The risks of being an early adopter

My late father was an early adopter. We had almost every gadget almost as soon as it hit the market. When my parents married in 1961, my dad bought my mum a dishwasher. It was such a novelty that she invited her mother over to see it (and promptly filled it with dish soap, which... is a story for another time).

Our family had cable tv from the early 1970s onward. Our first remote - some years later - looked a little like this:

...which is a far cry from what our most recent remote looks like.

I inherited this trait from my father, although I've learned to temper it a bit over the years. My wife often jokes that she can buy me anything she wants for my birthday, father's day, etc., as long as it's shiny, black and new. She also jokes (although sometimes through clenched teeth) that these purchases of electronics are often the beginning of an expenditure, not the end.

In my case, this interest transcended simply acquiring more devices. I became interested in the technology itself, and how it could transform our lives, whether the outcome was good, bad or indifferent.

So when I was looking for a Master of Education program, Ontario Tech U made infinitely good sense. In addition to offering the luxury of learning online, it allowed me to explore the intersection of technology and education, a topic in which I'd become deeply interested some years earlier.

I began teaching in 2002 in the graduate program in Public Administration at Humber College. About 10 years ago, I had an epiphany: rather than discouraging my students from using their electronics in the classroom, I helped them find ways to incorporate it into their lessons. I created a private Facebook group for them as an adjunct to the college's learning management system. I encouraged them to use the search functions in their web browsers to supplement our research for on-the-fly assignments. 

Then I decided to be bold. With the approval and support of my administration, I helped the college pilot online exams long before they became popular - and ultimately, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a necessity. The college continued to support my efforts and I responded by seeking and implementing additional measures to enhance security and academic integrity. 

So when the pivot to online learning happened in the spring of 2020, after getting over the same initial shock as everyone else, I felt well-positioned to manage the experience for my students' benefit. I also benefited from some hands-on training through the college during the summer.

At the same time that I was doing that training, I began my master's program at Ontario Tech. It opened my eyes to an important reality: that online teaching is not simply a pivot. Done properly and well, as is my goal, it is - and must be - transformational.

In one of my courses over the winter of 2020-21, the professor shared this video and rocked my world.

The message of the TED Talk was that we all tend to teach the way we were taught. And that's not always appropriate or even helpful. Another clip of a former British Secretary of State for Education also resonated with me profoundly. The Minister, Michael Gove, said this: 

“Almost every field of employment now depends on technology. From radio, to television, computers and the internet, each new technological advance has changed our world and changed us too. But there is one notable exception. Education has barely changed. The fundamental model of school education is still a teacher talking to a group of pupils. It has barely changed over the centuries, even since Plato established the earliest "akademia" in a shady olive grove in ancient Athens. A Victorian schoolteacher could enter a 21st-century classroom and feel completely at home. Whiteboards may have eliminated chalk dust, chairs may have migrated from rows to groups, but a teacher still stands in front of the class, talking, testing and questioning.”

Whatever one might think of Gove, his politics, or the government he represented, he has a point. Much of what we do still, today, in education dates to before the Industrial Revolution. Some of it dates back to the Agricultural Revolution, including the use of letter grades. This is a long-standing frustration of mine: that the educational system still - largely, although not exclusively - is based on a value system that may be several hundred years out of date. (Ever wonder why there's no school in June and July in most of North America? Well, wonder no more.)

This brings me back to this course and this program. As I complete my last two courses this spring and summer, I'm looking forward to starting a major research project come September on shifting teacher education from digital literacy (how to use the software) to digital competence (thinking about pedagogy from a digital-first perspective). While I haven't yet defined my research questions, what I do know is that some aspect of it will almost certainly look at the digital divide - the notion that technology, from wifi to the devices that run on it, is not distributed equally or evenly across all socioeconomic classes. There are also, particularly in Canada, significant geographic barriers to access to high-speed internet service.

I'm hoping and planning to continue the research that I began with this assignment last semester. I have a strong sense that the content in both of my courses this semester will afford me the opportunity to refine my thinking and be truly ready to tackle my research in the fall. In the meantime, I look very much forward to working and learning with what has been a spectacularly productive and supportive cohort this semester.