Some tenuous links

I find the films included in the film festival and the readings for Block 1 do not explicitly link to learning. This post is an attempt to make some admittedly tenuous links, using some of the themes as stepping stones for issues related to digital education.

The stop motion video “Address is Approximate” features a robot who takes a virtual journey across the world as captured by Google Street view. The journey that the robot takes, the lights of the computer screen flashing across its face, can be read as both liberating and escapist. Liberating in the way it allows the robot to see places he otherwise wouldn’t view, and escapist in the sense that it’s a type of mobility that doesn’t change his being in an office room still, allowed only to travel when the human is away. The movie allows an ambiguous reading that recalls the blurring of boundaries that Haraway celebrates in the Cyborg Manifesto. The robot is simultaneously mobile and immobile, animate and inanimate, the journey real and virtual.

While ostensibly about virtual reality, the video also offers some starting points for thinking about learning in the digital age. In the film festival, “Address is Approximate” is grouped under the heading of “Machine sentience”. Sentience as a synonym for awareness of the environment but not necessarily of consciousness or awareness of the self. It is a distinction that is crucial. Sentient machines, I believe, are able to, for example, record and respond to stimulus, to process data and learn from it. What does this remind one of? Automated assessments, especially when there is a large learner population; data tracking tools that give feedback that allow learners to set goals and monitor their progress; or perhaps surveillance tools that can help identify learners who are at risk of failing.

Another interesting in the video is how the robots are supported by other toys and objects: the lamps twirl, a toy figure clicks the mouse. This suggests that a range of agents can collaborate to achieve goals, reminding me of badges and digital portfolios.

I think the depiction of virtual reality in the video is somewhat passive. If we are to imagine the robot as a metaphor for learners, and the robot’s virtual journey as learning journey (a course within a virtual learning environment), then it becomes apparent how the robot quite literally stood in front of the computer screen. I think there’s a case for depicting the robot as taking a more active role in the road trip, as should learners about their learning paths.

And finally, the big screen where the journey happens. One of the things I remember from the IDEL course is that while virtual reality is still often crude in terms of providing immersive experiences, much progress has been made in making immersive psychological experiences. One can lose oneself in a book, in a movie or a song and even in video games. This is because the defining aspect of virtuality is not the technology itself but the experience it creates.

While doing some online research for this Block 1, I came across Burbles (2006) who proposes four qualities that are useful in understanding the potential of virtuality in learning contexts:

  • Interesting: complexity that allow new elements to be viewed, or viewed differently in different encounters
  • Involving: when there is a reason to care about the experience, achieved by showing relevance to the individual
  • Imaginative: allowing for the extrapolation of new details
  • Interactive: participatory

Reference:
Burbules, N. C. (2006). Rethinking the virtual. In The international handbook of virtual learning environments (pp. 37-58). Springer Netherlands.

The future of wearable technology

I have been thinking about human’s ongoing affair with technology. With the Miller (2011) chapter in my mind, it is quite a surprise to discover transhumanist ideals everywhere.

While it may not be a big surprise to find transhumanist references in a video about wearable technology, it is a bit of a jolt to find how they match the points that Miller made so clearly. Here are a couple of key quotations from the video:

"Ultimately we are going to be combinations of man and machine...

"If we don't accept those (technological changes), we are going to be left behind."

The wearable heart monitors discussed in the video are examples of what Miller describes as the virtualisation of the body. Heart rate data is captured by sensors on the watch and then uploaded to computer networks where they are then recorded and shared among a community — pretty much like Facebook for athletes.

However, the view that the body and its processes can be reduced to information codes and patterns is only one side of the story. The other side is that its purpose is to transform the body itself. Athletes can refer to their heart rate data to improve their performance.

A couple of questions I would like to further explore but are not fully discussed in the Miller chapter:

  • How do commercial interests influence the virtualization of the body? After all, the development of these devices, their marketing and the maintenance of the data they capture require huge financial investments that business would need to recover.
  • In the same way that numbers on a weighing scale can influence body perception, how does biometric data (their own and those from their network) influence the athletes’ sense of self?

