In the words of the great songwriter, Carole King, "I feel the earth move under my feet.." Although she was referring to someONE, those lyrics can apply to feeling the music, too...quite literally! As I read the excerpt from Jourdan's Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy I found myself nodding and saying, yes, yes, he got that right...I love to listen to music. I listen in the car while I commute, and I listen while I'm working around the house. I like to listen while I'm cooking, or reading (although I can't have words while I read - too much input!!) but I really like to just sit and listen. I'm a concert goer - and I can be mesmerized just listening to the notes float and entwine. The music appreciation class I took in my undergrad days has actually paid off through my life time - the instructor was very focused on training us to actually listen to what we were hearing. I was very interested in Jourdan's explanation of how the mind works, and the relationship between right brain and left brain tasks in listening. The opening of the section we read brought such clear images of early musicians to my mind - I appreciated the evolution of performing, and the dual goals of expressing oneself through music, as well as moving others to emotion through hearing that performance.
In my library each December I host an open house musical Christmas extravaganza - we clear out the desks, move in round cafe tables, bring out the decorations, set up the piano and keyboard and the drums and really let loose. The whole school is invited to drop in any time they can - musicians are "booked" throughout the day - teachers and students alike. Some performances are spontaneous, some evolve, sometimes it's like a jam session. I bake cookies (actually my husband baked 85 dozen for me this year!!) and serve hot chocolate all day. Each student gets a coupon good for a "couple of cookies and a cup of cocoa." We have had student/teacher bands, combos, duets... you name it. One year a faculty/student band performed a heavy metal rendition of White Christmas! The audience went wild! The place is packed from 8 am to 3 pm. Feedback from administrators, faculty and students is that it is such a common denominator - the atmosphere is naturally more relaxed, and they all get to see each other in a whole new way that they don't get to see in the classroom. I've thought about skipping a year, but they've already started making suggestions for things to include next year. I've also been frustrated at times because there is so much conversation during the performances, so I was very interested in the article's discussion of the evolution of concerts, and the listening habits of the audience. I will share some of that information with my teachers.
On a different note... from the New York Times article of Jan. 3, 2010, "A World of Megabeats and Megabytes," I was interested in the history of the portability of music with the advent of the digital file format. This sounded like a recounting of my own personal journey through music in the last 35 years! I can't seem to carry enough music with me - I always have a couple of flash drive full of music, my iPod, and even a portable 120 GB hard drive that I keep just for music - and keep it plugged in to my car's sound system. I related to the "need for instant gratification" in being able to pull up whatever song I'm in the mood for at the time.
In all of the readings I was struck by how we have come to take music for granted in our lives, to the point that it is often just in the background without us consciously listening. I thought about how people without hearing miss what we take for granted, and that led me to do some searching for more information about how the deaf "hear" music. I found a good article in Science Daily online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/11/011128035455.htm When we owned a Ford dealership, we had a customer who is deaf. Whatever vehicle he bought needed to have a great sound system in it - and he would set the bass so that he could feel the vibrations. The article, "Brains of Deaf People Rewire to "Hear Music," dovetailed with the readings on the way the brain functions in hearing people when listening to music. At home he would place mega-speakers on the floor so that it would reverberate through the floor - which drove his wife nuts because the sound was definitely different for her!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
A History of Media Technology Scares, From the Printing Press to Facebook
Via LIS News and Slate:
"...Worries about information overload are as old as information itself, with each generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on mind and brain. From a historical perspective, what strikes home is not the evolution of these social concerns, but their similarity from one century to the next, to the point where they arrive anew with little having changed except the label..."
Same Old Same Old? or A Whole New World?
While listening to Radio Disney this weekend, I was struck by how little things had changed since I was a tween and young teen, lo these many years ago. “I will love only you forever and ever.” “Love me for who I really am.” “I can’t live without your love.” “I’m really special inside where no-one can see.” “I’m for real, and I hate phonies” “You done me wrong.” “Baby, it feels so right when I’m with you.” And so it goes. Idealism, extreme emotions, high drama, focus on the self, and a deep desire to both fit in and be unique fill the songs that fill Radio Disney. These are the same themes that have been the hallmark of teen music for decades.
In addition to the music, much of the programming and promotion on Radio Disney had a very familiar feel to it. There were interviews with stars, contests—“Be the third caller and you could win…”—request lines, relentlessly upbeat disc jockeys, and young people on the phone trying very hard to sound very cool. Although I was trying to call the radio station from a Princess phone and today’s teens are calling from cell phones, the desire to be on the radio has not changed. Although my personal heartthrobs were Mark Lindsey and David Cassidy (much though I cringe to admit it) rather than the Jonas Brothers, the passionate adoration and desire to know every single possible detail about that person’s likes and dislikes are not very different today than they were when I was young.
And yet, some things are very different than they were. I used to have to listen to a song over and over and over again to try and figure out what the lyrics were. There were endless debates: did he say “Rolled up like a deuce” or “Rolled up like a douche”? (How sophisticated we thought we were to be able to say that work without giggling…) Nowadays, the lyrics are there for you with a click if you want them. I’m not entirely sure why that seems important to me, but it does. I’d welcome others’ thoughts on whether this instant availability of the lyrics matters.
When a radio station had a limited broadcast range it could only reach the people within its area of service. There was at least the possibility that popular songs or singers could vary from region to region. The capacity of Radio Disney to reach the whole nation instantly probably increases the homogeneity of popular music. The same songs and stars will be hits in New York, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles all at the same time.
Although there was some crossover between TV and music stars, i.e., David Cassidy, for the most part, music, movie and TV stars were different people. A musician followed one route to success and needed one particular set of people to back him or her, while a TV actor followed another route and needed a different set of people. The people who owned radio stations and music labels were not the same people who owned TV stations. But now, Miley Cyrus is a music/movie/TV juggernaut. Her TV show feeds demand for her music and her music and TV show promote her movies. Several of the songs I listened to this weekend were from the soundtrack of a soon to be released movie. There isn’t as much separation between entertainment venues as I remember.
I have heard it argued that the Internet would have a democratizing influence on music; anyone could get their music out there and find a following. Radio Disney seems to be an example of the opposite effect. By playing to young people’s desire to be on top of whatever is cool at the moment and being able to blitz the whole country with the few songs and singers that its owners deem to be marketable, Radio Disney has an enormously powerful effect on what tweens and teens listen to.
The idea of big corporations dictating what kind of music is available was also brought forth in the “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” and “The Way the Music Died” websites. This possibility bothers me a little less in those cases though, because they deal with music aimed more at adults. The argument that recording companies won’t buy hip-hop music with honorable or inspirational lyrics, that hip-hop musicians perform violent or homophobic songs because that is what sells has, in my opinion, some validity to it. If hundreds of thousands of people pay good money to buy songs with lyrics that I happen to think are hateful, it seems a little pointless to wring my hands and complain about the record companies or recording artists. As a society, we get the music we pay for, and if don’t like what is being paid for, we should probably think about why our culture values such songs.
Marketing to children though, may be a little different, simply because kids are developmentally more inclined to follow the herd. The need to fit in is so great at this age that it makes me a little uncomfortable to think of such a small group of people whose only motive is profit having such great influence. Having said that, though, I wonder what the solution would be. I would be very interested in knowing what others think about kids and music and marketing. Is anyone else troubled? Or am I over-reacting? Perhaps just another older person worrying needlessly about “young people these days?” In any event, spending time with Radio Disney was a very interesting and thought provoking experience.
In addition to the music, much of the programming and promotion on Radio Disney had a very familiar feel to it. There were interviews with stars, contests—“Be the third caller and you could win…”—request lines, relentlessly upbeat disc jockeys, and young people on the phone trying very hard to sound very cool. Although I was trying to call the radio station from a Princess phone and today’s teens are calling from cell phones, the desire to be on the radio has not changed. Although my personal heartthrobs were Mark Lindsey and David Cassidy (much though I cringe to admit it) rather than the Jonas Brothers, the passionate adoration and desire to know every single possible detail about that person’s likes and dislikes are not very different today than they were when I was young.
And yet, some things are very different than they were. I used to have to listen to a song over and over and over again to try and figure out what the lyrics were. There were endless debates: did he say “Rolled up like a deuce” or “Rolled up like a douche”? (How sophisticated we thought we were to be able to say that work without giggling…) Nowadays, the lyrics are there for you with a click if you want them. I’m not entirely sure why that seems important to me, but it does. I’d welcome others’ thoughts on whether this instant availability of the lyrics matters.
When a radio station had a limited broadcast range it could only reach the people within its area of service. There was at least the possibility that popular songs or singers could vary from region to region. The capacity of Radio Disney to reach the whole nation instantly probably increases the homogeneity of popular music. The same songs and stars will be hits in New York, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles all at the same time.
