Of Intentionalities and Serendipity

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Image by: JaceeIsmay

I happened to stumble upon these two articles on how klout is being used as a metric for hiring somebody as well as a metric for student grades. They were gut-wrenching and nauseating reads to say the least but I’m trying to wonder why? I understand the ”I need to tell them about this metric… If I didn’t do that I would be failing my students”argument but my initial reaction was a sheepish “yeaaaah….but…I feel there’s something missing.”

It didn’t actually hit me until I had a moment of wandering and an urge to check the Recent Changes at the UBC Wiki. The first page I saw was something about teaching critical media literacy. It’s a group course project for a Curriculum and Pedagogy class that includes a list of resources, lesson plans, videos, books to read and introduction to the topic. A list of all the groups and topics can be found here. I didn’t know what to expect, nobody was trying to sell me something, nobody’s trying to game the system, nobody was trying to make me listen to them because they want to be important. I just started to ask myself “What is this?” and thus with wikis, it becomes a rabbit hole journey that goes deeper and deeper.

A random shot I took of the road while on a tuktuk in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

One of my first flickr photos.

There’s so much talk about needing to engage, needing to put yourself out there, creating “your personal brand”. *shivers* But what really got me hooked and understanding all these social tools is flickr. At first it was because I wanted to share photos with my friends and then I discovered I could pull photos into so many different places and then I saw this:

Image by Novak Rogic at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogic/52574122/in/photostream of a bench at the University of British Columbia at autumn surrounded by red and orange leaves on the ground with green and yellowing leaves still hanging from tree branches.

Image by Novak Rogic

Ever since then, I wanted to challenge myself to TRY to be as good as Novak. I started to learn from what he shared and then I started to have conversations within
groups and communities. I have made flickr friends that I still know to this day and some I have lost. It wasn’t a big community but I treasured the little comments we had about each other’s photos and how we captured our lives. Those I’ve lost contact with still saddens me to this day.

I guess what I’m looking for is a balance between me and we, a balance between being intentional about things we share and creating space for serendipity. What made the interwebs terribly awesome (and sometimes downright frightening) is that stuff gets created just for the sake of getting created. There’s still a lot of that going on and I just want more of it.

Example of an Animated Magazine cover assignment for DS106. This one is a magazine called "Monsters". THe cover has a gif of a cyclops beating a dragon from a Ray Harryhausen film.

Gif by Jim Groom. Something that tickles my fantasy-nerd heart.

Articulations of Contexts and Expectations

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Taking out time to stop and think about what your doing is always a luxury and when the opportunity presents itself, I’ll just grab it whenever I can. This week the Course Design Intensive is offered again. Thankfully it did as we’re in some sort of process to reframe our teaching and learning with technology workshops (especially around WordPress) to be really about professional development. Collectively, we’ve been on this road before through many ups, downs and successful starts, way before my very short time here.

I’ve been learning a lot of things but one thing I learned is to actually write stuff down instead letting it all swim in the disjointed space that’s called my head. What I’ve been attempting to do for the past week really articulate the various discussions we’ve had over the past few months, create something to discuss and work with as we go forward, and really to get the ball rolling.

Expectations

“What are you expecting?”

It’s a question that’s always embedded in our discussion but never answered directly. The whole reframing discussion actually started out as us feeling that we were not meeting the participants’ expectations nor are they becoming the sorts of learners/teachers we want to be.

The articulation of everybody’s expectations (or what you perceive them to be) informs to
your course and learning objectives, the assessments you want to perform and the activities you want to facilitate. It illuminates the context we work in and try to navigate on a regular basis.

Me/Us
  • Participants must have something to start with. They don’t necessarily need to know anything but at least be confident enough to try something out.
  • Participants will change from thinking about the tools they can use first to thinking about their teaching and learning goals first then how technology can/can’t support their goals.
Participants
  • I will learn what I need to do my job.
  • I want to learn X because I want X.
Institution/Department
  • Instructors will know how to integrate technology in their teaching.
  • Instructors will know how to implement “enriched educational experiences”.

After writing these, I felt I had a greater understanding of what kind of balance we want to achieve with this “reframing”. There are always competing priorities, the short and long-term, deadlines and motivation. We always need to come down to some sort of appropriate compromise and it involves a lot of letting go. Letting go of content, letting go of control, letting go of how things ought to be, and accepting what things could be.

