Final Blog from Burbank

*Includes a narrative context about where this project came from, what you did, and why it is important to you.

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Where it came from

The senior English curriculum at my school is nebulously established and inconsistent across classrooms.  Perhaps much of my impression has to do with diminished department contact due to my room being in a separate wing, but the disconnect it creates is a feeling I've learned to trust.  However true this may be, (or seem) as an education model, it neither befits learning in 2012, nor my personal preference.  It's even anathema to the curriculum itself, as the year is anchored by a theme of social justice - a philosophy that combats the modernist notion that the community exists only to support the desires of the individual.  Said another way, the teachers who are teaching about meaningful, non-hegemonic human relationships are doing so in ultramodern isolation.  If it wasn't for the students spreading the word about what's happening, it'd all be academic radio silence.     

What I did

Objectively speaking, this is an unacceptable way to teach, and our department has embraced it mightily.  My response was to create a website for the ease of planning it will afford me, the ease of access it will afford students and families, and because it is a public space that can lead to better dialogue among teachers about our methods.  I consider myself fortunate ("How great is that?" Dr. Patterson had pointed out) to have the autonomy to do what I do, and I know the other senior teachers feel similarly.  But classroom autonomy can also give rise to militant territorial-ness – a quality that looks good on no one and doesn’t expand community beyond the classroom. 

Why it is important

As a person who is drawn naturally to teams and to the belief that I exist at my best when I exist with others, I am seeking always to be part of one.  My primary goal with each class each year is to create a team and captain them through, and I have been most successful when I’ve done it.  Creating the website was important to me because I want my classes to have a place that they can access anywhere, at any time, and on any device that will help create and amplify that team feeling.  I also want to create a space that comes closer to moving at the speed of a Digital Native.  Dr. Marc Prensky’s radical idea that the brains and thought modes of Natives are fundamentally different from my own is both fascinating and a major challenge to me.  Like many educators, I struggle with knowing whether the technology I use is only enabling me to teach what I have always taught with more digital flash, or allowing me to communicate wholly new ideas.  I am grateful for the struggle, however, as I know it will keep the question uppermost in my planning. 

Seeing the Wesch-moderated "A Vision of Students Today" in conjunction with Sir Ken Robinson’s talk helped to concretize their collective thesis: that the methods employed by U.S. teachers are stultifyingly arcane and must be adapted for the contemporary digital environment.  Wesch spotlights part of that piece in his 2010 TEDx talk wherein he uses the arrival of new media (census books and maps) in a New Guinea village to show how media literally changed the landscape, the history of the people, and how they relate to each other.  He then makes the point, of course, that the arrival of new media to the digital world has precisely the same effect on Internet denizens.  The parallels are clear and teachers remain mired in the past at their own peril.  The village children are born into and grow up in numbered, ordered houses that bear resemblance in shape only to those of their elders.  Teaching the obsolescing literacies of the past to our students is tantamount to the village elders neglecting to teach their children how to get from house to house by looking at the addresses.  All of this is to say that I want the site to be a place that teaches and uses contemporary literacies. 

Of course, it is also important to me that this site will lead to an easier and more open dialogue between the teachers.  It’s a way to engage in conversation about our department goals without using time at the department meetings.  It’s my hope that mine can be a small step towards consolidating resources, workshopping ideas, and refining the course, all while maintaining each teacher’s instructional affordances. 

*Explains how the use of digital technology enhances or changes this content/context.

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Because it tends to be unwieldy and abstract, teaching about the global availability of food and water can be difficult.  How I hope digital technology can help reshape the context for the students is by immediately connecting them, the outcome of our class discussions, and their experiences with others across the world.  I know the food and water unit (meal journal, 10,000 grains, rice visualization, taste test, examination of municipal vs. multinational quality documentation, Tapped, analysis of their own water habits, etc.) can benefit greatly from being taught and understood in a hyper-real digital context, and not just by embedding the information in the site.  I am eager to test the capability of the Internet to convey information that I have not yet been able to and have not yet even considered.  I think that an infographic of their food consumption versus that of someone living in poverty, with information supplied and manipulated by the students, will make a stronger point than I could.  Understanding character motivation, ambition, and the implications of knowing something one can’t un-know in Macbeth will be made more salient through attending Skype rehearsals for a professional production.  If I’m honest with myself, I know that I don’t yet know all the ways in which I’ll be able to make more content more available through use of digital technology.  I am looking forward to exploring, though.                