Although there was some crossover between TV and music stars, i.e., David Cassidy, for the most part, music, movie and TV stars were different people. A musician followed one route to success and needed one particular set of people to back him or her, while a TV actor followed another route and needed a different set of people. The people who owned radio stations and music labels were not the same people who owned TV stations. But now, Miley Cyrus is a music/movie/TV juggernaut. Her TV show feeds demand for her music and her music and TV show promote her movies. Several of the songs I listened to this weekend were from the soundtrack of a soon to be released movie. There isn’t as much separation between entertainment venues as I remember.
I have heard it argued that the Internet would have a democratizing influence on music; anyone could get their music out there and find a following. Radio Disney seems to be an example of the opposite effect. By playing to young people’s desire to be on top of whatever is cool at the moment and being able to blitz the whole country with the few songs and singers that its owners deem to be marketable, Radio Disney has an enormously powerful effect on what tweens and teens listen to.
The idea of big corporations dictating what kind of music is available was also brought forth in the “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” and “The Way the Music Died” websites. This possibility bothers me a little less in those cases though, because they deal with music aimed more at adults. The argument that recording companies won’t buy hip-hop music with honorable or inspirational lyrics, that hip-hop musicians perform violent or homophobic songs because that is what sells has, in my opinion, some validity to it. If hundreds of thousands of people pay good money to buy songs with lyrics that I happen to think are hateful, it seems a little pointless to wring my hands and complain about the record companies or recording artists. As a society, we get the music we pay for, and if don’t like what is being paid for, we should probably think about why our culture values such songs.
Marketing to children though, may be a little different, simply because kids are developmentally more inclined to follow the herd. The need to fit in is so great at this age that it makes me a little uncomfortable to think of such a small group of people whose only motive is profit having such great influence. Having said that, though, I wonder what the solution would be. I would be very interested in knowing what others think about kids and music and marketing. Is anyone else troubled? Or am I over-reacting? Perhaps just another older person worrying needlessly about “young people these days?” In any event, spending time with Radio Disney was a very interesting and thought provoking experience.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Free Information Visualization Tools
In class this past week, someone asked about building one's own visualizations. Here's a link to a post from FlowingData about a couple of free web-based tools to try out: http://bit.ly/9zOJLN
There are some tutorials on the FlowingData site (do a site search) that walk you through the process of creating some various visualizations, but most of them require knowledge of Python and basic scripting skills.
Cheers.
There are some tutorials on the FlowingData site (do a site search) that walk you through the process of creating some various visualizations, but most of them require knowledge of Python and basic scripting skills.
Cheers.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Google Wave
We talked in class about using the new Google Wave. This is a link to the site, which offers a video to explain the whole thing... http://wave.google.com/about.html#video
Waving is part chatting, part document editing - all in real time... All I have done so far is the chatting part, no document writing or editing. This month I have a couple of collaborative projects to work on and will try Waving to see how well it works.. I'll keep you posted!
Waving is part chatting, part document editing - all in real time... All I have done so far is the chatting part, no document writing or editing. This month I have a couple of collaborative projects to work on and will try Waving to see how well it works.. I'll keep you posted!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Images in the Classroom
A few years ago I was reflecting on how best to teach the African Slave Trade to my 9th grade world history students. While there are many different pedagogical approaches to teaching such disturbing and inhumane events and ideas to students, many of these methods require educators to use grade level or above readings and writing assignments. Certainly, these readings can be quite provocative and stimulate great discussion; however, I found that many of my students were so challenged by slave narratives and other primary and secondary documents that the full effect of the atrocities could not be felt. While that year many of my students had more life experience than me in terms of issues they dealt with on a daily basis they lacked the reading skills to match their maturity. For many educators this is certainly a problem—struggling readers with the ability to process complex and mature concepts and topics. As I brainstormed how best to take on this pedagogical challenge it led to reflection on how to best engage students in topics that are sometimes controversial, emotional, and unimaginable. The answer was clear—images.
As this week’s readings suggest, images are able to stimulate ideas and express meaning and stories. Further, they can encourage analysis and synthesis. For this particular lesson my goal was for students to understand:
1) the effects of European enslavement on the indigenous peoples of the Americas,
2) the role of African tribes in selling/trading slaves to Europeans,
3) the European conquest of African villages,
4) the experience of the Middle Passage including slave revolts and conditions aboard the slave ships, and
5) the arrival of the slave, the slave auction, and life on the plantation
To accomplish these goals I collected images of each part of the slave experience. Before presenting these images to the students we discussed the process of analyzing images and the power that an image can convey. After modeling an image analysis, students were organized into groups of three and given an envelope of images. The first task required students to place the images in order. During this phase, students were able to see the chronology of the experience and see the “big picture” of what had occurred. While this could have been done through a reading as well, being able to hold on to the pictures and creating a visual timeline for students made the ideas and events more tangible. Once students believed that the pictures were arranged in the appropriate order they articulated to me why the order that they had was correct. The next step required students to do an analysis of each image. This demanded students to look at particular details just as they would read for in a printed text. Students were encouraged to look for expression, types of weapons, clothing, etc. for each image in a step-by-step process. The end result was that students were able to breakdown each event/phase of the atrocity and talk about each with a strong sense of understanding. During the image analysis process students were also asked to develop discussion questions and write a list of questions to further inquiry to stimulate further exploration. The last phase of the lesson required students to take what they learned from the images and discussion and write a letter to slave.
Since I developed this lesson I have done it every year and found it incredibly successful. Students engage with the images and are able to create more connections than had I simply used slave narratives or other primary and secondary sources. The images encourage students to think critically and “see” history in front of them versus that of “reading” history. Since this activity I’ve had an increased appreciation for incorporating images in the classroom, especially when the topics lend themselves to challenging themes.
As this week’s readings suggest, images are able to stimulate ideas and express meaning and stories. Further, they can encourage analysis and synthesis. For this particular lesson my goal was for students to understand:
1) the effects of European enslavement on the indigenous peoples of the Americas,
2) the role of African tribes in selling/trading slaves to Europeans,
3) the European conquest of African villages,
4) the experience of the Middle Passage including slave revolts and conditions aboard the slave ships, and
5) the arrival of the slave, the slave auction, and life on the plantation
To accomplish these goals I collected images of each part of the slave experience. Before presenting these images to the students we discussed the process of analyzing images and the power that an image can convey. After modeling an image analysis, students were organized into groups of three and given an envelope of images. The first task required students to place the images in order. During this phase, students were able to see the chronology of the experience and see the “big picture” of what had occurred. While this could have been done through a reading as well, being able to hold on to the pictures and creating a visual timeline for students made the ideas and events more tangible. Once students believed that the pictures were arranged in the appropriate order they articulated to me why the order that they had was correct. The next step required students to do an analysis of each image. This demanded students to look at particular details just as they would read for in a printed text. Students were encouraged to look for expression, types of weapons, clothing, etc. for each image in a step-by-step process. The end result was that students were able to breakdown each event/phase of the atrocity and talk about each with a strong sense of understanding. During the image analysis process students were also asked to develop discussion questions and write a list of questions to further inquiry to stimulate further exploration. The last phase of the lesson required students to take what they learned from the images and discussion and write a letter to slave.
Since I developed this lesson I have done it every year and found it incredibly successful. Students engage with the images and are able to create more connections than had I simply used slave narratives or other primary and secondary sources. The images encourage students to think critically and “see” history in front of them versus that of “reading” history. Since this activity I’ve had an increased appreciation for incorporating images in the classroom, especially when the topics lend themselves to challenging themes.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Do School Libraries Need Books?
As some of you may know, I'm not a GSLIS student. My current home department is the Computer Science department. I found this debate over at the New York Times on libraries interesting, and I would like to hear some of your comments on the topic. The debate concerns whether or not we still need physical books in libraries with, among other things, the increasing use of e-readers and the ever decreasing amount of books actually being checked out or browsed. I personally hate reading anything longer than a blog post on a screen and kill lots of trees printing things (I promise I print double-sided and with multiple sheets on each side of the page!), but I'm curious. What do some of you think?
Social Media Revolution
Here's a fun and interesting video highlighting the impact that social media is having on the global economy and society.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Walter Benjamin article
I think it’s fairly accurate to say that Walter Benjamin and I have little in common. He truly understood art and I don’t. Even though I don’t consider myself to be an aficionado of the arts, I have felt a sense of appreciation for certain works. I can remember when I saw ‘The Thinker’ on a traveling exhibit or when I was viewing various paintings and the like at the British Museum in London during my one trip overseas. However, the reproduction of art in the modern world is of little concern to me and I think the claims here of negative fallout because of photography or moving pictures isn’t warranted. I understand that things do lose their ‘aura’ when you’re not seeing the original but in the grand scheme of things, this is inconsequential. If anything, seeing art through a picture online or in a print magazine only makes me want to see the original a little more if possible. That is probably why I did go with my mom when I was in junior high to see the Rhodan exhibit because I’d seen its representation elsewhere and here was a chance to see it in person. It’s like the difference between hearing your favorite musical artist’s music through some media and still wanting to see them in concert because you’d seen the representation of them already.