Blind Spots

What the expectations also show me are the end points of a learning journey. We also talk about the Expert Blindspot but we’ve never actually articulated what it means to be an expert. It involves asking participants the “why’s” of their expectations as well as asking the “how” of my expectations.

The tech support cheat sheet created by xkcd.

Fake It ‘Til You Make It.
(Image by xkcd)

For me, what an expert in teaching and learning with technology is somebody who:

  • Builds their own framework on how students learn. They keep that framework in mind since it’s a synthesis of what they’ve learned, what they’ve experienced, what they’ve observed and what they’ve reflected upon.
  • Has the ability to decide and assess the tools and techniques that can support their community or students. They’ll be able to know when something works, what doesn’t work and what needs to be dropped.
  • Is confident enough to try things out. Learning what can be done involves experimentation and practice.

These stem from the process that guides me when a colleague or participant comes looking for help. I always ask: “what do you need to do? and how does that help?” Brett was awesome enough to remind me that sometimes, we really don’t know what we’re doing. It’s all an educated guess that we take time to wonder, try out, assess, reflect and modify.

My descriptions of a novice is a composite of reflecting on what my experience has been like learning everything on the fly as well as who has been attending our workshops. Novices come because they:

  • Want to learn how to do a specific task.
  • Saw/heard something cool from a colleague and want to know how to do it.
  • Feel that doing something new is hard and need an “expert” to guide them.

Now What?

Given these expectations and what it means to be in this kind of work, I wrote what I thought my objectives should be for this reframing process.

Venn diagram of two circles where one circle depicts the goal of having the assessment skills to differentiate between different teaching and learning tools and the other circle to be about building people's confidence to try them out. Where the two circles meet is the goal to build their own framework.

I think these objectives work well to meet all the previously mentioned expectations. They might be too pie in the sky but these are meant to guide us. Building confidence in trying out new things comes out from our desire to demystify technology as alienating. Acquiring ways to assess technology reinforces a mindset where technology is a set of tools that should support our goals and not the other way around. Building each persons’ teaching and learning framework focuses on their individual understanding of their experiences and the contexts they work in. Our role is to guide them in this continuous formative process and show the possibilities.

Any kind of feedback is welcome as this is just the first step. I do have a draft Developing the Curriculum (DeCum) doc, which I’ll post next. These objectives will probably change later but it’s good to always just write them down.

Measurements at the Cost of Learning

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Sometimes when I look back, I see how far I’ve come since I moved to Canada. I still consider myself young and inexperienced, gaining the skills I need to go further, learning something new everyday, and grabbing any opportunity that may come my way. I was offered to go to the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative 2012 Annual Meeting last month as the representative our unit. At first I hesitated for a number of reasons: I’ve been to Austin before for another conference, I was going to miss two of my classes (both that I really enjoy), and more importantly, I will be going by myself.

I am not the most extroverted or social person in an unfamiliar environment, especially those who have infinitely more experience and knowledge in higher education. I was like Schrodinger’s Cat sans toxic substances, participating in this field but not necessarily in too deep. This is not to say I do not want to learn more. Indeed, I do but the peering sensation of youth, seeing the “professionals” at work was hard to shake-off. I had this vision of the ELI as this gathering of who’s who, the experts and in some conversations, have been characterized as the people who are too excited about technology.

Black and white photograph of a cat, leaning over a ledge.

Photo by Grufnik

Nonetheless, I went and entered the conference with apprehension and excitement to experience it for myself or at the very least keep myself open to possibilities. Of course, my vision of what ELI was came to fruition but at the same time, I was surprised by the amount of thoughtful conversations on learning that emerged throughout those 3 days.

I’ve been asked to say a few words about EDUCAUSE in an upcoming team meeting. I haven’t had time to reflect lately and my original idea for this post was to summarize some themes during the gathering. It seems like 3 days is too long to do in one post. I’ll try to revisit this topic again in the next few days and focus on one for now.

Learning Analytics

A significant segment of the conference was spent discussing the value of learning analytics, what the potential is, what it could be used for. The keynote speaker even called for a fourth revolution through the use of analytics, there was a panel debating the value of analytics and finally a somewhat one-sided discussion due to the absence of the opposing side.