During the week, I was primarily inspired by the spirit and work of Drs. Wesch, Fortuna, and Patterson, as well as that of my classmates.  By the course’s end, I knew that I had learned at least one new instructional technology from each of the other 7 that I am excited to use in class.  Among others, Jing, Voicethread, Infographics, safercar.org, QR generator, Google’s url shortener, and especially Weebly will figure prominently into my pedagogy in the coming year. 

As I said, Dr. Prensky’s concept of Digital Natives is both a curio and a challenge to me.  His claim implies that, as a Digital Immigrant, I am and will forever be playing catch-up with new technology and those whose proficiency with it shapes the world in which I teach.  I do have an advantage as an immigrant, however, and it’s the same as that which many immigrants of all kinds have – a critical eye for that which the Natives accept as normal, natural, and good.  Clicking through the Media Education Foundation’s website quickly and powerfully reminded me that my students don’t know how to scrutinize the media that is both (mis)representing and commodifying them because they don’t know that it’s happening – they’re too close to it.  As an outsider, as it were, I can recognize it for what it is and help them to become literate in their own constructed image.  The films on the website, particularly the Killing us Softly series are resources I will use in class.  This week confirmed for me that the media, which I’m beginning to understand as that which reflects an image of people back to themselves, has perhaps the largest role in determining what counts as normal, natural, and good in a culture.  And, like we saw in the Rucker Park film, it matters very little whether the reflection is accurate, because it will inevitably become the truth.  If “ideal” and “ideology” are linked by the media, then it is critically important to educate students on how to view the reflection critically.  To do so is to supply them with the literacies necessary to understand their position and be able to speak cogently about it.  There are no answers - no way to extract Photoshop from the image industry - but there discussions to be had in light of that reality and others.  And it is, I suppose, the Natives who will have them, facilitated as they will undoubtedly be by new digital media that 

has not yet even been imagined.     


All of this will take dedication and genius, please let Ms. Gilbert explain how not to let the pressure get to us.  (My favorite part starts around 15:35...).   

  

Embedded voicethread

Voice thread

Here is a voicethread.

Weebly

Go to the site.

Turkle

How does Turkle's claim challenge Mike Wesch's call for digital community and connection, if at all?
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    Just as a starting place, as I began the piece, I immediately became defensive and biased against Turkle because of her phrasing, to wit: "We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates" my emphasis.  The first hour of the first class was dedicated to talking about the difference between Prensky's digital natives and digital immigrants.  By treating Facebook as a noun rather than a verb, Ms. Terkle positions herself as an inexorable immigrant, a stodgy Luddite.  She is now the Internet equivalent of the cantankerous neighbor, bemoaning the loss of the "good old days."  It makes me the closed-minded pot in this situation, but I know I will have a hard time sympathizing with the thesis of a closed-minded kettle.  I'll read the article now...
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Terkle's claim challenges Wesch's on the grounds that there is a difference between conversation (authentic) and connection (inauthentic), and that the inescapable proliferation of digital technology facilitates only the most shallow of human relations.

