Category: Syndicated

Narrative in Relation to Instagram

Storytelling is something that humanity has done for generations. For as long as we can remember, people have relayed history and culture through storytelling. In looking at a social media network such as Instagram, the viewer sees an interesting approach to storytelling. Instagram is storytelling through pictures: as the participants post these pictures, they are making a statement about their lives, perspectives, beliefs, and opinions. Each picture is capturing a moment in time for each participant; they are sharing what they are experiencing with family, friends, and complete strangers. Another intriguing aspect to this form of storytelling is that it takes place on multiple levels of time and space. In the article “Narration in Film” by Markus Kuhn and Johann N. Schmidt, they state that “narration in cinema has to deal both with the representational realism of its images and its technical devices in order to integrate or dissociate time and space, image and sound, depending on the artistic and emotional effect that is to be achieved.” While this article discusses the idea of storytelling in relation to cinema, there are some key elements that can be correlated to photographs and the storytelling that goes on in Instagram. Therefore, what can be drawn from this quote is that while a participant may place a photo on Instagram there are many levels of time and space being interacted upon. The event of the photograph may have taken place a week ago and is just now being shared, but now the viewers of this photograph have created a new element of time and space around this photograph. By the participant allowing viewers to share in this event outside of its actual occurrence, they have now created a new place in time and space for this story to be told. And, this is perhaps one of the interesting aspects of how social media and narrative work together: social media allow people or participants to constantly play with their narratives by altering concepts like time and space.

Co-learning and Inclusion

You have value. You have worth. You have a voice; an expressive power that stems from your unique experiences. Share your voice.

The internet gives a voice to those who were once silent. It drives new and creative ways to communicate.

when you talk in a classroom that sponsors co-learning

I recently read “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire. In his book, Freire shows how communication and dialogue is essential to education, “Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education” (Freire 74). He believes that, “the more active an attitude men and women take in regard to the exploration of their thematics, the more they deepen their critical awareness of reality and… take possession of that reality” (87). The more that I read his book, the more connections I began to draw to the internet and the responsibility that we have as educators to promote inclusive dialogue.

Freire discusses ways to combat oppressive action with cooperation, unity for liberation, organization, and cultural synthesis (149-161). We, as educators, must take a similar approach to integrating technology into the classroom. We need to address new ideas with the understanding that cooperation and dialogue will lead to a more productive method of teaching. We must stand unified in our goal of presenting knowledge in a way that is understood, and truly beneficial to the student. As more ideas are considered and discussed, we must remain organized in order to implement these ideas effectively. Most importantly students’ cultural and experiential contributions have value to co-learning within the classroom. We need to embrace an attitude of acceptance and inclusion in the rapidly developing realm of education.

Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1993. Print.


Fixing the high school – Student Survey, Part 1

laughingghost:

Grant,
As someone who has only recently left the the public education system your blog gave words to something I have had difficulty describing. Its been my goal for the last 3 years now to become a teacher solely to deal with this type of issue. When I started trying to become a teacher for some reason I had this mental impression that teachers just weren’t aware of how bad things are. The truth is they know it’s just that nobody has figured out how to fix it. The truth is that the people who could have given up trying to do more do than influence their little conner so they don’t have to deal idiot politicians and officials who create standards without knowing the first thing about the profession and then blaming teachers when their grand plan doesn’t work.

Originally posted on Granted, and...:

[lightly edited since the original posting to achieve greater clarity and to add links by request]

I recently had a pleasant back and forth with Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute on what ails the high school. He was reviewing the recent disconcerting NAEP results that once again show high school achievement is resistant to reform. On this he and I agree. But then he proposed some diagnoses, the latter of which I think is totally off base (an E D Hirsch diagnosis). I strongly agree with his conclusion: it’s high time we better understood the problem of the high school. (Hard to believe that after 30 years of reform that started with me working with Ted Sizer in the Coalition of Essential Schools, we still lack clear answers.) After going back and forth collegially, we agreed to do some walk-throughs together next school year.

