The resistance to the change to a more free, open, active, dynamic, fair, interesting, interactive and better education are THE ZOMBIES.
I felt that I need more information about this scary argument. What I did?... Wikipedia of course and I found some useful information about my topic: educational zombies... The idea of p-zombies: Philosophical zombies. And then I was really scared:
...it is possible that there is a world exactly like ours in every physical respect, but in it everyone lacks certain mental states, namely any phenomenal experiences or qualia. The people there look and act just like people in the actual world, but they don't feel anything; when one gets shot, for example, he yells out as if he is in pain, but he doesn't feel any pain
A world that is so really like our world but without "conscious experience". I don´t want to go in a deep discussion about philosophical concepts. I like Philosophy but I am not so good to discuss about it in an appropriate level. Not like "Old socs", "I Kant", "L Tzu" and all the others philosophers in our Moodle forums.
In any case the idea of the educational zombies and his philosophical reflection let me in a very extreme pessimistic position: There are not solution, there are not opportunities to change nothing, because we are maybe selves the zombies and we don´t know. What to change then?
But if we are not, if we are the good guys, the "Ed-tech survivors/fighters" (...?) the avantgard of a new open, free, decentralized... better world thanks the social media in the Internet, than the question is HOW.
We can use this tech "to make fundamental and systemic changes" in our classes, in our teaching and in our learning. We can apply a more connectivist approach to our daily doing. OK, that is a way, and the second part is hopeful. The hope that a "viral process" transform our zombie-environment in something "vital", in life. Education becomes life.
"we have to gain our voice. We have to speak for ourselves. To reclaim our language, reclaim our culture". (S.Downes, Reusable Media...). :
Right, that can be an opportunity: The open social media in the Internet, and the use that an active individual working in network do with it, and in this way hope to gain some influence on the institutional practice of education and that means on the future our societies. Because against the hard critic that the idea of a Fifth Estate receive in the forums of our CKK08 I still support the idea of W. H. Dutton:
...the network of networks, the Internet is enabling the development of a Fifth Estate that is enhancing the accountability of many sectors across all societies, from Burma to Britain, and from the press office to the classroom
The most important thing that we can learn from voices of resistance against a change is two things:
1. The most powerful voice of resistance is sometimes in ourselves.
2. The resistance is normally not really a conscious resistance against do things better, but a zombie resistance, a resistance from the ignorance of the existence of a practical alternative way, an opportunity, and from the election of false opportunities that improve any real change but only the continuation of old corrupts practices in a new high-tech-envelope.
In any cases I know how to act now with zombies thanks to the people of "Commoncraft Show":
1 comentario:
Hi Carlos!
I really enjoyed and learned from your paper. I have a similar point of view, I called it inertia but it can be called Zombie resistance.
The choice we have is to continue doing what we do, each of us with our students, hopping to infect with the virus as many peers as possible.
One of the best things about this course is that I met you :-)
Thanks for being there!
Besos. Maru
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