Oh brave new blog with only me in't: Educational Leadership Supervision Post 1

Summative course for Masters of Education Portfolio

Thoughts on my Wicked Problem from Rittel 1973

The major obstacle that defines my wicked problem is that there is no perception that there IS a problem. Educational technology is not reflected upon or critically assessed by academics, educators, government institutions, or the general public because of the mantra that all technology is good for learning and teaching. These agencies are all working from a false premise that has its basis in the existing power structures of the corporate/consumer world. The mind map diagram is only represented by two huge clouds: one is the assumptions and misdirection provided by the power structures promoting educational technology; the second is the somnambulistic, uncritical consumers of the ubiquitous digital technologies, which by most serious research, further hampers critical thinking and reflection, providing a negative feedback loop. The ideological assumptions stated are the very tenants that are foundational to the mass delusion in which all the educational stakeholders find themselves. The mind map has only two large cloud groupings, indicating the gravity of the deception and propaganda surrounding educational technologies; analogous to a top-down corporation org chart depicting its communication and efficiency problems. Additionally, educational software companies who have sales and profit motives as their ultimate goal, are incapable of being objective or critical of educational software and hardware implementation in any educational setting. These companies are beholden to their bottom line and shareholders, not teaching and learning with digital technologies; despite their ebullience for a sea change using these technologies over the last 30 years. We need to examine what educational technologies are providing and actual results, not the future promises of a techno-educational utopia, facilitated by yet another version of software or a faster Internet connection. Educational technology is not creating critical thinking, instilling imagination, or inculcating wisdom. In fact, they are at cross-purposes with these very essential goals of our educational institutions.

The digital divide is becoming much wider economically, geographically, and educationally as the existing power structures are amplified by the very technologies that purport to ameliorate the crises which cause these phenomena. This is the defining dilemma of our post-industrial society, and we are but paying lip-service to creating digitally-aware and critical students who become citizens with the requisite skills to solve these problems for our collective future.

The mind map helped me clarify the problem in order to bring the ideological assumptions more sharply into focus. The brevity of text in nodes in a branch helped me stay focused as well, rather than prattling on. The images I chose where purposely humorous because of the seriousness of the subject matter. The software I chose (FreeMind) was created in Java, and like all software really showed its limitations once I tried to do anything beyond something simple. It had limitations with regard to image insertion and manipulation. When I moved the stakeholder boxes around, they would not stack nicely. Also, I could not just create an unconnected set of branches or ideas for images. True to software’s nature, it is about the tool and its limitations, not so much the learning.

Because of my research on this topic I feel that I am much too close to the issue of critical thinking about educational technologies for the mind map to have given me much insight.

FreeMind Mind Map does not scale very well within the blog so here it is as a png image followed by larger expanded parts below