This inspired me. My husband and I tried to volunteer at our local state youth prison but were turned off by the wall of regulations, like not being able to bring in and use a highlighter. It is so great you have them wrestle with real pen on paper, mind to hand learning, and back. The research overwhelmingly shoe that taking notes on laptop does not retain material like notes by hand on paper. How can they not see the value of muscle memory here? I hope you can teach them cursive writing also. The connectedness of letters. And poetry memorization! Might as well party like it’s 1900.
"we should think about stripping classroms down and doing an honest evaluation: what do we need technologically and why?"
This is what I was trying to convey in my first comment. Its been established in Instructional Design that good instruction puts the learning objectives first and the technology second. We need to decide our messages and then pick what technology allows us to best convey them. Doing things the other way, making technology choices first, compromises the ability to make effective instruction.
And to be clear, by effective instruction, I mean students learning what you intend. I don't think technology impairs *learning* - it simply intoduces more "noise" that allows room for students to make a wider variety of meaning... But thats an entirely separate conversation.
I'm really loving these posts about teaching in prison. The way you describe the prisoners' attitudes about learning remind me of when I first started teaching (Frosh Comp, University of Maine, early 80s) and had the occasional older or "returning" student as they were referred to back in the day, the housewives who were going to finally get their degree now that the kids were grown, or the blue collar guys who wanted to be the first in their family to go to college. Such students kept you on your game: they countenanced no horseshit and demanded you give them every penny's worth of the tuition they probably could barely afford to pay. And they always took advantage of one's office hours. I loved their dedication, but it was also frightening: what if they exposed the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, if they discovered that I was learning to be a teacher at the same time as they were learning to be students. Anyway, I've been thinking about finding ways back into the teaching game and your experience in the prisons has me wondering whether our local institutions of incarceration need help in that regard. It would be great to be in the presence of such students once more. Thanks again for these notes from the front lines; I wouldn't mind if you wrote several more.
I think what you describe is exactly it—that no nonsense, I’m here to learn students changes the games so much, and then you also realize, “How is that not the norm?”
It's not Ed Tech to blame, its values. Its differences in the values of the students, the administration, society as a whole that actually causes the differences you're observing.
I worked on a PhD in Instructional Design and Technology and one of the most salient things we're taught is that the technology itself doesn't matter, its what the technology can facilitate. If you pick your technology first and shoehorn your instruction to fit, its going to be poor quality compared to designing sound instruction and simply choosing technology to serve your needs.
A stick scraping in dirt; a pencil on paper; a keyboard on a typewriter, computer, smartphone, tablet...these can all facilitate the same thing--the communication of information.
The same assignment could be produced via handwriting, a typewriter, or digitally device depending on what the individual has access to. (Admittedly, the speed at which the same assignment could be produced does change--and this can offer more or less opportunity for reflection, but the assumption that a typed paper required less reflection than a handwritten one, or vice versa, does not always hold true. For example, I edited and retyped this many, many times...)
Your incarcerated students could use any technology, if they had access to it; its the fact that they value the opportunity to get an education, the content they're learning, the space to have discussions, the ability to be heard that differs them from your typical university students. Its the fact that the prison administration doesn't dictate curriculum or push technology compared to the university administration. Its the fact that society has pressured your traditional students into the craddle to college to career pipeline, while it has largely rejected your incarcerated students as continuting members of society and has barred them from having many career opportunities. (All of which is a real disservice to both the incarcerated and to society).
I do agree that changes in technology have been correlated, and perhaps contributed to, change in values. In the ability to record information we lost many oral traditions; and with every progressing technology we have increased the ability to distribute information.
I actually speculate that we may have reached a terminal velocity, so to speak, of information distribution--and have thus perhaps reached the point where the value of such technology does not outweigh the potential for doing harm--spreading false or damaging information as easily (if not easier) than accurate, thoughtful, critical information. But I would argue that comes down to a social values too.
I wonder if confronting AI will actually facilitate a renaissance of sorts, where we get back to valuing, treasuring, and prioritizing the artistic talents of humans.
(The irony of your AI generated art on this post is noted.)
There is no irony on AI art. I think it's where your jumping in that's the issue. I've been writing about (and using) AI for years, especially image generation--you'd see it in my other posts. As far as the content itself, I've been working with Ed Tech for over 20 years (I was the first person hired into my university with online as past of their contract--seems like forever ago.) The context of this piece is not that I'm new to technology. It's that I'm an old hand at it, and I have suddenly experienced the weirdest thing that I never thought I would ever see--a classroom that basically has the tech of the 80's (there is a whiteboard, to be fair.) Beyond that, I think where I disagree with you is on this point: "the message is the medium." I firmly believe that. The medium will always inform the values, and I don't think the two can be separated. There are studies that show the value of handwriting on the improvement of retention (and some others about just pace of work in general). I agree 100% with you about the forces outside dictating all the things they shouldn't be--it's the worst. But to be clear, I was deep into digitla humanities (started the track at my university) and actually used a self-generating poem in my interview (using an excel spreadsheet. Seems quaint.) I was forward in time and, oddly, rejected for it. Now I'm backward in time and the roles have switched--still rejected for it.
