I'm at the beach, in a cafe, finally getting my wifi fix. My first port of call was my daughter's blog, nineandSoph. While we are supposed (I'll get to that in a minute) to be basking in the sun, Sophie and Simon are in Tignes, experiencing a winter in the snow. Their photos are gob-smack gorgeous. I, on the other hand, will not add pics to this post. Today - and for the past 4 days - it's raining. Buckets of the stuff. We are all over it, which is why I'm in a cafe with wifi. We should be in the sun. I should be heading for the beach with novel in hand, towel, sunblock and sunglasses, ready for a stint rotisserie-ing in the sun for a few hours, before strolling back to the bach for lunch before round two of the same. 

Instead, we have been holed up indoors. We are on to our second Wasjig (a backwards jigsaw), and going stir-crazy. This is when we need wifi at the bach, or at least an iPad with 3G. Another alternative is to read the thesis draft beside my bed. It sits there, looking accusingly at me. I tell myself I'm on holiday. Reading is recreational right now. Yeah, right.  

So, what have I been thinking about? I've been thinking about how I will change my course with the secondary grads. I think I will develop it as an action research project for them, to get them used to the concept of teaching as inquiry. This is an important aspect of the New Zealand Curriculum, and one which I'm keen on as a means of developing critical self-reflective practices in new teachers. So, my brainstorm is to reframe what is already there as a process of wonder - the guiding question perhaps being, 'I wonder what would happen if...?' So, getting the grads to play with new tools and develop their own affordances for their curriculum, context, classes, could be fun. It will tie in nicely with the assessed tasks they do, and make better sense of the end of the year task. Sometimes Eureka! moments take a while...

So, if any of you have any views on this as a way to purposely link experimentation and risk-taking with digital technologies and pedagocial purposes, let me know! I'm on holiday, I should be parking my brain....

 

A lot has happened. Work, for example. Also, my mother died, and my daughter has left for her OE. These are quite big. My mother dying was a surreal experience, and today's blog, now that I have some distance from it, will be the topic for today. So, my silence on my blog has had some purpose. Distance.

My mother slipped and broke her hip while I was on sabbatical. The regular phone calls home while away were often about- shall I come home? how is she? My younger sister was her main carer, so was able to keep me updated. Basically, my mother was in a hospital bed for six weeks and didn't leave alive. Before her fall, her doctor had changed her blood thinning medication from warfarin to another one. I don't remember its name, but it has been implicted in other elderly people's deaths too. Essentially, she got dizzy and fell, shattering her rather fragile hip bone. She spent two weeks uncomfortably in hospital until they could operate to repair the damage around her prosthetic hip. The delay related to her warfarin replacement leaving her system, and her heart rate being strong enough for it.

After surgery, her leg was shorter and an infection developed at the site. Another bout of surgery took place in order to clean the wound, but she took 7 hours to recover, which is pretty close to not recovering. Unfortunately, this surgery did not remove the infection. On the day she was due for another bout of surgery, she refused. She'd had enough. So, given that she had a DNR, the antibiotics were stopped and morphine was made available. As you can imagine, this is a very truncated story - for lots of reasons. My two sisters and I kept vigil from that day (a Friday) until the following Monday morning when she died.

This vigil was a remarkable experience. Time folded in on itself. It had no meaning. It sped by and we took shifts on the inflatable mattress, the lazyboy chair, and the ordinary chair. Every now and then we'd get food, have a shower and change clothes, but mum always had someone beside her, and we were all there until the end.

Stoking is a term I'm now familiar with as it is associated with death. If you have someone you are keeping vigil over, ask the staff about it. It is rather disconcerting. Essentially, mum had two goes at dying, which is rather distressful.

Staff at the hospital were fantastic and highly supportive. However, if someone is dying and morphine is available to ease pain- ensure it's on tap and use it: it is a humane thing to do. Bring inflatable beds so you don't have to leave. We ended up buying three for the ward at the hospital, so others keeping vigil can at least get horizontal for a few hours at a time in the room. Hospitals don't seem to provide much for relatives in such sitations.

We didn't leave the hospital for several hours. The medical teams had to do their thing, the legal bits about time of death etc had to be done, and we had to wiat for the coroner to release her body before it could be laid out. This was really special. The staff members and my sister did that. By the time mum was shrouded, she looked beautiful. Once the funeral staff came to take her away, we could clean up the room and go back to mum's house. By the way State of Grace - run by women - were absolutely the best ever. Stunningly professional and kind.

