Enhanced Learning

Michael Brint
Associate Professor and Director, Integrated Program in Humane Studies
Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio

I. The Experience of Education in Digital Life

In his 1995 book, Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte signals what many believe to be a paradigm shift from “atoms” to “bits”–from an “atomic” orientation to the world consumed by material interactions to an orientation unburdened by such impediments as space, time and atomic weight. Racing unfettered at blinding speed over vast distances of space, the bit, the smallest unit in the “DNA of information,” [1] has done more than help usher in the post-industrial age of information. According to Negroponte, it has become the basic commodity of interaction in the post-information age–an age in which the possibility of digital living has become increasingly viable:

The industrial age, very much an age of atoms, gave us the concept of mass production, with the economies that come from manufacturing with uniform and repetitious methods in any one given space and time. The information age, the age of computers, showed us the same economies of scale, but with less regard for space and time… [By contrast,] in the post-information age, we often have an audience the size of one. Everything is made to order and information is extremely personalized… The post-information age is about machines’ understanding individuals with the same degree of subtlety (or more than) we can expect from other human beings.Such customized digital living entails more asynchronistic communications (like e-mail), billions of bits of information on demand (in such forms as TV programs, videos, music, and news), and less and less dependence on being in a specific place at a specific time. [2]

In examining the educational implications of living digitally, Negroponte captures many of the central pedagogical points now being advanced by prominent policy analysts urging the development of distance learning opportunities. [3] In most instances, such approaches consist in the creation of highly individualized asynchronistic learning programs accessible on demand. This form of delivery is said to particularly aid the growing numbers of non-traditional students whose lives require that learning be less and less dependent on one’s ability to be in a specific place at a specific time.

Whether delivered to a classroom, laboratory, workplace or home, learning digitally as an experience is said to be one of individual exploration, experimentation, and expression. Emphasizing the benefits of computers as learning tools, Negroponte notes that

While a significant part of learning certainly comes from teaching–but good teaching and by good teachers–a major measure comes from exploration, from reinventing the wheel and finding out for oneself. Until the computer the technology for teaching was limited to audiovisual devices and distance learning by television, which simply amplified the activity of teachers and the passivity of children. The computer changed this balance radically. All of a sudden, learning by doing became the rule rather than the exception. Since computer simulation of just about anything is now possible, one need not learn about a frog by dissecting it. Instead, children can be asked to design frogs, to build an animal with frog-like behavior, to modify that behavior, to simulate the muscles, to play with the frog. By playing with information, especially abstract subjects, the material assumes more meaning. […] Anecdotal evidence and careful testing results reveal that this constructivist approach is an extraordinarily rich means of learning, across a wide range of cognitive and behavioral styles.[4]

“Learning by doing,” “finding out for oneself,” “playing with information,”–Negroponte’s orientation sounds a lot like an updated version of John Dewey’s educational approach. Stressing similar ideas, Carol Twigg, a senior analyst for EDUCOM and one of the leading advocates of distance learning, claims that “what we know about high-quality learning, cooperative learning, and discovery learning-implies a learning-by-doing model rather than the passive, classroom-based model that typifies the teaching infrastructure.”[5] Against such passive learning, Dewey notoriously stressed the importance of experience as an active process. “To ‘learn from experience’ is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequences. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction–discovery of the connection of things.” [6]

In a similar vein, discovery labs for physics and other natural sciences (like the CUPLE program developed at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) stress the experience of discovery through exploration and experimentation. By using a studio approach to learning, computer simulations allow students to discover scientific principles through their own active engagement. Jack M. Wilson, Director of the Anderson Center for Innovation in Undergraduate Education, explains the basic premise underlying such initiatives: “The focus is on student problem solving and projects,” he tells us, “and not on presentation of materials. The emphasis is on learning rather than teaching.” [7]

While the CUPLE program uses multimedia tools authored by experts for student use in the discovery, experimentation and exploration of science, multimedia offers new domains of student expression as well. “We are entering an era when expression can be more participatory and alive,” Negroponte tells us. “We have the opportunity to distribute and experience rich sensory signals in ways that are different from looking at the page of a book and more accessible than traveling to the Louvre.” [8] Rather than simply interacting with a designed exercise, students can become their own authors–designing and architecting multimedia projects that integrate both different disciplines and media.

CITYSCAPES at Kenyon College is just one example of a course developed to focus on the student as the creative agent of learning.[9]From a literary walk through the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires to an analysis of the role of women in the agricultural economy of Nairobi, students in this course become authors of multimedia projects that focus on specific themes related to particular cities or regions of the world. In addition to the Internet and library resources, these projects, currently produced as a CD-ROM, combine videos, photographs, recordings, interviews, and journals made by the students themselves. As authors guided by both local scholars and distant experts in various fields related to their study, students become increasingly fluid in coherently drawing together and creatively comingling function and form, method and subject, narrative and design.

Along with their expressive and experiential potentials, many see the greatest advantage of computer learning environments in terms of their potential for customization. Course materials can be delivered to fit the different learning styles of students and developed to help students realize their unique potentials and capacities. According to Massy and Zemsky, the two most fundamental advantages of information technology are the new “economies of scale” it offers and its ability to provide what they term, “mass customization.” “Technology allows faculty to accommodate individual differences in student goals, learning styles, and abilities, while providing improved convenience for both students and faculty on an ‘any time, any place’ basis.”[10]

In the post-information age, most surmise, the advent of sophisticated and customized simulations across the curriculum will increasingly provide the basis of experience for engaged learning. Many who are helping to lay the foundation for the future of information technology and education advocate the creation of a National Learning Infrastructure that could deliver these sophisticated simulations “anytime, anywhere, to anyone.”[11] If these trends continue, the experience of education in digital life may well be one of more convenient asynchronistic communication, customized educational services on demand, and less and less dependence on being at a specific place at a specific time. Yet, for all of the Deweyean-sounding practices that are supposed to accompany these educational delivery services–learning by doing, exploration and experimentation, play and discovery–I doubt it is time to begin celebrating the realization of Dewey’s educational philosophy in the post-information age.

II. Learning as a Social Environment

If many proponents of distance learning follow Dewey’s lead in emphasizing experiential and constructivist models of education, few follow his views regarding the inexorably social and relational nature of learning. Most of their accounts portray distance learning (at least at the level of higher education) as a highly individualized process of self-development, driven by the student’s own initiative toward the successful acquisition of specifiable skills.[12]

For Dewey, no matter how individualized or customized the material that is being explored, learning is not an isolated enterprise that takes place within the self or between the individual’s mind and the material it confronts, but a social activity that takes place within the context of a social environment. “As matter of fact,” Dewey tells us,

every individual has grown up, and always must grow up, in a social medium. His responses grow intelligent, or gain meaning, simply because he lives and acts in a medium of accepted meanings and values. Through social intercourse, through sharing in the activities embodying beliefs, individuals gradually acquires a mind of their own. The conception of mind as a purely isolated possession of the self is at the very antipodes of the truth. The self achieves mind in the degree in which knowledge of things is incarnate in the life about him; the self is not a separate mind building up knowledge anew on its own account. [13]

From Dewey’s point of view, even the ideal of education as self-development must be understood as a social process achieved through interaction and relation with others. Rather than fostering this ideal, advocates of distance learning, particularly those who stress self-paced, independent study, tend to reinforce individual isolation. “The effort at isolated intellectual learning contradicts it own aim,” Dewey claimed, for it “precludes the social sense which comes from sharing in an activity of common concern and value.” [14] In examining the economic efficiencies gained by computer innovations, Massy and Zemsky tellingly report that without a supportive social environment, “the students who would most benefit from self-paced learning have the least motivation to do so.”[15]

The prevailing attitude toward teaching is also particularly telling on this point. In Twigg’s words: “Because of the widespread availability of self-paced learning materials, direct faculty intervention throughout the learning process will lessen.”[16] Like a small country being invaded by a foreign power, the idea of faculty interaction is not said to be condemned simply because of the enormous costs of the labor involved (although one suspects that this is the most significant issue). Rather advocates of information technology assume a notion of independent learners at the center of the enterprise who simply do not depend on faculty as the primary source of their learning. While Dewey was among those to argue against a teaching-centered model of education, he would certainly reject the radically asocial dimension of distance learning as it is currently being discussed. [17]

Once again, Dewey’s position is that the social environment–the interdependence and engagement of individuals in the performative acts of learning–is a necessary condition for developing the unique capacities of individuals. Even if such a model as the National Learning Infrastructure could develop an individual’s dispositions for distance learning; in its current direction toward individualization, it would be difficult to account for the experience of sharing in a common activity that is central to Dewey’s understanding of both the social environment of learning and the social aims of democracy.

