Tether or not?

Is mobile technology really an agent of 'academic freedom'?

That was the question which crossed my mind on reading Steve Wheeler's recent article entitled: 'At the end of our tether.'

Before continuing, I have to admit that I was an early adopter of smartphone usage in the classroom and have spent a long time discovering the diversity of potential affordances of these tools for language learning. They have become an integral part of how we work in our part of the world.

I don't envisage that changing...

However, there were certain things in Steve's article which made me think.

"We are living at a time in our history where the small device in the hand of the student is able to provide opportunities for any time, any place learning" S.Wheeler

since when, I thought to myself, has there not been opportunities for 'any time, any place learning'?

It is clearly not the presence of the 'small device' itself which necessarily leads to learning. Indeed, I spend a long time enabling students to discover the potential for learning which these devices offer.  

They do offer a number of useful applications for capturing and sharing sound, image, video, text, which can then be usefully shared with our communities via social networks...

We are indeed obliged in our societies to understand the possibilities that these devices offer and to become skilled in their uses.

Scrapbooking.

I still feel, (I must admit) more moved by a student-created scrap-book (admittedly with photos taken with a smartphone).

I still feel more moved by my scribbled drawings on paper than my filtered photos on Instagram.

I still feel that notebooks which are unlimited by the manipulation of bits are somehow precious.

What price Leonardo's scribbles anyone?

I still have scribbled relics of my 'Grand Tour'  interrail trip of Europe.

Wasn't that learning 'any time, any place'?

"Increasingly, people are learning informally through their mobile devices." S.Wheeler

Yes, this is undoubtedly true but don't their mobile devices restrict how and what they learn? 

What is 'informal learning'? Isn't it just learning?

A smartphone interface, its tactile surface (like a shop window is tactile) does that not limit learning?

A web tale...

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly;
“’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”
“O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

Mary Howitt

A web full of information does that paradoxically not limit learning? 

Even if one develops advanced 'crap detection' one is still interacting with a select type of potential documents. 

What of aborigene people or others who will never interact via this 'World Wide Web'?  

Are they not learning 'any time, any place'? 

Actually, not, their learning is centred on their particular ecology of which they are a part.  

Are we not at risk of losing their learning?

Can we really be 'any place'? 

Might the 'World Wide Web' of information not actually take us away from learning what is most essential for our interaction with our local ecology?

Aren't we tethered via these 'mobile devices' to a particular world view?

Aren't we tethered via these 'mobile devices' to a particularly dominant cultural norm?

Aren't we tethered via these 'mobile devices' to commercial data mining of our existence?

Aren't we tethered via these 'mobile devices' to security service tracking of our movements?

To be or not to be?

Don't these mobile devices actually stop people learning?  

Those people who interrupt  Hamlet to take photos of Sherlock or Dr Who are they learning?

Haves and haves not?

Does our 'academic freedom' come at the cost of the slavery of others?  

What do we know of the ecological price of smartphone manufacture?  

Well to be frank, I didn't know much about the ecological price of a smartphone...

I went and looked for information (on the internet - to which we are 'all' tethered now) and found cases of worker exploitation and death in mines, factories, environmental devastation.  150 people die every year in Indonesia mining for raw materials:  http://fridaymagazine.ae/features/reportage/smart-phone-manufacturing-the-social-and-environmental-implications-1.1218884  , so not much academic freedom for them!

What do we know of the cultural impact of the mobile devices on the education of young people in developing countries?

Clearly, the impact is enormous for better and for worse, depending on how one looks at it. 

A Pew Report from March 2015 illustrates this cultural impact in 'developing countries' (I never understood that term). http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/03/19/internet-seen-as-positive-influence-on-education-but-negative-influence-on-morality-in-emerging-and-developing-nations/.  

Inconclusions...

Whether we are tethered or not, whether we are learning or not, whether we like it or not, we are obliged to ask ourselves and our students questions about what sort of 'academic freedom' is desirable.  

S.Wheeler is absolutely right to emphasise that we have no choice but to reflect on these tools:

"The significance of the mobile device cannot be underestimated. In the last decade personal, mobile technology has gained a dramatic purchase on western society. It has driven many social, economic, political and, yes - psychological changes. The relative benefits and limitations of these changes can be debated elsewhere, but fundamentally, educators need to recognise something significant." S.Wheeler

As we become ever more 'hyperconnected', I am far from certain that we are or we will be 'freer'...

Image credits

Tethered Horse by piddix

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_rings_in_Portland,_Oregon#/media/File:Little_horse,_Portland,_Oregon.jpg

Leonardo da Vinci 'Foetus in the Womb' 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci#/media/File:Da_Vinci_Studies_of_Embryos_Luc_Viatour.jpg

David Tennant as Hamlet by Lisby https://www.flickr.com/photos/60861613@N00/3526232773

Baseball Fence by BSmedstad http://bsmedstad.deviantart.com/art/Baseball-Fence-125978992

Why EVERNOT(E)...? (Remember Everything)

I don't know about you but I never lose anything.

I know exactly where everything is.

I have never lost my keys, my passwords, or my notes... as far as I can remember.

Ever looked for technology to help you organise your chaos? Well, I did.

First I invested a PC with my text documents, my Encarta encylopaedia and my time in a marvellous digital diary which was perfect.


As soon as I left the house I had to jot the contents of my schedule down on the back of an envelope and transfer my stuff onto a floppy disk.

To do list: 'Don't forget to remember the envelope!'