Then there was the round of tying up loose ends- her accounts, the bank, the lawyer, the funeral process itself (we had a memorial servive the following week after she was cremated- we celebrated her and cast her ashes into the sea after paddleboarding out - she'd wanted to have a go, since she'd watched my younger sister do it each day, so we gave her a short trip - and said goodbye).... Four months later, there are still things to sort. This is quite difficult to do, but necessary and unavoidable. We think we're now ready for estate to be settled. Then it will be time to just remember her.

 

You've got to hand it to the Royal palaces: they certainly know how to put on a good show. Hampton Court Palace is a marvellous place to get a handle on the way a palace could function to support the vagaries of its chief inhabitant, its monarch (and assorted hangers-on) several centuries ago. It's a marvel of organisation. A machine.

The best bits have to be the domestic area: the whole food preparation industry, tucked to one side of the palace, but the real heartbeat. it must have been furious with activity, especially during Henry VIII's time, since he was a king who ate to excess. I loved the way the food storage areas were designed to take advantage of coolness (such as the fish cupboard - on  a shady side of a narrow walkway). The display and audio recording accompanying this, help recreate soemthing of the experience: vusial and aural technologies assist to make a visitor's experience a really deep one. It gets better.

The meat preparation area- the butcher's room, pie-making and stew boiling areas clearly show how pies were made, and the function of the pie-crusts as portable plates illustrates the ingenuity of making do with materials at hand. Pie crusts weren't eaten, because they were a salt & flour concoction designed to hold the meat filling. The refuse piles must have been prodigious. Some photos of these domestic arrangements are below. You need to visit it yourself if you haven't. It's a must-see. It takes an entire day to have a good look at things. It's certainly worth getting the audio guide to help.

In terms of technology, the displays show how cleverly the Tudors used available materials to make life work as they wanted it to in such a big place. The systems must have been prodigious - the book-keeping to keep track of the comings and goings of the goods, including the supply of foods and the supply of materials (plates, pots, uniforms, utensils...), the staff organsiation, workflows, communications... The latter must have been really interesting to be in charge of - how did they manage to get butchered meat on time? Vegetables and firewood etc? How did they decide who would supply and when? Without the communication facilities we have now (internet, mobile phones etc), the network of people with bits of information must have been a minefield to manage. No wonder they wrote everything down. You have to be impressed! Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantell's book about Thomas Cromwell, gives an idea of the lengths to which people went to gather information - particualrly Cromwell. Spy networks were absolutely necessary, given the way information was shared. Or not.

Anyway, here are some pics of the domestic side of things:

This Dig for a Day was a great thing to do.

I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who's keen on (a) Time Team, (b) digging, (c) finding stuff... This long term archaeological project is at the site of Margaret Beaufort's place. She was the mother of Henry VII, who was the father of Hentry VIII. She became, through her marriages, the wealthiest woman in the kingdom. Her son (Henry VII) spent most of his early years in exile in France, since he needed protecting against assassination, given the volatile time of the War of the Roses.

Anyway, we got to dig because the Sussex Council wanted, as a provision of its funding of the dig, to allow community access to the site: ergo, Dig for A Day. I found the site online after idly trawling through sites to see if I could find any Time Team episodes online. I've had this idea that I wanted to use snippets from the show to illustrate points about pedagogy - that learning takes place at the intersection of a variety of people's knoweldge and experience. Also, that these digs cleverly link qualitative and quantitative ways of conducting research. For example, there is the observational technique of noticing different shades of soil, and ehat that shades may indicate; there's the geophysics that uses magnetics and radar to examine what's below groud to understand what could be dug. There are the pottery and bone experts too, alongside those who can decipher historical texts. Once you put all of these different sources of information together, a new picture emerges along with new knowledge.

But I digress...We were put to dig in the community trench (read- we can't make too much mess here since we don't know what we're doing) to uncover what a particular stone wall might be and if anything was linked to it. Basically, we spent the entire day on our knees (thank goodness for the knee pads!), trowelling dirt and putting everything we unearthed into finds trays.To go to and fro from the dig HQ, we walked across the bit that spans what's left of the moat. Imagine that!

I haven't had so much fun for ages. It was like taking lots of layers of paper of a present. And it was just getting really interesting when we had to finish and catch our train. Along with bits of roof tile and brick, I found two bits of pot (images in a minute) and took a photo of the arrowhead a metal detectorist found. I was told not to use that image until after August 10. Since it's September 13, I reckon I'm safe. Apparently, the arrowhead is a hunting one from about Margaret Beaufort's time.

