[Xmca-l] Re: Teacher Distancing and "Social Distancing"

Wed May 27 11:40:40 PDT 2020

Hello Michael, and others holding on tight to this thread (and everyone else too),

Thank you for the distinction between teacher presence and social presence. It is helpful.

As far as ZOOM, I believe that the ONLY reason we are using ZOOM for school is because it is there and people know about it. It's totally ad hoc. I agree with you that it was designed for adults meeting online for corporate reasons, or otherwise. I had begun using it some years ago for an online Sanskrit study group that I am a member. I liked that ZOOM has the ability to offer shared screens, and that it is (was?) secure.

ZOOM has been considered better than Skype, because 1) Skype was bought by Microsoft at some point, and MS doesn't have the the best proactive stance on security and privacy (at least it didn't used to be) and 2) ZOOM was (until ZOOM bombing happened during its use in the pandemic as an ad hoc classroom platform) considered more secure and as a company seemed to take privacy seriously.

People like Ed Snowden and Julian Assange would remotely attend and present at various computer security and digital freedom conferences using ZOOM, which isn't exactly corporate. Don't know if they still do (well Assange most definitely not).

I feel ZOOM as an org have been very responsive to user concerns after the ZOOM bombings.

I'm not trying to upsell anyone on ZOOM, but it would not surprise me if the company began to ingest the concerns of classroom learning and are right now designing for that target scenario, given that we do not know how long this pandemic will last, nor how long it will impact classroom learning.

What I meant about ZOOM (no edu vs edu with ZOOM) was specific to the pandemic. Should we have no education no matter how non-ideal the platform is and let kids languish with their parents in the at-home health order lockdown, or should we try to provide some sort of connection so that kids can *try* to keep learning, despite everything else?

I am with you that ZOOM was not designed to be used as it is being used. What I'm reminding everyone is that the tool is plastic, but only if as a group we push back and inform the company to redesign its tool more appropriately. As it is with all tools. They develop.

That's not ever to be interpreted that ZOOM should supplant IRL classroom learning. I would never agree with that. But, for example, it might be a way, after the pandemic has passed, kids who are sick at home to keep up in their schoolwork, and to have homework study sessions with peers remotely. There is a lot of potential if placed in a proper context. It's just another tool (of many) in the learning toolbox.

Granted, there are always reservations I have for a tool/platform used for education and, in its current use, ZOOM almost approaches a public utility, given the times we are living in, and how much we are relying upon it to stay connected. Does the company have an obligation to design for the public need? I think it does.

With that in mind, I don't think I can respond to the comment about having a nail in my foot. I don't think that it has anything to do with the context that I offered the question "To ZOOM or not to ZOOM?"

In a sense, this is the Betamax vs VHS conundrum. It's not always the better technology that wins, but the one that is more ubiquitous.

However, ZOOM is in this instance a pretty good tool, in terms of stability with video and audio streaming live. That is a non-trivial problem to solve. A platform like ZOOM was a fantasy in the early days of the Internet (meaning mid1990s, actually). So before kicking the tires too much, remember where we once were 20 years ago.

I agree 100% it's not the ideal platform for classroom learning but there is huge potential to improve it.

The only reason people are using it is because it has become ubiquitous and it's not hard to get it up and running (if you have internet and a computer of course). That is likely how it is with all tools that become de facto tools for learning. But as I've said before there is always the off button.

Please, I do say this tempest in a teapot about ZOOM being fully aware this is a first-world privileged complaint. Those families who can't afford a computer and internet during the pandemic are fully shut out and that is just wrong. (Also, my very somber nod to Carol M in South Africa about even worse environments where learning is "expected" to happen.)

I also am on board with your comments, Michael, about ubiquitous internet connection, because the internet more than any time can be seen as a necessary and vital utility for the public good, like electricity, water, and TV/radio airwaves. I believe the internet, but moreso many internet companies obscenely profiting from riding on the tails of the internet, should be more equitably regulated.

