hegemony rules

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.

Rushkoff sums up much of what I’ve been feeling lately – that the Republicans seem to think that war really does give us meaning.

I usually don’t feel uneasy when I put those filters on, but last night – during the Guiliani speech – I realized I was no longer filtering a speechwriter’s intentional manipulation; I was trying to look beyond real hate. These folks were gritting their teeth, shaking their fists, and smiling the way gladiators do when going into combat against barbarians. And this is the incumbent party. The ones currently in power.

What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below. From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.

Last night, the Republican Convention made it clear they prefer war. They see the world as a dangerous and terrible place. Like the fascist leaders satirized in Starship Troopers, they say they believe it is better to be on the offensive, taking the war to the people who might wish us harm than playing defense. It is better to be an international aggressor – a bulldog with lipstick – than led by the misguided notion that attacking people itself makes the world a more dangerous place.

Read his full post.  (via BoingBoing)

From an article about Sarah Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Read more.

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.

created at wordle.net

So, I’m sitting in my empty apartment watching bad TV after a long day of moving most of my worldly belongings into a pod for my move to Chicago. The “bad TV” in this case is the movie Fatal Attraction, which was being sponsored by…

wait for it…

eHarmony.com.

I’m at a loss. A loss!

• The Movie Review: ‘The Happening’
  M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie, The Happening, is not merely bad. It is an astonishment, so idiotic in conception and inept in execution that, after seeing it, one almost wonders whether it was real or imagined.
  (tags: pop_culture film review the_new_republic criticism)

Pictures from my Japan trip are posted on my flickr collections page. It was a good trip, but I’m still suffering from the 16 hour time difference and feeling a bit…off. My favorite description of jet lag comes from William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition:

“She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”

Another in an ongoing song chart meme series.