Liquid Learning

Assessing factors in the introduction of ICT in formal settings

This is the final tool that was released during the 6th Open Classroom Conference in Stockholm. In many ways this is also the most accessible and purposely so as it forms the final stages of actively assessing and identifying major factors in the introduction of educationally orientated ICTs in formal settings. The tool was developed with and first documented on 'espheres identitaires' by Margarita Pereze-Garcia.

The wheel itself is I think fairly self explanatory. It works as a spider graph and in this particular version the factors are broken down into in four categories or dimensions:

• Institutional profile
• Learner profile
• Teacher profile
• Teaching and learning profile

Download ICT_Introduction_Wheel.pdf (155.6K)

Each of the major categories contains a set of factors that impact on the successful integration of ICTs. These factors are individually assessed by marking each of the axes using a rating of high medium or low in terms of postiveness or readiness of each variable in relation to the technology or intervention in question. Once built the spider diagram visually uncovers weak areas and possible barriers to ICT implementation. As a further note it is important to be reflective in this kind of exercise and appreciate the subjective position given by our personal experience and perspective - each of us clearly act and work within our own particular context and therefore maintain what I would describe as a partial perspective. This becomes evident as we find there are some dimensions where our evaluations will be limited – places where it is difficult to make judgments and where we may need to gather further information. The completed wheel can be utilised to build a list of barriers to the successful introduction of ICTs and help build a coherent strategy for overcoming them. Within this list of ‘action areas’ we will also discover points where personal influence is limited and to mitigate these barriers we may need to engage the support of other actors.

This is version 1 of the tool and a newer version will be released shortly where each of the four categories can be assessed within an independent wheel. We also hope to build up a number of comparative case studies where we can start documenting recurring issues, barriers and solutions across differing technological deployments.

Literature reviewed during the creation of the tool:

• The ICT impact report by EUN
• E-learning Nordic 2006 - Uncovering the Impact of ICT on Education in the Nordic Countries
• The impact of ICT in schools - a landscape review by Professor Rae Condie & Bob Munro with the collaboration of Liz Seagraves & Summer Kenesson
• A Framework for Leading School Change in using ICT: Measuring Change by Sue Trinidad, Paul Newhouse & Barney Clarkson
• ICT: Using indicators to assess impact of ICT in education

 

Visualising a 3D matrix

What is the best way to represent 3D in 2D? This was one of the difficulties expressed in feedback from the Stockholm workshop where the 'interpreting technologies in use' diagram was presented: an analytical matrix comprising x,y, and z axes and offering descriptors that span active to passive, isolated to social and formal to informal. It is not a simple process to create a legible and visually attractive representation of a 3D matrix on a flat page. This is probably why in my original working of this diagram the formal to informal polarity was not included as an axes even though it is more than ever a vital part of how we interpret our use of technologies - as a brief aside I feel this dimension to be particularly relevant when we consider how emerging  Web 2.0 technologies, that are in their wider internet usage largely informal, change in style and nature of their usage pattern when placed in more formal settings ... such as education ... a good example being the institutional deployment of blogging tools.

With the three axes to deal with during the workshop one of the participants, Per Filipsson from the Nationellt Centrum för Flexibelt Lärande put  forward some rough sketches and in a series of emails since the Open Classroom Conference he has kindly sent me the digital versions which are both excellent and engaging representations, thanks Per:

Vision one: 3D matrix for 'interpreting technologies in use'

Vision two: 3D box for 'interpreting technologies in use'

 

Making the right MUVE

After a squeezing a few free minutes this morning I have found found time to publish the first set of slides from the Open Classroom Conference in Stockholm held in October 2007. The workshop itself focussed on using the tools that I have described in my previous two posts and included work on identifying critical factors impacting on the introduction of ICTs into educational settings that has been initially presented here by Margarita Perez-Garcia on her personal site, 'espheres identitaires'.

Workshop presentation: Making the right MUVE:

| View | Upload your own

 

How do we interpret technologies in use?

This is the second in a series of tools that were released at the October 2007 Open Classroom Conference in Stockholm, alongside the socio-technical activity tool that was described in my previous post. It has benefited immensely from participant feedback during the workshop session and what feels like a finished version - or at least a version that is ready for further comment/criticism - is presented here.

