Look out! The risk of shifting learning.
Posted by shanetechteach on May 11, 2009
Recent work of a colleague who gets a fair bit of blog love from here has seen me reflecting on the inherent risk associated with the expanding use of digital tools in education. What is risk when it comes to digital pedagogy? Is it the risk of using the actual tool, risk of failure in terms that the lesson may not implement as planned, risk of inappropriate use, risk of privacy breach, risk of incurring financial cost, risk of any number of things? To be honest, before this discussion with @mobbsey my thinking on the risks with digital learning centred on the protection of my students. Since the discussion, and the subsequent web cruising and reading, I am considering a whole lot more.
Acknowledging risk is one thing, one must also assess it then put in place steps to manage it. The assessment and management of risk is something @mobbsey has been thinking about considerably, and has shared with me some planning documents she is developing to aid the risk analysis and management process for teachers. The process is similar to that of HPE teachers when managing physical activity. It is when I made this link to my curriculum knowledge that my perception of potential risk inherent with digital pedagogy expanded remarkably.
First consideration is copyright. I have blogged previously about my focus on students learning appropriate use of digital resources and their guided discovery of Creative Commons licensing. One aspect I promote the onsideration of is the aspect of “Share and Share Alike.” However as an employee of an educational organisation I don’t officially or legally own my work. Anything I create for use in my employment by my employing organisation is owned by the organisation. Does this then limit my ability to share and share alike? I can certainly share within certain boundaries, for example by direct request and response. But am I sharing alike if the work is not re-posted to a public domain? Does this represent risk is the use of licensed work?
Secondly, the consideration of license is huge. I acknowledge the relative safety we enjoy as educators in Australia where use of material for education within our closed classroom environments can occur without fear of copyright breach. I fear less informed educators do not realise the potential risk of making public materials they have used in such a fashion. My understanding is by letter of the law if a copyrighted material is used as a learning resource or in a piece of work produced, this can be freely displayed to students and teachers within the school only. This does not include shown to parents, visitors to the school or sharing to others outside the school.
Is there risk opening our students awareness of digital tools and theirpotential use. If I show my students that phones can capture images, then phones can connect to the internet – it is not incredible that they may join the two and realise they can easily post pictures to the internet. Indeed there are many services out there that make this process too easy. Does this learning, despite being productive and effective, increase the risk of privacy issues with our students?
As I think along this concept, my mind keps running deeper and deeper and I don’t think there is a simple solution to it at the moment beyond the corporate control that currently exists. My employing organisation has a filtering service, provides a secure LMS and allocates each teacher a webspace. This maintains control of the resources (which they rightfully own) and ensures some level of safety. Essentially, within those boundaries the risk analysis and management is already done for us.
And then there is the idea of real risk versus perceived risk. Perception of risk in regards to digital tools is heavily dependent on teacher experience and knowledge. A teacher who has not experienced the troubles a digital tool could bring may not perceive as high a risk. A teacher pushing the envelope of corporate control in the pursuit of innovation and engagement may not perceive a risk with their planned activities, whereas others in different contexts may. I guess this is why we are restricted, and that our work is owned by the corporation.
Now I know some of you will react strongly to the idea that we as teachers do not own our work, and that the corporate control could be a good thing. I have had many debates with teachers about these issues, and I have often lamented the restrictions (perceived and real) of the corporate control. Yet now, I may see some logic behind it all.
In the end, I think the process @mobbsey is looking for is for teachers to think and communicate before they innovate and implement digital pedagogy. As a Head of Department, I can totally agree there. I would expect the same of any of my teachers attempting to innovate with physical movement, why should digital tools be any different?
May 11th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
A very interesting read Shane, brings alot of issues to the forefront. Sounds like Nic has been doing lots of great work in making this whole process as smooth as possible for other teachers. Keep up the great work both of you
May 11th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Two words: disruptive innovation. Short term pain/ learning experience (often unintended) that if seen as a positive will lead to long term transformation beyond what we can foresee/ plan for, and beyond the old things in new ways stage… Of course good planning will always be needed along the way also.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Another issue that accompanies enthusiastic adoption of what governments like to call “transformative technologies,” is social risk and redistribution of power. People have hitherto been able to define themselves in their own terms to different audiences. Information, or at least data, about people is now stored on distributed systems, and is incredibly easy to stitch together. The natural frictions that prevented people being too closely associated with particular activities or relationships are removed. It is simple for an individual to casually snoop around for information left online about another person: e.g. which 2050 politician is going to have the footage of his muck-up day leaked to the media? The only defence is the size of the searchable web over time, and future technologies are likely to remove that. It is even more concerning that students are being conditioned that technologies that can be coopted by large organisations for their own convenience are the norm. Online databases of student behaviour, coupled with unique identifiers such as biometrics hold the potential for our current students to grow up wondering if they are ‘permitted’ to take a particular action – for example to attend a protest, or just to walk on the grass! Lifecacheing, or extensive use of CCTVs will be exciting for some, and anathema to others. I don’t think our students are being shown enough of the murkier side of the technology coin. A private life, in the original sense of the term, is something which our current students may not appreciate until it is too late for them to have one.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:54 am
Good post. These are curly questions/issues that are not easy to grasp at times, let alone getting into the argument of do they or don’t they own my work. I’m quite comfortable with my employer owning my IP. They pay me, supply me with the tools and training do get where I am now in sharing such ideas/information with other teachers. If I didn’t like it I can always seek emplyment elsewhere where the situation would be different. I have the choice….which is the way i like it to be.
I acknowledge the need for disruptive innovation. The challenge sometimes though is to do this within the boundaries of the policies we have to work within. Like them or not they are there to protect our clients (and ourselves). Of course there are times where current policies have been around for a long enough period that they no longer serve as effectively as they once did due to the (in most instances these days) technological innovations going on out tin the big wide world that our clients live in when they leave the school grounds. I see the disruptive innovation then has a place (as long it is thoughtfully done) to help the policy makers reconsider positions and take advantage on these new innovations.
What frustrates me though are those that, through best intent in most cases, try to innovate with no regard to the policies in place and actually put at risk not only their students but all of the other innovators out there. Those people’s actions are sadly, in my experience, the ones that get noticed the most, not for their innovation but for their complete lack of regard for the current policy situation. Again, sadly this is usually where someone on a much higher pay grade comes in and kills off the potential use of the innovation (regardless of how potentially good it may be for students). With more thought, planning and consideration such situations can be avoided letting the strategic disruptive innovation to occur.