How does technology use us?

cj, Insouci, Bill, and Botts, whilst I have been distracted you have attacked the idea of software as “User Friendly” “Tools” with such flair, that I have had to festoon myself with garlic and lash myself to a series of sheep, just so that I could calm my thinking enough to join the discussion.   

What does technology want from us? So long as the garlic stays fresh and I am connected to the sheep I can argue that software wants us to be more efficient.

Take Google – it allows students to search for popular information more efficiently than students did 20 years ago. Has the quality of the information retrieved by students increased because of technology? No

Take Photoshop – it allows students to create an image (by selecting from a software menu) more efficiently than students did 20 years ago.  Has the quality of images students create increased because of technology? No

Take Excel – I work in primary and secondary classrooms where every vertical surface is plastered with carefully colour themed Excel charts, tables and graphs. Classroom visitors are awe struck with the statistical thinking in evidence on the walls - impressed with the explicit evidence of “statistical learning through ICT”.

I could argue that Excel "allows students” to store, manipulate and present data more reliably, more tidily, and more efficiently than students could twenty years ago. 

But does all this, “allowing” through the mediation of Excel, mean that the process of storage, manipulation and presentation of data is made more meaningful to students? Probably not.

Has the quality of student’s statistical understanding of data increased because of what Excel has allowed? Probably not.

Indeed I am beginning to believe that the ease of software mediated chart creation has reduced students’ opportunities for statistical reflection. The charts and graphs and tables are created so quickly – just button the button, that there is no time to reflect on the creation process itself. 

I suspect our students are deceived by software, undone by the ease of data presentation when using ICT.

Why do I think this? Consider the learning "in the context of statistics" we seek for our students.

A critical step in the development of students’ statistical thinking and reasoning involves thinking about changing representations of data to develop understanding of what is being observed.

Excel certainly allows students to construct many different graphs and charts, but unless this is accompanied by critical explorations of the patterns and relationships of what is being observed these Excel graphs and tables cannot be equated with an enhanced ability in statistical reasoning. 

Excel mediated charts and graphs are instead used as data candy for the walls of the “statistically deceived”.

Check out the Excel graphs on classroom walls in a school near you - you will be struck by what is too often absent – something that is much more significant in building statistical understanding than the graphs themselves.  What is missing is any sign of a student critique/ evaluation of the options they considered and the decisions they made in their choice of statistical representation for their data. 

Displays that are the result of telling students to create a bar graph and then teaching them the steps to do this with Excel are unrelated to statistical reasoning, do not develop statistical thinking, and probably never will. 

I can sense the garlic falling off here but I suspect that “Excel uses us poorly" in that it's much valourised "efficiency" develops a learner expectation that statistical thinking simply requires neatly constructed "button the button" colour themed charts. 

This expectation creates an ICT reliance and compliance when it comes to statistical thinking, which can result in an unwarranted faith in the validity of technology mediated statistics. 

If any of this is true, then Excel is revealed as being efficient at betraying student statistical reasoning.   

Comments

[cj]

These questions are probably not unlike those the Maori asked about the pakehas fire sticks, are they more efficient killing machines? Doh! (Insert favourite dopeslap). I think what Arti is talking about is what I used to call complementary skills - ie if you let the beast do some work for you, you better keep an eye on the beast. Mostly we don't. There is the problem (pace Joe Weizenbaum -there, two honorable mentions in two comments). The trick is how you think about/theorise (awful word) technology which then lets you think a bit better about what happens when you get it to do stuff for you. The complementary notion is that whenever you get a machine to do something, it means you need to do something also (this is the student critique/eval thing). The example I often use is the use of a calculator to do sums. To get the beast to move 1's n 0's about you need to have at least approximation skills (otherwise the distance between Wellington and Dunedin is calcuated as 3 inches (that is showing my age). You also prolly need to know something about significant figures and on occasion how the damn thing rounds up, down, sideways for some trickier sums. The same logic, I would argue is applicable whenever you delegate (ie get a machine to do something for you). Eons ago a supervisor I had would never let me use software that I had not completely unpacked, sorted out, stepped through. These days we live in a thrill a minute space where all that matters is the colours you use in your pie charts, the glitz of you powerpoint (ugh .... bathe in garlic for 2 hours after contact with any form of powerpoint) and how flashy your Flash is. If folk angst about machine intelligence... there it is... in the gazillion powerpoints choking umpteen servers all over the planet. The only problem is the machines didn't do much. We confuse what the idiot savants can do (shuffle 1's n 0's reel quick like) with intelligent behaviour.

