Five Rules of Virtuality

Posted by Peter Ford in UncategorizedDec 18th, 2005 | 5 responses

Gareth Davies, a friend of mine from Advisory Matters has pointed me to Steve Woolgar’s book Virtual Society? – technology, cyberbole, reality and his ‘Five Rules of Virtuality’. These are:

  • Current rate of straightforward rapid expansion may not continue.
  • New technologies tend to supplement rather than substitute for existing practices and forms of organisation
  • The more virtual the more real!
  • Fears and risks associated with new technologies are unevenly socially distributed
  • Impact of new technologies depends crucially on their local social context

Gareth offers us Woolgar’s framework to makes sense of the technological innovation and activites that are being routinely embraced by our students and cautions that giving teachers and students similar tools in educational contexts might not make the difference that we as educators might have hoped for.

I’m not sure its about simply giving students and teachers the tools to do these sort of things in an educational context. David seems to assume that an older generation can somehow control the next. Has this ever been the case? And any attempt to do so is bound to fail? Didn’t ‘we’ try to control the speed of automobiles by making having a human walk in front with a red flag? Did that ensure that we don’t have car accidents now?

Now this seems a bit pessimistic and fatalistic to me so I want Gareth to elaborate on all this and give me a few tips as to how as an educator I can make a difference in the light of this virtual society – at least until I read Woolgar’s book myself ;-) Gareth is one of the good guys in the ICT consultancy world and would be a great asset to the edu-blogosphere. He needs to be more than a holiday blogger ;-)



5 Responses to “Five Rules of Virtuality”

  1. Ewan McIntosh says:
    December 19, 2005 at 10:14 am

    When he says that the current rate of rapid expansion MAY not continue, I’m not sure if he means that we will not allow it to, that it perhaps maybe won’t continue or whether he actually means it can’t. I’ve been wrestling with this one myself for the past wee while. I think that technology may be the one advancement that will not stop expanding at a fast rate. I wrote a post reporting Ben Hammersley to try and make sense of it, but a new reflection is overdue: http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2005/12/8_ideas_that_wi.html

    So I guess another statement might be: 6. We must learn new ways to filter and reflect on information.

  2. Gareth says:
    January 27, 2006 at 11:58 pm

    Peter,

    Thanks for your kind comments. To elaborate a bit further … over 15 years working with teachers has shown me a number of things. One of those things is that however ‘innovative’ they might be they are still ‘children’ of own particular age. This is of course true of historians (as a former history teacher, this has resonances with me, but it’s true of writers, scientists etc etc). They can never be truly objective because the value systems of their age always impedes them. This is true of teachers when they attempt to empathise with their students. However hard we try, we cannot quite understand how a younger generation might see the use of technology. We see new uses as sophisticated, when to these young adopters, they are stunningly simple and obvious. Steve Woolgar’s research shows this is, and has been true, of all technology adoption in the past. We actually adapt technology to do much the same old thing (his second rule) even though its original purpose might have been something else. The computer is one example in many – the difference engine became an all-purpose machine. It was not the invention that was important, it was it was how it was adapted to do many things. Another book to add to your reading list is “Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age” by Jon Palfreman, Doron Swade. This was the book of a BBC series back in 1993. (I have the whole lot on CD cut from the VHS tape I recorded at the time, if you ever want to see them.) Ask yourself why interactive whiteboards have been more readily and swiftly adopted by teachers than any other form of ICT to date? The answer is in the second rule.

    I don’t think this view is at all pessimistic. To me, ‘innovative adaptation’ is more exciting in a learning context that absolute invention. By simulating learners to think, society betters itself.

    Finally, this debate is not new, I’m constantly reminded of Seymour Papert’s work (www.papert.org) when I think about these things. Back in 1993 he wrote in ” The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer”:

    “The [child's] love affair involves more than the desire to do things with computers. It also has an element of possessiveness and, most importantly, of assertion of intellectual identity. Large numbers of children see the computer as “theirs” — as something that belongs to their generation. Many have observed that they are more comfortable with the machines than their parents and teachers are. They learn to use them more easily and naturally. For the moment some of us old fogeys may somehow have acquired the special knowledge that makes one a master of the computer, but children know that it is just a matter of time before they inherit the machines. They are the computer generation.

    What lies behind the love affair? Where is it going?

    Can it be guided by the older generation into forms constructive or destructive? Or is its evolution already out of our hands?”

    You just need to revisit Papert’s writing to realise how much more there is to do, and how slowly we are doing it.

    So … making a difference? My top tips:

    * Give the kids control and don’t lock things down;
    * Stimulate idea creation, don’t turn ICT into teaching ‘applications’;
    * Look at what they do with computers, don’t take the idea and impose rules and restrictions, but increase the contexts and opportunities to make it more fulfilling and rounded;
    * Make kids self critical and responsible for pushing their personal standards up.

    Gareth

  3. The FordLog » Gareth Davies on ‘Five Rules of Virtuality’ says:
    February 3, 2006 at 9:51 pm

    [...] I asked Gareth Davies to elaborate on his comments around the Woolgar’s ‘Five Rules of Virtuality’. His response is a thought-provoking read that I’ve pulled out of the comments and reprised here. It makes sense though and I like his top tips – a sort of of manifesto for making a difference with ICT. To elaborate a bit further … over 15 years working with teachers has shown me a number of things. One of those things is that however ‘innovative’ they might be they are still ‘children’ of own particular age. This is of course true of historians (as a former history teacher, this has resonances with me, but it’s true of writers, scientists etc etc). They can never be truly objective because the value systems of their age always impedes them. This is true of teachers when they attempt to empathise with their students. However hard we try, we cannot quite understand how a younger generation might see the use of technology. We see new uses as sophisticated, when to these young adopters, they are stunningly simple and obvious. Steve Woolgar’s research shows this is, and has been true, of all technology adoption in the past. We actually adapt technology to do much the same old thing (his second rule) even though its original purpose might have been something else. The computer is one example in many – the difference engine became an all-purpose machine. It was not the invention that was important, it was it was how it was adapted to do many things. Another book to add to your reading list is “Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age” by Jon Palfreman, Doron Swade. This was the book of a BBC series back in 1993. Ask yourself why interactive whiteboards have been more readily and swiftly adopted by teachers than any other form of ICT to date? The answer is in the second rule. [...]

  4. Never mind the technology, where’s the learning? » Challenged says:
    February 12, 2006 at 1:01 pm

    [...] People start blogs for different reasons, but in the main they have something to say. My reason, is that a good friend of mine, Peter Ford, challenged me to be more constructive in my blogging. So here goes. The aim of this blog is to comment on the fascinating world that is educational ICT – it’s not about the technology, it’s about the learning! [...]

  5. Never mind the technology, where’s the learning? » Stop the excuses: Children’s ICT Charter says:
    February 12, 2006 at 2:34 pm

    [...] In a previous post, I mentioned that Peter Ford challenged me to start this blog. Along with this challenge he asked me to give him , “a few tips as to how as an educator I can make a difference in the light of this virtual society”. Which I did. [...]

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