The films presented during the film festival prompted me to think about examples of how technology has recently influenced my own life. The film that particularly struck a chord was ‘Uninvited Guests’ as it made me reflect on the implications of technology, well-meaning or not, and whether this is a good thing. It made me think about two scenarios where my life was recently altered by technology in a way that wouldn’t have been possible only a few years ago.
VAR (Virtual Assistant Referee)
Despite having lived in Australia for over ten years, my love of West Ham United remains and trips back to the UK always revolve around matches. This year, the English Premier League has introduced VAR to assist referees and it has been controversial. It’s far to say that many fans and pundits do not always see “accurate” decisions as “better” ones. In a recent match against Sheffield United, West Ham had a last minute goal disallowed for an innocuous handball in the build up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bLOPWnLiw8
Bayne (2015) discusses technology being in service to the human. Much like the character in ‘Uninvited Guests’, it is questionable whether by providing insights improves the situation for humans. The man in the film was much happier when he managed to find ways to bypass the technology and even Sheffield United fans, despite being delighted not to concede a goal on this occasion, will surely find multiple times where VAR works against them. It seems to be having the same effect on those controlling the technology as GPS does to car drivers – target fixation and a lack of flexibility when it comes to the bigger picture.
WTSS (Weapons Training Simulation System)
My return to Australia saw an unexpected few days of work in my capacity as an Army reservist. My role is as far from the front line as possible but I was able to make use of the WTSS on multiple occasions, as it is situated right next to the office, in order to improve my skills. Without this facility, I wouldn’t be able to shoot anywhere near as often due to logistics and cost reasons. It is certainly far from the real thing (thank God!) and is even considered less effective than real range shoot as the weapon doesn’t respond in exactly the same way. However, these shortcomings are generally considered a small price to pay for more frequent opportunities to practise and having greater insights on your technique as a weapons operator. The way the technology is employed attempts to incorporate as much of the social practice (real-life scenario) as possible (Bayne 2015).
The question in both of these scenarios is really how much we allow the use of technology to influence what we do. Just because we can measure something doesn’t necessarily mean that we should. I regularly see technology used in the classroom and ask myself whether it’s actually improvement to what we do, or just unnecessary. Effectiveness of technology appears to correspond to how much it can transform the learning process and how much control humans keep over the process.
Bayne, S. (2015) What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? . Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1), 5-20.
Great to see your lifestream up and running Sean. I can see some feeds coming in, which is good, and I’m assuming this is your end-of-week post – it might be worth labelling these posts as ‘summaries’ or similar, so they can be located easily. These are the main posts I will comment on each week – see the course guide for all the details about the end-of-week summaries.
You might also want to explore categories and tags in WordPress – this can help with providing ways of navigating your lifestream, and generally organising your work.
‘This year, the English Premier League has introduced VAR to assist referees and it has been controversial. It’s far to say that many fans and pundits do not always see “accurate” decisions as “better” ones.’
This is a great example. The tech might be more ‘accurate’, but does it reflect the ‘human’ spirit of the sport? I think this same question might be asked of education: do we really need the kind of precision that technology provides, or os there something else to the educational experience that we could foster? Perhaps the ‘bigger picture’ you suggest later? This distinction between ‘accuracy’ and ‘best’ is a really important theme to take into the discussion of education technology I think.
On the weapons simulation, you might be interested in Lucy Suchmans work, for example: https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/suchman/pdf
Thank you for another great post. This will no doubt help me with my own research and I have been on the lookout for this information for ages. MBA Dissertation Topics Thanks, Greg.