Living in a Parallel Universe

Andrew was in his seat. His lesson was scheduled to start but as usual he was alone. The icon popping up on his screen showed him that most of the students had already joined the class on line. He pressed the button so that the entire session would be recorded.

He exchanged the usual pleasantries with the group. Mohamed said that he was in Germany as his mother was receiving medical treatment. Omar was at work but his supervisor had allowed him 1 hour to take this class. Most of the other students were at home although 3 or 4 of them were meeting at Starbucks in Mirdif

“OK, at the end of last week’s class I asked you to think about an issue. Click on the link I sent last week to see the discussion task.” The link contained an attachment which read as follows

“Imagine a world which is exactly like ours apart from some significant differences. This world has very limited technology. The internet does not exist. Mobile phones only appear in science fiction movies. Personal Computers and Smart Phones have not been dreamt of. The only way of finding out information is to read a hard copy or by spending time face to face with someone who already has the information you need.

Your group has been asked to develop a plan for the best way to teach young people the skills they need to lead successful lives. In developing this plan, three key issues need to be considered

How is useful information stored so it can be retrieved quickly when needed?

How will people who have information and those who want to learn end up in the same place at the same time?

How will people be able to communicate with others when they have questions or ideas they need to discuss or problems they are having?”

Andrew checked that everyone could see the text. Some of the students admitted they had a problem understanding all of the language in the reading materials. They asked Andrew to confirm that students could use the voice and text translate software that was available. He did.

“OK, who would like to start the discussion?”

There followed an explanation of the work the students had done. Over the course of the week they had shared articles, videos and held discussions with each other to agree on a common framework that nearly the entire group supported. Their findings can be summarized as follows:

1: Information needs to be stored in one place where people can go when needed. The information would need to be catalogued and ordered in such a way that information about the same subject was in the same place so that students could find it easily. It would have to be somebody's job to decide which information was stored

2: To enable them to communicate with each other, teachers and students would need to be physically present in the same place

3: To enable informal discussion between students they would all need to live and work in the same area.

Andrew asked the group what they would call these 3 places. The group said that they had come up with some new words seeing as these things did not exist. The words they had decided on were library, classroom and university.

Andrew questioned the group members on their plan. “So what you are saying is that these 3 places, the library, classroom and university, are solutions to the problems faced by a world which has extremely limited methods of communication?” The students agreed that this was true.

Andrew continued “How about if that method of learning was transported to our world? How would that work?”

At this point Ahmed spoke up for the first time. “I’m sorry but I am really frustrated here. I have a question which I really need to bring up. I am taking a course in lifelong learning skills. Why think about what we would do in a world that doesn’t exist? Why not focus on the world we have in front of us now?”

Andrew responded by saying that Ahmed’s point was a good one. However, the world he was asking them to live in was very similar to our own world in the past. That gave him the opportunity to rehash one of his favourite quotations.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

That started a discussion among the students about what it meant. Mohamed said that he had googled the quotation. He sent the link to everybody and said it had originally come from “George Santayana (philosopher, poet and essayist. (born 16 December 1863 in Madrid, died 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy). Mohamed seemed quite proud of that.

Later during the discussion Rashed said he had an important point to make. He had been doing further research on the Santayana quotation. Apparently, its real meaning is often misunderstood. He argued that “progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains nothing to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.”

Abdulla then asked this question

“Mr Andrew, when the internet and all the communication tools were first being introduced, all of the information from a million libraries suddenly could be accessed from home. And people could make videos and upload it and do all of the things we can do now for the first time. Loads of social media sites started up and suddenly everybody was online. But that just increased the amount of information. How did people know which information was useful and valid? And how did people decide which was the best way to communicate in different situations? How did they avoid they avoid the perpetual infancy that Santayana talked about?”

