Tag: PhD

Winter solstice – where science and culture merge

Sue Watling / / PhD, Uncategorized

Frost patterns

Winter is the time of alternative beauty. I love the patterns of ice. The cold chills and I miss the sun on the allotment but there’s one more task to do; I always cut my grape vine at this time of year.

grapevine in autumn

The tradition of pruning on Christmas Day is based on science. The wood should be cut when the sap is not rising and the coldest, deepest part of winter is the solstice around 21/22 December.

Astronomically, this is the when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky. This is also science. The earth takes approx 365 days to travel the ecliptic orbit around the sun. Every day since mid summer, in the northern hemisphere the sun appears to rise about 1 degree further south of east. This weekend the sun will appear to rise at the same point for three mornings; days are short, nights long, darkness appears to have overthrown light. Then – on 25th December – it rises one degree north of east and the celebrations begin. The sun has risen, been reborn, returned, light of life, conqueror of darkness, sun of god. Winter solstice is where science and culture merge.

sunrise over the humber sunrise

In older times, the movement of the planets were interpreted as a celestial clock marking the optimum times for planting and harvesting. Some people still garden by the moon, many following the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. Again this is science. No one can deny the gravitational pull of the moon on the tides so the relationship between planting and lunar phases makes sense. As the levels of ground water in the soil are pulled upwards during the full moon this is the optimum time to plant. Seeds and seedlings reach for the light and benefit from increased hydration. Cutting, pruning and harvesting all depend on the type of plant but it’s a biodynamic fact grape vines bleed so should only be cut when the risk of infection and death is lowest.

moon planting

Too often the older wisdoms have become lost. This is sad because we all need ways to connect with the earth beneath our feet. I like the space at the end of the year when email goes quiet and I love swapping presents with friends – but don’t buy into the surface presentation of self decking the halls in glittered tinsel. Holly and ivy is fine, tied with red and green ribbons, and never have artificial lights been so easy and pretty. See, I’m not all bah-humbug! My perfect day is on my terms. For me this time of year is about taking advantage of the lull to look back, look forward and take the opportunity to be myself. I love Christmas but I love it for the deeper significance of the turning wheel of the year. Best wishes for 2014. Blessed be.

flaubert's parrot

“Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.”  Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot

 

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image of planting http://www.pottingblocks.com/product_images/uploaded_images/planting-moon-phases-751×507.jpg

Let’s get digital – digital literacies workshop with Doug Belshaw

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

 modules flipchart resources flipchart engagement flip chartDoug suggests eight elements of digital literacies. If we interpret elements as characteristics this gives some idea of their complexity but not what they are. Maybe we need to look at categories. For example media digital literacies, information digital literacies, web digital literacies etc. But there are also digital literacies at subject level where the requirement for arts, science, food manufacture, nursing and social work might all derive from different learning styles and professional ways of working. Add digital scholarship,  digital pedagogy and digital identity and it’s clear you can have too much of a digital thing – there are too many digital literacies. We need an alternative taxonomy; a way to simplify the complexity.

all things digital flip chart

‘Digital literacy is a condition not a threshold.’*

Doug repeated this several times. But it’s only a condition if you are in the right place and time for it to happen. A shared starting point is necessary to begin the conversation. We might need thresholds after all. In Social Work in a Digital Society, I use threshold concepts to present digital literacies as social practices  Social Work in a Digital Society Threshold Concepts  Here each successive layer of understanding increases knowledge and alters practice. A threshold is like a starting line – a place to begin.

I think I get the concept  of digital literacies as a condition – being prepared to accept a digital dimension to your life and having the confidence to explore new digital landscapes – but access and support  is necessary as are specific goals and outcomes. In the way you need the alphabet to read, so you need basic tools to become digitally literate. The tools are the thresholds. We need to look at the building blocks of digital literacies like file formats and management, attachments and file sizes before RSS, building mashups and remixing code. 

Maybe the best way to grasp digital literacies is to see them as the online equivalents of everything we do off-line.

To encourage and support confidence with digital ways of working means engaging with the affordances, finding the tipping points or thresholds which make a difference. These will be different for everyone but they are already out there. We just need to find them; like Doug’s quote from  William Gibson ‘ The future is already here, but is unevenly distributed.’

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* Martin, A. (2006). ‘Literacies for the Digital Age: A Preview of Part 1’ in A. Martin and D. Madigan , eds, Digital Literacies for Learning. London: Facet Publishing, pp .3–25.

