Participatory Challenges

In reading "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture", I have found the tranparency issue very interesting. In the article, Shrier developed a location specific game that was used to teach American History. She had students explore the game and then asked the students how realistic they thought the game was, and if it was viewed as authentic. Shirer found that the young students did in fact believe that the game was historically accurate and true. The game that Shrier developed did not say that the historical information was ture or false, the students decided the game was authentic simply by playing it.

In school I see classemates and peers continually offering false information as concrete facts, especially Wikipedi. As an undergrad, I took a history class and was assigned a partner and we together were to do a report on Carthage, Rome. In ture group fashion we divided the work and decided to present it to one another before constructing our presentation. One week before presenting we subitted each of our slides, upon initial review of her slides I thought the information looked great. Only when I go to her bibliography did I realize that half of her sources were from Wikipedia and other unreliable Internet sources. When speaking to her she could not understand why Wikipedida was not considered reliable.

I don't know if the transparency trouble stems from tradition learning, because if you read it somewhere then it must be true. If you look at the traditional textbook for the most part that information is true and accurate, perhaps that idea has transfered from the page to the screen.



 

 

Challenging Traditional ID

 The Maturing of Constructivist Instructional Design: Some Basic Principals that Can Guide Practice by Jerry Willis, really got me thinking about linear vs non-linear and how many things in society and in my own world are completed in a linear fashion and the article made me start to question why that was? Linear is structured, has an order and is generally the best way to start new task: go from point A to point B, but what about the case for making point C being your starting point?  I think linear makes tasks easier, I have a very linear sort of personality, I always want to know what came before the starting point in any story. I drive friends nuts with this quirk because if  a friend starts a story with, "I was leaving the parking lot and..." I'm always like, what parking lot. " Costco..so, I was leaving the parking lot and..." Me, "What were you doing at Costco? "Buying toilet paper, it doesn't matter what I was doing, it's not part of the story. So, I was in the parking lot and..." " How much toilet paper did you end up getting?" And so it goes until I feel as though I have a sufficient amount of back story to continue with the current story. It helps me get the whole idea of the story, a feel for what was going on, I say it makes me more engaged. My friends say its annoying. The point is, it's very linear. I need to know what happened first before I can proceed, but I also have another quirk. I hate walking before running. I want to sprint right out the gate which is why I think linear in ID is a good thing. When I skip a head, read the back of the book first or take calculus 2 before pre-algebra I tend to do fairly well, but, I always feel as though I've missed out on the experience and like I took the really hard way. I don't ever feel bad, but half way through I'm always lamenting, "there's got to be an easier way." And there is, it's called chapter one. I think other theories could work in ID, chaos theory and non-linear post modernism, but as we discuss the status quo, I have to wonder if the status quo is in place because it works? I'm sure there is probably a better way to educate in ID, but why do we always have to shake the status quo just to shake it up?

learnig theories

The infed article was interesting because it challenges what it means, "to learn". In our society learning is defined by measurable tests and tasks more than knowledge acquisition. Most of us have never been to school just for the sake of learning. We are sent there when we are young, where we are challenged by what we learned not through discussion and exploration but through standardized test and quizzes. We progress and venture off either to college or into the work place, both coming with there own challenges and ideas of learning. But it seems very rare, even for the college student to learn for the sake of knowledge. It would seem as though we only learn to reprocess this knowledge for some sort of "test" regardless if it is for school or not. Due to efficiency, learning is crammed in, in a very standard and measurable way and then re-couped in a similar fashion. I wonder if that's why so many parents have such a hard time helping their kids with 5th grade math, because after 5th grade you're not really thinking about it much.
Sometimes I feel as though graduate school has ruined my love of learning for the sake of learning. It feels that I spend so much time on projects or assignments for school that I have very little time to just learn something for fun. I believe this again has something to do with the cult of efficiency, I don't really have the desire, nor does my major professors of having me hang around here too long while I take introduction to Mandarin or boating for fun. I wonder where our nature to rush through everything, to get something done as quickly as possible has manifested from? I masters degree used to take about 2 years, I have friends who are pushing to get theirs done in 1 year, same with the PhD a couple of friends are finishing theirs up after 3 years having taken 18cr class loads non-stop. What I think is more interesting is that these friends have no real plans for when they're done. They don't have jobs, families or careers waiting for them, they just wanted to be done. But on the contrast, I have a friend who is a 4th year, with a baby on the way, with only 4 classes left and he's talking about adding two minors and a co-major and reorganizing his committee.
I just find it interesting how education is used by some as either another thing to check off their list, a way to hide out, or something that must be completed to move to another task.