I am not completely sold on the messianic pill that is learning analytics as the driving force for us to learn better, especially after some contradictory statements by its proponents. If we are truly to revolutionize education, through the individualization of learning as the keynote suggests, then how can we truly measure something unique to an individual? Measuring implies some sort of comparability, a setting of benchmarks to see who are successful and who are not. If the system is designed as a sieve that filters people out then wouldn’t any kind of analytics of the system only measure how learners stack up against the barriers somebody else put them through. It’s like asking people to go through one door when in reality they could also go through the window, the fire exit, the doggy entrance, the underground passageway, the cave that’s on the left side of this house. And I thought we’re suppose to prepare learners for jobs that don’t exist.

The Clones are breaking in to the Super Mario block

Photo by: Kristina Alexanderson

It was suggested in the learning circle that analytics can be some sort of early warning system for students who are having a challenging time in school. At first I thought, yes, I see the value in that proposition but then, I remembered Gardner Campbell asking the question around the nature of the system. Are the analytics we are looking at point to the fact that some learners are not good at being students? He pointed out the valedictory speech of Erica Goldson, while Mike Wesch tweeted later on about Kohn’s Case Against Grades. Tests and grades are not necessarily the most successful benchmarks for knowing that any of us have learnt. Our own desire to learn is the price we pay just to achieve the numbers of the perceived norm. I do fear though that a learner’s failure is seen as an opportunity to question the learner’s practice within the system, not as an opportunity to see that the system is failing.

A very good and human story was shared during the learning circle about incompleteness of depending on analytics for solutions, ending with “Where is the wife in this conversation?” Hopefully I can follow up in another post.

A Process, An Experience and Some Thoughts on Academic Publishing

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It has finally happened.

I got published and in an academic journal no less. I and a few other colleagues submitted, what has been best described as an experiential paper, to the Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning. As an individual who had a somewhat detached experience during my undergraduate years, this was beyond anything I could have ever imagined. It was something I heard of; I had a vague idea of how it happens but the whole experience was very novel to me. For this, I am grateful to not only JCTL and its editorial team, but also to my colleagues who I collaborated with.

Reflecting on how this paper came to be, there were a few things that surprised me.

Name Order Counts

Maybe it was my naivety or general ignorance of academic publishing circle but I was taken aback by how important who goes first on the author list. My teammates were more aware of this issue due to their post-graduate degrees and far longer experience in higher education.

A King's Court

Image by Justin Kern

The question was asked during the planning session on how should we proceed with this collaborative paper. As they explained the situation to me, the prestige economy of academia became much clearer in my mind than ever before. Since I was taking the lead in the writing and coordination, everybody agreed that I was going to take the first author positon.

As much as I benefited from the arrangement, I still felt uneasy. The feeling became even starker when we received our copies of the journal. I congratulated one of my co-authors but she said she would have been more excited if she was the lead author. Her statement was not rooted in any form of negativity but the acceptance of a reality.

The paper could not have been remotely possible, intelligible, coherent or meaningful without her or the work any of our teammates did. We all took up the slack when one couldn’t, we worked hard to support each other, provide helpful feedback. I don’t want to diminish anybody’s efforts just because of the order on a by-line.

Academic publishing is such a strange beast.

Open Process = Efficient Process

The premise of our paper is fairly simple, we learn and form relationships with other people by listening, hearing, comparing and analyzing our experiences together.

Our process went as follows:

  • Write individual reflections on the question: “What makes us a team?”
  • Come back together to share our reflections
  • Discuss the similarities and differences on a common experience
  • Draw out some recommendations and conclusion

Writing a collaborative paper with four other people presents its own challenges. We wanted to avoid the following:

  • Losing any of our planning documents
  • Clutter our inboxes with drafts
  • Lose track of changes
VQ1005 processed : This opened the door

Photo by Robin Schroder

Lastly, we just wanted something that all of us can access. We started creating pages on the UBC Wiki since we only needed our CWLs. We created pages for outlines/work plans, the bibliography we wanted to use, various notes from those sources. We used Google Docs to create the actual drafts. The process itself wasn’t anything revolutionary but there were a few things that I found interesting:

  • The need to easily facilitate sharing has led to unintentionally documenting our process. These are the kinds of things that I was told was needed as alternative for draconic fact-checking tools.
  • Baby steps is quite important in having somebody use new technology. Don’t expect anything fancy right away, even if we think it’s straightforward.
  • Always have back-up plans. At some points during the whole process, we reverted back using Word to track changes. I always end up putting them in Google Docs anyway.
  • Needing to know where our plans were, forced us to be transparent.