Meanwhile, I can offer a fairly sobering…

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Webinar- Web Literacy with Connected Courses

The biggest ideas that I gleaned out of this conversation on web literacies is the ideas of building blocks and communities. Not only does the web provide the opportunity to build communities but also to restructure those communities on multiple levels. The individual participant in the community can rebuild or develop multiple identities with in this community based off of their own set of building blocks, nonetheless, the creator of this community can choose to restructure the who community based off of the larger set of building blocks. While these two entities are building and restructuring different aspects they are still working with in one set of building blocks or ideas. And, this restructuring can continue to occur infinitely as long the entities can continue to reinvent. The next facet that was interesting to me was the idea of distinguishing between the internet and the web (which to be honest isn’t something I have thought much about) however, in hearing the discussion about the differences it sparked interest based upon my own ideas and research. To start with identifying the web as a place to connect with people, where as the internet is the foundation for this, it is the designated area in which you can use your building blocks and the web is what you are building. Pat Berry described websites as “cities and communities” which encourage, necessitate, and relay upon social interaction to remain and evolve. Now while my research and ideas are slightly discombobulated and rough, what I find interesting is that the web still seems to relay heavily upon a social structure to continue to evolve and grow. It relies upon the relational aspect of human interaction to develop these websites, whether they are social media or consumer driven. Part of what interests me is why literature, such as Jane Austen, is still relevant today and how her ideas and/or books, have been able to create a web presence. Why is it that Jane Austen’s characters can still continue to appear in many different digital forms when on a basic level the reader, viewer, or gamer may be able to relate to her characters they can in now way relate to setting, culture, and/or time period of her novels. In Italo Calvino book Why Read the Classics? he approaches many of these questions in his first chapter and I believe that he would say that her books tell us something about our culture and ourselves. That Austen’s book provide a way to look the world regardless of time period based upon the interworking of a given society which, by personal experience, is largely based upon human interaction and relationships. Just as many facets of the web are.

Unit 3 Connected Courses — Web Literacy

Disclaimer: This is more of a rant than a coherent post There were a couple of ideas and quotes in these webinars that resonated quite powerfully for me both personally and academically. One of the things that I always enjoy thinking about is stakes and how the landscape of education and especially the academy is not one that is particularly friendly to the idea of failure. I’ve always found this ironic since I started studying pedagogy because one would think that, we as educators, would be more understanding of the process that learning takes — in the beginning you’re going to fail. Maybe a lot. This is why I really loved the point raised about “trying out loud.” It reminds me of tacit knowledge, which is I view as embryonic nascent ideas still under construction even at the time of articulation but more importantly this idea of trying out loud really implies a willingness and an acceptance that ones current efforts will likely fall short. It often feels like an invisible or unspoken dogma that we as students are not supposed to be transparent in our struggles. The default attitude is “supposed to be” I am good or I am gettin’ it. Likewise it feels like, as teachers, we are trained to never struggle, fail, or appear weak in front of our students. This attitude feels so natural — you’re the teacher, and you should be able to do everything perfectly right away for your students but this assumption completely excises any potential human moments that Howard Rheingold mentioned. I was very moved when he explained that he enjoyed it when he failed at something in front of his students because it becomes an opportunity to say that it’s okay to try and fail. I completely agree because nobody is ever really done learning how to do everything. There’s always more or different things to try. And speaking personally this correlates very strongly to my experiences as my previous post demonstrates. In fact a colleague and I came up with an acronym that I really enjoy — F.A.I.L = First Attempt in Learning. But I also enjoy thinking about this in terms of my current research into games. Professor Jaxon and a few other expounded on acquiring web literacies and how we can no longer excuse our lack of literacy because “I am not technical” and I feel that this ties very neatly into game theory. Those outside the field of digital media or game studies tend to hold very parochial ideologies about games that say things like “I am not a gamer”, “Games are just a waste of time”, or my personal favorite “Games aren’t rigorous enough to produce learning.” And these are used as excuses to not experiment with the field or to push (sometimes quite vociferously) against its implementation, but as Professor Jaxon, a lot of learning is identity work. In other words, nobody is born as a gamer, and depending on the intent of the player anything can prove didactic or productive so don’t be afraid! “If you’re not falling off it, you’re not exploring the edge.” In many ways I feel like gaming and the idea of gamifying is new and on the edge in terms of the archaic institution. An emergent idea that is being resisted in terms of what is rigorous or “educational.” And maybe gaming or the element of play could become the new-best means to approaching education but what is more likely is that it will supplement current pedagogy. So the question becomes one that was asked in the webinar by Chris Mattia: Do you want to shape the new or do you want to fight it.

