Comment on Lifestream summary: week 2 by jlamb
Hello Helen.
By coincidence I just commented on Matthews’s blog (where he talks about the BETT show) speculating on whether any of the group who attended the event would have had their experience affected by reading Bayne’s article in advance: and here you are reflecting on the same experience!
‘This perception is a key reason why technology adoption fails: questions about how technology and practice are complexly intertwined and how technologies necessarily change, affect, and radically alter processes and behaviours are infrequently considered.’
This really struck a chord with me and I think emphasises how important it is that we think critically around the digital and education, rather than defaulting to ideas around technologies satisfying educational outcomes.
What your reflections here also remind me is that the relationship between education and technology is subject to a range of interests beyond developing understanding: profit, a culture of performativity and so on. Without having attended the BETT show, I wonder whether the framing of ‘technology as tools for achieving education goals’ reflects the interests or pressures of those attending: the need to show results.
Talking more generally about your weekly review, I’ll be interested to read more about your recipes next week – in fact I think your critical reflection on the BETT show merited a separate blog post in its own right. All the same interesting reading and I’m looking forward to dipping into your blog as the week unfolds.
James
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One thought on “Comment on Lifestream summary: week 2 by jlamb”
Hi James,
Thanks for mentioning Matthew’s blog post to me: it was fascinating to hear his ‘prediction’ about the impact which Bayne’s paper might have on responses to BETT!
Your observation about results is a pertinent one. As well as the notion of technology being touted as a means of ‘improving outcomes’ (what does that even mean?!), there has been a rise in the use of technology to report on outcomes. Huge stands devoted to ‘data dashboards’ were present at the show. The rich, complex, creative bundle of emotions, ideas and responses that is the learner is channelled through a reductive algorithm and spewed out as a data set.
Thanks for your ideas as to how I might move forward with this space. I’ve spent a chunk of today revisiting my previous posts and adding more ‘metadata’ around them. This returning, reflecting and augmenting is an interesting experience and marks a shift away from the linearity of the blog experience in IDEL: we’re weaving complex fabrics using threads from a range of media, sources and thoughts.
Good to ‘meet’ you in the Hangout btw! And hope you’re having a great weekend.