I could only agree with the author in the idea that seeing in person is better for appreciating the artwork’s intrinsic value, but not completly . I think of the difference of seeing a movie in the theater and seeing it at home on dvd-there’s just something about being there that even the best Blue-ray, 1080 pixeled flat screen, home theatre system home environment can’t beat. At least, I think so as I don’t own any of these home entertainment devices. Benjamin may be right that the live performance is better than the movie production since the live actors can feed off of or adjust to the audience present with them as opposed to those actors who can only hope they’ve truly conveyed the screenplay’s intent with the help of the producer and/or director. However, I prefer the movie theater and its product for the opposite reason that Benjamin seems to think makes the live stage preferable-the artificiality. To see the set in-person just emphasizes that this isn’t real, just like witnessing an actor’s live gaff. These things only make me realize just how fake this production is and that to me takes away some of that ‘aura’ that a film’s editing and special effects can do away with without the audience even knowing, thus maintaining that believability. I do however agree that more often than not, you can better reflect on a painting or physical work of art better than you can most films. At least in a movie theater you can’t go back and rewind though since the emergence of dvr players, I’ve wanted to a time or two. Many people though can think of movies which have moved them and which have stuck with them even though they’d only seen them once. In this day and age, if you didn’t get the full meaning of a film it’s not difficult to go and pick up a copy of it on dvd to rent or own.
I could only agree with the author in the idea that seeing in person is better for appreciating the artwork’s intrinsic value, but not completly . I think of the difference of seeing a movie in the theater and seeing it at home on dvd-there’s just something about being there that even the best Blue-ray, 1080 pixeled flat screen, home theatre system home environment can’t beat. At least, I think so as I don’t own any of these home entertainment devices. Benjamin may be right that the live performance is better than the movie production since the live actors can feed off of or adjust to the audience present with them as opposed to those actors who can only hope they’ve truly conveyed the screenplay’s intent with the help of the producer and/or director. However, I prefer the movie theater and its product for the opposite reason that Benjamin seems to think makes the live stage preferable-the artificiality. To see the set in-person just emphasizes that this isn’t real, just like witnessing an actor’s live gaff. These things only make me realize just how fake this production is and that to me takes away some of that ‘aura’ that a film’s editing and special effects can do away with without the audience even knowing, thus maintaining that believability. I do however agree that more often than not, you can better reflect on a painting or physical work of art better than you can most films. At least in a movie theater you can’t go back and rewind though since the emergence of dvr players, I’ve wanted to a time or two. Many people though can think of movies which have moved them and which have stuck with them even though they’d only seen them once. In this day and age, if you didn’t get the full meaning of a film it’s not difficult to go and pick up a copy of it on dvd to rent or own.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Wired Kids, Negligent Parents?
In the wake of the Kaiser Family Foundation's newest report on media in the lives of young people, a four-part opinion series at the New York Times: http://bit.ly/dB7ijR
Revisiting Visual Culture
As I began to delve into the world of visual literacy this week, I was immediately confronted with ideas that had been introduced to me during my undergraduate years studying art education pedagogy. Issues about critically analyzing and producing images have always been central to art education, however, traditionally these images have always been those which were designated “fine art.” And while tradition has mostly prevailed in art education, there have been pushes for something new with the changing times.
In reviewing the articles and websites this week I was reminded of one of these grassroots art education movements called Visual Culture in Art Education (VCAE). I only remembered it vaguely, because it was not seen as “best practice” in my undergraduate institution. I mostly remembered the criticisms, that VCAE leveled works of fine art with things such as advertising, consumer products and comic strips. Also, it was said that the enormous breadth of VCAE made it too difficult to teach in the time allotted for the arts in schools. But as I sat there trying to recall more, I quickly was at a loss. I decided that in the spirit of this week’s topic that I would do some research into this topic.
I searched through old copies of Art Education (The Journal of the National Art Education Association) with the vague memory of an issue focusing on VCAE. Finally I found it, the November 2005 issue with the title, “Oh, No! It’s the Return of Visual Culture!” complete with image of a deformed swamp monster clutching a paintbrush. This was precisely as I remembered the art education movement, as a destructive and debilitating force against tradition. But of course, I had no foundation for this assertion, it was simply what I had been taught (and too naive to question). So I proceeded to read the publication from front to back. I learned that VCAE was truly an all-encompassing study of visual culture which includes the traditional visual arts along with popular culture images, folk art, industrial, interior, package and graphic design as well as photography, commercial illustration, entertainment media and the internet. It is truly a study of our visual world. The proponents of VCAE recognize the potency of these images and the effects on children growing up in the midst of these influences. With the fine arts as such a small portion of the visual world, they assert, why is arts education so focused on these antiquated traditions of high art?
I was surprised at how much seemed so relevant to my thinking today. I have always felt that students seemed ill-equipped to analyze the bombardment of visual stimuli around them. With advertising, television and the internet as a constant, unrelenting force in everyone’s life it is essential that we know how to filter this information and critique it. And yet in art education we tend to focus only on the high arts (mainly painting, drawing and sculpture). While I love these images and recognize their importance, I also wonder if it is enough to study these visual images and call it a quality arts education.
It is actually one of the many reasons why I am moving from the realm of art education to librarianship. It’s not that I now think the arts to be irrelevant, but the expectations put upon art teacher from staff, parents and administration was beginning to wane on me. It seemed to me that the arts in schools are a frill, an extra that could easily be replaced or eliminated at a moments notice. I knew that parents and administration expect conventionally beautiful (or even “cute”) artwork to grace the walls of the school and see that as a symbol of a quality arts program. And being a non-tenured teacher there is a lot of pressure to live up to that standard. However in reading these articles that dissected this Visual Culture art movement, I became once again inspired. These were the ideas that brought me to art education in the first place. The concept that children could learn to analyze a visual image and speak intelligently about its meaning, whether it be a painting by Da Vinci or an advertisement by McDonald’s. The idea that art isn’t limited to museums or the elite, that you can surround yourself with culture. I cannot wait to infuse my teaching with these new ideas and to bring visual literacy into my teaching. Perhaps I am not a complete convert to VCAE, but I am certainly glad that I revisited its teachings. And in addition, it also makes me happy to think that the role of the school librarian is no longer limited to the gatekeeper of books. The title of School Library Media Specialist allows me to introduce and explore the various forms of media to my young students, including visual media. And that is truly an exciting prospect.
In reviewing the articles and websites this week I was reminded of one of these grassroots art education movements called Visual Culture in Art Education (VCAE). I only remembered it vaguely, because it was not seen as “best practice” in my undergraduate institution. I mostly remembered the criticisms, that VCAE leveled works of fine art with things such as advertising, consumer products and comic strips. Also, it was said that the enormous breadth of VCAE made it too difficult to teach in the time allotted for the arts in schools. But as I sat there trying to recall more, I quickly was at a loss. I decided that in the spirit of this week’s topic that I would do some research into this topic.
I searched through old copies of Art Education (The Journal of the National Art Education Association) with the vague memory of an issue focusing on VCAE. Finally I found it, the November 2005 issue with the title, “Oh, No! It’s the Return of Visual Culture!” complete with image of a deformed swamp monster clutching a paintbrush. This was precisely as I remembered the art education movement, as a destructive and debilitating force against tradition. But of course, I had no foundation for this assertion, it was simply what I had been taught (and too naive to question). So I proceeded to read the publication from front to back. I learned that VCAE was truly an all-encompassing study of visual culture which includes the traditional visual arts along with popular culture images, folk art, industrial, interior, package and graphic design as well as photography, commercial illustration, entertainment media and the internet. It is truly a study of our visual world. The proponents of VCAE recognize the potency of these images and the effects on children growing up in the midst of these influences. With the fine arts as such a small portion of the visual world, they assert, why is arts education so focused on these antiquated traditions of high art?
I was surprised at how much seemed so relevant to my thinking today. I have always felt that students seemed ill-equipped to analyze the bombardment of visual stimuli around them. With advertising, television and the internet as a constant, unrelenting force in everyone’s life it is essential that we know how to filter this information and critique it. And yet in art education we tend to focus only on the high arts (mainly painting, drawing and sculpture). While I love these images and recognize their importance, I also wonder if it is enough to study these visual images and call it a quality arts education.
It is actually one of the many reasons why I am moving from the realm of art education to librarianship. It’s not that I now think the arts to be irrelevant, but the expectations put upon art teacher from staff, parents and administration was beginning to wane on me. It seemed to me that the arts in schools are a frill, an extra that could easily be replaced or eliminated at a moments notice. I knew that parents and administration expect conventionally beautiful (or even “cute”) artwork to grace the walls of the school and see that as a symbol of a quality arts program. And being a non-tenured teacher there is a lot of pressure to live up to that standard. However in reading these articles that dissected this Visual Culture art movement, I became once again inspired. These were the ideas that brought me to art education in the first place. The concept that children could learn to analyze a visual image and speak intelligently about its meaning, whether it be a painting by Da Vinci or an advertisement by McDonald’s. The idea that art isn’t limited to museums or the elite, that you can surround yourself with culture. I cannot wait to infuse my teaching with these new ideas and to bring visual literacy into my teaching. Perhaps I am not a complete convert to VCAE, but I am certainly glad that I revisited its teachings. And in addition, it also makes me happy to think that the role of the school librarian is no longer limited to the gatekeeper of books. The title of School Library Media Specialist allows me to introduce and explore the various forms of media to my young students, including visual media. And that is truly an exciting prospect.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
On Plato
(This started as a comment and then got quite long, so I moved it to the main page)
I really am fascinated with, and have spent a lot of time ruminating upon, the arguments against written language contained in Plato's Phaedo. Part of this is because I studied a great deal of Plato in my undergrad, and was always fascinated by the idea that so much of what I was gleaning from that material was never intended for the record.