Yet, when we begin discourse about "the internet for everyone," we also are pulling in by the ears security and privacy issues. I recommend everyone take a jaunt over to the EFF's website (eff.org) and familiarize yourself with them. They are one organization who is concerned about these issues in the new digital reality we find ourselves. They are sort of an ACLU for the Internet and other digital citizen issues.

I think we agree, Michael, that education is not binary when we look at all the environments across the world as they were before the pandemic and to how they've been impacted after. I hope it's clear now that I was being very specific about ZOOM during the pandemic.

Without meaning to put words in your mouth, I think we also agree learning and teaching is missing the sanctity it deserves all over the globe, and has for a very long time. Regardless, we have to make do with what tools we have and whatever is accessible to us.

I feel also that it's time for teachers to try to play with the digital tools that are out there, and start advocating for designs more appropriate for learning and teaching. Try to participate and influence the narrative in whatever way feels right to you, but don't sit on the sidelines and object to the reality we find ourselves. Well, you can do that, but I think you will be, and more so in time, a faint voice yelling into the wind.

Here's a possibility: we might organize and called ourselves Educators for Digital Equality (All over the world)  "EDEA" is a nice loose acronym. Would you join?

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2020 7:47 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Teacher Distancing and "Social Distancing"

  [EXTERNAL]

Hello David, Elizabeth, Annalisa, Rob, others,

Well social presence and teacher presence are two completely different lines of research and thinking even though they sound alike. Teacher presence comes from localized classroom research while social presence comes from the communication field I believe sometime in the 1960s.  Lately I have begun to think of teacher presence as similar to Bourdeiu's cultural capital. Our education system teaches certain groups of children how to read and get in sync with teachers from their more subtle physical signs so that they become more successful later in their school careers and in life. Many of the more successful children also get practice in reading these different signs at home. It is the old adage, don't listen to what I say, watch what I do. Social presence on the other hand is more related to our own understanding of our own communications and the value of those communications. We have a sense of what we are doing from those who are watching us (in the broad sense), and this sense changes as our sense of those who are watching us changes not only how we act but the investment we make in what we do changes accordingly. I see it all the time in teachers, who they are changes completely when they get up in from of a room of students. Just a mind experiment. The next time you read an XMCA post see if you can imagine a few of the members standing over your should observing you are you are reading with the expectation of some response. See how this might change your behavior.

As for Zoom. I just think it is not a good tool for education and the reason we use it is illusory (because it recreates a place-based experience so we are more comfortable with it?).  Zoom's purpose is not education in the sense of knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. Its proximal purpose I believe was to sell to corporations and such for meetings so they would not have to spend as much on travel. Its distal purpose, meeting platforms in general, was so individuals could engage in multiple activities related to the topic but not focused on the topic. I mean it is kind of cool, you can have a meeting where you wear a tie on top and boxer shorts below. And we are sometimes a talking head culture. But it is by nature very unilateral and expert oriented. Do we have to develop a whole new cultural capital oeuvre for Zoom meetings. We must make sure that those who are ahead stay ahead. Annalisa in answer to your question no education or Zoom, I worry about binary choices such as this. Maybe we should be asking ourselves how we got here in the first place. Why are these our only two choices right now, and many attempts using Meeting platforms are failing as they seem to be, how do we move forward from here. Why aren't we asking more questions, trying to understand how our great digital experiment is failing education. And speaking to Rob's poignant use of the term pink space, why is the lack of universal broadband dominating discussions. I think about the whole one to one movement and I really question why we leaped ahead to this without a reckoning over the need to have every corner of our society equitably wired (spoiler alert: because instead of corporations making oodles of money our society will have to spend oodles of money). So Annalisa I got back to your question, is it better to have no education or Zoom and I ask if you stepped on a nail would it be better to put on a band-aid to stop the bleeding or to figure our how to save your life (I know the answer will be both but where do I prioritize).

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of robsub@ariadne.org.uk
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2020 4:53 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Teacher Distancing and "Social Distancing"

Just a couple of very quick observations. (I find regularly that by the time I have formulated my response to something, the conversation has moved on by several degrees, so I'm getting in quickly.)

