Burbules, Nicholas C., & Callister, Jr., Thomas A. (2000).  Watch it: The risks and promises of information technologies for education.  Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

The theme of this book seems to be that, regarding educational technologies, solving one problem can give rise to unexpected effects both good and bad.

CH 1: THE RISKY PROMISES AND PROMISING RISKS OF NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR EDUCATION

Technology can be used well or badly, so questions like “Is the Internet good for education?” are misframed.

Three Challenges to Conventional Thinking about New Tech and Education

1)       Questioning the phrase “information technologies” as a way of characterizing these technologies:

a.       data is raw, information is cooked---what passes for information is often merely data (and erroneous at that)

b.       Information technologies are also communication technologies

c.       These technologies aren’t just a set of tools, they’re an environment

2)       Proposing a relational (rather than instrumental) view of these technologies:   an instrumental view externalizes technologies and examines them according to their use and purpose.  But:

a.        tools create new uses and purposes

b.       therefore, a “relational” view is two-way rather than just one-way

3)       Arguing for a “post-technocratic” policy perspective

a.       Policy choices aren’t just tradeoffs---they must take into account the  framing of issues: e.g., here are several variants of a “technocratic” framing.

                           i.      computer as panacea (championed by vendors and leading to disillusionment and the “next big thing” as education swings from trend to trend)

                           ii.      computer as tool: tools are neutral and good or ill depends on use (but as just argued, tools change the user, too)

                           iii.      computer as non-neutral tool: new tools are not completely neutral, for they imply likely uses.

b.       A relational perspective would take into account how each (tech tools and people) changes the other.

c.       A simple “cost/benefit? Framework is artificial and overly simplistic (e.g., sometimes the very same effects can be both good and bad).

The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown

Tech and education has shown itself susceptible to hyperbole.

Points

1)       Tech is changing faster, and the pace of change is getting faster

2)       Tech is changing our notions of “information”---e.g., what falls outside our definition of information will likely fall outside consideration in making decisions.

3)       Future lines of development are literally inconceivable; even comparing the impact of computers to the advent of the printing press is still just an analogy.

New technologies are dangerous, but dangerous precisely because they hold so much potential.

People without much experience with the new technologies tend to be the audience for nay saying authors excoriating the overblown promises of educational technologies.

Conclusions

1)       There is the tendency to frame this as a debate, which draws false dichotomies and polarizes.

2)       There is a false tendency to think that “more research” will settle the questions for us (but standard experimentation cannot predict the types of “Hawthorne Effects” argued for here).

CH 2: DILEMMAS OF ACCESS AND CREDIBILITY: ACCESS FOR WHOM? ACCESS TO WHAT?

Access isn’t just a technical problem: that is, access doesn’t just mean having a computer and an Internet connection. 

We need to also ask “access to what and for what purposes?”

Technical Access

The money necessary to buy computers, wire schools, etc. can be a vicious tradeoff for poor schools.

Skills, Attitudes, and Dispositions of Access

Machines aren’t enough—people must also know how to use them.  But even that’s not enough---you can know how to use something but disposition and attitudes can prevent you from actually using it.

Practical Access

Social circumstances influence time and opportunity to work and play online.

Issues of Form and Content as Issues of Access

• Though tacit knowledge (computer shortcuts) spreads quickly, it changes so fast a person has to use computers quite a bit for his/her tacit knowledge to remain useful.

• Even for the most knowledgeable users, using computers has inherent uncertainty.  What is challenging to some can be frighteningly chaotic to others.

• The Internet is so decentralized, with such a huge range of content, that some people can be inadvertently traumatized.

• People proficient at communicating online forget how daunting it can be for new users.

Five Features of Online Communication that Aren’t Neutral

1)       Asynchronous vs. synchronous communication

2)       The anonymity of online communication

3)       Individual vs. group communication

4)       The emphasis on writing skills

5)       Hypertext has spawned new styles of writing

Four Levels of Access

1)       Technical

2)       Skills, attitudes, and dispositions

3)       Pragmatic conditions that influence access

4)       Characteristics of the environment to which we’re trying to provide access

Issues of Credibility

·         What kind of access is worth having?

·         The Internet is unregulated, yielding a stew of good and bad information mixed together.

·         “Hyperreading” is the skill of critically and selectively finding, reading, and evaluating information.

·         How do you judge the quality of information when you’re not knowledgeable about the field? Assessing credibility requires both internal and external considerations, skills many people may not possess.

