Rousing the ‘Rip Van Winkles’ in Nigeria’s Tertiary Education

Rip Van Winkles

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(c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

IN OUR TERTIARY EDUCATION

ROUSING THE

Sources

This paper adopts insights from these sources:

o Educational Psychology

o Information and Computer Technology, ICT

o Educational Sociolinguistics


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Education and technology

A pictorial history


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1. The 1960s:

Blackboards, worksheets, visual aids, etc.


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2. The 1960s:

Tape recorders


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3. The 1970s:

(i) Typewriters


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(ii) The cyclostyle


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4. Early 1980s:

(i) The word processor


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(ii) The electric typewriter


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5. 1990s - present

The Computer


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The laptop


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iPad, Android, iphone, Palmtop, etc.


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The Photocopy machine and the printer


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The Smartboard


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The nicknames of a phenomenon

The Internet

The information superhighway

The World Wide Web


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Questions that will arise later!

How can I use the Skype to teach?

Is Facebook any use in the classroom?

What’s the value of Youtube in education?

What skills does a teacher need in the 21st century?

*What are we doing to our students? (c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

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What are we doing to our students?

A common scenario today is a classroom filled with digitally literate students being taught by ‘technologically dead’ teachers.


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Preface: The story of Rip Van Winkle

In brief, the story tells of an irreparably indolent hen-pecked husband whose major preoccupation was other people’s business.

One day, while returning from a fruitless hunting session, he saw an unusual man saddled with a very heavy keg of liquor – and he eagerly rushed to his aid.


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The two of them got to an unusual assembly of odd-looking people whom Rip was asked to attend to. After a little time, Rip took some of the liquor and got drunk – and fell asleep.

He woke up under a tree 20 years later – to the unkind realization that life had been greatly altered: no one recognized him, and nothing looked familiar to him at all. In fact, the language of interaction was replete with strange terms: politics, war, independence, etc.


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At a point, Rip exclaimed, “God knows, I’m not myself – I’m somebody else...everything’s changed...and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!”

Although later rehabilitated by his daughter, it took some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor.


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Introduction

Summits on education in Nigeria: Conclusions

- ill-defined educational policy;

- poor funding;

- unstable university calendar;

- recurrent strike actions;

- depletion of first rate academics

Conclusion: Our iceberg is melting


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‘Destructive progress’

A PhD readily confers teaching skills

PhD and teachers’ poor expressive/ communication skills

Teaching methodology

Teaching vs. learning styles: does one size really fit all?


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Questions arising

Is education different in the 21st century? (Let’s define literacy and classroom)

What happened to all those great teachers?

Are you worth the classification? (by position, confession or profession?)


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Water or wine?

An Israeli folktale tells of a party to which various members of the community were invited. It being normal for guests to provide wine, everybody took along their wine bottles and emptied them into the general vat of wine for consumption that night.


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However, people had also decided individually that it would not be noticed if their own wine bottle contained water.

The result was a vat full of water.


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The moral of the tale?

Our academic skills need to be evaluated regularly.


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Pathologies

The pathologies of Teaching

The pathologies of Learning


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The pathologies of Teaching

Many lecturers these days suffer from at least

three distinct pathologies:

oMarginality of knowledge

oResearcher narcissism

oMultimedia-ocrity (or Technophobia)


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Marginality of knowledge

A basic flaw in teacher recruitment is the specification of a basic degree (e.g. PhD) in the field – presuming a great mastery of the entire discipline.

However, a PhD holder in, say Lexical Semantics, may be grossly inadequate as a teacher of Use of English!


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Researcher narcissism

These days, not many lecturers conduct their research in line with the affordances of the 21st century.

Also, such lecturers have no link whatsoever with scholars elsewhere – not even in the office next to theirs – as they’re absorbed in their own research! (c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

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Multimedia-ocrity

Many lecturers can quite afford many of the devices that make up 21st century technology. E.g., iPads, iPods, laptops, tablets, MP3 player, etc.

These lecturers keep these gadgets out of the classroom – grossly unaware of their value in 21st century education.


