Wesch and Turkle

 

    Sherry Turkle and Michael Wesch may come from different academic disciplines, but their beliefs about people in our current times overlap in interesting ways.  While Wesch talks about teaching and learning, Turkle discusses the habits of people in general, and specifically, how technology has changed the habits of people, and not for the better in many cases.  Both scholars understand the challenges of technology, and how it can effect young people in positive and negative ways, but Sherry Turkle's talk serves more as a warning against having technology take us to places we do not want to go, while Wesch discusses more about harnessing technology in the classroom to actually take us to somewhere we actually do want to go.  Both arguments are valid, and I do not think they would disagree with each other.  Technology has wonderful uses, but it can definitely be misused, and overused.

    Turkle and Wesch would be allies in their views on technology and the potential for great things to be done with it both inside and outside of the classroom.  Turkle simply warns us that technology should not be a placement for real world relationships and our abilities to conduct real conversations.  She warns us that technology can leave people lonely but afraid of intimacy as relationships with people are mostly via email, tweet, Facebook etc.  We cannot sacrifice true human contact to simply dwell in a virtual world.  We owe each other our true undivided attention, and we cannot only pay attention to what we want to hear as we text and email.  This is not a real relationship of any kind when we do this.  She is worried these behaviors are getting out of hand, and leading us to places we really do not want to go in regards to technology.

    Michael Wesch is advocating the use of technology in a very constructive way, that I believe Turkle would be perfectly supportive of.  He is not asking students to become disconnected from each other in any way.  He simply advocates for students to learn more about the world using technology.  He frames the learning in a way that students will learn more about themselves in the the process.  Wesch recognizes that his students are living in a much more global society than ever before.  In order to successfully navigate this new world of globalization, students will need to be exposed to both the positives and negatives of this world, discover how they fit into it, and how they can facilitate positive changes in it.  He does this by allowing students to learn of the great inequities in this global world, and the negative environmental effects that human activities have caused over time.  He has students explore the many different cultures and regions of the world during the semester, including the many problems that effect these regions.  His World Simulation Project allows students to realize how they have a place, and a voice in this world, and the ability to make decisions that could help change the direction of the future in a positive way.  Students see that the world is a global and interconnected place.  In this interconnected place, their voices can be heard by many more people than was possible in the past.  Students learn that they matter.  The outcomes of technology use in Wesch's classroom are designed to be a positive experience for students, and are in no way advocating for students to become disconnected.  In actuality, students work closely together in class and can build real relationships with each other while utilizing technology to further group goals in the class.  I believe that Sherry Turkle would view this work as a model for the way technology should actually be used in a positive and constructive manner.    She is clear that she is not against technology.  She warns that it can take us places we do not want to go.  Where Wesch takes us is not one of those places.

Understanding What Is Really Important To Our Students

 

    Dr. Michael Wesch uses his one year old son as an example for what he would like to see as far as learning is concerned in the classroom.  Although his son falls off the step over and over again, he continues to get up with a smile on his face, and try again every time.  He explains that education has not been very conducive to producing this kind of attitude of persistence.  Education has been viewed as the dumping of information into the heads of the students, and then assessing how much of it was successfully absorbed by them.  He says that this is what leads students to asking questions like "what is on the test?", and developing an attitude towards education of "getting by".  His approach of beginning to go to lunch with students, and actually talking to them about what they were really concerned about is what opened his eyes to what is really important to these students.  Their main questions were "who am I?", "what am I going to do?", and "Am I going to make it?".  These are serious questions of identity and survival.  These concerns go greatly beyond the superficial question of "what is on the test?".  Dr. Wesch saw these authentic questions as something that needed to become part of learning.  He reinforced the validity of these questions with heart wrenching stories he was told by his students about their own lives.  