Teaching and learning in a digital age; the myth of digital competence

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

digital age image

The human need to create, manage and control information and communication remains constant. It could be said books and Blackboard sites are different ways of doing the same thing and the gap between Gutenberg and Google is not as wide as it might first appear. In 370 BC Plato has Socrates bemoaning the introduction of writing as damaging to human memory.  In 1981 Neil Postman predicted the rise of cable television would result in us all amusing ourselves to death. Back in 15th century Europe the printing press caused such alarm the Catholic Church introduced censorship; all books were to be approved before publication. It’s not unusual for new technologies to be heralded with doom and gloom.

Marc Prensky’s concept of Digital Natives Digital Immigrants could come into this category. In 2001 he offered a provocative but enduring image of technology as the agent of changing brains and behaviors of young people. While his ideas have since been challenged the myth of the digital native remains persistent. Young people are imagined to be tech savvy while older ones struggle.

Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA) begins with Prensky’s Digital Natives Digital Immigrants paper. Online discussions get lively because everyone has a view on Prensky. Even colleagues initially unsure about contributing to virtual conversations find their nerves are partially overcome because they have something to say about the need to support individual digital literacies and how they cannot be taken for granted.

Confidence and competence with learner technologies cannot be anticipated. Early, mid or late career is no predictor of Blackboard use and engagement. There are older people comfortable with online collaborative working and younger ones unsure of how to insert a picture or attach a file. All roads lead to the same place. Digital literacies are too often assumed rather than addressed. Where technology plays a prominent role in people’s lives, it can create digital closeting which prevents awareness of the full spectrum of digital engagement. This is the myth of digital competence. More meaningful communication is needed between those who support, maintain and mandate the technology and those who use it as a part of their day to day teaching practice.

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image from http://www.heraldboy.com/how-does-innovation-in-the-digital-age-survive/

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives Digital Immigrants. Available from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

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How broken email led to my discovery of the Landfill Harmonic Orchestra

Sue Watling / / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Following my confession on the breakdown of my relationship with technology, these are the messages Web Outlook are giving me this morning.

Error message      error message

It seems to have broke in the night although it’s probably my laptop. The most common response from colleagues is a variation on one of the themes below:

  • I’ve never seen that error message before.
  • It’s working ok for me.
  • It must be you.
  • Have you checked your leads?
  • err nerr? you got a right ‘ull accent!

When you’re disconnected you realise the enormity of your net affair. How it affects every thing. This is only a partial break; not like when the network’s down and there’s nothing to do but tidy desks or wash up. Looking at the piles of unread papers on my floor, I could probably do with a few days network-free. But am careful what I wish for.

I’ve mobile options but not everyone has. Last week a colleague was surprised to find three students in their class were dependent on campus computers for internet access. The TELEDA Induction forum contains references to not wanting smart phones, fearing work/life balances would blur. Some make a point not to connect evenings and weekends. Others find devious means to send sneaky email on Saturdays while for many Sunday evening is the new Monday morning. The time of an email reveals the owls or early birds. Colleagues stay up late, get up early, some seem not to go to bed at all. How many times do you check your mobile phone? Is it the first or last thing when you get up in the morning? Do you take your phone to bed with you?

Opinion is divided. Some say it’s professional to keep a permanent eye on email, others want a work/life divide which is a sacrosanct. Like all digital literacies there’s no ‘one size fits all’ model; everyone needs to decide for themselves the most appropriate management of email or social media used for work purposes. There’s also the Blackboard discussion boards. If you’re moderating a group of students participating in an online activity, how often should you contribute? Is tutor input wanted? Can it be a blessing or a curse on the delicate process of encouraging shared practice online?

My email is back. Before catching up, here’s a video I might not have come across otherwise. A useful reminder of the value of virtual communication for sharing what really matters; how in the middle of terrible conditions the human spirit and the power of music survives.

The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra

Digital illiteracies; institutional or individual responsibility?

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

It’s been a digitally illiterate week. Personally and vicariously. I’ve empathy for colleagues in buckets. Professional accreditation as a learning technologist (I’m ‘certified’ by the Association for Learning Technology) means nothing when something doesn’t work. In case you didn’t know, it’s a truth – universally acknowledged – where computers are concerned, if they can go wrong for me they will – and invariably do. ALT accreditation is – fortunately for me – more about pedagogy than hardware! 

Is it me or the technology? Why are MobiGos all different? What controls the sound when speakers are activated but silent? Between a blank projector screen and your resources is the loneliest of places.  There isn’t always time to check everything is working. Sometimes you have to go on a wing and a prayer. I’ve had videos refuse to play, files refuse to open and colleagues report similar experiences. You want to use multimedia in public to enhance and engage but it can be risky. Stick with text I tell myself after each technical disaster and invariably ignore my own advice.

