I’m not sure if we are supposed to do a follow up blog for this week or not. Its not in the grade book in Schoology, but I like to blog and reflect and find it helpful, so I will do it anyways. Even though we really looked at a lot of stuff other than this weeks reading in class.

It was interesting to me how different people came away with different take-aways from different articles. I also saw how you really better know your stuff before making a statement about something you assume. There was quite the lively discussion that ensued after the need for promoting women in Science and engineering was questioned. I think that gender disparity is well documented in the literature, but many other students made a much better case than I could. So the lesson there – know your literature.

Of course, I have always agreed with that, but I have seen from this class how much of literature I don’t know about. Guess that is why I need to get my Ph.D. 🙂

But, other than that, still no revelations on the Bernstein stuff that I did not understand  Just not much time to dig into that as I try to get papers revised and turned in (and harass my review partner to finally get me the last two of my reviews and papers of his for me to review).

So what have I learned since last post related to this weeks readings? Well, even though we didn’t have class, I have pondered the readings a lot and also thought about the class updates that were posted today. Now that I think about it, I can’t really say that I didn’t really learn anything about the individual professors. I did learn a lot, and was given a desire to dig into the work of some of them. That is a good start.

But sometimes you look at the papers and work of these professors and wonder to yourself: “will I ever get to that level?” It seems pretty far away at times… not just all the classes I have left to take, but also all the papers to read and issues to ponder to catch up with their massive knowledge of the topics. As others have said, I am always glad to get the help and feedback from professors on these papers – it never really seems harsh to me. Well, not in this class at least. Others in the past at other schools, maybe. But I just wonder if there is going to be a time when this all clicks and I “get” it, or I just slowly get there but never realize it and then on my death bed I have this shocking revelation that I got it and then pass away.

Northern Exposure… interesting show. I remember watching that a lot when it came on. And now it is making me afraid of defending my dissertation 🙂 Not really, but it makes you think about the radically different paradigms you will have to deal with on the path to completing the degree and beyond if you so choose. Mot places that I have worked with were all about compromise and working together, so it is still hard to wrap my head around a system where one professor could hold up the process because they don’t agree with your project design. Its just a different world to adjust to.

I am also surprised to see so much quantitative work from so many professors. I’m hoping to see a qualitative balance this next week to give me some hope that I won’t just be crunching numbers the whole time I am working on my degree. I don’t have a problem with numbers completely, but I like to know more about why people chose “5” on the scale than just the fact that they chose “5”. I can convert their opinions into numbers, but once you get those numbers,  there is no way to go back and find out what they meant by that number when they picked it.

So which criminal is the worst drug dealer? Now I think I have about seen everything there is to see in a class. But it was a great point about not being too close to what you are researching. I guess that is just something to struggle with – obviously, most of us would not have gotten into this field if we didn’t love something about technology. So we are all in danger of getting too close with the end user. Something to look out for.

From reading Bernstein, I understood that he believes we should embrace the struggle between modernity and postmodernity. After class discussion, I think I understand more the major differences between the more pragmatic moderns and the relativistic-ish post-moderns. If any of those are actually real words, that is. So I am wondering if this puts Bernstein in the pragmatic camp in some way. It seems very practical to embrace the problems with both sides of the modern/postmodern design. Maybe I still don’t fully understand that yet, but that is something that came to me as I am typing this.

Alright, so a random series of events and no class meeting and some changes to the reading assignments this week. But I still ended up learning many good things this week through the YouTube video. I can critique articles in a hundred different ways, but most of them are probably not academic in nature. I used to work for an educational publishing company, so most of the ways that I learned to critique were probably economic in nature (or to be graded in college). So now to add another method that is academic in nature.

But the method of critique that has been touched on a few times in class and expanded upon in the video makes a lot of sense. You get to know first if the study/article itself was even formed correctly before you really invest in reading the whole thing. But I guess one of the things I am now pondering is if I need to spend so much time writing the intro to my papers… seems like people reading them might be skipping past that part to get to the meat. But, anyways – I also haven’t really considered that I need to check to make sure that the “big names” are mentioned or covered properly in the appropriate areas.  Know your stuff if you want people to take you seriously. I still need to learn many of those big names, but that will be helpful to think of. I also look for certain names (like Prensky) that raise red flags. If any article mentions “digital natives” as a serious label, I would seriously wonder what else could be wrong in there.

So I really enjoyed the debates in class. I think they really show how hard it is to defend any paradigm completely – they all have weaknesses to deal with. I found it really hard to come up with an air tight defense for any of them – or any air tight attack for that matter. I have a hard time figuring out how anyone can be come a hard line believer in only one of them – but I am sure those kinds of people are out there, and I need to get ready for them. Thinking back on the debate, I probably would not have tried to beat out the opposing view as much as make a case that my view has a bit of an edge – for example, that qualitative has a slight edge on Quantitative because of the nature of the answers you get. People can lie on either one, but you can get a lot more out of a few sentences or paragraphs of responses than you can from “5”… “3”… etc. You will also be able to detect lies a bit better. It is a slight edge, but a slight edge is better than none.

So, the lifeworld idea of Habermas is a pretty big deal. I can see how that would impact research, especially of a social or qualitative nature. So it is our world that we experience and live together. So it would seem that Habermas and Bernstein are essentially writing what and how we come to experiences as we interact in our lifeworld. It would seem to be easy and straightforward, but coming to agreed upon terms and structures to describe these experiences would prove complex. I think if it was up to any one person to describe it for themselves, they would find it easy. Or easier – after all, you don’t have to agree on anything. In fact, it seems as you move across the paradigm scale, lifeworld becomes more difficult to describe. To relativists – what ever you say goes, so lifeworld is anything you say it is. To constructivists, you have to come to agreement with others and even society as a whole, so that takes more work. To empiricists, you have to test, experiment, prove things, and then go back to come to agreement on what it is all saying.