Connected Enculturation

Hello fair and faithful readers, today I’d like to talk about culture, freedom, and human decency. Oh, and of course the internet. I’m going to start by pointing you here, where Laura Hilliger talks a bit about web literacy. The key phrase that sent me off on the tangent I’m about to unfold for you was: “Web literacy is not about technical skill . . . it’s about citizenship, it’s about participating, it’s about embracing and spreading the ethos of open culture.” Now in my thesis work at the moment I am buried in thoughts about identity and community, so I was primed to think about the necessity of a connected culture. The way I see it… Culture is the answer to some of the questions brought up over the last few weeks about the balance between complete freedom and personal accountability. The web is a funny thing because its greatest strength, freedom, anonymity, inter-connectivity, is also the source of its most serious problems. I look at cases like Megan Meier (and to be honest, when I googled “online bullying suicide” the list of results was a bit horrifying in its scope) and I see one of the unfortunate results of the very things about the internet that we celebrate. The freedom to interact with others that the internet affords does not carry within it a regulatory component, which means that the nature of those interactions will run from the very positive to the extremely negative. Additionally, the ability to communicate anonymously, or even just safely outside of punching range behind a screen, carries with it a greater temptation (or if you’re an optimist who believes in the essential goodness of people, an easing of the inherent reservations towards causing harm due to that same distance) to be a jerk to people. In short, if you know you can get away with it, why not mess with people? The kneejerk reaction to that sort of scenario – particularly among Snailmailers* - is to eliminate the cause of the problem. Cracking down on the complete freedom, anonymity and inter-connection of the internet would make it more difficult and less attractive to be a troll, after all. Unfortunately it would also hamstring the web itself, creating some perverse monstrosity in its stead. So we return to the double-bind, the things that make it good also make it evil, this is starting to sound like a parable for the human race… But lo! Do not despair! There is a solution, of sorts, and like any good compromise it is ultimately dissatisfying on some levels. The solution is the enculturation of the online population. It is through teaching, and embodying, certain ways-of-being online that we can defang the trolls of the world. First, we must create a cultural force that directs people towards behaving decently to each other online even when they don’t have to. Exterior force, such as the legal system or swift kicks to the shin provide, is a popular way to encourage people to act decently, but this would corrupt the very nature of the open web. Instead we must create social mores, expectations of behavior, and structures of self-perception that internally motivate people to act decently. Rather than not trolling somebody because she could get arrested for it, the Online Citizen needs to be at a point where she doesn’t troll them because she sees herself as a person who does not troll. We must tie the cultural identity of the online citizenry to a set of moral values that are appropriate to, and recognize the temptations of, the new freedoms and affordances of a connected community. That said, I am truly a cynic at heart, and I am under no illusion that this inner morality will be a complete solution. However noble the cultural framework of a society, some psychos will always slip through the net. This necessitates the second major aspect of this connected enculturation, self protection. Part of learning to be an online citizen must be the process of developing an understanding of how to control access to your private information, relationships, and life. We are still in the first few generations of truly connected humans, and these brave pioneers have had to learn the hard way what it means to be safe and secure in this environment. Hopefully the painful lessons learned in the last few decades will be passed down to future generations, to whom securing data will be simply be a part of life. The practice of protecting one’s information, gating it at different levels depending on the sensitivity of its nature, needs to be bound up in the cultural identity of the online citizen. The same sort of values, mores and expectations that dictate how you act toward others, must also dictate how you manage your own information. It boils down to a balance between self-protection and respectful behavior towards others. The common element in both of these ideas is that you cannot rely on others to accomplish them. No one can force you to protect yourself, nor can they force you to be the sort of person against whom others do not need protection. Both of these things need to come from within, and we can encourage, or discourage, the growth of these inner virtues through the nature of the culture that we as online citizens embody on a daily basis. It is not something that can be easily measured, we cannot set precise quarterly targets for cultural construction, but what we can do is constantly embody the ideals that we need to pass on to the next generation. To paraphrase the Mahatma, we need to be the culture that we want to see in future generations. *What should we call the landlubbers of the internet age? Or are we too mature to coin a pejorative term? Probably the latter if I’m going to follow my own advice…