Anyway, this is a very quick romp through a say which left us feeling (a) good about having done it, (b) good about having helped move the dig further along in what it's revealing about the site, (c) good about learning more about Margaret Beaufort and what she accomplished and left behind. Now for some pictures:

1. the first two pictures are of the information boards about Margaret Beaufort and what the dig has discovered so far:

2. the next images are of lunch with the workers on the dig:

3. potsherds I uncovered:

4. The arrowhead:

5. What's left standing of Woking Palace:

I haven't posted for about 6 weeks. There are very good reasons for this:

• My husband joined me in the UK (but his bag didn't arrive - and that's another story) so my annual leave began so we could
  (a) visit Hampton Court Palace and other places, like Chiswick House
  (b) go on a Dig for a Day at Woking Palace (more on that later)
  (c) go to Ireland for a week's biking before returning to NZ.
• arriving home to sit with my sisters at my mother's bedside until she died (another story)
• getting back to work for some normality.

So, to start, I'll begin with the first event.

1. non arrival of bag with husband

My husband got on a plane in Auckland with Singapore Airlines, after having checked in his small, bright red bag. This contained all of his clothes and our cycling gear for Ireland. In Singapore, he was in transit for a few hours, but never saw his bag. At Heathrow, he arrived... but not his bag because it was checked right through to London.

Luckily, we've got used to taking phone photos of our baggage, so if this kind of thing happens, we can show the image to those who record these things. After getting the paperwork about the missing bag, we go to WorldTracer online to check the information. Daily. The bag has disappeared off the face of the earth. There is no record of it after it is checked in at Auckland airport.

So, several calls to insurance companies and visits to clothing shops later, we are still none the wiser about the bag. We end up spending far too much on replacing cycling gear because it is so expensive, and, to date, we are still awaiting the insurance company's response. Singapore Airlines have been hard to get hold of too.

Strangely, when I returned to NZ, there was a large postcard from TFL (Transport for London) who said they had a piece of lost property of mine. I was mystified. My husband was in London for two more days, so I sent him the info to check up on it. Guess what? It was the red suitcase, and with its contents intact! However, it was now bereft of all  identifying stuff on it, other than a plastic tag with hidden contact info. The airline tag (that great big, sturdy barcode tag thing that goes on suitcase handles that allows the bag to be tracked) was gone, as was the tag he had put on it with his contact info. Strangely, the bag turned up at a London tube station.

We are mystified. How did it get there, and why were all tags removed? If someone made a mistake, why didn't they fess up?

Lastly, bless the staff at TFL for not blowing the bag up, given where they said it was found. This is what this unassuming bag looks like, so if you saw it, we'd love to know the answer to this mystery:

This could be a long saga with the insurance company and Singapore airlines. I'll keep you informed.

It's quite common, I've observed, for people to talk about 'teacher training' rather than 'teacher education'. perhaps it's because there's a simpler alliterative ring to it. It is a ubiquitous term, yet is dripping with connotations. From my point of view, it links closely to the deprofessionalisation of teaching. This would suit governments desperately wanting to not spend money on this social, economic and environmental good. It is being done by people in positions of power who have already benefitted from the education process, quite often provided by the state, but who are blinded, in my view, by the shiny, glossy ideas of economic rationalism. Michael Apple recently had something to say about this. And while I quote such a large chunk of his article's introduction, entitled "Democratic education in neoliberal and neoconservative times", I think it serves to outline key concepts that link directly to the education/training issue:

We live in a time when the very meaning of democracy is being radically changed. Rather than referring to ways in which political and institutional life are shaped by equitable, active, widespread and fully informed participation, democracy is increasingly being defined as possessive individualism in the context of a (supposedly) free market economy. Applied to schools, this redefinition has given rise to the push for placing schools directly into the competitive market, management by private firms, commercialised media and materials and abandonment of the broader ideals of public education (Apple 2006; Ball 2007; Burch 2009). This degradation has extended to the point where a private consulting firm in the USA has recommended that ‘public’ be dropped from ‘public schools’ because its similar use in conjunction with housing, libraries, radio and assistance programs has come to have negative connotations. Such is the power of linguistic politics. Social commitments for the common good are now made out to be ‘public nuisances’. (Apple, 2011, p. 21 DOI:10.1080/09620214.2011.543850)

This belief that a market economy should drive education presupposes that something as fundamental as helping people learn to think, read, create, investigate, and manipulate should be designed according to the principles of this failed ideology. This ideology has failed because it has led to international meltdowns causing widespread hardship for countless people, but bailed out by the common good - our taxes. So, when the market economy - which wants to privatise profits - fails, it happily wants to socialise losses, sucking money from public goods like education. It then wants to turn education into a mirror of itself.

