Sherry's Blog

This week’s reading was the perfect conclusion to this seminar.  I remember (vaguely) reading McCloud’s whole book, Understanding Comics, in Library School for the week we talked about graphic novels, though I might not have made it all the way through (it being assigned at the end of the semester when things tend to slip…).  I really wish I had read it, but somehow, I don’t think I would have appreciated it the same way that I do now.

This reading kind of reminded me about Turkle’s discussion of constructed worlds.  Comics books are a world unto themselves and I love how McCloud is breaking down the rules for us. There were lots of “ah…so that’s why they do that…” moments while I was reading this, and I loved every minute of it.  Delving into the way things work, the nuts and bolts of another world like McCloud has done is brilliant and simply fascinating to me.

I also found myself thinking, however, “what does this have to do with what we’ve been talking about this semester?” But, when I got to the last page of our reading, it suddenly clicked.  McCloud is doing what we, to some extent, have been doing since September – taking a medium that well-established and accepted without much thought, and analyzing all its components in an attempt to develop a better understanding of it.  He looks at why things are the way they are, goes back into the history of comics, what others have done, why that worked or didn’t work and what lasting impressions it has on the comics of today, and draws his own conclusions.

My favorite part of the whole chapter were the last 6 panels.  McCloud concludes by saying:

I’ve been trying to figure out what makes comics “tick” for years and I’m still amazed at the strangeness of it all.

I seems to me that he’s got it pretty well figured out, yet he still seems to be in awe of the unknown.  He goes on to say that

…no matter how bizarre the workings of time in comics is — the face it presents to the reader — is one of simple normality.  Or the illusion of it, anyway.

All depends on your frame of mind.

In concluding this journey through the history of a new medium, I feel that this is a stellar mindset to come away with.  While we do understand a great deal about technology, its uses and the reasons for them, a lot of the workings are still pretty bizarre.  No matter how bizarre they are, though, we don’t necessarily HAVE to understand everything because of the brilliant men and women who have gone before us and worked hard to help technology work for us, presenting the illusion of simple normality.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for the priesthood of technology and blind acceptance of this medium, but I definitely respect McCloud’s awe and appreciation for the slightly unknown, while making the known work to his advantage.

With this in mind, I LOVED the little gremlin that was lurking in the clock…reminds me of the technology gremlins that I hang out with every day!

Where does it start?  As one colleague observed, we start the process even before kids are in school.  As another colleague pointed, we even move our families so kids can go to a specific school based on their rating which is based on test scores.

Illich says that this innovative kind of schooling is for a society that doesn’t now exist and I believe him.  We encourage creative thinking, innovation, and initiative at work, but in school, we take that away because we’re teaching to the test and students have to perform otherwise people will move their families to another school district.

School is supposed to be preparation for the workforce, we’re to be equipping students for their future careers.  Today, we’re looking at using technology to be able to work from home, to be innovative, creative thinking is prized – who knows what we’ll be doing tomorrow. But, as was pointed out, we’re educating students for the workforce of the past – the structure, the factory.  We’re perpetuating this cycle of restrictive, curriculum-centered, test-centered education.

Where does it stop?

It seems we’re all in agreement that the 7th grader with a PLE is amazing.  But we seem to say, “That’s nice, but it’ll never happen.”  Why not?

Because administrators need to have high test scores to keep their jobs, to get their school’s ratings up, to get more people to move to their district.  Because teachers are afraid to let go of the control.  Because teachers are afraid that students won’t learn, even though where there is interest, there is learning.

Do we just write off this generation – get rid of the old way of thinking – and wait to start fresh?  It worked for God and the Israelites on their way to the Promised Land – wait forty years until we clear out the old generation of linear, test-taking learners.

At the same time, I feel like there still needs to be some direction.  Even in the desert, the Isrealites had Moses to guide them.  I like Illich’s idea of the educational initiator.  As many members of our group have pointed out, there are opportunities you might miss unless someone pushes you outside your comfort zone.  But how do you become a life-long learner in a schooled society? Can we de-school without deschooling?

I’ve always had mixed feelings about video games. Growing up, we weren’t allowed to have them. Not at all. I’m pretty sure it was because my parents were worried about my brothers and I not getting things done or something. We didn’t do much TV either.  We didn’t have cable or even spend much time watching the few channels or movies we had.