Firstly the link to your article on Ruqaiya didn't resolve, David. But I found it here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XdBjusDTRI2ze6diFPoONbkpS5qFdLZworNTRS5-z-d7Wrm3_kaKqODPVr-UtouXiIa-kw$ . Thank you for that, though - looks well worth reading.

Secondly, I always had the impression that Bernstein was resisted not because of his work on codes specifically, but because he was too prone to allowing his work to be used to justify class differentials, almost to the level of the poor keep themselves poor by deliberately restricting the language their children learn.

Thirdly, meatspace. Hmmm. I'm toying with the idea of pinkspace. Less physically vulgar than meatspace and reflects the reality that the physical world, just like the online world, is dominated by those of us who are pink. Just a thought. Needs developing though.

Rob

On 2020-05-26 03:08, David Kellogg wrote:
> Michael, Anthony, Elizabeth--and (of course) Annalisa:
>
> I apologize for changing the threadline title AGAIN. I feel like the
> five-year-old who is always unscrewing the back of the TV set to see
> the little people inside; I was very dissatisfied withe the abstract
> theory on the other line, according to which everything is everything
> and mediation and unmediation are equally both and I wanted a way of
> finding the people inside it. I thought the term "meatspace", which
> Annalisa has heard before, captured that feeling pretty well (and
> there are also some echoes of a corruscating book review I once read
> in MCA titled something like "Yer askin' me to believe in sentient
> MEAT????")
>
> Let's use Michael's categories of "teacher presence" and "social
> presence" instead, so long as we keep in mind the point that Michael
> made at the end, that is, the teacher is always present even when the
> teacher is not present (as when the child is doing homework alone) and
> the additional point that teacher presence is one kind of social
> presence. But because presence and absence are (like mediated and
> unmediated) equally both ungradeable categories, I would prefer to
> talk about teacher distancing and social distancing. Michael Osterholm
> has objected to the term social distancing for the same reasons I
> raised earlier--it's a physical, mechanical distancing that actually
> creates a higher form of solidarity (and that is why the elements of
> society which oppose higher forms of solidarity oppose it). So I put
> "social distancing" in scare quotes. But the teacher distancing is
> real enough.
>
> Real but not by itself of developmental significance. What worries me
> is the possibility that we are adding to the kinds of inequalitiees
> that Annalisa, Henry and Tom are talking about on the other thread. It
> seems to me that teacher distancing differentially hurts some
> populations. I disagree that Koreans are more homogeneous than other
> cultures (in class terms significantly  less so) and I also think that
> if you were to sit through a lecture in the Korean language without
> understanding Korean you would not agree that language is the least
> important aspect of teacher presence. But (to bring these two
> together) I think that students who are able to focus on language, and
> on particular kinds of language, are disproportionately enabled in
> conditions of teacher distancing. This is the issue that dare not
> speak its name, for when Bernstein tried to raise it he was, as
> Halliday noted, "driven out of the field".  One of the reasons I wrote
> the article linked below is that Ruqaiya Hasan was not.
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Sangmyung University
>
> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
> Outlines, Spring 2020
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/vie
> w/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!XdBjusDTRI2ze6diFPoONbkpS5qFdLZworNTRS5-z-d
> 7Wrm3_kaKqODPVr-Utot_Yz0eEQ$  [1]
>
> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: _L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
> Works_ _Volume One: Foundations of Pedology_"
>
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/978981150
> 5270__;!!Mih3wA!XdBjusDTRI2ze6diFPoONbkpS5qFdLZworNTRS5-z-d7Wrm3_kaKqO
> DPVr-UtotPljj6rQ$  [2]
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1]
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/vie
> w/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!VO48fELJW7sniTLYfb-jdmrQdoIXI216JGBeW6N8-Zc
> e9P2I5M_FZBJKElhGyP20UejX0w$
> [2]
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/978981150
> 5270__;!!Mih3wA!VO48fELJW7sniTLYfb-jdmrQdoIXI216JGBeW6N8-Zce9P2I5M_FZB
> JKElhGyP026P9-1A$

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