The development of the tool stems from my own engagement with the integration, embedding, deployment, evaluation - pick your own circumstance – of technologies in education. An ongoing and not necessarily simple process that requires some understanding of how we actually use technologies or perhaps what is more easily described as a sense of what technologies become, defined by their patterns of use. This is something I recognise as complex relationship between design, affordance and appropriation. The 3D matrix I have drawn provides a mechanism to come to that kind understanding by deploying three descriptive polarities that run from informal to formal, active to passive and isolated to social.

How does it work in practice? Well my feeling is that this tool holds a number of possible uses by providing insights into how a technology is understood in terms of its current configuration or context, its desired or imagined configuration and as a comparator to the originally designed possibilities that we imagine programmed into the technology. By examining technology use across these dimensions the matrix provides not only a sense of the learning spaces we create but acts as a tool for identifying change processes. If we place our ‘technologies in use’ on the grid and find they are not acting in the areas we either anticipated or desired then we can begin to question how we might shift their position. In other words, explore the change processes we need to apply. The tool is in this way designed as complementary to the socio-technical activity tool, as these change processes will generally be identified as aspects within the three triangles of technology, literacy and pedagogical approach. For example, moving blogging from an isolated and infrequent enterprise to one that is active, social and community based may require: technological action such as a commitment that blogs will be maintained beyond the life-span of a particular course; a literacy intervention so users understand blogging as a genre and the possibilities for network building via by RSS feeds and blog rolls; and finally a pedagogical intervention where blogs become an active site for formative feedback and critical commentary.

Finally it is worth making clear, though I think this is already implied in the description above, that technologies within the matrix are not meant to be fixed but rather mobile and subject to change and may also occupy multiple sites depending on the perspective and context of use. There is no essence to the technologies themselves, except for an associated design value, and so we can see technologies as maintaining variable amounts of interpretive flexibility (Pinch et. al.). As technologies penetrate and spread in use then they tend to become understood more in terms of both the affordances of the technology and the context of use itself. To take blogs again as example, then one reason for their success as an emerging technology has been this very flexibility in that they can be interpreted and therefore used in multiple ways.

Once again I am happy to hear any comments on this work.

References:
Pinch, Trevor J. and Wiebe E. Bijker. "The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other." Social Studies of Science 14 (August 1984): 399-441

Evolution of a socio-technical activity tool for ICT in education

The socio-technical activity tool was developed while traveling back and forth between various European destinations. It started as a partially sketched exploration into the factors that impact our decision-making processes when we come to choose, or indeed evaluate, what might consider as appropriate technologies for enhancing learning and teaching. At the beginning the aims were 'simple', asking myself straightforward questions regarding the major factors or dimensions that we should consider in these decision-making processes.

 

The tool has now developed beyond these initial doodlings to something far more concrete ... forming the centre piece in the first session of a double workshop at the October 2007 Open Classroom Conference hosted in Stockholm. It was held up for public scrutiny alongside a number of other tools (see Prism(lab) and esphères identitaires) that have been developed with Margarita for exploring  the relationships within educationally orientated socio-technological systems. The current version comprises three triangles representing the key dimensions of technology, literacy and pedagogical approach that converge on the central notion of a decision activity which could be, for example, assessing the appropriateness of a particular tool in a particular educational setting. Each triangle is surrounded by a neighbourhood of descriptive sub-factors or variables:

1. Technology {Functionality, Cost, Infrastructure}
2. Literacy {Knowledge, Skills and Competencies}
3. Pedagogical approach {Context, Policy and Strategy, Purpose}

What I like most about the diagram is that as a visualisation tool it seems to work. It must be conceded that there is no simple solution to describing all of the actors and interwoven nuances that converge on decision making processes for ICTs in education but the diagram leaves open multiple interpretations and I think holds enough flexibility to be read in several ways. The key though is activity and the critical central tenet is being able to move oneself towards a position of making reflexive decisions while at the same time providing a balance between pragmatism and the naturally ecological or organic framework within which these decisions exist. More often than not our technological choice-making processes are driven by the ideal of finding good 'fitness for purpose' and yet through a set of these often complex and sometimes unacknowledged factors we can find ourselves making choices that are skewed by instinctual understandings. Here then, the socio-technical activity tool provides a reflective device for interpreting our actions.

An occasional paper detailing this and other tools developed for the workshop will be published shortly on the Prism(lab) research site and include complementary work from Margarita Perez-Garcia. And just for the record I am also including a snapshot of those early doodlings.