A Digital Cultural Shift

During this past week’s connected courses unit, Howard Rheingold and Kim Jaxon spoke about curation and what that means in relation to Digital Literacy. Kim specifically said something that resonated with me; she spoke about a “kinder curation” in which we must shift the current digital norms in order to reflect ourselves as kinder human beings. This has very much so been on my mind lately as I move forward with researching the idea of open access through gaming platforms. As I stated in my first post, I am a gamer. I chose to research this topic because I want to show those who view gaming as a hinderance to our youth that gaming methodologies can actually be utilized to help students interact, collaborate, learn, grow, and have ownership over their education. Over the weeks I’ve been watching TED talks by Don Tapscott, Lawrence Lessig, Jane McGonigal, I’ve read a multitude of articles on Open Access, how present day technology is being utilized in the classroom (Hybrid Pedagogy), testimonials from students on how they want more digital platforms available in their learning environment, articles on how MMO’s are being used in education, and currently I am reading through What Video Games Have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee. And I’ve been gaming, of course. Clearly, I’m invested in this topic. However, a few weeks ago I had a very eye opening experience that completely altered my optimistic view towards my topic. As part of my research, I asked a guild (which consisted of many individuals who I consider friends or at least acquaintances) if I could record their “raid night” in order to gather real-time evidence to support my claims. They all happily agreed. I explained to them over TeamSpeak (a program that allows multiple players to converse with one another during game play) that this recording would be used for a major research project and would eventually be presented to a class of graduate students. However, even saying this I asked them to be as natural as possible. As the game commenced, I soon realized that this was a mistake. The environment, which started off light and joking, soon became hostile, aggressive, and full of bullying and put down comments. I was appalled. This wasn’t a group of strangers, these were people who had known each other for years, and they were bashing each other in the utmost of critical ways. This wasn’t building community, or collaboration, or learning; it was a cesspool of blatant bullying and a perfect example of a dysfunctional community. After this experiment failed, I regrouped. I told the guild that I couldn’t use any of video that we had collected, and that maybe we should switch gaming platforms so that we could have a friendlier game where I could show positive elements of gaming and how it could relate to education. Yet again, I was wrong. As soon as we started playing, the toxic environment that had been so apparent during the raid spilled over onto the new game. As a newer player, I was targeted and used as a strategic way to gain an edge for the opposing team. I won’t go into extreme details, but what I will say is that by the end of the game, I was prepared to change my research topic entirely. I kept thinking to myself “how am I supposed to support this when I am sitting here feeling like a complete failure who can’t even play a friendly game with her own friends? This doesn’t build community! Or an environment for learning! This is hurtful! Why would I ever want to subject students to this?” Now, after a few days of reflection, I decided that giving up wasn’t the answer. I came to find out that an intense competition had been instigated a few weeks prior with some of the guild members, which apparently spilt prior tensions into the game we had played. I also spoke with several individuals from the guild separately, and discovered that because the raid that they engaged in wasn’t considered “new content”, that many other members of the guild didn’t take the fight as seriously, causing them to just mess with each other. Clearly this just wasn’t the night to spectate, and this was one bad experience versus a multitude of positive experiences. However, this experience has forced me to tread at a much slower pace into this realm of open access and gaming. I ask myself “how can we create a gaming experience that is a positive learning environment for all students? Why are major MMO gaming platforms becoming a place for toxic development and communities? How do we shift as players within these gaming communities to create a kinder culture where we help one another while still engaging in a healthy level of competition?”

