The problem with peers

The digital revolution favours peer orientation, and that’s a problem.  This is a conclusion from Dr. Gordon Neufeld, a Vancouver psychologist.

Neufeld’s concern is a bit different from many one hears.  It’s the peer part that he sees as a key element for what is going wrong.

He is starting from the base that “attachment” is the key psychological mechanism.  Healthy development depends on this attachment being inter-generational, providing the basis for developing of a positive adult identity.

 

Access to the technology has rapidly expanded to the point that nearly all adolescents are connected.  The way they use the technology is for linking with others—peer connections.  Adolescents don’t go online so much for information as for attachment, many being attached electronically for most of their waking hours, seeking the assurance that they belong.

Neufeld quotes the journal Pediatrics saying “a large part of this generation’s social and emotional development is occurring while on the Internet and on cell phones.”  This online relationship is with their peers, not their parents or other adults.  As a psychologist, he identifies that “parenting is not a set of skills and behaviors, but above all is a relationship.”  That relationship does not grow if the relationships are nearly entirely with peers.

This is not a phenomenon only in the rich societies where the technology has become ubiquitous.  A study of the uses of computers in Paraguay found that what students did with the netbook-type computers they were given was to play games, watch video and gossip with friends.  The project was based on an assumption that education would be the primary use.

Neufeld speculates on a “what if”?

“I often wonder what would have happened if the digital revolution had occurred before peer orientation took hold, but after increasing mobility, job scarcity and high divorce rates had separated us from those we love.  Without peer orientation perhaps a culture would have evolved to digitally connect children to their parents and teachers, uncles and aunts, grandmothers and grandfathers. Parents may be reading bedtime stories to their children through these digital tools when away from home; teachers and students creating a context of connection to facilitate learning; grandparents connecting with their grandchildren when far away.”

Of course, some of that does happen for some children, but these are not the dominant online relationships.

Dr. Neufeld is co-author with Dr. Gabor Mate of the book, Hold on to Your Kids.

Do we want our students to be workers for Google?

Google is an integrated platform of digital tools for education

While Pearson creates content and makes profits from intellectual property and education services, Google provides online spaces and apps with its "Google Education Apps."  These provide platforms for digital educational activity, without the corporation taking any direct role in the content that is developed or how it is used educationally.  The Google terms of service provide that "your institution (or students, faculty and staff) are the sole owners of your data."  (Google, 2014)

What Google calls the "core apps" offered to education are the same that are generally available--Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Groups, Google Sites and an Apps Marketplace.   Google claims that Google Apps for Education are used in 145 countries.

The business model is essentially for Google to be the platform for online activity and using the data collected in that process to target ads to users.  Google makes a commitment not to push advertising on student use of the tools.  However, profit potential exists in the integration of children into its overall service  which produces revenue in the longer term as students continue to use the tools introduced through the education apps and have their work stored in the Google cloud. 

The Apps Marketplace creates revenue from Google-developed apps and others integrated with the Google platform, but developed by third parties.  Google Play for Education offers ebooks (at a cost), textbooks and novels and non-fiction.  Students can read on a Chromebook or an Android tablet--additional sources of revenue.

The content is all stored in the cloud, so a school or district does not have to provide tools or workspaces for students, but the student uses the same tools and content where ever they have access to the web.

Google expands its reach with unpaid teachers

Part of the diffusion strategy is a professional development program.  Google offers a step-by-step planning guide for the creation of a district or school plan for implementing Google education apps.  It offers an apps training centre and uses a train the trainer model with the "Google Apps Education Certified Trainer" program and Google Apps School Guides.  While Google provides the online framework for professional development, the actual work is carried out by the educators without any cost to Google.  (Google, 2014)

Google provides management tools to teachers that allow control of access to students and the exclusion of others who might want to see what the students are doing.  This provides a level of security for student use, although the revelations about the NSA spying on masses of data indicate the degree to which belief in privacy is wishful thinking. And, of course, Google itself knows a great deal about you from every time you do a search, use gmail, Google maps, Google alerts, Google phonebook,etc., etc., etc.

