hegemony rules

In today’s NYT ArtsBeat blog, Patty LuPone writes a letter defending her choice to chastise audience members who were using cell phones and flash photography during her performances. She writes:

Do we allow our rights to be violated (photography, filming and audio taping of performances is illegal) or tolerate rudeness by members of the audience who feel they have the right to sit in a dark theater, texting or checking their e-mail while the light from their screens distract both performers and the audience alike? Or, should I stand up for my rights as a performer as well as the audiences I perform for?

Reader comments generally supported Ms. LuPone’s position.  I especially liked this one:

Welcome to the club. College profs have been putting up with this BS for the better part of a decade.

Students often wonder why I have such stringent policies regarding technology use within the classroom.  I usually mention how it is distracting to lead class discussion and lecture when there are individuals surreptitiously writing text messages or e-mail on their phone.  In labs, I have students turn off their computer monitors – if I didn’t, most of them would spend the class period doing a combination of surfing the Web, IMing friends, and obsessively checking Facebook.  It’s not that no learning is taking place when students are doing this kind of multi-tasking, it’s that they’re paying continous partial attention to multiple tasks (what Linda Stone refers to as “semi-synch”).  This makes deep, reflective learning difficult.

Taking a cue from David Silver’s Digital Media Production class, I’m going to be separating out technology-focused days from theory-focused days in my Introduction to Communication and Technology class in the fall.  Fortunately, I’ll be teaching in a lab that has a large table with computers ringing the outside of the room – I think this structure will facilitate class discussion more readily and allow for a natural division between times we’re talking about technology and when we’re actually doing hands-on work.  Hopefully, this will also encourage students to become a bit more conscious about their use of technology in the classroom.

I’m teaching a special topics this semester at Loyola about guerilla/alternative media.  Here’s the course description from the syllabus:

Guerrilla Media covers the history and theory of alternative forms of journalism, film, art, and digital media production, and explores how the term guerrilla has been appropriated for various methods of distribution, promotion and audience participation. Some topics we will consider include:  the rise of DIY (do-it-yourself) culture, guerrilla/indie news media, citizen journalism, zines, music and film mashups/remixes, viral ad campaigns, and Web memes.  We will see how the “independent” classification shifts according to appropriations of avant-garde techniques and how similar guerrilla media tactics are employed by union activists, artists, bloggers, citizen journalists, and advertisers.  Students will have the opportunity to create their own media artifacts that reflect DIY/guerrilla media sensibilities.

The course is roughly divided into three parts.  During the first part of the course, we will focus on some of the foundational issues that shape the production and consumption of alternative/guerrilla media.  The second portion of the course will be dedicated to further understanding some of the expressions/forms of alternative/guerrilla media (zines, machinima, mashups/remixes, citizen journalism, etc.).  The third part of the course will be dedicated to understanding some of the political, social, and legal implications of alternative media artifacts.

Students are blogging regularly and will be creating some sort of guerrilla/alternative media (or campaign) for their final project.  In the spirit of the class, last week I offered students extra credit if they:  (1) found a DIY craft/technology project they liked (like those posted on Craftster or Instructables or Make), (2) made the project, (3) wrote back to the communities from which they found the project with additional suggestions/ideas/improvements, and (4) blogged about their creations (with pictures!).  They have until the end of the semester to post their projects, and I’m very excited to see what they make.

Michael Wesch, a professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State, authored a compelling piece about education and what has happened recently in the classroom.  On the first day of his large lecture class, he realized the entire notion of engagement has changed.  As students played their iPods, surfed Facebook, and IM’d, Wesch aptly notes,”the students were undoubtedly engaged, just not with me.”  He continues:

My teaching assistants consoled me by noting that students have learned that they can “get by” without paying attention in their classes. Perhaps feeling a bit encouraged by my look of incredulity, my TA’s continued with a long list of other activities students have learned that they can “get by” without doing. Studying, taking notes, reading the textbook, and coming to class topped the list. It wasn’t the list that impressed me. It was the unquestioned assumption that “getting by” is the name of the game. Our students are so alienated by education that they are trying to sneak right past it.

The solution, he argues, is to stop seeing technology as a distracting force that impinges upon the walls of the classroom, but to expand the walls of the classroom to include these technologies.

We don’t have to tear the walls down. We just have to stop pretending that the walls separate us from the world, and begin working with students in the pursuit of answers to real and relevant questions.

When we do that we can stop denying the fact that we are enveloped in a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where the nature and dynamics of knowledge have shifted. We can acknowledge that most of our students have powerful devices on them that give them instant and constant access to this cloud (including almost any answer to almost any multiple choice question you can imagine). We can welcome laptops, cell phones, and iPods into our classrooms, not as distractions, but as powerful learning technologies. We can use them in ways that empower and engage students in real world problems and activities, leveraging the enormous potentials of the digital media environment that now surrounds us. In the process, we allow students to develop much-needed skills in navigating and harnessing this new media environment, including the wisdom to know when to turn it off. When students are engaged in projects that are meaningful and important to them, and that make them feel meaningful and important, they will enthusiastically turn off their cellphones and laptops to grapple with the most difficult texts and take on the most rigorous tasks.

The complete article is posted on Britannica.com.

I agree with Wesch’s perspective re: expanding the walls of the classroom to encourage engagement with the world (including all of the “distracting” new media surrounding us).  I especially like that he suggests that as teachers we must help students develop critical thinking skills in/around new media, and when they might learn the most by turning off their laptops and iPods. In my Communication and Technology course, I’ve asked students to take a 48 hour fast from non-essential new media consumption and reflect on the impact these technologies have on their sense of identity, community, and/or embodiment.  Most, I think, have hated the experience (and, that’s kind of the point, really), but I’m very curious to read their reflections.

What’s been interesting this semester is how many times I’ve assumed (wrongly, of course) that my students understood what appropriate use of new technology in the classroom entailed.  After watching several students repeatedly texting in class, asking them to stop, and then watching as they continue to text using their books to “hide” their cell phones as they continue to text (as if I won’t notice), I’ve become convinced that it’s incumbent upon educators to start talking (again) about the notion of a classroom community – and how iPods, laptops, cell phones, etc. can both add to and distract from the learning environment.

One of the classes I’m teaching this semester is CMUN 240 – Introduction to Communication and Technology (pdf).  The syllabus has us reading a lot of Lister’s New Media:  A Critical Introduction, which is a pretty dense text but provides a good overview of many new/digital media concepts.  We’re also tackling Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture, which is much more approachable.

Students will be writing brief reflections about the readings on their personal blogs, all of which will be linked from the course blog.  It’s still spartan at this point, but I’m hoping it will turn into a more robust set of resources related to new media as the semester progresses.