    Her most recent book may be subtitled Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, but she doesn't substantiate that claim (also made in paragraph 20) with anything other than specious anecdotes, if at all.  "We want to customize our lives," she says.  "We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party."  But when has it ever been different?  Hasn't technology just made it easier?  Hasn't the idea of the strong, untethered, decisive, uncompromising and pioneering iconoclast been part of the American mythology?  Witness President T. Roosevelt, Ani DiFranco, Pete Seeger, et al.  In Terkle's mind, (this current) technology is not just ornamental, it profoundly affects the development of human relations, which to her, is what makes life worth living.  
    The author forwards her thesis in paragraph 12: "No matter how valuable," she says, "(online interactions) do not substitute for conversation."  We are, according to Ms. Terkle, mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.  And in doing so, committing ourselves and (more importantly - it is implied - human posterity) to a future of bowling alone.  
    From what I have read, it appears that tonight's author and Dr. Wesch agree that the human animal is experiencing a somatic and psychological evolution at the hands of technology.  I imagine Ms. Terkle watching "The Machine is Us/ing Us" and agreeing wholeheartedly.  Terkle and Wesch differ in that she sees this as a problem to be rectified through a preservation of authentic interaction, read face-to-face conversation.  
    The debate is not without precedent or analogues.  Ms. Terkle would likely find kindred spirits in Alice Waters & Carlo Petrini and the Slow Food Movement.  Conversely, Mike Wesch probably gets excited by the work of Heston Blumenthal and those (however erroneously) associated with "molecular gastronomy."  Air conditioning vs. front porches, distance learning vs. "in-person" classes, Google Wallet vs. writing a check - the opinion of each thinker can be extrapolated to understand their likely position on each.  
    Ms. Terkle makes an interesting point about the more obvious examples of human attempts at conversation with technology.  The interaction of a pensioner with a toy is pitiful in her eyes, and if only those misguided Siri interlocutors would see it for what it is, they would see their place in the decline of whatever...  Radiolab covered this idea in an interesting episode called "Talking to Machines" wherein the hosts, with Ms. Terkle's help, relate the story of ELIZA, Joseph Weizenbaum's AI machine that he ultimately disowned as disingenuous.  Also mentioned in this episode is the more widely known Cleverbot, the inheritor of ELIZA's legacy.  
    In addition to refuting Wesch's claim that connection is relationship, Ms. Terkle also calls for a preservation and reappreciation of solitude, which for her is, "our ability to be separate and gather ourselves."  It would seem that this desire to be alone is opposed to her call for connectivity via conversation, but Terkle's self needs time alone in order to develop itself and prepare for human interaction in which the parties are encountering but not using each other, "...as spare parts to support our increasingly fragile selves."  "So our flight from conversation can mean diminished chances to learn skills of self-reflection," she says.  Terkle's vision of conversation necessitates the maturity of the self, both alone and together, and so she will be content with her Cape Cod dunes.

NPR

Jimmy Cliff profile on 89.7 WGBH.  Whoa...

Media Education Foundation

Reflect on the website.  What interested you most?  What surprised you?  How does this relate to the three anchors of our course?  
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    While browsing the videos on the site, I was drawn to the Byron Hurt document Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes which I notice is on tap for tomorrow's class.  As I watched, a line from the T.I./Rihanna song "Live Your Life" came to mind: "I got love for the game but hey, I'm not in love with all of it."  Though Mr. Hurt and some of his interview subjects admit to embodying destructive aspects of hip-hop, the film does not emanate from a locus of apology.  Instead, his mission is to grapple with, "...those limited and ultimately self-defeating ideas about manhood that hurt men as well as women."  Less about answers than about exploration, he closes by restating why he set out on the project in the first place, "I longed for a broader vision of manhood in the music i grew up with - the music that I love."  The three quotes below are from the film.  

"I jokingly say that I'm in recovery from hip hop.  It's like being in a domestic violence situation - your home is hip-hop and your man beats you." 3:50 - Sarah Jones, performance artist.  

"There's a whole lineage of black men wanting to deny their own frailty." 12:47 - Dr. Jelani Cobb, Ph. D., Spelman College.

"Men who have more power - men who have financial power and workplace authority, and forms of abstract power like that, don't have to be as physically powerful because they can exert their power in other ways." 16:31 - Dr. Jackson Katz, Ph.D., anti-sexism activist.

