In searching for a theoretical framework that can shed light on the direction of my project, I was pointed in the direction of “instrumentalism.” I found this article, “Technology Artifacts, Instrumentalism, and the Humanist Manifestos Toward an Integrated Humanistic Profile for Technical Communication” (Knievel, 2006, p. 65). Knievel covers a lot of territory in his article, outlining the difference between the humanities and humanism. The humanities are academic disciplines and humanism is a philosophy that employs human reasoning. Humanism informs the humanities but they are different, says Knievel. He also speaks to technology, as it was initially employed in education and how its since grown. Knievel speaks to the historical view that humanities and technology were considered opposing ideologies. By the 1970’s, technical communication was becoming a respected area, and universities recognized that students needed to be trained in writing. As the article defines technology tools such as the pencil, pen and paper, the different definitions of technology has changed drastically and continues to evolve.
Reimagining
A colleague and I recently shared our thoughts on teaching English during this monumental shift of Ai use. I had a few laughs as I shared, “and we thought ‘Grammarly’ was bad.” In our classrooms, we are (all) struggling with students using Ai tools, when we’ve asked them not to. We want them to develop their understanding of how to write without the tool. My colleague shared, “All of us are undergoing a paradigm shift especially the humanities and reimagining what are our classrooms look like.” We struggle with the paradox of not wanting our students to “cheat” and use it, with the understanding that they will need literacy in digital form, too. How do we balance these two?
Knievel shares various perspectives on technology through his article, including one that suggests technology must remain outside the human values and can, “actively and insidiously portending its ruin (Brantlinger, 2000; Noble, 1997; Postman, 1992)” (Knievel, 2006, p. 77). In our summer course, we were encouraged to approach opposing ideologies in culture as less of an “either/or” and more of an “and.” Perhaps we can recognize the differences in technology and the humanities, specifically the study of English in our classrooms, and also recognize that technology is not going anywhere. We may consider them part of a permanent, shared culture. “Looking outside the traditional parameters of English studies can help us construct a humanistic ethos for technical communication that better articulates technical communication’s relationship to technology and makes a case not for “spanning” the distance between the cultures of technology and literature and the humanities, respectively, but rather for integrating them” (Knievel, 2006, p. 67).
Another friend shared his analogy of Ai with me last year. He asked, “If you had to chop down a tree, would you use an ax or a chainsaw?” The obvious answer is… “A chainsaw!” Well, of course you would. It’s faster, easier, and much more efficient. But. What if the chainsaw breaks down? Well, then you would need to know how to use the ax. I since then use this analogy with my students. It is our job to teach you how to use BOTH; to teach the comprehension of texts, the pulling out their own ideas, and to share those thoughts in a cohesive, concise and clear way. I want them to know how to use Modern Language Association to cite their evidence and understand that using someone else’s ideas needs to be recognized as work that isn’t their own. I also want them to see the masterful abilities of Ai and prepare them for jobs that will utilize these technologies. It’s a balance.
“In this view, technology becomes the embodiment of an ideology whose most cherished tenet is the advancement of human interests. Rather than being separate from humanist ideology, then, technology is central to it.“
(Knievel, 2006, p. 75)
I don’t believe that educators or the public comprehends the enormity of change that is coming our way in education and the workforce due to Ai and automation. I see a wave of change coming and I want to prepare my students for their future. With any historical change, it’s important to visit the past. I found Knievel’s visit to various theories and perspectives, enriching and also hopeful. Currently, my colleagues rightfully express both hesitancy and interest in these rapid changes to technology. I also feel that polarity in my pedagogy and look to recognize the potential of Ai integration into my classroom with a critical, but hopeful, lens. Knieval suggests that technology cannot exist without humanism, and I would continue this in saying that the humanities can no longer exist without technology. Our English classrooms must adapt to the integration of technology or we will be left behind.
“We would no longer need to rationalize or apologize for our allegiances to the computer, to industry, and to the corporate world. Instead, we would open these arenas for analysis, recognizing them and the values they indicate as ways in which humans have chosen and continue to choose to map their existence. We can proceed then to look at technologies as manifestations and conditioners of values. We can, within English studies, encourage balanced, pragmatic critique with an honest, nonpolemical review of the desirable consequences that emerge from technology rather than participate only in ideologically charged deconstruction that yields no consequential change. Finally, we can participate in developing new humanists who see an integrated world, who combine a critical vision of technology with hope.”
