ECOO16: the DIY approach protects you from the tyranny of technology

The perils of presenting last; you've got other things on
your mind instead of what you planned to present,
but it helped!

By the time I got to my presentation in the last slot on Friday I was brain full, exhausted and not entirely sure I would be coherent.  After a rambling review of what got me to the DIY lab concept I finally got rolling on the building and operation of your own classroom computer lab.  I hadn't intended to, but a moment from my time as a high school dropout was on my mind as I began the presentation.  Vocalizing the story helped connect several ideas that explained where the DIY technology idea came from.

Being handy I ended up working at a Canadian Tire for a couple of months as the tire change guy before I started apprenticing as a millwright.  One day early on I was watching one of the mechanics diagnosing a Renault Fuego.  As he moved around under this unfamiliar car he burned his arm on the exhaust pipe.  In a fit of rage he threw his spanner across the shop and then stormed off, shouting that he was going to make the customer buy a new exhaust system (the car was in with carburetor issues).  The customer, having no idea what happens under the hood of her car, reluctantly accepted the 'fact' that she needed a very expensive exhaust system replacement.  This moment stayed with me because it not only taught me what ignorance can cost you, but also made me question the veracity of 'professionals'.

My father is an industrial heavy machinery mechanic and told me, even as my technology got increasingly complicated (bicycle to car, Meccano to early computers), that if something was built by people he could figure out how it worked. I'd internalized that idea from an early age. My second bicycle was home made, after buying early software I started writing my own. We spent cold hours on the driveway replacing head gaskets and tuning carburetors. I came to the point where I'd never shrug off the complexity of technology and trust it to someone else.

This doesn't mean I'm an expert at everything, but I always have a look under the hood and grasp the basics before I use a technology, whether it's smartphones, the internet or a motorcycle.  Since cars became dependable enough the vast majority of the public have lost any interest in their inner workings, but that wasn't always the case.  Early adopters of automobiles were their own mechanics.  The maker movement is a step back towards that kind of technical familiarity, but it takes a special breed to maintain that level of curiosity and ownership of technology.

The difference between digital technology and automotive technology is that the digital stuff insinuates itself into your relationships and becomes a 24/7 part of your life.  It affects your thinking rather than your muscles.  Not knowing how a car works might occasionally inconvenience you and cost some money, but not understanding digital technology when you spend hours a day socializing through it or (worse) teaching with it, is a disaster waiting to happen.  It isn't a disaster for tech driven multinationals who live off your data though.  They will happily convert you and your students' ignorance into profit.

This growing ignorance is what prompted the do-it-yourself classroom computer lab.  Handing students turnkey digital tools like Chromebooks might suit Google's market penetration strategy, but it doesn't teach students about the tools they are using.  Some teachers have said that they are teaching their curriculum and not technology but if you're going to use it you should, as a teacher, understand it, otherwise it will make decisions for you.  That is neither professional nor desirable.  If you can't be bothered to understand it, don't use it - but you risk quickly becoming irrelevant.

I'm in the strange situation of teaching the technology that the vast majority of Canadians use but no one wants to understand.  A general understanding of how digital technology works is vital if you're going to have it participating in your life all day every day, and especially if you're going to teach and learn with it.  You don't need to be an expert, but you do need to have some conception of how this potentially invasive thing works.

ICTC posts Canadian statistics in digital technology
jobs each month.  Yet Geography is a mandatory course
while computer technology is an afterthought.

I look at Ontario curriculum and fail to understand how digital technological literacy isn't a fundamental requirement.  The vast majority of Canada's population uses personal, digital technology and in many cases that use is almost continuous, yet very few people understand how it works.

We're graduating students into a millennial unemployment rate of over 14%, but it drops to 6% if they are information-communication technology focused.  Even if they aren't specializing in technology, every graduate we produce is going to use ICT/computers in their job in some capacity or another.  Our graduates don't have the option to ignore digital technology as so many educators have.

The DIY lab I presented might be a bridge too far for many teachers, but for digital technology teachers or anyone whose curriculum depends implicitly on digital technologies (business tech, media arts) I think it should be a requirement.  The teachers presenting this technology to their students owe it to them to develop a deeper understanding of the tools they are using.  For everyone else (teachers and students), an understanding of what's under the hood should be an essential requirement, otherwise they are teaching and learning in ignorance, which isn't helping anyone.

