Ed Admin vs. Ed Foundations and Other Things...

Recently, I’ve been spending my lunch breaks at work at the campus bookstore, perusing the texts that are trickling in for the fall. I must say, my heart skipped more than just a few beats when I saw the texts out for some courses in the educational foundations department. So, confession: I probably do belong in the EDEF department more than I belong in the EDEA department. I do enjoy my courses and my professors, but I think my academic interests lie more in the foundations of, the philosophy of, and the social contexts of education more than within education administration. –Had I really put more thought into it, I probably would have concluded that I belonged in the EDEF department with a focus in the social & cultural contexts of education, and taking my electives in higher education administration.

From the “credits” perspective, I’m half-way through the EDEA program – and I know almost all the EDEA professors. It hardly makes sense to switch departments. –And I could take some classes in EDEF…I just feel that my lack of time for classes makes it incredibly difficult for me to do this!

Here are the courses I’m drooling over:

EDEF 685 – International Development Education
Texts:
Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning
Transformative Learning

EDEF 698 – Advanced Topics: Feminist Studies in Education
Texts:
Feeling Power: Emotions and Education
World, Class, Women: Global Literature, Education, and Feminism

EDEF 762 – Seminar on the Social & Cultural Contexts of Education
Texts:
Durkheim on Morality and Society
Durkheim – The rules of Sociological Method
Das Kapital
The Great Transformation
(I'd really love the chance to read more Durkheim...*sigh*)

It’s okay. Perhaps I’ll have more of a chance to foray into these topics when I go for my PhD. ☺

In the meantime, I picked up the texts for the intro course to my program (go figure that I’m taking it now that I’m half way done…). I also did the smart thing and emailed the professor for the syllabus! I’m planning to squish the course reading (and perhaps some of the writing, at least the journaling) into my summer reading to make my fall more manageable.

Speaking of summer reading, I’m half-way through “This Book is Not Required." It’s a great, practical read that I think would be beneficial to all college students – and honestly, everyone. Discussion on this book will be forthcoming. I’ve also got some more books on their way (I was hoping they’d arrive today but I’ll have to wait until Monday).

An idea popped into my head while at the bookstore today – to read several books around a central theme from the perspectives of different subjects, and discuss the common threads or subject-specific insights they may offer. Since flipping through Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” and thinking – “Hey, I’m not that burdened by choice…” the more I came to realize that, “Hello, yeah, you are!” From choosing my major, to my career, to where I’ll go to grad school, to what I’ll eat for dinner and even to which book I’m going to read next! Isn’t it odd that I actually feel stress in choosing which book I am going to read next for fun??? And in the big picture of it all, my major didn’t really matter so much, and which book I’ll read next is irrelevant…so why do I feel stress in making that decision? Anyhow, that will be the theme – choices/decisions. The books I’ve selected are:
The Paradox of Choice (Barry Schwartz) - sociology
Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) - psychology
Nudge (Richard Thaler) - economics
Sway (Ori Brafman) – business/marketing

I may not read all four of them, but I will be choosing at least 2, likely 3 of these books for this fun little project.

Banker to the Poor - Discussion

Okay, so it’s been a long time coming, but finally, here is my discussion on Banker to the Poor. I’ll start with a very brief synopsis of the book and the ideas that Yunus discusses. I’ll then talk about the ties I see between his book and the way it relates to technology & social justice. Finally, I’ll talk a little about some observations made my myself and people the book club I joined. ☺

On the whole, I’d say that the beginning of the book is probably the most “exciting.” We hear the story of Yunus’ childhood – what it was like growing up in Bangladesh, from family stories to his education - progressing through different universities around the world, as well as the independence of Bangladesh. The book then proceeds as sort of a timeline, from Yunus’ first ideas of ways to help the poor, to the growth and expansion of Grameen bank.

Yunus contends that credit should be a human right – along with food, clothing, and shelter. Unfortunately, only those that have the collateral are able to access credit. What the Grameen bank does is lend credit to those living in poverty to buy what they need to make a living. For example, someone who makes chairs would be able to buy the supplies to make the chairs that they then sell. –This is opposed to taking out loans from other money lenders that charge such a high rate of interest that the poor can never benefit and just continue living their lives in poverty. The Grameen bank allows the opportunity to grow – where they are able to pay back their loans and profit from their businesses. There are requirements, of course – they must sign up as a group of five. In a sense, this is the collateral – everyone feels the pressure from their friends to keep up their end of the bargain, and if one person is unable to pay for some reason, the others must find a way to pay up. Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention, the Grameen bank focuses on lending to women. His idea for this was that women are the ones that are often in charge of the family and the household and are the ones living in the worst conditions. He found that men that get money will spend it on themselves while women will instead use the money to better their family and their communities.