(Knievel, 2006, p. 83)
References:
Knievel, M. (2006). Technology Artifacts, Instrumentalism, and the Humanist Manifestos: Toward an Integrated Humanistic Profile for Technical Communication. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 20(1), 65–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651905281040
“How do we balance the need to protect young learners from the adverse effects of technology while also teaching digital literacy?”
Mariel Miller
…I’m overwhelmed with the ethical dilemma of this situation. It’s a hypocrisy I query with daily; How do I get students to connect with others socially and practice skills off screen, while still balancing the necessity of teaching them invaluable digital literacy skills that will help them acquire a job, succeed and excel at that career, and save themselves valuable time and resources along the way?
My blog today will outline three perspectives:
Human Connection.
Necessity of Digital Literacy Skills –> The Workforce
Soft Skills are Paramount
Kids These Days by Jodi Carrington
Digging Into Human Connection
“There are 800,000 suicides per year. That’s one suicide every 40 seconds.”
“20% of kids ages 12-15 have had suicidal ideations. That means out of your class of 20 students, 4 have a plan. They have a plan.”
Carrington
Yesterday I read to my students from one of my favourite books, “Kids These Days” by Jodi Carrington. I always preface the conversation with my students about how sobering the words will be and that there might be some triggers about suicide. I only read a portion of the book, the part that really hit home for me and I think is most relevant to share with our students today. As the author speaks of her experience in helping students with their mental health, she outlines the staggering growing statistical rate of suicides. The three pages I read to my students start by saying, there is a problem, our babies are killing themselves. Grandparents have always said, “kids these days…” as though there was something wrong with the next generation, but we’ve never had rates like this before. So what’s so different about this generation?
“PROXIMITY.“
Our grandparents grew up in less square footage. They didn’t have a television distracting them from one another. They had shared space, and were forced to resolve conflicts as a result of this small, shared space. This created ease of connection within family dynamics. It created support, communication, resolution of conflicts. Now, we have big houses, and we hide in our bedrooms on our devices, and get a text that dinner is ready.
We NEED connection, and our kids are missing it.
As always, I end the conversation with my students by letting them know they have support at our school. They can talk to me, our counsellors, another teacher they connect with. I also implore them to be more mindful of their device usage over the weekend and explore conversations, eye contact, and connection with their family members and friends.
So why do I think this is important to talk about? I strive to develop the importance of my students to have a balance; a balance of social skills while developing the digital skills necessary to succeed into today’s workforce.
The Necessity of Digital Literacy Skills including Ai in the Workforce
Whenever I have a need for clarity on educational technology, I lean towards Jeff Utecht and his “Shifting Schools” Podcast for direction. One of his more recent podcasts dives into the topic of Ai, asking “How might Chat GPT help us reflect on human-centric skills?” Jeff and his guest, Tricia, share their insights on Ai suggesting that we are still using writing skills with our students while using generative programs. Jeff says:
“Every single AI, you have to write the prompt. If you want it to create an image for you, you write the prompt, if you want it to create text for it, you write the prompt. Writing is not going anywhere. Writing is changing. And how much writing we do, and what that writing is, and the format of that writing is changing, but it has been for a long time. It has been for a long time. And that is part of it.”
Jeff Utecht
Jeff also shares, ““I honestly feel like it’s malpractice NOT to use it.” His guest also shares that we could have done more to prevent the cataclysms that followed social media usage – that we should have done more to prepare our youth to use it wisely. They suggest we need to do a better job with Ai integration.
How might Chat GPT help us reflect on human-centric skills?
The podcast also shares a report pulled from one billion professionals and 67 million companies on the platform, Linkedin, pulls some interesting statistics and perspectives on Ai and its current and future impact on the workforce. By examining global data, the report highlights the enormity of the wave of conversations around Ai, which has increased by 70%. This, compared to other seminal tech moments, like cryptocurrency at 19% increase.
The report outlines the increase of member interests in Ai-related jobs. As highlighted in the graphic below, the number of job postings with AI-related skills has increased by 12% across seven major economies. In the USA, it’s increased by 21%.