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The pathologies of learning

Most of our students suffer from at least three pathologies:

o Amnesia

o Fantasia

o Inertia


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Amnesia

Many students regularly forget what they have learned in their classes. Indeed, at times they forget that they even attended some classes.


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Fantasia

Fantasia might be called illusory understanding or persistent misconception. It is potentially far more dangerous than amnesia.

It is that state in which students are absolutely confident that they understand something, but THEY DON’T.


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Inertia

Inert ideas are those that simply lie there, doing nothing. They are not forgotten; nor are they in some intrinsic sense wrong.

Inertia exposes a student’s inability to apply information or knowledge.


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Shared pathologies

In addition to their distinct pathologies, some university lecturers and many students share certain pathologies, e.g.:

oBibliophobia

oBeguilement

oVoidance


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Bibliophobia

Many lecturers and many students simply have a pathological hatred for books.

From discipline to discipline, we see the negative impact of this pathology, as it causes education to lose its edge.


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Beguilement

Such lecturers and students are sidetracked from their basic duty: teaching or learning.

The search for instant social mobility without basic sociological input makes both such teachers and students social dopes.


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Voidance

Distracted and filled with unrealistic ambitions, these teachers and students just carry a degree or certificate:

There’s no knowledge to back it up.


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For the record

A Psychological Sketch of Our Students


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Our students’ performance in exams points up the following disturbing facts:

o Their lack of basic writing/expressive skills overshadows their general knowledge.

o Their thought processes reveal certain reading and learning problems.

o Our students need stronger critical-thinking and problem-solving skills to survive in the 21st century.


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Learning disability: Operational guide

Ann Logsdon (2011) summarises learning disabilities as:

“disabilities in basic writing that affect the learner's ability to write words with correct spelling, appropriate word choice, and basic mechanics such as letter formation, grammar, and punctuation.”


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Exemplars of pathologies

Term-inal misconceptions

Drooling

Speculative claims

Teacher Do-it-yourself

Peter principle


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1. Term-inal misconceptions

There are definitions that students give during examinations which are, in a manner of speaking, the death of the terms being defined; hence, the expression, ‘term-inal’.

Look at this example: (c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

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“When writing for a non technical audiences like bankers, lawyers, businessmen/women, a computer engineer, their are certain criteria one has to use for effective communication and understand...”


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2. Drooling

Drooling suggests that the student thinks and writes in a manner reminiscent of Shakespeare’s description of life as “a tale told by an idiot – full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5).


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It is not impossible that at a point, a writer experiences the writer’s block. This is because, the human brain has powerful as it is does have moments when it has nothing. The writer is advised at this time to settle and relax. He will do well to use some basic forms. One of such as Repitition: this will help in that the writer could pick up from his writings. The writer repetition of an idea while writing will help as a link towards that which is lost...


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3. Speculative claims

The desire to sound knowledgeable sometimes becomes the undoing of many students, particularly when they run into the fallacy of hasty generalization.

Look at this example:


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Many a time does one need to write, be it poetry, prose, essays, letters and so on without really knowing where to begin or start from. This is not strange as it has happened even to great writers such as Wole Soyinka, Emily Bronte, Chinua Achebe, even Shakespeare, the greatest writer of his time would not have been cut out from the show of what is known as writers block.


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4. Teacher Do-it-yourself

This term refers to a student giving the impression that he or she ran out of time and could not fully provide the answer required of him or her – and, consequently, leaving the work for the teacher to complete.


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5. Peter Principle

According to Lawrence Peter, “Employees are promoted until they reach their level of incompetence.”

Applied to education, students are promoted above their level of language control.


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“Writers block can occure to any body in writings both literary, official and academic writings. What is writers block? Writers block can be describe to as when their is lapses in one’s word. This is to say that there are at times when we may need words and they may not come to us. This “writer’s block” occure also to scholars such as Katherine, Wolfburg Woolf and many others...”


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Arising from the numerous pathologies

One crucial question arises:

What should teachers do?


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Nine skills for the 21st century teacher

Patience . Adaptability Constant learning . Imagination

Teamwork . Risk-taking . Mentoring . Leadership

Communication


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The battle of the century!

