Reda Sadki’s Updates
Week 7: Thinking about learning technology: is the "product" metaphor really that useful?
I just finished listening to last week's live session, where a few folks got to present their technology case study. Very interesting stuff.
In my work, I am constantly discovering and evaluating new web sites and online services related to learning in some way. Increasingly, I'm wondering if there can be an underlying method for assessing them that is different from the prevailing consumerist, product metaphor.
What I mean is that we tend to look at a learning technology as if it were a product that we will consume if we adopt it in our learning/teaching practice. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Ultimately, we have to make pragmatic, practical decisions: do I use Schoology or Edmodo or Scholar for my project? It seems to me like we are quite "naturally" thinking as *consumers* of learning technology, as we do in our daily lives making choices about whether we use Facebook or Twitter (or neither), keep our e-mail on Hotmail or GMail, etc.
One limitation I see with this product approach is that thinking about learning is quickly reduced to listing and comparing technical features. The traditional IT approach in choosing a technology involves building 1) use cases and 2) requirements and then trying to find the software package, platform, or service that most closely matches these. In my own organization, I have seen the disastrous outcomes from this kind of analysis.
I'm not saying we shouldn't think about feature sets, requirements or use cases. I just question that they come up first in discussion. I think this happens because "detecting" the underlying learning theory that underpins a learning system is much more difficult. And it's not only about understanding what the project proponents grounded themselves in, but also looking at the gap between the intended theoretical underpinning and the live product. A good example is Moodle: I love the concepts, the history and the open access and open source. But I fail to recognize the constructivism claimed by its authors when I see how mechanistic, do-this-get-that it quickly becomes. From reading the case studies, I can see that good teachers are able to squeeze constructivism out of Moodle -- but a good teacher can probably do that with just about any system, and I fail to see how Moodle is making it easier.
From my own experience in search of the holy grail of learning systems, I've drawn the frightening conclusion that we live in a world in which we can expect an exponentially growing number of online systems for learning, propelled by various ideas which have less and less to do with learning (and more and more with corporate takeover and control of education).
That means we need to give up on the idea of a centralized platform that can meet all our needs -- and be grounded in coherent learning theory that leads to sensible teaching and learning practice.
Fortunately -- and not just because I tend to be an optimist -- I also believe that as the online world becomes increasingly fragmented, we are also developing the tools to pick and choose useful tools from the chaos, to which we can then creatively add identity (this is where visual design is important, as with the badges, etc.) to make a stable learning system. Most important, we need make these choices informed by a specific set of theories which we use as tools to make decisions on how we set up a course, how we determine its content, who "we" are (is it teachers, students, or both?), etc.
Philipp Schmidt from P2PU.org recently showed me The Mechanical MOOC, a good prototype for this kind of thinking and its application. Links for further reading:
http://mechanicalmooc.org/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/education/mechanical-mooc-to-rely-on-free-learning-sites.html
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/hack-higher-education/mechanical-mooc
Thanks for sharing.
Rotary all kinds of sensor must be mounted on the shaft. An integral slip ring assembly is used to transfer the electrical signal from rotating electronics to Nagano keiki Pressure sensor stationary electronics. The slip ring consists of brushes which rub on rotating ring, providing an electrical path for the incoming excitation and the outgoing signal voltage. At low to moderate speeds the abs speed sensor electrical connection between the rings and brushes are relatively noise free, but at higher speeds noise will severely degrade their performance.FORD SERIES
LAND ROVER SERIES
Typical max speeds will be in the 5000 rpm range for a medium capacity torque sensor. Finally, the brush ring interface is a source of mazda 6 suction control valve torque that can be a problem especially for very low capacity measurements where the driving torque will have trouble overcoming the brush drag.
Proximity and displacement suction control valve can also detect torque by measuring the angular GM SERIES
displacement between shaft's two ends. By fixing two identical toothed wheels to the shaft at some distance apart Speed Sensor the angular displacement caused by the torque can be measured. Proximity Pressure Sensor or photocells located at each toothed wheel produce output voltages whose phase difference increases as the torque twists the shaft.FIAT SERIES
Merci, c'est très touché cette analyse.
Not sure how I managed to find a four year old post! But yes, the idea that young children are competent fully formed human beings drives everything we stand for and all our decision making processes. I am in China now looking at some amazing work from a group of 3 year-olds for whom paint brushes are a new technology and watercolour is a new language.
Hi Marjorie, although that blog post is now 4 years old, I stand by what I wrote then and, unfortunately, believe that it applies just as much now. So it is heartening to hear of a similar insight from teaching and learning in K-12 brick-and-mortar classrooms. I was blown away by the artefacts of student work that you showed me in Beirut. And, if I understood correctly, it was philosophy that did it, not technology.
Your remarks resonate a lot with our experience in a number of start-up school situations. The most successful situations are ones in which the choice of technology has been made based on the aims of learning and the pedagogical philosophy first, then thinking about growth and what the budget allows. The best tools are the ones that are the most flexible because in fact our ideas about our learning aims must evolve over time--as we get better at our practice, our student collective get smarter as we go and we cannot stay in one place if we expect to serve their needs.