Geeky Mom

One thing we discussed as we prepared for our talk at ELI 2008 was that we should all confront our own personal fears and some of us did that. Barbara talked about fear as a faculty member using blogs to teach of being exposed, making a mistake, or generally looking stupid in front of her students. Leslie talked about fearing stagnation, of the fear of investing in technology that takes us backwards instead of forward. A fear I have that I don’t think I articulated was a fear of being irrelevant and unnecessary.

How important is my position, really, to the institution as a whole? If my position disappeared, would anyone really notice?

Most of the faculty that reach out to me are really just asking for tech support. They want to know how to perform certain tasks in Blackboard. They want to know how to edit a web site. They don’t tend to ask the bigger questions: what is appropriate technology for me to use to achieve my goals, how should I use x to help my students learn.

My fear is that I will never be trusted to answer such questions. I am glorified tech support, someone who knows the technology and who also happens to know and have experience with teaching and learning. What’s valued is my ability to answer the technical questions. But that’s not what I personally value about my skills.

If me, or someone like me, isn’t around to ask the big technology and education questions, will faculty turn to each other for such questions? I don’t know that they will. Faculty tend to be insulated and don’t discuss such issues with each other. There are a few faculty who are are thinking about these issues, but I suspect when they try to evangelize about what they’re doing with technology in their classes, they get the same looks I often do.

Sure, I want to justify my position out of a sense of survival, but I think it’s important to question–sometimes in a dramatic way–the logic of certain structures, to ask why and really mean it. So why do instructional technologists exist? Are they really needed and what is their role within an institution? How could they be more effective? Should their role change? Could we envision them teaching or doing research? Or do we want them to shift to be more tech support and be less concerned about the big questions?

I left this really long comment on Alan’s blog and thought it deserved its own space. We all discussed this to some extent while at the conference and obviously, I had a lot of thoughts. Thanks Alan, for spurring them again. Here’s the comment:

I have a love/hate relationship with conferences. On the one hand, I love the opportunity to travel, to drink, to meet new people, to talk to old friends, and to perhaps hear a few new ideas. On the other hand, I’m finding fewer new ideas at these conferences. What I’ve enjoyed most is the chatting between sessions, the twittering, flickring, and long talks over dinner that shift from technology to kids to patriotism.

I like going to conferences where I’m way out of my field. I went to SXSW a couple of years ago and that kind of blew my mind. The sessions were different, the chatter in the hallway was way different, and the alcohol was free. Problem is, I have to convince my employers that these conferences have merit. I really shouldn’t. Shouldn’t everything be related to education? If we’re preparing our students for the world, shouldn’t we see a lot of it, from a lot of different angles?

I have yet to go to an unconference, but I’m thinking of running one. I love the idea of showing up, posting what I want to learn about, what I want to teach, and then just talking to some smart people and hearing what they have to say. As someone said on my blog, though, there are a lot of people not on the bleeding edge of things who do actually get something out of these things. But I keep thinking, just because there are those people, does that mean I have to pander to them or be like them? I wouldn’t ask a physics professor to retake Physics 101. Why should I have to take Web 2.0 101? And doesn’t the Physics professor acknowledge that her Physics 101 students are at the bottom of a curve? Why can’t I acknowledge the same thing of some folks at my school and in the audience of these conferences? I’m not being condescending. I’m acknowledging a reality.

I kind of hinted at the conference that it would be nice to have an “advanced” track, something where we could really talk and play with stuff that’s pretty far out there. Why couldn’t Apple or Microsoft or Google bring the really new stuff to these conferences instead of iLife and tablets and Google maps which may be new to some, but old hat to many of us? And like you said, maybe we could build something together, the tools that no one else has yet created. But yeah, let’s make it fun!

Here’s the list of solutions to fear that was generated during our session. I’ll post our videos soon.

How do you overcome fear?

• having the conversation
• pool your strengths
• accountability
• make mistakes
• new skills
• understand the problem
• how to get people to pay attention
• need a decision-making process
• make yourself aware of what’s out there
• need a way to disseminate the information
• appreciating the new role of faculty in embracing technology
• working with faculty more closely
• role of students
• need time to adopt new technology–using students to be a part of the process to build resources
• discovery–play around with something for a while before incorporating into courses
• storm the walls
• overthrow the system
• experimenting
• talk to students
• preparing for constant change–perpetual beta
• encouraging students to support faculty
• working together
• identity
• know something truthful about the learner
• learner knows something truthful about us
• reason to use the technology
• examples–show vs. tell
• partnerships among faculty, students, & IT
• appreciate the technology as a consumer
• don’t feel the need to master everything
• faculty getting other faculty on board
• break out of structures
• bringing diverse people together to talk
• naming it–find a place for it

I’m in San Antonio at the Educause Learning Institute annual conference. Highlights so far have been hanging out with some great and interesting people: Barbara G., Barbara S., Leslie, Martha, Brian Lamb, Alan Levine and more. I also saw Henry Jenkins and George Siemens give a couple of interesting talks. My impressions were that Jenkins wasn’t provocative enough and Siemens went a little over the edge. Siemens made a pretty significant appearance in my dissertation, so I certainly respect his work, but he lacks the ability, I think to take his theory and explain its practical application. Someone in the audience actually got up and said, “I don’t get it.” And his explanation was just a rearticulation of the theory. Perhaps he leaves that for others to do. Jenkins, on the other hand, didn’t go quite far enough to shake things up. After all, his approach uses traditional avenues–research, white papers, books. Most of what he said I’d heard before. But I do know that there are plenty of people here who need to hear what Jenkins said.

I think a conference like this tries to strike a balance between reaching those who are unaware or only vaguely aware of the bleeding edge and those who are standing right on it. It’s certainly better than the main Educause conference which definitely appeals more to administrators and managers than to those working in the trenches (especially those of us working with the academic side of the house). There’s still another day and a half to go and of course my talk with the four fab ladies mentioned above happens later today. Our competition: none other than Michael Wesch, whom I met last night and tried to cajole him to go to dinner with a crowd of us. I think he would have enjoyed the conversation. I do really like his work. I’m sad that I’ll miss his talk.