    The example that Dr. Wesch gives of a student who stayed up all night gaming, and then slept or seemed disinterested in class is probably something many of us as teachers have experienced in our own classes.  Taking a chance, and diving into what is causing this issue, left Dr. Wesch realizing that this student was interesting, and actually had a lot to offer if challenged in a proper way.  This student turned out to be very successful when challenged in a way that was important to him, and gave him the ability to answer some of the previously discussed meaningful questions for himself.  This student began to see who he was, what he was going to do, and began to realize that he could make it.  I personally think that as a teacher I could not ask for a better result if my students came to this realization because of something I may have been able to help them realize about themselves.

    

    Through stories of his students, animation, and the stubborn refusal of his son to accept failure in his walking attempts, Dr. Wesch tells us how be believes this all comes together to explain how children learn.  Learning should be scaffolded, and failing grades should not just be handed out for those that stumble on the first steps.  Students need to keep going, with the help of the entire class, to make it to the next step.  This will proceed through multiple steps, and at the end of the process would be a final project that would be "worth it".  In his description of his model he stresses that students would help each other achieve the goal.  The journey through the steps of the project would help students realize the answers to the meaningful questions that they have.  Students would realize that they "could do it", they were "going to make it", and learn more about "who they are".  These questions would not be fully answered in one project, but the realization that they were learning answers to these authentically important and meaningful questions would spur them on to continue learning more about themselves, and develop compassion for others through the cooperative learning in the classroom .  Answering these questions about themselves would help give them the tools to weather the storms that happen in life, and make them more confident in knowing that they will make it.  This type of educational experience can lead to students learning a lot about themselves in the process of a project based learning model.  

Don't Prensky with my Boyd

      

      After watching the slide deck discussing the thoughts of Marc Prensky in regards to digital natives and digital immigrants, I thought what he had to say made a lot of sense.  I often feel like an immigrant to digital technology when I look at my students and see how much easier it seems to come to them than it does to me.  On the surface these labels seem innocuous, and make a great deal of sense to those of us who would be considered digital immigrants.  If you are like me, all the kids seem better at digital technology than you are, so it is easy to accept the label of immigrant and just assume the younger generations are all natives, inherently better at all this "stuff".

    Shortly after watching the slide deck presentation I began reading the chapter by Danah Boyd.  I am glad I read this after watching the slide deck, and not before.  Danah Boyd does a very good job of picking apart many of the problems with Marc Prensky's line of thinking in regards to the immigrant/native issue.  Besides the potential for the terms being offensive to some for cultural reasons, Boyd argues that accessibility and privilege play a huge role in varying levels of competence with certain technologies among the younger generations.  Not all of them spend their 

childhoods with the same access to technology for a variety of reasons, often related to socioeconomic status of a family, but also for any number of other reasons.  She compares students with access to home computers to those students who access a computer a local library that has many blocks and filters limiting the extent of its use.  the student using the technology at home with unfettered access or time constraints will naturally become more adept at using the technology than the student who has limited access for limited time.  

    As I read Boyd's arguments, I began to realize that I was being close minded in my approach to thinking about this.  I had called younger generations digital natives for years, and had no idea where that even came from until we had class today.  I just viewed my students as being "a lot better at this stuff" than I am.  I never stopped to really watch how their skills differentiated from student to student.  I just viewed them as being better than I was.  

    Marc Prensky and Danah Boyd vary greatly in their views of the nature versus nurture debate when it comes to digital technology.  Prensky insinuates that because this technology exists, and younger generations are born into it, that they are natives and instinctually better with it due to their ability to access it at younger ages than the immigrants were.  Boyd counters this argument by clearly stating that not all children have the same access to technology for numerous reasons.  The financial cost of acquiring the most cutting edge tools for digital technology would greatly lend to socioeconomic status lending itself directly to the access debate.  Prensky presents more of a nature argument while Boyd's argument relies on how one is nurtured on technology through a person's level of access to it. 