This week I tried to join an online meeting from my laptop. I forgot to check the hardware. As the meeting opened found I couldn’t use the webcam. Here is the message.

digital media error

Sometimes you can go into online meetings with sound only but not this time. The link to the meeting wouldn’t let me in. Ping! An email asking where I was. How embarrassing to suggest an online meeting and find yourself excluded. About 11 on a scale of 1-10. Ping! A text this time.  Skype was off, nothing was running in the background, I shut down, restart, same error message. In the meantime the meeting is going on without me and I’m feeling stupid.

The next day I want to demonstrate a WordPress blog in front of staff and students. I can’t log in. The error message has a yes/no option. I guess it’s asking if I want my details saving and say no. Try again – and again. Then I click yes and get to the dashboard, select the blog, have to log in again and the same error appears. By now time is running out. I log onto WordPress most days but where it mattered it wasn’t happening. Belatedly I realise it’s probably a browser issue but haven’t time to run advertised programmes to install Chrome. Again I feel stupid.

The scariest story this week came from colleagues who’d designed an interactive lecture using an online voting system to encourage participation. Everything worked fine during  practice but not in the lecture theatre. The software needed Chrome which wasn’t downloaded. Fortunately they had a Plan B. Unfortunately Plan B is a necessity.

Browser issues are increasingly common. Not everyone is browser aware. The response to the question ‘Which browser are you using?‘ is often ‘I don’t know‘. It’s easy to think you should but how? Where do we draw the baseline of digital competence?  Digital literacies are assumed yet the opposite is more often the case. The majority use a computer like they drive a car. Switch on the engine and go. Petrol in the tank and air in the tyres but that’s about it. Where do digital literacies belong? Are they an institutional or individual responsibility? Staff and students may be the best people to ask. Searching for the correct spelling of Mobigo I found this from student Stephen Fisher on http://ictadev.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/projects/mobigo/

“There are alot of potential solutions and maybe asking lecturers what they feel most comfortable with and would want from the MobiGo’s could prove beneficial cause as computing students we tend to think about what we know about computers and such whereas the average user may be confused and not fully aware / trained in optimal use of systems.” 

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

PhD crisis: what value can be extracted from failure?

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

PHd crisis? I don’t think I can manage another one 🙁 The process of narrowing down my research focus is taking forever. I’ve enough dead ends to populate a cemetery.

The solstice is coming. The coldest, darkest place in the year. This is the time…. for reflection. Reading my PhD log back to 23 January 2013 has depressed me. It confirms the absence of essential literature on digital pedagogy and staff development.  Surrounded with piles of books I haven’t read, and hundreds of thousands of words I’ll probably never use (I am prolific in one area at least), my reflection on the year’s progress isn’t reasuring. In spite of evenings and weekends of clandestine relationships. Me and my laptop. Me and the internet. Me and the accusations – Oh god, you’re not working again.

A year of trying to find myself philosophically. I have to face facts. My PhD has got lost. I need to rethink and restart.

My research is like water. It spreads. Isn’t contained. I may have said this before. For the past year I’ve been trying to get a foothold. An ontological and epistemological position. Some of it has been positive but I haven’t got there yet. My feet are still looking for their philosophical standing place.

Positives include rediscovering postmodernism. When academics began their deconstruction of reality, the internet didn’t exist, Today digital reality is endemic yet few people talk about postmodernism.  I’d like to apply a postmodern lens to the presentation of self online, to reconstruct my 3P model of Professional, Personal and Public identities, but this would be a research byproduct, not the primary function.  I need a practical solution to embedding research into my practice.

Times change. I shifted my PhD focus from the community (year 1) to the HE sector (year 2) to my practice (year 3). Maybe I wrong footed myself from the start because with every passing year the panic has increased. Maybe I’m simply not good enough. I wanted a research topic which informed and enhanced my practice. What’s wrong with that? Not finding my doctoral feet feels like a failure. I’ve read the books, gone to the workshops and study schools, but still can’t find a fit. I talk about digital exclusion and people switch off. Maybe it’s the way I say it. I don’t know. But exclusion and its invisibility is my thing and at the start of this year I thought I’d found a research space to slip into. 

With regard to teaching and learning, I knew engagement with a VLE was an under-researched area. The VLE is unpopular, maligned as clunky and linear, unfairly compared to more visual software like Wordpress, used predominantly as a document repository and largely ignored as a tool for enabling and enhancing learning. Embedding virtual pedagogy into my PhD would not only shift my practice from being research-informed to research-engaged, it would show case the VLE’s pedagogic potential. I’m pragmatic. I work in the present where the application of theory to practice matters. As does the day-to-day experience of staff and students doing the best they can with the tools they have. 