There’s no doubt that technology is moving rapidly, in particular this report outlines the specific impact of AI on jobs. Interestingly, GenZ stands to be most impacted by this rapid evolution because those jobs that they would normally step into to begin their profession: note-taking, scheduling, meeting organization, are the jobs that can be easily tasked to Ai. I would personally agree that Ai has the potential to rebuild systems of education and workplace. I agree that it will profoundly change the landscape of economy and that we need students with skills on how to navigate Ai. Our students will be more prepared for the workforce with those skills in hand. However, what else do they NEED?
Soft Skills NEED to be prioritized.
As I expressed in previous semesters, the need for our students to have soft skill development is paramount. We watched a documentary called, “Most Likely To Succeed” that outlined how the school system was created 135 years ago, during the Industrial Revolution. During this time, we needed workers that had the same general knowledge and could retain information. The school system structure created good workers for assembly lines in factories, and was sufficient at a time when jobs were structured: you became a firefighter, an engineer, a lawyer, or a trades person. But since that time, the rapid integration of technology in the workforce has demanded a structural change in the WAY we teach our students because the workforce is evolving so rapidly. As we enter into what Jeff Utecht calls the “information-era” and the “fourth-industrial revolution” we need to shift our way of teaching from knowledge-retention to more skill-acquisition. Most Likely to Succeed shared a perspective from one of the most renowned educational organizations, Khan Academy:
Khan Academy gave the following skills as their guide for hiring:
“giving and receiving feedback
what are their logical and critical thinking skills
what’s their ability to communicate
how curious is this person
how self aware is this person”
More excerpts below continue to highlight the importance of good social skills in the workforce:
“The need for people skills to complement AI skills indicates that while professionals need to learn AI skills, continuing to hone people skills should also be a priority. As jobs change with the incorporation of AI and become a collection of skills and tasks, workers will be more productive and spend less time on repetitive tasks, making unique people skills like leadership and creativity even more valuable. If professionals combine AI skills with people skills, they will stay competitive in a job market that will increasingly value skills that AI cannot reproduce.” (10)
future of work ai report
“Skills like communication and flexibility will become even more valuable as AI becomes more embedded in our workflows. A recent survey found that 92% of US professionals agree that people skills are more important than ever.“
Future of work Ai report
Overall, I see the initial question of, “How do we balance the need to protect young learners from the adverse effects of technology while also teaching digital literacy?” as an incredibly complex question that doesn’t have an easy answer. My perspective is that we as educators, have a duty to prepare our students for the world. This includes being aware of the negative impacts of technology and social media, while giving them the requisite skills they need to acquire jobs. It’s a teeter-totter balance and I hope to continue to teach my students how to use progressive technologies such as ChatGPT and other Ai tools, while also placing a high value on their social-skills, critical and creative thinking and collaboration with others.
References:
Carrington, J. (2019). Kids these days: A game plan for (re)connecting with those we teach, lead, & love. FriesenPress.
LinkedIn. (2023, November). Future of work report: AI at work. LinkedIn Economic Graph Research Institute. https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/economicgraph/en-us/PDF/future-of-work-report-ai-august-2023.pdf
“Twenty Years of EdTech” provided clarity around the rapidly evolving landscape of educational technology and I appreciated the approach of providing the reader with the positive aspects and the negative potentials of each of the educational tools. It was also interesting to see each platform be contextualized in time and space. It allowed me to recall my experiences with each: using wiki’s as a highschool student, watching through my young-adulthood as youtube evolved into potentially the world’s greatest and most up-to-date online resource, using social media as a tool to grow a business, integrating e-portfolio’s into my classroom five years ago with great excitement, and lastly, creating my own blog posts as a master’s student this past year.
One area of particular interest for me was the discussion around e portfolios and blogs. The general statement was that blogs are more progressive and e-portfolio’s are less applicable for students now. This quote is what sparked my curiosity and understanding:
“Although e-portfolio tools remain pertinent for many subjects, particularly vocational ones, for many students owning their own domain and blog remains a better route to establishing a lifelong digital identity. It is perhaps telling that although many practitioners in higher education maintain blogs, asking to see a colleague’s e-portfolio is likely to be met with a blank response.” (Miller, p. 14)
The question I’m left with is, does this blog preference apply more to post-secondary students, or is this about elementary or highschool students as well? I would have concerns around privacy with this, and accessibility. My preference up until now has been e-portfolio’s because they allow students to showcase their projects, whereas a blog post seems solely a tool of reflection and writing. In contrast, an e-portfolio allows me to facilitate the creation of multi-modal approaches: edited videos, digital posters, written assignments, reflective pieces of writing, artwork, screen recordings of their minecraft builds, and more. I am curious if my understanding of a blog is too narrow, if a blog can also serve as a “presentation” style of collections of work through the term.
