Out of/for control?
I happened to be talking to a bloke about Blackboard (as you do around here when you sit out in the Queensland sun at lunchtime with your hot and raw MSG stir-fry). He was a fan of the system. Apparently it only costs the university $55k per annum to run it as the CMS. Now I haven’t actually shopped around, but it sounds like a bargain to me. Anyway, we are moving away from it, apparently, to something more expensive and less familiar to the end-users (don’t you just love that term! No wonder no-one wants to be one). He’s not worried about losing his position of control with the current system, because he’s a fast ‘it’ (my new, nerdy pun on IT) learner, and since the rest of us will be struggling, there will be plenty of powerful support positions about for the gifted ones like him. So what? Well…
I have been listening to a voice-thread by Scott Wilson at Bolton University on PLEs. He mentions control, and I have been pondering on that as a factor in the debate about PLES vs CMSs. (Look at me ! A month into this stuff and I’m sounding like them – all acronyms. My apologies to anyone there still able to communicate in plain English – rage! rage against the dying of the light…!, as DT would almost say) So we can eliminate the control factor from the support staff, because they can pick up any other system without bother – or can we?
Maybe it is not about which system, so long as there is something or other in place to make the rest of us need them so very much. And if it metamorphosises intermittently, so much the better. Ah- ha!
Like this – (sorry if you’ve seen it):
Hmm. The power of the nerd. Interesting. Why else would they actually want to engage with all that code – all those acronyms?! They block us out with them, make us feel isolated, inadequate until it gets so bad that you just can’t…can’t hear them ask again- yet again – “ar sorry, don’t you know what that means?”…and so you smile glibly, almost convincingly, and just nod in acknowledgement to some string of consonants, as your brain starts thrashing through the alphabet, heading for a crash. Don’t send that error report again today. How much stupidity can one admit to at one time! Lots – I’m brave – but not that much!
That’s how they control us! BUT if we start using PLEs – JUST THE STUFF WE LIKE – instead of having to do it all THEIR way, we might stage some sort of turnaround, the new revolution. They will have to catch up with us when we call in the helpdesk. “Ar, what’s this?” they will ask. “ar sorry. Don’t you know what that means?”, we reply, dry as chips! Pure as power. Then! – what if I refused to focus on new tools and instead thought about some issue or question? Something I knew about but wanted to explore further – in an expert kind of way? What if I slipped into alpha-theta mode and the technology didn’t thump me back to beta with error messages? What if it was gentle and poetic and polite?? What if ‘it’ wasn’t akin to fascism?
But wait. Willis points out that some people don’t like the idea of PLEs because they don’t want to be independent learners. I suppose that’s like the prisoner who falls in love with the prison guard (don’t look for the link. I wouldn’t know where to start). Imprisonment is safe. You can’t make mistakes if you can’t make decisions. And how judgemental do I sound now! Who’s the fascist here? And how the heck do we reconcile this?
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
[...] open source LMS is the reduction in cost. There are a range of perspectives about this reason. On a recent post in her blog Jocene describes one of these perspectives as held by someone at the institution. He [...]
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October 22nd, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Conformity can still be choice.
It’s like installing software, I can just keep pressing next-next-next to get it working, or open up each aspect and tweak it to my own personal preference.
PLEs should still have a ‘don’t care’ state, a default state. Even if I’ve specialised into Mathematics, but today I’m not too fussed what unit to take, I should be able to just let the system (or guidance officer) choose the ‘easiest’ for me based on the units available.
If I don’t have any preferences at all, I would expect a similar curriculum to the one presently in place. Surely that is the agreed upon ‘default’.
Concerning acronyms, I think it’s just language specialization. I’m positive if I walk into a mechanic shop or a top chef kitchen or a banking back room I would have a hard time listening in on the conversation because the terminologies are so specialized. The terminologies are specialized because it’s more efficient communication; you know the other person will know what you mean when you say “LME”.
I don’t see tech speak as intentionally elitist, but ignorance of someone else’s ability to be a part of the conversation is.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
[...] the landscape for the PLEs@CQUni project. One of the presenters, Jocene Vallack read aloud a post she had made to her weblog on the topic. The post was in relation to management and control of [...]
December 17th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
[...] my initial post, I made reference to another colleagues frustration with discipline specific dialogue from the IT field. I am reminded of a comment by VR Bones in [...]