Woolgar's Five Themes

Having read Woolgar’s five themes I can identify with two of the five themes that I feel most strongly reflect the way in which I perceive the effects that technology is making currently in a context known to me.

Student geographical location

Theme 4: The more virtual the more real
Following along the theme used of face to face tutorials it is my experience that offering online tutorials as an alternative to face to face tutorials has not lead to increase in attendance. I find this surprising considering the area covered by my group this year attendance at F2F was more supported that a recent online tutorial. What was even more interesting was the fact that only one of the attendees had not previously attended a traditional f2f tutorial earlier in the course.

Given the opportunity I wrongly thought I would be giving an opportunity for students further afield to take part. Perhaps there are other barriers that I did not perceive.

Theme 3: Virtual technologies supplement rather than substitute for real activities

Following on the theme of the paperless office, I am surprised at how much I have printed this year and yet at work I am trying to reduce the amount of printing. A case of ‘do as I say’ not ‘as I do’. Despite Diigo and delicious coming to my aid there is often a need to sit away from the PC and study. I have tried hard this year to reduce printed material and have even contemplated the purchase of an iPad.

Tags on my Blog

Therefore Diigo certainly supplements the storage of reading material but when it comes to preparing for an assignment I prefer to throw all the material on the floor and start selecting important readings that help before highlighting sections and perhaps identifying quotes. It is only then that I will refer to the electronic media which includes Google Reader and Diigo. Tagging certainly helps but I wish I had given more thought to this as the my studies have progressed why for example is H808 more dominant than H800 because now I avoid using the course as a tag and tend to be more selective.

I guess I am not quite all electronic yet, but not sure really why this is.  

Woolgar, S. (ed.) (2002) Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

PLE where am I going

Well I know where I am going, 'to the cloud', and with the seal of approval from the OU I know I have made the right decision. Yes I will populate the college Moodle system but wherever possible I will be linking out to resources that are available elsewhere. My motivation is one of reliability as I don't think the college knows what it is doing with the VLE which by the way is now an Enhanced LE for some reason.Only this week I have seen a branding imposed on all my pages I have lost 20% of the page to a Banner fine on the home page but every page? The banner also wraps on larger pages so the fancy pointless log appears again on the right hand side cut in half. This is ridiculous and forums are no longer working so I can't even voice my feelings any more. So do I care.

In contrast the OU would have discussed these changes and offered an opportunity to share ideas and offer alternatives, I live in hope. 
My teaching material will be moved to my own platform and linked back in so I guess I am all for PLEs and free use of web 2.0 applications. Most learners that take the time to experince them realise their use very quickly but the barriers to the applications presented by the college muffle their enthusiasm.

My reaction is simple, 'How long are you going to be in the confides of the college and its restrictions'?

I know for assessment I will have to move it inside the wire but teaching resources need to be where they are accessible. I also refuse to accept that some of the tools I use should not be shared with learners who despite what some colleagues think are actually quite hungry for them.

In years to come I am sure I will be glad that I made this decision especially when the colleg realises they have to open up the route to the internet in a less restrictive way.

Why does my head hurt so much? It wasn’t like this when I was at Uni.

Reading Hara (1999) and Noble (1988).

Do you think these issues are representative of the broader picture of technology adoption in universities?

What issues would you personally identify as problems associated with the use of digital and networked technologies in education (either in your practice or more generally)?

A Students Perspective

'I need more individual help', it is much easier for the tutor to explain this to me than it is for me to sit and study and gain my own understanding. Why? Because I have a busy life I have 100s of facebook friends to gossip with and many other distractions that are much more interesting than learning. So you sit with me tell me what I need to know to pass the exam. In fact do I need an exam, can’t I just copy and paste something of the internet after all, it holds all the answers doesn’t it? It’s alright for you when you were a student you never had all this technology to deal with. Buy the way it is fine for me to use the technology but on my terms, don't force me to try and interact online and produce collaborative work it's too time consuming I'll do it down the students bar and hand it in on a scrap of paper.

I am paying for this course so tell me what I need to know, and if I choose to use facebook and twitter during the lesson, and turn up late or give the odd lesson a miss; put up with it.

A practitioners perspective

By creating all this innovative learning and presenting it in a format for web based access will I be making myself surplice to requirements. All this technology is for ever changing having designed discrete web pages before Web 2.0 apps I now have to move to a new platform. My delicious account although safe now, looked like it was going to crash and burn and I have learnt how to use Jing, Picasso, Google Docs, Diigo the list is endless. All this technology, my head hurts talk about information overload. If that’s not enough my students email me 24hrs a day and expect an immediate reply and ask to many questions because they email as their first port of call. Why won’t they use the conference?

The technology doesn’t always work anyone who has tried to do an Elluminate online tutorial will know how stressful this can be. Because I study distance education I am biased and probably too much so if I was honest (Hara 1999). I feel sorry for the laggards that lag behind because students expectations are that they will use technology and develop shared documents online and converse in a facebook group with the rest of the class and tweet each other during lessons and… and …. the list goes on.

Oh dear I just want to teach my subject, why won’t the students listen to me, why are they always on their phones, why do they not get involved in the discussions oh why does my head hurt so much? It wasn’t like this when I was at Uni.

Hara, N. and Kling, R. (1999) ‘Students’ frustrations with a web-based distance education course’ [online], First Monday, vol.4, no.12, http://firstmonday.org/ htbin/ cgiwrap/ bin/ ojs/ index.php/ fm/ article/ view/ 710/ 620 (last accessed 10 February 2011).

Noble, D.F. (1998) ‘Digial dipoloma mills: the automation of higher education’ [online], First Monday, vol.3, no.1,http://firstmonday.org/ htbin/ cgiwrap/ bin/ ojs/ index.php/ fm/ article/ view/ 569/ 490 (last accessed 10 February 2011).