Recent discussions around digital education and the VLE at Lincoln seem to confirm I’ve got lost in the PhD landscape – again. The sense of loss is reinforced through Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA) which stretches use of Blackboard and reminds me of a need to embed digital literacies into staff development and teacher education as well as the curriculum. This is where I want my research to be focused but I’m not sure how to get there. My action research methodology needs grounding in the relevant literature. It’s looking like I need the end of year break to begin a new review with a focus on staff development in higher education, on the pragmatic and pedagogical aspects of digital education rather than the political. What value can be extracted from failure? Once more, I’m about to find out.  

Hello laptop. Hello internet. Do you come here often?

Revising the myth and reversing the risk of the digital native

Sue Watling / / PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA) begins with a reading of Digital Natives Digital Immigrants. Written in 2001, Prensky’s paper offers a provocative but enduring image of technology as the agent of changing brains and behaviors of young people. I’m interested in the persistence of this myth of the digital native. In particular the conceptual leap it assumes between access and understanding. It reminds me of the medieval helpdesk video (2.44) direct link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

I like the line at 1.38 ‘When you’re used to paper rolls it takes some time to convert to turning the pages of a – book.’ Consider the conversion from pen and paper to a keyboard and screen. Technology is about people not machines. the problem is those promoting machines forget they’re the minority.

Put the word native into a thesaurus. It offers citizen, inhabitant, dweller, resident. Language is like yeast. It grows. Meaning can be cultivated but the surrounding conditions must be right for change. Today the term native can be defined as to live in one place, to be positioned or located. Today we are all digital natives. One way or another we engage with technology.  Prensky’s distinction needs revision.  The dividing lines have changed.

The physical ability to use a computer and access the internet, the cognitive knowledge of how to maximise usage and stay safe online are 21st century literacies. Society evolves. It rarely jumps. The gap between Gutenberg and Google is not so wide after all. They are different ways of doing the same things. Communicating. Disseminating. Excluding. 

The risk of the myth of the digital native is less about young people born into a technology enabled world, it’s about what happens when they grow up. It’s less about education having to shift its parameters to cope with changing brains and behaviours. It’s about remembering and respecting human diversity and difference. The risk is those who work with technology are losing this memory. As Prensky’s digital natives become creators of 21st century reality, the risk – where technology is concerned – is they might not have the memory in the first place.

If technology has a prominent role in your life, and the lives of family, friends and colleagues, you become protected behind digital walls. This digital closeting prevents you from seeing how the daily struggle with technology is the rule not the exception. This is particularly evident within higher education where those who teach and support learning are employed for their subject specialisms not digital literacies.

Prensky calls for the world to adapt to the requirements of the digital natives but I think this needs to be reversed. Those born into the world of google specs not gutenberg text, whose digital parameters mean they’re unable to see beyond a browser window, need to go and talk to real people face-to-face and find out how the other half live.

Half? Maybe more. Those for whom technology is a daily challenge and struggle probably accounts for most of us.

 

Crap City Chav City City of Culture! Bring it on ‘ull @2017Hull

Sue Watling / / PhD, social impact of the Internet

map of Hull c 1640

This blog post will come as no surprise. Hull won City of Culture 2017 and I’m feeling local and proud. Hull had an excellent chance. It has heritage and history in buckets and its solid working class tradition makes it one of the friendliest places in the world. It was unfair in 2003 when Hull was named number one crap town. The headline stuck, even when it had dropped out of the top 50. To gain City of Culture represents a turn in public opinion to be proud of – but no surprise for those of us who call it home. Hull has a lot to offer and it’s about time we got chance to show it off.

Hull is what it is. A town on the mid-north eastern edge of England. Geographically unique, situated in the basin formed by the Humber and Spurn Point, Hull’s history is the wool trade and fish, There isn’t much left of either. You have to travel to Grimsby to visit the Fishing Heritage Museum but it’s well worth the journey. You’ll find a mirror of Hessle Road and the docks which gave Hull its reputation and infamous smells. The trawlers have gone but Hull lives on. As the promotional video states, Hull belongs to everyone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXJkDgBUR9c

I’m loving the attention. It makes a change to see positive reports after decades of negativity

I like these:

My favourites include:

The bottom line is – Hull’s unique. Our accent and dialect set us apart as much as our location.

