Blog Audience & 7 Things Techies Should Know about Teaching."

Why do ideas come as you are trying to fall asleep?  The imperative drives one to find paper and pencil and record enough of the idea to be readable in the morning.  Here are my ruminations:

The audience for my blog, which I failed to previously specify, is, in one sense, anyone...it is posted on the Internet, after all. That is one way a blog is different from a book. Potentially the world (at least those with an Internet connection) can look over one's shoulder. In truth, most of us "nodes" on the Internet Superhighway have but a few onlookers. It is the hubs, the Grand Terminal Stations, that get the big traffic, like Google. The architecture of the Internet (see Theory of Complexity) is such that our little blogs are just whisps of grain blowing through the air, probably more private than a conversation in a restaurant. A book is more like a guided missle than a bit of grain. It has a focus and specific audience and the power of a book, like a karate blow comes from that focus and purpose.

Apparently when I'm drowsy I mix metaphors.

I was reading "7 Things You Should Know About the Evolution of the Textbook" by Educause (2012) and I was struck by how often tools that only work with one e-reader were mentioned. I'm tempted to write "7 Things Techies Should Know about Teaching." Hmmm [swirly design special effect with camera shot zooming in as psychedelic music plays to signal entering a dream state.]

1. A teacher has to include all, not exclude some who don't have x tool. A big challenge is how to ensure that students have and can afford whatever is needed for the learning to happen.
2. Even if a school has money to buy something for a class now, it likely won't shortly. Such programs don't last. Never buy expensive technology with a short shelf life unless you enjoy seeing programs limp to an end or just want a brag project for a year. Evaluate the lifespan of any project against expected benefit and allocate work energy accordingly. I do believe in play as valuable in developing understanding and some of these projects are that sort of play. Just don't fool yourself and take too much money from projects that will have a more substantive impact. Have a budget for play and live within it.
3. Never plan a project that is totally dependent on one thing working because the thing won't work... plus two or three other unanticipated things won't work. Teaching is living on a dancing landscape in which you go from surprise to surprise. The best coping technique, in addition to humor, is finding solid bits to anchor to year in and year out and let change blow around you, watching for more bits that have staying power or offer nourishment. And Learners break things. It's what they do and I love that about learning.
4. Stability rocks. (Rocks in the "really cool" sense, not in the "boat rocking" sense). Learning is hard. Structure and predictability help learners get there. Motivation in the form of novelty gives the learning a little gas but too much gas and you get conflagration.
5. Teaching is about balance, not about finding one tool that will fix everything, but measuring out an optimal amount of structure, of novelty, of encouragement that matches the needs of this particular student.
6. Teaching is about connecting with the student, not building a wall with a technology tool (and that includes books as a tool. Assigning a reading can be hiding from that connection. While I was contemplating the definition of a book, I realized that when you read a book, you have joined a group of people who have also read that book. You have joined a community. And yet I think as teachers we sometimes forget that connecting students to that community of readers is part of the pleasure and the goal of learning. Does the teaching task connect the student to a community or create a disconnect?
7. Teaching is about the learner's needs, and a bit about the teacher (or you get burned out and curmudgeonly). Ask yourself if this technology is for you, or for them.

[swirly design special effect with camera shot zooming out as psychedelic music fades.]

 Where was I? huh? Oh yes, reading "7 Things You Should Know About the Evolution of the Textbook" by Educause. The article used a term smart or interactive books. I prefer the term "responsive or responding books".

Why not smart?
Touching a place and having a map open up or a spot for writing a note isn't being smart. Being smart is what people do, like socking away 10% for retirement for 30 years or letting the grandparents watch the kids. You wouldn't call Mimosa Pudica (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq3UuHlPLQU) smart for closing to a touch. It does what the genes say just as tech does what the smart human says. If there is no human, it sits there waiting for a stimulus until electricity ceases to arrive. No human and it doesn't exist nor does it have a purpose for existing. There is over 100 years of research on the nature of human intelligence. Real intelligence does not look like what these devices do. It looks like what the user of the device does. Using smart to refer to these behaviors downgrades "smartness" and human skill.