Andrew replied “Abdulla, that is a brilliant question. What you are saying is that libraries, classrooms and universities are great solutions for a world with those problems. One of the biggest problems to enable learning to take place would be how to store information. If we cannot store information to enable it to be passed on to others, we would always be in a state of perpetual infancy. This would mean we would not be able to learn from others who lived before us. As Isaac Newton said, he was only "standing on the shoulders of giants." Your idea of a library would solve that problem. Your idea of a university where students and teachers can discuss and work on problems formally and informally is also a great solution. But your solutions also raise some issues which cannot be solved. What if some information you need is in a place you don’t know about? What if a student is somewhere else so cannot contribute? Luckily we do not live in that world. Modern tools solve many problems not solved by the solutions of a former age. But (and here is the thing) the modern world brings with it a whole new set of problems that need to be solved for the first time. And you always need to remember what it is you are trying to do in the first place. Because to be honest, all of our lives, from the day we are born until the day we die is spent trying to make sense of the world and to solve the problems we face. And that has been true as long as there have been humans on earth. And it always will be true

After the session ended, for the next discussion topic Andrew posted the following link:

What is the purpose of higher education? What is it students need to learn in today's world? And how should they learn it? As a starting point compare and contrast the following 2 texts.

TEXT 1

One of Einstein's colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. "You don't remember your own number?" the man asked, startled.

"No" Einstein answered. "Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from somewhere else?

TEXT 2

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!” (Thomas Gradgrind, a character in the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens)

As Andrew drove home he thought to himself "That will get them thinking"

My Practical Theory

Well it looks like we are getting into the meat of the course now. We've introduced ourselves and talked about a memorable learning experience - I really enjoyed reading those. Now I get the sense of the rubber hitting the road (so to speak)

I got value reading the articles listed but can't say that I have a developed sense of my own practical theory. I think this is for a number of reasons. Firstly I am not entirely sure what we mean by theory in the educational setting. Does it mean something similar to what it means in the world of science? Personally I don't think that can be the case, because scientific theory (as far as I understand it) basically means things that can be empirically proven in the real world - like Einstein's theory of relativity. This doesn't seem to be true in education and other social sciences.

Or does it mean theory like in the theory of music or the theory part of a driving test - rules you can adopt and apply in the real world? I think it must mean something along these lines. But am not sure!!

One of the main problems I have is that the theories seem so contextual - true today in this context but not tomorrow in another - that I am not entirely convinced they have a relevant meaning outside their own context. For me this actually really matters. Because as a content teacher in DMC the one thing I have always been told to be is FAT. Flexible, adaptable and tolerant. What this has meant in practise is that I have taught courses from low level practical courses in the Diploma to high level theory based courses in the final year of the Bachelors degree. This means different types of learning outcomes to different types of learners. I am sometimes (though not often) envious of those teachers who teach the same subject to students of roughly the same language level every semester. It must be far easier for them to have a sense of what it is they are trying to do! And to practise their ability at doing it!

I am wary of using metaphors to describe what teaching and learning is like (baking a cake etc) because I think it is very easy to make tempting but incorrect analogies. However, it seems to me that one can make an analogy between teaching and driving a car (and being competent at it). But just as in teaching, there are many many forms of driving - such as Formula 1, driving with your family going for a day out, driving in hazardous conditions etc. And there will be theories associated to each one. What you should do when this happens, how to avoid that happening etc. And the theory may be valid in one situation but almost certainly will be incorrect and possibly dangerous in another. My "theory of driving" if I have one is based on my experience which is almost entirely within a narrow set of contexts. I have never driven a formula 1 car and only rarely drive in hazardous conditions. But it is based on my values, principles and beliefs. Things my parents told me such as "Better 5 minutes late in this world than 50 years early in the next". Which means I rarely break the speed limit.

And one of the great dangers I think - both for drivers and educators- is when the practical theory (including the beliefs, values and principles of the drivers) conflicts with the context in which they find themselves. I see several drivers on Shekih Zayed Road who would be better suited to a Formula 1 track!! Could it also be true that many educators feel conflicted or stressed because their personal beliefs about what education is or should be conflicts with the educational context in which they find themselves?

Very early on in my HCT career a colleague told me that the most important thing in becoming a good teacher was to be a "reflective practitioner". And I have never doubted that this is true. And one of the concerns I have with the theories of teaching is that I feel there is a danger of focussing too much on the theory - particularly when it is a theory that we find personally attractive - and not enough about the reality of the context in which the learning is taking place.