    One thing that surprised me was the website physical layout and component parts.  I don't have a real clear idea of what I thought I might see, just something (more) digitally sophisticated.  The site is traditionally organized and utilitarian, which probably hews closer to their mission statement than anything with bells and whistles.  I think I was looking for a Twitter feed, maybe?  I also think the graphic would look better if it were the full width of the screen.  I'm sure they are very busy and cash-strapped, and I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but to criticize the form and content of media on an underdeveloped Website comes off as irresponsible.  I doesn't even really look fully legitimate, not any more so than a well-done blog anyway.  On another, less whiny note, I was not surprised to learn that The Media Education Foundation is headquartered in Northampton, MA.    

    As to how the site fits into the anchors:
I think that Anchor #1 is sort of like reading travel brochures for your home town - you have an intimate experience of it, but perhaps don't understand how it fits into a larger scheme. The Media Ed. site is a good resource for digital natives to get knowledge and perspective on the environment in which they are reared, but perhaps haven't had the time or occasion to observe with objectivity.

This site, in light of Anchors 2 &3 suggests that time can authentically be spent on looking critically at popular culture and the effect of its various vehicles upon us.  A sort of digital epidemiology which has much to say about how our conception of, "...equity and inclusion..." have historically been heavily influenced by what is considered, "...'normal,' 'natural,' and 'good.'"   

Full version of Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes

Coca-Cola

    Picture, if you will, a fresh-faced kindergartner in light-up shoes and a stiff backpack excitedly hurrying around the playground of their new elementary school.  For educators like us, this is the quintessential portrait of a bright, incorruptible student taking their first potential-filled public steps in the schooling realm.  We are not the only ones looking on from a distance and feeling the future swell, however.  Seen another way, the child, in their advertised shoes, carrying an advertised backpack, wearing advertised clothes, was dropped off from an advertised automobile, after they bathed using advertised products, and eaten a breakfast of advertised foods.  The cast of Mad Men would likely see this as a triumph, and for better or worse, advertising and branding are inextricable from the free-market economy in which we live, bring up children, receive the benefits of a democratic society, and experience perhaps the greatest degree of personal freedom anywhere in the world.  It may be the cost, but the author of "Why I Said No to Coca-Cola" wants to know: what's the price?
    John Sheehan, said author and the former vice president of the school board of Douglas County, Colorado was, in the late 1990s, the lone dissenter in a vote to sanction "...one of the most lucrative beverage contracts in the nation..." (Sheehan 17).  For Mr. Sheehan, the price of allowing the clout and machinations of one of the most effectively marketed brands to buy its way inside public schools was too high.  How high?  He makes it clear that the board, in ultimately welcoming the deal, were then, and probably are now indebted much more than the $27.7 million that Coke paid for the 3-school, 10-year contract.  In his words:

     I started out relatively supportive of the use of advertising in schools, as long as it was done "judiciously."  But gradually, I changed my opinion.  Now I can no longer accept the notion of our schools becoming brokers for advertising space, or worse yet, middlemen in the merchandising of products directly to our students. (17)

    To summarize his concerns:
1. "There is no such thing as opening the floodgates just a little bit." (18)  
2. Allowing behemoth brands into schools could potentially lead to a time when "...our educational goals might be influenced or even set by private companies targeting our students with their narrow messages." (17)
3. Granting Coca-Cola almost 30 million dollars worth of access to a captive, historically receptive audience is a "breach of...trust." (18)
4. "It sends the message to our voters and legislators that we can let them off the hook - " (18).  Essentially, it tears a rent in the civic relationship between taxpayers and school populations.  It shifts the financial responsibility off of the community and onto the mercurial whims of an infinitely wealthy deus ex machina.
Just a little sly Tom Waits humor from 1976's Small Change.    