When Plato recorded (or created, depending on your view) the Socratic dialogs, he was primarily recording a method of teaching and learning that was not especially popular (the Apology is evidence enough of that). The Socratic method as we know it consists of group learning in a question-and-answer sort of environment. It is not front-led, in that each member of the group is encouraged to contribute both in the asking and the answering, but is certainly guided. The Platonic/Socratic argument against written knowledge is that it precludes this kind of inquiry. The written word, Plato's Socrates surmises, says the same thing to everyone. In that sense, then, it is dangerous, because one person may read a text in a way that encourages positive action and another may read it in an opposite way.
(Edited to add: After a comment, I noticed that this paragraph seemed somewhat contradictory. What I mean, and what comes from reading the Phaedo, is that Socrates' opinion is that while a text literally says the same thing to everyone, it cannot defend itself against misinterpretation. I hope that clears up my somewhat overtired musings.)
I wonder, as we move away from book-based learning and communication of ideas, what new sorts of teaching and learning will be created, and what old forms may be revived. In the world of blogging we already see much greater room for discourse within texts, with comments and message boards present on almost any blog and even many news sources. In things like Wikis, too, we see this ever-presented adaptability of text and information, and the arguments both for and against such flexibility. Even the medium in which our class is presented is one that is completely new, allowing for distance learning that also exists in a group setting.
With this constant flow of conversation, the originals are always adapting, both with the direct additions from the comments and the potential additions and modifications by the author as new ideas, questions, and information are presented by the readers.
What has been called the information age is, for our purposes, a new environment for learning, and I think it will be fascinating to see how the teaching professions and the lives of students evolve over the next ten or twenty years.
I really am fascinated with, and have spent a lot of time ruminating upon, the arguments against written language contained in Plato's Phaedo. Part of this is because I studied a great deal of Plato in my undergrad, and was always fascinated by the idea that so much of what I was gleaning from that material was never intended for the record.
When Plato recorded (or created, depending on your view) the Socratic dialogs, he was primarily recording a method of teaching and learning that was not especially popular (the Apology is evidence enough of that). The Socratic method as we know it consists of group learning in a question-and-answer sort of environment. It is not front-led, in that each member of the group is encouraged to contribute both in the asking and the answering, but is certainly guided. The Platonic/Socratic argument against written knowledge is that it precludes this kind of inquiry. The written word, Plato's Socrates surmises, says the same thing to everyone. In that sense, then, it is dangerous, because one person may read a text in a way that encourages positive action and another may read it in an opposite way.
(Edited to add: After a comment, I noticed that this paragraph seemed somewhat contradictory. What I mean, and what comes from reading the Phaedo, is that Socrates' opinion is that while a text literally says the same thing to everyone, it cannot defend itself against misinterpretation. I hope that clears up my somewhat overtired musings.)
I wonder, as we move away from book-based learning and communication of ideas, what new sorts of teaching and learning will be created, and what old forms may be revived. In the world of blogging we already see much greater room for discourse within texts, with comments and message boards present on almost any blog and even many news sources. In things like Wikis, too, we see this ever-presented adaptability of text and information, and the arguments both for and against such flexibility. Even the medium in which our class is presented is one that is completely new, allowing for distance learning that also exists in a group setting.
With this constant flow of conversation, the originals are always adapting, both with the direct additions from the comments and the potential additions and modifications by the author as new ideas, questions, and information are presented by the readers.
What has been called the information age is, for our purposes, a new environment for learning, and I think it will be fascinating to see how the teaching professions and the lives of students evolve over the next ten or twenty years.
Add to Your Social Media Repertoire
Ever wanted to try Twitter? Already have a Twitter account? Follow me (CarolGSLIS) and learn some new skills, while also learning more about media literacy, reading, libraries, and more!
On the Imperiousness of Literacy
While Ong’s questioning of the effects that the centrality of writing has on our minds and our culture is at first provocative, I think he is raising an important point that should be considered. Why are reading and writing privileged in our society, and what effect does this have? As librarians, we see great value in reading in particular, and spend much of our energy promoting its merits. I’m not suggesting that this should or will change; but I do think it is important to take a step back and understand why this exists and what it may mean. In Ong’s assertion that “Literacy is imperious,” I don’t see imperiousness as a characteristic of the term or something that is inherent in the skill of reading, but rather a reflection of the cultural privileging of this way of learning, working, and living that has become so imbedded that it may obscure our vision to other ways of thinking.
In The Children’s Machine, Seymour Papert (developer of the LOGO programming language and contributor on LEGO Mindstorms) argues that computers may offer some very meaningful ways for pre-literate (illiterate?) children to learn, create, problem solve, and interact. He questions the idea privileged in the U.S. educational system that reading is the first and most important skill to be learned, and points out just how much time teaching to read takes up of the first few years in school. He is not suggesting that reading is not important, but that it might better serve students to learn in other ways in complement to reading. This is just one example of an alternate viewpoint that may not be considered because of the privileging of literacy.
Of course, reading and writing is so embedded in most of our lives that how can we ever really distance ourselves from it enough to analyze its role? Like Plato, who records Socrates’ arguments against the written word in writing (the only way we would even know about it today), we are fully immersed in the written way of doing things. While the beginning of Ong’s article raises the questions I mention in the first paragraph, it becomes clear that he sees it as central, concluding that “Writing is a consciousness-raising and humanizing technology.” While we may come to the same conclusions, I think the process of thinking it through raises some interesting ideas.
Digital Brains and Wisdom
I found the Ong and Wolf articles assigned for this week fascinating reading, although I have to admit I also found them pretty heavy slogging to get through. I had always thought of imperious as meaning arrogant, but I was surprised to learn that it also means “assuming power without justification”. What could it mean to say that literacy is imperious? The idea that literacy should not necessarily be regarded as normative and natural and essential to human intellectual life was one that had not occurred to me before.
Upon further reflection I realized that, of course, Ong is correct. There was plenty of human intellectual discourse prior to the development of writing, and writing is not an innate characteristic of being human in the way the speech is. What writing did, was to change the nature and content of intellectual discourse. As Ong puts it, writing is “utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior human potentials.” Writing brought about an “interior transformation of consciousness” that made possible a whole new type of intellectual process. Where oral thought had been essentially conservative, written thought allowed for more abstract and exploratory thinking. Writing allowed for ideas to be preserved across time and across space.
What does this have to do with digital literacy? I can’t help but wondering what changes in the nature of the intellectual thought of our species may be slowly being wrought by evolving digital technologies. I was struck by the description of how Plato condemned writing as alien, artificial and foreign to human life—quite similar to the criticisms often leveled in modern times at computers and digital modes of communication. Could it be that we are in the midst of a transformation that we are not fully aware of, just as Plato was not truly aware of how thoroughly writing had changed the nature of thought during his times? As Ong points out, Plato could not even have formed his argument against writing had the emergence of writing not already changed his thought processes. Perhaps the existence of digital media has already changed the structure of our thoughts in ways we have not yet fully realized.
This idea is supported by the Wolf articles, which describe how the human brain changed as reading and writing developed. Where Ong talks about a transformation of consciousness, Wolf describes a transformation of the physiology of the brain. If these changes occurred as the technologies of reading and writing emerged, it is equally possible that changes of similar magnitude are occurring as digital technologies emerge. A simple Google search with the term “internet changes brains” yields 37, 600 results, including many articles that I suspect many of us have read over the past few years. Some of these articles appear to be of the hand-wringing variety—“Is the Internet Melting Our Brains?", while others are more positive—“Using Internet Boosts Older Brains”.
In a sense, I don’t think it matters much whether we agree with the hand-wringers or the cheerleaders. Change, whether it’s for the better or the worse, is here, and, in my opinion, is unstoppable. Perhaps it is more important to be aware of it and to try to understand it than to form a judgment about its goodness or badness.
So why is the word “wisdom” in the title of my post, you may be wondering at this point? It’s there just to highlight a passing and somewhat unformed thought I had while reading the Ong article. Ong points out that great advances in intellectual thought were made possible by the development of writing. As he puts it, “Pressed by the need to manage an always fugitive noetic universe, the oral world is basically conservative. Exploratory thinking is not unknown, but it is relatively rare, a luxury orality can little afford, for energies must be husbanded to keep on constant call the evanescent knowledge that the ages have so laboriously accumulated. Everybody, or almost everybody, must repeat and repeat and repeat the truths that have come down from the ancestors." Writing made exploratory thought possible, it created a separation between knowledge and the possesor of that knowledge. Knowledge and ideas could be transferred without personal contact. Although it is indisputable that a vast amount of great thought and intellectual progress was enabled by the emergence of writing, it may also be just possible that a bit of wisdom was lost in the process.