Then, gradually, as my brothers and I got older, something changed. They got Nintendo Game Boys (my mom was hooked on Tetris at the time, so I’m pretty sure that’s why she “caved” to that request), and they kept up pretty well with the newer versions of the devices and games as well. I didn’t have one, but I’m not sure I ever really wanted one. I was happier with my books. I would play on my brothers’ Game Boys every now and then, but never for very long.

Eventually, everything changed. We got cable (that happened while I was at college…thanks Mom and Dad). I still remember how excited my brothers were when they got a Game Cube for Christmas one year. And they were equally as thrilled with the Wii we got a few years ago. I think they actually let me touch it once, which was very nice of them since I probably messed up some kind of high score or something.

All this to say, I’m still not sure what I think about video games. I think Turkle (besides having a fabulous first name, even spelled correctly) is completely correct in her observations and conclusions and I definitely learned a lot about the mindset of those who do enjoy video games. The part of the reading that really resonated with me was when she talked about the rules of the worlds that exist in these games. “Everything is possible but nothing is arbitrary.” I love this statement because it captures what I love most about reading – the chance to go into another world and learn it’s rules and secrets.  Jasper Fforde is one of my favorite authors (Shades of Grey is one of his most recent and intriguing) and is a genius when it comes to creating other worlds and the rules that go along with them.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t and don’t need video games. My need for consistency and immersion in a story is met through reading. When it comes to my need for control and perfection, I completely identified with Rob:

I wrestle with my own demons of perfectionism and certainly don’t need to test myself against some programmer’s manufactured demons.

I’m a first-born. I’m the only girl in a family of two very athletically-gifted, mechanically-minded boys. I was, and still am, all about the individual competition. However, running is my drug of choice. I’m that person that Turkle mentions at the bottom of page 512 who is put off by the idea of that elusive “right answer” instead of intrigued. I’m the woman she talked about that doesn’t really get excited about right way to work something mechanical  and a wrong way, since I usually do it the wrong way. Being a first-born and a perfectionist, I don’t need another avenue to help me feel bad about myself.  And since video games were competitive in my house, they were certainly not an outlet for personal satisfaction since my brothers were so much better than me.

That being said, I do enjoy the occasional song on Guitar Hero, and the odd bout or two with rabid bunnies on a really enjoyable game that my husband found. But these don’t have the staying power for me that Turkle is talking about. In fact, the option to play for about 5 minutes at a time is more appealing to me. I skip through the story of our little Rayman game to get to the action (shooting bunnies with plungers).  I get to indulge for a little bit, maybe take the edge off the day with a little intense concentration, but I don’t have enough time to feel bad about myself and my skills (or lack thereof) because if I’m not doing well, I can just quit after the round I’m on and go running instead!

I’m not sure what the grand application or brilliant insight is for this post or this reading…I’m still not sure what I think or how what I think will inform what I do and I look forward to hearing from others today!

“Hang on, it’s thinking.”  Thanks to Laurel, we recognize that computers don’t actually “think” but they do things to provide us, the audience, with “a representation from which thought may be inferred” as we interact with them.  Fascinating.

I’ll go ahead and say it – this human aspect, the insight into the human psyche, is what Engelbart was missing (yes, I know, he had a more altruistic goal in mind when he began work so many years ago).  Laurel seems to be following in the footsteps of our other authors (channeling Nelson in particular) when the introduction talked about her desire to take technology out of the hands of the technologist and make allow for new, creative, interactive opportunities on a very personal level.

I wasn’t very familiar with Aristotle’s structure, but of all six elements, the element of Thought was probably the most fascinating to me in terms of what it means for the world of technology.  Why are digital cameras designed to “click” when we take a picture?  Why does the keyboard on the iPad make a typewriter noise when you type something?  Before I would probably have said “because it can!”  But a huge, mega-watt light bulb went on in my head as I read Laurel’s example of spell check on page 568.  The device doesn’t HAVE to make any kind of sound or actually DO anything…it just knows.  But we add in steps or sounds that represent the action as is occurs because

[...] it is key to the success of a dramatic representation that all of the materials that are formulated into action are drawn from the circumscribed potential of the particular dramatic world.

Sound like anyone we’ve read recently?  It seems that our tendencies towards presupposed existence of spaces which exist in their entirety extend to the outer representations of our machines, not just the inner workings of them.  The computer has to track with what we know in order for it to make sense to us, and so, moving on to the last few elements, we characterize them, whether or not characters are necessary to the actual action taking place. Not all people are like this, but as Laurel and Aristotle have shown us, humans expect certain things whether they are aware of those expectations or not, and when those expectations are not met and the conventions are not adhered to, we get upset.