Mind Your Internet Manners

We take off hats in church, watch our language when Grandma visits, and open the doors for strangers.These are things we are taught as young children because we live in a society where kindness and respect are still (if at least barely) a way of life and living. We have learned social norms for things that we understand to be respectful (as well as disrespectful). So now, as we enter into a new digital era, why are we not developing ways in which we are respectful on that realm? It seems a norm to say horrible, cruel things online because we can hide behind our computers or fake profiles. Because the internet started wildly, exploding in girth far beyond our initial scope, we are now stuck with a monster of social disaster. Where are the handshakes and the tipping of hats? Why does it seem like we are constantly seeing "trolls" running the comment pages with horrible statements and cyber bullying a common place thing. Have we taken our school yard tendencies and brought them now to a place where the consequences are few, even though our words are written, encoded and documented electronically? Now instead of words that are called out from across the school yard, they are plastered over forums and social media sites for not just classmates to see, but families and strangers and the effects are far worse and maybe even far more devastating. It seems, then, that now is the time to utilize our time as teachers who work extensively online and incorporate into our classrooms an understanding of what the web can do for us, as well as against us. Internet manners, so to speak. Just like bullies in the school yard, there will always be those who will use anything at their exposure to hurt others, but we can help teach other the importance of "being nice" and why it matters in all aspects of our lives. How often do you feel teachers take the time to explain the importance and consequences of a student's online actions? Most time searching and working in the classroom is based wholly on working on the items at hand. It would seem "common knowledge" not to say mean things or berate others online, but we know that in the end, when not monitored or without proper knowledge, a child/person will easily go about their usual abusive ways. At what point do we start off by giving "online etiquette" and is there such a thing? Recently a slew of extremely talented, very public and involved women in the digital scene have been victims of harassment, ridicule and even threatened! I usually would not use an exclamation point when just stating a fact, but how are we in such an age of wild technological advances, yet we still live in a barbaric age where intelligent, open women, willing to be vulnerable for the sake of education and openness become victims of such vile acts? How can we possibly call ourselves a society when we still act like animals? Have we just jumped back to the middle ages in regards to women's rights and respect? And at what point did those who were bullying and harassing ever think that what they were doing was just as horrible as saying to their face. Have we lost our sense of reality hiding behind keyboards, feeling this false sense of superiority, willing to send off any comment or wicked word because we can? I believe in free speech in all sense of the term, but free speech was not meant for you to break down the beautiful living souls who devote their entire lives for their freedoms, your education and the openness of the web. In the end, will these horrific statements and harassment be what brings down the openness of the free web we so easily take advantage of? What happens when the web is no longer open and free? What would be the ultimate cause of the destruction of what we have grown to love and enjoy and use to every extent possible? The laws that we will have to make to prevent those from being devastatingly cruel? Do we have to go that far that we even have to make those laws? How can we educate the next generations about the need for "niceness" on the open web? How do we instill this sense of respect and understanding that comes with open forums and social media? How do we show them this when as of late, the horrific crimes are being committed just as much by adults (if not more so) as the kids who don't think twice when spewing out hateful words. Is it because the internet grew so fast, so wildly, and so free that "because we can we will" online and yet when it comes to etiquette, we don't even see that such a thing would be necessary? Like the open web is a dark alleyway where dark dealings go down and because there are no rules in that corner of the city, we can do as we please? Why do we accept that as a society and let it keep happening? Yet, what can we do to keep people from being horrible to other people? We have been this way from the day Adam and Eve crawled out of the ooze of the swamps. It will always be human nature to be cruel to feel superior. So maybe, from much younger ages, we can instill in children the same respectable mannerisms we were taught when Grandma would visit, or when we would walk into church. At some point we need to begin a habit of teaching the respect that everyone, even the faceless names in forums and blogs, deserve because even though they are just electronic representations, behind those works and writings are still human beings who want to cherish the openness and crazy, beautiful, wild world of amazing possibilities that the web holds. Harassment and threats should not ever, ever be an acceptable part of the internet.