Resist, Rebel, Revolt!

I saw this sticker at work today, slapped on the front wall of one of the classrooms. Someone has tried to peel it off, but with little apparent effort to fully remove it. I figure another student wanted to try to keep it, but it simply tore instead.

I chuckled when I saw this. It's more funny than serious, and has the feel of a 1950s advertisement for a cola. You know the sort of thing - a healthy, well behaved lad, probably called Johnny Goodboy, winking and telling us how much he enjoys it. It's a lovely kitschy mash with a message that subverts the image.

Of course I took a photo. That's something I do. But it got me thinking in light of last week's readings, and then it took on a much deeper meaning and message for me.

Ah yes, thinking back to my undergraduate years now, studying literature and remembering Roland Barthes mentioned in passing. No, I didn't read any of his work, but I recall his ideas (in very basic terms) that the author's intent has little value, and the reader bring their experience, understanding, knowledge and worldview to the text - that is the reader defines the meaning.

So for me this sticker has taken on a new meaning. As educators we need to resist, rebel and revolt against the inertia of traditional education and teaching. Change management is difficult, and teachers are notoriously resistant to change. Even adventurous teachers are hesitant to radically change their methods of delivery. This can be for a number of reasons, not least school policies, costs, time and peer pressure.

Revolution doesn't always have to be violent, but by its definition it needs to be sudden or rapid. And when governments talk of revolutionary changes to education policy and practice, you can rest assured they generally aren't.

Oh, and Happy Halloween.

Learning Styles and Notetaking.

I've done a lot of professional development over the years. I've received a lot of handouts, and taken a lot of notes. And yet the number of times I've either re-reread those notes, or even skim reviewed them, can be counted on one hand. And those times were when I was preparing for a job interview and the training was directly relevant. The last time I moved house almost all went into the recycling bin, and I haven't missed them once.

Of course I made notes when I was studying, both in my undergraduate and my postgraduate, and used them to prepare for assessment but even then, for the most part, I found them boring to review.

There was one exception. One module I undertook where my study and research notes had to be submitted and assessed. I worked hard on my research, and those notes were tidy, organised and diverse. I submitted three exercise books of  notes, comments, cartoons, diagrams, illustrations and quotes. Some were handwritten while some were printed.  It was a work of art, and I received 28 out of a possible 30.

It's the one set of notes I kept and actually enjoy still skimming through from time to time.

And with that in mind, along with my years of teaching experience and my understanding of learning styles, I have commenced making my notes in a similar fashion this time.

I am a visual learner with some degree of creativity, so I cannot stand too much text on a double page. It has to be broken up somehow, whether by including computer-printed sections, cartoon, images, table or even simply colour. Everything has to be relevant and have a reason, not just included because it looks more appealing to me.

So far, so good.

I enjoy spending that little bit longer to make my notes interesting and enjoyable to me. I find that I not only retain more as I'm creating them, but I am much happier to revisit them.

Imagine My Delight.

Time to get serious.

I was late signing up for this programme, and so now I'm a little late in engaging with it. I will have to do most of my study on the weekends, and so I'm commencing my first week tasks a week late, during the second week.

I didn't think this would concern me too much, as I am an efficient worker and a fast learner, and I am committed to undertaking this programme properly. Even though I was nervous and a little worried - after all my last distance learning experience was pretty awful and I wasn't too sure on the required workload I would encounter this time around.

Imagine my delight when I opened my first week's tasks and was instructed to watch an episode of The Prisoner. My wife heard my howl of laughter from a couple of rooms away, and I had great joy in telling her I wasn't just watching TV, I was studying.

It's been a couple of years since I last saw this series, but it is a longtime favourite of mine. Even though I've seen it a few times, it was wonderful to watch it again. I did the pre-reading tasks and watched it with different eyes. And then I reflected, wrote my notes and answered the guiding questions I had been given.