If you were serious about having the young take things a little more soberly, have em read Computer Power and Human Reason. Joe spins a good story. Maybe you might need to render it into a World of Warcraft raid.

[Artichoke]

Thanks cj, will look for a copy of Computer Power and Human Reason on Alibris. I don't have a good sense of what I am arguing here yet -

I am trying to get a sense of Illich's "tools for conviviality" argument- eg institutions/ technology create as many problems as they promise to solve,

Cars introduced to increase mobility but sheer number of cars on Auckland's roads create gridlock - reduce mobility - [will note here cj that to an Aucklander the distance between Wellington and Dunedin is 3 inches]; the more money we pour into budget education in NZ the greater the disparity we seem to create between groups of learners from different socio-economic groups, new drugs designed to alleviate suffering create as many serious "side effects" as they do cures.

The apocryphal - more helicopter pilots are killed whilst training for "how to survive helicopter crashes" than are killed in helicopter crashes - stuff

[cj]

This is like blasts from the past conversation--those eons ago, another scribble I did was called the convivial spreadsheet - playing with Illich's ideas. Re the $ into education. I simply don't believe in "the system". It's systematic child abuse - and yes acknowledge all the heroic folk who do amazing things despite the system. Hence my interest in doing school differently, underpinned by the notion that kids actually do bring to this L work - heaps of talents/skills/resources.

Really the IT in schools stuff is a dodo. Reached its limits in the late or mid 80s and amazing teachers have been continuing to do amazing things ever since at huge cost--cos school is a technology--a way of doing things. And it's a big hairy scary bear of a technology and any new kid on the block better conform/align with the way the bear wants to do things or it gets gobbled.

You see what is possible with kids and all this stuff when you look outside schools. Nuff said.

[botts]

hey arti

you continue to inspire with your questions. while i think more, a quick interlude on the google thing. i actually think that google does give us access to better information and hence the knowledge that our kids have is potentially broader and deeper than ever before.

as an example - back in the dark ages when i was a primary school kid, i was considered to be one of the clever ones, an advanced student. as a result of this, my end of year project for year 6 was to research and present a major report on... wait for it ... tibet. now back then tibet was a closed country with no real information coming out about what happened inside. apart from some VERY brief articles in the likes of "world book encyclopedia" my only access to information was though the university of west oz's library. they had exactly 3 books on tibet in their collection. one was in tibetan, one was in german and the other was a research thesis on some bizarre endangered animal or plant or somesuch and therefore totally useless. fortunately my mum knew xsomeone who knew someone who shook the hand of someone who could translate the german for me and so i was set. got an A+ and went straight to the top of the class.

however, the moral here is that google would have given me the chance to get more information because the dissidents would have been publishing electronically and so on etc etc etc and i would have had access to information from other places than just the local uni library.

hope that helps
botts

[Artichoke]

Botts, you have a point here with Google Tibet - the context for research is always relative to what you can readily access.

Brabazon has this quote at the start of her BA Google paper that I quite like. It emphasises that Google Tibet may have made bringing in content easier but the critique that was celebrated in the grade was the result of your thinking.

Academic research involves three steps: finding relevant information, assessing the quality of that information, and then using appropriate information either to try to conclude something, to uncover something, or to argue something. The Internet is useful for the first step, somewhat useful for the second, and not at all useful for the third. Beth Stafford (1999:145)

I have no access to academic libraries and rely heavily on search engines, books bloggers recommend, and articles bloggers email, to find information about ICT and teaching and learning. BUT I just know when I rely on these sources I am trying to make edu_meaning when a good third of the jigsaw has fallen down the back of the cupboard.

It is the new learning, and the links to new readings, that I especially value when reading other edu_blogs, and I learn best of all from reading and thinking about the comments left here from other bloggers.

[Graham Wegner]

I know I'm not adding much to the conversation here but I can't resist this quote from an "ethical hacker" I heard speak at a seminar on wireless networking the other day: - "Technology is always trying to solve the problems it creates." It is true in so many ways.