It turns out that walking in to the presentation unfocused allowed me to laterally connect a lot of the foundational ideas around this do-it-yourself philosophy of educational technology use.

The DIY Computer Lab

Teaching computer technology has me expanding and
enhancing our program to make it as current and
relevant as possible - the DIY lab is a key to that.

My ECOO16 presentation suggestion:

We're used to being handed locked down, turn key computer labs by our school boards, but this approach doesn't teach technological understanding.  The future of technology is diverse and individualized and we should be striving to encourage a deeper understanding so that students can find the devices and software that suit their needs.  Many boards have suggested BYOD as a solution, but this amplifies socio-economic differences that public schools should be trying to mitigate.  There is another way.

I'm a teacher who gave back the lab that was given to me.  Over the past two years I've developed a digital learning space that is made by students at the beginning of each semester.  Students build PCs, upgrade parts and install and maintain software.  In doing so they learn how to build current and relevant technology to suit their own needs.

In this presentation I'll explain the process, costs (and free things!) as well as how the lab works on a day to day basis.  DIY computer access offers students a chance to become authors of their technology use instead of being mere users.

Interested?  I'll be presenting on this at ECOO in November.  This whole post is pasted out of my application to present.

Learning Goals
- how to make DIY technology work in the classroom
- using current (like, made THIS YEAR!) software in a classroom
- learning technology by building it rather than just using it
- developing technological fluency in students and staff
- exploring educational freeware
- exploring beta software available for free use
- how to source hardware (suggestions based on experience)
- changing students & staff from users to authors of technology

Windows 10, the latest in graphics and processor technology and twice the memory of your typical school PC.  What do we
do with all that horsepower?  We run Unity (professional license given freely by Unity for our educational needs), and
build 3d models in Blender.  None of this would be possible on existing school board basic Dell PCs.

With flexibility in how we build a lab, we can pursue advanced technology, giving our
students authorship over their technological fluency.

Agility is key if you want to keep up with technology - you'll never develop it if you're kept as a pet user.

A Blender model made by one of our grade 12s last year - this kind of experience allowed her to build the kind of portfolio
that got her into the heavily contested Sheridan College video game design program

Master/Journeyman/Apprentice

I'm once again in the additional qualification classroom in order to gain another teachable.  This one was a bit tricky.  I'd been working in information technology since I graduated with an honours BA in English in the mid '90s.  When I went into teaching, I looked into getting my technical qualifications (I'd spent a fair amount of money on getting IT qualified and wanted to keep a finger in the pie, so to speak).  It didn't happen.  The Byzantine rules around what I needed and how I qualified were taking so long to get through, it was easier to just plug in my degree (to a very degree friendly teacher qualification system) and start there.


I did computer clubs and delved into #edtech relentlessly, but didn't get my computer engineering qualification until now because I needed it for a headship, and they'd recently made changes that cleared up some of the labyrinthine rules around getting the qualification.


So here I am, a qualified IT technician in a computer engineering class.  If we're doing networking, or computer repair, I'm aces, but soldering?  Circuit boards?  Not so much.  The funny thing is we have electrical engineers that don't know what a registry is or how to reset an IP address, but they are brilliant on a circuit board.  I'm starting to realize that computer engineering is another one of those subjects that collects expertise from various disciplines and files it all under the same heading.  I'm also beginning to see why some comp-eng teachers' courses look so different from other comp-eng teachers' courses.

Other than cutting networking cables, running them and installing hardware, I'm not really a nuts and bolts of electronics kind of guy, but after taking this AQ, I will be.  When I was a kid I got into cars and stereos and did some wiring then, it's nice to get hands on with components again.  My experience has all be around making it (IT) work for business, after taking this AQ, I get the sense that I'm going to end up delving more deeply into maker culture, something I've wanted to do for too long.


Getting my head back into wiring diagrams felt impossible in the first few days.  I'm finding the tools available, especially Arduino and Fritzing to be invaluable in bridging gaps in knowledge.  I know I won't be a Jedi knight at circuitry by the end of the course, but the 1-2-3 system our instructor has been using has recognized the varieties of skills in the room and allowed people to focus on what they want to improve in, and improve I have.


I'm looking forward to hitting my tech-class in the fall and getting my hands dirty.  In the meantime, I just started Shop Class As Soulcraft, suggested by our instructor on the last day of class.  Some mechanic's philosophy will help fill in the gap I'm feeling between my academic background, and my urge to work with my hands again.