Taylorism and the cult of efficientcy

I thought Callahan's stance on the rise of the businessman or muckrackers, and the dominance of the business ideology that was applied to everything in the United States during the time of T. Roosevelt including education reform. He states the businessman ideology was applied to everything and was propaganda through newspaper, speeches and school board meetings. The very word of "school board" tends to give away to the businessman approach to schools and efficiency. It would seem as though there was a real culture shift from when the men at that time went from wanting to be affiliated with doctors or lawyers to then wanting to be looked upon as a "businessman". I don't things have changed much since then. Schools are still ran on a business model with efficiency being the most important factor. I happened to be in Chicago around the time of this reading while teachers in inner Chicago were on strike. What struck me was when speaking to one of the striking teachers was that their biggest fight with school boards was less students in the classroom. They felt that school boards were piling the students in, giving the teachers very few resources and were being expected to compensate out of their own pockets for the lack of funding. But, really the idea of efficiency can be seen in all aspects of professions. Take a call center, businesses can cram people into a tiny cube, put a headset on them and the worker can get through 200 calls a day. I also think the cultural perception of the "business man" is back. There seemed a time when everyone wanted to grow up and be a doctor or lawyer, but now people are forgoing college all together to try their hand at a start up.

Professional Organizations

I really appreciated the links for the professional organizations. Being new to the department, I don't really know whats out there to get involved in. I think it's important to be apart of some professional organizations to add that level of professionalism on the student level as well as helps you network. I've been trying to work on creating a professional profile so these links and the presentation by David Culver really helped.

Moral Philosophy

In class we discussed morality vs ethics. To illustrate morality and ethics were were given as task: It is a hot summer day. While getting gas you buy a bottle of water for around 2.00 a friend of yours who works for the distributor states that they jack up the price when its hot outside. Is this ethical? Is this moral? We were split into two groups, one group argued that it was moral and just, the other group argued that it wasn't.
I was in the group that argued that it was moral. We argued that per capitalism the store should be able to price a good any price they want if the market will bare. Our opposition argued that this was not moral because water is a basic necessity. We rebutted that while water is a basic necessity the convenient packaging was not. I felt that the corporation who makes the bottled water also had a responsibility to their shareholders and that by driving the price of their water up, shares would go up, dividends would go up and the corporations citizens would be happy.
The readings on morality and ethics raised a lot of interesting points, can something be immoral but ethical? I especially thought the example of the lawyer and his client example in the Pojman article was interesting because it American culture its sort of like how could a lawyer not tell the jury if his client was actually guilty?? But, at the same time I can see that his responsibility is to his client and his client alone and his own personal beliefs or morality should not conflict with job. I think that's the difficulty of some jobs, especially law. Many years ago my dad was a first year law student at Boston University and quit after his first year, when asked why he would always say that he went to law school because he wanted to make a difference and be a voice for the little guy. But once he got there he realized that that isn't really law at all, that your bound by all these rules and ethics even if it goes against your own personal beliefs and morals. I saw a commercial or a movie, something, once where a client asked his attorney if he believed he hadn't killed his wife, and the attorney responded, it's not my job to believe you or not, its my job to convince the jury that there is a possibility that you didn't do it. But if a lawyer did nothing while an innocent person took the blame for his clients actions and the lawyer knew this then according to Pojman his or her actions would be immoral. As stated in the reading morality has five purposes:

1.       To keep society from falling apart

2.       To ameliorate human suffering

3.       To promote human flourishing

4.       To resolve conflicts of interest in just and orderly ways

5.       To assign praise and blame, reward, and punishment and guilt

I think for a lawyer to allow the above to happen would be breaking all the purposes of morality and violating Aristotle's idea of ethics. This action would be a violation of a right action. But in terms of the store exploiting an opportunity? I think in the general sense of morality they are not violating any of the basic principles of the purpose of morality and are in fact complying with them.