These devices are supposed to be augmenting my intellect -> I am human -> therefore I place them in a “circumscribed world” in which I map human characteristics on them and they’re subject to the same restrictions I am as a human (ex. the need to think)…all in order to help me have a better grasp on them as agents in this grand play of my life. We’re both in it together and the devices become my friends, figuring out what I need, responding to my input, and helping me accomplish things. 

At last!  I’ve found justification for naming all my devices!

The thing that struck me the most from Viola’s writing is his idea of space – idea spaces, memory systems, and eventually data space.  “The interesting thing about idea spaces and memory systems,” he says, “is that they presuppose the existence of some sort of place, either real of graphic, which has its own structure and architecture.”  It was interesting to be reminded of the human need for some kind of space which already exists onto which we can map our new ideas.  This is a concept that is used in education a lot – help the child (or adult) connect the new knowledge to something they are already familiar with and they will learn the material better.  Almost all of our blog posts have some element of tying the current week’s reading to that of previous weeks, drawing connections, comparing and contrasting, all in an effort to help ourselves understand it.

As Viola was talking about the data space, “an imaginary but real chunk of space [...] theoretically infinite,” still existing within the confines of the computer with a reference point for the operator, it made me think of that short clip of Nelson we watched during our meeting a few weeks ago.  We still relate this infinite space to things which are comfortable – files, folders, documents – a presupposed structure that already exists in its entirety.

Second Life came to mind several times while I was reading this article as well.  Its an infinite space into which viewers can wander through prerecorded or simulated scenes and events, like the interactive video that Viola mentioned.  But even then, Second Life is just that – a virtual world that mimics the real world (though there are a few differences such as methods of travel, etc).  Ideally, we’d be able to use such an infinite space to discover new things, etc, but with Second Life and other interactive virtual worlds, it seems that there are limitations based on what producer has decided will be the possible pathways that the viewer must take.

Viola laments that

Even though the technology is interactive, there is still the same old linear logic.

Though I may be off base as I certainly didn’t completely understand this reading, it seems that he’s advocating for “thinking outside the box” of our own preconceived notions and limitations.  Viola talks about new diagrams where “viewers can pop in and out at any place.  All directions are equal. Viewing becomes exploring a territory” and not a literal one.  I wonder if it’s possible to completely throw off any presupposition of existing structures and really make use of this “data space” that is being developed.  Will we always go back to the structures we are familiar with?  Is that a bad thing?

And how about that porcupine?

cc licensed flickr photo shared by ice.bluess

(Porcupine picture borrowed from Alan Levine’s post about this reading from the spring seminar: http://cogdogblog.com/2010/03/27/porcupine.  Even reading Levine’s post didn’t shed light on the “condominiums” part of this article!  I’m usually pretty good with words and metaphors, and I’m disappointed in myself for not quite grasping this one. I hope this afternoon’s discussion will help shed light on that…)

I thought Engelbart was hard, but somehow that technicality was easier to digest than this week’s excerpt.  “The Medium is the Message.”  I understand that (I think!) – technology (used loosely in McLuhan’s writing) itself is worth studying and in and of itself brings a message of some kind of change.  But when McLuhan started explaining it, I had trouble following him.

Distracted by the Medium

Taking the phrase at face value and applying it to my field, I have to completely disagree with McLuhan.  In K-12 education, we’re always preaching that the medium is NOT the message.  When teachers get caught up in the technology, they lose sight of the learning that is supposed to be taking place in their students.  Students can also lose sight of the learning as they get distracted by the shiny, flashing, beeping technology.  There’s nothing wrong with learning how to use technology, but we encourage teachers to focus on the content – the core curriculum that doesn’t change – and then employ the technology as a tool to assist in teaching that content.

One statement in particular jumped out to me:

Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of a technological idiot.

I think I resent being referred to, however indirectly, as a technological idiot.  Maybe I just need to process it more.  Maybe I got uneasy as several of my personal beliefs were challenged and subconsciously chose not to understand the rest of it.  I think that how media is used is important, and should be considered.  Even though McLuhan dismissed Sarnoff’s statements (“products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value”), I have always thought that.

I tend to be a middle-of-the-road person, so I can (sort of) see his point, but it seems that the medium may or not be the message depending on the situation.  In my situation (K-12 education), it’s not.  In his situation (the light bulb and other significant media), it is a message.

I’m eager to hear what others have to say.  If I’m way off-base, I’d love to know!