In places like the UK and the US, where I've been visiting during my sabbatical, this seems to be rife through the kinds of policies being enacted. Measurable targets and production language abound. This language is also permeating New Zealand political educational discourse, where the current government believes it has the answers for what matters, rather than heeding the wisdom of evidence (since education professionals only operate from self interest, as the economic ideology would suggest, and so should not be listened to. Political points of view are of course, objective, rational and eschew provider capture). This ideology assumes that teachers are totally responsible for the 'product', as if a learner is a unit item (although it then beats up teachers for not addressing acheivement gaps, while trying to whip away support meachanisms that could help - witness what's happening in the US). This is economy-speak. It links closely to views about who teachers are, and the language used to describe their profession. The prevalence of certain labels is not a coincidence.

'Teacher training' as a label, assumes that understanding what it means to teaach and learn is a technical process: if I do this, then that will be the result/product/outcome and I can replicate that forever. It assumes that content is king - that learning is about being filled with stuff - an empty vessel to be filled. It implies no need to think, process, understand, evaluate, synthesise, transform, create. 'Training' has always linked to repetition, replication, reproduction. In other words, the ability to consistently turn out the same thing on a regular basis. It is the industrial, conveyer-belt model, where the same item comes past your station, ready for you to add your stamp or widget to.

Unfortunately, for those who ascribe to this view, learning isn't actually like that. Teaching learners in classes (face-to-face or online) is messy, complex, full of grey areas and points of view. It's full of uncertainty, change and different needs, contexts (such as physical, social, cultural, lingusitic, environmental, emotional, discipline-oriented). The items (ie learners) in a class  are therefore not homogeneous lumps passing by on a conveyer belt. They are full of ideas of their own, possibly distraught by or preoccupied with things going on outside the class or at home, but characterised by the legal need to be there - that's if we restrict this for the moment to those in compulsory schooling. As someone else noted, those who can, teach; those who can't, pass laws about it. It appears that these people, by dint of having been to school, know more about the profession than those who have made it their life's career and work, and who have learned to understand what pedagogy actually means and implies. A pertinent question to ask such people would be to seek to know if they can identify the last time they were in a school classroom and/or asked education professionals for their points of view.

If education is deemed to be important enough to be a legal requirement, then states have a legal duty to supply that education, unless it decides that all it wants is compliant, malleable items to control and bend to its will. After all, those who are students now, will be those in charge in 20-30 years' time. We need them to be able to do that if we are to survive with dignity and humanity.

So, we need to stop talking about 'teacher training' and talk more about 'teacher education'. The latter  is about working to shape thinking and understanding, the ability to critique and question, to wonder at, wonder if,wonder why and wonder how, to embrace complexity, uncertainty and still keep the end in mind- helping young minds to think strategically and purposefully. This process does not happen automatically. Significant others are necessary to shape this. Significant others are not 'trained' - they become so through nuanced understanding of complexity, difference, perspective and perception. These accrue over time, through active experimentation and reflection, and through providing multiple opportunities for learners to learn in recursive and reflexive ways. This is not 'training'.

Education can be seen as a process of learning to become through understanding over time. Doing isn't enough. Therefore, we need to stop anyone talk of teacher training and call by its real name - teacher education.

 

Since Monday, I'e been at Brunel University wih a group of people interested in beginning a new professional community: AUCEi. We'e been meeting in an unconference kind of way. It's been slightly disconcerting, given our desire for order, but we're beginning to take shape. A small group of us worked on developing ideas about these sorts of questions:

• What do we stand for?
• What are our aims and principles?
• how should the community be governed?
• does it require membership fees to function?
• who should be members and should this membership be mediated?

They are not insignificant questions, because they influence what happens about everything else - for example, what sort of journal we want to be associated with. Should it be Creative Commons licenced? Online? By subscription? If this is about the ubiquity of communication and devices which mediate this ubiquity, what influence do they have about what counts as an appropriate text?

