AI – howsheilaseesIT

Time for a digital go slow? Just what are we doing with ed tech?

This is one of these posts I have to start with a caveat that I actually don’t really know what I am trying to say, so it will probably be a bit incoherent (well, a bit more incoherent than normal!)

Last week I attended the ALT Scotland annual meeting. The meeting was always planned as a hybrid event, and with the national rail strike this week, a few more people took advantage of that option. I did go in person as it was in Glasgow, so I had a low carbon travel footprint. I was originally going write something about the event -which was great – thanks to the organisation of the group co-chairs Joe Wilson and Louise Jones. You can see more about the event here.

It was great to be at a face to face event. Like everyone else I have missed being with people over the past 2 years. Over that time I have also got used to, and benefited from the flexibility and convenience of online meetings/conferences/events. But face to face is always best isn’t it? Well yes and no. During and after the event, I couldn’t help thinking about these words from the University of Edinburgh Manifesto for online teaching:

“Distance is a positive principle, not a deficit. Online can be the privileged mode.“

I don’t have access to EduRoam so didn’t try to connect to wifi. I was a wee bit late (another online meeting) and so when I got there I just wanted to listen/engage with speakers and people in the room. I didn’t join the zoom room. It turned out that most of the speakers were actually online, and being able to see the chat message notifications ping up on the “big screen” I was aware of missing out on quite a lot.

Now, I know I could have joined the online space too, but I did feel that would have been too much cognitive load for me aka I couldn’t be a**** to scroll through my email, find the link and join – after all I was in the room! So that got me thinking about hybrid teaching (which we did have a good discussion about in the room once the “official” meeting had ended), and just where and what screens should be showing – a screen with a chat window might be more useful than a camera on a person.

When we were leaving the room, a colleague from the college mentioned that the camera on the front of the “big screen” could track eye movements of people in the room, provide staff with data on engagement.

OMFG was the reaction from myself and a few others. Ethics? Data processing? Proxies for engagment – don’t know about you but some of my best thinking has been done when my eyes are closed and/or not staring at a screen. So I was going to write something about that but then I had forgotten about an University of Edinburgh seminar I had signed up for with Neil Selwyn titled digital education in times of climate crisis.

Now I am not even going to attempt to summarise Neil’s presentation, it was recorded and I’ll add the link here when it is available. Neil was very up front about the session being more of a provocation and an opportunity for him to present some “things” he has been thinking about in relation to the climate crisis and ed tech.

Although I am aware of the inequalities around technology and the digital divide, I probably have a bias towards a positive view of the benefits of technology in education. That’s not to say I am not critical of technology use, far from it. As Neil’s presentation unfolded, I did become acutely aware of how little I really consider the environmental impact of my use of technology.

As Neil pointed out, ed tech is actually based on excessive use, an always on culture with limitless data and storage. The irony of listening to that on my super-fast home broadband on my laptop, whilst checking my mobile phone notifications via my “very good mobile data” contract was not lost on my and I was once again so thankful for all the privileges I have. I also had that nagging voice in the back of my head about really needing to find time to work out the costs of getting solar panels on my roof.

Of course over the pandemic the issues of digital inequality and wider social inequalities came into stark view. Yet, the answers from ‘big tech’ don’t really seem to be addressing these issues. That pandemic amnesia (that ability to forget everything that as happened over the past 2 and half years) seems to be setting in again. Being back on campus will solve everything . . .

We can pay lip service to increasing, flexibility and accessibility through tech. Cameras in the classrooms will allow us all to be together. They can even automagically follow “the teacher” as they move around the room. But is that actually what anyone – staff or students need? What pedagogical principles is that supporting? How much energy is that using? Particularly if cameras are also tracking and sending to systems to process potentially vast amounts of data that as well as being ethically questionable might not actually be of any practical use to anyone.

Over the past year there does seem to have been a rush to buy lots of tech and refit learning spaces without that much consideration of how it can actually be used effectively and what its ROI will actually be. It is all to easy to be guilty of succumbing to the big tech promise of shiny, new solutions that cost us more and are ultimately causing us to use more energy (mainly from fossil fuels) that are killing the planet.

So what can we do? Neil used the lens of eco-justice to explore notions of decoupling technology form economic growth. Perhaps we need more “voluntary simplicity” with an accompanying focus on community, conviviality and care – a form of “digital de-growth”.

Of course, this is really challenging. How can we shake ourselves out of our comfortable complacency? If my current digital networks and connection opportunities were taken away, I would be bereft and probably unemployed. I have found online spaces full of positive conviviality and community. Can/could I find a digital equivalent to the slow cooking movement? An approach that would allow me to keep the most important elements of my digital needs whilst at the same time balancing my environmental impact? (Must, must check out those solar panels . . .)

How can we be “realistic but resistant” to ever more ed tech consumption? Neil suggested that perhaps one starting point was to think what might be ed techs version of the bicycle – is it the Raspberry Pi? Do we just need to be thinking smaller, less “shiny”, and be more connected with coding and making? My former colleague Christine Sinclair commented that maybe we all need a “cradle to grave” environmental impact assessment to help us make informed decisions.

