Jan 6th, 2009 by Prof Wesch
I created a new tab on my Netvibes page of the feeds that help me stay on top of the latest buzz. It represents less than 10% of the feeds I actually check, but I thought it would be useful to have these particular feeds on a single page for a quick glance now and then. Feel free to take a look, and let me know if you have any suggestions for what I might add or remove.
Jan 3rd, 2009 by Prof Wesch
Those of us striving to integrate participatory media literacy practices into our classes often face resistance. Other faculty might argue that we are turning away from the foundations of print literacy, or worse, pandering to our tech-obsessed students. Meanwhile, students might resist too, wondering why they have to learn to use a wiki in an anthropology class. The surprising-to-most-people-fact is that students would prefer less technology in the classroom (especially *participatory* technologies that force them to do something other than sit back and memorize material for a regurgitation exercise). We use social media in the classroom not because our students use it, but because we are afraid that social media might be using them - that they are using social media blindly, without recognition of the new challenges and opportunities they might create.
I was reminded of this while reading Howard Rheingold’s great little article, Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies, where he writes:
If print culture shaped the environment in which the Enlightenment blossomed and set the scene for the Industrial Revolution, participatory media might similarly shape the cognitive and social environments in which twenty first century life will take place (a shift in the way our culture operates). For this reason, participatory media literacy is not another subject to be shoehorned into the curriculum as job training for knowledge workers.
In all of Howard’s work is an understanding that a new technology may have good or bad consequences, determined largely by how people use it and how well they understand the broader implications of these uses. In Smart Mobs, he warned that new forms of participatory media could be great “cooperation amplifiers” but without sufficient literacy on the part of the public could also become an “always-on panopticon” invoking Bentham’s haunting design for a prison in which a centralized entity could see everthing all the prisoners do, “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”
Like Howard, I employ social media in the classroom with a sense of urgency.
Like the early days of print, radio, and television, the present structure of the participatory media regime - the political, economic, social and cultural institutions that constrain and empower the way the new medium can be used, and which impose structures on flows of information and capital - is still unsettled. As legislative and regulatory battles, business competition, and social institutions vie to control the new regime, a potentially decisive and presently unknown variable is the degree and kind of public participation. Because the unique power of the new media regime is precisely its participatory potential, the number of people who participate in using it during its formative years, and the skill with which they attempt to take advantage of this potential, is particularly salient.
Ultimately, participatory media literacy is as much about a literacy of *participation* as it is a literacy of media. For, as Howard says, “a participatory culture in which most of the population see themselves as creators as well as consumers of culture is far more likely to generate freedom and wealth for more people than one in which a small portion of the population produces culture that the majority passively consume.”
I have never been happy with the standard Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) software options that have been available (or the prices!), so for the next 2 weeks I will be on a quest for the perfect fieldnotes management system that will be used by my incoming class of 15 students for our ethnographic project exploring anonymity on the web.
So far I have been testing Diigo, Evernote, and Tiddlywiki.
I’m looking for something that has the following characteristics:
So far, Diigo seems best for the collaborative aspects of the project. It allows us to build up a massive database of links and notes that are collectively generated, tagged, and organized. But it is a total failure when it comes to the ability to create private notes and work offline.
Right now, the best solution I can imagine is a combination of Evernote and Diigo. Evernote for managing private notes and working offline. Diigo for sharing and collaborating. If Evernote could somehow be synced with Diigo we would have the perfect solution.
I should also mention that each option also has bonuses not listed above. For example, Evernote is easily updated and synced from multiple devices. You can even upload pictures from your mobile and Evernote can actually decipher text within the photos which is then searchable.
One more problem with all 3. It would be great to be able to hyperlink to offline materials such as photos and videos. (Obviously, none of these things were designed as QDA software replacements, so these are not really shortcomings.)
Any thoughts or solutions? Any possibilities I have overlooked?
Still much to explore. I’ll update as I find solutions.
Dec 23rd, 2008 by Prof Wesch
Amazing month. As many of you know, I was awarded the U.S. Professor of the Year Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research Universities, had a wonderful journey to Europe to give a couple keynote presentations, was mentioned in a little blurb by David Byrne in New York Times magazine, was showered with praise by our university president, and was even named “coolest man on the planet.” Now I’m gearing up for a great new project on anonymity on the web with my Spring 2009 Digital Ethnography team.
Here is the acceptance speech for the award:
Oct 22nd, 2008 by Prof Wesch
Daniel Willingham has an interesting response to Steve Hargadon today in the Britannica Forum (I highly recommend both articles) in which he references an article by William Kilpatrick, which I consider a must-read. In the article, Kilpatrick has some great lines like, “We have for years increasingly desired that education be considered as life itself and not as a mere preparation for later living … it follows that to base education on purposeful acts is exactly to identify the process of education with worthy living itself.” Lots of great ideas here, but the kicker for me was the publication date (below the fold) …
Oct 21st, 2008 by Prof Wesch
(originally published on Britannica Blog)
In spring 2007 I invited the 200 students enrolled in the “small” version of my “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology” class to tell the world what they think of their education by helping me write a script for a video to be posted on YouTube. The result was the disheartening portrayal of disengagement you see below. The video was viewed over one million times in its first month and was the most blogged about video in the blogosphere for several weeks, eliciting thousands of comments. With rare exception, educators around the world expressed the sad sense of profound identification with the scene, sparking a wide-ranging debate about the roles and responsibilities of teachers, students, and technology in the classroom.
Oct 21st, 2008 by Prof Wesch
I’m part of a forum on “classroom 2.0″ over on Britannica this week. It should be fun. We have some very thoughtful contributors with many different perspectives participating, including Steve Hargadon, Mark Bauerlein, Dan Willingham, David Cole, Michael Horn, John Seely Brown, and many others. Here is a snippet from the press release:
Are the new technologies that fill today’s classrooms a bane or a boon to learning? That’s the question a panel of experts will tackle in “Brave New Classroom 2.0,” a forum taking place this week at the Encyclopaedia Britannica blog (www.britannica.com/blogs).
The forum will explore the effects of PCs, laptops, whiteboards, the Internet, PowerPoint and other technologies in classrooms at all levels, from grade school to graduate school. Continue Reading »