Then came a PDA  or Avigo, as we called it in my home, which sychronised my faithful digital diary in a portable monochrome form. Finally I was able to know where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing; when I remembered to synchronise the thing. The Avigo was accompanied by  my easy to forget USB key.

More recently, I have been delighted with Google Applications and bathe in the sea of  tranquility somewhere over my netbook, PC, any other PC's or Macs and around my smart iPhone. USB keys I now lose unthinkingly. Who needs keys in the clouds? I am so blasé now.

There are of course no clouds in the clouds.

Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Zoho, et all intermingle (or not) above our heads in a fight to be at our service. So much of their service is free. Flickr, Yahoo!

How does one find what one is looking for in the clouds? How does one select the best cloud to entrust one's life?

Well personally, I don't put my trust in any one (particularly not me).  I have invested much in Google, quite a lot in Apple, very little in Microsoft and just recently a tiny share in EVERNOTE.

EVERNOTE is my current favourite helper. I admit to being enthusiastic. Present in every device it seamlessly takes my bits and pieces (those which are not in my diary, my presentations, my class notes, my links, my photos, my videos)  wherever I am and keeps them to be shared with whoever after. This friend trips through operating systems, in and out of Twitter and Facebook, recording text, photo, sound and location. It understandstands that a smartphone can complement a PC, a PC can converse with an iPad.

This my friends is the future of my digital environment. I have servants at my beck and call who are comfortable wherever I am, in any context, in any social system, discreet, un-demanding of my attention, close to hand and almost, like me, entirely free(ish).

Le Retour de Mickey L'Ange...

It didn't work! Failure, total failure! How could they possibly understand so little? How might one come back after such a fiasco?

Thursday 25th August I was busy at Cyberlangues a grouping together of language teachers from all over France. I was due to 'animate' a workshop on the use of Smartphones and Tablets in the language learning classroom.

Everything was in place. The colleagues were there, in number, in the room and in other regions and other  countries following the events on Twitter and on Adobe Connect. The tests were almost conclusive. Nothing could go wrong...

Then it did.

First apparent problem was my own ambition.

 I was curious to learn how far one could go with the different spaces and tools linked to us at the same time: netbook linked up to video projector with a document camera pointed at an  iPhone and/or the people in the classroom,  microphone plugged into the netbook and speaker to transmit/exchange the sound from participants all over the world via Adobe Connect, chat enabled in Connect and Twitter stream, Adobe Connect app on iPhone to act as portable terminal for the participants to exchange with the other partipants coming from the UK, India, and France. The iPad (1) would be projected, after the netbook, with an AV adapter - excellent but limited to particular apps. Marvellous! I had just the app: Popplet. Great for presenting complicated ideas visually.

You understand  all of this with difficulty. I can almost hear the hesitation between the commas and the colons.

Well, I did try to make it simpler.

I had promised myself not to include the participants from around the world via Adobe Connect. Then I got taken up by my enthusiasm and that of the others; marvellous people from my PLN (personal learning network) on Twitter.

Frankly, I blame them!

Without them, I would have been unable to have so much to talk about, so much to share, so little fear for ridicule, so little reason to doubt that the game is never over....until it is.


Then even worse, I didn't do what had been on the advertisement for the workshop.

The lady from the Ministry apparently kindly, pointedly let me know that she was rather disappointed that we didn't actually get to touch the touchscreens and the myriad of applications behind the glass.

The teachers, after all were there, in number, to get to grips with IOS (or perhaps Android) in the classroom...


Ah yes...The teachers were apparently non-plussed by my introduction.

A snapshot of a painting attributed to Michel Ange (my spelling). What was the connection between my workshop on iPhones, iPods and this painting I asked ambitiously?

Well we tried reproducing the gestures, together, bravely, physically. I must thank the brave members of the workshop who did what I had begged: 'Get up and Move!'. Well they all did except @KedemFerre, (a rebel) who spent his time looking at my website and the lady from the Ministry who reminded me that her wheelchair dependence was an obstacle to such pedagogical innovation...

The teachers were confused.  I include myself in this category. @chrisjaeg asked @warwicklanguage, via Twitter, whether  @sensor63 was always disconcerting so? Others admitted to being elsewhere..(I didn't)  Some had clearly not been looking... carefully. Their fingers touched (on the painting there is a space between God and his Adam). Others looked at me, the ceiling, the others, anywhere anxiously. What on earth were we doing? Was it ok to stand up and be ridiculous in front of the lady from the ministry?  What about the applications?

Touch is not just tactile Mickey!

An Italian painting, it was, I was assured by Michel Ange (by an Italian teacher to be accurate).  Creation, a part of the Sixtine Chapel's ceiling. I learnt! The rest, I was obliged to find for myself, thanks to Google, Wikipedia, and Twitter.

Mickey Ange had a father. He was unhappy that his brilliant son chose to be a ceiling painter. Mickey the son rebelled. Thank God he did! Without his Genius, our world would be a worse place.

Of course this story is almost completely untrue!

He painted the ceiling with the help of his anonymous apprentices.

This article, owes much to @timbuckteeth, @warwicklanguage, @w2YAdavid, @Wagjuer the confusion of the participants present, my children and my wife and childish curiosity.

The lesson I learnt.

A tool is only useful when it is wielded with others and its product witnessed by others who might embellish its failings with their feelings, reactions, and presence.

Education is this new century with these new tools has more to do with love than with legend...