Digital natives Vs.

Digital immigrants (c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

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Who are the natives and who are the immigrants?

The natives are also known as Net Genners, and:

o They invest time and other resources on instant messaging, text messaging, MP3 & MP4 players, mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, etc.

o Owing to their ‘addiction’ to these devices, they’re nicknamed ‘Digital natives’.


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oNet Geners have grown up within a world whose ecology is technology.

o Thus, it’s hard for them to think of life or living without these devices.

o It is therefore crucial that lecturers explore how Net Generation students learn and work.


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A test of lecturers’ adaptability

Teaching in the 21st century is not business as usual. The teacher is, of necessity, expected to adapt to the ‘demands’ of the 21st century learner.

Lecturers must develop new thinking that brings an end to ‘business as usual’.

Lecturers must incorporate existing technology into their work.


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All because:

oThe Net Generation student’s learning strategy is multimodal: very much like the Internet itself.

oHis mind resembles "hypertext," meaning that images, sounds and text link together bits of information.


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oResearch shows that Net Generation students are strong visual learners and weaker textual learners.

oThey are intuitively drawn to multi-media presentations.

oMore than anything, Net Generation students are excellent collaborators.


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Source:

http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/what_is_21st_century_education.htm

So what is 21st century education?

It is bold. It breaks the mould. It is flexible, creative, challenging, and complex.

It addresses a rapidly changing world filled with fantastic new problems as well as exciting new possibilities.


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One principal requirement

Besides their reading problems and expressive/writing shortcomings, our students need to acquire 21st century [new] literacy skills.

These literacy skills help students gain knowledge through reading as well as using media and technology. >>


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1. Information literacy

Students need to know how to work effectively with information:

o to remember lesson content

o to understand what is taught

o to apply aspects of the subject

o to analyse and evaluate new information, and

o to create information. (c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

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Information: consumption and production

Consuming information

o Before the Internet, information through books, TV, etc. was provided by professionals. These days, amateurs are involved.

o Students must take on the role of the editor, checking and cross-checking information, watching for reliability, signs of bias, datedness, and errors.


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Producing information

o In the past, students were mostly consumers of information and wrote largely for the teacher — to pass tests or exams.

o These days, writing has real-world applications and consequences.

o Students need to take on the role of professional writers, learning to be effective and ethical producers of information. (c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

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2. Media literacy


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Source:

http://www.thoughtfullearning.com/resources/what-are-literacy-skills

Media literacy involves understanding the many ways that information is produced and distributed.

The forms of media have exploded in the last decade and new media arrive every day.

Students need to learn how to critically analyze and evaluate information coming to them through any medium.


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3. Technology literacy

The 21st century is enmeshed in a technological revolution, with huge changes taking place over brief spans of time.

A decade ago, Facebook and WhatsApp didn't exist, but now many people could not live without them.

The average cellphone now has more functions than

computers of the late 1990s. (c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

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Teachers can help students use these technologies more purposefully, e.g.:

o researching on the Internet;

o using search engines;

o accessing videos, podcasts, and feeds;

o evaluating Web resources;

o using social sites;

o visiting virtual worlds;

o blogging and using wikis; and

o using message boards, newsgroups


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But to help the students, teachers, need to be properly acquainted with these technologies, and how they enhance teaching and learning.

>> (c)2015 Prof. Adeleke A. Fakoya Lagos State University, Nigeria

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Web 2.0:

A Vehicle for Transforming Education

That is the title of the 5th chapter of Lawrence Tomei’s (2010) book, ICT for Modern Education and Instructional Advancement.

A few nuggets of the content of that chapter are instructive for the 21st century teacher.


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According to Julia Gooding

“Web 2.0 …” [is a review] of some of the most commonly used and most useful technologies.

[These] technologies are now opportunities to be implemented in the classroom.


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The term ‘Web 2.0’ is “a colloquialism that refers to the current state of the ever changing World Wide Web.”