For the most part, our need to be organized and efficient has led us to be open about our process and transparent on what we intended to do. We still faced challenges such as differing technical skills and comfort or the occasional bugs every now and then but we managed in spite of these.

Going back to my discomfort with the importance of the author order, opening up our work plan and outline shows, at least partially, who did what. It doesn’t capture all of it but it is evidence of our contributions to the final work. I might just be writing this out of some sense to alleviate guilt but really, it’s just my way saying thanks and giving back the honour my co-authors – Lydia, Roselynn, Isabeau, Jan – truly deserve.

A Korean Journey

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A panoramic night photo of the Myeongdong shopping district in the heart of Seoul.

Myeongdong Shopping District

Last week, a friend and I had a discussion about trip planning. She was taken aback when she found out how much planning (or lack thereof) I did for my Korean sojourn last June. For better or for worse, the only things we planned were the plane tickets and the place we stayed at. We took on Seoul, and to some extent South Korea as well, day by day.

Accommodations

Black and white photo of three women walking at night in front of Gyeongbukgong Palace in downtown Seoul, South Korea.

If you stay at Hangul House, this will be your neighbour.


We stayed at Hangul House in the art gallery neighbourhood near Gyeongbokgung Palace. Although the rooms were a bit small and spartan, it had a cozy atmosphere from its wooden floor to open courtyards. We even took advantage of some night-time conversations under their Japanese maple tree. The three houses that make up Hangul House are situated at the end of this small alley surrounded by traditional Korean homes. When you wake up it’s quiet and serene; you wouldn’t think that a busy commercial road is only 2 blocks away.

For $50/night, it was well worth the price, especially with such a convenient location of the subway, airport bus, regular bus, food establishments and sights within a 2 – 10 mins. walk away. Barring the one guy who was a douchebag, everybody from Hangul House were friendly, courteous and helpful.

What did we do?

Staying for a week in Seoul gave us enough time to explore many areas both within and outside the city. For a city this big, we know we’ve only scratched the surface. The following is the rough itinerary of how our 7 days went by. None of us exactly knew where we would end up the next day. Breakfast time was decision-making time.

Day 1

  • Arrive at the airport just before lunch
  • Get to Hangul House & rest
  • Walk around Insadong and have dinner of beer, chicken and sausages at hof.

Day 2

A replica of the ancient Astronomy tower in Wolseong Park made of plants at Gyeongju

One of the many sights at Wolseong Park

  • Ride the morning bullet train to Gyeongju
  • Eat BBQ beef lunch
  • Walk around the city, especially the area around Wolseong Park
  • Eat the long umbrella-shaped >corn rolls.
  • Realize that Bulguksa is not walkable.
  • Take a 20-min cab ride to Bulguksa
  • Spend the rest of the afternoon exploring Bulguksa.
  • Wait 45 mins. for the bus to go back to the train station then somebody tells you that the bus doesn’t stop there. The stop is actually down the hill.
  • Get to the station and find out that your only option to sit down during a 3hr. train ride is to wait for the last train.

Day 3

A small cafe at a mall in the Dongdaemun district in Seoul

You can Booky and his delicious liege waffles at the back exit of the Maxtyle mall.

  • Arrive in Seoul at 1AM, exhausted
  • Wake-up late and hear the knock from your friend who you just arrived in Seoul and who you’re supposed to pick-up at the Airport Bus Stop.
  • Eat at Popeye’s Chicken and then check-out Gyeongbokgung Palace
  • Spend the next 6hrs shopping around Dongdaemun.
  • Unexpectedly get free liege waffles from Booky, the very friendly proprietor of Honey B., a small cafe at the back of Maxtyle mall.
  • Explore the Zaha Hadid designed Dongdaemun Design Park and Plaza and see the world’s coolest fire hall.
  • Eat at the very affordable Pizza School for dinner and see the beautiful Cheonggyecheon Stream.
  • Walk back to Hangul House and see the statue of General Yi Sun Shin.
A Walk from Cheonggyecheon

The head of Cheonggyecheon Stream

Day 4

Secret Garden area at Changdeokgung Palace

The Secret Garden at Changdeokgung Palace

Day 5

You can wear traditional Korean clothing in one of Insadong's many photobooths.