Disney

What is your relationship to Disney and animated children's culture?  What role did these texts play in your life as a child?  In that of the children/parent you care for?  How do your memories challenge or reflect Christensen's claims?
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    For the period of time my older cousin Heidi worked at CVS in the 90s, I would intermittently receive VHS Disney movies on gift-giving occasions.  This was a good arrangement; I liked Aladdin, The Lion King, Fantasia, and Lady and the Tramp as well as anybody.  I was happy to be part of the city choir that sang the theme to Beauty and the Beast at the spring showcase and have fond memories of learning to enunciate the hard T in Beauty.  My neighbor Normand was more familiar with what I now know are the older, non-animated films like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but I thought they were supremely corny and so was he for electing to stay in and watch them instead of coming out with me to play paper airplanes outside.  I can also remember being more than a little turned off by the idea of my classmates visiting the Disney theme park.
    During my prime viewing years, I was a passive receiver.  In fact, with the notable exception of the sad scene in the The Fox and the Hound, I have very little memory of Disney movie visuals.  I think I watched for the songs.  It was only after I had entered middle school and had pretty well stopped watching that I heard about any hidden messages in the movies.  At that, it was mostly Easter eggs and, although it piqued my curiosity to see a phallus in The Little Mermaid, Heidi had skipped that one and I had soccer practice to get to.  I did become aware of the Disney Princess ideal in school through listening to girls talk, and I thought it was an interesting thing to consider, but I certainly wasn't going back exegetically through the canon to confirm.  
     On the whole, my childhood media experience was colored much more heavily by world of Jim Henson than that of Walt Disney.  And looking back, Zoot, the saxophone player in the inimitable "Sax and Violence" spot is characterized just as stereotypically as any of the Disney mainstays Christensen implicates.  Because his zany, multicolored foam rubber cast never really bore much resemblance to humans, Mr. Henson took 99% of the opportunity to criticize away and probably escaped some of that which has dogged Disney for years.  Reading Ms. Christensen's piece, it's tough to disagree with any of what she is forwarding.  It causes me to wonder, though, how successful a person of her bent might be in conversing with a child about unjust representations of the female form or definitions of the good life.  It is absurd to think that it can be done.  But conversely, it is not absurd to think that the child absorbing the subtext at Disney's feet cannot also absorb a wholly different subtext from a different source, a less marketed one, perhaps.  
    By circumstance, children live in the state of "ignorant and happy" as Christensen's student Justine wishes to remain on page 198.  She will never be there again, and it is both the curse and blessing of maturity.  It is interesting to see how Christensen pushes her students (or, rather, their realization/frustration at the the damaging Disney subliminals push themselves) to create a product that will do the same for others.  The PTA pamphlet, for example, might have taken an unsuspecting parent off-guard, but with its grading system and more positive suggestions, the product fulfills her mandate: "Don't just rant in general...Use evidence to support your thesis" (198).  

This was also one of my animated touchstones.  Hellllloo President Bush!

Napolean and Ghandi discuss colonialism via Shel Silverstein

Man using wrench

An additional source

Wesch and the Old Revolution

What claim is Wesch making about 21st century learning and kids?  Do you buy it?
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     Wesch claims that the educational revolutionaries of 2012 are pointing at the same ills and calling for the same changes as those of the early twentieth century.  This seems to imply that the nearly one hundred years of  successes enjoyed by American students have happened despite an unsupportive, lackluster, and critically vapid education system.  Sort of like driving to Lil' General to pick up some milk, turning the car off, reaching to put on the e-brake, and realizing that you'd never taken it off.  As to whether I buy what the author is selling, I must exercise my option to come down somewhere other than yes or no.  
     Mr. Wesch sort of makes my middle point with his closing remark, "And so we find ourselves exactly where any great learner would want to be, on a quest, asking question after question after question."  In other words, it is not a matter of establishing a monolithic "best" model, but rather constant refinement through analysis that keeps the ed. system directed toward real learning.  With this I can agree.  Looking for a unified theory of everything educational is a fool's errand, but the debate it creates among the vocation's most passionate voices is not to the detriment of learning.  In my short time doing this work, I have become convinced that those who shout the loudest are seeking the impossible - a solution.  That they don't know that which they seek is mythical does not seem to bother the policymakers who, given the correct set of persuasive and favorable circumstances, can be convinced to enact even the most stifling set of education reforms.      
     Despite being the author of the article, Mr. Wesch is not given to this kind of talking and would prefer to focus on his collaboratively nonlinear explorations into the digital realm.  It would seem that, with some exceptions, he is bypassing the book or written work as the most accessible method of elucidation and offering instead the future work his current students are doing as citations of his pedagogy.  If it helps tap on the glass or inspires others, so be it.  As in the video, the distinction between content and form has been muddled by the very tools used to convey both.  
     One thought that has been with me for some time is about access over ownership.  Having, owning, and storing are vestigial verbs of an earlier time when hard drive size was the engine volume of muscle-car, boat-anchor desktop machines.  These times instead privilege merely the ability to quickly access all the applications, games, and self-specific media users desire.  Not unlike the angst and reticence Dr. Bogad felt regarding her "analog" books, Web 2.0 users are conflicted about what to do with non-digital artifacts in the face of their seeming devaluation.  The new form and how it's accessed dictates the content and its relevance.   