    After contemplating the ideas of both of these authors, I have to agree with Danah Boyd more than Marc Prensky.  Prensky's ideas are definitely more in line with how I was thinking for a number of years, but that is before Boyd had me considering factors that contribute to the development of digital skills in children.  I was also impressed with her explanation of the value of Wikipedia.  Like most teachers, I was told from almost the first day of teaching that I should not allow students to use that a source on any assignment.  I have stuck to that for 18 years, and Boyd has me reconsidering that as well after giving an overview of the extensive review process that edits go through on the site.  The Boyd reading has definitely made me feel that I need to be a little more open minded in regards to just about everything she discusses in this chapter.  I do believe after reading her article that, although the students all seem to be better at using technology than I am, it is not because they are digital natives.  They are better at than I am because I do not have the level of interest in it that they do, even though I have unlimited access, and their abilities with it will vary depending on their access to it as they have grown up.  I plan on watching them more closely next year to see if I can begin to notice differences in how they navigate the technology we are using.

Class 1-Hello Everyone

                                                                                                                                   

    Hi, my name is John Brennan.  I am looking forward to getting to know everyone during what promises to be a busy two weeks.  I decided to include a picture of myself to the left that shows me looking extremely confused while looking at my phone because that is my usual expression when I try to do anything on it.  I am hoping I will be able to upgrade some of my technology capabilities through this course, and be able to integrate some of these skills into my classroom in the fall.

    I grew up in Rhode Island, and attended Bishop Hendricken High School.  I went on to college at Brandeis University where I majored in History and played four years of varsity baseball.  When I graduated from Brandeis in 1996, the internet was not really being used in course of my studies.  What little I know about technology has been what I have learned through trial and error from that point on, and from the limited amount of professional development I receive in my district.  This is actually the first blog post I have ever attempted, and most of what we will be doing in this class will probably be new to me.  It is a little nerve wracking, but I am excited to learn.  I went back to school at RIC in 1999 to get certified to teach Social Studies through the RITE program, and eventually found my way into the classroom teaching for Warwick Public Schools.

    I currently teach at Pilgrim High School as a member of the Social Studies Department.  I have been at Pilgrim for the past 15 years out of the 18 I have been with the school system.  I have also coached baseball at the school, and am taking a break from that at the moment to complete the M. Ed in TESOL program through Rhode Island College.  I am doing this because the demographics of my school are rapidly changing, and teachers with ELL/MLL experience are in short supply in my system.  I foresee a huge need for ELL/MLL teachers in the coming years in my system.  I feel that this program will help me with the students I have in my current classes in Social Studies that do not speak English as a first language, and will also give me another option for the future if I choose to go in the direction of being an MLL Specialist in the school system.

    When I am not teaching or taking classes, I enjoy taking care of my pet pig (yes, really), and my Cane Corso.  The pig is named Pickles, and she is around 275 pounds.  The dog is around 135 pounds and her name is Gracie.  Needless to say, during the pandemic and distance learning, Pickles and Gracie were the highlight of my classes conducted online from home.  Pickles was incentive enough for the kids to log onto my classes during a time when attendance online was really poor district wide.  

    As a Social Studies teacher at the high school level, I teach a variety of subjects, and these can vary from year to year.  Over the last couple of years I have mostly been teaching ninth grade World History, tenth grade American Civics, and Western Civilization which has eleventh and twelfth graders in it.  I would love to learn more about some of the types of technology and media that I could incorporate into all of my classes.  I have been hesitant to use technology I am not very comfortable with my classes because something usually goes wrong and I end up not knowing how to fix it.  I have found that although I often do not know how to fix these problems, the kids usually do know how to fix it.  I have become a little more comfortable with some of the basic new technologies we use in our district like Google Classroom, and Aspen for attendance and grades.  I have recently been using Edpuzzle for some of my classes as well, but I know there is a lot more out there as far as useful technology for education that 

I am yet to become familiar with.  I am hoping this class will introduce me to some of these, and I can become comfortable using them.  Doing this introduction using a blog has already given me some ideas about how to use this format in class.  I had never considered it before, so I guess I'm off to a good start so far.

    Anyway, I look forward to meeting all of you in class.  It will be a busy couple of weeks, but I am looking forward to it.  I hope everyone has a great rest of your weekend, and I will see you at 9 am tomorrow.

Take Care,

John Brennan