You seem to have taken some offense to my comment and feel the need to emphasize your experience in response. I did was not questioning your experiences; I was simply offering an alternative perspective: you're comparing apples to orange; the technology isn't the only (or in this case significant, IMO) reason for the differences you've observed.
As far as the message is the medium,
I don't think we are entirely in disagreement. I agree technology isn't inherently neutral, nothing is. The medium can, and does, influence the human experience, but at the end of the day it is still the *human experience.* We ascribe meaning and thus values to the world we interact with, and the various medium can only be used to reflect (and perpetuate) those things, they don't make meaning and values on their own.
I actually think we are in agreement that many contemporary societal values are not only unsustainable, but actively harmful to the future. And that it will benefit us all to return to focusing on the distinctly *human* aspect of things. We're just approaching the issue from different lenses.
...You really don't see the irony in using AI generated art on a series of post where you're arguing for a return to more human-centric, low computational, work? Where you compare the richness and quality of work produced by intentional exploration to the shallow imitation of work produced without it? Okay. Maybe we don't have a shared meaning that leads to congruent understanding of afterall. In which case, we can agree to disagree and I won't attempt to converse with you about this again. Better?
I also think we agree on a lot. I do find interesting that people always refer to AI generated images as "art." I don't consider this image on the top of this post art. I just view them as images, which I would never offer as art, in the same way that people used to seek stock images if you were a regular blogger back in the day. But I also have a lot of music I've made, as an experiment, that uses stock AI voices. My sense: you can only critique capitalism from within, using its tools. There's no other way.
What I agree the most on, and which I didn't write about (for fear of going on too long) is the natural resource issue. Where I work brands itself as "EcoU," yet no one could mention the amount of water that's being used to cool servers (we are also very proud of our land acknowledgement). Like you say, our contemporary values are unsustainable and harmful, and are getting more so by the day. I think what I'm really writing about (in a still very unfinished way--I use Substack to draft), is that we should think about stripping classrooms down and doing an honest evaluation: what do we really need technologically and why? We are at a point where, when working in a larger university structure, we do not even ask that basic question or ask what affect it will have on students.
Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat
by Caitlin Seida
Hope is not the thing with feathers
That comes home to roost
When you need it most.
Hope is an ugly thing
With teeth and claws and
Patchy fur that’s seen some shit.
It’s what thrives in the discards
And survives in the ugliest parts of our world,
Able to find a way to go on
When nothing else can even find a way in.
It’s the gritty, nasty little carrier of such
diseases as
optimism, persistence,
Perseverance and joy,
Transmissible as it drags its tail across
your path
and
bites you in the ass.
Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird,
Emily.
It’s a lowly little sewer rat
That snorts pesticides like they were
Lines of coke and still
Shows up on time to work the next day
Looking no worse for wear.
This inspired me. My husband and I tried to volunteer at our local state youth prison but were turned off by the wall of regulations, like not being able to bring in and use a highlighter. It is so great you have them wrestle with real pen on paper, mind to hand learning, and back. The research overwhelmingly shoe that taking notes on laptop does not retain material like notes by hand on paper. How can they not see the value of muscle memory here? I hope you can teach them cursive writing also. The connectedness of letters. And poetry memorization! Might as well party like it’s 1900.
"we should think about stripping classroms down and doing an honest evaluation: what do we need technologically and why?"
This is what I was trying to convey in my first comment. Its been established in Instructional Design that good instruction puts the learning objectives first and the technology second. We need to decide our messages and then pick what technology allows us to best convey them. Doing things the other way, making technology choices first, compromises the ability to make effective instruction.
And to be clear, by effective instruction, I mean students learning what you intend. I don't think technology impairs *learning* - it simply intoduces more "noise" that allows room for students to make a wider variety of meaning... But thats an entirely separate conversation.
I'm really loving these posts about teaching in prison. The way you describe the prisoners' attitudes about learning remind me of when I first started teaching (Frosh Comp, University of Maine, early 80s) and had the occasional older or "returning" student as they were referred to back in the day, the housewives who were going to finally get their degree now that the kids were grown, or the blue collar guys who wanted to be the first in their family to go to college. Such students kept you on your game: they countenanced no horseshit and demanded you give them every penny's worth of the tuition they probably could barely afford to pay. And they always took advantage of one's office hours. I loved their dedication, but it was also frightening: what if they exposed the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, if they discovered that I was learning to be a teacher at the same time as they were learning to be students. Anyway, I've been thinking about finding ways back into the teaching game and your experience in the prisons has me wondering whether our local institutions of incarceration need help in that regard. It would be great to be in the presence of such students once more. Thanks again for these notes from the front lines; I wouldn't mind if you wrote several more.
I think what you describe is exactly it—that no nonsense, I’m here to learn students changes the games so much, and then you also realize, “How is that not the norm?”
“shows that…”
It's not Ed Tech to blame, its values. Its differences in the values of the students, the administration, society as a whole that actually causes the differences you're observing.