Why not interactive?
I'm bucking the tide but to me, speaking as a human, an interaction is with another human or something higher on the biological scale than a plant. When I interact I expect the other being to respond to me as me. Not because it is just following a line of code that when x happens I do y. I expect the other being to be somewhat unpredictable (part of the pleasure as well as risk of an interaction). I suppose we can ask a device what it thinks interactive means...oh wait. No we can't, not and get an answer that is really *meaningful* to the device beyond that plant level, beyond what the human has told it to attend to. Yes, I have considered the artificial intelligence therapy bots in my reflections. Bet they don't include me in their reflections. And that's the point. Using interactive to refer to these devices downgrades "interaction" and human relationships.

Why responsive?
Because it is what they do. You behave... their coding results in x response. It is a more precise terminology. I happen to like what Mimosa Pudica does when I brush my hand against it and I enjoy the responsive features of my e-reader and e-texts...but I don't confuse them with a thinking, feeling (and I use those terms deliberatively) human being. Humans are a different category of action from technology calling for a qualitatively different reaction from me. And if I don't alter my reaction for people, then we say something isn't right with Sally. I also like this term better because it reminds us that technology is that most wonderful of human creations, a tool. It is brought into existence to be responsive to the creators, to provide an extension to human capacities. Using "responsive" to refer to the devices is more precise and assigns the correct sort of recognition to the amazing tools we humans have created.

Future tasks
Define terms: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Consider Roger's Theory of Innovation: Mountaineers, Pioneers, Settlers and People who Stay Back East-- which are my audiences? how does that affect what they'd do with ebooks?
Consider Types of Books vs Learning Models, such as Dee Fink's and Bloom's revised.

Objectives of the Blog & Audience of the Book

I have been watching and reflecting on e-readers, e-texts and education for several years. The time has come, as per the walrus (Carroll, 1872), to bring together my reflections, make concrete my reflections and test my ideas in the pool of public opinion. 

My larger goals are to at a minimum provide a foundation document for those who teach. The document, a proto-guidebook, will explore issues in using and creating e-texts and e-readers for education.

The situation is still too murky for a clear map, but we know enough to point out major landmarks, both mountain passes and areas of avalanche danger. We are perhaps at the age of Magellan with great discoveries still to be made but we can be confident at the general outlines.

Electronically the goal document has been on its own journey. Of course a new explorer starts with the familiar, and I have a pile of books about books, journal documents, newspaper articles, handwritten notes and other representatives of the print and paper age. 

But I've also wandered the digital realm, using FreeMind concept mapping software, pdfs from online sources, epublications from major retailers, Word documents and now a blog. I am purposefully feeling the shape of this murky thing, all along the edges, inside and out, trying out kinesthetically and organically the forms these words are taking. 

My goal for this blog is to help express those sensations, to articulate them in rough form before placing them in the guidebook. As with any project I expect to uncover deadends, half thoughts, side issues and place them here along with the major issues, insights, and implications because, of course, one can never tell which is which at first. Setting them all out here to ferment (foment?) in the sun will help me spot those that need to be fondly bade farewell and those that just need polishing to be made formally presentable.

Perhaps my audience will identify themselves and tell me who is interested. I'm told that authors today should focus on their niche and not worry about the larger audience (Writer's Digest July/Aug 2012).

Of course vanity says that everyone is impacted by changes in knowledge production and dissemination, that now it is within the reach of anyone to become an author, that we all are storytellers at heart and have been since the first auroch was painted on a cave wall by flickering fire, the first handprint pressed onto the wall proclaiming "I".  

But honesty tells me I must attempt to define those to whom I am speaking or I shall surely fail to speak to any"one."

I most want to speak to those on the front line of education -- the teachers. Of that genus I am most familiar with college faculty having worked in higher education for 25 years, most of that with faculty on their concerns and dreams for teaching. As it stands today, they will be my first focus.

However, my mother was an elementary school teacher, my sister and two 2nd cousins middle and high school teachers.  I don't presume to understand all of the issues for this group but I hope to write so that what I say is of use to any level of instruction.  

I expect to attract the support tier for instructors...librarians, faculty developers, instructional designers, instructional technology persons. I welcome their insights gained from seeing across teaching situations and I believe my reflections will be of use to them, but not directly targeted to them other than as a tool that may be useful.  

I may also find administrators in my reading group trying to make decisions about large-scale programs. I'll try to address some of those issues as I proceed as well. 

So, goals set, audience described...what's next?