“. . . an environment filled with opportunities to … create content in new ways … to share information, communicate differently, collaborate easily … and self-publish”


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“It [Web 2.0] is often defined by the technologies that are part of it:

o social software

oweblogs and linklogs

o folksonomies

owikis

opodcasts, RSS feeds, and web services”


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Other applications include:

o tagging

o social bookmarking

oonline learning communities, and

oonline office applications.

All of these applications are user-centered, user-generated, and user-controlled.


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Teachers around the globe are using these new technologies because many are inexpensive and easily accessible methods to:

o incorporate technology

o increase critical thinking

opromote substantive engagement in the classroom. >>


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1. Audio and video conferencing

“Using technology to communicate and collaborate across different countries can create a more global learning environment, can allow for cross-cultural studies, and can enhance understanding and appreciation of education in contexts other than your own.”

- Driscoll (2007:12)


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Audio and video conferencing are becoming more popular and only require a simple computer with a microphone, and webcam — standard equipment for today’s computer systems


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2. Blogs

As observed by Driscoll (2007:10):

“Blogs are simple online journals primarily used to support communication in the form of presentation, and they provide a great tool for class interaction.”


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Creating a blog is as simple as writing an e-mail, and the services are free through many providers including www.weblog.com, www.blogger.com, Bravenet.com, edublogs.org, and 360.yahoo.com.

Each of these providers offers brief online tutorials to assist the user in creating his or her own free blog.


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3. Social bookmarking

Clicking on Bookmarks or My favorites is a means of storing links to sites on one’s own computers for future access.

Social bookmarking is “designed to keep found things found, identify new communities, discover new websites, make us more productive…” - Gordan-Murnane (2006: 27)


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4. Wikis

Wikipedia is one of the largest wikispaces on the Web.

Wikispaces (or wikis) are “. . . online collaborative communities that lend themselves to continuous editing and refinement of content.” - Huffman (2006)


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5. PowerPoint

It gives you everything you need to produce a professional-looking presentation.

PowerPoint offers word processing, outlining, drawing, graphing, and presentation management tools - all designed to be easy to use and learn.


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Making teaching/learning fun

One fun way of using PowerPoint in the classroom is to administer a test with it. Here is an example.


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Making English fun to learn

Who wants to be a millionaire –

Sorry,

WHO WANTS TO BE A GREAT COMMUNICATOR?


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Instruction:

In each of the following exercises, select the most suitable option (that is A, B, C or D).


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1. In recommending a course of action, we generally advise a person to:

a) follow jacket

b) follow suit

c) follow coat

d) follow trousers


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2. To emulate others, we usually:

a) take our cue from them

b) take a queue from them

c) take a coup from them

d) take a question from them


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3. What kind of wind does not blow anyone any good?

a) an ill wind

b) a foul wind

c) a smelly wind

d) a whirlwind


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4.‘Love’ associated with which animal is regarded as unserious?

a) pigeon

b) tortoise

c) fox

d) puppy


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5. What do you call a person that looks very much like another?

a) a scanned image

b) a carbon image

c) a splitting image

d) a spitting image


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There are many tools to select from – going by the technologies that make up ‘Web 2.0’; but the teacher needs to know what can best serve his purposes.

Also, the teacher needs to consider his or her students’ learning needs and styles before recommending any ‘tool’.


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Conclusion & Recommendations

“Students who use computers in schools demonstrate improved motivation and enthusiasm for school; critical thinking, problem-solving, and independent learning; skills and content knowledge; and ability to compete in the workforce.”


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Teachers, too, need to internationalise their practice. Get to know about helpful classroom practices in enviable societies and adopt them.

Have you heard about Flipping?


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Universities and similar institutions should compel teachers to incorporate the use of technology in their teaching.

The future that can be glimpsed from current global educational trends is not one that uses chalk and blackboards but one that employs Web tools and smartboards. ><


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97 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.

“...this trade of ours [is] in danger of falling into disrepute...”

– Acts 19:27

“Teachers, teach yourselves.” – Romans 2:23


Thank you.


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Rousing the ‘Rip Van Winkles’ in Nigeria’s Tertiary Education

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