I haven’t shared a journal style blog in a while and what with the way things are I thought now might be a good time to get some thoughts down on paper (or screen!). Its day two for me of working from home [or at least it was when I wrote this], having been in work all last week but then developing a cough and temperature over the weekend leading to me taking the decision to stay at home. This decision was far from simple, or at least felt much less simple than it should have been. My thinking was that I had a little bit of a cough but it most likely was from my run in the cold earlier in the week. I was looking to justify to myself how it would still be acceptable for me to go into work. I didn’t like the thought of leaving my team to it, to them working in the office at my request on Monday but without me being there. This felt like a betrayal of my team and therefore I needed to find a reason or justification which would make attending work acceptable. My initial thinking paid little consideration to the potential impact I might have had going into work or to the signal I would be providing the team, showing them that it was ok to behave heroically and attend work in spite of illness, personal wellbeing and the potential risk to others.
The issue of risk to others is one that particularly interests me and possible the issue which helped me eventually make the correct decision to remain at home. In thinking about this risk, the concept of near-misses and remote-misses in relation to the World War II bombing came to mind. Heading into World War II psychologists were worried about the significant impact on mental health which widespread bombing of London would have. There were fears that society would collapse. The reality was far from this, as people came together and developed a community spirit and resilience, almost the opposite behaviour as to what was expected. As psychologists sought to understand what happened they came upon the concept of near and remote misses. A near miss meant a person physically felt a bomb go off and saw the aftermath in the dead, including friends and relatives. These people suffered psychologically and often physically from bombings. Remote misses referred to those people who heard the bombs fall and saw the damage to building but who did not experience any direct loss or see injuries and deaths first-hand. The vast majority of Londoners fell into the Remote Miss category. For these people, they were spared and may have seen themselves as lucky, and with each subsequent bombing they survived they felt more and more lucky, and even invincible, each subsequent bombing reinforced their belief that bombs didn’t impact on them. It is through these people that the community spirit and resilience built despite all the death and destruction across London during the bombing. Taking this idea and applying it to the Corona virus we have near misses in those who either contracted the virus or have loved ones who have contracted it, and even died from it, but we also have the remote misses in those who haven’t contracted the virus, or had mild symptoms or even who are infected but asymptomatic but who were aware through the news, social media, etc. The remote misses, like in London, significantly outnumber the near misses and through this and the sense of invulnerability or “it won’t happen to me” which may have developed, may have been behaving counter to the guidance being offered by the government. As such “social distancing” wasn’t being adhered to as it wasn’t important, or at least wasn’t perceived to be important. To be clear, the concept of remote misses helps to explain behaviour but it doesn’t excuse it. For me, in understanding behaviour and my own thinking, I was better able to question it and arrive at what I consider the “right” decision.
The other factor which eventually led me to the decision to stay away from school was the potential that my own behaviour might model for others my expectations. If I would consider going into work more important than my own health and the potential risk to colleagues, then this communicates to others what I consider important and therefore what I expect of them. Even if I verbalise the importance of everyone looking after their own health first, if I had gone to work this would have provided an indicator counter to what I had spoken. I realised I needed to be conscious of the non-verbal cue my attendance, complete with a cough, would send.
Social media posts have been quick to condemn those who didn’t adhere to social distancing guidance however I am not sure such condemnation serves much purpose. Now to be clear I am not condoning those flaunting government advice however I do think it is important to at least to try to gain some understanding as to how certain behaviours occurred. Online for those occupying the moral high ground, their decision-making processes look simple and flawless. These people knew what was right and acted accordingly. Or at least that’s what social media would have us believe. The reality I suspect is not so simple or at least for me it isn’t, as the decision to not go into work with what I considered a minor cough, a decision with a hopefully obvious “right” behaviour, caused me to stop and think and to wrestle with my own thoughts.
As it was, I stayed home, doing what was the right thing. Hopefully the next time a similar dilemma arises I will also do the right thing, however for now I am more conscious of how easy it is for us as human beings to consider, to rationalise and justify, but despite this still manage to arrive at the wrong answer.
You can read a little about direct hits, near misses and remote misses here.
It is important to firstly acknowledge that our views on technology are very much the result of our experiences. My experiences include learning to code in Basic on the Commodore 64 at an early age, before moving on to AMOS basic on the Amiga and then QBasic, Visual Basic and C++ on the PC. This early use of technology, and the ability to develop software to solve problems has very much shaped my views. Now, today I walk around with a mobile phone with over a million times more memory than my commodore 64, from less than 30 years earlier, and the growth rate across the period has not been linear. A perfect illustration of this lies in how long it took various technologies to reach 50 million users. Radio took 75 years whereas TV only took 38 years. Bringing us close to today, Facebook got the time to 50 million users down to 3.5 years before Pokemon go managed it in less than a single month. It is clear from this that the pace of changing is quickening.