Also, maybe it’s just the reprinting in our book, or maybe it was McLuhan himself, but I think this reading could have been vastly improved by a few well-selected pictures…

Last week’s seminar was certainly not what I expected.  We went in talking about what seemed to me to be a early version of the iPad, and I left thinking about the controversy surrounding social media at the moment (still not exactly sure how we ended up there).  Having just been told at work to keep the social media out of the workplace, it was a subject that really hit home for me.

I was thrilled to see ap’s post on social media, and really appreciated her distillation of the issue to one word: trust.  But I think I would go so far as to add human nature to that conclusion.  People are just stupid sometimes.  In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be such a thing as distrust or snap judgments and it wouldn’t matter what we put online or didn’t put online.  When the success of something as a viable tool depends on the ability of everyone using it to operate with the same basic standards and guidelines, good luck…

It almost seems unethical.  We are always encouraged to “be yourself” – don’t become someone you aren’t just to fit in, don’t act differently because of the people around you – just be you.  But in the push to separate professional and personal lives in the online environment, I feel like we’re encouraged to do just that.

It seems like there are two extremes in the spectrum of attitudes towards social media:

1. Those people that have completely blurred the lines between social and professional
2. Those people who forget that people do have personal, as well as professional lives

I think the first group has ruined it for everyone else.  The first group creates the second group.  I understand the desire of a company to maintain an image or reputation, and it seems to be even more important when it comes to schools.  But would that be important if everyone was able to take the same trusting approach to things they find on the Internet about people?  Employees have conversations at work all the time about their personal lives, they share pictures of grandkids, weekend activities, etc., and this is not forbidden.  What is it about the Internet that makes employers in particular so wary? Trusting that people have the professional decency to behave in a manner appropriate to the situation shouldn’t be a hard thing.

Is a middle-of-the-road approach too much to ask?

But can’t people loosen up, behave oddly, behave out of character, etc from time to time?  And couldn’t they want to share that with others?  Couldn’t there be a context, a reason, rationale for this behavior?  Shouldn’t we expect others to approach the publicized impressions of ourselves that are out there with those questions in mind?  Shouldn’t we approach others the same way?

But we’re only human.

Today, I taught a workshop for K-12 teachers about how to create a 21st century classroom.  It seemed like it went right along with our reading for this week!  I was really excited to read Kay and Goldberg’s account of what sounded to me like the first school computer lab. Engelbart was brilliant and he had great ideas, but I love the way that the readings have shown the progression of the computer to be more and more personal.  In a way, it kind of seems a little selfish to take Engelbart’s machine, intended for the betterment of mankind as a whole, and turn it into something that serves us on a very individual basis.  But then, when Nelson, Kay and Goldberg take it into the K-12 classroom, the computer seems to have pure motives again, as it seeks to enrich the learning experience so greatly.

So, back to today…Before we got started, I asked the participants come up with their own definition of what a 21st Century Classroom looks like.  Most people said something about technology – having computers for every student, interactive whiteboards, etc.  So then, referencing the 21st century skills framework (outlined by The Partnership for 21st Century Skills), the New Media Literacies, and a lot of ideas that we’ve discussed in our seminar, I waxed eloquent about the 21st century learner being one that is creative, innovative, involved in collaboration with peers, and how technology is a perfect vehicle to help us achieve these goals in the classroom.  I cautioned that technology should not be the focus, that the subject matter and skills (critical thinking, etc) should be the focus.

But then, as we got into the workshop, and I was demonstrating lots of web-based tools (blogs, wikis, voicethread, etc), I learned that a majority of my participants taught at a prison.  Their kids don’t have access to computers and the Internet.  “All this is great,” they said, “but what are we supposed to do?”  I also had a few participants from rural districts, and they echoed the same sentiment.  Only, for their students, it was a matter of not being able to afford the technology, rather than not being allowed to use it.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, but I have yet to come up with an answer.  What happens in cases like this?  Is it possible to have a 21st-century classroom without technology?  Is it possible to teach 21st-century skills without technology?  If so, what would that even look like?  How do you practice the collaboration, the innovation, the digital citizenship without access to a computer and the Internet?

I preached that “it’s not about the technology,” but is it?  And what happens if it does turn out to be all about technology?

As I drove home from our seminar last week, I heard this song on the radio.  Now, I’m not going to claim to understand this song.  At all.  (Even a quick trip to the collaborative knowledge base of the world didn’t help me understand it.)  However, the last “verse” really popped out at me, especially in light of what we’d just talked about.

