Prue Salter’s Blog: Exploring the Power of Technology as a Learning Tool

Seely Brown certainly had remarkable insight into the direction that learning in the digital age would travel. So what has changed since then? Seely Brown & Duguid (1999) and Seely Brown & Adler (2008)

• Infrastructure (eg. broadband and speeds) and availability and access have improved for the majority of Australians. Computers are faster and cheaper. Internet is not just restricted to computers either, we can use mobiles and other devices as well.

• The web has gone from being perceived as a means to either send a ‘letter’ quickly or a faster way to browse an ‘encyclopedia’ to being an integral part of our lives – we do banking and pay bills, shop online, communicate (even date!), contribute and blog, develop ideas, create and explore our own identities online and relationships with others. For many when their ‘internet’ crashes, their lives grind to a halt! Seely Brown’s prediction of the shift of using technology to support relationships (as opposed to individual experiences) has certainly been validated.
• Students have greatly improved in their ability to make judgments about the information on the Web. I have noticed that even in the last few years, when I ask students what questions they ask when deciding if a site if credible/reliable their answers have a much greater depth and subtlety than they did a few years ago – through their experience they have come up with things I would not have considered but that make perfect sense.

• Some of the ‘big’ sites that have shaped the way we (and particularly the digital generation) experience the web were launched (and became mainstream in their use) during the last 10 years. None of these sites were around when Seely-Brown was discussing these issues in 1999:  Wikipedia (2001), Skype (2003), Myspace (2004), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005) and Google had only just launched in Nov 1999  (and now google has become a verb – ‘just google it’ – in fact we have a whole new language around Web 2.0 applications).

• There are so many embedded applications that allow people to publish and participate on the web without the need for their own domain name or a working knowledge of HTML coding or even applications like FrontPage and Dreamweaver – this accessibility is again largely in part thanks to Web 2.0 applications.

• The Web as a ‘medium’ is an interesting concept. This is still an issue that we have not resolved. Seely Brown gives the example of Comcast but think about a more recent example like YouTube. 10 months after YouTube was launched in December 2005, it was losing $500 000 a month with no plan of a way to make money. Despite this Google purchased it for 1.64 billion. Why? Maybe because they just didn’t want anyone else to get hold of it and even now they are still not sure what to do with it or how to make money with it. But they are hanging onto it – until someone works out what to do with it. As Seely-Brown says, none of us really know what the medium of the web will evolve into but the entrepreneurs want to make sure they have a slice of the action.

How do I see the issues raised by Seely Brown et al. being adopted?

• I think more and more educators are embracing and adopting the idea of social learning and the learner learning to be a participant in the field as opposed to an observer. One example of these is the way schools attitude to Wikipedia has changed. Originally a large number of schools banned the use of Wikipedia outright for use in assignments, but now most schools will openly accept Wikipedia as a listing in a bibliography although many insist on a secondary check of the information. Teachers are moving more and more away from the teacher driven instruction mode method of teaching to a more student driven experience, striving to make what students learn relevant and as ‘hands-in’ and  ‘real-life’ as possible, harnessing the power of technology when applicable to achieve this.. This makes perfect sense given the digital generation likes to learn through exploration and discovery. But as Trent pointed out, adolescents have little patience to delve to any great depth in a particular media. If they cannot find what they are looking for, they are quick to switch to an alternative media or follow a different lead (media-meshing).       

What might be some of the challenges? How do these relate to your own context of learning in your workplace?

• One of the biggest challenges is that the generation who understands and is immersed in Web 2.0 activities does not have the maturity or experience to work out the best ways to make use of these technologies in an educational sense. Those with the pedagogical background and an educator’s perspective, do not really understand the potential of these technologies as they are not immersed in them and look at them from a fundamentally different perspective. I think things will change dramatically when those who approach technology from a life-long experience that contributes to a deep and fundamental understanding (that may simply not possible for many of the teachers and parents of the current generation become the educators (although will a new set of technologies have emerged then that means the cycle of disconnect just start again?).

• Another challenge is dealing with the generation of ‘multi-processors and teaching them how to manage their use of technology. Parents are continually concerned about students’ use of MSN when studying and most students will admit they are rarely talking about their schoolwork. Again, another example of technology with a huge potential that we have not yet worked out how to tap into effectively.

• As educators this means we need to be continually striving to challenge our own perceptions and notions of learning to find the best ways to take advantage of this new medium. This became obvious to me when I created a study skills site for students to use and although it was very interactive it took a student to point out to me that many students would rather listen to the text blocks than read them (which simply meant me creating optional audio buttons). It is difficult to break our love affair with text based mediums.  But the use of technology to tap into multiple intelligences makes sense – however we still need to consciously think about it – it does not happen automatically. We have to work hard to achieve bricolage. One success for me in this area is that I always suggest to students that they read their study notes into a MP3 player and put them on their IPod and to the students this seems like such an amazing idea – why didn’t they think of it when they are hooked into them 24/7? Because again, they cannot see things from the perspective of an educator. We cannot expect them to do this so it is up to us to immerse ourselves in their world and help them harness its power.