Or maybe that is just my take on it now, which could change as we go along.

So I guess the lesson to be learned after class in relation to research: play the rules, or else. Well, at least ‘or else’ for now. With open access journals and free massive online courses coming to kill the university, I guess this will all go away soon. Yeah, I don’t buy that one either. Personally, I would like to see a healthy system of open access continue to grow alongside what we already have. I don’t mind playing in some one else’s sandbox by their own rules, as long as I can also have my own sandbox to do whatever I want.

A co-author and I already ran into these clique rules this last month. We worked on a research study about cyber bullying together. She is the main author, of course, but is helping me see the process by letting me be a co-author. It was a good, qualitative study. The peer reviewers shredded it quite unprofessionally. They had a huge problem with us examining sexuality and how those with an alternative sexual preference identified a much higher level of bullying in their life. But nothing about the actual study or results itself. My co-author has been published many times and was just baffled on what the reviewers were upset about. But like was said this week, people don’t want you to come in and rock the boat with something that changes what they have been saying. We challenged their power structure in some way we weren’t aware of.

So far, the readings and class times have been giving me a distaste of empirical methods. Not that I hate them, but I just think too many people put too much stock in numbers. They just tell us likelihoods when they are generalized, not absolutes. But people read these studies and then spew all over Facebook how some study says vaccines cause autism, or whatever the case may be.

So I am getting a better understanding of Incommensurability now, but even a better picture of how it relates to research paradigms. I’m guessing that there are some brutal verbal brawls out there between people who sit heavily in one camp or the other. At some point, I have to wonder what good any research is. If each study has to be from only one paradigm, but reality shows us that all are operating at once – why should I bother? Other than I guess if I get a job at doing it someday. If there can’t be a research paradigm out there that mixes all three like reality, then what are we doing? But, who am I kidding – I like to look at this kind of stuff even when I disagree with it. And it does help us get closer to something useful. Sometimes.

The Other and the problem of other minds. Man, I can’t wait to mess with someone’s head the next time I see a crazy Facebook argument. Even though Habermas is probably not into Facebook, I wonder what he would say about all of that. I bet he could really cause some heads to spin. But even though I can’t see into people’s heads, I think it will be fun to take different arguments that people throw all over the place and see which paradigm that particular statement fits into.

I have been trying to do some research on this deformation of communication that was brought up. That would be fascinating to look at how that is affecting communication in our global age – when people are bringing in everything from new words made up yesterday on Twitter to ancient translations of Bible verses to back up their arguments. But – I don’t seem to be able to find much with just some basic searches. That will have to be something to dive deeper into when time allows.

Truth, facts, reality, fiction. Interesting thoughts to consider. I think that these are topics we can ultimately argue in circles about forever. You can say there are no absolutes, but that statement is an absolute statement itself, and in order to be true it has to be false. You can say there is no truth, but we know that there are things that are not true and have never been – like a flat earth – so if there are some things that were never “truth”, are there things that can be “truth”? Maybe we don’t know enough about Science yet to be at a point where we can examine actual absolute truths. Or maybe we are there and that is proof in and of itself. Interesting concepts to ponder that were brought up in the last class meeting.

What we do have to lean on is social agreements, and that is what I am beginning to understand is what Habermas and Bernstein are dissecting. Some of the readings from the upcoming week are also helping me to dissect these thoughts as well. I think I really need to see how these issues affect learning and research in a practical way. I know that Habermas is using several concrete “normal” examples, but it is really more of a sentence or two and then a few paragraphs of hacked translation. So seeing it pulled apart and reassembled in the context of a study really helps.

Of course, pondering all of this helps to consider the problems set forth by Prawat & Floden in their article. I’m still not sure which of the three perspectives that they set forth that constructivists have to take I really fall into. I think in reality I don’t like to be too extreme or one sided on many of these philosophical ideals – I really like to take hybrid or blended approaches to most issues.  Truth is rarely ever black and white. But Prawat & Floden wrote as if a hybrid approach was impossible. I still doubt that, but will see what time reveals.

I think I am finally understanding the relationship between Clark and Kozma. So to whoever has to grade my last two minor arguments, if you are reading this, I have to apologize for how much they suck. When I read the prompt about Clark and Kozma, I assumed there had to be a disagreement between the two and went looking for it. I had trouble finding it, but I was traveling and had limited time and all of that and decided to ignore my gut feeling. So, now I understand that Clark was not as much anti-media as he was pro-method and wanted to focus more on how concepts are taught with different tools rather than the tools themselves they are taught with. Kozma was adding a clarification to expand on Clark’s ideas by saying that there was an unnecessary division between method and media in Clark’s article.

I also thought that I heard we were only supposed to use the provided articles for sources. Not sure where I heard that, but I tried to stick with that and found that it is impossible to prove points without the ability to go to as many sources as needed. In a way, it is a relief to find out that we can use other sources because this will make it easier for me to support a position. It will be more work overall, but that work will produce better arguments in the end.

So now I am looking at a new way to frame my discussion about online learning, ed tech, etc. We can’t make people learn faster or better, but we can improve the affordances surrounding learning to improve the overall experience. I typically think that way already, but now need to watch the way I write and talk about these concepts to make sure I don’t give the impression that I think there are ways to make people learn better.

Ultimately, that would also re-frame the Bonner article in my mind to not be a way to use cognitive theory to improve learning, but a way to allow for different affordances that different learners might need. I’m not sure what that will exactly mean for the “learner as a dirty slate” vs the “learner as a clean slate” part of Bonner’s examination, but I still lean towards the dirty slate side as of right now.