HIGHLIGHT #2 | |121
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LOCATING THE BABEL FISH
to open up landscape to facilitate access to the meaning of what
previously existed or exists in that location, while visually interacting
with environment around, conceptually opening up “Augmented
space” (Crang & Graham, 2007, p.792). Likewise the simplicity of
video learning (c), attempts to make complex meaning transparent
through narrative and metaphor, on to technically complex digital
artefacts such as ‘environmental sensor packages’ that transmit
live data that describe environments (d), described by Crang and
Graham (2007, p.793) as a Transducting space; all digital artefacts
that are taking on the role of facilitation of knowledge towards
mean-making. This hypothesis extends the notion of teacher within
a 21st Century educational paradigm, the guise of the teacher
begins to change, the teacher becomes ubiquitous through not only
embedded digital artefacts, physical and virtual, but within change in
agency of and meaning of the word teacher itself. Thus challenging
educational methodologies and pedagogy, summed up by Herbert
Thomas (2010, p.502) as “In short, our difficulty in understanding
and articulating the nature of learning is partly brought about by
our inability to articulate where learning takes place”. If this is the
case, what will the role of the teacher be under this new regime?
How will educational theory and teaching methodologies change?
How will the answers to these questions begin to facilitate a future
in which our physical and virtual environments translate a binary
understanding of their existence into analogue meaning? If an
object or environment can describe its form and function in every
detail, so rendering knowledge ubiquitous and superseding what
Knox (2012, p.2) sees as “The archival tendencies within the OER
movement (that) emphasise this relationship, in which technology
is positioned as a prosthetic to the learning process; an instrument
considered only in its capacity for enhancement” by making content
indistinguishable from technology, will the agency of that object (or
digital artefact) render the word teacher meaningless?
Instruction:
(the process or act of imparting knowledge, design of learning)
Is the act of imparting knowledge linear or nonlinear? It could be
argued that the industrial model of education is linear, but do we
learn in a linear way? I would argue not (Robinson, RSA, 2010) (a)
. I would suggest that the challenge to instruction, the process
or act of imparting knowledge, lies in the accommodation and
acceptance of nonlinear progression towards learning objectives.
For instance, in the digital domain, it is now possible to travel to
Edinburgh stopping off in Hong Kong, Ursa Major and Uncle Fred’s
garage (not to mention the restaurant at the end of the universe!).
What are the questions that need to be asked to begin to deal