(However, at least one Canadian province, British Columbia, has privacy laws which prohibit personal data from being stored on the cloud because of the US laws that allow for government agencies to access personal data without a requirement to inform the person whose data has been accessed.  This means that use of Google services by students is outside the law, but still common.)

We are all unpaid workers in the gift economy

Google's overall strategy, and its education strategy, is to depend on the 'gift' economy and third party developers.  A platform is only of value if there is content that is of interest to potential users or a place to share one's own ideas and content with others who might be interested.  Google apps are of use because of the content that can be accessed, but Google does not have to provide any of the labour involved in the creation of content.  It is able to provide access to massive online content with very few employees or payments to outside content providers.

Wang and Ames critique " information determinism" that "is tied to...the belief that free and open access to information can create real social change."  The free information frame means that "anyone who leaves any information trace becomes a worker (albeit unpaid) for these companies, since that data can be monetized through advertising and other means."  (Wang and Ames, 2010)

References:

Davis, M.  (2013). "Ed. Companies Exert Public-Policy Influence."  Downloaded April 4, 2013 from http://bit.ly/1cgSNzf

Google.  (2014).  "A technology platform schools can trust." www.google.ca/apps/intl/en/edu/privacy.html.  Downloaded January 2, 2014.

 Google.  (2014). "Guide to Going Google."  Downloaded from https://sites. google.com/a/googleapps.com/k-12-guide-to-going-google/ January 2, 2014

Wang, T. and Ames, M.  "Global Discourses of Information:  Questioning the Free Information Regime."  Downloaded February 8, 2014 from https://webfiles.uci.edu/mgames/research/ubicomp2010-wang_ames_information.pdf

Pearson--a digital hydra in education

Pearson is the vertically integrated corporate 'answer' to every educational need

Pearson is a UK-based company, self described as the "world's leading learning company."  Its owner is the company that publishes the Economist, a newsmagazine aimed at a transnational corporate audience.  Pearson was also the publisher of Penguin books until it spun off Penguin to merge to another major book trade publisher.  Pearson's strategy now is to concentrate on education as its source of income and profits.

The biggest corporate players in education before the digital age were textbook publishers.  The creation of ebooks and the use of online information sources have dramatically reduced the production of textbooks as well as encyclopaedias.  Britannica has stopped printing its encyclopaedia and most textbook publishers have seen rapid declines in revenues from that source.

Pearson has been the most successful of the former textbook publishers to develop a revenue stream from digital sources, although others are going digital and merging with other companies.  Pearson has achieved growth through diversification and its revenue growth has been supported by moving into what it calls "emerging markets," particularly in Latin America.  Pearson expands its penetration into edtech by buying  up both established companies and supports potential developments through its edtech "accelerator program."

The Hydra nature of digital Pearson

Pearson has a product for every stage of the education process, building on and expanding the "harmonization" and globalization of education.  Pearson talks about the "education industry;"  others call it the "education-industrial complex," drawing on warnings about the influence of the military-industrial complex.

*Curriculum and standards--the Pearson Foundation played a role with the Gates Foundation in the creation of the Common Core Curriculum being imposed in many states in the U.S.  The non-profit Pearson Foundation was fined $7.7 million in New York for using Foundation funds to create resources sold by the Pearson corporation.

*Courses for the Common Core Curriculum--the Pearson Foundation, in conjunction with the Gates Foundation, created several online K-12 courses offered on a free basis.  These, however, lead to another set of courses that are offered for sale by the Pearson Corporation

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*Digital resources--it continues to publish hardcover textbooks for part of the market, but has expanded to  etextbooks and a wide range of other digital teaching resources.   Pearson is the largest digital content provider for education.

*Sharing resources developed by teachers at no cost--Pearson provides an "open source" learning management system, "OpenClass," where teachers can post the courses and resources they have developed, providing content for Pearson at no cost for development of development of the resources. 

*Testing--it has developed standardized tests for state curriculum in the past and now for multiple states which have adopted the U.S. Common Core Curriculum.