There may have been some value in the conservatism necessitated by a world without writing. I have long been enchanted by storytelling. I firmly believe that there can sometimes be more “truth” and more wisdom in a short, well-told tale than in volumes of written text. When a person, or a community, or a culture, can only keep as much information as can be committed to memory, by necessity only the most valuable ideas will be preserved. In a society where access to information is virtually unlimited, and the ability to preserve every little scrap of information—from financial records, to test results, to endless photos of the minutest events, to recordings of what we eat for breakfast—is also virtually unlimited, many people find it increasingly difficult to sift through all of that information to find what is of value; they find it difficult determine what their values are and to decide what constitutes moral “right behavior.” I don’t at all mean to suggest that we ought to try and go back to some idealized “good old days” when everything was better and everyone knew right from wrong; I simply wonder what was lost along with all that was gained when we humans learned to write.
Upon further reflection I realized that, of course, Ong is correct. There was plenty of human intellectual discourse prior to the development of writing, and writing is not an innate characteristic of being human in the way the speech is. What writing did, was to change the nature and content of intellectual discourse. As Ong puts it, writing is “utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior human potentials.” Writing brought about an “interior transformation of consciousness” that made possible a whole new type of intellectual process. Where oral thought had been essentially conservative, written thought allowed for more abstract and exploratory thinking. Writing allowed for ideas to be preserved across time and across space.
What does this have to do with digital literacy? I can’t help but wondering what changes in the nature of the intellectual thought of our species may be slowly being wrought by evolving digital technologies. I was struck by the description of how Plato condemned writing as alien, artificial and foreign to human life—quite similar to the criticisms often leveled in modern times at computers and digital modes of communication. Could it be that we are in the midst of a transformation that we are not fully aware of, just as Plato was not truly aware of how thoroughly writing had changed the nature of thought during his times? As Ong points out, Plato could not even have formed his argument against writing had the emergence of writing not already changed his thought processes. Perhaps the existence of digital media has already changed the structure of our thoughts in ways we have not yet fully realized.
This idea is supported by the Wolf articles, which describe how the human brain changed as reading and writing developed. Where Ong talks about a transformation of consciousness, Wolf describes a transformation of the physiology of the brain. If these changes occurred as the technologies of reading and writing emerged, it is equally possible that changes of similar magnitude are occurring as digital technologies emerge. A simple Google search with the term “internet changes brains” yields 37, 600 results, including many articles that I suspect many of us have read over the past few years. Some of these articles appear to be of the hand-wringing variety—“Is the Internet Melting Our Brains?", while others are more positive—“Using Internet Boosts Older Brains”.
In a sense, I don’t think it matters much whether we agree with the hand-wringers or the cheerleaders. Change, whether it’s for the better or the worse, is here, and, in my opinion, is unstoppable. Perhaps it is more important to be aware of it and to try to understand it than to form a judgment about its goodness or badness.
So why is the word “wisdom” in the title of my post, you may be wondering at this point? It’s there just to highlight a passing and somewhat unformed thought I had while reading the Ong article. Ong points out that great advances in intellectual thought were made possible by the development of writing. As he puts it, “Pressed by the need to manage an always fugitive noetic universe, the oral world is basically conservative. Exploratory thinking is not unknown, but it is relatively rare, a luxury orality can little afford, for energies must be husbanded to keep on constant call the evanescent knowledge that the ages have so laboriously accumulated. Everybody, or almost everybody, must repeat and repeat and repeat the truths that have come down from the ancestors." Writing made exploratory thought possible, it created a separation between knowledge and the possesor of that knowledge. Knowledge and ideas could be transferred without personal contact. Although it is indisputable that a vast amount of great thought and intellectual progress was enabled by the emergence of writing, it may also be just possible that a bit of wisdom was lost in the process.
There may have been some value in the conservatism necessitated by a world without writing. I have long been enchanted by storytelling. I firmly believe that there can sometimes be more “truth” and more wisdom in a short, well-told tale than in volumes of written text. When a person, or a community, or a culture, can only keep as much information as can be committed to memory, by necessity only the most valuable ideas will be preserved. In a society where access to information is virtually unlimited, and the ability to preserve every little scrap of information—from financial records, to test results, to endless photos of the minutest events, to recordings of what we eat for breakfast—is also virtually unlimited, many people find it increasingly difficult to sift through all of that information to find what is of value; they find it difficult determine what their values are and to decide what constitutes moral “right behavior.” I don’t at all mean to suggest that we ought to try and go back to some idealized “good old days” when everything was better and everyone knew right from wrong; I simply wonder what was lost along with all that was gained when we humans learned to write.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Digital Tidbits
An attempt at multitasking . . . can I create a blog entry while watching Frontline's Digital Nation tonight?
It has been a digital week and I feel like I'm learning so much and yet there is so much to learn. Tidbits from this week:
1. Harry Potter mania: Universal Studios is opening the Wizarding World of Harry Potter this spring (won't give a date, which is frustrating as I'm hoping it will be open when I'm in Orlando in late March, marketing ploy or do they just not know?). USA Today published an interactive marauder's map last Thursday: Peeking at Harry Potter's World as it Takes Shape. This is a brown and white map that you hold in front of your computer's digital camera and it becomes interactive. Music starts playing, voices of the characters are heard, and 3-D images take shape from the flat page of the map. It didn't work quite as easily for me as described in the article, but it was pretty amazing.
2. Article in School Library Journal about social networking: How 11 Intrepid Users Get the Most of Social Media. Really interesting uses of a variety of digital media, some with children and in school settings, some celebrating storytelling and books.
3. Release of the i-Pad and how it might relate to children's books: "Using the 2-page view, you can see both pages of a book. 9" screen,1.5 lbs. This is really going to make picture eBooks possible. Ithink this is going to be a core strength of this device -- once the
Note: Dulemba also has an i-phone application/book: Lula's Brew-- I don't have an i-phone yet so I haven't checked this out, but what a concept.
4. Even during my beloved respite for the week, watching Masterpiece Theatre's Emma on PBS, Emma Twitter parties (sponsored by PBS) are going on. I enjoy reading the tweets afterwards, but don't participate in real time. Jane Austen still gets my full attention!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Laptops and Literacy
This week's readings about the nature of literacy have posed some questions for me to ponder relating to a new initiative at the school where I work. The school where I have been an English teacher for the past eleven years is going forward with a plan to purchase netbooks for all incoming freshmen in the 2010-2011 school year, with the plan to continue this for all incoming freshmen for the next four years until the entire student body is netbook-equipped. The concerns many teachers have expressed about this initiative -- cost, maintenance/theft concerns, cheating, increased distractability in classes (all of the classrooms will be internet-connected), potential negative impact on traditional literacies, etc. -- have been largely dismissed by the powers-that-be. We are all for closing the digital divide, but our district already has a program to get laptops into the hands of students whose families can’t afford computers, many students already have laptops (of a higher quality than the ones they will be given), and there is no plan to provide internet access along with the laptops, rendering them useless at home (since they will not come with any non-internet based software). Anyone who expresses concerns about the plan and calls for, not necessarily a stop to the program, but at least a more clearly defined and better-researched rationale and plan for implementation, seems to be labeled anti-technology, anti-progress, and out of touch. The administrator in charge of purchasing this technology, in response to one recent question about the impact on print literacy, declared that “all literacies are the same.” Going into this week’s readings, I was curious how they would address this issue in particular.
The Wolf reading suggests that certain aspects of traditional reading encourage unique brain development that could be compromised in a generation engaged more in digital media at the expense of traditional reading. At the same time, Wolf acknowledges that perhaps these new literacies could encourage the growth of previously undeveloped neural connections and enable individuals with some disabilities in print literacy with a better ability to maximize their intellectual potential than in a world dependent on print literacy. Similar issues came up in the Braille article -- what is lost and what is gained by the dependence on these new technologies? I am not opposed to the benefits the new technologies have to offer, but I am concerned about what would be lost.
I am willing to entertain the possibility that my feelings on this issue are at least partially because I am more comfortable with print than digital media. Reading the Wolf excerpt, I wondered if I am just nostalgic for the kind of reading moments Proust describes. I do sometimes worry that my students who are poor readers, who never developed that "lost in another world" engagement with reading books, will never experience the pleasure I found in those moments. But perhaps I miss things that they experience through their engagement with digital media. Who am I to judge one experience better than another? At the same time, must one be gained at the expense of the other?