While a professor at Chittagong, Yunus noticed the dichotomy between the university – a place full of wealth and knowledge – and those in the surrounding areas – illiterate and stricken by poverty. He sees the university as having a responsibility to its surrounding community, “If a university is a repository for knowledge, then some of this knowledge should spill over to the neighboring community. A university must not be an island where academics reach out to higher and higher levels of knowledge without sharing any of their findings” (p. 34).

When he first discovered the plight of those suffering in poverty, he came in contact with a woman who was suffering, essentially, because she did not have twenty-two cents. Yunus realized that he could easily just give her the money, but that would not solve the problem permanently. Here begins a theme that runs throughout his book: charity is not the answer. Yunus calls charity as “a way to shrug off our responsibility” and that it “appeases our consciences” (p. 249). People (including myself) donate to causes they wish to support but oftentimes, charity just perpetuates the cycle of poverty. If we look at the welfare system in the US and really think about it, it’s almost as if it’s designed to keep those living in poverty poor and to then pass this on to their children and their childrens’ children. The benefits they receive from the welfare system help them – but it’s incredibly difficult to get off welfare because jobs they often get pay less and offer fewer benefits than welfare does! –Giving people the opportunity to take out a microcredit loan so they can improve their own lives can offer not only a long-term solution, but can improve their morale and self-esteem.

Related to this is the idea that technology can help. Of course, technology cannot change a situation when it is just presented and given to a community. In a sense, this is like charity – throwing money or technology at a problem does not solve it. For technology resources, effort, and education are essential. Yunus noticed this as one community had large amounts of land that was not being used – it was because the government had brought in modern irrigation technology but it broke, and nobody new how to get it fixed! Access to information is, of course, the key – that all groups of people might have access to the same information is one of the most wonderful things about the Internet.

Okay, let me step back a minute. I just spewed out a bunch of information about microcredit lending, charity, welfare, and technology, but what’s the bigger picture here? In my eyes, the bigger picture is that people can change their lives and become citizens capable of political action. When Yunus started this project, it was really just trying to find a solution to a problem – there was no desire for personal or political gain – it was just a problem that needed a logical solution. Yunus really had no idea how big this would get and how drastically he could change the lives of these people – who eventually proved to play a large role, politically!

Think about it – if you are able to give people the opportunity to make an honest living for themselves and improve their standard of living, they will have higher levels of self-esteem and self-respect. They learn and grow and have a desire to educate their children (Yunus even found that Grameen families even started to choose to have fewer children!), educate themselves, find value in their own opinions, and exercise their political will! In fact, Grameen borrowers (who are predominatly female) voted in the 1996 election and were able to almost wipe out a political party out of the Parliament that was against women’s rights! In fact, more females voted in that 1996 election than males did!

So where does this leave us now? Some of the ideas we talked about in the book group were that this did not (for understandable reasons) work out in the U.S. – part of the problem is the welfare system and part of it is cultural. We also discussed how much time and energy Yunus put into changing the lives of these people. He literally started one person at a time, one village at a time. He exercised incredible patience with women who would not speak to a male – showing up day after day after day just to start his bank out. It is as if he saw every little bit of improvement as positive, and every negative situation he faced as a challenge – incredibly impressive. We also liked how he came at this from neither the left nor the right, but from a position of logic and social-consciousness. He just wanted to help people and was willing to work hard, through trial and error, to find a solution.

Yunus proposes a future of social businesses, a new sector that is driven by social-consciousness because, “We don’t have to put everything on the shoulders of the government. Governments are limited; they cannot do everything and we have responsibilities as citizens” (p. 266). I look forward to reading his next book, Creating a World Without Poverty, to find out more about his ideas of social businesses.

ETEC 698 - Technology and Social Justice Wrap-Up

My 6-week summer course in Technology & Social Justice has come to an end. I find myself feeling the way I feel after every other semester – relieved, yet a little at a loss as to what to do with myself. Anyhow, I enjoyed this course a great deal and thought I’d share my thoughts about it!

I’ve had several people ask me what course I was taking this summer and inevitably, my answer to them elicits some confused looks – “Technology and what?” So what exactly is that about? To be quite honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting myself into either – but you have to admit, it’s a great course title! The topics we discussed in class varied a great deal from how technology can be used for social justice causes (i.e. political action committee websites), how technology can help disseminate information to all (making information something for all, not just a privileged few), the digital divide, how technology can help people in third world countries, as well as ethical considerations for new technologies and the implementation of technology.

The class was taught completely online with both synchronous class meetings (through Elluminate) and asynchronous discussion (Laulima forums – which is UH’s version of Sakai). In addition to looking at technology from a more global perspective, this course also introduced me to many great sources of information - which I will review at the end of this blog. I was also glad to see many parallels between course reading and some reading that I’m doing outside of class on microcredit as a mechanism for eradicating poverty (Banker to the Poor by Yunus). A blog on my review of Banker to the Poor is forthcoming as well – I’ll also be joining a book group that’s discussing Banker to the Poor tomorrow, which I’m also excited about!

