Gareth Davies on ‘Five Rules of Virtuality’

UPDATE: Gareth has a blog with a great title.

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.

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.