This episode was The General, in which all citizens of the Village are able to undertake a three year University level qualification in three minutes through a breakthrough scientific method called Speedlearn, in which they watch TV and are fed studies through psychedelic/hypnotic images and music. Of course they all gain the knowledge, and can repeat facts parrot-fashion, but all have the same information - even the same knowledge.

One of my first thoughts connected this to the rote-learning scenes in Pink Floyd's The Wall. Right in the middle of Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), the young boy is ridiculed by his teacher for being creative and writing poetry, before they return to reciting the times table.

Everyone is surely familiar with this son's refrain of We Don't Need No Education, We Don't Need No Thought Control. And at first it sounds like a nice little throwaway, anti-establishment slogan. But that's not what Roger Waters was referring to. He has been quoted as saying it's about bad education, about the strict education he encountered that stifled creativity and suppressed and stifled rather than inspired.

So I was thrilled when it was mentioned in the post-viewing notes.

Some other loose connections I made. If these were mapped, it would result in more of a rhizome than a mindmap:

• Nen No Natsu Yasumi (1999) - A Japanese film of four boys (played by girls) who stay at school over the summer and do all their learning via computer screens. I really need to watch this one again as I'm not sure whether the connection is anything more than the computer learning.

• The Truman Show - The movie directed by Peter Weir, in which all the residents are actors and Truman doesn't know he's on TV. Is this like the Village in the Prisoner? Are the others all residents or are they actors?

• Baggy Trousers - a song by Madness. It only relates in as much as the memories they have of school is not the education itself, but the time messing around with their mates.

• 1984 - Novel by George Orwell, in which Winston is observed and controlled and educated with propaganda through a big screen.

• Frankenstein - Novel by Mary Shelley. Who is the real monster here? The Professor or the General?

• The Penultimate Truth - A novel by Philip K Dick, also his short story The Mold of Yancy, in which a leader appears on TV in benevolent fireside chats to guide and control his population.

Nen No Natsu Yasumi

As I said, loose connections I noted while watching. Now for some thoughts I had about the show in general.

• It's much more Brechtian than I had previously considered. None of the characters are named, and many are simply given titles which reflect their job or role.

• Even #6 never mentions his name. He continues to insist he is not a number, and that he is a free man, but he never ever gives his own name. Does he even know it anymore, or is it darker than that?

• Why is #6 the only one who is unhappy there. OK, a few people try to escape throughout the series, but it seems to be more of a plot device than open rebellion. Why are there no escape committees, etc. Are the others really happy there, or are they actors fulfilling a role?

• Is the Professor for or against the General? He developed the system and at times seems proud of his work, but then condemns it. Is he truly under duress, is it drugs and therapy, or is he torn between the horror of what he's building and the lust for scientific advancement.

•  Was he and his wife encouraged to come to the Village with the promise of artistic/scientific freedom but is now being menaced or blackmailed into doing the dirty work with his creation?

• The symbiotic duality of the General and the Professor. Good vs Evil, Victim and perpetrator, Power vs powerlessness.

• Why does the population of the Village need this education? Is it an indoctrination experiment for them general public? And why doesn't #6 know about it at the beginning while the rest of the Village are already undertaking the course?

• The result of Speedlearn is even more rote than the old -fashioned system of education the Professor is attempting to supersede. They respond word perfectly every time.

• How does the numbering system work? I always thought it was seniority. #2 is obviously higher than #6, yet #12 has been there longer than #6 and is also higher up.

• I thought it was obvious very early that the General was a machine. The Professor said he wanted to destroy it, not kill it.

• The creator of something powerful has trouble retaining control. Who/what is the real monster? Did we learn nothing from Frankenstein? (or, more recently, the Terminator movies?)

Just some vague thoughts I had about this show. And now for the actual educational take-away from viewing this show.

• It is dangerous and unhelpful to presume technology dehumanises society and education. Technology is a tool and a medium. Society and learning is evolving, as are communication and social interaction.

