Reflections on my position in an eLearning world

As I gaze back through the window, albeit still very small, which is now opening to permit my view into the world of eLearning and technology, and taking into consideration the wide range of perspectives and beliefs on whether it is a good thing or not, I am at a point in time where I want to heartily embrace some of the technology and am still wary of some others.

I realise that some forms of eLearning have probably overtaken me almost by default. In my business as a Music Teacher and Administrator, youtube has been a huge bonus. I find myself almost as a matter of course recommending students take time to view their chosen pieces of music for learning on youtube. Not just one version but as many as they can, so they get a feeling for the whole. It has also been a godsend for the introduction of critical thinking in terms of comparing and contrasting to inform their own interpretive performance. It has become such an integral part of our teaching arena that it almost came as a shock to know that this technology has in fact been around for just over 5 years now, which means it only started half way through my tenure as the Principal and director of my company. The use of youtube is now in our planning sights for other uses to benefit our organisation.

On a personal level I have been a fairly active facebook user for some time now, although perhaps still have the reticence of my age group for full and frank exposure of myself to the world through this media, choosing a high level of privacy and not seeing the point in taking part in online games. I see it as a communications tool and have reconnected with several friends lost over time through distance and changing circumstances and divergence of interests. It feels a good thing to re-establish these connections, especially with folks across the world. Some I am happy to keep in the facebook realm, others I would like to reconnect face to face. But there is a more sinister side which bothers me. Only this past week I have had cause to block a person who had made an offer on a car I was selling for my son. The car was for sale through an internet sales service. Some personal details had to be shared and a viewing arranged. After selling the car to someone else he then proceeded to send an abusive email, and then call me continually. The upside to this unpleasant experience was that he did not ever get my physical address. Since I searched and found him easily enough on facebook I determined, however, that he too could do the same with me. Here is a two edged sword - the ability to be able to take charge to a wider audience of a task liking selling a car is of great benefit, but are the privacy concerns more than if one were to advertise in a more 'old fashioned way' - through a newspaper or sitting the car on a street corner? Is it the fact the there is more accessibility that stalking is more possible? Is it really possible to compare this aspect with experiences in a former world of less online communication? Or does the thing which makes online communication so much more accessible also introduce the feelings of a right to accessibility? Is there evidence of a lack of real face to face human contact and therefore a decrease in the ability to read emotions and feelings and therefore feel empathy?

I have been excited by the possibilities of things such as Moodles and wiki's and the availability of research for students at all levels. To have at one's fingertips the ability to find out information on any given topic or area of interest is something in which I myself revel. There is no reason not to know what you want to know. But therein also lies a rub. Does the technology which allows me to find out what I want to know, whether it be of a social, intellectual or even of a culinary nature, at the click of a button, put me at an unfair advantage to those in the community for whom access to adequate hard ware is a matter of affordability? Will the explosion of availability of technology also create greater social stratification where the poor get poorer, not just in a monetary sense, but also in a sense of general knowledge, understanding and accessibility to the world and what it has to offer in physical and metaphysical terms?

At whatever age or stage we are, there is the question of educating in the use of the latest technology. Unless there is ongoing and continually updated education on not just 'how to' but the 'what's new' then the gaps between the haves and have nots will grow wider. The whole face of education is changing and being challenged. In schools, the vast majority still of those teaching are from the generations of the immigrants to technology and for whom technology is a threat or at least part of the unknown, untested and just plain scary. So who is educating who? What is the knowledge that is needed to exist in today's world? Is it a knowledge about finding knowledge? Or is there still a body of knowledge that should just be known? Or should there be a happy medium somewhere? In my own field of music education, there is no changing the power and beauty of past masters at creating the art. Mozart and Beethoven and Bach will always remain by their very nature and position in a historical perspective, producers of great aesthetic beauty in the eyes, and ears, of many. The greatest questions for performers now is whether modern equipment should replicate the sound Bach would have expected in his works, or whether modern equipment should provide its own interpretative element to the black dots on the page.

It is the accessibility for all which tempers my enthusiasm. Although I have ready access and a certain willingness to learn, I know that there are many others in socio-economic terms who have not the funds perhaps and therefore the attitude that is required to embrace much of this technological explosion in communication and learning. There is clear evidence that technology, being so young, is a domain of the young. If the world has changed so much in just 5 years, what can we expect in all the '5 years' of the rest of our lives? Will the young who are the natives of today's technology, be the immigrants of the next 5 years? How does this auger for the fragmentation of society as we know it? What are the implications for educating into the future when so much changes so quickly and more importantly more becomes redundant quicker.

Clearly I don't have answers and sit very much on the fence, albeit with both feet on the technology side. I am happy to keep an eye on the other side! There is definitely an age factor involved, I am prepared to admit. Am I clinging to the past because it is comfortable and known or because there is so much from the past which really is still relevant and useable and not disposable? I admire the likes of Michael Wesch for his enthusiastic embracing of technology in his world of educating others but I also see so much benefit in not throwing out centuries of learning in other ways. Perhaps I fear that if I don't keep up with what is happening in terms of eLearning and the availability of new technology I will find myself in a similar position to my elderly mother who seemed to have given up many years ago when tapes were introduced and stopped even bothering to try to learn how to operate a her beloved radio when it became incorporated with a tape player, and for whom handwriting was the only possibility after the typewriter was no longer the tool for publishing.