Beyond concerns of what the lack of print literacy might mean for the pleasures of reading, however, are concerns about whether or not the increased use of digital media in schools positively impacts student learning. An article from the New York Times that has been circulating around school -- Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops by Winnie Hu from May 4, 2007 -- chronicles several school districts around the country that are now abandoning laptop programs like the one upon which my school district is embarking. The reasons given include misuse of the computers (to cheat, look at pornography, etc.), costs for repair and replacement, and a lack of research showing that having the laptops improved academic performance. Part of the issue is that the programs are so new that little thorough research on the efficacy of these programs exist, but the results of existing studies do not look overwhelmingly promising. The article says,
"In one of the largest ongoing studies, the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group, has so far found no overall difference on state test scores between 21 middle schools where students received laptops in 2004, and 21 schools where they did not, though some data suggest that high-achieving students with laptops may perform better in math than their counterparts without. When six of the schools in the study that do not have laptops were given the option of getting them this year, they opted against."
Later in the article, Mark Warschauer, a professor of education who supports laptop programs, acknowledges that there is no evidence that laptops increase state test scores, but he does say, “Where laptops and Internet use make a difference are in innovation, creativity, autonomy and independent research. . . If the goal is to get kids up to basic standard levels, then maybe laptops are not the tool. But if the goal is to create the George Lucas and Steve Jobs of the future, then laptops are extremely useful.”
Given that George Lucas and Steve Jobs, however, did not go to schools with one-to-one computing, however, and still managed to become as innovative and creative as they are, I still wonder if there is a way to merge what’s good about both these approaches. Is there a way for the new digital literacies not to replace the print literacies of the past, but to add on to them? Is putting a laptop in front of every kid all day at school the best way to do that?
The Wolf reading suggests that certain aspects of traditional reading encourage unique brain development that could be compromised in a generation engaged more in digital media at the expense of traditional reading. At the same time, Wolf acknowledges that perhaps these new literacies could encourage the growth of previously undeveloped neural connections and enable individuals with some disabilities in print literacy with a better ability to maximize their intellectual potential than in a world dependent on print literacy. Similar issues came up in the Braille article -- what is lost and what is gained by the dependence on these new technologies? I am not opposed to the benefits the new technologies have to offer, but I am concerned about what would be lost.
I am willing to entertain the possibility that my feelings on this issue are at least partially because I am more comfortable with print than digital media. Reading the Wolf excerpt, I wondered if I am just nostalgic for the kind of reading moments Proust describes. I do sometimes worry that my students who are poor readers, who never developed that "lost in another world" engagement with reading books, will never experience the pleasure I found in those moments. But perhaps I miss things that they experience through their engagement with digital media. Who am I to judge one experience better than another? At the same time, must one be gained at the expense of the other?
Beyond concerns of what the lack of print literacy might mean for the pleasures of reading, however, are concerns about whether or not the increased use of digital media in schools positively impacts student learning. An article from the New York Times that has been circulating around school -- Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops by Winnie Hu from May 4, 2007 -- chronicles several school districts around the country that are now abandoning laptop programs like the one upon which my school district is embarking. The reasons given include misuse of the computers (to cheat, look at pornography, etc.), costs for repair and replacement, and a lack of research showing that having the laptops improved academic performance. Part of the issue is that the programs are so new that little thorough research on the efficacy of these programs exist, but the results of existing studies do not look overwhelmingly promising. The article says,
"In one of the largest ongoing studies, the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group, has so far found no overall difference on state test scores between 21 middle schools where students received laptops in 2004, and 21 schools where they did not, though some data suggest that high-achieving students with laptops may perform better in math than their counterparts without. When six of the schools in the study that do not have laptops were given the option of getting them this year, they opted against."
Later in the article, Mark Warschauer, a professor of education who supports laptop programs, acknowledges that there is no evidence that laptops increase state test scores, but he does say, “Where laptops and Internet use make a difference are in innovation, creativity, autonomy and independent research. . . If the goal is to get kids up to basic standard levels, then maybe laptops are not the tool. But if the goal is to create the George Lucas and Steve Jobs of the future, then laptops are extremely useful.”
Given that George Lucas and Steve Jobs, however, did not go to schools with one-to-one computing, however, and still managed to become as innovative and creative as they are, I still wonder if there is a way to merge what’s good about both these approaches. Is there a way for the new digital literacies not to replace the print literacies of the past, but to add on to them? Is putting a laptop in front of every kid all day at school the best way to do that?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Walking into a Desert
"Watching a Digital Nation in Action" is the title of today's post on Digital Education, one of Education Week's blogs. It previews Digital Nation airing on PBS's Frontline next week (Tuesday, February 2 at 9 p.m. EST). You can also watch a preview and much of the work in progress on the PBS web site. Some of the quotes seemed particularly pertinent to our class discussion last week, especially this one on multitasking:
"Virtually all multitaskers think they're brilliant at multitasking," Sociologist Clifford Nass says. "And what we're discovering is that they're really lousy at it."
I have a very ambivalent attitude about multitasking. Some things I can do quite well together, and it just seems more efficient -- listening to a podcast while doing dishes, listening to a book on CD while driving . . . but for other tasks I end up not doing any of them very well. Or at least not as well as if I was only concentrating on just one task.
Another compelling quote is "Walking into a classroom without media," one educator says, "is like walking into a desert" for students these days. Wow. This description seems very apt. If media is ambient, flowing in a stream all around us, then no technology must be like a desert. If media is part of children's environment and life outside of school, then it needs to be part of their learning environment.
I missed another episode of Frontline earlier this year that focused specifically on children and the digital world, Growing Up Online, but that too is available to watch online. Sometimes it's pretty convenient to be living in the digital age!
"Virtually all multitaskers think they're brilliant at multitasking," Sociologist Clifford Nass says. "And what we're discovering is that they're really lousy at it."
I have a very ambivalent attitude about multitasking. Some things I can do quite well together, and it just seems more efficient -- listening to a podcast while doing dishes, listening to a book on CD while driving . . . but for other tasks I end up not doing any of them very well. Or at least not as well as if I was only concentrating on just one task.
Another compelling quote is "Walking into a classroom without media," one educator says, "is like walking into a desert" for students these days. Wow. This description seems very apt. If media is ambient, flowing in a stream all around us, then no technology must be like a desert. If media is part of children's environment and life outside of school, then it needs to be part of their learning environment.
I missed another episode of Frontline earlier this year that focused specifically on children and the digital world, Growing Up Online, but that too is available to watch online. Sometimes it's pretty convenient to be living in the digital age!
The FCC's Future of Media Project
The Federal Communications Commission is hosting an online discussion about the future of media in local communities. Additionally there is a blog with information and resources. You can learn more at http://reboot.fcc.gov/futureofmedia
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
How to form an identity when everyone at school thinks you're a weirdo
I was really excited when I saw the readings for this week. In college I had a minor in media studies, which basically involved reading a lot about popular culture. I took a few classes about media fandom specifically, because I was a fan in a former life! As a result of being interested in fandom from a semi-academic standpoint, I have read a lot of Henry Jenkins. (I've followed his blog for the past few years - it's here, if you're interested.) So I was happy that he was on the reading list, taking a positive stance regarding fanfiction.
David Buckingham seems skeptical about the liberating, empowering possibilities of internet communities. This reaction is understandable: as he rightly points out, the overwhelming majority of "content creators" and, by extension, fandom kids are upper-middle class. Most of them are also white and female. Though many fans benefit from those sets of privilege, it is inaccurate to suggest that participants in fandom are teenagers whose voices would be heard in any situation. In particular, many fandoms provide a safe, accepting space for GLBTQ teenagers and young adults (although there are always problems, and there are a slew of them right now, mostly having to do with the fact that "slash" fanfiction is mostly written by straight females). As Buckingham writes, "it could be argued that the internet provides significant opportunities for exploring facets of identity that might previously have been denied or stigmatized, or indeed simply for the sharing of information on such matters." Fandom tends to attract a lot of people who aren't able to fully express themselves in the "real world" – a lot of us felt like we were not accepted by our peers, teachers, or even our families. Having access to a supportive group of like-minded people, even if you never meet them, can be tremendously important for kids who feel like outcasts.
I don't have much interest in the copyright issues – are a bunch of eleven-year-olds really threatening Stephenie Meyer's profits? – but I understand other concerns about fanfiction writing. It's not the same as writing fiction from scratch, after all. The characters, setting, and sometimes even the situations are already there, as Jenkins points out. If you hope to become a real author, fanfiction won't necessarily teach you how to create interesting characters or develop a world. But it will help with plenty of other aspects of writing: it means that "young writers begin publishing and getting feedback on their work while they are still in high school," even if their school district doesn't offer creative writing classes. It means that they will learn how to plot, revise, write good dialogue – all basic stepping-stones that aren't always taught in English classes. Not to mention the fact that with writing, as with nearly everything else, you only improve by doing it.
So there are plenty of benefits when it comes to kids' (and adults'!) development as writers. In my case, though, it's a little different. I have never been much of a writer. What I always loved, and benefited tremendously from, was the community that sprung up around beloved TV shows and books. The people I met through internet fandom, starting when I was in middle school, exposed me to ideas and viewpoints I would never have encountered in the small town where I grew up. Many of the beliefs and values I still hold were introduced to me by other misfit teenagers on X-Files message boards. And because I didn't know any of these people in real life, I was able to express concerns and problems that I would not have been able to discuss with friends or family members.