*Test preparation--"MyLab" provides digital preparation for standardized tests, many of which are  produced by Pearson.

*Test cheats--New York has a contract with Pearson to look for irregularities in test results.

*Operation of schools--Pearson is investing 10 million in private schools in the "developing world" as well as Charter schools.

*Student Information Systems--PowerSchool, the Pearson student information system,  is used in many jurisdictions to hold information on students--demographic data, grades, test results, information on behavior and more.  It provides a dashboard for decision-makers using the data collected.

*Alternative high school examination--it offers a new test to be used in the US as a way of getting high school equivalency for those who have dropped out of attending school or have failed required courses for graduation.

*Teacher licensing test--Pearson, along with Stanford University,  has developed a Teacher Performance Assessment  to be used by teacher education institutions to identify those who should be allowed to become teachers.  In the United Kingdom, it offers "Pearson's Teacher Training and Certification Program."

*PISA--Pearson has a contract with the OECD to produce and administer the next international PISA examination with a focus on science in2015 as a computer-based exam.

 

*Recommendations for education reform--though its Economist  'intelligence reports' it gives advice to countries and school authorities on education policy based on PISA and other data--recommendations on curriculum, resources, student data, teacher education and the like.

 

This is a closed feedback loop--Pearson has a product for every stage of the education process with information systems that can make recommendations to Pearson for what it should develop or purchase and to make sales pitches disguised as recommendations to school authorities on content and policies.

[Marvel comics says of their Hydra that "Hydra is a world-wide subversive organization dedicated to global domination."]

Pearson acts as a quasi-government agency

As a company owned by shareholders, Pearson must place emphasis on profits as its primary objective.  In early 2014, when revenues were less than projected, the value of shares dropped significantly over night.  The primary motivation of a corporation in the "education industry" must be to make profits, not to engage in philosophical discussion of what a society wants from its education system and how it should be organized to meet social objectives.

Pearson doesn't just wait for customers to come to it.  According to Michelle Davis writing in Education Week, "Pearson Education has spent more than $6 million over the past decade lobbying at the federal level (in the U.S.)."  (Davis, 2013)

Diane Ravitch has commented that "Pearson is overstepping the bounds of the role of a profit-making business.  The corporation is acting as a quasi-government agency in several instances, but it is not a quasi-government agency:  it is a business that sells products and services.  What part of the field of education does Pearson not manage?." (Mansell, 2012)

References:

Davis, M.  (2013). "Ed. Companies Exert Public-Policy Influence."  Downloaded April 4, 2013 from http://bit.ly/1cgSNzf

Gutstein, D.  (2012).  "Pearson's plan to control education."  Downloaded February 7, 2014 from http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Issues/Privatization/PearsonGutsteinReport.pdf

Mansell, W.  (2012).  "Should Pearson, a giant multinational, be influencing our education policy?"  Downloaded July 23, 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jul/16/pearson-multinational-influence-education-policy

Corporations in education: Pearson and Google

Corporate intrusion into education through technology:  Pearson and Google

Big corporate players are rightly convinced that technology use in education is only going to grow--and this has potential for big profits.  Genuine applications of technology could expand opportunities for educational development and make education more accessible for everyone.  Technology also offers significant symbolic value in giving a message that education is in tune with a nation's participation in the global economy.

However, the challenge for corporations within the capitalist system is to position themselves to make potential profits in the rapidly evolving environment of digital education.  Meeting social objectives of equity and open participation do not drive corporate decisions, unless they can be framed to meet profit objectives.

Information and Communications technologies are a Trojan Horse for privatization and marketization of education.

Pearson and Google are the two of the largest players in the race for profits from education.  However, they represent two very different strategies for defining their role in the contest:  Pearson as a vertically integrated, trans-national corporation focused on selling content and services;  Google as a platform that provides service to teachers and students through a range of "education apps," some for "free" and others managed on a fee paying basis for education institutions, school districts or schools.