  • Explore Insadong and peruse its many souvenir, antique, artisan shops.
  • Buy a sock imprinted with G. Dragon’s face for a friend.
  • Eat an authentic Korean McBulgogi Burger at the local McDonald’s.
  • Go back to Myeongdong for some retail shopping and watch a sad-looking Snoopy mascot dance around in the middle of a busy pedestrian intersection.
  • Discover the deliciousness that is grilled flattened squid.
  • Help a friend get to the Airport Bus Stop by Hangul House to catch her early flight back home.
  • Trudge our way up to Namsan Seoul Tower for some spectacular views of the city.
  • Send a postcard to your loved one through the highest mailbox in the world.
  • Get wet from the pouring rain, the one night you didn’t bring an umbrella.

Day 6

A photo from the Hello Kitty Cafe where 2 girls where drinking a hot beverage framed in the outline of Hello Kitty's head.

You will be assaulted by the pink.

  • Walk around COEX Mall and eat at the overpriced Bon Marché.
  • Fail in the first attempt to find the Coffee Prince Cafe in Hongdae but eventually end up in the Hello Kitty Cafe with all its pinkish glory.
  • Explore the Hongdae area while buying little snacks along the way and listening to some good street music.
  • Buy more snacks at the local convenience store and bread shop then consume them under Japanese maple trees.

Day 7

A photo of a seafood and olive oil pasta on a white circular plate.

There are many, and I mean many, pasta restaurants in Seoul

Day 8

A white heart-shaped painting on brick wall and in front of it is a long blue wooden bench.

Hongdae is well-blessed with fabulous and quirky street art everywhere.

  • Eat brunch at cafe that has a bedroom theme in Hongdae.
  • Finally find the Coffee Prince Cafe and spend the next few hours ogling the tourists that stop by.
  • Make a brief stop at Itaewon and see the tourist-to-local ratio go up by tenfold.
  • Go back to Hangul House to grab our luggage and catch the Airport Bus.
  • Buy take out at McDonald’s for the flight home.
  • Make teary-eyed farewell to the one you love.

The Tao of Taho

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When I was a child, every morning I heard the familiar holler of a man who said “Tahooooo!”. It brought out giddy feelings of excitement as I run towards the kitchen to grab a small glass, ask my mother for some money and run out the door to catch the man who purveyed this deliciously sweet and creamy delicacy.

This is a shot of the rim of a glass full of taho. It is this warm tofu pudding dessert mixed with syrup (arnibal) and minute tapioca pearls (sago), popular in the Philippines.

One of the last glasses of taho I ever ate. (28 June 2008)

Not uncommon in Asia, taho is a warm tofu pudding dessert mixed with syrup (arnibal) and topped with minute tapioca pearls (sago). Yet, it is an iconic image of my childhood that nothing can compare to the style popularized in the Philippines.

It was a morning ritual for those lazy and humid weekends or those most-awaited days without classes. I was the devout disciple beckoning the call of an unknown man who only appeared at daylight and disappear after our transaction was complete. Our little dance continued for years until I lost those weekends and went out during days without classes. He continued his craft, his one and only business as I grew up, replaced by the new kids on my street. Eventually, I left the home I knew and loved, moving to a country where my taho did not exist.

Every time I went back for a visit and stayed at my lola’s house, I would hear the holler again and be brought to the same childhood rituals from years back. I would rummage around for some money, grab a glass from the kitchen, and catch him to become a child again. The man my lola would endearingly refer to as ‘taba’, meaning fat, remembered who I was. I was taken aback by his memory of my sister and I. He asked how she and my mother were as he fondly remembered our ritual rush to catch him before he disappears. I was pleasantly surprised that he still remembered who I was.

After I graduated in 2008, I made it a point to start my journey where I started. I saw Taba again, recreated our little ritual, chatted for a bit, finished my taho and went our separate ways yet again. Unfortunately, I learned last year that he passed away from coronary problems. 2008 was the last time I would see him; a vestige of my past that I could never experience again.

I took a photo of that last glass of taho from Taba. It was then what it is now: a reminder that I’m growing up.

A tall glass of soy curds with tapioca pearls and syrup, commonly called taho in the Philippines.

Taba's Taho