 

 

Digital Equity

There was an in-class activity where we were divided into two groups based on the following situation: there are two schools in two different districts. One school is in an affluent neighborhood and receives about 10,000.00 in funding and were filled with high-SES students, while a neighboring school located downtown only receives around 5,000.00 in funding and had low-SES students. Our groups were assigned to us and divided into pro the allotted monies being distributed they way that they were and against the allotted monies being distributed they way that they were and why. I was on the against group.
Our group rationed that the monies were not being fairly distributed. We stated that the students from the more affluent school district had more available resources and thus more opportunities than the students from the poorer school district. We stated that if test scores were higher at the high-SES school and research showed that those students benefited from higher teacher to student 1:1, that funding should be cut from that district and more monies be allotted to the poorer district. We reasoned that the poor district could use the money for either hiring more qualified teachers, teacher training and certifications, and putting in more computers and school programs. We said that based on moral theory that it was immoral to stunt the opportunities of those who needed them the most. Our opposition stated that because of property taxes, those who lived in the better school districts paid more in taxes thus they should be able to have good schools, it was perfectly fair.

I think this was a tough call. My first instinct is to say, that's not fair. We are purposely and systematically limiting one group of peoples opportunities We are saying to these low-SES schools is, here are the metrics that you need to hit. We wont give you any help, money or ability to hit these but if you don't hit it, then you'll be punished. It seems kind of whack. I mean, if I'm a teacher what incentive do I have to teach in inner city Chicago or Detroit? I'm going to be overworked, underpaid and pretty much left to my own devices, plus if these kids can't learn or won't learn I could be fired. On top of that, I'm going to be living in one of the most crime ridden towns, make barely enough to survive and have to constantly watch out for my safety. A nice suburban, rich and homogeneous school district is starting to look pretty nice. But, this is a bit of a fallacy isn't? We're assuming here that all is dandy at Johnston high school or Prep Academy. I think it might actually be harder to teach at one of these schools because the expectations of parents is so much higher. As a teacher  t one of these schools you should be able to single handily get their offspring into the Ivy three Harvard, Yale and Princeton. As a parent in one of these school districts with some extra cash to burn you might have more pull, hey you did fund that new gym at the school, so if you think this policy should fly because you have money to flex it should well.. fly. It would seem as though the teachers were a little owned by the parents if you will. Because, since the dawn of man, money speaks. I have the money so in some way I'm more important. My children are more important, and my monied friends children are more important as well. If you bus your kids to my district, well, we can't have that. I mean, what would this world come to then? We wouldn't want our bright little darlings mingling with those downtown kids now would we? Unless of course they play football or basketball, then thats okay. Every kid should get an opportunity, right? As you can see, I'm being a bit tongue and cheek, but that's to an extent how our society operates right? Its food for thought, as to why one child should be more important than another. And, what our proponents of rewarding high-SES schools are saying is that those kids are just more important because they have money. This isn't a matter between private school vs public school, as both schools are public. As I see it, there is nothing wrong with wanting the best for your child. If you want your specially little darling to get the top education and move on to another top university then by all means send them to private school. Where you can flex your money as much as you want, but if your student is a part of a public school system...I think its only a matter of principal to play fair.

What I think is interesting in this debate and of the digital divide is that it moves past just education and looks at how we value individuals. In the education policy article the author speaks of a test they constructed to see how computers were integrated into the lives of both low and high SES children. What the researches found was that both students used the computer fairly evenly, what was concerning was how the students were using the computers. The low-SES kids were using the Internet for more rudimentary and mundane tasks while the high-SES kids performed similar tasks, but also conducted research and synthesized information during their time on the inter net. It would seem then that the low-SES student would have a much harder time in college, if they get there, where conducting research and synthesizing information is critical than the high-SES student who are pretty used to it.