In looking at individual aspects of the educational offering of both Pearson and Google, they may seen benign or even positive.  However, with an examination of the breadth of what is offered by both, it is obvious that they can have an excessive influence on education.  It is the interaction and inter-relationship of the different elements of their businesses that provide them with the power to dominate in educational decisions.  Rather than collective decision-making about education through public processes, decisions about what should be done and what tools exist are driven by private interests through a relentless search for profits.

Two further posts will provide details of the corporate strategies of Pearson and of Google

Technology is globalizing and colonizing

FECODE, the teachers’ union in Colombia, sponsored six seminars in different cities in Colombia in November 2013, where they asked me to talk about technology, education and critical pedagogy.  Participants in the seminar wrote out questions for discussion following my presentations.  When question time ran out, I agreed to respond to the other questions in writing.  I have combined questions into some specific themes, with this being the third of three.

What actions are possible in responding to technology that is globalizing and colonizing?

ICTs as they have been developed and disbursed are instruments that serve the interests of neo-liberal, global capitalism.

Governments everywhere are driven to want  students to become workers in a global economy. Students using ICTs are seen to be a key component in a global race and thus, the schools are pressed to accommodate these tools into the classroom, regardless of lack of adequate models or proven results.

ICTs have largely been developed in North America and Europe with much of the production of the hardware done in Asia.  These reflect the interests, values and perspectives of the places they have been developed.

All technologies have built into them a social order, according to Langdon Winner.  Marshall McLuhan said that "we shape our technologies, and then our technologies shape us."

For much of the world, there has been no opportunity to shape the technology, but the technology has been disseminated in ways that shape their education system and society.  That has been the colonizing factor of the development of ICTs as they impose new conditions and cultural patterns as a form of imperialism.

So what can be done about the situation? 

It may be that inequality, individualist isolation, cultural damage and economic dependency that result from the global capitalist system could be reversed by abandoning the system and creating an alternative.  In the absence of such a revolutionary change, one strategy may be to find the cracks in the system where it is possible to operate on an alternative set of values--social solidarity, collective action and diversity in cultural development and practices. 

Critical pedagogy and alternative tools

People acting together can build alternatives.  Critical pedagogy in relation to information and communications technology has to make visible to teachers and students the submerged structures  and the implicit social and political meaning embedded within the technology.   Having alternative ways of seeing patterns is an important aspect of critical understanding and creation of alternative products.

In the area of information and communications technology in education, some concrete possibilities include:

Develop teaching resources and approaches that encourage a critical examination by teachers and students of the power relations that are implicit in the technology--its design, patterns of ownership and implicit social relations;

Use open source, free software instead of software produced by Microsoft and other commercial products;

Use online, open journals with free access for publication of research and commentary, rather than academic journals that are in hard copy, produced in the north and with closed editorial control;

Create online textbooks that incorporate appropriate values and perspectives and use these in place of commercially produced textbooks;

Organize groups of teachers working collaboratively to produce teaching materials that are made available electronically;

Maintain an accessible database of free teaching materials developed and shared by teachers.

Even if these are not widely adopted, the existence of alternatives sends an important message that the major global, corporate businesses that have identified Latin America as their new market opportunity (such as the Pearson Corporation, Apple or Microsoft) are not the only approach to utilize information and communications technology in education.

Administration and testing drive technology in education

FECODE, the teachers’ union in Colombia, sponsored six seminars in different cities in Colombia in November 2013, where they asked me to talk about technology, education and critical pedagogy.  Participants in the seminar wrote out questions for discussion following my presentations.  When question time ran out, I agreed to respond to the other questions in writing.  I have combined questions into some specific themes, with this being the second of three.

Will the introduction of new technologies replace and reduce the number of teachers?

It is the dream of some policy-makers to replace teachers with computers.  They may think that pre-programmed computers can replace teachers.  Or they may think that online learning will allow a teacher to teach many more students than in a face-to-face classroom. 

While programmed learning may be effective for some skills, a rich educational experience for children and youth still requires human interaction, even if it is communication through ICT.  Even for adults, the experience of mass education through MOOCs, a current form of applying technology to education for adults.  MOOCs are Massive Online Open Courses that can have tens of thousands of people signed up, but few who finish the course.  For many students as well as adults, the promise of cheaper mass education has not been fulfilled. 