It also means navigating everyone's agendas and interests, since not everyone comes from an education background in the sense of being educators of one sort or another. Some are really keen on creating learning objects or developing the ubiquity side of communication, while others of us are keen to pursue the affordances of these technologies for learning aims.

We also intend using Google+ to develop aspects of this organisation over time, since we will soon be in far flung corners of the globe (well I will be, any way - most others are from the Northern Hemisphere). Using Google+ will be a great experiment to not only connect, but also examine its potential for learning communities.

Tomorrow is a big day in this regard, for we shall be thrashing out some of these weighty issues. If any of you have ideas, please let me know asap by commenting below.

Visit to Bradford: Monday
This was a whole day trip starting at 5.30am,  so I could get to Kings Cross for the train to Leeds then Bradford. I organised all of this on the web, of course: the visit by contacting James Langley, after finding out about what was going on re mobile tools after a Google search. I also bought the train tickets in advance, ready to collect from the machine at the station.

Anyway, @lordlangley73 was there waiting at Bradford Interchange station. Luckily I sent I a photo and a description saying I'd be the one looking anxious.... James had organized a a great day of visiting schools (primary) doing marvellous things with iPodTouches.

The first school visit at Bowling Park Primary, was ably hosted by Chris (@chrismayoh), who, even as an EXTREMELY young chap, was already intuitively developing a culture in which students flourished using digital mobile tools. The school has a set of iPod touches it lends to students. They stay at the school over night, but are assigned to individuals during the day. They do this because a significant part of the school population is quite transient. Moves can be at a moment's notice. 

These iPodTouches devices are about 18months old and don't have the ability to take photos or make short videos which is now hampering their uses, but nonetheless, this school is finding ways to engage students in learning. These devices are also supplemented by pods of net books available per class. This desire to have devices available where kids are comfortable, rather than sending them off to a dedicated IT suite, is deliberate. It links to where students' work is, and keeps known resources at hand. In other words, it's not foreign territory, and mirrors social uses of media devices, which are also used in familair surroundings. Students across the school were using these devices wisely and for learning - either individual or with with others. Some used them collaboratively, negotiating with their peers about what mattered.

Here are some images of waht students were doing. I've tried not to include their faces, since I didn't have the opportunity to ask students if it was ok, but Chris allowed me to take these images. I'm grateful.

The next school, Glenaire, was smaller and more homogeneous in its intake. However, it had newer iPod touches in pods for students to use. These ones had video functions, so they were able to use them for more things like: audio & video links embedded in QR codes, images with augmented reality options, once activated by using the Aurasma app on the devices. They has also, with James' help, done some geocaching as part of a problem-solving task related to geographical knowledge.

Kids themselves showed me what they had done. They treated these tasks as a natural part of what learning is about:

The final stop was linked to James's home base. A number of schools selected students who had progressed well in their achievement measures, and these yound students had a number of hours solving maths problems using mobile devices. One of the teachers commented on the quality of the kids' talk, saying how impressive it was that they were using mathematical language quite naturally and accurately:

This is a mere snapshot of the experience, and doesn't in the least do justice to the skill of the students or their teachers in developing ways of embedding technological tools like iPads and iPodTouches into learning that's really meaningful.

The day was a rush, and I didn't write down everyone's names, but they should be proud of what they do.

 

I've just finished reading an article hot off the virtual press by John Loughran (DOI 10.1080/02607476.2011.588016) which examines ideas about the role of teacher education. I think, for a start, the term 'teacher education' is significant. It is not 'teacher training'. It links to what he says here:

"Despite the rhetoric about teaching being complex and sophisticated, many observers of teaching see it very differently. There is a public view of teaching as the transmission of information. Even the research literature is strewn with studies that bemoan transmissive modes of teaching. Students’ experiences of teaching and learning are shaped by what Lortie (1975) described as the
‘apprenticeship of observation’. As a consequence of that apprenticeship, it is not hard to see why views of ‘teaching as telling’ and ‘learning as listening’ may become embedded in a student’s psyche.

Superficial understandings of teaching are also exacerbated through such things as high stakes testing and approaches to teaching standards which, because of the implicit need for simple solutions to complex situations, again reinforce ingrained views of practice as the delivery of information" (p. 279).

These ideas link closely to what I've been trying to express before - that learnng is a much more complex enterprise than 'how to' do. His paper draws on my friend and colleague Ronnie Davey's fine thesis about being a teacher educator in New Zealand. She clearly outlines the tensions and complexitites of a role which, as Loughran also points out, has an uneasy relationship with the imperatives of academia and bulk transmission. Perhaps the imperative of social media may redress this somewhat, and help us get back to first principles about what it means to teach and what it means to learn, and what matters in that process.