Week 1 summary: bodies vis-a-vis technology, learning transfer

Week 1 is a dizzying introduction to a broad range of themes.

My key takeaways includes the complicated relationship between human bodies and technology and how technology alters the way we perceive and act in the world. This can be seen in the development of images I posted.

The first TogetherTube session was great fun. Reading, as opposed to hearing, both insightful and hilarious comments was a great way to enjoy and better appreciate the movies and recognize key themes.

I tried to make a tenuous link to my work context and found the idea of disembodied information resonating with the idea of learning transfer in corporate training.

I’m still tackling the secondary readings slowly, managing only Hayles (1999) so far. It’s rich in insights but dense and heavy. I’ve read Miller (2011) and Bayne (2014) but am conscious I need to make better connections.

Learning transfer

Learning transfer, the application of knowledge and skills learned in a training course into the workplace, is a recurring and unresolved issue in corporate training. And the end of week 1 of the course, I am beginning to see how the idea of transfer appears in different and often troubling variations. The term transfer nows seem dangerously misleading.

transferSetting aside the idea of transfer as learning application, there is the idea of transfer as disembodied knowledge. Hence, knowledge can be transferred from trainer to trainee, and that to to improve work performance, it is enough that trainees attend a course. Designing courses that that are based on memorization of facts and repetition (both useful in some contexts but not all) assume that knowledge can be decontextualized, or that knowledge decontextualized has value.

Bayne (2014) points out more subtle variations in her critique of technology-enhanced learning, citing the unquestioned use of productivity tools to improve teaching and learning. I believe that these are related to learning transfer because they both lead to a tendency to ignore the contexts and purposes of learning.

I think that transfer, in the sense of decontextualised knowledge, is synonymous with copy-pasting files. Hence, there is the more crude idea but equally troubling idea that face-to-face training courses can be transferred online — all it requires is uploading learning materials to a server, and making them available anytime, anywhere.

Transfer, in the sense of implantable memories, is one of the themes of the short film, Memory 2.0. In the film, the protagonist frequents a local shop in order to relive memories of a previous relationship. (Incidentally, purchasing for memories–and by extension, knowledge and learning–reminds me of off-the shelf e-learning courses.) Learning transfer is also more explicitly mentioned in the Matrix movies, especially the scenes where Neo learns martial arts and helipcoter driving as fast as the operator can flip a switch.

Hayles (1999) traces these ideas in the history of cybernetics. Viewing the physical world as built on some kind of informational code allowed the separation of the material world from the information that underlies it. Information then becomes disembodied, separate from the flesh that contains it. Returning to pop culture references, this is the basis of teleportation as popularised in Star Trek movies.

Screen captures
I know Kung Fu
I need to get back
Beam me up Scotty

References
Bayne, S. (2014) What’s the matter with ‘Technology Enhanced Learning’? Learning, Media and Technology, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2014.915851.

Hayles, N. Katherine (1999) Towards embodied virtuality from Hayles, N. Katherine, How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics pp.1-25, 293-297, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Visualizing the posthuman

The image below shows how my views have changed after the readings.

This is a reaction to a previous post, Tech in ‘modern times’ which contains vintage photos of the relationship between humans and technology. The photos are of white Western male adults.

In constrast, the above photo of an African mother and baby’s hands highlights the feminist critique of the liberal humanist view of technology which was often visualised with depictions of white European males. According to Hayles (1996), such images promoted a universality that subdued women’s voices.

In addition, the lack of a gadget, tool or prosthesis in the photo reflects my changing views that technology is part, not separate from being human. As between mother and child, this relationship is intimate and generative.

Image source
BBC News

Reference
Hayles, N. Katherine (1999) Towards embodied virtuality from Hayles, N. Katherine, How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics pp.1-25, 293-297, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.