• Can less face-to-face interaction actually bring benefits as well as its advertised negatives?

• Why do we believe everyone is entitled to a University education? Most don't actually need it for the roles they will undertake in life. Like much of life (TV, roads, etc), we've moved to a 'user pays' system of funding. As the percentage of degrees per population increases, is mass tertiary education necessary? Would we be better with other forms of education more suited to our life roles?

• The slogan '100% entry, 100% pass' seems to have a current relevance. We regularly hear tales of student entitlement and of tutors who have difficulties in failing students who have paid premium fees.

• Education is better compared to a gym than a supermarket. (Tutor notes) You don't pay for a finished product but for the resources, support, mentors and trainers, and the environment. The student still needs to supply the motivation and effort.

• How much can a computer actually think and teach? How much is simply regurgitation?

• Why are educational institutions, curriculum and qualifications structured as they are?

• Education should never be about learning and reciting 'facts.' (What is a fact anyway? What is truth?) Education should always be about enquiry, re-positioning your viewpoint, and further enquiry.

Negative Learning.

We've been asked to reflect on a negative learning experience from our past, which reminds me of when I did my undergraduate as a mature-aged student (I was almost 40) and had to write about a teacher who inspired me. I must confess that at the time I really couldn't think of any who inspired me as such. There were a couple who were very good, a few who were good, but none who stood out and would one day be mentioned in any of my memoirs as the reason I went on to other things.  Instead I wrote about a terrible teacher I had who inspired me to not be like him.

My tutor loved it. I got great marks.

I must point out here I am, by nature, a very optimistic person. I'm not some inherently negative, but it was easier to recall a poor teacher than a brilliant one who had engaged me.

But it seems I'm back writing about a negative learning experience.

The major one for me, and it has relevance to my current studies, was a distance/online postgraduate certificate for which I was awarded a scholarship a few years ago.

It was in regards to a discipline which at the time I was not performing in my role at a school, and as such had no practical experience. This course was conducted fully online. Unfortunately this consisted solely of downloading weekly mountains of PDFs and reading them, accompanied by a weekly 'blurb' paragraph from the tutor.

There was a not too active discussion board, for which we later learned any student who posted fewer than 15 posts lost 10% of their marks at the end of the module. This was not advised in advance. We were instructed to buy two very expensive textbooks, which were hardly referred to and, coincidentally, had been co-authored by the tutor.

Assessments were marked against criteria that seemed to be different to those given to us, while other pieces presumed prior knowledge. There had been zero advice, information or training in conducting particular assessments, and then we were marked down on missing elements. Meanwhile the tutor was unavailable and unresponsive to emails.

There was also a disparity in the marking. In the second term we learned we could choose not to undertake the full term of reading, writing, essay writing and assessment by attending the tutor's two day workshop. As this fell in the middle of the term break, I had already booked holidays. Myself and one other student had to undertake the full course, while the other 17 went to this workshop, which ended with two page multiple choice tests being handed out. All very informal, where they sat at the tables, discussed answers and everyone passed above 80%. I felt that was incredibly unjust.

Although I did well enough in this course, it was not a pleasant learning experience. For much of it I felt overwhelmed, struggling to understand theory without discussion or guidance, and even alienated at times. I questioned the relevance of what I was learning, whether I needed to study this and whether I was 'doing things right' in the practical aspects. I have to say this experience put me off further study for many years. And instilled a distrust of online study.

I suppose this experience, like many others (positive and negative) informed my own teaching practice. As a teacher I strived to:

• Ensure assessments are clearly explained and marked against supplied criteria

• Ensure all elements being assessed have been taught

• Ensure inclusion of students. Don't trust they understand without checking

• Make myself available to students

• Prepare and present varied and interesting relevant resources

• Ensure parity in marking (even across differentiated assessments)

• Teach the relevance of what is being taught

• Be open to change

• Self reflect and act on it