One of the  difficulties of teacher education is that the idea of 'delivery' is so entrenched, that the technicist view of teaching creeps into peoples' psyche about what teaching actually is. After all, when you observe someone who's good at it, it doesn't look like anything much at all. That is probably because the design and thinking has already gone on behind the scenes and what happens in the classroom is the impromptu version based on sound principles of pedagogy, content, concepts and constant reflection-in-action.

I'll put it another way. I asked a potter once, how long it took to make a large pot I had been admiring. The answer was something like, "three hours and 10 years". The implication was that in order to make each pot as beautiful and perfect as possible, the potter drew on a long history of practice and knowledge that coalesced each time he made a pot. It wasn't just doing, it was knowing - applied in its deepest meaning.

Thus, knowing how to teach others how to learn is not the technical knowledge of the industrial model, but about the application of principles and experience and wisdom to contexts within which a collection of individuals bringing their needs, prior knowledge and attitudes and values come together. The point of that coming together is to challenge and move that group individuals to a new place in their knowing. It is knowledge work.

And the final word belongs to Loughran (2011, p. 289), when he argues that "The development of new knowledge is a central tenet of academic life and when that knowledge directly impacts practice, then in teaching about teaching, that is surely a powerful and significant outcome."

The past few days have been busy. I've been to Milton Keynes to visit Agnes Kukulska-Hulme at the Open University, where we traded ideas on mobile and online learning, and revisited the ideas from the Twitter project I ran with initial teacher education students in 2009, leading to the article in the Journal of Open Learning in 2010. We talked about the difficulty of writing an academic article on a topic that until about that time, had very little written about it, leading to discussion about how to write about new fields when there's no direct history to link to. I suppose in such cases, it's a matter of using other sources to draw inferences from existing sources and links in order to start a new trajectory of investigation. In that way, others can launch from these new bases.

We also talked about the difficulty of basing research studies in schools - particularly secondary schools -  and why this may then have a relationship to the imbalance between published articles using tertiary contexts compared with secondary school ones. This is a difficulty for the field of mobile and social media research in education because understanding what happens when young adults in schools use such affordances is important to what happens in the tertiary context, and indeed in wider social spheres.

If we are unable to provide the means by which young people become strategic, thoughtful and informed users of these tools, we are setting up the future to be inherited by those who consume rather than think and have agency over their own practices. This, as I've alluded to earlier, is putting citizens at risk of those who prefer to manipulate with half-truths and/or media campaigns to push specific agendas that may not be in others' best interests. The use of social media tools and affordances for learning purposes may help. This blog post is of a like mind.

I keep coming back to the same point, I suppose: we need to teach students to be the writers of their own stories, or someone else will write it for them. That requires a concerted effort to design learning that constantly provides alternative views, pushes students to be aware of gaps and silences, hones their abilities to make sense of various kinds of texts, and equips them to apply these skills in new and unfamilar contexts. This is bigger than content and is about more than the technicist 'how-tos' about function proliferating on the Web and via offerings through places such as the Khan Academy. Such sites focus on the do this then that kind of processes. Tellingly, they avoid the grey areas of argument and complexity, instead focusing on things like mathematical calculations/formulae and aspects of content that are understood to be constants. So, those examples are good for revision of specific elements of some subjects, but cannot replace the role of someone who designs opportunities to apply knoweldge or processes to new contexts or texts, to synthesise thinking or make inferences, argue, or examine perspectives and issues.

It is these that are the core of deep and satisfying learning. It comes back to the man & the fish adage Joanne alluded to in a comment posted earlier. The 'how to' examples proliferating on the web are about the handing over of fish and the mechanics of baiting hooks. They are not about the subtleties of 'reading' tides, understanding patterns of fish migration, the weather and how these diverse aspects link to the presence or absence of fish stocks, or even how to fish for different species, sizes of fish or their prefered bait. All of these are about linking concepts and diverse aspects of knowledge and accumulation of experience through trial and error in to a new whole that is entirely context-dependent: one person's fishing ground is understood differently from someone else's.

Mobile and social media affordances have to be viewed in a similar way: they may be different species of fish, but what sort of sea do they swim in? How do we help people read that sea so that cultural practices and structures are mediated by individuals' and groups' own agency?