Little comparative research has been done on the efficacy of online learning using the most current technologies--and the technology and programs change so fast that it is difficult to do this kind of research beyond anecdotes of how students and teachers feel about specific experiences.

The reality of computer use in education is that the "essential" uses are turning out to be administrative and for student testing, not for the learning process.  The new core curriculum in the United States is designed to have students taking tests online, so computers have to be provided to the students.  One school district alone, that of Los Angeles in California, is spending $1 billion to provide a tablet for every student.  These large expenditures are being  duplicated in many other places, as well. 

Education is seen by venture capital as having the potential for future profits.  Finding ways of privatizing education and making profits is a major motive for much of the investment in the creation of new education technology uses.

Addressing technology inequalities and gaps

FECODE, the teachers’ union in Colombia, sponsored six seminars in different cities in Colombia in November 2013, where they asked me to talk about technology, education and critical pedagogy.  Participants in the seminar wrote out questions for discussion following my presentations.  When question time ran out, I agreed to respond to the other questions in writing.  I have combined questions into some specific themes, with this being the first of three.

New information and communications technologies (ICT) have the effect of increasing already existing social and educational gaps.  What can be done about these inequalities and gaps?

Several types of gaps were identified in different questions:  social class differences between students who have access to ICTs and those who do not; gaps in access between students who live in the cities and those in rural areas where they are without any access to the technology;  differences between teachers and students.

Some teachers oppose any introduction of the new technologies into classrooms.  Many good reasons exist for being critical and skeptical about positive impact on education.

 

What, if any, are effective uses of the technology in learning? What is the impact on health as students spend time on the screen rather than in physical activity? What is the impact of individualist rather than collective relationships?

Despite these  legitimate questions, we cannot stop the inclusion of ICTs in education.  Nor should we.  They are too attractive and are getting more and more a part of the lived social experience of many of our students.  We cannot go back, but we must influence the direction forward if new technologies in education are not to increase already existing social inequities.

Social inequality is increased

Research evidence from the OECD PISA exam results shows that the most effective use of the technology is learned not in the classroom, but by students with access to the technology at home.  These students have more comfort with the technology than students who only have access at school. 

The equity issues in technology can only be effectively addressed by creating  more equity in society as a whole.  However, the reality is that in countries of both the north and the south, societies are becoming more unequal.  Equity in access to the technology is a part of the larger social problem of inequality.  Some steps can be taken, though, to make improvements by policies that give preference to the poor in social investments in technology. 

Special attention has to be given to students in rural areas if they are to have access to the technology.  As an example of what is possible, in Cuba schools that do not have electricity are set up with solar panels to produce the electricity needed for technology.  Again, equity demands that preference be given to providing access to those who are marginalized.

Generational gaps

A generational gap is recognized across societies.  A common mistake that many governments have made is to give the technology to students, but not the teachers.  It should not take any more than common sense to know that if you want teachers to integrate technology into their teaching practice, you give computers to teachers and encourage them to use them to assist in their teaching.  Instead, governments follow policies like giving tablets to students, but loans to teachers to buy their own computers.

The technology is attractive to many students and they may feel more comfortable using them.  However, the experience reported from many of the experiences is that the students use them to play games, watch movies and gossip with other students.

Critical pedagogies and ICTs

Even where teachers and students all have access to ICTs, effective use in the educational process is still very much a work in progress.  Many of the uses in education are based on individualist notions of "personalization" and  pre-programmed "assistive technologies."  Uses of technology have built in values, usually invisible and unexamined, that become an influence in the construction of values in our students.

A central role for critical pedagogy is to have teachers working together to develop pedagogical approaches based on socio-cultural, critical theories such as from Vygotsky's work, in contrast to the dominant individualist pedagogies.

  

Pedagogical circles of teachers doing collective, reflective research on their practice could be one method of teacher development of critical pedagogies in teaching with ICTs.