Media Literacy Post 2: This immigrant is restless

It was April of 2011 when I recognized that my socialization regarding technology, left unchecked, would lead me to place of fearful bitterness, surrounded in a kind of anti-Valhalla by the willfully ignorant elder males of my family coldly staring at the inscrutable blinking of their VCR clocks.  Despite their laudable life accomplishments, as a group, these men have always preferred to affect corny bemusement in the face of advancing technology rather than engaging it.  Even though they cut off their nose to spite their face, to them it is a source of some pride to have no working knowledge of anything more complex than a toaster oven.  

Seeing that I had potential to inherit some of these tendencies, I, like Ray, decided to dive in.  Instead of getting the banal new phone for which Verizon told me I was eligible, I upgraded to a web-enabled device - the very latest that was available at the time - during the spring vacation week last year.  That was very out of character for me and I have been thanking myself every day since then for having made the choice I did.  This being the first time I encounter the term Digital Native on anything more than a cursory level, I am hesitant to self-identify as one or not.  I do know that anything I have done or experienced digitally in the last 15 months was born out of the decision I made to no longer be afraid of technology I didn't fully understand.  The results have been great, and embracing technology has made me a better teacher, coach, person, and has brought my family closer.

It's likely that the same stubbornness that causes my uncles to associate technology use with capitulation to a less authentic way of living is what guided me toward untrammeled, headlong immersion.  Given that, I will perhaps still not be the person who incorporates Pinterest into his daily routine.  But I won't be scared to try.  I may not be a Presnskian Digital Native, but I have lived long enough to have experienced sea changes in other venues and feel confident in my ability to make my place in the new order.  Anything to prevent this from happening, right?

    

Media Literacy Post 1: Introduction

Good morning; who's got Olympic fever?!
Since school let out, I have been working to make good on my organization goals.  I started by painting the bathroom and getting estimates on what it would cost to have a tree removed from where I envision the butterfly/bee garden - and future apiary - to be.  I signed up for this class, cashed in some miles to purchase a ticket to LAX for a former roommate's wedding, (there will BE a dancing flash mob and that's that) and took the car into the shop to have some work done before we take it out to Chicago for another friend's wedding.  Over the weekend, I did an emotionally cold and brutal job of cleaning out my classroom (a process aided in no small part by the extreme makeover planned for it by the administration this summer).  I found things in the back of storage spaces I never knew existed (witness exhibit A: the mini Pawsox batting helmet filled with T tokens) and am excited about teaching in an overhauled space next year.  I want to design and  install shelving so I can centralize all the quickly obsolescing books, movies, music and stereo equipment taking up space elsewhere.  I want it to look something like what's below, does anyone have cabinetmaker recommendations? 1

When not in class, I enjoy hammer throwing, cooking, canoeing, projects, re-reading classic books, coaching, and reaching things on high shelves for my parents.  I am looking forward to learning a lot this week.