So I think where this is going is that I don't think I really have a "practical theory" of teaching because I don't feel I have a consistent enough context in which to have developed one. Unless that is my practical theory - to try to understand the context in which I am operating and react accordingly.

And doing the reading for this exercise has actually helped with that. I think it will be beneficial for me and my learners if I consciously consider in my lesson planning the particular type of learning that is going on/required, according to the list described by Saljo. That way I can try to create the environment which will maximise the chance of effective learning happening. And although this may be different from what I would ideally like it to be, that is irrelevant, because when I am teaching my job is to enable my students to achieve the learning outcomes of the course I am being paid to teach them and to develop the graduate outcomes of the HCT.

My Learning Experience

As many of you know, my son Declan has special needs. He is 26 now. When he was 9 I helped him to learn how to ride a bike. For about 4 years he had been riding a bike with stabilisers (the 2 little wheels that go either side of the back wheel). That had been fine up to a point but his older brother who would ride next to him, got impatient at the slow speed and would ride off down the passage at the back of our house. Declan would pedal furiously after him but was restricted by the maximum speed he could attain using the stabilisers. One day I noticed that the one of the stabilisers often was in the air while Declan was pedaling. Then the bike would rock back onto it so the other stabilizer was in the air. I noticed that this happened frequently. So over a period of days I gradually raised the height of each stabilizer so that it spent less and less time on the ground. Declan was riding a bike normally without realizing it.

The hardest part came when I removed one of the stabilisers. Declan was very unsure about allowing me to do this and only allowed me to when I reassured him the bike would not topple over because 1 stabiliser was enough.

Then I kept raising that one until it hardly touched the ground. Dec still didn’t know he could ride a bike. But I did. When I removed the final stabilizer he didn’t want to ride the bike. But I said I would run behind him to catch him. We went up and down the passage for about 2 hours with me running behind him with my hand on his back so he would feel safe. Finally I stopped and he pedaled off on his own. He had learned to ride a bike and he never ever fell off. It is one of the proudest moments of my life.

What was I learning?

That I could teach. Also that people of all abilities can achieve things they wouldn’t even dream of. All that is required is patience, determination and time.

What made the experience so good?

Because it mattered to me. It was not just a learning experience it was an emotional investment. Also I think it mattered because at the outset there was no guarantee of success, although the objective was very clear. And because it was something really worth doing. Dec's life has been greatly enhanced by his ability to ride a bike. But probably not as much by mine was by learning how to help him do it. I also know that he has taught me much more than I will ever teach him.

Pre Course Reflection

I worked in a bank for 15 years before coming to Dubai. After getting my financial services professional qualifications I took a degree in law. My subject matter expertise is therefore Financial Services and Law. I first experienced on line learning getting to grips with WebCT when Rob Peregoodoff was the college coordinator. He was really helpful and I realized that the best way to learn something was to have a go but to have access to “just in time” training support as well. I became quite adept at using WebCT and could upload audio recordings for online quizzes and other bits which felt quite advanced at the time. Then it changed to Blackboard and I found that everything I knew how to do was redundant, which was incredibly frustrating. So I started using Moodle. At that point I completed the qualification to be a Certified Member of the Association of Learning Technologists. Then I got another role at DMC and stopped teaching!

Now that I have returned to a role in the Academic side of the college I am keen to get to grips with BBVista and other online forums.

I hope that by completing this course I will get a valuable qualification as like many others I do not have any formal teaching qualification apart from my English Language CELTA. I am most keen to learn from the experiences and contributions of others. As I have now returned to a role within the academic life of the college I also hope to re-engage with the habit of reflective practice which I believe is the foundation of all good teaching and learning.

Welcome to Andrew's Blog

Hi Everyone

this is my first post. I am looking forward to this course a lot. I know it will be challenging but most things worth doing are. I am really glad that I will be working with and learning from a great group of colleagues. I know it will make the journey a lot easier.