The more I think about the pace of change and the way that technology is becoming an integral part of our everyday lives the more the movie Ready Player One comes to mind. In the movie Wade Watts makes use of virtual reality to live a double life, living as Percival in VR. As the film progresses it becomes clear that his two lives aren’t as separate as he would like and that events in virtual reality impact on real life and vice versa. For us, like Wade Watts, our lives in real life are inseparably linked to our digital lives. In fact, I believe that it no longer serves us to think of digital citizenship as the term implies that there is something else available, a non-digital citizenship, when in fact there is not. Possibly the discussion should not be of digital citizenship at all but simply citizenship. As Danah Boyd, in her book, Its Complicated said, although the apps might change our online connectedness, our need to share and the challenges around privacy are “here to stay”.
Looking at how we prepare our students for the world and the issues listed above I can see the things which we do satisfactorily, through our eSafety programmers, however I can also see those areas where little or nothing is currently offered. We currently discuss the importance of privacy settings on social media, of having strong passwords, of how online content, once posted, will remain permanent and of the need to be aware of bullying online. These areas are currently covered. Sadly, however little is said in relation to the conflict between user convenience and individual privacy, between individual privacy and public good, and between social media reporting on or actually creating the news and truths which we come to believe. These are the areas which we need to discuss, for which there isn’t a single answer and therefore where the most we can do is help students develop their own views through discussion. It is through discussion that we can hopefully ensure that students, when presented with the infinite challenges of technology use, will approach them with their eyes wide open.
I thought I would share some initial thoughts following day one of JISC DigiFest. The event was launched with a very polished and professional pre-prepared video displayed on screens scattered around the events main hall, focussing on the rate of change in relation to technology and some of the technological implications of technology on the world we live in. The launch session also included a room height “virtual” event guide introducing the sessions and pointing you in the direction of the appropriate hall. In terms of the launch of a conference this was the most polished and inspiring launch I have seen albeit on reflection there wasn’t much particularly innovative or technically complex about it.
The keynote speaker addressed the changing viewpoints of different generations of people focussing particularly on Generation Z, the generation which currently are in our sixth forms, colleges and universities. I took away two key points from the presentation. The first was how each generations views were shaped by their experiences particularly between the ages of 12 and 20 year old. Jonah Stillman used thoughts on space as an example showing how Generation X might have positive views focussing on the successes of the moon landing whereas Millennials may have a more cynical view following the Challenger disaster. Additionally, Jonah mentioned movies as a social influencer and how those in the Harry Potter generation may view cooperation and trying hard, even where unsuccessful, in a positive manner. Those born later than this may draw on another series of films, in the hunger games, resulting in a greater tendency towards competition and the need to succeed in line with the movies storyline of everyone for themselves and failure results in death. The second take away point from the session resulted from the questioning at the end of the session around what some saw as the absoluteness of the boundaries between generations. I think Jonah’s use of the word “tendency” addressed this concern in that the purpose of the labels was for simplicity and to indicate a general trend and tendency rather than to suggest that all people born on certain dates exhibited a certain trait. It increasing concerns me that this argument keeps coming up when surely it is clear that there is a need to use simplistic models to help clarity of explanation and that no model, not matter how complex will ever truly capture the real complexity of the world we live in.
The current outbreak of the Corona virus has highlighted a particular educational need which I believe EdTech is well placed to fill; the need for learning to continue when staff and/or students are unable to actually attend school either due to forced closures or individual illness or through forced isolation such as is required in relation to containing the Corona virus.
I am going to start with Microsoft Teams as it is the one which immediately jumps to mind, in particular its “Meet Now” functionality. The reason this functionality is first to my thoughts is my belief in learning as a social experience and therefore the need for interaction beyond simple file sharing, ideally in a video format complete with all the non-verbal cues present in our normal day to day interactions with others. Via Meet Now lesson content can be shared as a live video stream including the ability to share desktop content such as presentations or worked examples, etc. This is very useful for conducting a lesson remotely or allowing students to access a lesson remotely however it also includes the ability for the video stream to be automatically recorded so that students can also view it after the event, in an “on demand” basis. Microsoft will also automatically transcribe the video making it easily searchable however I note that this very much depends on the quality of the audio within the video and the pace of speech, the accents of individuals speaking, etc so it isn’t full proof.
Personally, I also think Flipgrid is worthy of mention as another possible video related solution which can be put in place quickly allowing teachers to share video content with students and students to reply again with video. I think this could be useful for creating the feeling of group discussion where the students are in diverse locations and may not be able to access the video stream at a specified time. Another app worthy of mention would be Wakelet in its potential use by teachers to collate resources quickly and easily ready for students to access as, when and where needed.
Technology and Learning