In contrast to Dewey’s concentration on the social functions of education, the individual ends of distance learning are most frequently described in terms of the acquisition of definable skills. “It seems to me,” Carol Twigg writes,

that our definition of learning is changing in a number of ways… Increasingly, viewing a college education as mastery of a body of knowledge is becoming outmoded. Instead we recognize that graduates need to have acquired skills… along with such abilities as finding needed information and working well with others.[18]

With this emphasis on acquired skills, we are also beginning to see more stress placed on educational outcomes. “Because of its capacity to focus on individual assessment,” Massy and Zemsky note, information technology “will make the teaching and learning enterprise much more outcome-oriented.”[19] In large measure this growing emphasis on skills and outcomes is related to a greater consumer orientation to education. Increasingly students are looking “for increased competition between higher education providers to work to their advantage as consumers.”[20]

While Dewey too understood the importance of acquiring skills, he would no doubt be disturbed by the instrumental and pecuniary ends of distance learning. In his essay, Individualism, Old and New, he claimed that “the development of a civilization that is outwardly corporate–or rapidly becoming so–has been accompanied by the prevailing mentality of the ‘business mind'” and the prevailing standards of value derived from pecuniary success alone.[21] On the educational front, the ability to buy economic success is understood in terms of the acquisition of skills of technical mastery sold at the best price. Yet paradoxically, Dewey argued, even if these skills are quite broad and fluid, such narrowly conceived individualist attempts to find economic security in an increasingly insecure economic world produces the conditions under which individuals become increasingly lost, unable to “find support and contentment in the fact that they are sustaining and sustained members of a social whole.”[22]

For Dewey, a highly individualistic or libertarian model of learning severely narrows and restricts the meaning and practical effects of education’s social function. In his view, the purposes of education in a democracy are necessarily both individual and collective in nature. They consist in developing individuals’ natural capacities and acquisition of skills in concert with their preparation for the activities of engaged citizenship and reflective thought. Indeed, without pathological effect, the growth of the individual–the unique development of the individual’s talents and skills– cannot be separated from the social environment of shared activities, values and common interests within which the individual is sustained and grows.

Although information technology has the potential “to increase learning productivity in the areas of codified knowledge and algorithmic skills,”[23] it may not serve these larger social purposes. Indeed, even if one could argue that sharing in common activities that are primarily non-algorithmic can take place within the social environment of distance learning, Dewey would strongly criticize the disembodied nature of such a “social” environment.

For Dewey, learning digitally may well push Cartesian dualism to new heights as minds connect over vast distances without the inconveniences of time, place and body. In his view, the separation of body and mind culminates “in a sharp demarcation of individual minds from the world, and hence from one another… [This] dualistic philosophy of mind and the world implies an erroneous conception of the relationship between knowledge and social interests, and between individuality or freedom and social control and authority.”[24] In educational practice, it often assumes the form of a body of knowledge distinct from its social purposes and a mind free from its social context and physical constraints. As Sidney Hook explains, a dualistic theory of mind and body, according to Dewey, “converts functional distinctions in the ‘moving unities of experience’ into separations of existence. Thus mind is considered separate from the body, whose activity is viewed as an alien influence on how the mind learns and the self is divided from its environing physical and social world.”[25]

Even as a real time-interactive-talking heads-model, being digitally educated decontextualizes the experience of learning and realizes in practice what Descartes only separated philosophically: Minds communicate through bits, bodies move through atoms. The most elemental dualism of the post-information age is thoroughly Cartesian. Detached from the motion of our bodies and disengaged from our local physical and social surroundings, education in the post-information age does not connect, but separates the self from the world, and thus from others. Rather than fulfilling its promise, learning digitally seems only to compromise the most significant elements of Dewey’s educational philosophy.

III. Learn Locally, Think Globally

Although information technology, like the printing press, opens up radically new options for education, Dewey would remind us that computers are, after all, tools. And, like all other tools, they provide ways of getting around and fulfilling one’s purposes in one’s environment. The question is how can we best use the tools of information technology for our educational purposes and aims?

In terms of delivery, advocates of digital learning often argue that information technology provides a better option than the traditional university. With its relatively fixed economy of scale and centralized location, the university has become a legacy of the industrial age. In Twigg’s words: “Our institutions of higher education are reminiscent of other kinds of industrial age organizations such as the factory and the department store–characterized by size and centralization–in contrast to the distributed, networked organization and mail-order shopping services of the 1990s.”[26] Twigg predicts that the ability to transmit through networked organization high quality learning tools customized for the individual student will begin to replace the traditional (teacher-centered) functions of the university. While there will still be a role for faculty and institutions of higher education in terms of certification, student services, and some collaborative experiences, she suggests, its centrality in the process of learning will significantly change as students become more independent and self-reliant and as physical contact becomes “less important to them.”[27]

Although Twigg may well be correct in arguing that the industrial designed university no longer provides the best option for educational delivery, her vision of the future predicated on independent learning, as we have seen, is not without its serious defects. In analyzing the profound implications of the printing press in America, Dewey noted that localism with its infinite variations and specific contexts tends to become stronger as the world (or at least information about it and our connection to it) grows closer.[28] And just as industry and politics are witnessing a tendency toward both decentralization and globalization, the best option for educational delivery may well be the more local community and small college system with new neighborhood and workplace learning centers further developed to meet the educational needs of both traditional and non-traditional students. Within these small colleges and decentralized institutions, the physical proximity of students and faculty would help to embody learning and knowledge as a social process.

To learn locally and think globally, students must have access to the tools of technology. Information retrieval, communication systems, and independent and collaborative learning tools are now necessary and even elemental parts of learning. But they are not sufficient. They must be contextualized within a learning environment. As most agree, learning tools can “stand in” for a physical and social environment, but they cannot replace it. One simply cannot replace the direct and palpable gravity of social interaction that is intrinsic to the atomic weight of learning with weightless bits traveling at blinding speed through thin fine fibers of glass.

As global communication systems eviscerate time and space, digital learning may transform the mode of educational production and delivery. It may even make the traditional university and large state institution obsolete. But as our access to the tools of technology become less dependent on space and time, as distance learning increases, the proximity of social interaction in the process of learning should increase proportionally: The more distant the means of delivery, the more proximate the learning experience should be in terms of the intensity, relation, and quality (if not quantity) of interactions between faculty and students. Rather than becoming less so, the physical and social environment may become more important as distant learning tools become more available. As in the case of localism and globalism, physical proximity and intensive social interaction may both compliment and counterbalance distance in learning. Although learning digitally may promise to make us less dependent on time and space, it is only within a social environment of learning that we can begin to celebrate the experimentation, exploration, and expression–the idea of learning by doing–central to the spirit of John Dewey.

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Endnotes

[1] Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, (New York: Borzoi-Knopf, 1995), 14.

[2] Ibid., 163-65.

[3] For example, see William F. Massy and Robert Zemsky, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity” 4.

[4] Ibid., 199f. Return to text

[5] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure” 5.

[6] Dewey, Democracy and Education, in John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899-1924, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 147.

[7] Jack M. Wilson, “The CUPLE Physics Studio,” The Physics Teacher.

[8] Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, 224.

