a human anatomy class, but I found the solution interesting.
>
> Blackboard was another platform we used, which I detested. It was like
> looking at the teacher's chalkboard through a slice of swiss cheese.
> Perhaps it is more "evolved" now.
>
> What was interesting about SL is that one could project a sense of place,
> which we know is helpful for memory and retention. There was a lot of open
> space for play involved in SL, enough to make it interesting, but it was
> perhaps far too much work to create viable learning environments.
>
> I think what we have to accept (which I feel all experienced educators
> already know and feel) is that flattening all education to an online
> learning space of a 2D screen, as may be experienced with grade-schoolers
> during the pandemic today, is destructive to learning, *because* of
> associations of place with learning.
>
> In a way, online learning venues that we may enjoy as adults, such as the
> AUP conference on Psychology in Global Crises, is a bit like driving,
> drinking, and smoking. What I mean is that one must pass a certain age in
> order to decide if it is good for me or not, or that I have the hand-eye
> coordination to negotiate (as with driving). Consider recent ZOOMbombing
> abuses, which would make any parent want to unplug the computer and
> constrain learning to books.
>
> We live in a time where the classroom holds no sanctity whatsoever. We
> must put the sanctity back into teaching and learning.
>
> I still maintain that we are not powerless to debate the ways in which the
> situations and environments we determine are viable to create contexts of
> learning.
>
> I find the lack of detail in the Klein article is not by accident, but out
> of convenience. There has been plenty of online learning happening for
> quite sometime now. But this has largely been in adult or in college-aged
> learning venues . Not with grade school.
>
> I do think that there has been some online tutoring venues for
> grade-school kids, but I'm not certain how much that has been formally
> studied. I also wonder what answers homeschooling might contribute as well,
> although that venue for learning has a decidedly conservative sheen upon
> it, for all the homesteading mythologies those folk abide in. I would guess
> that this is form of learning is one that they would welcome, because
> parents would get to pick and choose what their children learn.
>
> I don't think this could ever be construed as a liberal arts education,
> nor would it deliver new generations of critical thinkers.
>
> What I feel may be a part of the pushback against these propositions is
> childcare, and how parents will require this to provide for their own
> families. I found this NY opinion piece insightful:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-parenting-burnout.html__;!!Mih3wA!TtUqmpGOEamhdGENoUK38fnjlmNlYA4vSAq6ZV3ITNdBNfnqywwH7WxPSqjezRPe1JPZDg$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-parenting-burnout.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article__;!!Mih3wA!SZSEYLggVkbsFhK2-SLWJT1oidlnry4UU07CU8yscHieuVTRIi4U3vkjwqo1GLIpcTD9PA$>
>
> It may be we witness in a shakeout for free childcare that it is a right,
> not a privilege. That would be a huge boon for many. But the pandemic may
> also show us a new aspect of the validity of classroom education and why we
> must fight to preserve it. We use it or we lose it.
>
> It may usher in more critical discourse about the meaning of the classroom
> to the child's learning. if only for the attentional affordances that the
> classroom provides to a cluster of young minds and their teacher.
>
> Last, in reply to your, "I cannot grasp what is intended/visualized by the
> AI/digital experts," may I remind you that Thomas Edison believed that he
> could turn the classroom upside-down with the invention of film, and that
> education would be significantly transformed by watching movies. People
> then worried if that meant there would be no need to learn to read, etc. We
> see that what Edison visualized was simply not realistic. But is it the
> case that watching films in a classroom doesn't provide some facet of
> learning? Yes. But has it supplanted traditional forms of learning? No.
>
> If teachers discover there are legitimate technological additions to
> already successful evidence-based learning environments, that support
> well-known learning theory, technology can be welcomed if it can be
> integrated with existing models.
>
> If teachers do not find such technology useful, then it's just another way
> to enrich the pockets of Mr. Schmidt and other technophiles, where money
> will be spent but the products unused. That would be tragic and wasteful.
>
> One of the aspects I do not like about the idea of grade-school online
> learning environments is how it inures children to surveillance, which may
> also turn off a great many kids who would prefer wandering backyards, or
> riding bikes in the park, to play with friends. I don't think learning and
> surveillance is a constructive combination.
>
> There is a lot to consider, and perhaps this is where the alarm is more
> appropriately felt, because these are new challenges, and there are not yet
> words to describe what we find wrong with these problems, and so we must
> better ourselves by searching for the arguments and stances we can unite
> behind. Perhaps we feel alarmed because we must grapple with an unknown
> interloper. We are fatigued because our senses are already shredded from
> what is already difficult about living in a pandemic.
>
> This is why I do not feel Klein's tone is helpful to us. It stands upon a
> mythology that technology is inevitable. After much study and
> introspection, I will never accept that reality.
>
> To listen to Klein is to believe that a town crier were to some and say
> "They are coming take all our tools and all they will leave us are hammers
> and pins."
>
> I just do not believe this narrative.
>
> We cannot give up.
>
> Is there a fight ahead? Yes.
>
> Should we rally together to protect what needs protecting? Most
> definitely, yes.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Annalisa
> ------------------------------
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 20, 2020 7:31 AM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?
>
>
> *  [EXTERNAL]*
>
> 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
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtAyGVuRQME__;!!Mih3wA!VRgkzssOuSyNvpVQWR2QH7dShhiXD5eWtYs2HahNwv_pKUU7G9GOQZMrzIpGsa_-KDBGFw$> 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://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/may/13/naomi-klein-how-big-tech-plans-to-profit-from-coronavirus-pandemic__;!!Mih3wA!TtUqmpGOEamhdGENoUK38fnjlmNlYA4vSAq6ZV3ITNdBNfnqywwH7WxPSqjezROLzyC8bA$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/may/13/naomi-klein-how-big-tech-plans-to-profit-from-coronavirus-pandemic__;!!Mih3wA!VRgkzssOuSyNvpVQWR2QH7dShhiXD5eWtYs2HahNwv_pKUU7G9GOQZMrzIpGsa-SnnFGDg$>
>
>
> Just asking
> Tom Richardson
> Middlesbrough UK
>
>
>
> --
>
> "How does newness come into the world?  How is it born?  Of what fusions,
> translations, conjoinings is it made?" Salman Rushdie
> ---------------------------------------------------
> For archival resources relevant to the research of lchc.ucsd.edu.
> For narrative history of LCHC:  lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
> For new MCA-related website see: culturalpraxis.net
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!V4rtgUKjjshdiOxbIML_kuerunhUbHYomcCKiRVA5FkPs1WJIJwbuavyFoG613bJeWFP-g$>
> .
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200521/85ae5968/attachment.html