David Buckingham seems skeptical about the liberating, empowering possibilities of internet communities. This reaction is understandable: as he rightly points out, the overwhelming majority of "content creators" and, by extension, fandom kids are upper-middle class. Most of them are also white and female. Though many fans benefit from those sets of privilege, it is inaccurate to suggest that participants in fandom are teenagers whose voices would be heard in any situation. In particular, many fandoms provide a safe, accepting space for GLBTQ teenagers and young adults (although there are always problems, and there are a slew of them right now, mostly having to do with the fact that "slash" fanfiction is mostly written by straight females). As Buckingham writes, "it could be argued that the internet provides significant opportunities for exploring facets of identity that might previously have been denied or stigmatized, or indeed simply for the sharing of information on such matters." Fandom tends to attract a lot of people who aren't able to fully express themselves in the "real world" – a lot of us felt like we were not accepted by our peers, teachers, or even our families. Having access to a supportive group of like-minded people, even if you never meet them, can be tremendously important for kids who feel like outcasts.
The importance of online networks in identity formation obviously varies a great deal depending on the individual. There are plenty of teenagers who participate in online networks very casually, for example, or whose online networks are just extensions of their real-life networks (i.e. Facebook and MySpace). Most of the kids I work with fall into that category – and most of those kids are friendly and socially adept in real life. They don't need to seek out strangers to connect with. But I know a couple of kids who aren't so confident, and who have found a niche in online Twilight fandom (which sort of horrifies me, because I hate that book in more ways than I can describe here, but so be it). Fandom can be a really powerful, helpful thing for teenagers who don't feel accepted in real life. Aaand there's my spiel about that.
On a sort of separate note, just because I found this quote interesting (it's Buckingham quoting Somebody Giddens): "The self becomes a kind of 'project' that individuals have to work on: they have to create biographical 'narratives' that will explain themselves to themselves, and hence sustain a coherent and consistent identity." This reminded me instantly of a comment my friend Hannah left on my blog a few years ago:
On a sort of separate note, just because I found this quote interesting (it's Buckingham quoting Somebody Giddens): "The self becomes a kind of 'project' that individuals have to work on: they have to create biographical 'narratives' that will explain themselves to themselves, and hence sustain a coherent and consistent identity." This reminded me instantly of a comment my friend Hannah left on my blog a few years ago:
It’s interesting, too, that you question what you’re looking for there [in Los Angeles], since you’re so clearly an author of an autobiography, and have been for so obviously a very long time, that clearly you’re looking for the plot, right, and clearly for the story line to go with the narrative. Or that’s what it seems like. And arn’t the novels awfully hard on the protagonists? Life as a protagonist is hard, it really is, because novels are records of problems that are eventually solved (or are not solved; so much better to be a protagonist of a novel than a tragic hero). I’d say you’re looking for the content of your blog, which makes you exactly the kind of girl who moves to Los Angeles, because it’s the kind of person who's protagonisting in something that moves to Los Angeles, I suppose.
I started my first blog in 2000. At the moment, I blog very sporadically (and as privately as possible), but at various points in the past ten years, I have blogged regularly and openly. This activity played a huge role in shaping my identity, largely because it gave me a sense of trajectory: I knew exactly where I had started, and I could look through past entries - thousands of them - to find the decisions I made to move myself forward. As Hannah put it, I've been protagonisting. In difficult times, it makes me feel like I have some control over my own life – and that's a good feeling to have. With the internet, even teenagers who aren't "content creators" by Buckingham's definition are leaving a trail behind them. You can trace their development through Facebook notes and wall posts and photographs on MySpace. Teenagers carefully cultivate their social networking profiles to reflect the identity they want: the right bands, TV shows, and books for their crowd. There are very few teens who are online who aren't content creators, in that sense. They are all actively involved in shaping the identity they show to the world, becoming more aware of their own and other people's expectations in the process, and that can be a powerful thing.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Technology/Media and Youth
This week's readings and video clips were a reminder of he undeniably large role which current and emerging technologies play in young people's lives and our own. I was reminded of the commonly used expression 'too much information' and of the frustrated feeling I have at trying to keep up with all the technology available nowadays. However, I saw through these articles and videos reminders also of the exciting possibilities that new media outlets offer us all, young and old.
The article by David Buckingham examined how teenagers interact with and how they incorporate modern technology into their lives and I though he presented some arguments which I have occasionally seen bore out in the high school library where I work. In the article it was said that many adults think that teens are eager to embrace every technology which comes on to the scene and the are very proficient with them as well. At my school, I have had to show students how to do things on the computers, which I remember thinking at the time were 'things they should know' since I too have thought that teens are mostly tech savvy gurus we adults should be consulting rather than the other way around. Like Buckingham said, this isn't always the case. As I write this, one of our students who recently took over the lead in the production of our morning announcements is yet again here in the library using more of his lunch time to work on the physical equipment and software that's housed here for that purpose.
Another point of view presented here was the idea that the youth of today are somehow unique in how they utilize technology. Often times the media will take a hold of something like a 'To Catch A Predator' episode or a news story of how some teenage girls or boys were 'cyber-bullying' or 'sexting' to show that this generation has some special disreputable quality all of their own. I know I'm getting older however, I certainly can recall nasty notes my peers sent to one another or rumors of others using the existing technologies for less than appropriate purposes.
In Why Heather Can't Read from MIT's Technology Review, the article's focus on the way in which young people like Heather Lawver have used technology to further their passion for writing is encouraging. She is obviously someone like the student above from my school who I mentioned liked audio and visual productions, both like to incorporate technology in their lives albeit in different fashions. This article reminded me of another student at our school who I met recently who shared with me about her passion for writing and I thought of her when I read about these online communities of online peer reviews. I wonder if something like the Sugar Quill web site mentioned in the article would be an appealing outlet that would help her develop her writing ability.
I understand where there might be some validity to their criticism of schools inhibiting student writing somewhat by focusing too much on grammatical elements but, I also think that part of the curriculum is included in schools for no good reason. Writing is more than style and a good writer will master all aspects of the process for maximum effect. While I have some disagreement with this author about their stance on what they seem to portray as grammatical pickiness, I do think they are correct in what seems to be their stance that the Internet is a great learning environment for young adults who have a vast array of places to find inspiration and critical but hopefully constructive feedback.
Lee Rainie's presentation at the Networked Learners Symposium also proved insightful in what he shared on young adult and adult users' usage of technology. The one thing which stood out the most to me were his comments on the amount of information that is being presented to teens and how that will only grow worse as they get older. At my graduation from high school back in 1990, our superintendent somewhat prophetically told us how the amount of knowledge we'd need for the real world would double every so many years and that it would only get worse so, we needed to prepare for that world. I think the reason I remember his words so well was that I found this to be true in my life in the years since then. Young or old, if you are even somewhat technologically active in today's society you have what Mr. Rainie called truncated attention spans. A good example might be that while I was watching the video, I have to admit that I simultaneously had three other windows open on my computer searching for tickets to this weekend's men's Illini basketball game, checking back with this course's Moodle page to see what I still needed to do for this week's class, and I was typing notes on Microsoft Word from the presentation in between that all.
The times we live in currently are overwhelming when it comes to the technology and media onslaught and the prospect of facing strange new changes in this regard still leaves me with a little bit of dread. Yet, having said that I also look forward to it with anticipation-what an odd combination! As adults who work with teens we must at least try to stay abreast of these developments so we can best serve our constituents in their pursuit of personal, academic, and professional goals. I feel there will always be 'too much information' in our world from now on, but at least the young people we help will be better able to find their way through it all because they were prepared well.
The article by David Buckingham examined how teenagers interact with and how they incorporate modern technology into their lives and I though he presented some arguments which I have occasionally seen bore out in the high school library where I work. In the article it was said that many adults think that teens are eager to embrace every technology which comes on to the scene and the are very proficient with them as well. At my school, I have had to show students how to do things on the computers, which I remember thinking at the time were 'things they should know' since I too have thought that teens are mostly tech savvy gurus we adults should be consulting rather than the other way around. Like Buckingham said, this isn't always the case. As I write this, one of our students who recently took over the lead in the production of our morning announcements is yet again here in the library using more of his lunch time to work on the physical equipment and software that's housed here for that purpose.
Another point of view presented here was the idea that the youth of today are somehow unique in how they utilize technology. Often times the media will take a hold of something like a 'To Catch A Predator' episode or a news story of how some teenage girls or boys were 'cyber-bullying' or 'sexting' to show that this generation has some special disreputable quality all of their own. I know I'm getting older however, I certainly can recall nasty notes my peers sent to one another or rumors of others using the existing technologies for less than appropriate purposes.
In Why Heather Can't Read from MIT's Technology Review, the article's focus on the way in which young people like Heather Lawver have used technology to further their passion for writing is encouraging. She is obviously someone like the student above from my school who I mentioned liked audio and visual productions, both like to incorporate technology in their lives albeit in different fashions. This article reminded me of another student at our school who I met recently who shared with me about her passion for writing and I thought of her when I read about these online communities of online peer reviews. I wonder if something like the Sugar Quill web site mentioned in the article would be an appealing outlet that would help her develop her writing ability.