[9] A description of CITYSCAPES can be found in “Strengthening Teaching and Learning in the First Two Years,” PEW Charitable Trusts (Number 9, January 1996), 4.

[10] Massy and Zemsky, Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” 2. (www.educause.edu/ir/library/abstracts/nli0004.html)

[11] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure.”

[12] Although one of these skills may involve collaboration, it is nevertheless described as a kind of “pull yourself up by your own boot straps” social environment of independent learning.

[13] Hook, “Introduction to Democracy and Education,” 304.

[14] Hook, “Introduction to Democracy and Education,” 44.

[15] Massy and Zemsky, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” 4.

[16] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure,” 8.

[17] On the role of the teacher and the social purposes of education, see Dewey’s The School and Society in The Middle Works, vol. 1.

[18] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Infrastructure,” 1. See also, Jeremy Shapiro and Shelley Hughes, “Information Technology as a Liberal Art,” Educom Review (March/April):31-35.

[19] Massy and Zemsky, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” 3.

[20] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Infrastructure,” 4. Return to text

[21] Individualism, Old and New in John Dewey: The Later Works, vol 5, p. 67f. Return to text

[22] Ibid. Return to text

[23] Massy and Zemsky, “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity,” 2.

[24] Hook, “Introduction to Democracy and Education,” 300.

[25] Hook, “Introduction to Democracy and Education,” x.

[26] Carol Twigg, “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure,” 5.

[27] Ibid., 8.

[28] See “Americanism and Localism” in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 12, p.12-16.

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Laurie Finke
Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio
Date of publication: 1997

The Culture of Virtual Communities

In one passage from A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s fictional narrator finds herself walking across the grounds of an Oxbridge college deep in thought, contemplating an essay by Charles Lamb on Milton’s “Lycidas.” She remembers that the manuscript of that famous poem that Lamb cites in his essay is housed in the library of the very college whose grounds she walks. She imagines herself literally retracing Lamb’s footsteps “across the quadrangle to that famous library where the treasure is kept.” Finding herself at the door of the library,

I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel, barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. (Woolf 7-8; emphasis in original)

The narrator’s response shows how quickly alienation follows from exclusion, how quickly intellectual curiosity can become indifference: “Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe and locked within its breast, it [the library] sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep forever” (Woolf 8).

I found myself returning to this scene again and again when I was asked to think about the consequences of emerging information technologies for the teaching that I do in a Women’s and Gender Studies program, particularly in relation to the kind of student-centered pedagogy that we, for the purposes of this project, are calling “proximity learning,” and opposing to the “distance learning” so often extolled as information technology’s future (Twigg, Alley). Surely such scenes of exclusion as Woolf describes in 1928 could not be repeated in an American university at the end of the twentieth century? No student of ours–female or male– would be turned away at the doors of our colleges’ libraries by kindly silver-haired librarians guarding the doors and rebuffing the unwelcome. Yet the refrain heard constantly among cyber-touts these days is that the locus of the library is rapidly changing. Soon the “treasures” about which Woolf writes so eloquently will reside not in atoms–in weighty volumes stored on scores of shelves in monumental stone buildings–but in ethereal bits, floating around in a non-place we’ve come to call “cyberspace,” capable of being disassembled and reassembled at our merest whim in any format we desire (Negroponte). Knowledge–or at least information– will no longer be “locked away” and apportioned out by the gatekeepers of culture, but will be available anywhere, anytime at the press of a button or the click of a mouse.

This enthusiastic assessment of the democratizing potential of information technologies, however, merits closer scrutiny. What will the effects of this dematerialization–this transformation of information from atoms to bits–be? In particular, we ought to pay close attention to the rhetoric of the sales pitch through which the benefits of cyberspace are being promoted. While the term is often used rather loosely to refer to everything from computer games to the World Wide Web, “as though each computer screen were a portal to a shadow universe of infinite, electronically accessible space” (Markley 2), it is worth noting how the experts talk about the concept. Michael Benedikt defines cyberspace as “a globally networked, computer-sustained, computer-accessed, and computer-generated, multidimensional, artificial, or virtual’ reality” (Benedikt 122). Marcos Novak characterizes it as “a completely spatialized visualization of all information in global information processing systems, along pathways provided by present and future communication networks, enabling full copresence and interaction of multiple users, allowing input and output from and to the full human sensorium, permitting simulations of real and virtual realities, remote data collection and control through telepresence, and total integration and intercommunication with a full range of intelligent products and environments in real space” (Novak 225,226). What both definitions have in common is their thorough erasure of human agency in the transition from a material to a virtual reality ^[1]. In both definitions machines are remarkably lively and intelligent. They “network,” “sustain,” and “generate.” They provide access; they “enable”interaction, “allow” input and output to circulate, and “permit” simulations. Humans, on the other hand, have almost entirely disappeared or are completely passive. Indeed we no longer have people attached to computers at all, but “human sensorium.” People have become little more than inert receptacles for “input” and “output.” As Donna Haraway writes, “Our machines are disturbingly lively and we ourselves frighteningly inert” (Haraway 152). This way of talking about computer technology is not limited only to VR visionaries. Most educators writing about the benefits of information technology use the very same rhetoric:

• IT will change teaching and learning profoundly, no matter what the response of traditional higher education institutions. (Massy and Zemsky 2)
• IT enables students to work at their own pace with continuous assessment, in contrast to the traditional post-secondary education method which can be described as batch-processing with episodic assessment. (Massy and Zemsky 4).
• For not only will information technology accelerate the move toward a process focus and collaborative learning, it may change the fundamental relationships and understandings we’ve developed during the era when most information was stored on paper. (Batson and Bass 44)

In the first sentence, information technology is characterized as having the power to transform higher education in spite of whatever paltry resistance its institutions might mount (notice it isn’t educators, but only institutions that resist). Human agency can amount to little more than a pallid and ineffective imitation of computer efficacy (“batch-processing with episodic assessment”). In fact, in the technological determinism that marks most writing of this kind, human actors appear only as obstacles to the electronic transformation of higher education. Faculty and administrators who resist the inevitable digitalization of the university are seen as the problem to be solved: “faculty will have little interest in IT’s capacities to boost academic productivity to the extent that they lack an appropriate vision of learning productivity” (Massy and Zemsky 6). Sentiments like this are so common nowadays that they fly by unnoticed. But their consequences for how we think about information technologies and for the problems we gloss over are profound.

The effect of this discursive logic that endows machines with agency while erasing human actors is to write out of existence a whole host of material and cultural institutions and practices that create and sustain information technology, but which also determine who is allowed access to this information. Gone from the analysis are the programmers, designers, factory workers, sales workers, service technicians, patent and copyright lawyers, policymakers, executives, college faculty and administrators, as well as the hardware, software, electricity, and raw materials necessary to keep the production line moving. A whole host of technoscientific, economic, social, and cultural practices that regulate both knowledge of and access to information technology simply become invisible. Those who extol the democratizing potential of new information technologies rarely talk, for instance, about the complexities of copyright law, the economic costs of access to this information, or the inevitable pattern of breakdown, repair, and obsolescence involved in maintaining electronic equipment, all material practices that involve human actors who serve as gatekeepers, determining who will have access and who will be denied.

Even the most superficial examination of the material practices that sustain the illusion of “cyberspace” reveal that far from being a cultureless and egalitarian meeting place in which “status, power, and prestige are communicated neither contextually. . .nor dynamically,” in which “charismatic and high-status people may have less influence and group members may participate more equally” (Taylor et al. 18), emergent information technologies, because they are situated in networks of material and cultural practices, institutions, and economies, replicate all of the inequities and hierarchies that currently plague academia and the larger world of which it is a part. As colleges and universities celebrate the
promise of brave new technologies that will fundamentally change the ways in which faculty and students interact, it is important to keep in mind the very real danger that some of our students, because of where they are situated in these networks, may, like Virginia Woolf, find themselves locked out of the technological campuses of the future.

