Unboxing PIG

Unboxing is the unpacking of new products, especially high tech consumer products. The product's owner captures the process on video and later uploads it to the web.

Some consider the popularity of this practice is due to the ability of showing the product exactly for what it is without any adulteration advertisers usually make around the product. Being able to see what you are getting can contribute to the decisional process.

According to Google Trends, searches for the term "unboxing" began to surface in the final quarter of 2006.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unboxing

Created with flickr slideshow.

 

Unboxing PIG was something of an event – as the photos attest – PIG travelled in a state of personal comfort only ever aspired to by the rest of us – including Air New Zealand.  Refer - refitting of the Air New Zealand widebody Boeing 777-200s.  

His body was enveloped in bubble wrap - snout ears and tail were protected by slabs of polystyrene and Tip Top ice cream container “cones of silence”.  The whole wrap firmly wedged in a cardboard box, wrapped in richly annotated newsprint.

The experience made me think about how we unbox learning.How do we unwrap learning to make learning accessible to students?

My work with the classroom based approach to using SOLO Taxonomy means I get to talk with educators all over the globe. A recent conversation with Canadian educator Chris Horton spilled over into Twitter last week.

@mrcjhorton Change in knowledge, skills, attitudes & or behaviour over time - takes effort, slow, gradual, uneven process. Evidence seen ..

— Pam Hook (@arti_choke) October 27, 2014

@mrcjhorton in cognitive complexity of what we communicate & how we act #SOLOTaxonomy useful model differentiate levels of outcome over time

— Pam Hook (@arti_choke) October 27, 2014

@arti_choke Agreed. Thank you for the input. I felt that you would be able to add to our conversation.

— Chris Horton (@mrcjhorton) October 27, 2014

Chris raises an important question – how can we unwrap something if we don’t know what it is. With PIG I may well have seen the taxidermy as a disposable stuffing used to allow the sheets of plastic bubbles to ship safely. Sharing a model of learning like SOLO Taxonomy with students helps ensure they can distinguish bubble wrap from PIG

The Twitter exchange made me wonder - if learning’ is a long term change in a person’s thinking and behaviour, then why do governments, schools and teacher so rarely assess such long term change. Why are we so future focused that we refuse to pause in the present to assess what has gone before – preferring the rush as we embrace one new pedagogical excitement after another.

Perhaps it is because we no longer value the patience and hard work associated with embedding effective pedagogy – we over value the pedagogical activism associated with “discovering and exploring” and under value the pedagogical approach of educators who dedicate their professional lives to “integrating and sustaining”.

I commonly read blogs and tweets remonstrating at the “limitations” of the so-called pedagogical dinosauria who it seems "refuse" to experience a similar moment of metanoia or spiritual conversion at the roll out of yet another “the latest digital device” across the campus.

It seems a culture of consumerism has us hot-wired for the future – restless in the present – disengaged in the immediate. When living in the moment is inadequate – and we are subsumed by “there must be something more than what we have or where we are” thinking - we neglect “now” for the froth of “next”. We are aroused by new, radical, different - we clamour for change – we want to bleed on the boundary - wrestle on the cutting edge – punch above our weight. We promote ourselves as being different from the rest - and variously describe ourselves as edu_punks, edgy educators, alone in our schools, we fondly imagine ourselves geeks so far ahead of the crowd that we are boundary workers in the next place where “out of whack” is the new "in whack" black – it seems that whatever confronts existing approaches excites us – actual pedagogical value has little to no significance in the conversations shared.

The irony to the outsider is that whilst we are awash in the turbulence of tomorrow – clutching tight to the tyranny of change and the latest iteration of the 10 top trends for the future - we all the time contentedly draw “the salary of the same” from the government of the day.