Maybe . . . One throwaway comment Neil made was that he always encourages cameras off in online sessions. A small way to reduce energy consumption. That got me thinking of that scary, eye tracking camera – maybe we should just switch them all off too or at the very least have a conversation with our students about them and let them decide.

Finding joy in ethics and criticality: reflections on #altc21

I have to admit I at the start of the conference, I felt pretty jaded. It’s been a long year. I haven’t had a proper break – that’s my own fault – not blaming anyone but me for that. And like everyone else I’ve had, and continue to have, my fair share of challenges this year. Another online conference wasn’t exactly filling me with eager anticipation.

There’s always something of the start of the new term feel about the ALT annual conferences, which is one of its strengths. That is also historically why it’s been a challenge for some people to attend the physical conferences. One positive thing about the move to is a lot more flexible, and accessible for many. Anyway, like I said, I wasn’t really feeling any excitement for anything at the start of the week – online or in the “real” world! I knew I would be dipping in and out of the conference due to work commitments, but as is so often the way with ALT conferences, it and more importantly the ALT community, slowly drew me in.

The keynotes were, as ever, very strong this year. Sonia Livingston’s “the datafication of education: in whose interests?”, focused on her research with in schools around the use and understanding of data (particularly children’s understanding of data and how it is used). The give and take of data in schools (and throughout education) is quite unbalanced. The ‘system’ takes data, often without any really questioning from students or wider society. Schools/colleges/universities, are generally trusted entities, with a (at least here in the UK ) a legal duty of care for their students. However, as more 3rd party systems are integrated in education, and more data is being given to companies, the balance is changing. They take the data and offer it back in ways that they choose. Sonia highlighted that adults often give children a false sense of trust about managing data, without highlighting that once a company has your data, despite GDPR, there is a lot it can do with it without you realising. Just what is Google/Zoom/Microsoft etc actually doing with all the extra data they have collected over lockdown for example? The need for data literacy for us all, not just kids, is increasingly important.

Data literacy was central to Mutale Nkonde’s keynote, based on her 2019 paper “Advancing racial literacy in tech” , Mutale expertly took us through the bias of AI and algorithms, highlighting in particular the racial basis in social platforms (Tiktok was cited here) with their implementation of data proxies for popularity, that clearly have historical racial bias “baked in”. Mutale encouraged us all to question and have more conversations about data, AI, algorithms. To participate in projects such a AI for the people which aims to develop and support the ethical use of data. Mutale also reminded us that algorithms are IP and so have commercial confidentiality on their side. Companies do not need to share the algorithms they use. I for one think that should be challenged more, particularly in education. If we use a AI or any 3rd party company and it is harvesting data, then part of the contract should be full disclosure around how that data is being used, so that there can be informed discussions around what patterns, historical trends, etc algorithms are being built on.

Starting these conversations can be tricky. That’s where the (launched at the conference) ALT Framework for Ethical Learning Technology might come into play too. During its launch John Traxler asked if we need to decolonise educational technology. This sparked off a bit of a debate on the ALT mailing list, so I think the answer is a clear yes! Adapting the statements in the framework to questions would be a good starting point, imho around conversations about the ethics of technology, the ethical use of data, what that actually means in context.

The highlight of the conference for me was the final keynote from Lou Mycroft. Lou is one of the founders of #JoyFE. This really did bring back my #joy. I loved Lou’s explanation of: joy as an intentional practice, of the power of being affirmingly critical, but not cynical, of quiet resistance, of the joyful militancy of embracing “the power of giving away power”. I loved the wave Lou weaved ideas around leadership, around transformation being a start not an end point, of turning values into questions. For example what would assessment look like as a practice of hope? What would timetabling look like as a practice of care? I would encourage you, dear reader to watch all the keynotes, as well as the other sessions.

For me the ALT-C conferences have always been places and spaces of joy, for sharing of ideas, for getting re-energised, and also for getting confidence from the community to continue (or start) some bits of quiet resistance. Lou proposed leadership as being more about co-ordination, not control. On reflection, I think that is strength of ALT too, it can, and does provide co-ordination for the community. The range of special interest/member groups are a living example of that.

The conference also saw the launch of the ALT/ITN co production “The Future of Learning “. Lots of “shiny” tech stuff there and worth a watch not to see the future, but to see what is happening now. Not a lot of critique of technology/AI/ data so I wonder if there were to be another episode if a theme of the ethical use of technology would be apt? That would give a space for the new framework and the work of the ALT community in this area to be highlighted. It could help raise wider awareness of the need to question how, where, why, when and with/by whom data is collected and shared. That might provide a way to show some joyful resistance and coordinated leadership can allow for more equitable, ethical, caring and joyful future for learning.

Many thanks to the conference co-chairs, the conference committee, the ALT team, and everyone who participated in the conference.

Facing the Future of HE – another podcast experiment

Last week I took part in the Advance HE Community webinar title, Facing the Future: Higher Education in the era of artificial intelligence. As I was traveling home from Galway, I didn’t want to risk joining the session from the bus. Although I have to say the wifi on the buses in Ireland is pretty good. So instead did a short podcast (having been inspired by my recent experience of the InVinoFab podcast series).

The session was only open to Advance HE members, but I thought I’d share my contribution to the session -which is far less around AI but more about people, critical pedagogy and curriculum.