I believe that both faculty and students can use computer mediated communication (CMC) and IT to teach and learn in new ways that are more collaborative, interactive, and ultimately more effective, but I am also wary of the very real possibility that gender, race, and class hierarchies will (and have) all to easily become part of the “circuitry” of the new information technology on our campuses. I worry that these technologies could have unforseen and undesirable consequences for the politics of gender, race, and class in academia. The question I want to pose is, as teachers, how do we responsibly integrate new information technologies into our classrooms without excluding or alienating the very students we want to empower? My answer is that we can do so only when we pay attention to the material and cultural practices that accompany the adoption of new technologies.

The cultural practices that have sprung up around computer mediated communication (CMC) and information technology (IT), far from being gender-neutral, are, if anything, more male than the culture they mirrors. By almost any measure we might choose, men dominate the computer world through sheer numbers. 87% of all doctorates in computer science go to men (and two-thirds of all bachelors degrees); 92% of all computer science faculties are male (and 97% of all tenured faculty) [Shade, Simmons]. These numbers suggest that those who are designing hardware, software, and networks, supporting and servicing them, and teaching about them are most likely to be men. This is not to suggest, however, that women have nothing to do with computers. Women figure heavily in the global production lines of the computer industry (Taylor et al., 15), in data entry, and in secretarial positions. In other words, they cluster disproportionately in those areas of computer technology that are low-paying, repetitive, and routinized, those areas that are least likely to influence decisions about how CMC and IT will be used and who will have access.

On the internet, the heart of the revolution in information technology, depending on how you count, men outnumber women in proportions that range from 2 to 1 to 9 to 1. If you measure access men outnumber women only by two to one. If you measure actual use the disparity can be as high as 10 to 1. A survey conducted in 1994 by the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center (GVU) at Georgia Tech showed that male internet users outnumbered female by a ratio of 9 to 1. A year later, the same survey showed that , at least in the U.S, the disparity had begun to shrink; women accounted for 29.3% of users in the 4th Annual GVU Survey. However, to be counted in a survey of this kind a user would have to find the GVU web site and complete the questionnaire. To avoid the potential biases that might result from self-reporting, Matrix Information and Directory Services (MIDS) and Texas Internet Consulting sent electronic surveys to the domains representing organizations on the internet. These surveys counted the numbers of men and women who could send e-mail outside the domain. In 1994, this survey showed only a two to one discrepancy between men and women who had active email accounts (64% to 36%, MIDS Survey). John Quarterman and Smoot Carl-Mitchell suggest that the proliferation of email on college campuses explains the smaller gap between male and female users in this survey. Students have become the largest proportion of internet users and the average university student population is pretty evenly divided between men and women. But the MIDS survey still leaves a 2 to 1 “gender gap” even for relatively simple electronic technology like email. Collectively what these studies suggest is that while men and women are becoming more equal in opportunities for accessing the internet, there are still wide disparities in how men and women use electronic media.

The reasons for this disparity, I believe, are not all that well understood. Much of the research on women and computing, even the feminist research, begins with the assumption that women are disadvantaged and even deficient users of computer technology. Such analyses locate the problem in the resistance of users rather than in the technology they are being asked to use, or better in the network of material and cultural practices that sustain the technology. Women, in this view, are intimidated by the technology and the communicative style of the internet because they communicate differently from men: men are comfortable with the kind of adversarial exchange characteristic of the internet, while women prefer a more supportive communicative style (Herring). Indeed, women’s and men’s communicative strategies are
so different that they inhabit different cultures (Mulvaney). Such views, however, are based as much on stereotype as on any empirical evidence. Michele Evard’s research on fourth and fifth grade children using a netnews-like forum in a classroom setting suggests that, before they encounter the culture of the net, boys and girls act in CMC in almost identical ways: girls speak as often as boys, they give instruction in equal numbers, and they flame just as often as boys (Evard). This study suggests that what ever discrepancies exist between men’s and women’s use of CMC and IT result less from profound psychological differences between men and women than from the practices, values, and institutions that
constitute and are constituted by the virtual communities that have sprung up on the internet.

To understand the discrepancies between male and female computer use and their implications for classroom use of CMC and IT, we must investigate the material practices that discourage women from participating. These include:

• Economic barriers. Access to information technology requires hardware, software, and, increasingly, internet access, all of which require a significant financial output. Since women on average make less than men, they may be more disadvantaged as buyers of computer services (Shade, Simmons). Cost may have less impact on college students as the cost of some (though certainly not all) of these services are borne by colleges and universities. Nevertheless, as educators we must constantly remember that the increasing dependence of higher education on electronic technology will always work to the benefit of more advantaged students who can afford the cost of cutting edge technologies.
• Lack of familiarity with computer technology. As children, girls are often have less access to computers than boys. When they do, their use of the computer is almost exactly the same as boys (Evard). The computer game industry, however, is notoriously male-oriented, producing few titles that would appeal to girls.
• Learning styles. While the literature on infotech frequently promotes the potential of technology to appeal to a variety of learning styles (Negroponte, Batson and Bass, Alley), it is not always clear that training in the use of infotech accommodates a variety of learning styles, especially when the learner in question is resistant to technology or anxious about it. For some users (and here I would include myself), the rapid obsolescence of technologies once learned can be quite daunting and a disincentive to investing the time required to learn still newer technologies every six months.
• Harassment and pornography. Information resources like the internet are not always friendly places for women. The kind of harassment that often plagues women in face to face communication  has, not surprisingly, become perhaps too frequently a fact of life in CMC (Anderson, Brail, Kendall). The libertarian, anything goes culture of the Web has made it an attractive place to sell and disseminate pornography. Without advocating censorship or indeed any reigning in of the Web’s decentralized (non) organization, I would point out that the climate for women on the web can be chilling; one need not actively look for pornography to find it. Recently I logged onto a popular search engine, looking for information on “women and the internet” for this piece. My query
  yielded some fifty entries, half of which advertised “the hottest women on the internet,” “lingerie lounge,” “Asian playmates,” and “SEX PORN XXX FUCK ADULT GAY WOMEN VIDEO.XXX.COM” repeated over and over in capital letters (the electronic version of shouting). My students have reported similar experiences. Women on the internet are both subjects and sexual objects.
• Discursive inequalities. Although CMC was supposed to eliminate status markers like race, age, physical appearance and physical abilities, empowering those in low status positions,(Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler, Taylor et al. 54, Stone), gender seems to be a status marker that persists even in  electronically mediated situations^[2]. Recent studies of usenet groups show that, even when the subject matter focused on women’s issues, in mixed sex groups men contributed significantly more posts and that when women’s participation rose above 30%, they were perceived as dominating the discussion (Taylor et al. 17, 55, We). In a study of the relative participation of men and women in usenet groups devoted to women’s issues (where we might expect women’s interest, and hence their participation to be higher than elsewhere), Gladys We reported the following discrepancies between men’s and women’s contributions:

Newsgroup	#responses	%female	%male	%unknown
Alt.feminism	303	11%	83%	6%
Soc.women	292	13%	78%	9%
Soc.feminism	47	53%	40%	7%

 

These findings validate the experiences many women have had in internet discussion groups and raise questions about the consequences of their use in a classroom setting.

The Pedagogies of Virtual Communities

As colleges and universities invest more heavily in information technology and as IT becomes more integral to our teaching, educators need to think about those we may be leaving behind. And yet such discussions seem to me to be precisely what is missing from the literature on information technology’s pedagogical potential. Although much of this literature discusses forms of faculty resistance to classroom uses of IT (Twigg, Massey and Zemsky, Gilbert), rarely does it acknowledge that student resistance will also be a barrier to the successful integration of electronic media into our teaching. In fact, students will show the same diffusion curve in adopting IT that experts predict of faculty; there will be a small group of early users, the majority will only follow once a critical mass is reached, and the resistors are in real danger of being left behind altogether (Green 29). It would be useful to have some information on, for instance, how gender, race, and socioeconomic class affect these categories. Are men really more likely to be among the early adopters of IT? Are economically privileged students with access to the resources required to access cutting edge technology more likely to be represented among early adopters? Are women more likely to resist the change to electronically mediated classrooms? Are there students or even entire institutions who lack the economic resources to participate in the IT revolution? It would be preferable to rely on some empirical data to answer these questions rather than on stereotype. Once patterns of student use have been established, educators have the more difficult task of determining the causes of resistance. As I have tried to suggest above, resistance to IT among women students (and faculty) may result less from deficiencies in the individuals than from their resistance to the culture they are being asked to enter. Overcoming this resistance will require paying attention to the developing cultures of virtual communities.