Another area that sparked interest for me was about this paradox of social media. I agree with this paradoxical perspective of social media. I owned a business for a decade and I used social media as a tool to engage with our clientele, expand our reach, and for personal sponsorship in athletics and monetary gain. Having witnessed the potential for an entrepreneur in social media, I believe our students deserve a better understanding of skill acquisition prior to graduation. Particularly the later, senior years of school should have more digital media skills to transfer to our students. I felt validated in reading that, “many students will go through their education without being required to produce a video as a form of assessment. We need to fully develop the critical structures for video in order for it to full its educational potential, as we have already done for text.” (Miller, p. 11) I felt validated because I teach my students how to make recordings, and how to use capcut or other tools to edit videos to capture attention and relay information to the viewer. I’m always surprised at how many students have watched countless videos on tiktok or youtube, but really have no idea of how to start this journey into creating their own.
I do also recognize the negative aspects of social media. If it’s not being used as a tool for creation, and solely as a tool of consumption, the user can fall into a pattern of mindless-scrolling. We’ve also seen the rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide raising drastically since the increased use of social media, particularly in adolescent females. There’s also the concern for screen time taking away from time spent elsewhere, including physical activity, sports teams, health and wellness, connection with the outdoors. I’ve noticed my students do not possess the skills of tackling difficult conversations, face-to-face. I also have concerns around young users of social media coming across material meant for an older audience. The potential for inappropriate images, themes, or messaging, is high-risk for our young social media users.
Lastly, I’ve heard of digital badges, but haven’t put them into practice yet. This article seems to speak highly of the potential there, and that peaks my interest in wanting to know more about them.
The Landscape of Merging Modalities gave me a context for understanding the dynamic approaches of online learning. I am a visual learner, and I appreciated Table 1. Merging Modality Models that showed the type of online learning taking place, and the labeling of these styles of learning. My personal experience with online learning is small. My first real opportunity to learn online has been this Master’s program. The insight of this quote resonated with me for a multitude of reasons, which I will discuss below:
“To address this, designs should consider not only mixing modalities but also reducing synchronous instructional hours to create time for asynchronous activities and dialogue. Regardless of institutional or instructor plans for learner communication—whether synchronous or asynchronous—many learners in a course will develop their own private backchannel spaces to support learner-only asynchronous peer-to-peer communication” (Twenty Years of Edtech, 46).
Firstly, I appreciate that we have professors who understand the value of peer-communication and encourage this time for dialogue. In my teaching practice and school environment, I feel the one thing that is lacking is time for educators to share insights and ideas. Some of the most valuable conversations come from face-to-face interactions with my colleagues. For example, this week, I had an enriching conversation with a colleague about which teaching strategy to use in a vocabulary lesson with my grade 8 students. I was able to apply her suggestion with great success. It was clear at the time that her experience teaching ELL students was valuable to our conversation. I, in return, have experience in other capacities that I enjoy sharing with my colleagues. We each have rich, diverse backgrounds and tapping into those is not done enough because of time constraints and busy teacher schedules.
I can also relate to this question posed in this paper about learner-confusion with relation to expectations around online learning. I appreciate when specific boundaries and expectations of the online learning environment are expressed. For me, clarity in an online space looks like quick but valuable clarifications:
“You don’t need to have your camera on the entire time. / Or you do.”
“Share or ask questions the following way – ie. either in the messaging box / Or raise your hand.”
“This is where you will access your readings.”
These types of clarifications go a long way, and are established early in a physical classroom as well. Letting students know what will be expected of their behaviour and establishing routines are one of the fundamental ways to create a strong classroom environment with clarity of communication.
Finally, another quote from the reading that resonated with me was this:
“In a time of significant shifts to online learning in a variety of configurations, we should try to utilize common terminology to describe our intended designs and practices.”
I appreciate the clarification of these types of online-learning environments. This approach provides clarity, two-fold; the educator planning the class has a framework and can fit their goals into the practices they will put in place. And the learner benefits from understanding what is expected of them, how the information will be accessed, and what the learning environment with their cohort looks like.
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