I’ve always said there’s a song for everything, and the musical of my life continues with these lyrics, which have been bouncing around my head all week.  They resonated because of what Alan Kay said about technology being a two-edged sword – it can save and dramatically improve our lives, or it can become a prosthetic and supplant a function or process that was perfectly normal, healthy, and natural, effectively killing it.

This reminded me of a term I’ve been hearing a lot – social isolation.  It may not be new to many people, but I first heard it at a leadership conference for technology grant recipients in August, and it definitely resonated with me.  According to studies, since 1985, Americans have become more and more socially isolated, despite the incredible leaps in technology that have allowed us to become more connected to each other.  I can’t help but think this is a prime example of technology becoming a prosthetic, taking the place of something we already knew how to do (communicate) and severely crippling it.  It’s so easy to be “friends” with 420 people you’ve barely met.  I can keep up with people from college without even having to talk to them.  Do I really know them?  Maybe not, but I know what they had for lunch.

On the other hand, Nelson points out that “the computer is as inhuman as we make it.”  People have created thriving Personal Learning Networks (or Communities or Environments, whatever you call yours) completely on computer-based interactions with people they’ve never met, and might never meet.

And then Nelson throws Styx for a loop and says that we need to “rescue the student from the inhuman teacher, and allow him to relate directly and personally to the intrinsically interesting subject matter, than we need to use computers in education.” In this case, it’s the teacher (supposedly “warm” and “human”) that is “dehumanizing” education, killing the curiosity and enthusiasm of students by adhering to the prescribed structures of the curriculum, and it’s the computer that is allowing the student to explore new worlds, saving his desire to learn.

Are computers making us dumber?  Are they dehumanizing us?  I’m not sure I have the answer to that, but thank you very much, Mr. Roboto, for giving me something to think about…

“Augmenting the Human Intellect.”  That just sounds daunting.  And to be honest, reading (or valiantly attempting to read) Doug Engelbart’s article last week didn’t really help clear up that concept.  It wasn’t until hearing Christina Engelbart, daughter of this exceptionally brilliant visionary, speak on Wednesday that I really caught the vision that he was trying to convey so many years ago.  As I listened to Christina and the rest of the group talking, I understood that the focus of the whole framework was on the results rather than just developing a cool new toy for scientists to play with.

With that in mind, I found the conversation on the co-evolution of humans alongside the technology to be very interesting.  I have a lot of thoughts swirling around about this one, so bear with me!

While humans invariably lean towards homeostasis, as pointed out by a colleague in her blog post, we also want things to be faster and easier. This is something I really don’t understand.  If something comes along that will make our lives easier, why is it not embraced immediately?  The obvious answer is that it takes too much effort to learn something new. So, I thought it was interesting that Christina mentioned that ease of use wasn’t a factor considered in the design of the new workstation.  I understand the reasoning she gave, but if its not easy to use or to learn, people will continue to stay where they are with technology.

And if those old dogs stay where they are, where does that leave those of us who do embrace new technology and levels of efficiency?  How “downward compatible” do we have to be before we can say, “I’m sorry, but you just have to learn this new program or tool”?  Continuing to support those that aren’t as eager as I am in the world of new media, or simply refuse to acknowledge it, is frustrating and sometimes hinders my ability to be looking forward.  Its necessary, but troublesome.

As I read through the article for this week, I couldn’t help but wonder if marketing is part of the problem.  While I found it interesting to see glimpses of today’s tools and technologies in the Engelbart’s article from 1968, it was still pretty dry.  While the learning curve will forever be a challenge to the old dogs, I kept thinking “If they could just see what this research center could do, they’d be all over this thing!” In order to get people to move from here to there, you have to convince them of why staying here is terrible and unacceptable and why going there will be so much better.

So…what if another well-known visionary took on the task of selling this idea?

“Are you tired of being inefficient?  Do you suffer from stacks and stacks of data and notes cluttering up your life?  Would you like to help solve the world’s problems? Well now you can!  Introducing the new Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect!  Designed with you in mind, this robust machine will take you to incredible new levels of efficiency with its top of-the-line file structuring system, high-powered 4.5 megabyte swapping drum, and revolutionary new input systems…

(insert lots of exclamatory statements here)

But wait!  Call now and we’ll throw in a second display so you and a colleague an communicate in real time with crystal clear Picture-in Picture capabilities – absolutely free!”

Maybe we just need different kinds of motivation to learn those new tricks?