Originally posted to eBridge on Sunday 27 November 2011
I've had a weekend of rest from thinking about the project, as it seems to have been consuming my whole life lately! There's been a positive aspect to this, because it's an indication of my line manager's trust in me that she is willing to let me pursue my project in work time without intervention, but I have been finding myself burning out a lot - both mentally and emotionally. I've learned to reflect on my emotions, and what is causing them, which is usually an 'automatic thought' that I haven't consciously registered, and I've come up with what has been bothering me....
When I was in a school on Wednesday to video one of my participants. I got talking with a colleague who is convinced that there will quite simply be less teachers in future. Now while I'm very enthusiastic about the possibilities for online learning, the idea that funding for schools is coming under pressure in this way is quite disturbing to me, because for all the possible benefits that could be realised by going online, there is a huge void of uncertainty between policy making and successful implementation. Not least of of my concerns is the removal of human contact from the process, because this devalues the worth of people's experiences in the equation. There is a wealth of information available on the internet, and no end of tools for aggregating it in convenient and saleable 'apps' for whatever technology base you happen to be using - indeed many companies have been predicting this and situated themselves accordingly - but without the very human element of contextualisation I fear that we will be digging ourselves further into a trap of our own conceit.
We tend to assume that everything we find online is necessarily correct and sacrosanct, but often it's either so impersonal as to be useless, or put out there to win us over to buying someone's product. I found myself initially balking at the low marks I was given for my last assignment, but on reflection I realise that I had been single mindedly pursuing a train of thought that seemed beneficial without considering all the angles. My ideas stemmed from reading the works of some influential people in the field after stirring presentations at conferences, but I now realise that I had taken them straight from blogs and websites, without balancing them against any kind of rational feedback, criticism or peer review. Although the ideas may have benefited my practice in the short term (I'm still convinced they have
),
I am losing some objectivity by not balancing them out in this way. If I can
lead myself astray in this manner, with some supposedly useful experience in the
field, what chance does the average school pupil have if they are completely
reliant on whatever content gets pushed their way?!That's a load off my chest, now for a bit of sleep before I plunge back into video editing....
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