I understand where there might be some validity to their criticism of schools inhibiting student writing somewhat by focusing too much on grammatical elements but, I also think that part of the curriculum is included in schools for no good reason. Writing is more than style and a good writer will master all aspects of the process for maximum effect. While I have some disagreement with this author about their stance on what they seem to portray as grammatical pickiness, I do think they are correct in what seems to be their stance that the Internet is a great learning environment for young adults who have a vast array of places to find inspiration and critical but hopefully constructive feedback.
Lee Rainie's presentation at the Networked Learners Symposium also proved insightful in what he shared on young adult and adult users' usage of technology. The one thing which stood out the most to me were his comments on the amount of information that is being presented to teens and how that will only grow worse as they get older. At my graduation from high school back in 1990, our superintendent somewhat prophetically told us how the amount of knowledge we'd need for the real world would double every so many years and that it would only get worse so, we needed to prepare for that world. I think the reason I remember his words so well was that I found this to be true in my life in the years since then. Young or old, if you are even somewhat technologically active in today's society you have what Mr. Rainie called truncated attention spans. A good example might be that while I was watching the video, I have to admit that I simultaneously had three other windows open on my computer searching for tickets to this weekend's men's Illini basketball game, checking back with this course's Moodle page to see what I still needed to do for this week's class, and I was typing notes on Microsoft Word from the presentation in between that all.
The times we live in currently are overwhelming when it comes to the technology and media onslaught and the prospect of facing strange new changes in this regard still leaves me with a little bit of dread. Yet, having said that I also look forward to it with anticipation-what an odd combination! As adults who work with teens we must at least try to stay abreast of these developments so we can best serve our constituents in their pursuit of personal, academic, and professional goals. I feel there will always be 'too much information' in our world from now on, but at least the young people we help will be better able to find their way through it all because they were prepared well.
Are Those Who Hate Glee Trying to Protect Kids from Themselves?
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This week's questions, which focus around characterizing young people's relationships with media, connect with one of the items we touched on in last week's class: the idea that much of media literacy consists of "protecting" young people from the media. While this can be important (it's awfully easy to stumble onto unintended topics on the internet, and kids should probably know how to avoid doing so), it often leads to some cringe-worthy responses.
The inspiration for this post is a piece I stumbled upon regarding a conservative backlash to "Glee," a Fox-owned series that premiered last fall (if you work with teens and haven't heard of it, you might want to open your ears!). That first article, at least, is a fringe group (and, in truth, it's not clear whether it's satirical), but a quick googling of "Christian Glee Response" brings up quite a few other reactionary articles. Even Time Magazine has a piece about whether Christian leadership and families are reacting to "Glee" with hostility. It's fairly clear that they are (browse through some of those google hits and you'll see an overwhelming majority in opposition), but why?
Much of the conservative backlash to the show comes from the fact that it "glorifies homosexuality" (some of those articles claim that even the heterosexual characters are, in essence, not gender-normative enough). This is not a new trend in conservative backlashes, of course, but the sense that some of these scandalized adults are focusing on the show's musical content is hard to shake off.
Ironically, there's a fair amount of opposition to "Glee" from the liberal camps (blogs in particular, as those links will show), as well. Specifically: characters are thinly-veiled stereotypes; those stereotypes are exploited without explanation; and the show frequently falls into painful, seemingly unintentional mistakes of ableism, sexism, racism, and so on. There have been a fair number of episodes that fall into some pretty unfortunate traps, including a pregnancy faked to keep a boyfriend, a dance number in which the character with a handicap spends the entire sequence on a bed, and the fact that the only character of color is a young Black woman who is little more than a sassy afterthought. Part of this is due almost certainly to the fact that much of the show's energies go toward producing the musical numbers and bringing in guest stars, including Kristin Chenowith (most recently of Wicked fame), rather than adding depth to the characters and plot.
And yet, these are the grown-ups talking, and some of those even love "Glee" despite their protests. Among the high school crowd, especially those who went through middle school as High School Musical and its respective sequels and live shows came around, "Glee" is a phenomenon. In it, kids see a dramatic representation of the realities of their lives, from clique wars to teen pregnancies (and faked ones). The much-lampooned gay character, for example, is mostly well-adjusted with a supportive group of friends, but still encounters homophobia from his peers. Teens live in a world of stereotypes, and as we read in the Buckingham piece for this week, much of that is involved with creating their identities. In attempting to define themselves, they must also define others, but with everyone just beginning to create their roles in life, the definitions are limited and elementary. The characters in Glee are not especially deep, but teens don't tend toward viewing peers outside of their own friend-group as having characters beneath their veneer.
In the first case, we have parents (and other adults) attempting to protect kids from viewing a lifestyle of which they do not approve. For many kids, doing so is impossible. In the second, we have proponents of social equality trying to discourage stereotype. Again, it is nearly impossible to shield children from the influences of the larger culture. At the same time, most adults do hope to instill certain characteristics in the youth who look to them for guidance. A much more effective way of approaching the issues, and giving teens the tools to find their way through it, is to discuss these issues. There's an interesting article by Rachel Simmons that I found when googling links for this post that covers talking to your kids about Glee. It includes asking questions about the stereotypes in the show. If you'd like to address the issues in the show with the teens in your world, I recommend taking a glance at it.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Universal Design for Learning
This week’s essential question centers on young people’s relationships with both media/information and communication technologies, and on the role of media in our students’ lives. A pundit wrote that our students today live in a rich, colorful world of multimedia – and then they go to school. There is a lot of truth in that, but I do think we are making progress as educators to become more open to the possibilities and the uses of technology in our classrooms and libraries. That will require us to transcend our generational digital differences in order to embrace ideas and tools out of our comfort zone. Making that leap will take some guidance and a lot of motivation on the part of educators and librarians. I have been exploring some excellent resources to help with the guidance part of it – and I am highly motivated to learn more!
Universal Design for Learning is the practice of providing multiple methods of "representation, engagement and expression" for all students to maximize their learning. Once again Joyce Valenza, along with Karen Janowski, hit a homerun with their wikispace - udtechtoolkit - a free technology toolkit for Universal Design for Learning in all classrooms. This wiki is a goldmine of information and links to even more information! For example, I found the link to the digital text of the book, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning by David H. Rose & Anne Meyer (ASCD, 2002). Chapter 1 has a section covering brain research and new technologies. The point is made that recent brain studies show that the brain does not have just one overall learning capacity, but instead has multiple areas for learning. You can easily see the importance of that to educators who understand the power of technology in the classroom – new methods of teaching and for students to show what they’ve learned gives greater flexibility – more options for engaging the students in their work. What might not be so obvious is the implication for school librarians. While libraries and print text are historically linked (!) our libraries today are so much more than simply print text. New technology has offered new ways to connect our students with the stories, the authors, the ideas. Readers who fail the quiz on an assigned reading because they struggle with print may understand the story perfectly when they listen to the audio book. An author’s website may draw them in to the story line of a series. A web tour of locations in the story may bring the story alive by giving them needed background information to understand the context. I know many teachers who believe that the only way a student should study literature is through the traditional print based materials in the textbook or in the book they hand out in class. I disagree totally with that approach. I believe we would be withholding knowledge and depriving the students of the excitement of connecting with the story if we do not use all the tools and media available.
We have been talking about learning styles at our school, and about helping our students identify their own learning style, as well as helping teachers identify their own teaching style – they might not match up! The V.A.R.K. website has a very useful assessment tool – a questionnaire - for determining your predominant learning style. There are other assessment tools online, but V.A.R.K. goes a step beyond by providing help sheets. Each is tailored to the kind of learning style – for example Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic (hence the name VARK). Each provides insight into 3 aspects of the learning style: best methods for taking in information, best methods for processing or learning that information, and best methods for sharing what you’ve learned.
These resources – the Universal Design for Learning technology toolkit, the digital book (Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age), and the V.A.R.K website provide so much useful information and insight to get us on the right track for helping our students both in the classroom and in the library.
My CAS focus is on finding ways to help teachers and librarians overcome barriers to successful collaboration – I see a lot of material here to explore and use. I am especially interested in the applications in the school library for connecting readers through the use of technology and digital applications. I am excited to have multiple ways to help students find out about new books, or learn about the author, the setting, the characters or gain background knowledge to increase their understanding. In our library a GSLIS practicum student last semester presented the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award title book talks by using a Google Earth tour of the locations. We observed that more students stayed focused on the talks, asked questions and made notes of titles they wanted to read than in other class presentations. Presentations to five classrooms using this multimedia approach generated over 200 individual title requests from those students for the books on the reading list! The English teachers are giving extra credit for each title they read from the list, and the students are reading books they have chosen. The students are completing more book reports and my circulation has increased – those books are seldom on the shelves. There will be many more multimedia projects in the future for my library, for sure!
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