We must also pay attention to the pedagogies we adopt within these virtual communities, and the assumptions that underlie those pedagogies. Enthusiasts of IT will often point to the shift electronically mediated learning requires from a teacher-centered classroom to a student-centered one (Twigg, Alley). As Carol A. Twigg quotes Alan H. Leader, dean of the School of Business at Southern Connecticut State University:

The purpose and outcome of our educational enterprise is learning, not teaching.
Teaching is what we do. Colleges do not exist in order for us to teach but so that
students can learn. . . .The focus must be on the student, not the instructor (Twigg 13).

The pedagogical writing about IT and distance learning extols the advantage of student-centered learning, but what is its vision of student-centered learning? Critiques like Twigg’ s of the traditional teacher-centered classroom, in which the scholarly expert, having distilled the truth from the best minds in the field, transmits it to students, identify real problems in traditional teaching methods. But what do they offer in place of what Paolo Freire has described as the “banking method” of teaching in which teachers
make deposits of knowledge in their students’ minds (Freire 1968)?

Even the most sophisticated writing on distance learning and the pedagogical applications of IT, as, for instance, Twigg’s call for a national learning infrastructure, views the primary goal of education as the delivery of information transplanted from the teacher’s brain into the student’s (Freire’s “banking method” of teaching under a slightly different guise–the scholarly expert has been replaced by a
computer). Such transfers, educational analysts like Massey and Zemsky or Twigg claim, may be more efficiently accomplished with greater convenience to students (who may even be able to learn in the comfort of their own homes) by computers in an individualized, asynchronous learning environment, which is an elaborate way of describing a student sitting in front of a computer terminal. (see “Being Digitally Educated: Dewey, Technology, and Distance Learning“) And if this is all education is about, they are undoubtedly correct. Computers can more efficiently convey information than human instructors. They can store, search, sort, transfer, transport, organize, replicate, and compute information much faster than any human can.

But do these enthusiastic claims about information technology confuse knowledge and information, transmitting with educating? Does student-centered learning refer only to students’ passive assimilation of data or does it require more active participation from them, more interaction both with their teachers and with their peers? Perhaps we cannot substitute a computer for the social interactions we claim occur in
proximity learning anymore than we can create a computer program to parent or an electronic therapist. Like parenting or therapy, teaching (and learning) does not involve a simple exchange of information. Information gathering is not the central activity. Like parenting or therapy, education integrates students into particular social networks–in the case of education we call these social networks disciplines. These social networks have customs, rules, procedures, and specialized languages. Some
of these are explicit, but many are unstated, taken for granted by those who have already been integrated into the social network. These rules, procedures, customs, and languages dictate what questions can be asked, what counts as an answer, what counts as evidence or explanation, who may speak at any given time, whose answers count, and how information is gathered. Students learn the customs, rules, and procedures of their chosen social networks or disciplines by acting as participant-observers, by learning the “culture” of their discipline, and not simply by acquiring the discipline’s content. A students become a member of the social network as she learns to create new knowledge, not as she learns to regurgitate information ( Brown and Duguid). The goal of higher education then only partly the transmission of knowledge; it also requires the creation of new knowledge.

Missing, then, from discussions of the technological classroom is a sophisticated analysis of pedagogy that unpacks the social networks students must learn to navigate during their college years. Those pedagogical discussions are, however, available in many other places. Feminist scholars, for instance, have explored these issues and their impact on women for nearly two decades. For two decades they have mounted a challenge to teacher- and information-centered models of education which has been remarkably successful at many institutions. That challenge has gone unnoticed in the literature on classroom uses of IT, this despite a virtual explosion of information on the subject. In the 1970s, feminist teachers, convinced that a female-friendly education required not only a transformation of the content of higher education but of its method of delivery as well, began to explore new teaching approaches. They found useful strategies in many different sources: the consciousness-raising practices of the early women’s movement, the progressive tradition in American education created by John Dewey (see “Being Digitally Educated: Dewey, Technology, and Distance Learning“), and the liberatory teaching promoted by Paulo Freire and others. What makes feminist pedagogy unique, however, has been its attention to the particular needs of women and its grounding in feminist theory as the basis for its multidimensional view of how classroom knowledge is constructed through the formation and maintenance of social networks (Tetreault and Maher). This information is voluminous and readily accessible ^[3].

Yet, despite this wealth of information, discussions of both feminist pedagogy and information technology’s impact on the women who constitute upwards of 50% of our students are notably missing in most mainstream discussions of the IT revolution, which tend to treat students as largely featureless and interchangeable cogs.

Obviously I believe that IT and CMC can and ultimately must have a place in a feminist classroom. I have use these tools–e-mail, electronic discussion groups, the internet, multimedia programs– on a daily basis in my own classes. And my experience has taught me that these tools, along with the networks of social, cultural, and material practices in which they are imbricated, will change how we teach. But finally it is up to us as teachers (and as members of our own social networks) –and not the technology–to determine the nature and extent of these changes. It is my hope that by understanding the particularities of our students, the nature of the social networks to which they seek access, and the nexus of material and cultural practices that IT both embodies and sustains, that we will not, to paraphrase Anne Fausto-Sterling, create an electronic academy in which cyberspace seems an illegitimate place for women and gender issues seem an inappropriate enterprise for the gatekeepers of infotech.

Bibliography

Albright, Julie M. “Of Mind, Body and Machine: Cyborg Cultural Politics in the Age of Hypertext.”

Alley, Lee R. 1996. An Instructional Epiphany. Change. Mar: 48-54.

Anderson, Judy. 1996. “Not for the Faint of Heart: Contemplation on Usenet.” In Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth Reba Weise, eds. Wired_ Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seattle, WA: Seal Press.

Brail, Stephanie. 1996. “The Price of Admission: Harassment and Free Speech in the Wild, Wild West.” In
Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth Reba Weise, eds. Wired_Women: Gender and the New Realities in Cyberspace. Seattle WA: Seal Press.

Brown, John Seely and Paul Duguid. 1996. “Universities in the Digital Age.” Change. July/August: 11-19.

Cherny, Lynn and Elizabeth Reba Weise. 1996. Wired Women:Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seattle: Seal Press.

Evard, Michele. 1996.”‘So Please Stop, Thank You’: Girls Online.” In Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth Reba
Weise, eds. Wired_Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seattle WA: Seal Press.

Finke, Laurie A. 1993. “Knowledge as Bait: Voice and the Pedagogical Unconscious.” College English 55:5-25.

Finke, Laurie A. 1994. “Pedagogy of the Depressed: Feminism, Poststructuralism, and Pedagogic Practice.”
Teaching Literary Theory, eds. Dianne Sadoff and William Cain. MLA: 154-168.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Herder and Herder, 1 968

Gilbert, Steven W. 1996. “Making the Most of a Slow Revolution,” Change. March/April: 10-47.

Green, Kenneth C. 1996. “The Coming Ubiquity of Information Technology.” Change. March/April: 24-29.

Grusin, Richard. “What is an Electronic Author? Theory and the Technological Fallacy.” In Robert Markley.
Virtual Realities and Their Discontents. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996: 39-54.

Haraway, Donna J. 1991 “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Herring, Susan. “Gender Differences In Computer-Mediated Communication: Bringing Familiar Baggage To The New Frontier.”

