eLearning Island

I had two interesting experiences with Google this week

1. Attending the annual Google I/O 2013  via a video-link, at their offices in Barrow Street, Dublin
2. Using Google Forms for the first time

On one hand, I left the I/O further questioning many of my concerns about Google (and other companies e.g. Apple and Amazon) as they develop proprietary ecosystems around Apps, Operating Systems and Data-management.

On the other, using Google Forms for the first time, I saved a vast amount of time (and paper) in carrying out an evaluation with a Transition Year group, of one hundred and fifty secondary-school students. Forms was reasonably straightforward to use and allowed me to immediately begin an analysis of some of the data  collected. I was really pleased with the application and have not stopped singing its praises!

I heard both Cambridge’s John Naughton and M.I.T.’s Richard Stallman speak here in Ireland in the last while. I blogged about their presentations (Naughton / Stallman) and found both men thought provoking.

Naughton I wrote,  warned us of the dangers of becoming modern day sharecroppers (definition: A tenant farmer who gives a share of the crops raised to the landlord in lieu of rent) as we use online applications to “enhance” our lives, whether of the Google, FaceBook or myriad of other applications offered to us for “free”.

Stallman makes a cogent case about  Why Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software “What schools should refuse to do is teach dependence. Those corporations offer free samples to schools for the same reason tobacco companies distribute free cigarettes to minors: to get children addicted. They will not give discounts to these students once they’ve grown up and graduated.”

Audrey Watters, posted a piece “Google Play for Education Versus the Open Web” in Hack Education yesterday about her thoughts on Google I/O 2013 and Education.  Watters makes many good points but the one that resonated most with me is

“Tablets facilitate consumption and content delivery, but they haven’t really changed the way we teach and learn. They are not the powerful computing devices as envisioned by Seymour Papert et al. And with their emphasis on app marketplaces and app ecosystems and not on openly-licensed content the World Wide Web, tablets raise all sorts of other problems for education”.

This is a problem – but what to do? Being realistic we cannot avoid Google! I think it is more about how we approach Google or any of the major corporations. We must engage our brains. Essentially do we want Google to anticipate our needs (something that their engineers are well on the way to doing – read more here) or do we want to use Google for our needs?

This is the real work of education – helping people take control of their lives and realising that in these still early days of the online world, we are being pushed and pushed into vistas that may be limited.

Content creation, is hugely important to us in the digital age.  Many devices however allow us to do less and less with (our) content, funnelling us into a small number of ways of “enhancing” what we have developed.

I will happily continue to work with Google Forms but I will continue to express my concerns about the ethical issues surrounding the relentless Googlization and appification of knowledge and ideas.

Disclosure: This post was written on a Chromebook. I accepted a free main-course followed by an ice-cream at the I/O. I got the t-shirt and took two stickers!

Photo credit: Google Developers (the t-shirt is mine).

Trinity College Dublin published the Down Survey in a digitised form this week.

The Down Survey is according to its website  “…the first ever detailed land survey on a national scale anywhere in the world…” made between the years 1656-1658.

I happened to attend a presentation on the early stages of its development at a Google Developers Group, Dublin a number of years ago. I was fascinated at the interplay of history, database development, mapping, creativity and so on.

The work has now come to fruition allowing Geographic Information Systems to give us a picture of a place in time, and of a time in place, in this case using Google’s  mapping technology.

I believe it is important that this type of cross-curricular work is highlighted to secondary school-students as examples of good creative practices.

This is not the work of coders or programmers or historians or cartographers but the work of collaborators across all disciplines.

Technology enhances the Humanities. The Humanities enhance Technology.

As Ed Parsons of Google Tweeted on the launch of the Down Survey

Great evening at TCD for the launch of the Down Survey a brilliant combination of computer sci & the humanities downsurvey.tcd.ie

— Ed Parsons (@edparsons) May 13, 2013

I first wrote about oracy over a year ago after a presentation from David Puttnam at the Science Gallery, Dublin (here).

A web definition (here) explains oracy as…used to describe a person’s ability to efficiently communicate with others via the spoken word as well as to fully understand oral communication.

I had spoken to Kevin Cahill, a secondary-school teacher of English from Cork about oracy while we were together at a conference – he has done some thinking about the concept in the light of Junior-Cycle reform here in Ireland.

I revisited a Prezi he published (here) today…Connecting English to the Digital Ecosystem: Focus on Oracy.

Oracy has been to the front of my mind in the last number of weeks.

Transition-year is winding to a close and sixteen-year old students throughout the country are presenting aspects of their excellent work in schools or at national events, like mini-company competitions or social-entrepreneurs.

I have noticed a thread amongst some of these young people. Their ideas are excellent, their presentation is superb, PowerPoint or posters are no problem, but ask some of them to stand in front of the laptop or poster, in front of a group .

What happens? -Verbal communication is poor. Oracy is lacking.

For all the digital technologies we have, nothing beats verbal enthusiasm in pitching for business, in telling a story, in making your wishes known!

I have spoken to some of the students I teach informally about the challenge of verbal presentations. They agree they need education and practice in a supportive environment.

My teaching colleagues and I recently worked with a group of students in Portmarnock Community School who have developed and marketed a piece of software for surfing enthusiasts (here). They had qualified from a regional competition and recognised that to win nationally (which they did), they needed to present themselves in a better verbal fashion.

I wonder how many excellent ideas in Ireland are lost by students who excel in the digital / artistic expression of ideas but fail to verbally express them to an audience?

Time to teach the process of oracy!

Image from Oracy Matters (here in Amazon).