Lessons from a Plastic Eggplant: The Importance of Open Access in Education

^{"When you decline to create or curate a culture in your spaces, you're responsible for what spawns in the vacuum." -Leigh Alexander, 2014} 

So this quote, used in a pretty powerful taped lecture by Dr. Alec Couros*, is actually from an article on a Gamer website. At first, when I tracked down the original source, it made me chuckle. A world-famous educator referencing a quote as profound and meaningful... from a "video game culture writer" (as Alexander calls himself). But I think this clash-turned-synthesis of two very different worlds illustrates at a very basic level exactly what "open learning" is. It is using the vast world of knowledge available to us to connect and build our own knowledge... and then, ideally, eventually contributing our own ideas in return. 

* Here's a link to Dr. Couros' blog... I couldn't get the lecture itself to hyperlink.

As I am writing this, I am holed up in the basement, pretending not to exist. I snuck down here to do homework during my little one's nap and my mother is now graciously watching her tear the house apart, I'm sure. I have to hide because Lucy will want my attention.  All of it.  She doesn't care whether I get a good grade or obtain some greater insight into my journey to being an art teacher. Lucy just wants me to be a willing 'dinner guest' in her tiny playhouse, where she will hand me plastic fruit and I will dramatically 'eat' it and exclaim :Yum! Thank you!" Sometimes, she hands me a tiny purple eggplant (which is, oddly, the same size as the plastic strawberry - where is your sense of scale, toy people!?) and just before I take it, she changes her mind and yells "Mine!!"  I am now forbidden to 'eat' it.  And this is hysterical to her... it becomes a game where I plead for the eggplant (I don't even like eggplant!) and she runs out of the tiny house, clutching her plastic prize and shrieking "NOooo!! MINE!!!" 

Now, is my toddler greedy? Perhaps. But what toddler isn't a little egocentric?  Lucy is convinced we are all here to care for and entertain her. She is the center of the universe.  And there's no use arguing against this notion until she is ready to accept it.  

She hasn't developed what I learned in my Educational Psychology class is called "theory of mind".  Essentially, theory of mind is the ability to understand that others may have different feelings, beliefs, knowledge, intentions, or perspectives different from your own. It typically evolves between early infancy through about age 5, when a child truly grasps that others think differently. And, as we grow and learn and observe... we must devise methods to question the validity of other's thinking, especially in an academic sense: What is their motive? What might their bias be? Who might disagree with this point of view? What do I think about it?  I guess, in this rapidly changing world of open learning and infinite resources to draw from, as educators it is our job to facilitate and direct this curiosity... both for our students and for ourselves - and colleagues, for that matter! 

After all in David Wiley's TED TALK he points out "If there is no sharing, there is no education."  We cannot be toddlers, possessive of our work or our insights - greedily running down the hallway screaming "Mine! Mine! Mine!" Instead, our teacher battle cry should be "Ours! Ours! Ours!".  There's a colloquialism that refers to certain truths being "common knowledge" - i.e. the sky is blue, George Washington was the first president of the US... But why can't everything - or at least more things - be "Common Knowledge?" Or at least the goal of education could be to work towards that lofty ambition.  Take Wikipedia, for example. It is the epitome of "participatory culture".  In fact, there's even a wiki for participatory culture, in which it states:

Social and participatory media allow for—and, indeed, call for—a shift in how we approach teaching and learning in the classroom. The increased availability of the Internet in classrooms allows for greater access to information. For example, it is no longer necessary for relevant knowledge to be contained in some combination of the teacher and textbooks; today, knowledge can be more de-centralized and made available for all learners to access. The teacher, then, can help facilitate efficient and effective means of accessing, interpreting, and making use of that knowledge.

The very premise of Wikipedia is both awesome and terrifying.  If anyone can edit it, then how is a discerning reader supposed to trust the information it presents?  I remember being cautioned against relying on Wikipedia as a reliable source for research papers in school. But the more I read, the less skeptical I am... In fact, I found a really good article that explains the process of creating and maintaining a wiki: How Wikis Work

If you don't like what is out there as consumable internet literature as it pertains to your given subject matter, is complaining about it going to fix anything? Who knows... You could comment after a distressing - or even incorrect - article.There is an enabling anonymity online.  One that emboldens us to put thoughts out there that we may otherwise keep to ourselves out of politeness. But often others have enough control to delete your competing viewpoint. And does expressing unhappiness with content really change anything? Or are you just another faceless dissenter?  

Perhaps our jobs as educators is to fill the "vacuum within our spaces"...  to provide meaningful content that furthers others' understanding of the subject matter we wish to teach - or, if that seems too daunting, to at least attempt to flush out errors or unproven statements of fact and correct them - or, at the very, very least, learn where the most reliable sources are and how to direct your students to them!  After all, we have more technology at our finger tips than any generation before us. Think about it...

According to FlightGlobal (“Serious About Aviation”), the Apollo Guidance Computer, or AGC, had just 64KB of memory and only 0.043 MHz of processing power. That was enormous at the time, of course, but compare those specs with those of modern netbooks—the pint-sized laptops that are considered underpowered by today’s computing standards.

The typical netbook has over 100 GB of capacity – more than a million times that of the computer on which NASA staked an historic mission and the lives of three astronauts. And a netbook’s 1.6GHz processor is several thousand times faster than that of 1969’s AGC.* 

So, we have these amazing machines.  What we choose to do with them is up to us.  Take this screenshot from that lecture I referenced at the beginning of this blog: 

Using this device "capable of accessing the entirely of information known to man" to do something other than look at cat pictures...can we really replace the original model of teaching? A model "In which a single, presumably omniscient teacher explicitly tells or shows presumably unknowing learners something they presumably know nothing about"* and textbooks - which can become outdated by the time they are finally written, edited, published, and disseminated - are the sources of knowledge? Of course we can! I love the idea of Open Education Resources!  Check out this video!

For my Content Literacy class this week I am supposed to take a textbook from my subject area and critique it.  Literally, the only example available in my college library is a second grade "Art Connections" book written in 1998.  Granted, using textbooks for art education is not exactly common practice - it's more of a learn by doing sort of activity.  But, as I move down the list of things I'm supposed to critique, I can't help but think "Good Lord, if this book were what I had to rely on to help educate my students, we'd all be totally screwed!"  Thank goodness I will be teaching in an era where there are blogs by creative art teachers to spark ideas, or how-to videos on YouTube for a project I may not totally know how to do but want my students to experience it, or awesome resources for art history and museum collections where we can view masterpieces instead of cat videos!

If we use this new world of technology responsibly, it will be an asset in this evolving definition of education. Learn and give... Share and cultivate... Fill the vacuum and expand your own "theory of mind"... Do not cling to your proverbial eggplant and run screaming "Mine! Mine! Mine!"  There's a whole, unlimited grocery store out there - with enough for everyone! Go, use this wonderful technology, and make a salad or something else delicious!  Just choose wisely, not everything available is healthy.  And sometimes it's mislabeled or past its expiration date. Make good choices and you'll make a difference in everyone's life that you invite to eat at your table.  

Happy shopping, everyone!