Kendall, Lori. 1996. “MUDder? I Hardly Know ‘Er!: Adventures of a Feminist MUDder.” In Lynn Cherny and
Elizabeth Reba Weise, eds. Wired_Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seattle WA: Seal Press.

Kendrick, Michelle. “Cyberspace and the Technological Real.” In Robert Markley. Virtual Realities and Their
Discontents. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996:143-160.

Maher, Frances A. and Mary Kay Teatreault. 1994. The Feminist Classroom: An Inside Look at How Professors are Transforming Higher Education for a More Diverse Society. New York. Basic Books.

Markley, Robert. Virtual Realities and Their Discontents. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996.

“History, Theory, and Virtual Reality.” In Robert Markley. Virtual Realities and Their Discontents. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996: 1-10.

Massy, William F.and Robert Zemsky. “Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity.”

Milroy, L. 1980. Language and Social Networks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Mulvaney, Becky Michele . “Gender Differences in Communication: An Intercultural Experience.”

Neville, Nicholas. 1995. Security and Privacy in a Surveillance Society, London: Ninja Books http://www.changeipaddress.net/

Quarterman, John S. and Smoot Carl-Mitchell. “Is the Internet All Male?”

Shade, Leslie Regan. “Gender Issues in Computer Networking.” ftp://cpsr.org/cpsr/gender/leslie_regan_shade.txt.

Simmons, Susan. “Democracy, Women, and the Internet.”

Stone, Allucquere Rosanne.1991. “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures.” In Benedikt, Michael, ed. Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.

Taylor, H. Jeanie, Cheris Kramarae, and Maureen Ebben. 1993. Women, Information Technology, and Scholarship
(Taylor et al.). Urbana, Illinois University Press.

Thompson, Graham. 2013. Test Match Special Abroad, Education Levels in Pakistan Cricket Team

Twigg, Carol. “The Need for a National Learning Infrastructure.”

We, Gladys. “Cross-Gender Communication in Cyber-Space.” ftp://cpsr.org/cpsr/gender/we_cross_gender.

Woolf, Virginia. 1929. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

Endnotes

[1] I am indebted to Richard Grusin for this point (see Grusin 1996, 40-41).

[2] Though “computer crossdressing” in CMC is by no means unheard of and given the lack of bodily cues, relatively easy to achieve, it is not at all clear whether such behavior has challenged or simply reinforced traditional gender stereotypes, see Stone, 82-85, Kendrick 155-159, and Kendall.

[3] A gopher site maintained by the Women’s Studies librarian at the University of Wisconsin contains a searchable bibliography on women and information technology with seven hundred entries. (gopher://silo.adp.wisc.edu:70/00/.uwlibs/.womenstudies/.infotech/.infofull)

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Mostly learning is an individualized experience and at times pupils can feel isolated, success is usually measured against the person’s own learning targets. However there are methods which try and reduce this feeling of isolation –  collaborative learning encompasses a number of approaches to education, that might also be known as cooperative learning or  group learning. It’s a well respected procedure of getting a couple of students to work with each other in order to facilitate their learning.  For educators, it’s a worthwhile experience trying to join with some other teachers wishing to find out more about cooperative learning. Implementing full-scale cooperative learning isn’t a very simple endeavor but it can be quite straight forward in small groups.

On the 1 hand, teachers also ought to attend conventions and workshops to find out more about CL on a normal basis. Every year, they get a chance to start afresh. Because of the vast information that can be found on the web, the teachers can implement different knowledge in their classroom rapidly, and it’s the best method to grow the teacher resources.

Cooperative Learning in some senses today differs from it’s initial conception. The process now  is more than just asking students to work together. Cooperative Learning is very beneficial for practically any student learning another language or skill. Overall, it is important because it helps to bind communication with social skills, something every student needs to develop. Cooperative Learning allows students to better their capacity to manage ideas and data in collaboration with other individuals. There are a number of Cooperative Learning approaches that are made to attain unique objectives.

Students like to choose group names since it is cool and since it gives them decision-making power. They come to school from different cultures, with different experiences, and using different learning styles (Ogbu, 1988). When students compete, they simply watch out for themselves to reach their very own academic targets, for instance, to obtain an A or maybe to pass the grade level. The students develop an extremely strong ownership for the procedure and respond exact positively to how they’re given almost complete responsibility to cope with the problem posed to them and they have significant input in their assessment. They learn to understand and appreciate different perspectives through a dialogue with their peers. Suppose you want your students create a class newsletter.

Students don’t need in order to answer the questions they pose. For instance, in mathematics, they can use data to calculate the number of people who have access to drinkable water. In addition, It helps students understand that the activity was intended for more than just entertainment. If students find it impossible to read, do not observe the significance of reading, nor enjoy reading, we don’t ignore reading. They can watch videos together, discuss the content and present newly-learned information to the rest of the class. Then, clearly, the students draw sticks to find out their grouping.

Students ought to be told what it’s they will learn and the reason it is crucial. They could not learn well without interaction with other classmates. Students have the feeling they’re `in this together,’ feeling that every member’s individual effort is not only going to help him, but the entire group. They can argue with each other and sometimes don’t get along, especially if they’re not used to working in a cooperative environment. Thus, students that are disadvantaged regarding aptitude or prior knowledge for any given domain of study may benefit from contact with students that are more skilled.

Jane Williams

Tech Blogger and Author of – BBC iPlayer Blocking VPN Services

It’s often overlooked, but the vocabulary you use in teaching mathematics is important yet sometimes is hardly studied in teacher training colleges. There are lots of unique types of maths we use each day and teaching about them relies on being able to relay their meaning as well as all the formulas and equations. It’s important as whatever the area of work you’re employed in, everybody needs maths at some point. Mathematics is needed almost everywhere and those who master it will practically take their skills for granted. However if you don’t understand maths then you can find all  sorts of problems in today’s world, no-one can just dismiss maths and its vital importance.

Children naturally have huge potential of learning, curiosity and brain power. Make certain you involve your child whilst making the flash cards so they can feel they’re part of the whole process. Additionally, if the youngster cannot blend in the usual classroom, a particular arrangement may also be made. Children are also taught to begin with the greatest number. In the beginning stages, the youngster must learn how to expertly grip the object which ought to be thrown. In case you have at least two children at house, it will be less difficult for you to really teach them.

So as to teach a student mathematics, first one should attempt to create the student comprehend the significance of mathematics generally. By mixing ability levels, students may work with each other to acquire a better and clearer knowledge of an idea. In This way, interested students may get in contact with you and benefit from such opportunities. Students should be provided an opportunity to learn in an environment where there isn’t any teacher dominance. It isn’t guaranteed that advance student wouldn’t make mistakes. Students that are exposed to music in schools have shown time and again they excel in regards to reasoning abilities.

Schools across the world often have trouble teaching mathematics but most are in reality making progress, but there’s still lots of work to do. In either circumstance, the teacher has the ability to pick a suitable pace and move ahead with it. Art teachers can utilize wise goals to assist them in increasing the proportion of students who can meet expectations for ink drawing, for example. For instance, Math teachers might need to consider increasing the proportion of students who have the ability to fulfill the expectations for basic algebraic principles. As such, they have to give prior attention to the characteristics of the students. Of-course teacher has a vital role in making a mathematician. Elementary teachers that are teaching English should ideally utilize bright goals focus to make sure their students can understand and utilize conjunctions by the close of the semester.

Besides that, you’re able to personally show more involvement in your child’s education. The great Article Summary It does not have to be difficult to overlook the significance of the article summary. Absence of mathematical wisdom and skill couldn’t make a guy to progress in life as it is needed in our day to day life. There’s a particular amount of private skill involved with learning how to read music or play an instrument. To begin with, it is critical to find out what study skills are essential for success.

Further Reading:

Using a Proxy for Netflix, John Stephens, Willard Publishing, 2014

Inquiry means to seek understanding by means of a process predicated on provocative questions. Many would greatly take advantage of understanding and with a process called Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry is an approach predicated on strengths in place of weaknesses, on a vision of whatever is possible in place of an analysis of whatever is not.”
Typically our blogs revolve around evaluation techniques that are particular to program evaluations. Within this study we’ll first supply a concise breakdown of Current affairs, general knowledge as well as their importance. An all-inclusive breakdown of appreciative inquiry, or AI, are available here.  AI is both a philosophy plus a practical method of change management.

Asking an excellent question is powerful. Sometimes you’ll have a CEO who says, I wish to concentrate on the problem. Appreciative inquiry will not negate nor ignore problems.
If you would like to make change, Appreciative Inquiry is a superb method to start the process. When we evaluate training we’re determining our capacity to get accurately identified the issue, and addressed it’s cause. AI is applicable to each type of situation.

The traditional method of problem-solving in companies or educational research is really to discover the main cause of an issue and also to repair it. Unfortunately, on the office front, trust and employee engagement proceeds to decline. You’re challenged to assist your congregation address an issue that’s both complex and emotionally charged. Appreciative Inquiry attempts to make use of ways of asking inquiries and envisioning the future so as to foster optimistic relationships and build on the current potential of a specific person, organization or situation.

It’s inquiry predicated on positive questions. An important effort is to identify who’s taking responsibility for what.   There are certain other services and methods which offer similar outcomes, but involve a different method reaching that goal.  Look online for organisational development methods and you’ll find more examples, this residential vpn can help you access resources blocked in other countries.
Among the most appealing elements of this transformational method is the fact that it can involve huge quantities of people. Invites individuals to participate in building the sorts of organizations and communities which they want to reside in. They are going to reflect and discuss on their prior experiences and strengths, developing a high degree of interaction that’ll add to the productivity of the entire group.

AI assumes that the majority of people within an organization are aware of its own problems, and possible solutions. The goal of the current work is really to examine the quest for tacit in management. It is really an affirmative method of human and organizational development. For instance, it really can be used for strategic preparation, diversity management, or any additional critical issue regarding the functioning of the organization.

Men and women move towards that which they’re able to envision! Change starts to take place with all the very first questions we ask. The topic should be one where the team, group, or person is truly interested and wishes to find out more. If it seems too daunting, begin with a small topic or a little group, even a single person.

They build relationships and provide you with a possibility to connect. A group then begins to evolve dreams about what could be and what is going to be. It becomes clear the future could be built on the successes of yesteryear. Reality is made within the moment, and there are a number of realities.

Jane Williams

Learning styles aren’t fixed throughout life, but develop as someone learns and grows. They may be interested in people, are generally imaginative and emotional, and have a tendency to be strong within the arts. They prefer to watch instead of do, tending to assemble info and utilize imagination to solve problems. It doesn’t imply that the individual would fail in a group environment. Different factors influence someone’s preferred style. They should select the best product for communicating their understanding of this issue or text.

Everybody has a mix of education styles. Your preferred styles guide the way that you learn. Our learning style is actually a product of both of these choice decisions. The subsequent learning styles are combinations of someone’s preferred approaches. These theories propose that all people may be classified in accordance with their style’ of learning, even though the numerous theories present differing views on the way the styles ought to be defined and categorised. The conclusion is apparently that everybody is different, there are people who profess to learn about learning styles but you’re genetically made to acquire information and also make sense of earth around you. This enhances the speed and caliber of your learning. There are alternatives for example information assimilation.

Tell me, and I’ll forget. Involve me, and I’ll understand.

We all show different degrees of aptitude in several content areas. In addition, There are others like memorization. Such a focus, however, means it does not manage the individualized procedure for learning. Particularly these events  revolve around perspective transformation.   There’s an interesting documentary on the the media site Netflix which you can access online, this will help if you have problems accessing the site.

Learning styles group common techniques people learn. These individuals use other people today’s analysis, and would rather take a practical, experiential approach. These people have the ability to take a look at things from other perspectives. These people today require good clear explanation as opposed to practical prospect. They also alter how you internally represent experiences, the way that you recall information, and yet the words you decide on. Here the individual will not respond to a possible learning situation. There’s absolutely no correct or wrong way. This is the place where folks interact through patterned behaviour.

Researchers using brain-imaging technologies have really been able to learn the vital sections of the brain in charge of each learning style. Educators should help students discover their distinctive profiles, in addition to a balance of fashions. Educators should make certain that activities are made and carried out in ways offering each learner the opportunity to engage within the manner that suits them best. Allowing novices to access information in terms they’re comfortable with will boost their academic confidence.

As Dewey (1933) has said concerning reflection quite a few processes can happen simultaneously, stages might be jumped. As an example, Kolb focuses on processes within the individual mind, in place of seeing learning as situated. The issue here is the experiential learning model will not apply to all or any situations.

Here you are required to be mindful. On the basis of the experience of numerous courses. The action is taking place in another series of circumstances and also the learner is currently able enough to anticipate the potential impacts of the action.

Further Reading@

Accessing News Sites Online

Gregorc’s model can help you gain more thorough comprehension of how you think and learn. Solely, so as to teach and understand creatively and efficiently, each of the steps of the above learning model must certainly be followed. Some models are derived from personality types, while others are derived from brain dominance.

Trying many different varieties of learning style break-downs can enable you to see unique sides of your own learning abilities and developing a special picture of your own preferences. Along with learning styles, there are several other nature and ability tests online. The subsequent learning styles are combinations of the person’s preferred approaches. This model of education emphasizes there are certain requirements the learner has to fulfill to be able to learn effectively.

Learning styles theories are criticized by many. Learning styles theories haven’t panned out, and it’s our responsibility to ensure students know that.” Research-based criticisms of learning styles are found in below. A critique of education styles.   The experience of Sudbury model community schools shows there are many means to learn less the intervention of teaching, that will be to say, minus the intervention of the teacher being imperative. So, to an enormous extent, the success of education depends on the learners themselves (Anthony, 1984). The teacher should discuss with the learners why it’s quite important to grasp a selected topic.

For an educator, getting to understand each learner is similar to experiencing a fresh book. Furthermore, the educator must relate the prior lesson together with the present to generate the learners prepared to learn. Essentially, the teacher helps her learners concentrate on the task available.  There’s some fascinating studies online mainly on American University and college sites, you may need to use a VPN to change to US IP addresses if you are outside that region though.

Before creating an assumption a child has a learning disability it’s important to create the distinction between another learning style as well as a learning difficulty. Proponents of unschooling also have claimed that children raised inside this method learn at their very own pace and fashion, and don’t suffer from learning disabilities. The teacher should ensure there is an excellent balance between learn and play to be able to accomplish a better learning environment. If they’re pushed to the limit, learning won’t occur.

The most essential facet of learning is change. They’re more likely wish to learn and also to continue learning as soon as the purpose is clearly defined. Instruction as well as the learning environment. Several scientists have attempted to hypothesize manners in which learning style theory may be used within the classroom.

Students learn best when they’re able to employ a learning style with which they’re comfortable. It is impossible for them to learn with several other students who’ve different learning styles. If students aren’t communicating well with one another, it might be they have very different learning styles. This appears to show that students had motives apart from true learning.

Learning involves relating portions of the subject matter to one another and to the actual world. So what characterizes each individual depends not merely on the skills possessed, but likewise the strategies to use them. The easiest way for somebody to learn is based on the man, obviously. People today learn in various ways.

Cognitive and learning style analysis have a distinctive function in the procedure for personalizing instruction. Learning, according to this model, is actually a procedure for accomplishment via an individual. Here are a few methods to utilize the Integrated Intelligence Menus particularly for performance assessment without attempting to do everything simultaneously.

John Salmon

Identity Cloaker

The Kolb learning style inventory can be found in a handful of ways. The Kolb model gives a typical reference to start the discussion on experiential learning. We were quite happy and not slightly surprised to seek out our results compared very well with those of Kolb.  I had a look on my own watch and noticed that I’d to visit a class in 5 minutes. Our learning style is really a product of both of these choice decisions. A helpful spot to start this internet exploration is David Kolb’s own site.

