“Do one small thing every day” (Dobrowolski, 2015).
I believe that every action I do leads me toward the next chapter, job, or experience in my life. While I live with intentionality, sometimes when dreams don’t come to fruition immediately it’s hard to know if you’re doing the right thing. Because of this, I like to think of my actions as tiny shifts in the right direction that “magically” lead me toward my ideal future. In her TED Talk Draw Your Future – Take Control of Your Life, Patti Dobrowolski (2015) provides a roadmap to be more intentional and less “magical”.
First, she talks about the importance of a visual representation of your future. She suggests drawing a picture of your current situation. Then, she says to freely dream: “Draw where you want to be” (Dobrowolski, 2015). Make sure to “soak it in,” “fill it with color and emotion,” and “get inside of it” (Dobrowolski, 2015). Finally, Dobrowsolski (2015) encourages listening to your intuition to execute your plan by asking yourself “What is the boldest thing I can do to get from here to there?”
What if we took this concept and applied it to trends in educational technology?
In his TED Talk Build a School in the Cloud, Sugata Mitra (2013) asks “Where did the kind of learning we do in schools come from?” He describes the global information economy from 300 years ago that was dependent on handwritten data and ships. He calls this the “bureaucratic administrative machine” and recounts that “to have that machine running, you need a lot of people” (Mitra, 2013). Consequently, the machine to produce those people became the foundation for schools today. After all, schools needed to produce people who had good handwriting, who could read, and who were capable of simple mental math (Mitra, 2013).
This is the picture of where we are now in education. Sadly, not much about our educational system has changed in the past 300 years in spite of massive technological advancement and connectedness. We are “continuously producing identical people for a machine that no longer exists” (Mitra, 2013). We are bound by high-stakes testing and limitations (laws) on the way schools are “allowed” to run.
What might the future hold for the cloud in educational technology?
Mitra (2013) described the future of learning in which children all over the world tap into wonder and the ability to work together through school in the cloud. He said that encouragement is the key (Mitra, 2013). Whereas threats shut down the brain, encouragement can “shift the balance from threat to pleasure” (Mitra, 2013). To achieve this, particularly in remote and impoverished areas, Mitra suggests taking advantage of the Cloud. Through encouragement and collaboration, we might achieve collective, constructivist knowledge equity.
Defining the cloud: Infrastructure
” ’The cloud’ refers to servers that are accessed over the Internet, and the software and databases that run on those servers” (Cloudflare, n.d.). “The cloud enables users to access the same files and applications from almost any device, because the computing and storage take place on servers in a data center, instead of locally on the user device” (Cloudflare, n.d.). However, in reference to education, the cloud is more than just hardware and databases. The cloud is also the collective knowing and ever-changing body of information gained through the wisdom of crowds.
Defining the cloud: Pedagogy
In Collaborative Cloud: A New Model for e-Learning, Liao, et al. (2014, p. 341-342) outlined a model of e-learning in the Cloud with a focus on pedagogy over hardware and software:
- Embrace a wide range of resources. This includes infrastructure and human resources. Collaborators include students, instructors, and TAs. Then, restructure the roles of all people. For example, students with high grades tutor students with low grades.
- Include learning support like tutorials and discussions as a service. This is more important than materials.
- The typical cloud could be based on how much time and the number of resources each supplier has. The collaborative learning cloud should depend on the information about each collaborator’s knowledge structure and status. Institutions could leverage AI to determine this!
- Marketplace rules can stimulate Ss’ participation and better dispatch virtual resources among collaborators.
- Collaborative cloud learning pushes boundaries. It challenges the existing curriculum and grading system. Therefore, more collaborators mean more available resources and services.
“By applying the knowledge modeling technique and the economic model of the free market in the collaborative learning cloud, virtual resources can be dispatched in the most reasonable and effective way. This design alleviates the tension between limited instructional resources and too many learning support demands” (Liao et al., 2014, p. 349).
How I went from the cloud as an infrastructure to the cloud as a pedagogical tool.
I remember the first time I used Google asynchronously. At this point, I used it with my mom and sister to plan our meals and supplies for a family vacation. You see, my mom and sister live in Michigan, I am in Texas, and we were meeting in Oklahoma. We wanted to plan who would bring what, what we would eat, etc.
It was August 2012 and my mom didn’t really know how to use Google Docs. For example, she didn’t know that it saved automatically in a remote location or that it was collaborative. Because of this, I made sure to include directions on how to use Docs.
The first time I used google docs in my class was truly in a low-tech manner. In 2016, I used Docs instead of a whiteboard to display the lesson. This was a very teacher-centered and simple example, though it was easy to update on the fly when plans changed. Next, I promptly moved to a google slide that was interactive. Students had access, and I included hyperlinks so they could access curated resources. It was slightly less teacher-centered and also more complex than my original use. This example shows how I used Google Slides to guide my students’ learning: Slide Example. Then, in 2019 I started to use a Google Site to communicate with students. It was one-way communication, unlike an LMS like Canvas or Google Classroom.
Finally, post-COVID I used Google Slides to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous student work that was student-centered and complex, though it still required more teacher facilitation than a blended environment. Here is an example of an activity to review editing and revision with 6th-grade learners: 6th P: Edit and Revise
Now that I teach adult learners in a post-COVID world, I employ blended environments and curate resources with learner-centered outcomes. I also use so many more aspects of Google Workspace, including Drawings, Docs, Sites, Slides, and more!
Through this grad school work, my goal is to “draw” a picture of a future that uses technology to enhance pedagogy.
What might that intentional image – the dream – look like for me and the lives I touch?
References
Cloudflare. (n.d.). What is the cloud? | Cloud definition. Cloudflare. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cloud/what-is-the-cloud/
Dobrowolski, P. (2015, March 27). Best Ted Talks 2015 – Draw your future – Take control of your life. YouTube. Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vl6wCiUZYc
Liao, J., Wang, M., Ran, W., & Yang, S. J. H. (2014). Collaborative Cloud: A New Model for e-Learning. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51(3), 338-351. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14703297.2013.791554Mitra, S. (2013, February 27). Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud. YouTube. Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jYVe1RGaU