I’ve decided to try to spend some of my “free time” reading in anticipation of a course I intend to take in the fall – EDEA 657 – Intro to Higher Education. I got a syllabus from a friend that took the course and lucky for me, the texts are already in the bookstore and I was able to find all the additional articles she assigned to read online as well! Hopefully the curriculum hasn’t changed much – but if it has, that’s okay…I’m sure the reading was assigned for a reason and they’ll be good!

Here are some of the resources I was introduced to in my Technology and Social Justice class that I thought I’d share:

Elluminate
Our class met online for synchronous discussions through Elluminate. It’s kind of like Skype but it’s mostly for classes or videoconferencing and has a virtual “blackboard” where PowerPoint presentations can be made or you can add text or draw. Also, the moderator can split the class up into smaller groups for discussion. While this does come with a fee, Elluminate.com does offer a “three for free” – meaning you can connect up to three people on Elluminate for free. –So give it a try!

OpenOffice
OpenOffice is incredibly awesome. It’s a suite similar to Microsoft Office except it’s better because: 1) it’s open source, 2) it’s FREE, and 3) it’s giving people an alternative to the mighty Microsoft monopoly (well…almost monopoly at least). Of the whole suite, I’ve only played around with “Writer” (i.e. “Word”) though there is also “Calc” (i.e. “Excel”), “Impress” (i.e. “PowerPoint”), “Base” (i.e. “Access”) and “Draw” (i.e. “Visio”). I think OpenOffice is an excellent option for schools and non-profits (and, well, everyone). Microsoft file formats (i.e. .doc, .xls, .ppt) can be imported into OpenOffice, and exported easily to .pdf and can also be exported to Microsoft formats. Highly recommended. *****

CreativeCommons
Prior to this course I was unfamiliar with CreativeCommons licensing. Since the internet makes it incredibly easy to share and transmit information that one creates (i.e. documents, research, photos) it makes sense that people will want to share and collaborate. When thinking about intellectual property in the information age, it’s important to consider the legal ramifications of what is used and shared and how it is referenced. Enter CreativeCommons – where you can go and apply for your own free licenses to allow others to share in your creations. This appeals to me from two perspectives: 1) everyone is viewed as a creator of knowledge…not just the people who have agents and publishers and 2) it encourages collaboration. I was impressed to see that people not only share images on which they allow others to build, alter, and enhance, but also share and re-mix music – it’s fantastic. Sometimes when I think about the youth of today and the internet, I become concerned because of issues like cyberbullying, cyberstalking, and spending vast amounts of time online – but I also think that the internet offers incredible opportunities to collaborate and connect. –And I think the younger generations see the potential in the internet to become creators and collaborators.

Second Life
Most of my classmates described Second Life as “creepy.” I actually thought it was really cool – and I can see how people really get into it. You basically create an avatar and you can change outfits, undress (which I did accidentally and then had difficulty locating my clothing…), talk to other people online, and become part of totally and completely different virtual worlds. From an educational perspective, I think it could potentially add another level to online learning – the idea that your avatar could actually participate in a virtual classroom is kind of cool (and I believe some colleges have used it for online graduation ceremonies). Personally, I feel like it would take me too much time to master, but overall, it’s pretty neat and I think everyone should try it just to see what it’s like!

American Memory Project
American Memory is a fantastic online resource of public domain content (transcripts, audio, video, etc.) from a variety of subjects that is part of the Library of Congress. I particularly like their sections on Culture/Folklife and Women’s History…they’ve even got some great information on the evolution of the conservation movement from 1850-1920! Anyone that is a fan of archives will love this site.

Columbia University’s Social Justice Wiki
So this is another great example of the intersection of technology and social justice. Here, wiki technology is used to allow people to add to an information archive of social justice topics of all kinds.

Inspiration Software– InspireData
In class, we played around with some Inspiration software including Inspiration, Kidspiration, and (my personal favorite) InspireData. These were all developed to help students (of a wide variety of ages) use computers to learn more visually. I downloaded the trial version of InspireData and was completely wowed by the technological capacity of the software, and how easy it was to use…I seriously wish this had been around when I was younger. Students can set up online surveys for their classmates to take and then can arrange the data into bar graphs, charts, and Venn diagrams! Talk about making data analysis accessible to people of all ages!

Thus ends my discussion of ETEC 698 – a great course that I highly recommend to my fellow classmates in the EDEA department. I will conclude this blog with a great quote: “Equal access to technology is not the same as equal access to equal technology” (NCES, 2004).