Of the single most criticisms of the model is the fact that the concrete experience portion of the learning cycle isn’t appropriately explained within the theory and remains largely unexplored. The expected experiences incorporate those which might be predicted by the concepts and hypothesis which were established within the learning cycle. It’s likewise readily evident within the model the experiential learning cycle can happen individually or within a social group. The issue here is the experiential learning model will not apply to any or all situations.

Kolb also did a great job of integrating both dialectical entities into the model to form a comprehensive learning cycle where the whole learning procedure can be traced. For instance, Kolb focuses on processes within the individual mind, as opposed to seeing learning as situated. For example, He focuses on processes in the individual mind, rather than seeing learning as situated.

The solution might seem obvious with you, but that’s likely because you were faced with similar situations and have, with time, needed to develop strategies to solve learning situations like mine. The two of these procedures are shown to work in assisting children learn how to cope with emotions and learn more efficient behaviors since they intentionally add a reflection” stage to the action” stage. In addition, There are numerous examples of computer-based interventions predicated on experience. The aptitude adapt your learning approach dependent on the needs of the situation may be critical.

It doesn’t imply that the individual would fail in a group environment. The action is taking place in another group of circumstances and also the learner is currently able enough to anticipate the potential impacts of the action. Each one of these could be appropriate to various situations (see Jarvis below). Here the individual will not respond to a prospective learning situation.

At a significant level, neglect of some stages can end up being a big obstacle to learning. All these may be brought with each other to provide a total reflection in your practice. There are particular skills connected with each one of the learning styles. Still another application of experiential learning is really in the specialty e-learning, which is certainly a hot topic at the moment the chance to accessing all sorts of education using an online IP changer to switch IP addresses is something completely new to education.

Everyone has their own method of learning. It’s at the heart of the main reason why experiential learning is this kind of effective medium rather than classroom learning. Language, culture, climate and, clearly, education. Through experience, learners can construct firsthand an awareness of understanding of the events happening around them.

It’s the kid’s way of education. They’re interested in people, are normally imaginative and emotional, and are generally strong within the arts. These people have a tendency to have a solid imagination and the capacity to see from other perspectives. These individuals require good clear explanation in place of practical prospect.

John Williams

http://identityvoucher.co.uk/

There is a battle commencing across the developed world, for a sector that has often been neglected in the economic targets of these nations – education.    Australia is at the forefront of this sector and has recently become the largest international provider of education when measured on a per capita basis.  Australia sees the education sector as a huge growth opportunity as it desperately needs to balance it’s economy at the demise of the mining sector which has been a foundation of Australian success over the last decade.

International education is a growing sector, in 2014 about 5 million people studied outside  their home country.  This figure is expected to rise as travel and global communication increase and people start to look internationally for their education. Educational establishments  have been under pressure in most countries, cuts in funding and competition from private education all affecting the state sectors so it is essential that they look beyond the domestic market.

The two current leaders in international education are the UK and the US who both generate billions in income provided by outside students.   This is also likely to increase especially if you include online courses, you can access all sorts of course in leading American universities especially if you follow this guidance – hide my ip online.  The Australian education sector isn’t yet as large, but their is a real incentive to invest in this sector.  There is competition though particularly throughout Asia with both China and Malaysia hoping to develop their own international student sector.

Australian education generated nearly 20 billion dollars last year a rise of nearly 11%.  Surprisingly the education sector is now the country’s third biggest export earner behind the two mining commodities coal and iron ore much of which is shipped to China.

Ironically the education sector in Australia is being driven by demand from China too.  Australia has a reputation for providing high quality education and it’s multicultural society make it attractive to Asian students.  Their falling value of the currency and relative distances are other attractions to potential Chinese students.  Many young people from China already route their internet connections through an Australian proxy anyway to bypass the Chinese restrictions on internet usage.

For anyone looking for an education opportunity there’s some interesting news from the Canadian Government. It has announced some changes to current legislation allowing international students to apply for permanent residency from the USA and other countries.

The changes will roll back a number of previous amendments which were made to the Canadian Immigration Act which were made by the previous Conservative led government and announced in the Summer of 2015.

Bill C-24 is the legislation which increased the requirement for residency from three years to four. It also got rid of a previous provision that allowed 50% of any time spend under work or study visas to count against this total when applying for citizenship. This made it much more difficult for students to apply for citizenship after completing their studies and has seen numbers of international students applying to Canadian educational establishments fall.

It was the 50% credit that caused the greatest problems and acted as a huge disincentive for international students seeking to relocate to Canada. It is hoped by restoring the credit that again students would be attracted to both Canadian education and applying for citizenship status.

Although many people in Canada are highly educated and international there is a constant demand for educated and motivated new citizens. Increases in infrastructure and government sponsored developments have boosted the Canadian economy however there is a shortage of human capital. It is a huge and advanced country, with the attraction of being largely bi-lingual there is a need for English and French speakers. With the development of the internet, the digital economy is increasing too. You can work using the internet in even some of the more remote areas of the country and even access entertainment – you can even possible to watch BBC iPlayer Canada.

The immigration minister John McCallum welcomed the changes and hopes that the reversal of the policies would attract more applications for Canadian citizenship.

VTech has been running one of the most successful online learning sites for many years, but last month it suffered a serious blow. The site which is part of the global electronic firms web presence was hacked and potentially millions of user credentials compromised.

The company released the details in a recent press release but insisted that no financial details were lost. However the amount of data that was stolen could easily lead to individuals suffering financial loss. The hackers stole names, email addresses, secret questions and answers plus some passwords. They also managed to get hold of other data including children’s names, genders and birthdates.

It is the sheer number of details stolen that is the surprising amount, although many of Vtech’s education tools link in to these web accounts. These accounts are also used to record progress in games and applications so that parents can monitor them.

Children’s games and toys are increasingly linked to web sites and vast databases are kept to track these details. Many children spend much of the time interacting with these online sites and others that are similar. There are many videos which are also attractive to children often produced by simple video makers like Content Samurai, many of these can be found on YouTube.

It is a worry for many parents particularly as children are less likely to be aware of the risks involved in supplying personal information to websites. Most computer games and console games require accounts which are often verified using addresses and mobile phone numbers which would also be stored online. Children are also unlikely to question requests for such information or challenge requirements for those details.

At this point it is unclear whether VTech was deliberately targeted because it had childrens details but this is obvious a major concern. There is an investigation starting in the US about the attack although the company’s headquarters are in Hong Kong.

Jeremy Hallings
Video Maker

It’s often been touted as the rise of a new form of education which will eventually transform the world. The MOOC is certainly transforming the way the world’s Universities are delivering their courses. What’s more they are allowing people to access world class education irrespective of their location or circumstances.

Massive Open Online courses are uniquely flexible as regards time, finance, geography and many other normal restrictions. Universities throughout the world are designing all their courses with the potential to be delivered online at little or often no cost to people through an internet connection. There are still some restrictions, at least with some providers in order to maintain quality and stop people just enrolling on everything. Some require entry interviews, tests or locks based on geographical areas however these are the exception rather than the rules.

the geographical blocks are similar to those used by the big media sites, however these can be bypassed easily using this technique. You can see how you can easily use a proxy based in the required country like this video –

So what will the future hold for education in 10 years? Well if you look at traditional University and college courses you’ll see most of them now contain an online component. There are obvious advantages in that courses can be recorded and rerun year after year if they are stored in a digital format. This also increases the amount of time available for tutors to help their students individually, freeing up time that would normally be spent in vast lecture theatres with an audience of students.

One area that will hopefully increase the benefits to the standard of global education is collaboration. This will allow Universities and colleges to specialise in specific areas and utilize other academic resources for related studies. Imagine being able to tap into technology courses from MITT, Economics from LSE or business schools in Harvard. Collaboration will allow experts and academics to study and teach their own areas and use others to help educate in related areas.