I worked on a PhD in Instructional Design and Technology and one of the most salient things we're taught is that the technology itself doesn't matter, its what the technology can facilitate. If you pick your technology first and shoehorn your instruction to fit, its going to be poor quality compared to designing sound instruction and simply choosing technology to serve your needs.
A stick scraping in dirt; a pencil on paper; a keyboard on a typewriter, computer, smartphone, tablet...these can all facilitate the same thing--the communication of information.
The same assignment could be produced via handwriting, a typewriter, or digitally device depending on what the individual has access to. (Admittedly, the speed at which the same assignment could be produced does change--and this can offer more or less opportunity for reflection, but the assumption that a typed paper required less reflection than a handwritten one, or vice versa, does not always hold true. For example, I edited and retyped this many, many times...)
Your incarcerated students could use any technology, if they had access to it; its the fact that they value the opportunity to get an education, the content they're learning, the space to have discussions, the ability to be heard that differs them from your typical university students. Its the fact that the prison administration doesn't dictate curriculum or push technology compared to the university administration. Its the fact that society has pressured your traditional students into the craddle to college to career pipeline, while it has largely rejected your incarcerated students as continuting members of society and has barred them from having many career opportunities. (All of which is a real disservice to both the incarcerated and to society).
I do agree that changes in technology have been correlated, and perhaps contributed to, change in values. In the ability to record information we lost many oral traditions; and with every progressing technology we have increased the ability to distribute information.
I actually speculate that we may have reached a terminal velocity, so to speak, of information distribution--and have thus perhaps reached the point where the value of such technology does not outweigh the potential for doing harm--spreading false or damaging information as easily (if not easier) than accurate, thoughtful, critical information. But I would argue that comes down to a social values too.
I wonder if confronting AI will actually facilitate a renaissance of sorts, where we get back to valuing, treasuring, and prioritizing the artistic talents of humans.
(The irony of your AI generated art on this post is noted.)
There is no irony on AI art. I think it's where your jumping in that's the issue. I've been writing about (and using) AI for years, especially image generation--you'd see it in my other posts. As far as the content itself, I've been working with Ed Tech for over 20 years (I was the first person hired into my university with online as past of their contract--seems like forever ago.) The context of this piece is not that I'm new to technology. It's that I'm an old hand at it, and I have suddenly experienced the weirdest thing that I never thought I would ever see--a classroom that basically has the tech of the 80's (there is a whiteboard, to be fair.) Beyond that, I think where I disagree with you is on this point: "the message is the medium." I firmly believe that. The medium will always inform the values, and I don't think the two can be separated. There are studies that show the value of handwriting on the improvement of retention (and some others about just pace of work in general). I agree 100% with you about the forces outside dictating all the things they shouldn't be--it's the worst. But to be clear, I was deep into digitla humanities (started the track at my university) and actually used a self-generating poem in my interview (using an excel spreadsheet. Seems quaint.) I was forward in time and, oddly, rejected for it. Now I'm backward in time and the roles have switched--still rejected for it.
You seem to have taken some offense to my comment and feel the need to emphasize your experience in response. I did was not questioning your experiences; I was simply offering an alternative perspective: you're comparing apples to orange; the technology isn't the only (or in this case significant, IMO) reason for the differences you've observed.
As far as the message is the medium,
I don't think we are entirely in disagreement. I agree technology isn't inherently neutral, nothing is. The medium can, and does, influence the human experience, but at the end of the day it is still the *human experience.* We ascribe meaning and thus values to the world we interact with, and the various medium can only be used to reflect (and perpetuate) those things, they don't make meaning and values on their own.
I actually think we are in agreement that many contemporary societal values are not only unsustainable, but actively harmful to the future. And that it will benefit us all to return to focusing on the distinctly *human* aspect of things. We're just approaching the issue from different lenses.
...You really don't see the irony in using AI generated art on a series of post where you're arguing for a return to more human-centric, low computational, work? Where you compare the richness and quality of work produced by intentional exploration to the shallow imitation of work produced without it? Okay. Maybe we don't have a shared meaning that leads to congruent understanding of afterall. In which case, we can agree to disagree and I won't attempt to converse with you about this again. Better?
I also think we agree on a lot. I do find interesting that people always refer to AI generated images as "art." I don't consider this image on the top of this post art. I just view them as images, which I would never offer as art, in the same way that people used to seek stock images if you were a regular blogger back in the day. But I also have a lot of music I've made, as an experiment, that uses stock AI voices. My sense: you can only critique capitalism from within, using its tools. There's no other way.
What I agree the most on, and which I didn't write about (for fear of going on too long) is the natural resource issue. Where I work brands itself as "EcoU," yet no one could mention the amount of water that's being used to cool servers (we are also very proud of our land acknowledgement). Like you say, our contemporary values are unsustainable and harmful, and are getting more so by the day. I think what I'm really writing about (in a still very unfinished way--I use Substack to draft), is that we should think about stripping classrooms down and doing an honest evaluation: what do we really need technologically and why? We are at a point where, when working in a larger university structure, we do not even ask that basic question or ask what affect it will have on students.
Outstanding
daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn