I have always wanted to “live venturously”, (Virginia Woolf like), “plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices”, I liked to imagine that an individual’s complexity meant unpredictability so that rather than others suspecting that I had “lost the plot”, it would be more the case that no plot could find me.
Is why when I read (e)thusiasms for personalisation in education associated with the eLearning Action Plan and elsewhere I felt unthreatened. The prospect of co-constructing extensive user data profiles in education left me strangely unmoved – I was smugly confident that however "personalised learning environments" are defined and however "personalised learning environments" are designed – (adaptive personalisation: institutionalised provision and procedure/ customised personalisation: enabling the learner to engage with institutional provision/ dynamic personalisation - the institution engaging with the learner) they would always misrepresent the complexity of the individual and his or her learning interactions, and thus ultimately disappoint. So even though I knew personalisation was being touted as a “education’s Killer app” I filed all stuff on PLE’s into a My Documents folder labelled “This too will pass”.
I expected the PLE thing to froth and subside much like the development profile of personalisation in commercial environments outlined in David Walker’s post Personalisation goes one-to-one with reality
“The technology called "personalisation" had its genesis in a 1993 book by marketing experts Don Peppers and Martha Rogers called The One to One Future, a tome about the possibility of selling in a different way to each different customer. Around 1995, technology-oriented marketing types put Peppers and Rogers together with the Internet in one of those mad-scientist lab-explosion moments. When the smoke cleared, they had decided that online commerce would be one-to-one marketing's killer app.”
"We built a personalization-engine service, and it turns out people didn't have much interest in personalizing content. They are happy going on and reading what's on our front page and navigating their way through it. About 1 percent of our users used it. We spent $200,000 and ultimately canceled it."
“The results are in from the Web's great experiment with one-to-one marketing. Verdict: personalisation suits only a small minority of sites”.
I can see why we like to talk up personalisation in education, and why ICT is being promoted as a significant player. In truth personalisation represents a much needed opportunity to rark up the need for ICT in schools - a purpose other than that overly vague “integration” stuff.
Claims to be meeting the learning needs of each individual 21st Century Learner is the classic “No sparrow falls unseen stuff” of our schools. And in the West we do like to think that we are individuals – different from others - unique in thought – autonomous and independent. But I reckon this PLE stuff is geared wrong. For starters I suspect that all this talk about personalisation fails to acknowledge how unlikely it is that students will ever consider an environment designed by others and owned and controlled by the institution as their personal environment.
I also struggle to understand how we can use a PLE to “place the learner at the centre of the education system” and at the same time determinedly pursue pedagogical approaches that embrace collaborative and cooperative learning. There is a deceit in here. How can we support the individual with a “where you've been, where you are, and where you're going” PLE map, when the journey has been a collective crusade. How valid is any attempt to assess the contribution of the individual within the collective contribution of a group?
Seeking individuality in education has its own issues, its own social cost. As Teemu cautions
Behind the PLE there seems to be a strong ethos of individual right to choose to study whatever they want, with who ever they want. I guess this is what makes it “personal”. The ultimate freedom to choose also means that there can’t be a request of commitment.
I am afraid that behind the PLE concept there is actually the metaphor of learning as a knowledge acquisition, and not only knowledge acquisition, but also community (or people) acquisition. Communities share. individuals consume. With PLE students will consume information and each other.
Given all this restless thinking I was surprised to discover today that that personalising me is going to be dead easy – It seems that I am not unique at all – quite knowable and effortlessly profilable in fact. My character summary fits Somerset Maugham’s
"She plunged into a sea of platitudes,
and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer,
made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
A simple inquiry over where I am staying in Rotorua for the Learning@School 07 conference in February made me realise that my life does not involve trembling over precipices, and plucking the wild goat by the beard. I am not arriving in Rotorua in a recklessly bohemian, careless and carefree fashion in February - armed only with a change of knickers, a toothbrush, and vague plans to sleep on the sofa of any new friends I make. Like a thousand other conference attendees my sensible accommodation has been booked for yonks.
Hi Arti! :)
Personalisation eh? That's the new buzz word around the schools eh? Interesting...