Examples of Hull dialect

Crap Town, Chav Town, now we’re going to be Cultural town – and about time too. We can hold our own with anywhere else in the UK; we have the Museum quarter, High Street, the Deep, Town Docks Museum, Ferens Art Gallery, Fruit, the university, college and more. Bring it on and let’s hear it for ‘ull!

The presentation of self online: why google is your best friend

Sue Watling / / digital literacies, PhD

image of social media logos

Every year I revise my sessions on digital identity. There is always something new to say. Last week two students from Chester misjudged their choice of fancy dress.  Without social media this one night in their lives might have gone unnoticed. Now potential employers putting their names into google will see information not included on any CV.  The incident has gone viral. All around the world. While some media commentators blamed the DJ for awarding them first prize, thereby increasing the chances of publicity, others have been scathing about the young women themselves.  It looks like poor judgement rather than any in depth intention to offend but the damage is done.

Erving Goffman’s 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life was one of the first to suggest social identity is a performance. Like actors on stage, we wear costumes, have fixed props and adopt roles. Through these roles we present ourselves as having a specific persona which in turn is recognised by others. From here it is a small step towards attribution and stereotyping whereby assumptions are made based on appearance.

Goffman was writing long before personal computers and the internet but I find his work useful for considering the presentation of self online. Digital identity is something we don’t take seriously enough. In an increasingly digital society, turning to the internet is one of the first steps taken to find out more about other people. What turns up can be a surprise. I advise students to google themselves. It isn’t being egocentric or narcissistic. It’s a 21st century necessity!

Problems are caused less by the information we put out there and more by what other people do with it. I take in horror stories from the Daily Mail. Not because I’m a DM fan but because it show students the reality of personal information going viral. The accidental email sent to all rather than one person, inappropriate comments forwarded on, a holiday photograph shared by a Facebook ‘friend’ or simply stupid behaviour which pokes fun at vulnerable people. Whether innocent or cruel, once online it’s permanent. Our digital footprints are impossible to erase. Dressing up as the twin towers might not have been the best career move but will always be a useful reminder of the perils of presenting the digital self online.

 

Image from http://fansided.com/2013/06/06/social-media-facebook-twitter-problems/

Two-tier tourism; King Tut’s tomb to be (or not to be) real

Sue Watling / / nothing to do with work, PhD, Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age (TELEDA)

The picture on the right is the original tomb, the one on the left is the replica.

The picture on the right is the original tomb, the one on the left is the replica.

King Tutenkamun’s tomb is being recreated. The copy will be next to Howard Carter’s house on the hill at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings.  Initially tourists will be asked to choose which one to visit; the real or the fake. I wonder how many will make the journey to Egypt then opt to visit a replica of the most famous tomb in the world, when the real one remains open less than a mile away. The intention is to protect the original, damaged by the impact of tourism. It makes sense to appeal to the fragility of ancient burial sites, sealed up with the intention they would never be visited again, designed for darkness. It also raises questions about the difference between the real and the imitation.

In France the prehistoric cave paintings in Lascaux were discovered in 1940 and opened to the public in 1948. Visitor exposure created rapid air change. Body heat and breath were blamed for rapid growth of fungal mould threatening the 17000 year old pigments. The caves were closed within 15 years and the replica Lascaux II built nearby. Tourists can experience the colour, size and impact of the paintings without damaging the quality of the original.

prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux

What happens next? Maybe a tomb or cave for tourists to visit which isn’t a copy of an original but a synthesis passed off as authentic. Here is a way to alter history. A gradual seepage from the real to the artificial, in the name of preservation, with visitors no longer knowing the difference.  Signs and simulations encourage us to feel we familiar with places and people we know nothing about. Consumers are saturated with media images of significance rather than substance, continually pressured to buy a product or engage in activity for what it represents rather than what it is. I think visiting a replica must be preferable to not having access at all. Education substantially depends on text and images which are facsimiles. I’d visit Lascaux II for the experience and probably not over-think the reconstruction. Soon I won’t even have to go to France because there are talks about Lascaux III which will go on tour.

I’ve stood in King Tut’s tomb and doubt the ability of any fake to replicate that sense of awe. Tut is a plain place. The tomb of Ramses VI is far more visually stunning. With Tut it’s the history which bestows the meaning. Knowing this is the place where the most fabulous of all Egyptian treasure was found. Authenticity like this can’t be duplicated but authentic experience is not sustainable if it risks destroying it. There are no easy answers; least of all what happens to the original? Preserved and protected, visited by a privileged few, secreted away behind locked doors and security systems. What price will be put on an original experience? Sounds like two-tier tourism in the making.