·         Faced with such a daunting task, many are willing to give over the regulation of the deluge of information to third parties (editors, archivists, etc.).  However, there are dangers in centralization.

·         When you recommend a link, there is some implied transfer of credibility.  When many people do this, it creates a system of distributed credibility.

·         People recognize the problem---many Internet sites deal with evaluating the credibility of online information.

Gaining Credibility

How does one gain credibility in this environment?

• Gaining the skills to become an information provider
• Learning more about web design
• Collecting links
• Practicing hyperreading
• Becoming an editor or archivist
• Promoting information you want to become more visible

Dilemmas of Access

What if everyone does gain access?  What about more congestion, garbage and conflict online?  Will online “gated communities” proliferate?  The theme of this book, again, is that solving one problem can give rise to unexpected effects.

CH 3: HYPERTEXT: KNOWLEDGE AT THE CROSSROADS

When technologies become familiar, they become invisible.

The nature of printed books promoted a linear and hierarchical structure.  Text on computers is more nonlinear and discontinuous. 

Analogy: Trees have hierarchical root systems.  On the other hand, rhyzomatic plants spread root systems in all directions.

The Internet, then, is changing the way we read, and in keeping with the book’s theme there will be consequences of this, both good and bad.

What is Hypertext?

• Text and ideas are linked to each other in multiple ways.

• In hypertext, the reader becomes not just a reader but an active contributor, which starts to break down the distinction between author and reader.

• Hypertext both organizes information and influences the kinds of information it organizes (i.e., identifying and creating relationships among elements changes those elements).

• Every text is rudimentary hypertext if the reader annotates it and/or brings his/her own experience to bear. Hypertext can therefore be seen as both a form of organization and a way of reading any text.

• Viewing hypertext as mere “electronic footnotes” is superficial.

Hypertext and Thought

• Hypertext seems to parallel the way human minds think and learn: dynamically, interactively, through associations and by exploration (Vannevar Bush).  This view of hypertext meshes well with constructivist learning theories (such as “schema” theory) in cognitive psychology.

• In hypertext, any point is not just a discrete point but a “node” of multiple intersecting lines of association.

• Hypertext flattens hierarchies: no node seems more central than any other.  “One experiences hypertext as an infinitely decenterable and recenterable system.”

Consequences of Hypertext

• Good: potential for novelty, creativity
• Bad: Chaos, arbitrariness, “a limitless bricolage of fragments”)

Writing and Reading Hypertext

• Producing traditional text is exclusive (authors spend a good deal of time figuring out what to leave out).
• The production of hypertext is more inclusive.

• As the number of links grows, the author’s ability to impose structure lessens.

Authorship and Design

• Librarians, in the process of categorizing, archiving, and linking, have been producing hypertext for a long time.  However, as the sheer volume of information grows, their work becomes more important.

• “No one can read everything relevant, and not everything relevant is worth reading.”

• Increasingly, librarians are indispensable “intermediaries” who use heuristics (e.g., causal relations, analogy, timelines) to interweave components in meaningful and useful ways.

Active Reading

Three Types of Reading

1)       Browsing: causal, curious reading.

2)       Using: having a good idea what you’re looking for.

3)       Hyperreading: organizing, evaluating, and adding to what you’re reading.

Paths, Trails, and Learning

·         Hypertext can be passive or interactive.  The former is better for browsers and users, the latter for hyperreaders.

·         There’s a tradeoff between flexibility and accessibility.  When choosing between these, one needs to consider one’s audience.

Hypertext Can:

• facilitate learning by allowing novel connections that stimulate thinking
• be an external representation of learning that incorporates the users’ annotations
• be a prompt to metacognition in that readers’ modifications enhance learning

 Some readers of hypertext end up with superficial “channel surfing” with no overall sense of coherence.

 Well, that’s it for the summary.  Here are the other chapters:

• CH 4: CRITICALLY READING THE INTERNET
• CH 5: MISINFORMATION, MALINFORMATION, MESSED-UP INFORMATION, AND MOSTLY USELESS INFORMATION: IS CENSORSHIP THE BEST RESPONSE?
• CH 6: SURVEILLANCE AND PRIVACY: CAN TECHNOLOGY PROTECT WHAT TECHNOLOGY TAKES AWAY?
• CH 7: INFORMATION FOR SALE: COMMERCIALIZATION AND THE EDUCATIONAL POTENTIAL OF THE INTERNET
  CH 8: WHAT KIND OF COMMUNITY CAN THE INTERNET BE?