Oh Arti... at least they're trying. I'll give them that much. The word "Personalisation" does have that tinge of marketing sales pitch. What would teachers have to do to personalise education for the students. I shall propose some ideas:
First: We have to bring a luggage everytime we go to school. Afterall, the politics of the body is difficult to manage in class and some students do find our outfits quite - distracting.
Second: The student 'consumption' of knowledge can be terribly voracious or terribly apathetic. So we must each provide a voice recorder for the students. To those who are hungry for knowledge would take most of what we say into analytical consideration. Those who think we 'suck' would try using our voices during acute periods of insomnia. Either way, we're allowing the personalisation of our voices to the students.
Third: Bring a lawyer. If personalisation becomes part of an ethics of the school, I mean, just imagine if you're not very personalisable. You could be in a lot of trouble. It's always better to be safe than sorry. They could sue you for just having a mole in an unacceptable area of your face.
Four: Always have drugs constantly available in your luggage. Preferably horse-tranquillisers and a good dose of Speed and Paracetemol. Just think of the ridiculous amount of questions and demands students must have when we are personalisable. It took Barbie over 30 years to cover the personalisation of fashion and the plastic doll still hasn't got it right. We simple humans might take a bit longer to adapt. For safety reasons, don't use the horse-tranquillisers unless you are certain fainting or paralysation are the only avenues out of information overload.
And Five: You have to get used to the fact that personalisation in education isn't really cut out for human beings. You must be half-human to be able to make the cut for PLE. So I propose an additional hard drive to be inserted near the cerebellum and I would also slot a few spare memory cells in whatever area of your body you find not very useful right now. Cyborgian bodies are quite uncompromisingly conditional to the new PLE system. If you have electronic arms, even better. A pace-maker would definitely give you brownie points. Don't get me started with a prosthetic face. Just think of the possibilities for personalisation!
All in all, I think personalisation in education is a wonderful idea. Of course, we traditional teachers won't be able to hack the pace or learn fast enough for our voracious students. Our not-so-personalisable bodies are definitely a setback in education. Won't be needing these flabby babies no more. Just hop-online honey. We could be anything your imagination conjures. Why, I've always wanted to chat with a cyber-monkey-cum-horse-hung tutor. It would just make Media Production so much more enjoyable, and of course, personalisable.
Oh! I could go on forever. I love personalisation!
Insouciantfemme
Posted by: Insouciantfemme | February 02, 2007 at 04:51 AM
Touched by lighthearted unconcern i tremble falling off the precipise but I am screaming on the way down, I know my frailty cannot cope with being cyborg. Puleeese (in the language espoused by my teenager) personalise is verbage, was once a noun= person. To make more personable, turns this noun into a verb (to quote an earlier poasting). I would like to think it means to care, however institutionalised education and individualised education might just be a tautolgy (taughtology?). I could enjoy this, English lessons having been wasted on me, maybe they just werent sufficiently personalised. I love the living dangerously metaphor.
Posted by: ailsa | February 02, 2007 at 10:46 PM
Ohh Insouci, I have so missed your deliciously aberrant take on education.
I reckon you have buttoned the button with your expressed desire to n(e)twork with a “cyber-monkey-cum-horse-hung tutor”. My site viewing stats have gone exponential ever since your comment – and all visitors to the site seem to be googling “horse hung tutor” + “horse tranquillizers”
I wasn’t going to bother with the Learning@School 07 Leadership Forum: A Leadership Perspective on ICT PD (Thursday 1.30pm - 4.30pm ) Preferring instead a Forum of my own making at the Pig and Whistle
Your comment has forced me to review my plans. I feel compelled to join the Leadership Forum on “Personalisation” to ensure your thinking is heard.
Someone needs to ask the difficult questions about horse tranquilizer and horse hung tutors.
Posted by: Artichoke | February 07, 2007 at 09:54 PM
And Ailsa I am helplessly attracted to your whimsy - the notion of being "Touched by lighthearted unconcern" makes me tremble on a Ferlinghettian high wire
Constantly Risking Absurdity
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
Is just the perfect reponse for those many queries over my failures to meet institutional deadlines. I am going to insert it into as much officialise rhetoric as i am able.
Posted by: Artichoke | February 07, 2007 at 10:31 PM